Honestly I hadn't planned on Arkansas. Really, I hadn't.

It just struck me as completely unexpected when I read the brochure stuck in the back of Charlie's fishing magazine.

Visit Arkansas! Land of lakes and rivers!

Yeah, okay. I like water. Water is good.

Where the people are friendly!

Okay. That's a plus.

Sports of all kinds, rock climbing, water skiing, boat racing, horse racing, hunting – ouch -.

Sounds fun. Water skiing isn't really conducive to Edward's personality.

So I googled it. Turns out it's a nice place with unpredictable weather and the sun shines a lot. I was in.

I restarted my life at the University of Central Arkansas. Its in a suburb of Little Rock. I moved into a one-bedroom apartment about a mile off campus. Dorm life was definitely not for me. Plus, I didn't think any roommate would like waking up to my screams in the middle of the night.

Just because I try not to think of him, doesn't mean I don't dream of him. Those dreams where my life ends every night, over and over again. Every night the misery I keep barely contained in the daylight wells up and spills over as I cry and wail for my lost love, my lost life, a future barred from me forever.

I hadn't realized until my first day of class what I mess I was. People just outright stared at me. I need a to do list.

Bella's To Do List

Wash clothes

Iron clothes

Brush hair

Decrease dark circles under eyes

Remember how to smile

Retrieve life

It's a work in progress.

I was taking 15 hours of class. I had to because of the scholarship I had won. It required 15 hours and a 2.7 GPA.

Cake

My classes were

Sociology

Biology

World History I

World Literature I

Writing I

Cake

And so continued my first week in Arkansas. I was tired because I had drove all the way from Forks. It felt like a 400-hour drive. Good thing all my crap fit in the back of my truck. A second trip was out of the question.

I had my studies and I had television. I had reminders that I was alone. I had anger.

People kept a wide berth from me on campus. In the small, overcrowded student center, I always had my own table. I was left alone by most. The only personal interaction I had was with one of the matronly librarians that worked late at night. She helped me get used to the cataloguing system they had.

I started checking out books – lots of books. I'll admit, I checked out Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire first. Louis reminded me of Edward and I threw the book across the room.

After that I move on to Bram Stoker. Then I read The Historian – and on and on and on…..

After a few months I exhausted my need for vampire lit and moved on to technical reading. I found that textbooks kept my brain supremely occupied and made me so tired me dreams were muted, if not completely extinguished, with mental exhaustion.

I found I was interested in meteorology. I realized that Edward would have never guessed this or ever dug deep enough into my psyche to have figured it out. That gave me pleasure, to have found something out about myself that he had never guessed. I realized that there was probably many things about me he would never have guessed.

And so my quest to become a new woman, one completely unrecognizable by Edward, should we ever meet again, began.

I finished my world history essay in record time. My professor said he found the topic very interesting and unusual and immediately approved of my essay: Vampire legends of the Americas.

I just can't stop picking that particular sore, that tiny trickle of blood reminds me why I'm here.

I cannot forget my past, my love.

Even here, in this simple, nice place. Well, not always nice. Arkansas, I had come to find out, is a place where Mother Nature suffers from Schizophrenia. In one day, you could see the sun, a 15 degree temperature drop, a thunderstorm, and possibly snow – depending on the time of year. I learned that the locals have a saying that goes, "Hate the weather in Arkansas? Wait 5 minutes and it'll change."

I loved the unpredictability of the weather. The thunderstorms get particularly violent here. I would often set under my apartment's small porch and watch a storm roll through at night. The thunder would shake my very bones as the lightning seared dazzling pictures behind my eyelids, almost completely erasing his perfect, angel face in my eyes, his velvet voice in my ears.

One night, a particularly warm night for February, about 65 degrees, when what can only be described as one helluva storm blew in from the west, toward Russelville. I was completely entranced by the intensity, the beauty of this storm. I sat amazed on my porch for about 15 minutes.

Then I heard one of the most god-awful noises I have ever heard in my life.

It was a loud, howling roar that drowned out the storm. It was a sound I heard every Wednesday at noon when the city tested the tornado sirens.

!!!

I sprinted inside my living room, grabbing a blanket off my sofa, and ran for my bathroom. My radio had been blaring this advice for about ten minutes and thanked God I lived in a ground-floor unit. My ears filled with a roar like a train was about to crush me to the tracks. I heard my little radio broadcast a tornado warning for Faulkner County, mine, just a little too late.

It felt like my whole apartment was shaking clean off the foundations. My bathroom window burst open, covering me in a torrent of shattered glass and hail. The wind howling through that window drenched me with ice-cold rain. I knew the large hailstones would leave bruises, but I don't care because I'm not going to be here much longer to care.

I knew at any moment my whole world would implode as the tornado ripped through the small apartment that was -shortly before tonight- slowly becoming my home.

I had never felt more helpless in my entire life. I had never before wanted a protector as bad as I did then.

But what could anyone, even my immortal Edward, do in the face of an unstoppable force of nature?

I wouldn't survive. I would never see Edward again. He left me and here I am, about to die by a force stronger even than my love for him. I decided to die with his face in my mind and his name on my lips. Whenever I get wherever it is we go, in my heaven, he will be waiting for me. I was smiling as the door exploded out of the bathroom.

Will Bella survive this storm, only to find a bigger one waiting?

Review Review Review please! I want to make this story better, please help me with your constructive criticism! It is much appreciated!