Chapter One

Charlie was waiting for me at the airport with a bouquet of flowers, luckily, I didn't have a favorite color or was picky about receiving flowers. I smiled brightly when I reached him, knowing he was glad I decided to spend the rest of my time here for high school instead of deciding to go travel with Renee and Phil.

If I didn't have Charlie and was stuck with Renee and Phil (no offense to Phil) I would have stayed back in Phoenix despite the fact my bedroom kept reminding me of my miscarriage. I had made sure to replace my mattress and choose bedspreads and bed sheets that were a different color than the original ones I had. It hadn't helped that my original sheets were white, so my sheets were coated in blood from my body trying to dispel Avalyn from my womb.

Now though, I couldn't help but smile and have some tears that were falling down my face at the fact Charlie had always been there for me. He had been there for me when I had Avalyn cremated, but Renee didn't come to the funeral home to see Avalyn cremated. Phil had attempted to come to see his step-granddaughter cremated but Renee had managed to make them late to the funeral home. I was already leaving with the special box that held the bagged remains of my fetus.

"I'm happy you're here, Bells," Charlie whispered as he hugged me. I held him desperately, keeping my head up against his warm chest. He was dressed in his chief-of-police uniform (hat and all), so it showed he was in law enforcement.

"I'm glad too."

I pulled away from him and let him take my luggage from me before we went towards the front doors of the Port Angeles airport. I stayed by Charlie's side, looking forward at the tiles and not at the families that were going throughout the airport. I wouldn't be able to deal with the knowledge I had lost my daughter and when I would see little girls around me it would bring me back to the fact, I wouldn't be having Avalyn in my arms this month.

The ride back to Forks was filled with just the sounds of the cruiser moving down the highway and the music from the radio station. I didn't pay attention to the music that was playing, despite the fact that classical music was reverberating throughout the cruiser and trying to sooth me. My fingers just kept tapping against the locket that held Avalyn's remains–thankful that they had welded the locket shut (obviously) or else the ash would have come out. My little girl would be with me always, no matter what would happen in the future.

It was slowly beginning to rain when we arrived in Forks, my lips turning upwards when I noted how everything was the same. It was comforting, to be honest. I was also glad that Charlie wouldn't tell them I was pregnant to begin with, because he knew if I had a miscarriage or decided to put Avalyn up for adoption, he didn't want the town to condemn or pity me for becoming pregnant to begin with. So, I didn't have to deal with future classmates at school knowing their newest classmate was not only pregnant but had lost the baby.

When we reached Charlie's house, I couldn't help but smile. The house looked exactly as it always did since I could remember. There were the same worn-out white panels of the house–which needed to be power washed. The shingles of the roof needed to be replaced. The house had two bedrooms and one bathroom. My bedroom faced the west side of the house, which ended up overlooking the front yard of the house.

Speaking of the front yard there was a Chevy truck that was parked on the gray gravel driveway, which belonged to Billy Black (my godfather who also happened to be a native on the La Push Reservation). He had bought it in 1984, though it was new in the late 1950's to the early 1960's.

It was a faded red color that also had rust that had spread throughout the paint, evidence that the truck was open to the elements and wasn't tucked away safely in a garage. The truck had big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab.

It was everything that I had remembered from since I was little and Billy used the truck to take me and Charlie along with his son, Jacob, fishing at the lake. Of course that was when Billy used to be able to walk, he had been diagnosed with Diabetes when I was in late elementary school and ended up being wheelchair bound now due to the diabetes.

"What's Billy's truck doing here?" I couldn't help but wonder aloud, only for Charlie to blush and inform me he had bought it from Billy as a homecoming gift for me. I blushed back at him before thanking him, since it meant a lot to him.

Getting out of the cruiser, I went towards the front porch of the house while Charlie grabbed my luggage (not that there was a lot to begin with), and waited patiently for him near the front door. The whole time my hand was upon my locket, while I kept my other hand down and away from my stomach. I knew that was something I still did, without meaning to or without thinking, for I still thought that Avalyn was here with me.

There would be some out there claiming that Avalyn was watching me from Heaven. I wasn't a religious person despite having a grandmother (Grandma Swan) who was Catholic. She would have been thrilled at being a great-grandmother if she were still alive. She would have told me Avalyn was waiting for me up in Heaven, she might possibly be taking care of Avalyn until I would be reunited with her. It was a nice thought, but I was a realist at heart, she probably wasn't watching over me.

Charlie reached me and sat my things down before he unlocked the door. I went through first, my eyes landing on the moderate sized living room. The furniture was the same from when he was still married to Renee. The same plaid couch, leather recliner, floor lamp, and coffee table. The same worn out and stained carpet flooring, along with all my school pictures lined up on the fireplace mantel for the whole world to see. Everything that I had been greeted with for seventeen years, it was in front of me and it was both comforting and depressing at the same time.

Charlie came in and shut the front door behind him before he went upstairs. I trailed after him, noting in the corner of my eye the photographs that were up against the wall the stairs were built up against. A wedding picture of him and Renee, both of them eighteen and at the Port Angeles Courthouse. A wedding picture of his parents (Grandma and Grandpa Swan had Charlie when they were older, he was their miracle child). There was even a picture of me when I did ballet in elementary school, in one of my recital costumes–a blush pink.

My bedroom was open. I entered, where I was welcomed with light blue walls and a peaked ceiling. There were yellowed lace curtains that framed the only window in the bedroom. A second hand computer with a modem (phone line) was stapled to the closest phone jack on the floor. A rocking chair from my baby days was in the corner of the room.

A white wrought iron bed with a purple bed set let me know that Charlie remembered how my favorite color was purple. Or at least it was one of my favorite colors. I wondered what Avalyn's favorite color would have been like. Would she have liked the shade of purple in front of me or would she have said that purple wasn't her color?

"I remember you said you liked the color purple," Charlie mumbled, making me assure him out loud that I liked the bed set. He relaxed, knowing I wasn't someone who lied.

Charlie didn't see a reason why he should still be lingering in my bedroom. Instead he gave me another grateful smile, awkward but present enough to allow me to know he was really glad I decided to move and be with him right now. I could have decided to just go with Renee and Phil, and be forced into a living hell for the rest of my high school days because Renee would always have that smile on her face. The exact smile she had when she learnt I had lost Avalyn.

We ended up eating one of the usual 'dinner meals' the restaurant in town, The Lodge, prepared for families in town that decided to have the restaurant make their food. I didn't pay attention to how the food seemed to be lovingly made, unlike some of the meals that restaurants made and were nothing more than another means of extra cash. I didn't even notice how Charlie had ended up getting my favorite foods for the dinner, when he could have chosen something that was more of his taste.

I went to bed before long, knowing I would rather be asleep and not look at Charlie. He claimed I wasn't a failure to him, an embarrassment. He would have brought down the baby crib that his parents had made when they learnt they were going to have him. I didn't want him to look at how I would touch my stomach and know that it was flat, that Avalyn wasn't resting within my womb, ready to be borne by the end of the month.

The next morning, I woke to the police cruiser's engine purring, enough for me to flip onto my side away from where the window was. A few tears fell down my face, for I had hoped when I would come back here, I would have Avalyn in my arms. I was planning on sleeping in this bed with a baby crib in the corner of the room. I was planning on going around town and showing her off, letting everyone see my precious Avalyn.

I went downstairs and ate a natural granola bar, my eyes peering out at the cars that were leaving the neighborhood. The heater was on in the house, which didn't help when I was covered up in blankets upstairs in my bed. I could have been still sleeping, but I had missed school a whole month after I had lost Avalyn (if Renee weren't such a fake bitch around Phil she would have forced me to go back to school as soon as she could), and I didn't need to miss anymore school.

I decided to wear a white turtleneck sweater with a light tan cardigan button up jacket along with dark washed jeans and brown leather Slip-On shoes. I brushed my teeth and my hair, adding a white headband at the last moment to push away my bangs. I put on a little bit of makeup, not a lot but enough to highlight my features. My brown eyes were more stunning to the neutral colors I decided to wear for the day, and my silver heart locket still stayed around my neck.

The drive to the high school didn't take too long, it was off of the highway and looked like a collection of matching houses instead of one building like in Phoenix. There were overhead pathways that went from building to building, so that everyone could be sheltered away from the rain and wind. Nicely trimmed bushes lined each side of the pathways, bringing more green onto the campus despite the forest that was behind the school.

Parking in the front office parking lot, I grabbed my backpack along with the brown leather cross-body satchel I had sat in the passenger seat of the truck. I hopped out of the truck, shivering some from the cold wind despite the fact I also was wearing a gray parka over my cardigan and turtleneck sweater.

I was immediately hit with a blast of cold air conditioning, enough for irritation to leak from me at the knowledge it was already cold enough outside. Add air conditioning to a building during mid-January in Washington State, it was even more ridiculous and made me wish I was somewhere warm and sunny instead of cold and dreary.

The office had padded folding chairs that lined either side of the office, and orange flecked commercial carpet that needed to be replaced. Potted plants were throughout the office. They filled every crevice that was within the office building, though just like the bushes outside there was no need for anymore plants since this town was surrounded by moss covered trees. The office was cut in half by a counter, where a large, red haired woman wearing glasses and a purple sweater was looking at the computer that was situated on the lower part of the front office desk that was behind the front of it.

The woman glanced up, noticing me, before she gave me a brilliant smile.

"Hello! You must be our new student, Chief Swan's daughter!"

I fidgeted with Avalyn's locket before nodding my head and stepping forward. She didn't comment on me fiddling with the locket, nor did she seem to notice how I had my daughter's name upon the locket. My hand was covering her name, so that might have been the reason behind her not commenting on it. I informed her I preferred to be called Bella instead of Isabella, which in return made her nod her head to let me know she understood me.

"Of course! I'm Shelly Cope but you'll have to call me Mrs. Cope. Let me get your things and then you can be on your way to your first class," she informed me before she stood up from where she was sitting in her desk chair and went back to where the filing cabinets were.

I waited patiently as she went over to them and pulled out the things I would need for my first day of school here. She came back and handed me my schedule, before she handed me a map of the school with highlighted pathways to each of my classes and finally a slip of paper I needed my teachers to sign by the end of the day. I took them and thanked her before leaving the classroom.

I was almost to the front door of Building 3, where my first class of the day was, when I was greeted with a nervous Asian boy coming up to me. He had on a worn out one strap backpack that was cross bodied and a sweatshirt from what looked like the University of Tokyo Science, though it must have been twenty years old–maybe it was from an older cousin or an uncle of his? He had on nicely worn jeans and some tennis shoes that were worn out almost as much as the sweatshirt.

There was a camera that was in the boy's hands, and his hands shook some when he looked at me. He was tall and lanky, though he was barely on the tall side when it came to the male side. I waited patiently for what he said, for I could tell he was shy and he was trying to gain the courage to ask me something, probably if he could take my picture.

"Hi, I'm Eric, Eric Yorkie!" the boy said a little too loud, before he cringed his nose back when he realized he yelled at me. He cleared his throat and brought his camera up some more so I could look at it even more, as though I hadn't noticed him fiddling with it.

"I'm Bella Swan," I supplied, enough for him to sigh and relax.

"I'm on the School Newspaper and I was wondering if I could take a picture of you and you could drop by after school to be interviewed by my friend, Angela Weber," Eric offered, enough for me to be the one to give him an awkward smile.

"That's kind of you to ask but I would rather not. I hope you understand, I prefer my privacy," I confessed, earning a disappointed frown from him before he nodded his head, allowing me to know that he wasn't going to push me anymore.

The sound of the warning bell was my saving grace, waving goodbye to Eric I hurried into the building and down the hallway to where Mr. Mason's classroom was. I was at least glad it was a subject I enjoyed and it wasn't a class that I couldn't stand, which always fell into the math category. Instead it was English, and I was often found walking around reading classic novels.

The classroom looked like any other English classroom. There were posters of all the famous playwrights and the authors. There were the two bookshelves filled to the brim of worn out novels, most of them were bought at least ten years ago. They were yellowed with age and some of the paragraphs were probably covered with highlighter from students that either needed to give another look at a chapter or wanted to help the future classmates. There were the chaired desks along with some potted plants that were on the windowsills of the white painted brick walls. The white and black speckled linoleum tiles had scuff marks from tennis shoes and desks.

Mr. Mason turned his head, his average essence figure, had nothing special about it. His brown eyes landed on mine and he gave a reassuring smile. I gave him an awkward one too before I moved forward and introduced myself, letting him know I preferred to be called Bella instead of Isabella, and handed him the slip of paper. He signed it before he handed me a textbook and motioned for me to go and take one of the empty desk spots.

Finding one of the seats that were near the back, I plopped down and opened the textbook to the correct page and my spiral notebook to a clean sheet. Mr. Mason seemed to have common sense and knew that not everyone wanted to be displayed in front of the whole class.

In the corner of my eye, I noted how a pretty blue-eyed girl was staring at me with excitement. Her dark curls reminded me of a more modern version of Jessie's hair from Saved by the Bell. She was dressed quite stylishly too, though she wasn't wearing anything that I found myself wearing that suited her. The colors on the other hand were a little too clashing for my opinion. It was for an outspoken girl, and I wasn't that kind of person.

She leant forward and reached her hand out for me to shake when Mr. Mason was turned away from the class. "I'm Jessica! You must be the chief's daughter! Isabella, right?"

I shook her hand, only because I didn't want her to feel even more awkward when I would tell her I liked to be called Bella and not Isabella. She did, indeed, blush when she had heard this, but I assured her it was fine. I might prefer to be called Bella, but it was a nickname and Mr. Mason didn't introduce me to the rest of the class. So of course, she wouldn't know I liked to be called Bella.

Jessica wasn't able to talk my ear off for the rest of the class period, partly because Mr. Mason seemed to have excellent hearing (there wasn't a reason why he shouldn't, he wasn't anywhere near old), and another being that other classmates would shoot her looks. They didn't want her to scare me off, or maybe they wanted to get to know me too.

As soon as class was over Jessica had plucked my schedule from the desk and scanned it before letting me know we shared Trig, Spanish, along with Gym. Her friend Lauren shared this class with me and her along with Gym, but Lauren had to go to the dentist to get her wisdom teeth out (she had all four of them instead of luckily three or two). I had yet to have my wisdom teeth cause me trouble, so I didn't seem to share the same pain or be in the same predicament.

Jessica stayed by my side, as though she was a shadow or a ghost that had sewn itself to mine. She was rattling off about all different things that happened in Forks and was telling me which of the kids at the school I needed to avoid. She wasn't being a bitch, she just thought that the school was cliche enough it had a hierarchy. She believed in the YA Romance novels, where high school ended up being the best time in a person's life. She didn't know that there were more out there than just the fictional worlds she would read eagerly.

Lunch came soon enough, and there was some rain that was cascading down from above us, hitting the aluminum roofing of the overhead pathways. It only made the noise louder than it should be. I was going to get a headache if I stayed outside longer than was deemed necessary. I just hoped that the rain would stop eventually, and I could head back to Charlie's house without having to worry about the rain getting my hair wet or my clothes.

Entering the cafeteria, I inwardly cursed how the cafeteria was just as cold as the front office was. The building was a dwarf compared to the cafeteria there was back in Phoenix. Though there were just as many teenagers chasing after each other, throwing food from distances to see if their friends could catch the food from that distance. There was that one kid or two that would add different mixtures of food together that shouldn't be mixed together, being thought of as gross but also thinking that it was cool at the same time.

"Come with me, my friends and I have the middle table. It's the sacred table, if it weren't for Lauren being Co-Captains with me on the Varsity Volleyball Team then I don't think we would have been able to easily get it," Jessica bragged, a smirk dancing across her light pink lip gloss covered lips.

I almost wanted to give her a sarcastic 'congratulations' but knew there was no need to do so. I might not like how bubbly and naive she was, but it wasn't her fault. She just happened to be someone who was a social butterfly and wanted to be the center of attention by sitting at the center table of the cafeteria with her friends.

We reached the center table, where my eyes landed on Eric sitting there, browsing through his camera to check on what photographs he had taken. He glanced up and waved hello to me before he looked back down at the photographs. He might end up having a deadline soon and he was struggling with what photograph he wanted to use. Or he could be making a portfolio.

There were a lot of photography kids that were in Phoenix, there was an award-winning photographer that had been hired shortly after I started school there for the Photography class. So, I was accustomed to sights such as this. I should have expected this to have happened, when I would come, they would want a picture of me and an article of me for the newspaper but to be fair I didn't even know that there was a photography/newspaper club.

"I see you've met Eric, the girl to his right is the Editor of the School Newspaper, Angela Weber. She's also the Lutheran Minister's daughter," Jessica informed me as the meek Asian girl who was quite tall and had long obsidian hair and clear framed glasses reached her hand up and waved at me.

"Then there's–"

"Yo! Jess, who's the new girl?"

I turned my head, noticing a friendly black boy coming up to us with a short afro upon his head. His eyes were a nice hazel, and he had a charming smile. He was dressed in more athletic wear than casual clothes, he must have come from Gym. There was the scent of him being freshly showered so at least he was one of the boys that actually showered after Gym.

"This is Bella Swan. Bella, this is Tyler Crowley. And that's Mike Newton." Jessica reached one of her manicured fingers up, pointing it directly at a baby-faced guy with bleach spiked hair that was gelled also. He perked up when he saw me, enough for me to swallow some sourness at the fact that he was the type of guy that would flirt with any new girl he saw.

Mike reached us and leant up against the table, his eyes traveling from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. "Hey, I'm Mike. You must be the chief's daughter, you're a lot hotter than what I've heard," Mike spoke, enough for me to tighten my jaw and sit down, dismissing him.

"Okay I see how it is," Mike grunted before he sat down on the other side of the table and mumbled, barely loud enough for me to hear but enough for me to know that he wanted me to hear, "bitch."

"No! No! No! We are not going to have that kind of attitude at this table, Michael Jameson Newton! Just for that you are going to go buy Bella's lunch for her. Get her the whole works," Jessica instructed, her eyes narrowing at Mike. His mouth fell open and he looked as though he was going to retort only for Jessica to hiss, "now."

I sat down awkwardly at the cafeteria table, knowing I would be waiting on Mike to bring my food back to me. I just hoped he wasn't someone who would spit in food, because that would be the last thing I needed to deal with. So, I probably wasn't going to eat lunch…great…

Mike had barely come back and sat the tray down in front of me when Jessica grabbed my arm and yanked me, enough for me to hiss from the strength. Damn athletic people who constantly worked out! I didn't need any bruising from being yanked around.

"Bella! Bella! It's the Cullens!"

I frowned, not knowing that the Cullens would change my life forever.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: here's the first chapter of 'THROUGH HELL OR HIGHWATER'. I honestly have no idea on how to bring Marcus into the fanfiction, so I'd love a lot of ideas of how I should introduce him. Should the Volturi arrive all together because they hear about Bella being a human and want to nip it in the butt before it can go on any longer? Or should Aro send a letter to Carlisle to ask him to come and visit him, and that's how they find out about it? Tell me which of the two you prefer? I kind of like the first idea.

-Emmy

as always: Twilight doesn't belong to me