Disclaimer. All publicly recognizable characters, settings etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters, ideas and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: I have decided to rewrite this story, including added scenes in most chapters and some changes that I felt went better than the original. The old story will remain posted for a limited time.
Chapter 1: Forks
(Natalie's POV)
My mother drove us to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing a simple pair of distressed jeans and an old band t-shirt from a concert my mom, my twin sister, Isabella, and I had attended a couple years ago and loved. It was a memorable day for the three of us, so I was wearing the t-shirt as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was my jean jacket.
In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town called Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with Bella and I when we were only a few months old. It was in this town that my sister and I had been compelled to spend a month during every summer until we were fourteen. That was the year that we'd finally put our foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with us in California for two weeks instead.
It was to Forks that we now exiled ourselves – an action that we took with great horror, especially Bella. She detested Forks. I wasn't much of a fan myself, but for a completely different reason. It was during my last summer in the small town that I had my heart broken by my childhood sweetheart, Paul Lahote. So when Bella had suggested that we come up with a new tradition in place of our annual month-long stays in Forks, I jumped on-board with her proposal.
Phoenix…
I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.
"Girls," my mom called out to us – the last of a thousand times – before we got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."
She looks more like Bella then she does me, except with short hair and laugh lines.
I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could we leave our loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course, she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost.
But still…
"We want to go," Bella lied reassuringly, breaking me out of my thoughts. She'd always been a bad liar, but she had been saying this lie so many times lately that it almost sounded convincing now.
"Tell Charlie I said hi."
"We will." I said, giving her a small smile.
"I'll see you both soon," she insisted, reaching up to adjust the clasp on the oval locket I wore, which dangled from a long chain around my neck. It had belonged to my grandma Swan. Inside was a picture of Bella and I at our tenth birthday, our arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. "Look after each other and remember that you can come home whenever you want – I'll come right back as soon as you need me."
I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.
"Don't worry about us," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."
She hugged us both tightly for a minute each, and then we boarded the plane, and she was gone.
It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, an hour in a small plane to Port Angeles, and then another hour drive back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, we were both a little worried about.
Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that Bella and I were coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten us registered for high school and was going to help us get a car to share until we could each afford one on our own.
However, it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. None of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I knew he was more than a little confused by our decision – like our mother before us, we hadn't made a secret out of our distaste for Forks.
When we landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen or anything, – just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.
Charlie was waiting for us with his cruiser. This I was expecting, too. Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks, Washington. The primary motivation behind us buying a car, despite the scarcity of our funds, was that Bella and I refused to be driven around town in a car that had red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop, after all.
Charlie gave us each an awkward, one-armed hug when we exited the plane; or in Bella's case, stumbled. She was quite the klutz and it always puzzled me where she got her sense of balance from. She could find something to trip over on just about any flat surface.
"It's good to see you, girls." He said, smiling as he automatically helped me catch and steady Bella. "You both haven't changed much. How's Renee?"
"Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." We weren't allowed to call him 'Charlie' to his face.
We only had a few bags each. Most of our Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. Mom had helped us pool our resources to supplement our winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.
"I found a good car for you girls, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in, me in the back and Bella in the front.
"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said 'a good car for you' as opposed to just 'a good car'.
"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."
"Where did you find it?" Bella asked, just as skeptically.
"Do you girls remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast where Paul and his family lived, as well as many of Charlie's friends.
"No." Bella answered.
"Yeah, he used to go fishing with us during the summer, right?" I asked, having a bit of a clearer recollection of our visits to Forks than my sister did.
"Yup," Charlie nodded. "He's in a wheelchair now, so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."
"What year is it?" Bella asked, and I could see from his change of expression that this was the question that he was hoping we wouldn't ask.
"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine – it's only a few years old, really."
I hope he didn't think so little of us as to believe we would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?" I prompted.
"He bought it in 1984, I think."
"Did he buy it new?" Bella pressed.
"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties – or late fifties at the earliest." He admitted sheepishly.
"Ch- Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. That's more of Natty's thing, but she doesn't have any of her tools up here, so we wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and we can't afford a mechanic…"
"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore. Also, I'm sure if Natalie needed to borrow Billy's tools or to use his garage for whatever reason that he would let her."
"How cheap is cheap?" She asked after a couple seconds passed in silence.
"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it - as a homecoming present." Charlie peaked sideways at Bella and then up at the rearview mirror at me with a hopeful expression.
Wow. Free.
"You didn't need to do that, Dad." I insisted. "We were going to pay for a car ourselves."
"I don't mind. I want you both to be happy here." He admitted, looking ahead at the road when he said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. Bella had inherited that from him, so she was looking straight ahead as she responded.
"That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. We really appreciate it."
"Yeah, Dad. Thank you very much." I added. Despite being apprehensive, I was touched that he had gone to the lengths that he had in order to make Bella and I feel welcome. No need to add that our being happy in Forks was unlikely. He didn't need to suffer along with us. And I definitely wouldn't look a free truck in the mouth – or engine.
"Well, now, you're both welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by our thanks.
We all exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.
Forks was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.
It was too green – an alien planet.
Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the same small, three bedroom house that he'd bought with Renee in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had – the early ones.
There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was our new – well, new to us- truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it!
I looked at Bella and could tell that she liked it too. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself and Bella in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged – the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.
"Wow, Dad, I love it!" I exclaimed.
"So do I," Bella agreed with a smile. "It's great."
Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful. We wouldn't be faced with the choice of either walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the Chief's cruiser.
"I'm glad you girls like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.
It took only one trip to get all of our stuff upstairs to our separate rooms. I got the east bedroom that faced over the back yard and Bella got the one next to mine that faced over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the white lace curtains around the window – these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes were switching out the crib for a bunk bed for Bella and I, which was no longer there, having been removed in favor of a full sized bed when Bella moved to the room next door. Charlie also added a large L shaped desk as I grew. The desk now held my laptop that I had saved up to buy last year, along with a small printer. There is also a large vanity that had once belonged to my grandma swan and an armoire.
The room that Bella now used was our grandpa Swan's old room that he had slept in back when he was living with Charlie before he'd died. It was a little bit smaller than mine and had been painted purple recently for Bella's benefit instead of the old green color that it used to be. She had a small dresser, a bed, a rocking chair from when we were babies, and a desk that now held a second hand computer with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation from our mother, so that Bella didn't have to borrow my laptop every time she emailed our mom.There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which we would both have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that fact.
One of the best things about Charlie is that he doesn't hover. He left us alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether impossible for my mother. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape. I wasn't in the mood to go on a real crying jag. I would save that for bedtime.
Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven - now fifty-nine – students; there were more than seven hundred people in our junior class alone back home in Phoenix. All of the kids here had grown up together – their grandparents had probably even been toddlers together.
We would be the new girls from the big city, a curiosity, outsiders.
Maybe if we looked more like girls from Phoenix should, we could work this to our advantage. But physically, we'd never fit in with how the rest of the girls looked. I should be tan, sporty, blond – a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps – all the things that go with living in the valley of the never-ending sun. I had gotten asked out a handful of times, but no one who I was interested in dating. I was waiting for someone I really liked to ask me out one day rather than just saying yes in order to obtain popularity points at school.
Bella and I were fraternal twins; both ivory-skinned with slender bodies, but soft somehow, obviously not athletes. We were both the same height and build, but my hair fell down to end just under my ribs and was a darker shade of brown than Bella's. I also had bright blue eyes, while Bella had inherited our mother's brown ones. Our tastes in clothing differed as well, though neither of us was fashion crazy like a lot of the girls we went to school with. I dressed in what I was comfortable in, but I thought I still had good taste. Bella was more of a T-shirt and jeans kind of girl.
When I finished putting my clothes away in my closet and armoire, I took my bag of bathroom necessities and went to the communal bathroom to clean myself up after the long day of travel. I looked up at my face in the mirror as I brushed through my long, tangled, damp hair. I didn't relate very well to people my age, aside from Bella, and that was because she was a lot like me in that aspect. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was just a glitch in my brain. But the cause didn't matter. All that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow would be just the beginning.
I didn't sleep well that night. The constant whooshing of the rain and wind across the roof wouldn't fade into the background. I pulled the faded old quilt over my head, and later added the pillow, too. But I couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard I tried.
Around midnight, I heard the creaking of my bedroom door and peaked my head out from under the covers to see Bella quietly closing the door before turning around to face me. I lifted up the covers in silent invitation and scooted over towards the other side of the bed. She scampered forward and dived under the quilt to get warm. It was a habit we had settled into ever since Bella got her own room. Whenever we had trouble sleeping, she would sneak into my room. We had a very close relationship, as close as sisters could be. I think it had something to do with always having to be the adults in the house, so we relied on each other to get things done and looked to the other for support from the time that we were just little kids. I could always tell what she was thinking and how she was feeling, almost like a sixth sense. I knew it was the same for her.
Bella and I smiled tiredly at each other, no words needing to be said. Having my twin here next to me was enough to help me relax. Finally, the rain settled into a quieter drizzle and we were both able to fall asleep.
A/N: First of many new chapters ready to be posted! I hope you enjoyed it! I am so excited to see what you guys think of the new additions and changes I made in all the chapters! Thanks for sticking with me! Bella'Xo