A/N: Pay careful attention to the chapter subtitles to understand the timeline. :)
Word prompt: Image
Dialogue flex: "How are you feeling this morning?"
Something True
Image
This Summer
Once again Bella awakens in a world she doesn't want to live in. That's not to say she doesn't want to live; it's just this place, this small town that makes the hairs on her arms stand up and her bones shudder.
The first thing she does when she gets up in the morning is she takes out the blue stick of chalk from her bedside drawer and marks a line at the base of the wall. She is counting down her days until graduation, counting down her days to freedom.
Soon I can become someone else. She longs to be a stranger.
She remembers a younger time, before her mother worked, when her family had very little money. To decorate they had to get creative. Together, Bella and her mother dipped long scraps of silk in tea and tied them to each of Bella's bedposts. With beet juice, they tinted her linen lampshade to a purply-blue. They added big glass beads to her plain white comforter. "There," her mother said, hands on her hips, looking around. "Fit for a princess."
Bella still has the lampshade and the silk slinking down her bedposts, but the comforter her mother found that matches the hues of her lampshade is new. She remembers when her mother brought that comforter home, how she smiled at Bella when she gave it to her, how her mother likes to pretend that life is as beautiful as she sees it. Bella thinks her mother's attitude just makes everything uglier.
Every time she vacuums herself out of the living room so that perfect lines are left in the carpet, Bella wants to scream at her that no matter how perfect she makes things appear, the ugly facts are lingering like layers of dust on every surface—most of all on her mother, where every betrayal has latched on, making her smile grotesque.
After her shower, Bella combs her fingers through her hair and throws on jeans and a sweatshirt over a T-shirt. She doesn't look in the mirror.
In her room she sits in the old rocking chair while she pulls her sneakers on, ties them. She takes a second to sit back, close her eyes, an image of a younger but still elderly Mrs. Cameron coming to mind. "How are you feeling this morning, Little Lu?" she hears, and nearly scoffs. She feels no different than she does every morning.
Standing up, the chair rocks behind her, creaking, empty. She heads straight downstairs and out the front door without saying anything to anyone, without even seeing anyone.
School in August has never felt right to Bella, and senior year is no different. And while other towns are unbearably hot at this time of year, here there's a chill in the air and it's sprinkling as she walks to school.
She's used to this about Forks, a town where rain is much more a part of life than sun. Bella doesn't mind the rain. It's one thing she used to hate but now welcomes. She doesn't even pull up her hood. The rain tells the truth. Bella knows there are enough lies in the world. The weather may as well be honest.
When she comes to what used to be her forest-shortcut—her place—she tells herself that the water in her eyes is only rain. Her place is now nothing—charred, barren. She can't bring herself to walk through it so she takes another route, along the highway.
A car zooms past her as she steps into the crosswalk. Its wind nearly knocks her down.
"Don't stop or anything!" she wants to shout. But she doesn't. She doesn't see the point in saying anything that won't be heard. And this axiom goes beyond people who won't hear to include people who do hear but don't listen, which includes most people, so she remains silent as much as possible.
She wishes for anything to distract her from getting to school, another fundraiser, Mrs. Cameron, anything at all.
Yesterday, the first day of school, she'd caught Alice's eye in the hall. Lifting a hand to wave, it hadn't even reached alignment with her chest before Alice had turned away. Not a hint of a smile had met her lips, though a crease in her brow flashed before all Bella could see was the back of the girl's head.
Passing the empty parking lot of the Veterans' Hall, Bella recalls phone calls from Alice, recalls clicking ignore, deleting messages without listening to them. It wasn't only Alice's calls she'd ignored, it was all of theirs. And Jessica and Lauren both seemed to be giving Bella the cold shoulder as well. It occurs to Bella that Rosalie is now her only friend.
She finds the blond girl digging through her locker and hugs her. "I appreciate you," Bella says, her voice strangled, barely coming out. It's the first thing she's said today, maybe even in two days. She feels like she needs a drink of water.
Rose's arms reach around Bella, her hands pressing against her back. "Is it the rumors?" She pulls away. "Nobody believes them. Not about you, Bella. They're pretending it's true. They want something to happen around here, drama, humiliation, anything. It isn't you."
This time when Bella's eyes tear up, she can't blame the rain.
"Come with me to the cottage tonight? My brother won't care. Just... get out?"
"Will anyone else be there? Alice and them?"
"I've only invited you." Rose takes hold of the strap of Bella's backpack and gives it a tug.
Bella nods, wiping her eyes before the tears have a chance to leak out. And then holding her throat as it feels like it's closing up, she nods again.
"And you know what? Just ignore them. Everybody is going through their own thing. Everyone."
Just as she says this, Royce King stops behind Rose, his face set like stone in a near-scowl. Bella's expression must change because Rose asks, "What?"
"Royce is behind you," she whispers.
"Okay, I have to go with him, but I'll see you later, right?" When Bella doesn't answer, Rose shakes her arm and repeats, "Right?"
"Right."
…
Bella doesn't leave for the cottage until ten, after dinner, after homework, after her dad's left for his shift. Bella's mother attempts to stop her. "Where do you think you're going this late on a school night?"
"Wherever I want," Bella says. Without her dad around, she has no problem picking a fight with her mother.
"Not if I say you don't."
"You won't stop me."
"The hell I won't." Her mother blocks the door.
Bella stands there, head tilted. "You'll let me out if you don't want Dad to know who you really are." She doesn't mean it. She doesn't say it for any reason but to upset her mother. One of the last things Bella would want is for her dad to know who she herself really is, let alone who her mother is.
Her mother's face falls. "Just-" she steps aside, letting her daughter pass "-be careful and... don't let your grades slip."
Bella thinks that if her mother really means that, it would be better if she didn't say it because on instinct Bella wants to do the opposite of anything her mother tells her to do.
In the dark she walks through the beating wind, following the path of deadness she avoided earlier, to the lake shore, to the cottage. It's about a ten minute walk from her house. There's no moon tonight. She can't see the cottage from where she is, but she knows its location by the lamp post in front of the dock. The closer she gets, the cottage begins to take shape.
Rosalie's already there. Bella spots her car in the gravel driveway. Indoor lights glow through the windows, through the sheer curtains. She knocks and Edward answers. His hair is wild, his eyes are puffy and red. He doesn't say a thing as he backs up, opening the door wider, inviting her in without really inviting her. She steps past him. His place is warm, relief from the wind.
Despite the warmth, she keeps her jacket on. He doesn't offer to take it off, doesn't put his hands on the back of her shoulders and insist.
Rosalie comes into the living room from the kitchen. "My brother bought us beer."
Edward pops the top off with a bottle opener and places the cold, wet bottle in Bella's hand. She grips it by the neck and looks around.
Big boxes clutter the floor. Across the room from her is a wide sliding glass door with a view of the lake. She can't see it now, not when it's so dark outside, and with the lights on in the cottage.
The walls—cluttered with fishing and hunting memorabilia—are painted a medium, dull blue. Edward busies himself taking things off walls: mounted fishing poles, a big fish on a plaque above the aged brick fireplace, old fishing hats and coats on a wall-rack.
Edward is so busy that Bella isn't sure if she should offer to help or not.
"He's making the place his own," Rosalie says, and then raising her voice she adds, "No matter what our parents say about it!"
"They can go to Hell," he says, ripping a rifle down.
"Are you sure he doesn't care that I'm here?" Bella whispers.
"I'm sure." Rose hits the tip of Bella's bottle with her own. "Besides, I don't want him to be alone right now if I can help it."
"Why not?"
"Don't open your mouth, Rosalie," Edward says.
She does open her mouth, but before she can say anything, Bittersweet Symphony starts playing. This means Royce is calling. Rose slips her phone out of her back pocket and shakes it in her hand. "I have to answer this." She steps out of the living room and into one of the bedrooms.
That's at least the second time in one day that Rose has said she has to do something in reference to Royce. Bella wants to call out to Rose that she doesn't have to do anything.
Instead she stands still in her spot at the entrance to the cottage, looking at the back of Edward. She knows he's been living here all summer, though she hasn't seen much of him. The last time she saw him he didn't look like this. He was smiling, talking, animated. And by the looks of things, him redecorating or whatever he's doing, it doesn't appear that he's going back to college this year.
She glances at the door Rose closed behind her. Standing on the sofa, Edward is removing a frame off the wall that seems to be stuck. When he gets it off, it takes some of the wall-paint with it.
Just to do something other than stand there, she sets her beer down on the rustic, dinged-up coffee table and grabs a frame of fishing lures that are held in place by push-pins. She plucks it from the wall and puts it in one of the many boxes that litter the room.
"All of it goes?" she asks.
"Everything from the walls."
She takes another frame down, one of old army memorabilia, some other country's coins in the corner. She doesn't look close enough to figure out where they're from.
The silence filling the room makes her head spin. She wishes Rose would come back or that Edward would say something. Neither happens. Like robots, Edward and Bella keep clearing the walls and filling boxes in a quiet that vibrates from the earth's core into the cottage. It rattles her body.