Author's Notes: Yay for reviewers! You guys make my day ^_^ In this chapter, Nessie finds herself on her own for the first time ever… and she's not sure if she likes it.


Disclaimer: The Twilight saga and all characters therein are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. No profit is being made from this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended.


Chapter Nine

Flight

Jewelry: my locket from my mother, a ring from Esme, the sapphire stud earrings from Rosalie. Clothes: underwear, jeans, a skirt, a few shirts. I could buy whatever else I needed. Bank card to access my private account in the Grand Cayman islands. Cash, one hundred thousand dollars. Passports, several of them. Spare laptop, encrypted and fast, with a satellite Net uplink and a solar charger.

All this took me under a minute to throw into the suitcase. I didn't think about it, I just did it.

From downstairs I heard the beginnings of an argument as Charlie and Sue were distracted by Carlisle, and as Jacob, Edward, Bella, and Alice cloistered themselves in the living room, speaking in urgent and angry tones. They wondered what to do about me.

Me, Renesmee, the problem child.

They wondered how to explain it was all fated, that nothing could threaten my bond with Jacob.

That just made me growl low in the back of my throat. I hated being forced into things. Especially…

I clutched my arms to my chest, unable to stop the hurt that enveloped me like a cloud. I couldn't see past it. It was poison. Jacob and Bella, before I was born. They'd kissed. What else had they done? Was I the sloppy second choice of Jacob Black because he couldn't have my mother?

A new and awful possibility occurred to me. Was this some kind of revenge of his? Did he imprint on me because he wanted to get back at Bella?

God. And here I'd been, falling in love with this guy, and he'd been in love with my mother.

He could have been my father.

"Sick, sick, sick," I said aloud. "Twisted, messed-up, stupid, horrible family. They knew and they didn't tell me. They…" The whole Almighty Imprinted One issue was a burden that made my left ring finger tingle in outrage. I had an arranged marriage; no, worse, a forced marriage.

Over my pile of ashes, I thought, borrowing a phrase from Rosalie. I wouldn't take this. I wouldn't be second place.

Screwing my face up, I yanked Jacob's bracelet off my wrist and flung it on the floor.

Then, I grabbed the handle of the suitcase and I jumped out my window into the soft snow. I was fast, but Edward was faster; he was on the ground in front of me.

Let me go.

"Renesmee, please listen. There's an explanation."

Oh, I'm sure there is. I stared into his pained face, memorizing it. I didn't know how long it would be before I saw him again.

Edward's mouth crumpled, seeing my intention.

I knew then that he wouldn't stop me. I walked past him and into the garage, hopped into my Jaguar, and turned the key. I pulled out fast, and my foot paused on the accelerator for a fraction of a second, just long enough to hear Jasper say, "Alice! Alice!"

For Edward to gasp in shock.

For Jacob to burst out of the front door, his arms and legs quivering as he fought the transformation.

I punched it and saw, in my rearview mirror, the great russet wolf pounding after me. But he'd done too good a job on the engine beneath the vintage hood; the Jaguar was faster, faster than Jacob, faster than my thoughts.

I screamed eastward until I hit Interstate-90. In the soft darkness I was a ghost with the speedometer maxed out, passing other cars so fast it looked like they were going backwards, and an hour later I was weaving through the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio.

Another hour, turning away from the great flat expanse of Lake Erie, and I was in Colombus, passing rusted factories and dying towns. The weather was slushy and ineffectual against the windshield and the cloth top of the car. It dampened my mind so that I didn't have to think. I just drove.

Another hour and I was careening around the curves on I-40 west of Nashville. The night was young and the weather cleared up so that I could have seen stars, were I looking.

I knew what my family was doing by now. Jacob and Jasper would be using their lesser computer skills to try to find if I'd taken a flight or left the country. One of my parents would have driven to the airport to see if my car was there. Someone else would have called the Denalis, telling them that I'd run away, hoping that I was going to them. They would be checking all my passport aliases: Vanessa Wolfe, Nessa Swan, Renee Masen. I was incredibly glad that Alice couldn't see me.

Truth be told, I didn't know where I was going, only that I needed to get away.

At a dark hour of morning, along a lonely stretch of the interstate just past Little Rock, Arkansas, I saw the lights of a police car flash behind me. They were feeble and receded within minutes. A half-hearted attempt. The forest edged up into weeds at the sides of the road. The trees looked malevolent and hungry. These were blighted areas, still struggling with refugees and migrants from the cities, and they lived in tent cities in the trees. Once in awhile I saw the glimmer of a fire blazing in an oil barrel and the shadowed figures standing around it… tiny blinks of light that hung in my vision, dangled there for an instant, and then fell away.

I stopped for gas at a run-down station. It would have been a forgotten corner of America, except that it was here along the interstate. The man at the station didn't bother to look at me as I threw down too much money on the counter, and he didn't bother to count what I'd given him.

The sun rose when I was halfway across Texas. The light washed out the wintry landscape, the dead yellow fields, the grey branches of trees. A green direction sign flashed past me and I averted my eyes too late; it advertised Highway 34, north toward Jacobia and Wolfe City.

Soon after that, the skyscrapers of Dallas gathered like a grove of trees on the edge of the horizon, and I weaved in and out of rush hour traffic as best I could, using the commuter lanes. After the slow stretch, I was back on the open road, heading south.

I'd just shot past a dusty little town and crossed over a weak river when I realized where I was going.

Brazil, of course.

Someone there needed my help – PeuChen91, whoever she was – and I had friends there. I could visit Zafrina and Kachiri and hunt in the jungles, go a little bit wild. Even if my family figured it out and Alice saw my decisions by way of those around me, it would take them forever to find me. After all, one area of the Amazon looked just like another, and it would be difficult to track anything through swamps and rivers. By the time they found me, I might – just might – be ready to talk to them.

In the meantime, I was driving south, and I was free.

I stopped for gas again just before the border with Mexico, bought Mexican car insurance, and found a diner. Sitting alone in a corner booth, sunglasses firmly in place, I ordered steak and eggs; the eggs were runny but the steak was good Texas stock.

Then I was on my way again, and hit the border at just before noon.

I would use Renee Masen to enter Mexico. She was twenty-two years old and had only been to Canada before. The immigration official in his booth was dazzled by my smile and by my car; he looked me over, then the Jaguar, and told me I better have Mexican car insurance.

I smiled and showed him the piece of paper.

"Muchas gracias. Welcome to Mexico. Be careful of the bandits."

I tried not to laugh. Bandits! I could eat them for breakfast. Literally.

Leaving America behind me, I sped through the dusty desert. From here, it was simple. Just keep going, keep moving, it didn't matter how fast or how slow. I was in no rush. All I focused on was the turning of the wheels beneath me and the landscape in front of me. Little places where people lived. Broken-down cars, roadside food stands, squat houses and long rows of corn. The land turned from brown into green. A sprinkling of rain washed the dust off the car.

My phone had a sat-nav system and there was no question of stopping and asking for directions. My Spanish was passable, thanks to a multi-lingual education when I was a child, but I wasn't in the mood to speak to anyone yet. I needed to be free of all constraints, conversation and politeness and stupid imprinting.

Renee Masen passed through the border into Guatemala, behind a truck full of chickens.

I couldn't go as fast on these roads; they were poor quality for the most part and I was afraid of ripping a tire. Some sections were well-maintained and I made up time… then they ended, as though whoever repaired roads had changed their mind, gone home, and taken a siesta.

It took as long to get through Central America as it had to get across the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas combined. After Nicaragua – I was getting weary of run-down border crossings in all these filler countries – then I was into Costa Rica, stopping for gas once and smiling as I slammed the accelerator down on their wealthier, safer roads. Night fell as I passed a glowering mountain with red edging the top: a live volcano.

A volcano would kill even a vampire. I looked at the mountain with respect and kept driving.

In the dead of night I crossed over the great Panama Canal. I stopped the car for a moment to stretch my legs, watching as a freighter ship, lit up like a beacon, floated underneath the Bridge of the Americas. It looked to be carrying grain. I sniffed the air: the sea and the rich layers of tropical vegetation, the oil and metal and churning engines of ships, the people wearing cotton and straw. So different from what I was used to.

Sighing, I got back in the car. I was in South America now. A continent away from the hurt and the betrayal. The air was sweet with my freedom.

Some hours later, at midday, the road ended.

I was in a town called Yaviza, according to the sign, and it was the terminus of the road I'd been following. There was no fanfare, no reward, just a rusted sign and a hunched-over village. Women in long skirts carried water and children on their backs. A girl of about my age, heavily pregnant, scrubbed her laundry by hand as she stood barefoot next to a plastic bucket.

The road drifted off into a spread of gravel that scattered like dull stars into the exuberant vegetation of the rainforest. On the other side of the road, a large, stubborn-looking river drifted by.

I glared at my sat-nav phone. It had not said anything about a gap. I'd punched in Pan-American Highway, thinking with good reason that the road would continue into South America. I felt misled by my technology, and that unsettled me.

Angrily punching a few keys, I turned off the navigation program and also erased the fourteen voice messages. Two from Bella, eight from Edward, three from Alice, and one from Jacob. I hadn't listened to any of them. I knew what they would try to say.

I parked the Jaguar and, ignoring the stares of bemused villagers, I approached the pregnant girl.

"Si?" she asked, glancing up, her eyes squinted against the sunshine. She had wrinkles on her brow already. She could not be my age, I must have been mistaken.

I asked her how to get to Columbia, explaining about my car and my need to keep going. As her expression grew more and more confused, I wished that I could just pass her my thoughts without startling her. Instead she just stared at me like I was an alien.

All right, I supposed I did look a little… odd. I still wore my wine-colored satin blouse and cream wrap skirt from the family dinner. My hair was pulled into a ponytail underneath a baseball cap and I'd kicked off my heels in the car.

Bare feet, just like hers.

Explaining again in Spanish, I said that I was trying to drive to Brazil and I needed to know where the road picked up again.

The girl started laughing at me.

Well, I'm glad to have made her day, I thought. "Por favor?" I said.

Shaking her head at me, she said that the best thing to do was to go to the airport and fly out. Yaviza had an airport, she said, pointing. I looked back at her just in time to see her eyeing my Jaguar.

And leave my car here. In your dreams, lady. I gave her a sharp look, but she didn't even seem ashamed.

I tried a couple other people – an old man smoking the last remaining stub of a cheap cigarette, and a man in the grimy general store – but they offered equally worthless advice. I could rent a motorcycle and cross the jungle. I could take a ferry to the other side of the lazy river.

Useless. I got back in my car. I would drive back to Panama City and hitch a ride on a ship, with my Jaguar, to Rio de Janeiro.

A few hours later, as I approached Panama City, its lights just beginning to glow as the sun set on the ocean, I realized that I was about to fall over from exhaustion. I hadn't slept in… (I counted the hours I'd been driving)… two days. This was taking a lot longer than I'd thought; I probably should have flown.

On the other hand, the driving distracted me, and it felt like I had put the world between me and him. That was a nice feeling.

Punching in my request into my now-untrustworthy phone, I found the city's best five-star resort. Pulling into the front amidst white columns and palm trees, I stumbled out, grabbed my suitcase out of the trunk ("Mine, thanks," I hissed to the bellboy who tried to take it from me) and handed the keys to the valet, then presented myself at the front desk.

I'd never checked into a hotel before. I'd never even stayed at a hotel before. I felt very grown-up as I said, "I need a room just for tonight, please," and gave the clerk my most dazzling smile.

It was impossible to tell what the clerk was thinking as he looked at me. He looked almost hypnotized. After a long beat he blinked a couple of times and said, slowly, "How old are you, miss?"

"Twenty-two."

"Ah. Well, yes. How will you be paying for your stay, please?"

"Cash."

"I will need to see your passport, please, sorry."

Entertained by his contradicting terms, I handed him Renee Masen. He entered the number into the computer and passed it back to me.

"Yes, thank you," he said. "View of ocean or gardens, your preference?"

"Ocean."

He beamed as though this was the right choice. "Room Three-Twelve, thank you."

I was shown to the room, and as soon as the bellhop had closed the door behind him, I flung open the doors to the balcony. The sea glowed under the last remnants of the sunset. The room was enormous, with polished teak furniture, plush sand-colored carpet, a massive bed frothy with white silk, a vase full of bird-of-paradise flowers.

I was not supposed to be somewhere like this all by myself. There was no one to exclaim to, no one to breathe in the rich ocean air with me. My eyes turned to the bed and I thought of how alone I would be tonight.

Jacob should have been sharing this with me.

Jacob had kissed my mother before I was even born.

It would have been one thing if they'd been honest with me. I could have handled that. After all, I couldn't have expected Jacob to not have a life, just because I wasn't around yet… but it was the secret of it, the shame, the sense that I'd had the rug pulled out from under me. I didn't know Jacob at all, and I was supposed to spend my life with him? My mind came back to its original position: trapped.

It was then that I remembered it was Christmas Eve. I'd have spoiled their gift-giving at home. I would not be there to see the look on Jacob's face when he saw the antique jet engine. Guilt swamped me for a black moment, followed soon by self-pity. I'd ruined everything, and everything had been ruined for me.

I would have no Christmas, no family, no Jacob.

I turned in a dizzy circle that made the luxurious room see-saw in front of my eyes, and I collapsed onto the soft carpet, crying.