Chapter 1

"Hey, Bella, pass the milk." She paused, waiting, "Hello? Earth. To. Bella."

I looked up at my cousin, Cameron, who was now staring at the milk pointedly. Oops.

"Milk, right. Sorry, Cam. I don't think I got enough sleep last night," I looked down, mumbling my poor excuse before passing the milk carton to her from across the table.

"Was it the dreams again?" she asked me under her breath, glancing at our mothers in the other room, drinking their coffee. I shrugged vaguely, disliking how she said it in such a casual manner, but it confirmed her suspicions. Her large blue eyes, so much like my mother's, narrowed ever so slightly with curiosity, but she didn't push the subject. I hated it when she did that.

I sighed in defeat. "Yah, but it's no big deal. Same stuff." Cam was the only one who I ever told about the dreams… more like nightmares. She's my best friend.

The nightmares always featured the same handsome, yet terrifying, pale-skinned man with the most frightening ruby red eyes that seemed to bring forth all of my fears and terrors in one stare. Looking into those eyes was like being dunked into ice cold water and never being able to surface in enough time. I shuddered at the remembered sensation.

Cam noticed my trembling and said, "You know, I wish I wasn't such a heavy sleeper. Maybe then I would be able to help you." I almost laughed. Nobody could help me because I was an outsider that probably no one would ever understood.

"It's fine. Seriously, don't worry about it. They're just dreams, right?" I was only trying to persuade her. I figured out a long time ago that these weren't just visions in my head when I'm unconscious…very vivid visions. But Cameron didn't have to know that.

"I guess you're right. But you can always tell me these things. I'll always be here," she reminded me softly. I resented when she acted so much older than me. I was older than her, but she always understood everything I threw at her.

I tried to lighten the mood just a little. "Yah, I know, it's 'cause we share the same room, Cam." She rolled her eyes.

"Okay, okay, I get it, but still-"

Our conversation was abruptly cut off when Zack came tramping down the stairs angrily.

"It's not fair!" the four year old griped, sitting down in his chair, crossing his arms and pouting cutely..

"Sorry, Zack-ey, but summer's over next week," Cameron teased, ruffling his soft, blond hair

"But I'll have no one to play with!" Again with the adorable pouting.

I stood up to make him a bowl of cereal. "You can play with Joe," I advised him lamely.

On cue, the Jack Russell Terrier came galloping in the kitchen happily, licking Max's hand and running through my legs haphazardly. My mother had bought him when she went through an "animal lover" phase.

Ironically, she was allergic to dogs.

I was hugely attached to Joe; he would always come in our room when I was having a really bad night and hop on my bed, waking me up with a jolt. The sooner I woke up, the better. He had done this ever since I was seven, helped me when I knew that I couldn't cry out to my mother like a normal little girl with harmless dreams that she wouldn't remember in the morning.

I grimaced at myself, sounding like a cheesy TV drama with my "woe is me" speech.

(Picture of Joe on my profile. Joe is an actual dog, so I had to find one that looked close to the real thing.)

"Yeah… you could teach him how to sit," Cameron said sarcastically, but he didn't notice. Zack's eyes lit up at this, huge aqua eyes shining. Cameron chuckled under her breath and murmured, "And that shouldn't be very hard to do."

I started to clean my breakfast up from the table quietly, still absorbed in my thoughts when the phone rang. I jumped slightly, but stumbled quickly around Joe to answer it.

As I reached out to pick up the phone from the wall, my shadow covered the wall. Suddenly, a black snake was wrapped around the phone and on the wall. I would have screamed, but I knew it wasn't real. The snake had blood-red eyes.

Oh no… Not him again, I thought miserably. It glared at me right in the eye and hissed, opening its mouth all the way open, making me flinch away and feel light-headed. I instinctively turned to see if Cam or Zack heard the awful noise, but I knew they wouldn't. I turned back to the "snake", but it now morphed into a black scorpion, tempting me to scream. I felt faint.

The phone was still ringing, and Cam turned to look at me curiously. I took a deep breath and gripped the phone, knowing that my hand would go right through the creature. The "scorpion" turned into a black wreath of smoke around the phone that soon disappeared, but I felt as though I had just plunged my hand into ice water.

My cousins saw nothing.

"Hello?" I asked breathlessly, though I was recovering quickly from the encounter. I was used to this- 10 years of practice, I though wryly to myself.

"Hi, Bells, can I talk to your mother please?" I recognized my father's voice on the other end of the call, all the way in Forks, Washington. Why would he want to talk to Mom?

"Sure, Dad….". I threw a confused expression to Cam before walking into the living room to hand the phone to Renee. "It's Dad," I mouthed to her. I didn't miss the anxious glance that my mother and my Aunt Marie exchanged before she took the phone into the other room.

"Bella, honey, do you want to go outside today? It's beautiful outside!" she said quickly, but I knew she was just trying to distract me.

"Um… no thanks. I'll just go to my room…." I mumbled quietly. I suddenly felt like I had to lay down.

The next day…

"Bella, can you come in here?" my mother's voice rang through the house, breaking my reverie. I had been staring out the window just trying to forget. Forget him. Forget everything. Again with my depressing mood. I should really stop doing that…

I got up slowly and walked into my mother's room. She was sitting on the bed and patting the seat next to her. A feeling of dread coursed through my veins. What was wrong? What happened? Was she seeing another guy now? Was she going to try something hazardous like bungee jumping again?

"What's wrong, Mom?" I sat down hurriedly. A look of discomfort crossed her face for a second before an uneasy smile settled on her face.

"Well, nothing really, Bella, it's just that your Aunt and I worry about you. You're always so isolated, and you seem so… unhappy. You were always such a quiet child…."

She didn't notice my flinch at her observation.

"But I was always hoping that you would break out of your shell, get some friends. Well, you do seem to be close to your cousin…." she rambled on, reluctant to get to her point.

"Mom, what are you trying to say?" I asked quietly, though I already had an idea. I tried to fight the choking sensation that seemed to be closing my throat as she brought my world crashing down around me.

"Bella, your Aunt and I think that maybe you should try to live with your father for a few months, to see if you like it better there. To get some fresh air."

I was frantic. "Mom! I can't leave Cam and Zack! I can't! I'll go outside! There's fresh air outside, too!" I couldn't breath as I thought of leaving Joe, my aunt, my mother, too. Tears started to form in my eyes, threatening to overflow.

"Your father has already agreed, and I'm sending you tomorrow." The phone call. That's what they were talking about. That's why Marie and Renee had been so anxious around me yesterday. They were discussing it behind my back.

"But Mom…." I trailed off uselessly. She was playing the parent roll now, and I was the child again.

At the airport….

I turned to face my family one more time before I entered the plane. Zack suddenly shot out of his mother's clutches and stumbled up to me. I fell to my knees to hug him tightly. I buried my head in his hair and smelled his "No tears" shampoo. "I'll miss you, Zack," I murmured.

"I'll miss you too Bella," he croaked. I pulled back and smiled at him, wiping some of his tears away with my fingers..

"You teach Joe how to sit for me, 'kay?" I made my last request to him, trying not to sob when I thought of Joe again.

He nodded smiling a tiny smile. "Do you have to get on the airplane?" he begged me with his eyes, sad again.

I nodded sorrowfully. "I do…. Be a good boy, you always are," I whispered before kissing his cheek and releasing him, standing up to see Cameron walk up to me.

"Hey," I whispered. I stared at my best friend, so much prettier than me, in my opinion. She had her mother's looks, blue eyes, dirty-blond hair, hers more of a darker color than her brother's, almost brown, but with natural blond tints and streaks. She had pale skin, but not as pale as mine.

"Hey," she whispered back. We were both fighting tears. We suddenly broke into a tight hug, crying hard. But we got a hold of ourselves quickly, and when we separated, I felt that I left a part of me with her, my cousin, my best friend ever.

"You can still always call me. You can tell me anything. Anything," she assured me. I nodded, wiping the last of my farewell tears away, wondering why she always said that.

I turned to my Aunt Marie and my mother, Renee, the two women that had raised me. I couldn't be mad at them. They wanted what they thought what was best for me, even if that meant tearing my heart in two.

They both enveloped me in one huge hug, suffocating me, but in a good way that made me never want to let go. When I released them, my half- heart split in two again, making me shed a few tears again.

"Love you, Bells," Aunt Marie whispered before kissing my forehead. I grinned at her.

"Love you too."

My mother had moved in with her sister when she had left Charlie, taking me with her with intentions of moving out a few months later after she got back on her feet. She never left, and for that, I was very grateful. I would never know Cam the way I knew her now if Renee had left and gotten another house, another husband… not that I wouldn't want my mother to be happy if she found somebody else. She deserved to be happy.

"Say 'hi' to your father for me, Bella," Renee added reluctantly. I nodded. "Love you," she murmured as she hugged me one more time.

"Love you," I whispered, depressed from all of these goodbyes.

I waved goodbye one more time before getting on the plane, feeling as if I were facing my worst nightmare.

How ironic.

R&R