A/N: Thanks to everybody who reviewed! It made me so happy! Here's Chapter Two!
Disclaimer: Bella's still a character, yeah? I don't own.
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Crash
Chapter 2
"Quilly! Who's that!" Claire pointed at Tala, her eyes sparkling. Quil smiled down at her.
"She's Emily's cousin. Her name is Tala." Tala smiled at the little girl, who was strapped inside the bright pink car seat in the front of Quill's truck.
"Her foot looks funny."
"I broke it."
Claire's eyes grew wide. "Broken?" she gasped. "Quilly! Tally's broken!"
Tala giggled to herself, and Quil chuckled. "No, she only broke her foot. She'll be fine soon."
Claire let out an audible sigh of relief. "Good. Broken people isn't good, right?"
"Right, Claire bear."
Tala felt as if she was imposing upon an important conversation between the two of them.
Claire reached over to the radio and put on Radio Disney, and Tala couldn't contain her visible cringe. Quil noticed, and shot her a death glare. Tala just slunk lower into her seat as Claire began singing along with some boy who had an unnaturally feminine voice.
"Quilly, sing with me!" she insisted, bouncing up and down in her car seat.
Quil let out a nervous laugh. "Claire bear, that's not such a great idea. I'm not as good as that beaver kid."
"Bieber, Quilly. It's Bieber." Claire corrected him, letting out a little pout.
"Right. Him." Quil kept his eyes glued to the road, doing the best he could to fight the invisible force that made him so inclined to look over at Claire's adorable face.
"Pleeease, Quilly?"
Quil chanced a glance over at Claire, who was giving him the cutest puppy dog face imaginable. He let out a sound that reminded Tala of a cat being strangled.
"Yeah, Quil, go ahead and sing. I'm sure you're not as bad as I am," Tala said, deeply amused at the amount of power a little girl who was barely a fifth of Quil's size had over him.
Quil grumbled, and began to mumble lyrics under his breath.
"I can't hear you, Quilly. And Tally said that it's okay." Claire said, reaching out her hand and poking Quil in the elbow repeatedly.
Quil's singing became a bit louder, just loud enough so that Tala could hear what he was saying.
"Baby, baby, baby oh…"
Tala stifled a snicker, and he glared at her in the rear view mirror. She shut up immediately, but her face was flushed from the effort it took her not to laugh at Quil, who had an incredibly deep voice and was singing a song by… well, Justin Bieber.
Tala looked out the window at the road while Claire squealed in delight at Quil's singing.
To Quil's immense relief, they pulled into Emily's driveway not sixty seconds later. He shut off the radio immediately, and Claire hopped out of the truck to run into the house.
Quil turned to Tala, and grimaced. "Don't breathe a word about this. Ever."
Tala feigned innocence. "About what?"
Quil's eye twitched. "About me singing Justi- oh. Got it."
Tala smiled at him. "I thought you were fine; I sound like a dying chicken when I sing."
Quil let out a nervous chuckle. "Awesome. Let's head inside."
"Alright."
They sat in awkward silence for a bit.
"So, I kind of need you to not be on the chair I need to climb over to get out of the car."
"Oh. Oops... Sorry."
"And I put extra blankets right here just in case you get cold, okay?" Emily pointed to a chair heaped up with six more incredibly warm looking blankets- not that Tala actually needed them; the bed was already covered in ten blankets, at least, and Emily had insisted she wear her old flannel pajamas that had little wolves on them.
"Thanks, Emily." Tala smiled at her, gazing out the window again at the short stretch of woods, and father away, she assumed, was the beach, for she could hear the faint crashing sound of waves against the shore.
"And if you need anything, don't hesitate in waking me up-"
Tala focused her attention on Emily again with a laugh in her voice. "Emily, I know. And you don't have to go to this much trouble; however clumsy I am, I'm sure I can get to the kitchen without killing myself to get a drink or something." She smiled genuinely at her. "Thank you, for everything. I don't know where I would have been carted off to if you couldn't have taken me in."
Emily smiled at her, her eyes tearing up just the tiniest bit. "That's what family is for, isn't it? Even if we are only distant cousins."
Then Sam called for her from the kitchen to talk about something, and Emily quickly wiped the tears away from her face as she smiled at Tala. Tala smiled back, and Emily shuffled out of the room after saying goodnight and giving Tala a tight hug.
Tala sat down on her window seat, leaning against the window pane. It was freezing cold compared to her regular body temperature, and as she breathed, the moisture of her breath clung to the pane under her nose in a foggy cloud, fading away and coming back, and fading away and coming back, in a never-ending cycle in time with her breathing. She closed her eyes for a moment, and strained her ears to listen for the waves again. Shh... shh... shh... shh… the waves crooned, as if part of a lullabye. Tala drifted off to sleep leaning on the window, her arms wrapped around herself in a comforting embrace, her injured foot dangling down and touching the floor. Her curly brown hair covered her face, shielding it from anyone looking into the window, and the white bandage covering her arm glowed in the light of the half-moon.
Tala woke from the frightening cold. She jerked her head up, and whacked it on the corner of the window. She cursed, rubbing the spot which would now have a bruise, as her vision cleared from her groggy and blurred sleep. She glanced at the clock, its glowing numbers illuminating that it was much too early to be awake yet. 1:30. She sighed, and scooted upright into a more comfortable position on the seat. Her breath clouded into little sheep that drifted lazily away from her, disappearing as they moved farther away into the room. Tala glanced outside again, the moon brushing the treetops as it slowly set into nothingness. She heard a little whine from right below her window. Startled, and very intrigued, she looked down to see a looming grey figure on four legs. The wolf! Tala realized. She decided that this must be just a dream. No wolf was that big, and no wolf would just saunter up to a house like that. She opened her window, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, she swung her crutches to the outside of the house and lightly lowered herself down onto them. Her toes glanced across the frozen dew on the grass, and she shivered, a sudden chill running up her spine, not unpleasantly.
"Hey, boy. What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Tala asked, still a good five feet from the wolf, if not more.
The wolf made a sneezing sound in response, as if to say "No, silly".
Tala hummed in amusement. "I'm sorry for hitting you with my truck, you know. I don't even know how it happened; you were just there all of a sudden. I'd take it back, if I could, you know." The wolf seemed as if it was actually listening.
Absurd, really. Tala let out a little laugh, and the wolf looked at her with a scrunched up forehead, like it was raising its eyebrows in question.
"What? It's nothing- kind of odd, though. That you're here. It's probably just a dream, I know, but I'm glad that somebody's here for me. Somebody who will listen…" Tala choked up at that part, afraid to cry, afraid to show weakness to this odd character that seemed to be haunting her in a rather nice way.
Immediately, he was by her side, his cold wet nose a comforting presence on her hand, his eyes looking at her like she was the best thing that had ever existed. She scratched his nose, almost without really thinking about it.
"Cars are terrifying. I'm surprised I had enough guts to drive here from Seattle, after what happened to Mom and Dad. They got in a car crash too, you know," she confided to the shaggy grey mass next to her. "It wasn't like me, though. The police just found their car in the ocean three days after they were supposed to have returned from LA. Apparently, they drove off the cliffs while coming home and drowned." Tala frowned, and looked at the wolf's large, trusting brown eyes, and she said the one thing that scared her beyond anything else.
"I visited to the crash site, you know. And I'm no crime scene investigator or anything, but the cliff guards lining the cliff? They weren't broken, didn't have a scratch on them. The police didn't even say anything about the bodies either." She hiccupped, and quickly brushed away a tear. She would not cry in front of her friend, as imaginary as he may be.
The wolf whined, and cuddled into her side. She hiccupped again. "I miss them so much," she whispered as she began to cry.
Quiet, choking sobs wracked her small body, making her crutches, arms, and legs shake like leaves in a brutal wind. Her eyes screwed up in pain, and her face began to turn a blotchy red color from her crying. Softly, the wolf took her pajama sleeve into his mouth and tugged her to the porch, where she sat down with a loud thump, the crutches falling uselessly to the ground in front of her as she hugged the great creature sitting next to her.
Tala's cries were muffled in the beast's thick warm fur, and he hugged her back the best he could with his giant head, agitated that he could do nothing else to calm his girl down.
Tala mumbled something into his shoulder after a while. To the regular person, it would have sounded something like "'m flurry," but he heard what she had said clearly. He cocked his head as if to say 'Sorry for what?'
She laughed into his fur, sniffling, igniting a pleasant shiver to crawl down his spine and puff up his tail just the slightest bit. "For crying all over you. I'm not usually like this, I'm just so confused and-"
The wolf pulled back and looked at her. You have all the reason in the world to cry, love. I just wish I could do something to fix it.
Tala rewarded him with a watery smile, like she'd heard what he had thought. "You're amazing, you know. I wish you were real, and not just a dream."
Just because you might be dreaming, doesn't mean that it isn't real.
Tala laughed a funny-sounding laugh. "You sure know your books, alright. Harry Potter- the seventh one. Dumbledore said that."
He smiled at her, a toothy grin.
She wrapped her arms around him again, and curled up close to him. "Don't leave, okay?" she murmured, exhausted from her cry and the past few days in general.
Never...
A soft knock woke Tala up that next morning. Startled, she sat up quickly, and managed a slurred 'Come in'.
Emily opened the door, carrying an enormous tray of breakfast. "Morning, Sleeping Beauty."
Tala smiled sleepily at her, and glanced at the clock. 12:30. She yelped, and went to spring out of bed, but Emily gave her a look that froze her in mid-movement.
"It's Saturday. Stay in bed. Sam found your crutches outside near the porch when he went to work today, and you were in here asleep."
Tala's eyes widened. "So it wasn't a dream! The wolf actually came!"
Emily looked at her, set the breakfast tray down on Tala's knees, and, shoving the pile of blankets to the floor, sat down on the chair by her bedside. "Wolf?"
Tala tried her best to explain what had happened. "...and I hugged him and I cried for a long while, and well, I just fell asleep. And now I'm here." She shrugged. "It was all very surreal." Not that I minded it, Tala thought with a small smile. She looked at Emily. "You believe me, don't you?"
Emily smiled at her. "Of course." Her tone of voice still held a hint of doubt, but Tala ignored it.
Tala finally turned her eyes to the tray sitting in front of her: a blueberry muffin and butter, three pancaked with strawberries on the side, and a tall glass of orange juice sat in front of her, arranged just like in a restaurant. "Oh my gosh, Emily. This looks so wonderful. Thank you!"
Emily beamed. "I'm glad! It's a new buttermilk pancake recipe I'm trying out, and you're my only hope of actually getting an answer of whether it tastes good or not." She sighed wistfully. "The boys usually just scarf it down without even tasting it." She looked eagerly at Tala. "Go on, try it!"
Tala giggled, and with some difficulty, picked the fork up with her right hand and cut a small piece of the pancake with the side of the fork, and popped it into her mouth with a strawberry. Tala turned towards Emily, and suddenly demanded "Open a restaurant. You'll become a millionaire in no time."
Emily's laughter filled the quiet house. "You're too cute!"
"No, I'm serious!" Tala insisted. "I'd live there!"
Emily opened her mouth to reply, but just then the front door opened and closed, and the formerly quiet house was no longer very quiet, suffice to say.
"Emilyyyy!" a voice whined pitifully.
Emily snorted, and stood up. "Come on out when you're dressed and everything, okay? If you need any help at all, call me, okay?"
Tala smiled. "Okay."
"Emmmmmm!" another voice called.
"I'm coming, you pigs!" Emily called. She grinned at Tala and then exited her room.
A few minutes later, you could hear a large chorus of cheering, and the occasional cry of 'Food!'.
Tala smiled to herself, and finished off her breakfast. Carefully placing the tray and empty dishes at the foot of her bed, she swung both her feet out of bed and grabbed ahold of the bedpost, doing a quirky one-footed hop over to the chest of drawers. She retrieved her usual clothing, and did her best to put it on with two useless left limbs. It took her a bit longer than usual, and it was around one-fifteen when she finally emerged from her room, hopping on her right foot while she attempted to bring the food tray back into the kitchen.
The sight that she opened her door to was not unlike yesterday: the unnaturally buff men were crowded around the small TV set, hollering at their favorite teams that were playing; Emily in the kitchen baking every single thing possible; and the rain pouring down outside, making the dirt mud and the dirty air smell clean and fresh.
Tala hopped on one foot towards the kitchen again, the tray balanced on her right hip, her right hand holding onto the other side of the tray a bit more firmly than necessary. The loud thump her socked foot made on the wooden floor turned the heads of everybody in the room. It was also met with a large chorus of smiles and slightly obnoxiously loud 'good mornings' (in Seth's case, at least).
Tala smiled at them, murmuring a quiet good morning and swaying there awkwardly.
The front door opened and closed. A loud voice boomed out "Seth, your turn! Paul is being a total pain in the ass, and-" Embry noticed Tala standing there awkwardly, and a goofy grin replaced his slightly annoyed look. "Hey, Tala."
"Hi," she replied meekly, shuffling her foot side to side in an attempt to make a quieter getaway to the kitchen.
Embry quickly took notice of Tala's predicament and swooped in and took the tray from her. He smiled sappily at her. "Want help getting over to the couch? They're doing curling right now."
"Er-" she was surprised this stranger was acting so nice to her. She had only met him yesterday, and that had been quite the awkward experience.
By the time she'd shaken herself out of her own thoughts, he had returned from the kitchen, and softly touched her elbow to guide her to the couch, where there was one spot left, Seth having just left.
"You can have my spot; I can sit on the floor."
Tala blinked. "Thank you…?" She was confused. "You don't have to, you know-"
"Yes I do," Embry insisted, and he went to go get a glass of water for both him and Tala.
The rest of the group began laughing the second Embry left the room, all eyes on Tala.
"What?"
These people are crazy, Tala decided. She smiled then. Not the bad crazy, though- the good kind.
"No, no, no, no, no! How could you have missed that? You were so damn close!" Sam threw a chip at the screen, and Jake slammed his fist down on his knee, hard. He winced.
Meanwhile, the rest of the house cheered.
Is this what a real family's like? If so… Tala smiled as she decided that she would root with Sam and Jacob.
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So, how was that?
Again, thank you to MySuperAwesomePenName for being a marvelous BETA!
Also: would you like me to respond to your reviews by PM or on my Authors Notes?
And more: I posted this, and then read like fifteen other fan fictions with the main character's name as Tala. Should I change it, or keep it the same? I want to change it but I've already posted, and...
Anyway, Happy Friday the 13th!
Fun Fact: In Germany (apparently), they think Friday the 13th is a lucky day!
Until the 20th,
Pichi