Author's Note: This story will be in Bella's POV only. There will be no direct dialogue between characters until Chapter 13 because all chapters up to that point are Bella's memories of the past.

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyers owns Twilight.

Chapter 3. How It All Began

Everything changed my freshman year of high school. Two weeks after school started, my mother committed suicide. She shot herself with the gun my dad kept at the house for protection. I was the one that found her when I came home from school. I'm not too sure what happened after that. I know that I must have called 911 because the next thing I knew, my dad was suddenly there holding me while I cried.

That was the first time I saw my father cry. The last time I saw him cry was at her funeral.

I think the hardest part about the whole situation was that she didn't leave a note explaining why she did it. She never gave any indication that something was wrong.

Her funeral was a few days later.

The service was nice. It seemed like the entire town showed up to mourn with us.

My dad took my mom's death very hard. He barely spoke two words to me during or after the funeral. My dad wouldn't even look in my direction. He basically made me feel like I didn't even exist anymore. He also began to drink a lot more. He would go to work as usual, then come home and drink until he passed out. It became his new routine. The only thing that really changed was that when he went on his fishing trips, he'd drink more than usual.

My friends missed my mom too. She used to make us all snacks and watch movies with us. She was basically like another mother to them, so they took her death pretty hard too.

Over the next few weeks after my mom's funeral, I began to notice that my friends were slowly beginning to drift away from me. I'm not sure what changed, or if something happened, but after awhile they began to ignore me altogether.

It hurt. I was in pain and still mourning the death of my mother, and my friend's abandoned me when I needed them more than anything.

I guess they just didn't care anymore.

I was now completely alone. I no longer had friends and my father was too busy getting drunk and ignoring me to care.

So I began to hike as a way to escape the hurt and pain I felt by being alone.

That was how I discovered the meadow. And how I met James.