Next chapter up. Thanks to Jannie for the review. I'd love input from more people. : )

Unpacking

Maureen had to admit that Forks was abysmally tiny compared to the other towns she'd lived in. But that was hardly a reason to look down her nose at it. A town was better judged by other things…its inhabitants, for one. Or its ghosts and its scars, if one chose to see how the past affected a place. From what she could tell though, all three were fairly innocuous.

As it should be. Maureen thought. Innocuous was the best word for this place…it seemed barely there, or ready to come to pieces for lack of any substance. But it wouldn't. Maureen could tell.

The cab driver pulled up outside a tan, brown-roofed house. It wasn't the prettiest home Maureen had ever seen, but it was decently large, and looked about fifty years old. She scooted out of the cab, and trotted up to the door. She rang the bell once, and only had to wait thirty seconds. The girl who opened the door wore a pink t-shirt and blue jeans. And she was exactly the same height as Maureen. That hadn't changed.

"Maureen! Hi!" Jessica swooped in for a hug, which Maureen returned. "Oh my God, it's great to see you! Like, how was your trip?"

Nothing's changed completely, here. Maureen though. They're still my family.

"It was long." Maureen admitted. "I'm glad to be here. It's good to see you after such a long while."

"I know. The last time was, what, a year ago?" Jessica laughed.

"Year and a half." Maureen said. "We had the big Christmas reunion at Grandma Stanley's house."

"Oh, right!" Jessica smiled. "I remember."

Here was something different. Jessica was smiling and laughing, and seemed genuinely enthused—but there was a hint of discomfort in her eyes, a tension under her words. It sobered Maureen, reminded her that this wasn't some pleasant visit.

She's going to ask for the details. Maureen thought. When they were younger, Jessica had proudly claimed she was going to be a detective, all so she could find out the answers to everything. Childhood curiosity led to teenage gossiping.

"I have to pay the driver, Jess." Maureen said. "Will you help me get my stuff in the house, after I do?"

"Sure thing!" Jessica said.

Cabbie George was paid (Maureen gave him a large tip—gas mileage notwithstanding, he'd driven her nearly a hundred miles) and he helped Maureen wrestle her trunks and duffle bag out of the car, before driving off. Easy enough. But getting the luggage into the house was another matter entirely. Maureen couldn't fault Jessica for her lack of muscles—she hardly had any herself, not when it came to lifting extremely heavy boxes. But she imagined the sight of two short teenage girls trying to carry a giant steamer trunk was extremely pathetic.

"Whew!" Jessica sighed, when they got the first trunk up onto the second floor landing. "I hope you have a boss speaker system in there, to make it all worth it!"

Maureen smiled ruefully. "Sorry, not too much by way of entertainment technology." The two girls tramped back downstairs. "My computer and an ipod are about it."

"Then what made it so goddamn heavy?" Jessica grumbled.

"Let's get the rest of it before I tell you." Maureen said, exiting the front door with Jess following her.

"Hey, I like your necklace!" Jessica said, pointing at the green choker around Maureen's neck. "And your pants. They match your eyes, I think."

Maureen smiled. "You think?"

"Well, it compliments them." She squinted at Maureen's face. "What color are your eyes, exactly?"

"My driver's permit says they're gray." Maureen grabbed one handle on the second trunk, as Jessica grabbed the other.

"You don't think they're gray?"

"More like I just don't know. They sort of shift around."

"Weird! So what, you're a chameleon?" Jessica giggled.

Maureen bit her tongue in irritation, and counted to three in her head.

"Despite how stupid it sounds, it's actually not weird for human eyes to change color." Maureen said. "Or rather, for eyes to look like they are different colors. Irises, especially ones with lighter pigments, are strongly affected by light and the presence of other colors. If I put on a green sweater and stood outside on a sunny day, my eyes would probably look different than if I put on a blue sweater and stood outside on a cloudy day."

"Really?"

"Yeah. But the difference is subtle, anyhow." Maureen said. "It certainly doesn't happen with bright blue eyes, or deep mahogany eyes. The colors change, but stay muted. Hence, they wrote gray on my driver's license."

The second steamer trunk was a little bit lighter to carry. And the duffle bag, while heavy and unwieldy, could be managed by one person. Maureen carried it slowly up the stairs on her back, while Jessica dragged the trunks into the farthest room on the right, making noises about how she hoped no one would notices the scratches on the floor. Maureen stepped through the doorway, and dropped the duffle as gently as she could. It was a small room—she remembered it had been an infrequently used study in her younger days, and then more of a storage space than anything else. It was bare now, save for a dresser, a desk, and a bed that was really more of a cot. It smelled clean, though, and the window had a nice view of the backyard.

Jessica was fumbling with the locks on the first trunk, and flipped it open before Maureen could make a protest. Her expression of curiosity faded into a look of utter confusion.

"Blocks of wood?" Jessica lifted a piece out of the trunk, half-wrapped in a towel.

"My loom." Maureen said. "I'll have to put it back together, obviously. And the spinning wheel is in there too, along with a few other things."

"Spinning wheel…?" Jessica seemed to be taking a few minutes to process the information, so Maureen took the time to unzip her duffle and start unpacking. She'd tried to prevent as many of her clothes from wrinkling as possible, but the linen shirts were pretty well wadded up. She started separating them into a laundry pile.

Scrabbling sounds. Jessica was opening the other trunk. "Maureen, is this all you brought?"

"All my tools and supplies." Maureen said, carefully refolding her garments before slipping them into the dresser drawers. She was glad to see that the closet, while small, had a collection of bare plastic hangers in it. "The loom, sewing machine, knitting needles—"

"There's a hammer in here!"

"If it's got red tape around the handle, it's for putting the loom back together. The other one's for putting grommets on corsets, but I think it's underneath the books at the bottom."

Jessica fished a book titled 5,000 Years of Textiles out of the second trunk. There was a moment of silence.

"Sooo…" Jessica said. "I take it you're still on a big fabric kick."

Maureen laughed. "That's a bit of an understatement, but yeah."

"But what about your toothbrush? School supplies?"

"All in the duffle, or I figured I could find what I needed at the local store." Maureen said, putting the last pair of socks in the dresser. "I know it's ironic, but for someone who sews as much as I do, I don't actually own a lot of clothes. Or much of anything else."

"No stuffed animals? Mementoes?"

"I've got the stuffed cow from when I was a baby, but that's about it." Most of my mementoes were people. And the things I made for them.

"The trunks belonged to your mother, though…right?"

Now they were getting into awkward territory. Maureen closed the last dresser drawer. "Yes."

Jessica shut the trunk. "Can I ask you something?"

"Ask away."

Jessica swiveled around, facing Maureen as she knelt on the floor. "What happened to you? Dad told me that you got in trouble, and needed to come live up here. But he wouldn't go into detail."

"Uncle Thomas needs to be less vague." Maureen said.

"So what happened?"

"I got expelled."

"No!"

Maureen blanched. The tone of Jessica's voice wasn't one of shock, or concern. She was scandalized. Delightfully scandalized. To her, Maureen's problems had all the relevance of a soap opera.

This was a big change, and more than just an adolescent shift. Maureen should have anticipated it. What else was there to do in a numb world, except to make mountains out of molehills?

"What did you do?" Jess was thirsty for more information.

"My teachers were being assholes." Maureen said, reciting the narrative she'd worked out. Never mind that it was full of holes. "I started mouthing off to them, calling them awful names and pushing their buttons. One teacher snapped so bad she hit me. They got rid of her too, but I'd caused too much fuss. So I was expelled. That, plus the fact that I'd been…chafing…in the house, my Dad figured sending me to school far away was the best idea."

"What did your step mom say?"

Maureen laughed. "Cathy wanted me to stay, and do 'counseling' with her. I'd rather eat a bucket of sea urchins."

"I thought you liked her."

Maureen suddenly found her head swamped with responses, with exaggerated horror stories she could tell Jessica. This place wanted Cathy to be a one-dimensional bitch.

Nothing doing. Maureen thought. I say what I want.

"She's fine, she's a good person." Maureen said. "She just thinks that delinquent behavior traits can be cured by lots of attention. It felt like smothering."

Maureen sighed, and ran a hand through her hair.

"Anyway, Cathy was pretty much set on home-schooling me. But I told my Dad I wouldn't do it, then I spent the whole summer going on about how it was an awful idea. So he decided to send me here instead."

"Wow. I'm so sorry." Jessica's voice was more sympathetic now, and less greedy for information. But Maureen made a mental note—her cousin was triggered by dirt.

"No need to be." Maureen said. "I'm glad I came here. I didn't like where I was. I think I'm going to be happier here."

"From sunny California to cloudy Washington?" Jessica smirked.

"What do I care about the weather? I'll sew myself a raincoat."

"You can't sew raincoats!"

"Of course, they just spring into existence out of the raincoat gnome's belly button." Maureen said sarcastically. "I can make lots of things, Jess. Even if I didn't use the hideous plastic most raincoats are made of, wool can be very waterproof."

Maureen rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Would you mind giving me some time to unpack? I don't think I'm in a mood for conversation anymore."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

It took a little more persuading, but eventually Jessica left the room. As the door shut, Maureen walked over to the bed, and sat down. The cot springs squeaked—it really was an awful bed. But nothing a goosedown mattress and a couple heavy quilts couldn't fix. Maureen added them to her mental checklist, along with curtains for the window, and maybe a doily for the dresser. No harm in making things look nice.

Nice room, nice home, nice town, nice place. Things were going to be fine.

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