Chapter Three: Two Very Different Sleepovers

June

Another Friday night, another sleepover at Jessica Stanley's house. Jess has lived next door to my family my whole life. I'll try my best to describe her, but she is wholly unique it's hard to paint an accurate picture of her. Whenever I try to put her into words she ends up sounding like a deranged cartoon character. She is fun incarnate. Jess is a few inches taller than me and slightly chubby. She is freakishly strong for a girl; I think as a side effect of wrestling with and generally trying to kill her older brother Andy. Those two were like Itchy and Scratchy. She talks fast and a lot and about the most inappropriate subjects. Jess is just one of those people who have no filter that stops random crazy thoughts from falling out of their mouths. She will loudly tell a roomful of strangers that her ass itches or declare that she doesn't like a certain cereal by announcing that "Shredded Wheat tastes like old people." She also has absolutely no shame and is virtually impossible to embarrass. Jessica is the silliest person I've ever met. She is simultaneously the biggest tomboy and girliest girl. She's the kicker on the school's football team and plays third base on the boy's baseball team. She can spit 20 feet; yes, it is as disgusting as it sounds. She loves to show this particular talent off to boys and they find it inexplicably charming. Boys flock to her. She can somehow be one of the guys and still be sexy. She has a date any night she wants one. She is very pretty and wears clothes with frilly ruffles and flowers. She has gorgeous shoulder length blond hair that is always curled and accented with ribbons, clips, or barrettes. I have never seen her in public without a perfect manicure, pedicure, and expert makeup. Above all, Jess is the gossip queen of Forks High.

"Oh, look. Your whore sister is at it again."

"What?"

"Alice is crawling in her bedroom window with some random loser."

From Jess's back porch, we can see the back of my house. I saw my sister's tiny, ghostly pale body as she ducked down and wiggled into the widow the led to her bedroom in the basement. Her spiky dyed black hair was the last thing to disappear into the room. On anyone else that hair would look rebellious and tough, but on Alice it made her look even more like a faerie princess. She had high cheekbones, a small pointed chin, and perfect eyebrows that she never had to pluck. You would almost swear looking at her that she wasn't human. She just had this ethereal beauty and other-worldly quality to her; you half expected to find a set of gossamer wings hidden beneath her shirt.

"Ugh. I don't want to know."

"Damn, you would think she would have learned after all the drama from the USS Swan Incident." Jess giggles.

"Shit, Jessica, you know I hate it when you call it that."

"But, Bella, that's what everyone calls it!"

"Everyone calls it that because that's what you call it. You're like our own personal Perez Hilton. And, I don't think it's funny."

Oh, God. Why did she have to remind me of the USS Swan. The summer after her freshman year and right before mine, the school marching band was invited to be in the Seattle Independence Day parade. The parade went well and the band spent the night in a hotel. Alice somehow managed to get drunk and pick up some twenty year old sailor from the Navy base in Bremerton. They went to her and her skanky friend's room and the chaperone caught her screwing him. He ran away because he would get in serious trouble for statutory rape and she hadn't told him she was only fifteen. So, my parents get a call at 3:26 a.m. telling them that they have to immediately drive to Seattle and pick up her drunk tramp ass.

Needless to say, they were both livid and my parents livid are a very bad thing. She had publicly embarrassed my parents and they hated any dirt on their precious reputations. That was the first time she got sloppy and my parents found out about her drinking and sleeping around. That was the first time Alice was ever beaten. Her cute button nose was broken and swelled to twice its normal size. Her large round silver-blue eyes were blackened and nearly swollen shut. Her little Cupid's bow shaped lips were split and bloodied. I was so scared for her. She is so tiny, barely five feet tall and only eighty-five pounds. My parents cancelled our family vacation and Mom stayed home with us twenty-four hours a day to make sure none of us had any visitors and Alice didn't leave. Alice was grounded for three weeks as punishment; it took almost that long for the bruises to fade. The school district expelled her, then my mom made a ridiculously large donation to the Forks Parent Teacher Association and her sentence was commuted to a suspension for the first two weeks of school. Whenever I think about that day, I can still hear her screaming, but I can't tell Jessica this is why the USS Swan story isn't funny. I'm not allowed to tell anyone the rest of the story.

"Whatever, I think she's slept with every jackass under thirty from here to Sequim. I don't get her. She could pull so much more quality tail!"

"Can we please stop discussing my sister's sex life, please?"

"No, we have to discuss her sex life. It's the most scandalous thing happening in this boring town. Lord knows we can't discuss your sex life, Bella. You don't have one. You've never even had a boyfriend. Hell, you've never even told me you liked a guy. I could almost swear you were playing for the other team and too scared to come out, but you aren't gay. You've never hit on me and I am fucking sexy. If you were gay, you'd totally have a crush on me."

I giggle and roll my eyes at her. "If I was gay, you would so not be my type and you know it. You talk too much, you're too loud, you have disgusting personal habits like leaving the door open when you're on the toilet, and you're ass is too big."

"Bitch!" Jessica yells and laughs while playfully smacking me on top of my head with a chair cushion.

I guess my sisters and I are each a total screwed up mess in our own ways. Rosie has her nearly impenetrable hard shell. She has definitely gone the hard-ass route. She is pessimistic and sarcastic. Her default emotion is anger. If you are anyone other than my dad and you piss her off, look out! She will confront you and you will lose. If there was a game called Make Girls Cry, Rose would be the all time grand champion. She has this uncanny knack for just knowing the perfect thing to say, pointing out the one thing you are most self conscious about that will result in tears in seconds. It is scary to behold. Guys that mouth off to her or touch her without her permission, she just decks. Girl has a nasty punch; I should know. She has hit me enough times. Her relationships with boys are weird. Her type is spineless weaklings she can boss around and treat like shit. She will call her boyfriend Greg and tell him that he has to come over and do her laundry for her and he'll be at our house fifteen minutes later. It's pathetic.

Alice has no protective shell. Alice is one tiny hyper ball of constant emotional turmoil. She is so sensitive and feels everything and so deeply. She cries when she is happy, when she is sad, when it's Tuesday. She has about four emotions at any given moment; it's exhausting just being around her. She is so optimistic, always having these crazy plans and schemes for the future; she tells me she is so positive because she can see the future in her head. Did I mention Alice inherited some of Mom's quirky flake tendencies? She is achingly vulnerable and open and trusting, which bites her in the ass on the man front. If you put Alice in a roomful of great guys with one damaged cheating liar, Alice will find that one. Sure, she sleeps around a lot, but Jessica doesn't get it. Alice doesn't sleep around for fun or sexual gratification; she only desperately wants someone to love her. She just goes about it all wrong or with all the wrong guys. Alice wills herself to fall in love too fast and then either gets her heart shattered by jerks or scares away the few good ones she attracts. Alice has a badboy fetish. I think it's a subconscious FU to Chief Swan. I think she has slept with a few taken and every available boy between fifteen and twenty-five on the Olympic Peninsula with a rap sheet. I think Tyler Crowley got himself arrested for vandalism just to get on her radar.

Me. Hell. How do I even describe how screwed up I am when I don't even know who I am. Seriously, I have no freaking clue. I am the most accomplished actress no one has ever heard of. Every word, every action, all an act to project an image that the world in general and my parents specifically want to see. I don't feel happy when I look happy. I don't feel sad when I look sad. I'm never fine when I say I'm fine. I am empty. Everything anyone knows about me is an elaborate years old lie. I can't even remember the last time I was the real me; I'm not sure at this point there even is a real me anymore. I am the daughter version of a Stepford Wife. I'm a robot. I'm perfect. I'm pristine. I'm either highly visible as a role model or I try my hardest to be invisible. I do everything in my power to ensure my parents are always pleased with me. I don't care if they love me, I certainly don't love them. I just don't give them reason to be angry. I do my chores before they are ordered, I never break curfew, and I never hang out with anyone they disapprove of. In essence, every single decision of mine for the last six years hasn't been my decision at all. It only boils down to 'what would Charlie Swan want me to do'. It has been so long since I really thought about what I wanted or would enjoy that I have completely lost who I was and who I now should be. I envy Rose and Alice; they are still unabashedly themselves and damn the consequences. They live; I have more or less been dead for a large chunk of my existence.

Lord knows we can't discuss your sex life, Bella. You don't have one. Jessica has no idea how true that statement is and why. No, I don't have boyfriends, but what she doesn't know is that I don't have friends either, including her. I have acquaintances. The closest thing I have to a real friend is Jake, but even that is not a true friendship. Friendship requires vulnerability, trust and honesty. I am shut down on purpose. The vulnerable are weak and get hurt. It's better to feel nothing than to be vulnerable. Trust, don't make me laugh. I can't trust. The two people in the world I should have been able to rely on have failed epically. Those same two people have ruled out honesty as well. If I was honest about myself and my life, Dad might literally kill me. So yeah, if I can't even have a true friend, how am I supposed to cope with a boy? I'm a little scared of every boy except Jacob because of my father. Add to that the fact that when my parents first found out Alice was sexually active Dad nearly beat her to death. Thanks so much for that particular mindfuck. I'm not comfortable around them, don't know how to talk to them, don't get them. Teenage boys are like an alien species to me. No boys ever notice me. I guess I give off a visible 'don't even bother' vibe. The few mild crushes I have had resulted in me either being too painfully shy to talk to them ever again or me being so fantastically awkward they thought I was a freak. I lost interest soon enough anyway. I can't seem to cope, so I don't even try anymore.

"So, anyway, back to the fresh meat." Jessica continues with a mischievous grin.

"Fresh meat?"

"OMG, Isabella, wake the hell up! You know, the new guys are coming Sunday!" She giddily claps her hands. She is such a girl.

"Oh yeah. I forgot Dr. Cullen and his family were moving in this week." Our church was getting its new minister finally. They had waited to move until after their boys got out of school for the year in Chicago. Jessica was all excited at the prospect of new teenage boys in town. I swear it was like waving a shiny new toy at a five year old.

"How can you forget about new boys? New boys! I don't get you sometimes, Swan. When was the last time fresh meat moved to town? Like four years ago. Big disappointment there. Eric Yorkie turned out to be like a human version of Butters from South Park. Total weirdo dork. But now…sigh. New boys! They could be Abercrombie models!"

"Whoa, slow down there, Jess. Should I warn them to get the restraining order right away or let them meet your crazy ass first?"

"Shut up, cow."

"You can't call someone wearing size two skinny jeans a cow. Besides, I see big Butters warning signs from those two Cullen kids. I mean come on, how cute and cool could they be with names like Emmet and Edward."

"See, that's where I think you're wrong. Have you seen Dr. Cullen?"

"No, what difference would that make?"

"You missed church the last time he was in town. You are in for a huge hit of smoking hot old guy. He has replaced George Clooney as the only old man I would do."

"Ewww. That's nasty. He's like the same age as your dad."

"Wait. You'll see. He is gorgeous. Shortish blond hair with hints of grey. Blue eyes you could stare into all damn day. Tall, thin, nice muscles. Yummy. That's all I can say. Yummy."

"We should go to bed. You are clearly delirious. Freak."

"I'm not a freak."

"Yes you are. You are lusting your new pastor. Tell me that isn't freaky behavior."

"I'm only lusting him until I get a peek at his kids."

"And you think that makes you less of a freak?"

"Yes, I make perfect sense to me. I bet they're trouble. Oooohh, I hope they're bad boys!" Jessica squeals.

"Doubt it. Their dad's a minister. They'll be boring and lame."

"Bella, Bella, Bella. So innocent and naïve. Don't you know anything? Pastor's kids are always holy terrors. They look all sweet and innocent and have all the adults conned, but they are all the biggest troublemakers."

"Yeah, okay Jess. Whatever."

"I'm leaving for Hawaii tomorrow so I'm gonna miss everything. I'm counting on you to be my eyes and ears, Swan. I expect pictures and a full report of everything they say and do e-mailed to ASAP."

"You are such a nutball."

"I'm serious. I gotta stay in the loop. The gossip doesn't stop just because I'm on vacation with my parents and stupid Andrew."

"Fine. I'll send you a dossier as soon as I get home, James Bond. I'm going to bed."