SM owns Twilight. Super long A/N at the end.

Chapter 6: Clarity

In the days that followed being dumped by James, Bella spent an unhealthy amount of time in her room, curtains drawn, locked away from the world. Though she felt hurt, mostly she felt anger—at herself, at James, and at the situation in general. She couldn't understand why he'd done this to her, and all in such a cruel manner, with all of his friends as spectators to her humiliation.

Maybe he'd come to realize that she didn't love him like she said, not in the way that he loved her. He must have been hurt by this; in turn, he wanted to hurt her in the same way. She'd tried so hard to make herself fall in love with him. People fell in and out of love all of the time. Why couldn't she do it so easily?

Bella wondered if she just wasn't meant to truly be loved by anyone. Her father seemed to care about her, but he lived on the other side of the country. He'd never once asked her to live with him, never protested when she stopped visiting regularly. She lived with Renee, yet she barely saw her mother. She'd never had any close friends, never bonded with anyone as she grew up—not in any of the towns they'd lived in or in any of the schools she'd attended.

Then James had come along. He had said that he loved her, but he didn't seem to have any issue with leaving her. Was it really so easy to cast aside the one you loved? Bella could hardly blame him. She was shy and awkward, painfully average and boring. There was nothing special about her. She wondered why he ever wasted his time on her at all.

She didn't deserve anyone's love, especially not his. He was smart and funny, charismatic and wealthy. He deserved someone beautiful and unique. Those words would never be used to describe Bella Swan. She was meant to be alone.

Bella returned to the solitary existence she'd once led, only this time she felt even lonelier than before. Sometimes she found herself forgetting—grabbing her phone to send James a text about her evening plans, or just to see what he was doing. Little things would remind her of him and she often found herself choking back tears. The blue of the sky reminded her of his eyes. The beach made her think of their first date, when he'd tricked her onto a bodyboard. She couldn't even drown her sorrows in ice cream because it reminded her of the way they met.

~ O ~

Days turned into weeks and with nothing to do with her time, Bella threw herself into her schoolwork. She spent hours in the library, pouring through books and research. She meticulously plotted and planned each assignment, not satisfied until it was deemed perfect in her eyes. She continued to look for another job and filled out applications for colleges she really had no interest in. Bella did anything to keep her mind occupied, trying hard to forget that she was alone once again. She settled into a lonely, but functional routine. She was coping as best she could, trying to just endure, but things soon went from bad to worse.

For the past two weeks, Bella had felt a little under the weather, like she'd caught a virus or the flu, probably from one of the kids at school. She'd fought with chronic bouts of nausea, terrible headaches, and just an overall feeling of unease. She briefly wondered if she was developing migraines, the nausea and vomiting a product of the constant throbbing in her head.

Looking in the mirror, she scrutinized the pallor of her skin. It was more sallow than usual, devoid of the usual pink undertones. There were puffy bags underneath her eyes, darkened from the lack of sleep. Bella's hair, having gone unwashed for three days, was flat and matted to her head. She looked like a corpse—cold and lifeless.

Bella opened up the medicine cabinet, searching for something to dull her pain. Advil might be able to lessen the ache within her body, but it would do nothing to mend her broken heart. As she reached for the bottle of pills, her eyes drifted to her box of tampons…her unopened box of tampons. She quickly slammed the cabinet shut, sliding down to sit on the bathroom rug.

Rubbing her hands roughly across her face, Bella let out and exasperated sigh. This couldn't be happening—not to her! She hadn't been on birth control, but they'd used condoms every single time and she didn't remember one breaking. It wasn't even like they'd been together that many times; she could count the instances on her fingers. Bella had always been very meticulous about her safety, but even she knew that condoms weren't completely effective. Of course she'd be unlucky enough to fall into their miniscule percentage of failure.

Pulling herself up off of the floor, she pushed her jeans low and pulled her top up, examining her stomach from all angles. She didn't look any different. In her heart though, she knew that something just wasn't right. Bella sniffled a little, but she knew she needed to keep her fears at bay, at least until she was sure.

~ O ~

Riding the city bus to the pharmacy had been a less than pleasant experience. Her thoughts had been so muddled when she left; in shock, she'd simply shoved some money into her pocket before bounding out the door, not bothering to grab a purse or bag.

The thin plastic bag they'd given her at CVS had done little in the way of concealing her purchases. She could feel the stares of the other passengers of the bus, examining her closely. Bella tried her best to conceal the bag, but Clearblue Easy, e·p·t, and First Response were clearly visible.

Once she arrived home, Bella grabbed a paper cup and the egg timer from the kitchen, along with a bottle of water from the refrigerator. She sipped on the water as she read the instructions for each test…three times, just to be sure. By the time she finished reading, the water had made its way through her system. She nervously filled the paper cup to half capacity, then gently swirled the tip of each stick, replacing the caps on the ends. After using all three tests, Bella cleaned up her mess, thoroughly scrubbed her hands, and set the timer for five minutes.

Bella sat nervously on the bathroom floor, wondering if her life was about to change. She tried to think of something else, anything to occupy her mind, but all she could concentrate on were the loud ticks of the timer, counting down to her impending doom.

As she sat on the floor, she tried to think of anything but what this could possibly mean for her. Bella didn't even want to consider the possibility that the tests might be positive, that there was a baby growing inside of her. She didn't even realized that she'd rested her hand on her stomach.

Closing her eyes, Bella thought about moving away in the fall, about college. She imagined how different it would be. She dreamed of making friends and finally feeling like she belonged, of a handsome man that she would fall in love with without even trying. He would adore her, someone finally able to see who she really was. These were the things she wanted for herself and a baby most definitely didn't fit into the equation.

The ding of the timer broke Bella from her daydream. She rose from the floor slowly. Her legs felt shaky and unreliable, like those of a newborn baby deer. She picked the test sticks up from the counter, staring blankly at the results.

plus sign

:)

Pregnant

"No. No. No, no, no, no, no," Bella whispered to no one. She placed her hand tightly over her mouth, trying to stop the screams that wanted to erupt from her throat. This was wrong. Those tests couldn't be accurate. She must have done something to cause them to give her a false positive. With shaking hands, she grabbed the instructions again, skimming through them at a frantic pace. Tears rolled down her cheeks, marring the tiny black print. She shook her head back and forth as she tried to find some way to make this all okay.

Finding nothing to absolve her, she could no longer contain the broken sobs that ripped from her chest. Bella could almost feel her heart breaking. She imagined the large pieces falling to the grubby tile floor, shattering into tiny shards. Feeling like she could no longer stand, she stumbled to her room and collapsed onto the bed, still clutching the three positive results in her fist.

The goals Bella had hoped to achieve flashed before her eyes, now broken dreams that would never see fruition. There would be no Dartmouth; there probably wouldn't even be college. She'd never become a teacher. She'd never marry the man of her dreams in a church while wearing a pretty white dress. Girls like her wore ivory and got married at city hall; shotguns were sometimes involved.

As she contemplated her future, the visions changed. Bella no longer saw herself. Instead she saw her mother. Renee struggling to pay the rent. Renee going from one dead end job to the next. Renee chasing all the wrong men in her search for Mr. Right. Was this what her life would become—everything she'd always told herself she would never be?

The gravity of the situation weighed heavily upon Bella's heart. What would she do? How was she going to tell James? He wanted nothing to do with her; he wouldn't want their baby either. Jacksonville was a big city and there were places she could go to…get rid of it, but even the thought of such an act brought a painful tightening to her chest. Bella knew that she was emotionally too weak; she would never be able to deal with the guilt she would feel if she allowed herself to take that route.

Maybe she could give the baby away once it came, put it up for adoption. She was sure there were plenty of lovely couples out there that would be happy to have her baby as their own. As she considered this path, she thought about the tiny life that was forming inside of her. It would be in there for nine months, growing and moving. She could imagine her stomach expanding, feeling the flutter of her baby kicking for the first time. Experiencing all of that, would she really just be able to hand it over? To give away a living, breathing part of her? This left her with only one option.

Eventually the tears would no longer come and Bella simply felt numb, like she had nothing left to give. The weight of her mistake overtook her and she fell into an exhausted slumber.

~ O ~

Shortly before midnight, Renee stumbled into the apartment. She'd just come from the airport, dropping Phil off to catch his flight. He was taking a red eye to New York, attending some baseball camp. Renee was upset that he would be gone for two weeks, but she hoped this was the jumpstart his career so desperately needed. If he ever made it to the Majors, they'd be set.

Renee paused as she passed Bella's room, wondering why the door was open and the lights were shining brightly. Her daughter was always asleep by this time, the door closed and her room bathed in nothing more than the moonlight. Softly stepping inside, Renee found Bella asleep on top of the covers, still wearing her shoes and jacket.

There had been a change in Bella's demeanor lately; even Renee, who rarely paid attention to anyone besides herself, had noticed. Bella seemed withdrawn and depressed, more so than usual. Renee wondered if it had something to do with that blond kid; she hadn't seen him hanging around in a while.

In a rare moment of motherly concern, Renee gingerly sat on the edge of the bed. She removed Bella's shoes, reasoning that there was nothing she could do about the jacket, not wanting to wake her sleeping child. She pulled a throw from nearby, placing it on top of Bella. As she moved to turn off the lamp, something curled in Bella's hand caught her eye.

~ O ~

Bella rubbed her eyes furiously, trying to coax them into adjusting to the bright lights of her bedroom. She'd been awoken abruptly, pulled from her slumber by her mother's screeching wail.

"What in the hell is this, Bella?!?!" Renee screamed, though she never gave Bella time to answer the question. She continued to yell and pace the floor, her arms flailing wildly through the air. She had all three pregnancy tests clutched tightly in her hand.

"How could you be so stupid? You could have gotten birth control at the free clinic, or…Jesus, the morning after pill. How could you let this happen? Are you going to answer me?!?!"

Renee stood there glaring and Bella withered under her gaze, like a beautiful flower wilting in the hot summer sun. There was no explanation to be given, no reasoning behind this nightmare—only muttered apologies from a fragile young woman.

"I'm sorry," Bella whispered. "I didn't…I just—" but she was cut off by Renee.

"Do you know what this is going to do to your life, Bella? Ruin it! You won't be able to go to college with a baby, you'll never find a good job, and you'll never find a husband. No decent man wants a woman with some snot-nosed brat trailing along behind her."

Renee continued to rant and rave, but Bella simply tuned her out. Whereas she saw this pregnancy as her accident, she would always be Renee's mistake—an unwelcome child that was the result of an unwanted pregnancy. She'd always known her conception hadn't been planned, but she never realized the depth of her mother's resentment.

Bella had always felt her mother was cold and distant, but she'd always attributed it to Renee being a young mother. She'd had no previous experience and no one to guide her in nurturing and caring for a child. The gap between mother and daughter had only grown as Bella had gotten older. Maybe it was naivety or stupidity, but Bella had never considered that her mother just didn't want her.

The pain of this revelation cut like a knife deep within Bella's already fractured heart. She'd tried for so long to forge a better relationship with her mother, wanting to be more like close friends or sisters even. Instead, her efforts were always met with disdain. Bella had always been shoved aside, always been an afterthought to whatever scheme her mother was concocting. She was always second best.

Tears should have fallen, but instead Bella felt a sense of peace, as if everything in her life suddenly made sense. It was clear to her that she would never be enough, at least not for Renee. She'd wasted so much time trying to gain her mother's love and affection. She realized that no matter what she did, that was never going to happen. If she wasn't worthy of her own mother's love, how could she ever expect anyone else to genuinely care about her?

Then she thought about the baby—her baby. Even if no one else ever loved her, her child would. In that moment, Bella made a promise to herself…and to her unborn baby. She would always put her child first, sacrificing all to make sure it was loved, protected, and cared for. Her own needs and desires would take a backseat. Her child would never feel like a mistake, but a happy and unexpected surprise.

Strong in her resolve, Bella looked up to find Renee staring her down, a menacing look in her eyes.

"Are you even listening to me? I said do you even know who it belongs to? Is it that blond boy…Jamie, Jimmie, whatever the hell that rich kid's name is?"

"Yes."

"Well, get your shoes back on. And hurry up. I didn't make this mess and I'm sure as hell not going to be the one to clean it up."

"Wait—what?" Bella asked in confusion, unable to decipher what Renee's ramblings meant.

"We're going to his house, Bella. I know that kid's family has money. He wears designer clothes and he's always buying stuff for you. They can afford to take care of this."

Panic bubbled up in Bella's chest. Her heart thumped rapidly and her stomach gurgled in unease. Maybe she could reason with Renee, diffuse the situation until she could come up with a better plan than this one.

"It's nearly one o'clock in the morning. And James doesn't even know yet. Can't we wait until—"

"No, we're not waiting. This gets taken care of tonight. Now get your damn shoes on!"

~ O ~

A/N: My beta, lislar, is awesome. Please check out her stories if you already haven't!

Some of you might have been expecting this; others not so much. But I hope you aren't disappointed in the path this story has taken. I promise I have a plan. Just stick with me here.

Several people wondered last chapter why James didn't just break-up with Bella or tell her what was going on. James shares a lot of similarities to New Moon Edward. (That info might be beneficial for later on as well.) He knew a simple break-up just wouldn't do it. He needed Bella to think he no longer wanted to be with her. If she hated him, she would stay away. As for the manner in which he orchestrated it—well, Jane is his mother. Even if he wants to change and be different from his family, the lack of a moral compass has been ingrained in him since childhood. Sometimes it's hard to overcome that, no matter how hard you try.

Finally, the fabulous m81170 and I have started our own little website. http://www(dot)twificpics(dot)com The site focuses on graphics, so if you are a creator or just like look at pretty things, stop on by. We have tutorials, resource lists, and a forum.