[Chapter Three]
Edward Cullen isn't at school the rest of the week, so I don't have to sit there and be stared at with an intensity that's unnerving. I don't have to dip my head a certain way for pieces of my hair to fall to the side where Edward is sitting in order to not have his golden irises zeroing in on me. I don't have to deal with the predatory glint in those eyes, or his fingers tightening on the dissection table hard enough I would think there are cracks forming.
The weekend and Monday passes, and it's Tuesday.
It's sleeting outside when I wake up, my eyes falling on the white dust that cascades down from the dreary skyline above me. I can't help but glare up at the sky and shoot the bird at it, not finding it funny at all how the weather has decided to spit at me and call it snow. It just reminds me of what I'm missing back in Phoenix, and how I could be heading to school with a t-shirt and denim shorts, along with flop flops instead of in multiple layers.
I'm up early enough for me to turn on the clunky computer and head downstairs to eat breakfast before coming up and checking to make sure it's officially dialed up. I type in the newest information on Renee's case and hope that I can receive any information. Yet there's nothing there, and no matter how much I demand Charlie tell me anything he can learn from the Phoenix Law Enforcement he claims there's no reason for me to know anything. It only makes me angrier and more determined to find something about Renee that was overlooked.
Tears of frustration cascade down my face and I rub the tears away with the back of my wrist, growling in anger. I'm tempted to scream and throw a tantrum but that won't help anything. She'll still be missing whether or not I throw a tantrum.
Sighing, I get up and put on my clothes for school.
A cream hued knitted patterned sweater with long sleeves, light denim washed jeans, and tennis shoes that have the colors of cream and white together. I put in little pearl earrings that are clip-ons, ones that Grandma Marie had given me right before she had died. I sigh and smooth down my clothes in the stand-up mirror, noting how there are tired dark lines etched underneath my brown eyes. The disappearance of Renee has affected more than I thought.
The drive to the high school is slower than usual, but then again, my truck can't go over 50 mph without the engine getting too hot. I'm at a crawling speed, and everyone else happens to be at the same speed. The radio is on but I'm barely listening to it, since the quality isn't that good and there's nothing interesting playing at the moment.
The spot that I've been parking in since I've been here is still empty.
At least there's a tinge of good luck when it comes to that.
I slide into the spot without any issues and turn off the truck before leaning back for a few seconds. I hop out of the truck, almost slipping and breaking my ankle from the unsteady landing, and push pieces of my hair behind my ears. I should have grabbed some bobby pins from the bathroom countertop drawer before leaving.
I go to make my way around the truck, only to pause and notice the snow chains that are wrapped around the tires of the Chevy. My heart stops for a second and my mouth clamps shut. Tears rise in my eyes, and I keep myself from outright screaming in the open. Seems like this is a pattern of mine that won't stop. My mom is missing but has been mostly absent in my life, and my dad has been absent for most of my life but has put more effort into his parenting duties than my mom did.
I'm trying to get control of myself, of my life and my inability to have control of it and the people in it, when the sound of brakes locking on dry ice resonate behind me. I slowly turn around and my eyes widen, tears falling down my face still and red lining my eyes from when I was rubbing my hands against my face. Tyler's van is skidding across the parking lot and heading in my direction, yet I cannot find myself moving from my spot.
My eyes turn away from the van and to the family on the other side of the parking lot.
The Cullens and the Hale Twins, all of them are staring at me as though I'm the one who is meant to end the world. My mouth falls open, for a moment I believe that I had seen Edward with his family but the next moment he's in front of me and pushing me behind him. I fall next to the car that is parked to the right of mine, only for the other half of the car to head towards me again. Edward has to scoot over and stop the van, again.
"Bella? Bella? Are you okay?"
My mouth is clasped closed. My eyes are wide, and my blood is flowing rapidly through my body. Black spots start appearing in my eyesight and the last thing I hear is my name being called by the teachers along with Edward's. Then I close my eyes and slump sideways, a freezing cold being the last thing I feel.
The first thing that happens when I regain consciousness happens to be me flinching from the harsh fluorescent lighting above my head. The all-white hospital coloring allows me to know that I'm currently in the Forks Medical Clinic Emergency Room.
I slowly try to sit up, only to cringe when I notice that my body is a little sore from where I had landed. There are some nasty blue bruises on my left arm and I'm certain there is a patch or two when it comes to bruising on my leg. It's very easy for me to become bruised by anything and everything. Even on things that you wouldn't imagine you could get bruised from.
"Miss Swan?"
I make a humming sound, before closing my eyes and snuggling back into the pillow. It's not the most comfortable pillow but if I focus just enough, I can fall back to sleep. I won't have to think about anything in particular, such as the fact that now everyone at school will probably find out Renee is missing and Phil is dead by the end of the week, because one of the nurses will be noisy and end up telling their family about my messed-up family.
I force myself to open my eyes after I hear my last name called again.
It isn't because of the repeat of my name, it's because of how sultry the voice is. I faintly remember Charlie telling me the best doctor in town is Dr. Carlisle Cullen. It would make sense that this beauty ends up belonging to the foster father of the stunning looking and sounding teenagers.
Sitting upright, I look away from down at my body to the doctor standing at the end of the hospital clinic bed. Carlisle Cullen reminds me of an archangel, with warm butterscotch hair that is styled nicely and smooth but thick. His features are softer for a man, but they still have sharp cheekbones and a proportioned nose, along with plump lips. His golden eyes have thick eyelashes that frame them, which almost seem to brush against his skin when he blinks.
He's wearing an white oxford button up shirt, brown dress trousers and matching colored dress shoes. A doctorate coat makes his muscles even more delicious as he holds a clipboard in one of his hands. A stethoscope is hanging around his neck.
He shoots me a dreamy, handsome smile that makes my heart stutter some without my permission.
A faulty wiring in my system.
If I were hooked to a heart monitor, I'm sure that the pattern of stuttering would be heard from every person in the emergency room and not just me and Dr. Cullen. So, it's not fair how he has this effect on me, especially when he's a lot older than me and is apparently happily married.
Asking if he can sit at the end of my bed and for me to call him Carlisle, he sits down a minute later once he has my permission. "How are you doing, Miss Swan?"
"I'm a little sour and exhausted. You can call me Bella, not Miss Swan. I'm glad that your son, Edward, was able to protect me from Tyler's van. I barely saw him next to his siblings and the next moment he was shielding me from Tyler's van."
Carlisle snaps his head up from looking down at my paperwork. There is bewilderment in his eyes, and his eyebrows furl together as though he heard something wrong. Yet I don't correct him, and he clears his throat, agreeing with me a moment later. "Yes, it was a good thing that Edward was able to save you from Tyler's van."
"Bella? Bella! Oh God! Are you okay?"
My head turns to where Tyler Crowley is being wheelchaired into the emergency room and sat back down onto the bed to rest. His leg has just been casted, and I can't help but also flinch at the thought of having a gnarly injury. I also can't deal with the annoyance of his family members surrounding him, checking and making sure that he's happy.
Thankfully I have just Charlie here and I won't be smothered to death by worrying relatives.
He'd be the only one caring for me while living up here, even if Renee and Phil were still safe and sound in Phoenix.
Honestly, even in that case, I'm the one who would take care of him more than he would take care of me. He can barely even take care of himself. Renee can barely take care of herself, but hers is through adolescent-like behavior.
I open my mouth to reassure Tyler that everything will be okay, when the emergency doors slam open, and Charlie comes speeding into the room. His eyes scan over everything, and everyone all at once. Until they do a second quick look over and find me with my arm up and waving at him awkwardly. I know that my smile is too large and friendly, at least when it comes to me.
Charlie rushes towards me and when he reaches me, he bends down and hugs me.
As he pulls away from me a moment later, his eyes widen at the sight of the large bruises that are on my arm. His eyes harden and I know I have to say something before he turns around and threatens Tyler.
As much as I can't stand Tyler, he doesn't deserve the wrath from the Chief-of-Police.
He still has some life to him, and it was honestly a mistake.
He doesn't control the weather and when it comes to the state of the van, I think it belonged to his parents before it was handed down to him (so if anyone is at fault it's probably his parents for not having the brakes checked). The van was probably on its last limb and now he can get his own car that he likes and doesn't have to accept because it belonged to his parents.
Everything goes through one ear and out the other as another conversation starts, only this time between Carlisle and Charlie.
Carlisle doesn't ask anything about Phoenix, or about things from before last week.
It's one of the nicest things that anyone has done, to have the decency to not have utter motives.
To not be expecting to have news after a long enough respectable silence on the matter.
He doesn't talk about anything of that sort, instead he talks about the bruising and other things that are a result of me hitting the asphalt parking lot hard.
Almost the entire junior class is waiting for me when I walk out of the emergency room and down the corridor to the lobby. They are all gathered around each other in the said lobby, some of them have stuffed bears while others have cards wishing me well. A bundle of balloons are in Mike's right fist, while Jessica has a stuffed bear. Angela has the card and all of them have relief flooding through their eyes and their whole features.
I shoot a look up at Charlie, without saying anything I make sure that my face shows the worry and anxiety of being crowded by the teenagers of my grade. Charlie nods his head and shields me by putting me behind him and having his arm in front of me, thanking everyone around us but letting them know I've had a long day. They are more than understanding though of course there is the one or two teenagers who want to push me into accepting their concerns.
The drive back to Charlie's house is awkward.
My body will probably ache for the next couple of days, and I know that I probably will skip school tomorrow because I don't want their pitiful looks.
Especially when Charlie on the way home tells me Phil's family and friends have made a manhunt for Renee's kidnapper, so it's been making the rounds of all the nation's news channels.
I can only imagine the hands raising behind their mouths and the whispers as I walk past them on the high school campus. The ones that would join the social media pages in order for them to be able to keep talking about Renee to my face. They are the ones that make me want to curl up in myself and join some online homeschooling classes. They are the ones that would make me want to go up to Canada because no one will know about the disappearance of Renee Dwyer.
The moment we pull up and park in the front gravel driveway, I lean over and kiss Charlie on the cheek. He blushes some from the sweet gesture I give him, and I unbuckle myself, before getting out of the police cruiser. Shutting the door without slamming it, I hurry up the front porch stairs and pull out my house keys from the pocket of my pants.
The house is quiet, and Charlie comes into the house before starting the fireplace up for me. I grab one of the wool blankets that are in the closet next to the stairs and wrap it around me, before plopping down on the couch. Charlie hands me the television remote before going off to work again, the clicking of the front door locking gives me enough of a reassurance I can let all my emotions from the terrible day I have had out.
Tears begin to flow down my cheekbones, and I reach my hands up, wiping away the tears.
I've never had that many times I've cried all my life, but I've cried more times with the disappearance of Renee and death of Phil than I expected. I never imagined I would be so distraught with something like this happening but then again, Renee didn't deserve to go missing without a trace and Phil sure as hell didn't deserve to be murdered.
I don't realize I cried myself to sleep until I hear the sound of something being knocked over upstairs. My eyes snap open and I peer up at the popcorn textured ceiling above me, wondering if I had imagined the whole thing. I try to go back to sleep but find myself still thinking about the sound I had heard a moment ago.
Getting up slowly from the couch I creep over to where the kitchen is.
I have to make sure I'm paying attention to the ground and things around me in order to not trip and alert whatever made the noise upstairs.
My heart is racing in my chest, and I enter the kitchen before pulling out a knife from the kitchen drawer. I shut the kitchen drawer slowly, making a small little click instead of a loud thud that I carelessly did all the time back in Phoenix. I stand there for a second, hoping that I'm just stressed out and imagining things, but I still need to leave this kitchen and go up to my room.
The stairs make loud creaks as I head up them.
Each step is just an alarm blaring for the intruder to know I'm making my way towards them and discovering their hiding place.
It's the only noise, there isn't the sound of someone running away from the creaking. Nor is there the sound of the window opening and someone falling out of it because they missed the oak tree near the window.
It's completely quiet other than the sounds I make.
The knife thuds onto the ground when I reach my open doorway, and the intruder looks at me from where she is standing. Her blue eyes are gone, her skin is the same color as the Cullens' skin tone (that pale white skin that is tinged blue), and she looks like she could be Phil's age instead of actually being 37. She's Renee and she peers at me with those watery eyes of hers.
"M-Mom?"
Renee reaches her hands up and covers her perfectly cute cupid-like lips with her long and thin fingers. Her caramel hair falls in a soft mess a little past the bottom of her collarbones. Her waist is smaller, and her curves are more pronounced. She has mud and blood caked throughout her hair and there's dried blood around her mouth. Her clothes are worn out, as though she's been living on the streets for over a month. Clothes that would be freezing cold if she were still able to feel temperature, since it's a muscle shirt and denim shorts. Her feet are bare, there aren't any shoes.
"Bella? Bella. My baby."
"You're alive, but why do you look like that? Why are your eyes red?"
Renee slowly makes her way towards the bed and sits down.
I nervously head over to where she is but sit down on the rocking chair instead. She twines her fingers together and lets her eyes shift all over the place, almost like she can't believe she's in the bedroom she had last seen when I was an infant and this was my nursery instead. Her feet sway back and forward, and she bites the corner of her lips.
"Bella…I'm a vampire."
My eyes widen at what she says, as though I'm expecting her to tell me she's pulling a prank on me. Even though Renee is the opposite of me and is more carefree, jokes about things that aren't always appropriate to joke about. She'd never joke about this. I can tell when she does tell the truth, and she's telling the truth.
"How?"
"You were invited to a classmate's weekend party, and after I begged you to go you did even though it was obvious you didn't really know the girl. It's probably one of the best decisions I could have made. I was jogging around the neighborhood during twilight, and a vampire attacked me. They took me to the Greater Phoenix Parks and left me for dead. Phil's dad was sick, and he went and visited him when I was going through the transformation…he was the one who found me. I was so thirsty…that I lost all control and killed him…"
"But…they said that your I.D Cards were still at the house and your car keys?" I can't help but ask, as I remember reading about that in the article.
"Phil drove me home when I was going through the transformation. I chased him into the ballet studio down the block and attacked him in the back parking lot. So, our car keys were still at home and our I.D. Cards. There was no struggle in the house because it didn't happen in the house," Renee confesses as tears began to rise in those crimson irises of hers.
I can tell Renee is in complete agony, at the fact that she had murdered her newlywed husband of three months. She brings her hands up and covers her face from me, sobbing at the memory most likely of poor Phil running down the street and her chasing after him.
He probably thought she had been drugged and had woken up delirious, but instead of drugs it turned out to be vampirism. She drained him dry and left his body somewhere in the desert far enough it took weeks for them to find it. His parents had to find out that their son had died in a horrible manner, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was not even one drop of blood in his body left.
"Why are you here?"
Renee pulls her hands away from her face and sniffles some before she looks around my room. Her eyes never land on anything too long.
She doesn't look at me completely, the shame that radiates from her is strong enough I can almost taste it in the air. She isn't breathing, now that I notice it, and her eyes are a little darker the longer she has been sitting on my bed. It is unsettling and I almost want to tell her to leave me, and to never come to me again. I'd tell her she lost any chance of being a mother for me when she had still been human.
"I…I honestly don't know. I guess, in a way I wanted to try and have another chance at being your mother. The one you deserve. I could have died in that desert, but I didn't. Maybe it's God or maybe it's just a coincidence but I'm being given a second chance at being your mother, right when I had hoped we could start fresh…"
I frown and look over at where the photograph is sitting on my nightstand, the immature younger Renee still giving the peace sign. My eyes turn away from the photograph and I turn and look at her again, noticing the worry and pain that maybe will be permanent on her immortal face. It's enough for me to bite the corner of my lip for what seems like the millionth time.
"I don't know…"
"Let me prove myself. At least until the end of May, and if it doesn't work out between us, I will leave you alone."
Sighing, I nod my head before my stomach growls.
At the sound of the growling, I can't help but ask her if she's had blood recently.
She nods her head before admitting, "yes, I try not to drink unless I really am thirsty. I can't smell anything when it comes to you. I can only smell your body spray and your shampoo. I wouldn't have come up here if I thought I would have attacked you."
"If you're going to be staying here for the next couple of months you need to go up to the attic. At least when Charlie is here."
Renee gives me a small, shy smile as she nods her head again. I can feel my heart rattle in my chest at the smile, wondering if I've made the right choice in giving her a chance.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm going to try and have Renee redeem herself. I'm not excusing the toxic behavior that she's given to Bella. She's going to have to re-learn how to be a proper mom, and thankfully Esme will help her when it comes to that. I thought her attacking Phil in the ballet studio would be irony.
anyway, hope you enjoyed the latest chapter.
as always: Twilight doesn't belong to me.
-it'semmynotemma