The Twilight Twenty-Five
thetwilight25 dot com
Prompt: 3
Pen Name: Glitterb1234
Pairing/Character(s): Bella + Edward
Rating: T
Word Count: 498
Photo prompts can be found here:
thetwilight25 dot com/round-eight/prompts
It was a road that went nowhere.
Literally nobody ever drove down that stretch of the 101 just North of Forks, Washington, and Bella liked it that way. It meant she could go there whenever she felt like getting away, and be sure of not being interrupted. The only thing that could be reached along this particular road was the head of a hiking trail, and it was so poorly maintained that it hardly existed anymore. Ironic, she thought, that no one used the trail because it was overgrown, but the lack of people walking back and forth caused the trail to get more overgrown, so they were even less inclined to use it... It went on and on. The futility and ridiculousness of humanity, summed up in a length of dirt track.
On days like today, when it all just got too much, she would drive her rusty red Chevy truck to the end of the road, park, and lie on her back right in the centre of the road, over the yellow lines supposed to divide one stream of traffic from the other. With her hands behind her head, and one foot flat so her knee bent up to the sky, Bella would stare at the clouds and try to find picture, or close her eyes and dream of better times.
When her parents didn't fight every day.
When her mother spent every night at home.
When her friend's self-absorption had been amusing rather than irritating.
When she was just a normal small town girl content in her normal small town world.
Before she'd discovered just how cruel the world could be.
She tried not to think of that dark night on a back street in Port Angeles, the fear from being separated from her friends, the four men shrouded in shadows who'd herded her in, the harsh words they'd spoken and the brutal things they'd done to her. The solid surface beneath her made it harder, but she refused to let herself fall into those memories.
When school was out, Bella spent most of the day lying in the road rather than face the claustrophobic atmosphere at home. She'd been there for a while when a rustling in the trees interrupted her silent musings. She lay perfectly still, waiting, listening.
"Oh! Hey there!"
The voice was almost obnoxiously chipper, very definitely male, and terrifyingly unfamiliar. She sat up with a jerk, ready to run, then froze as she took in the handsome boy with wild coppery hair who had just come off the trail. He was dressed for hiking, wearing a backpack and a good deal of mud. There was a leaf lodged in his hair, and Bella wanted to pluck it out.
He was smiling as if he found strange girls lying in deserted roads everyday. "Are you okay?"
No one had asked her that in a while.
So she cried, and the stranger simply put his arms around her and held her tight.