Edward & Co Read Twilight
Chapter 1: First Sight
- PART ONE-
Edward POV
First Sight Alice read.
"Intresting title for first chapter" I muttered under my breath.
"Edward!" Alice barked "Shhh!"
I growled and she continued.
My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt-sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.
"Ha-ha, she is definitely coming then" Roaslie laughed .
In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United Sates of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead. It was to Forks that I now exiled myself-an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.
"Why go to live somewhere where you can't stand to be?" Jasper mused.
"Not sure, but I think we'll find out soon" Alice whispered before continuing.
I scoffed, I didn't want to listen to this anymore.
Alice saw what I'd do.
"No, Edward!" she barked. Everyone turned to me.
"Your not leaving!" she growled.
Esme frowned at me. "Please Edward."
"Fine!" I huffed and sat down again.
I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and it's blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.
This girl sure had a good imagination to describe places like this, I thought.
"Bella," my mom said to me-the last of a thousand times-before I got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."
"What?" Carlise couldn't hold his question.
Alice nodded. "Let me continue."
My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would b food in the refrigerator, gas in her car and someone to call when she got lost, but still….
"Her mother sounds like the type of a witty and creative, always trying out new things to me" Esme said softly.
Alice nodded. Oh yeah, bite my head of for speaking, but allow the rest of the family!
"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.
"Tell Charlie I said hi."
"I will."
"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want-I'll come right back as soon as you need me." But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise "Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."
"It sounds like her Mom would have reason to worry about her in Forks, if the preface is anything to go on," stated Carlisle.
I nodded.
She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she was gone. It was a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about.
"Why?" Rosalie muttered, Alice ignored her.
He'd already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car. But it was going to be awkward with Charlie. Neither 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 my decision- like my mother before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks.
"Poor bloke" I said, not bothering to hide my bordom. Everyone turned to glare at me. Is it 'I-Hate-Edward-Day' or something?
When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen- just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun. Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too. Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks.
"You mean, she's...s-she's the chief's daughter?!!" Roselie screeched. I rolled my eyes.
"No shit, sherlock" I muttered.
"Edward!" Esme scoled me.
"Sorry mother." I said in a mono-tone.
"I didn't know that Charlie had a daughter," stated Emmett.
"Really?" I asked. "I did,"
"Well of course you knew Edward. You read minds," said Emmett sarcastically.
I shurgged.
My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.
"So true" we all said at the same time and laughed.
Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane. "It's good to see you Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renee?"
"Mom's fine. It's good to see you too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call him Charlie to his face. I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.
"If we met her, I could take her SHOPPING!" Alice squeeled, at the book in her hands.
I sighed. At least she wouldn't drag me along with her.
"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in. "What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car".
"She isn't half observant!" Jasper choked out. That worried him - he was thinking about when she meets us in the book. I rolled my eyes again.
"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."
I laughed, they came out when I was half the age I am now, nobody could be exicted about a chevy!
"Where did you find it?"
"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?"
I growled and wasn't the only one. Everyone apart from Esme and Alice did. They were the wolves and they organized a treaty with us- well Carlise in fact.
Esme put her hand on his shoulder to calm him down. He looked up gratefully at her.
How I sometimes longed for a mate. I was lonely, I didn't let anyone see that - but Esme saw through me.
La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.
"No."
"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.
That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.
I chuckled - she sounded like the kind of girl who'd catch my eye. But she was human - so I dropped it.
"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore and e offered to sell his truck cheap."
"What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask.
Jasper pannicked in his head. "Jaz, calm down." I warned him. He looked at me once and did a sharp nod.
"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine- it's only a few years old really."
I hoped he didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?"
"He brought it in 1984, I think."
"Did he buy it new?"
"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties- or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.
Yep, around half my age. I chuckled again.
"Ch—Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong and I couldn't afford a mechanic…"
"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."
The thing, I thought to myself…it had possibilities as a nickname, at the very least.
"Maybe Rose could help her out." I muttered and she threw a daggers glance at me.
"Never - will I go near that girl - only if it's to tear her head off." she muttered darkly.
Esme gasped - "Rosalie! Don't speak so horribly about the girl!"
Rosalie rolleed her eyes. "Want me to apologize? Oh wait, hang on - ITS A BOOK!"
Esme glared at her and Rosalie fell silent.
"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on.
"Well, honey, I kind of already brought it for you. As a homecoming gift."
That was a nice thing to do. Maybe Charlie was looking for ways to make her forgive him or something. She sounded like she held nothing against him.
Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression. Wow. Free. "You didn't have to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car."
"She is so selfless!" Esme smiled happily.
Maybe she'd warm up to my son. She sounds perfect for him. I so want him to be happy!
"Mom, Calm down" I said. She was like Alice when she wanted to go shopping.
"I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the road when he said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. I inherited that from him. So I was looking straight ahead as I responded.
"That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility.
He didn't need to suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth- or engine.
I laughed as well as Emmett and Jasper. The girls looked at us weirdly.
"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks. We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for conversation. We stared out the window in silence. It 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.
So true. I thought.
"Isn't that because we live here?" Jasper asked, mockily.
Alice looked up at her husband and pulled what Jasper thought was a 'sexy-as-hell' look. Gross.
"Jazz, shut. up." she muttered.
Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that's he'd brought 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 my new- well new to me- truck. It was faded red colour, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise I loved it.
My jaw dropped. She loved the trash?!! She was exicted and glad she had a chevy?!! What was wrong with her?!
Emmett and Rosalie looked digusted.
"She's weird" I said and they noddded.
The others ignored us.
I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself 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! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful. I 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.
Ok, she had a point there.
"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.
It only took one trip to get all my stuff upstairs.
Alice gasped. We laughed.
I got the west bedroom that faced out 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 yellowed lace curtains around the window- these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The desk 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 my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner. There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that fact.
I know where it is. I thought.
This book was becoming confusing. I coughed.
"I'm going hunting." and I ran out of the back-door. But not before Alice said "We'll wait for you!"
I sighed.