During breakfast I sat, watching my spirit lady explore the house.

"So were you born deaf?" She asked.

"No. Car accident." I responded. I started to think that maybe this was a blessing of sorts. I could focus wholeheartedly on my delusion, and not have to worry so much about everything else that had occurred. All of the things that had messed me up. I spent the next little while, whispering away the basic details of my life to her. She seemed fascinated, but somehow motherly about it. Her head turned towards the door suddenly.

"We've got company."

I frowned at her, I hadn't heard anything. Suddenly I saw Charlie barrel down the stairs, opening the front door. My delusion was not as hard of hearing as I, clearly. It was Alice, and Esme, both looking quite severe. Alice darted in, while Esme stayed to talk with Charlie by the door. Alice immediately whisked in and sat, directly on spirit lady, who hopped out through her, to lean against the counter. I watched her for a moment, before she jerked her head over to my latest guest.

"Huh? Sorry Alice."

"I said, Esme is here to officially report Edward's leaving to Alaska."

My stomach twisted with the name and the spirit lady cursed something awful.

"Okay." I said. That was all I could manage. "How are things otherwise?"

Alice blinked morosely at me. She began to sign about her family and the long fight they had been having, only broken up by the return of Carlisle and Esme to work. It sounded exhausting, being awake all the time. She told me about how she was looking ahead as best she could, but everything was blurry and uncertain, changing almost as fast as the weather.

"And I still can't see you at all." she said. "Pick a number."

"Three." I said. There were three of us in the kitchen, spirit lady included.

"See? I didn't know you were going to say that. And that's easy. Has something changed on your end?"

"Other than the obvious?" I snapped back. I flexed my fingers, and then laid my head in my hands. "No, sorry Alice. I'm sorry. I'm going crazy, and that's about it."

Any further explanations were unfortunately interrupted by the phone. I didn't hear it ring, but both Alice and spirit lady looked towards it, and Charlie came bustling in.

"You'd best go for the rest of today Alice." I said, my head spinning. "I'm not feeling great and I just need to sleep."

She stretched out her hand, resting it on mine. She was here when I needed, for as long as I needed. All I had to do was call. I nodded, with the understanding of the simple touch, both disgustingly familiar with the cold stone and unusually comforting, with the delicately small fingers. She got up to leave, worry evident on her face. I stared off into the window. I didn't want to catch Esme's eyes. She, of all the Cullens, looked the most like him. A few minutes later I knew they were gone. I felt the cold breeze of the damp outside swim through the living room, to the kitchen where I sat.

"Your dad wants you." Spirit lady chimed. I looked around quickly.

"Bella, I'm needed at the station. Some kids vandalised Newton's store, and they want me to come help em deal with it." He said, looking worriedly at me.

"Dad, go. I'm fine. I'm tired. All I want to do is sleep. I'm not going anywhere." I stared at his worried face. "Seriously. Are you going to start staying home every time I get injured or lost? Don't waste your holiday days. I'm okay."

It was enough of a pep talk to get him out of the door, although it took me putting my pyjamas back on to properly convince him.

"Promise, if you need me, you'll call Renee, or me?" he asked, jacket in hand, looking up at me sitting on the stairs.

"I promise." It was an empty promise. There was nothing either of them could do now. Spirit lady suddenly walked down from where she'd been waiting in my room. As Charlie shut the door, she began talking to me again.

"You actually going to sleep?"

"I'm going to try." I said, clambering upstairs, and into my bed. She waited at the base of my bed, regarding me for a moment.

"I think I'm going to go explore the town."

"Don't get lost." I added, sarcastically. She flipped me a middle finger, as she disappeared out of my room again.

And suddenly I was alone. Truly alone. I tried to push all of the feelings, all of the hurt, and tuck it away, but it was more than that. I wasn't some love-scorned girl. I was having physically painful reactions to this event. My body felt as though part of me had left. A phantom limb, spasming with pain. I closed my eyes, and lay down. Sleep was a solitude. Away from having to not feel, having to save face, having to talk to anyone. I ducked my head under my pillow, and began to breathe as deeply as I could, counting invisible sheep, to send me to sleep.

My dream was back, and different. I was in Edward's car, I was driving it, and I couldn't find any of the pedals. I was speeding down a forest-lined road in the dark and the rain. I was looking for something, for someone. I caught flashes of him, of Edward, as he ran beside the vehicle. Suddenly he was gone as quickly as he had appeared, and a flash appeared in the road. A pasty white figure with flaming red ringlets, and redder eyes. She tossed the car like it was nothing and I flew through the air, my hair rolling in windmills around my face as I spun listlessly in the car.

I screamed myself awake, and noticed, with true and equally confusing terror, that my bedroom was ablaze in flames.

I looked around me, it was encircling the bed, leaping from item to item in my room, as though gasoline were lighting the way. Nothing had reached my actual bed yet, but all four walls of my room were on fire. The only escape that I could see was the window behind me. I launched myself to it, coughing with the smoke I had inhaled in the process. I wrenched it open and looked out. If I really jumped from here I could possibly grab onto the tree, but I had no idea if I could physically do that. It was a do or die at this point though.

"Jesus fucking Christ." Spirit Lady was instantly beside me, looking out the window too.

"I don't suppose you..." She started, looking towards the bedroom door, and then shook herself off. "Perhaps you've had enough excitement for one weekend. Shit." She turned around again, peering out of the window again. "Switch places with me. I think I can make that."

I had the unwilling, and disorienting feeling of movement, and I was standing beside myself, engulfed in flames that were tickling through the spirit version of myself. I saw my body, surprisingly nimble, climb out to the outside of my window, standing up against the house, my back towards the tree. I bent my knees slightly, crouching, using the top of the window frame to hold on as I prepared to spring backwards. I was kind of glad Spirit Lady was in charge of this maneuver. I would have not thought about leaping backwards, nor been so calm in the execution. I was fucking panicking, to be honest. My house was on fire. She crouched further in my body, mumbling curses and pushed off, jumping backwards, and twisting as she flew in the air. She gripped expertly onto the closest branch, and used her momentum to swing herself down to a lower one. That one she held onto for dear life. She looked up at me, watching her from the window.

"You coming?" she mutttered.

The sensation of motion as we switched again, nearly knocked me in my real body out of the tree. Spirit lady disappeared from the window, walking through the house, and came out, around the front of the house, calling up to me. In the time that she was gone, I tried to mentally catch up to what was going on.

"I have two bits of good news, and two bits of bad news." Spirit lady piped up, from the ground. "You're not hurt, and neither is Charlie. Every electrical appliance in your house suddenly caught fire, so the investigation will likely associate it to a power surge and a shit ton of bad luck." She paused before delivering the bad news. "The bad news is, you burned down your house, and now, it's unlikely that I'll be able to disentangle myself from you."

The last two statements made no sense whatsoever. I slowly made my way down from the tree, slipping and scraping myself a few times before I hit the ground. It, for once, in the history of this miserable and damp town, wasn't even raining. Nothing seemed to be slowing the all-engulfing flame that was eating my childhood home. Neighbours had finally caught notice, and I could see movement out of the corner of my vision. I sat down on the grass, slightly scraped, but none worse for wear, considering.

Spirit Lady however, seemed to have gone insane. She cursed, and paced, and pulled at her hair while muttering on about 'shouldn't have's and 'impossible's. I was dimly aware of someone pulling me away, wrapping me in an oversized coat, and standing with me in the road. All I could look at was the yellow hotness, that was blackening the white and green house that I had known since forever, with an angry aboriginal lady storming around outside, unseen.

You burned down your house. She had said. What kind of statement was that to make? I'd been asleep, specifically in the thralls of a nightmare. Or had I? Perhaps I really had managed to have some kind of epic psychotic break. My thoughts were interrupted by flashing, and noise. I was suddenly being shook, and I turned around quickly to see the panicked face of Charlie, squeezing me tightly, like he worried that I wasn't really there.

"Are you hurt?" he managed to pull away from me long enough to say.

"No. I got out through the window. Thank fuck that tree's there." I flinched as a large portion of the roof at the front caved in. More lights were flashing, and now firefighters were running to and from the house. I could barely see it all though, smushed against Charlie's chest as I was. He pulled me over to his cruiser, parked diagonally and quite unceremoniously in the road. He opened the passenger door, and sat me in it, taking off his own jacket to wrap it around my feet. I hadn't even noticed that they were bare, and cold. I pulled the stranger's jacket closer around me, and sat, in the car door entrance, watching Charlie now. I had seen enough of the house burning down to last a lifetime. I thought that it couldn't possibly get any worse, but I was wrong. Watching Charlie watch his home destroy itself in flame was worse. He looked thoroughly wounded. He kept a hand firmly attached to me, as if reassuring himself that what really mattered was fine. But he was hurting.

If the spirit lady was right, and this was somehow my fault, I would spend every waking hour trying to make it better.