Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Stephenie Meyer and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, guys, I'm back with the next update! I've been taking a short break from my weekly WIPs for mental health reasons and saw something at my college that hit the Twilight button in my brain today, so here you go. My hands hurt from this haha, but it's worth it. ;)

Hope the next chapter takes me slightly less time to write, but I make no promises.

As always, also hope you enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~full moon~

~chapter 3: phenomenon~

When I woke up in the morning, something was different.

It was the light. It was still the grey-green light I was growing used to outside my window, but it was clearer somehow. There was no fog veiling my window. I jumped out of my bed to see if maybe, possibly, it was the sun, but my hopes were dashed. I groaned.

A fine layer of snow, even more terrifying than the rain, covered the yard, dusted the top of my truck, and whitened the road. But, that wasn't the worst part. All of the rain from yesterday had frozen solid: it coated the needles on the pine trees in delicate, fascinating patterns, but it also formed a thin sheet on top of the driveway, making it deadly slick. I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry; it might be safer for me to just go back to bed.

But, alas, I didn't.

Nonna was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, sipping at a mug of coffee. She smiled up at me. "Buongiorno, Isabella," she said.

"Buongiorno, Nonna," I replied, stopping to hug her and kiss her cheek.

"Have you seen the snow outside?"

I sighed. "Yes."

"Have you seen your truck?"

Fear seized my stomach. "No. Why? What happened to it?" My truck seemed practically indestructible, but it would be just my luck for something to happen to it when I was asleep and it snowed, wouldn't it?

But my grandmother's smile only widened, telling me that perhaps everything was alright. "You'll find out," was all she answered.

Her response made me nervous – and jittery. Wanting to find out what was wrong, or at least different, but also not wanting to make more trips than necessary, I threw down a bowl of cereal and the rest of the orange juice from the carton. That made Nonna laugh. "Be careful!" she called out to me as I hurried out of the room, and indeed, the entire house. "And safe! Ti amo!"

"I will!" I shouted back as a promise. "Ti amo, Nonna!"

I stopped myself from running before I exited the house, taking my time on the steps and sidewalk. Anxiety twisted my stomach into knots nevertheless as I went over to my truck and saw –

There were thin chains crisscrossed in diamond shapes around the tires of my truck. Snow chains. Relief flooded through me at the thought, because this meant that my truck wouldn't have a problem with sliding and slipping over the roads. But it also made me curious in an almost dreadful sort of way: who had put them there? Certainly not Nonna.

I got my answer as I opened up the driver's door. Sitting on the seat was a note in my cousin's handwriting. Thought you might benefit from these, the note said when I picked it up to read it. Don't be a stranger. We miss you, Loca! -Sam

Guilt and gratification in equal parts twinged in my stomach. I had no idea when he had come last night – because he certainly had to have come last night, after I had fallen asleep.

I needed to go down to La Push, without the excuse of going with friends. I needed to see my family: Sam, Emily, their son Levi, and everyone else. Even Jacob I needed to see, as awkward as that reunion was going to be.

My mood began to lighten up on the drive to school. I felt excited it go, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, nor seeing my new set of friends, although Mike at least made my days less dreary. No, if I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edythe Cullen. And this was very, very stupid of me.

I should be avoiding her entirely after our conversation yesterday. It hadn't gone bad, but I had simply revealed too much about myself with her with getting hardly anything in return. And one of the things I had gotten didn't make sense: why would she lie about her eyes?

Not to mention, I was still frightened from the hostility that had come from her. It seemed like at any moment, it could return. I was also scared from how tongue-tied I became when I pictured her perfect face. I was well aware that, even if she did like women like I did, my league and hers were spheres that did not touch. I should not be anxious at all to see her today.

During the drive, I tried to distract myself from unwanted speculations about Edythe Cullen by thinking about Mike, Eric, and all of the other boys at school. Mike's interest in me seemed to be different, but it was unusual for me to receive this much attention from the opposite sex. I was sure I looked exactly the same as I had in Phoenix, where nobody had been interested in me at all. Maybe it was just that many of the boys back home had seen me pass slowly through all of the awkward phases of adolescence and had just thought of me that way. Maybe it was because, even without being out, they'd picked up that I had no attraction for them in return. Regardless, I wished that the boys here would get the same mindset. I didn't like being treated like a novelty, or a new, shiny toy for them to play with. Nor was my clumsiness something that should be endearing – it was just the way that I was.

When I got out of my truck at school, I got all of the way to the back of my truck before a tingle went down the back of my neck. For some reason, I thought it meant that I had forgotten something in my truck, even though I knew I hadn't gotten anything out of my back. I had just turned around to go back to the driver's door when I heard an odd sound.

It was a high-pitched screech, and it was quickly becoming painfully loud. Startled, I turned around and looked up to see what it was.

I saw several things simultaneously. Nothing was moving in slow motion, the way that it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain go faster, allowing me to absorb the several things happening all at once.

Edythe Cullen was standing four cars down from me, staring at me in horror. Her face stood out from the sea of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But more important sight was the dark blue van skidding on the ice, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly in the parking lot. It was heading straight for the back of my truck – and straight for me, since I was in between the two of them. It was going to kill me. I wasn't sure how I knew this, but I knew it to be true.

Yet, I didn't even have time to close my eyes and brace myself for the pain. Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the metal of my truck bed, I felt something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I had been expecting. My head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something solid and cold pinning me to the ground. I was laying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to.

But I didn't have a chance to notice anything else, because the van was still coming. It had curled gratingly against the truck and, still spinning and sliding, was about to collide with me again.

A low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was not impossible to recognize. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, causing the van to shudder to a stop not even a foot away from my face. The delicate hands fitted two deep dents in the side of the van's body, which would have been recognizable as hand prints until the hands came together, making a larger dent but one that wouldn't be identifiable as having been caused by human intervention of impossible strength.

Those hands then moved so fast they blurred. As one hand continued to press into the large dent, pushing the van away under the protests of it in the form of squealing tires and squelching plastic and metal, I felt another grab my legs, pulling me away from the tires of the van. I didn't even have time to do anything more than begin to gasp as I heard the van at last come to a metallic, grinding halt, exactly where my legs had just been.

It was absolutely silent for one second. Then the screaming began, a cacophonous and terrifying chorus. I could hear more than one person shouting my name through it. But clearer than all of the yelling, I could hear Edythe Cullen's voice, low and frantic, in my ear:

"Bella? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." My voice sounded strange, like I was underwater. I tried to sit up, and realized Edythe was holding me against the side of her body in an iron grasp.

"Be careful," she warned as I struggled. "I think you hit your head pretty hard."

I became aware of the pain just as soon as she'd spoken. "Ow," I groaned.

For some unfathomable reason, this seemed to amuse her. "That's what I thought."

"How in the..." I trailed off, trying to collect myself into something more manageable. "How did get over here so fast?"

I felt her tense under me, if that was possible. She already seemed so tightly wound. "Bella, I was right next to you," she murmured, her tone serious again.

I turned to sit up. This time, she released me from her hold. In the limited space, she moved away from me as far as she could, like I hadn't just had my head practically in her lap. I looked at her concerned expression and was captured by those honey-gold eyes. What had I been asking her again?

It was then the crowd of people with tears streaming down their faces found us, shouting at us, shouting at each other.

"Don't move," someone instructed.

"Somebody get Tyler out of the car!" another person yelled.

There was a flurry of activity around us. I tried to get up further, but Edythe's cold hand pushed my shoulder down. "Don't move," she said, repeating what that one person had just said.

"But it's cold," I complained.

"You don't know how injured you are," she replied. The chuckle under her breath surprised me. It seemed to be a direct contradiction to her words, even though there was an edge to the sound.

"I saw you," I suddenly remembered. Her chuckle stopped short. "You were over by your car."

Her expression hardened. "No, I wasn't."

"But you were," I insisted. All around us was chaos. I could hear the gruffer voices of adults arriving onto the scene – paramedics, probably, if they weren't some of the male teachers. But I obstinately held on to our argument; I was right, and Edythe was going to admit it. "I saw you."

"Bella, I was standing right next to you. I pulled you out of the way." She unleashed the full, devastating power of her eyes on me, as if trying to communicate something crucial.

But this time, I wasn't swayed. I locked my jaw. "No."

Her gold eyes swirled with anger and some other emotion I couldn't place. "Please, Bella."

"Why I demanded?"

"Just trust me," she pleaded desperately.

I could hear the sirens now. Apparently the male voices I had heard were some of our teachers after all. "Will you promise to explain everything to me later?"

"Fine," she snapped, abruptly exasperated. "I will."

"Fine," I repeated stubbornly.

It took six EMTs and those two male teachers, Mr. Varner and Coach Clapp, to shift the van far away from us to bring the stretcher in. Edythe vehemently refused hers, citing that she wasn't actually hurt. I tried to do the same, but the traitor told them that I had hit my head and probably had a concussion. I almost died of humiliation when they put on the neck brace. It looked like the entire school was there, watching somberly as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance. Edythe got to ride in the front. It was maddening.

For once, I was glad that my father wasn't with us. I know it sounds awful, but when the police arrived, I could only imagine what Charlie would have done, had he been with them. He would've been overbearing, as I was his only child and daughter, demanding the EMTs for a second opinion. And he would've been downright furious with Tyler.

But just because he was gone, it did not prevent my ambulance from getting a police escort to the county hospital. I was the daughter of the former sheriff of the county; that was not something easily forgotten. I felt ridiculous the whole time they were unloading me. What made it worse was that Edythe simply glided through the doors of the hospital under her own power. I tried not to grind my teeth too much.

They put me in the emergency room, because unlike the hospitals in Phoenix the ER was really just a long room with a line of beds separated by pastel-colored curtains. A nurse put a pressure cuff on my arm and a thermometer under my tongue. Since no one bothered pulling the curtain around to give me some privacy, I decided I wasn't obliged to wear that stupid neck brace any longer. When the nurse walked away, I took it off as quickly as I could and threw it underneath my bed.

The second flurrying of hospital personnel made me aware of another person being brought into the room, to the bed right next to mine. It was Tyler Crowley, who I recognized from my Government class. He was the one who was truly injured; the left side of his face was severely bruised, and there was a cut to his forehead that was obviously going to be in need of stitches. It made my gut churn; I had never been able to tolerate blood.

"Bella, I'm so sorry!" Tyler exclaimed, staring at me anxiously.

"I'm fine, Tyler – you look awful, are you alright?" As we spoke, nurses began unwinding the soiled bandages that had obscured the rest of his face. It was even more awful than I'd thought, as he had more shallow slices all over his face besides the one big gouge. I hoped for his sake that they didn't scar over as they healed.

He ignored me. "I thought I was going to kill you, Bella! I was going too fast, and I hit the ice wrong..." He winced as one of the nurses started to dab at one of his many cuts.

"Don't worry, it's fine. You missed me."

"How did I?" he marveled. "Everything was so fast, I was sure I was going to..."

"Umm..." I said. "Edythe pulled me out of the way."

He was confused. "Who?"

"Edythe Cullen, she was right next to me," I explained, trying to furnish a lie on the spot. I'd never been very good at this: lying. I didn't sound very convincing.

"Edythe? I didn't see her..." he replied, his confusion increasing. I really wasn't doing this very well. But he didn't let the impossibility of it bother him for long. "Is she okay?"

"I think so." I waved a hand. "She's around here somewhere. They didn't make her use a stretcher."

They wheeled me away then, off to X-ray my head. I told them I was fine, and I was right. Not even a concussion, they said. I asked if I could leave, but the nurse said I had to talk to a doctor first. So there I was, stuck waiting in the ER, trying to ignore Tyler's constant apologies and promises to make it up to me. Each time I tried to convince him it was fine, he just seemed to take it as even more reason to torment himself. Finally, I just closed my eyes and ignored him. But even then he didn't get the hint, keeping up a quiet mumbling.

"Is she sleeping?" a musical voice asked some time later. My eyes flew open.

Edythe was standing near the end of my bed, smirking. I scowled at her, which wasn't easy. My brain wanted more to ogle.

"Hey, Edythe," Tyler began. "I'm really – "

Edythe shook her head before he could make more of a fool of myself – unlike me, who had to keep on doing so, apparently. "No blood, no foul," she said, flashing her brilliant white teeth. She pulled open the curtain to the bed on the other side of me, which was empty, and sat on it. She went back to smirking as she regarded me. "So, what's the verdict?"

"There's nothing wrong with me, but they won't let me go yet," I complained. "How come you aren't strapped to a gurney like the rest of us?"

"It's all about who you know," she replied playfully. "But, don't worry: I brought someone with me to spring you."

Then a doctor came around the corner and she was...beautiful. She was beautiful. She looked to be around forty or so, with shoulder-length curly blonde hair, styled in that way that it made her look like she'd come just straight out of a movie from the 1940's or -50's. But she was also pale, and tired looking, with circles underneath her gold eyes. It was those gold eyes that made me realize this had to be Edythe's adoptive mother, despite them not having any concrete relation by name, the Dr. Carine Cullen.

"Hello, Ms. Swan," Dr. Cullen greeted me in a voice almost as musical as her daughter's. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," I said. I hoped it would be for the last time.

Dr. Cullen walked to the light board over my head and turned it on.

"Your X-rays look good," she said. "Does your head hurt? Edythe said you hit it pretty hard."

"It's fine," I repeated, sighing. As I did, I gave Edythe a quick scowl.

The doctor's fingers prodded lightly along my skull. She noticed when I winced. "Tender?"

"Not bad." I'd had worse.

I heard a chuckle, Edythe being the culprit. My eyes narrowed.

"Well, your grandmother and cousin are in the waiting room," Dr. Cullen said. Neither mother nor daughter gave any hints to what they thought about this, but for some reason I thought I sensed an...undercurrent of tension there. But I had to be just imagining it. "You can go home with them now. But come back if you feel dizzy or have trouble with your eyesight at all."

"Okay," I said.

Nonna and Sam were going to be attentive to me, probably even as overbearing as Charlie would've been, but they were better than the alternative of facing my classmates again. I could only imagine how they all were going to look at me.

"I should let you know," Dr. Cullen added, sounding just as amused as her daughter kept vacillating on being. "Most of the school seems to be in the waiting room as well."

"Oh, no," I groaned, burying my face in my hands. That was like one of my worst nightmares.

"Do you want to stay?"

"No, no!" I swung my legs over the side of the hospital bed and stepped down quickly. Too quickly. I staggered, necessitating Dr. Cullen to catch me. She looked concerned.

"I'm fine," I assured her again. "Just – clumsy."

One of the edges of her mouth quirked. "If you have any pain, take some Tylenol," she suggested as she steadied me."

"It doesn't hurt that bad."

She signed off my chart with a flourish. "It sounds like you were extremely lucky."

"Lucky Edythe was standing right next to me," I amended her.

Dr. Cullen gave her daughter a quick, blink-and-you-miss-it glance, like she shouldn't have but it was a force of habit. "Very lucky indeed," she agreed.

My intuition flickered: she was in on it.

But she went over to Tyler's bed next, ending my brief encounter with her.

As soon as her back was turned, I went to Edythe's side.

"Can I talk with you for a minute?" I hissed.

She took a step away from me, her jaw clenching like mine had earlier. "Your grandmother and cousin are waiting for you," she said.

"Just a minute," I insisted, glancing over at Dr. Cullen and Tyler.

Edythe glared, then turned her back and strode down the long room like a model. I had to struggle to keep up with her, trying to not trip over my own two fee and make another scene. As soon as we turned the corner into a short hallway, she turned around to face me. Her eyes were cold.

"What?" she demanded.

Her sudden shift back to unfriendliness intimidated me. It made what I said come out with less confidence than I'd wanted it to. "You still owe me an explanation."

"For saving your life?" she retorted incredulously. "I don't owe you anything."

"You promised," I reminded her meekly.

"Bella, you hit your head. You don't know what you're talking about."

That –

That angered me. It had just been proven that there was nothing wrong with my head. Nothing had broken. I had no concussion. She knew that. I told her as much.

She sighed exasperatedly. "What do you want then, Bella?"

"I want to know the truth," I said. "I want to know why I'm lying for you."

I more than half-expected her then to ask me what I thought had happened. And potentially, probably, I would've made a fool of myself in response. The truth was ridiculous. It did not make sense, no matter how true it was.

But I seemed to have interested her with my ask. "You'd lie for me?" she questioned. "Somebody you barely even know?"

I nodded once, jaw tight.

"Why?"

"Because – " I had to think about my answer. "Because obviously you don't want anyone to know about what actually happened. Neither does your mother," I pointed out. The inclusion of Dr. Cullen startled her, as if she hadn't been expecting to pick up on that. "But if I'm lying for somebody that I 'barely even know,' as you put it, I need to know why I'm doing it. I need a good reason. I don't like lying, as a principle." There was no need to mention how bad I was at it.

She looked away from me, her gold eyes darting. I thought she might've been debating her answer, but in the next second I knew I'd only been hoping for that.

"In that case...I hope you enjoy disappointment," she said.

Then she walked away.

I was caught up in so many emotions – anger, bafflement, embarrassment, and etcetera – it took me a few minutes to move. When I did, it felt like on legs made of rubber that I made my way slowly towards the end of the hallway.

The waiting room was even more unpleasant than I'd feared. It seemed like every face I knew in Forks was there, staring at me.

"Loca!"

Sam just about swept me off with my feet with his hug, not to mention almost crushed my ribs. In any other situation or with any other person, I would've been mortified, but he was my cousin. I both felt and heard him sniff my hair, which was strange, but my brain didn't process it enough to question it. In truth, I was simply too glad to have my cousin here.

He might have been only a year older than me, but Sam was one of the only constant male presences in my life I'd ever had. The only other one now was Billy Black.

I tried not to think too much about that, as grief had returned to claw at my heart when it came to my father.

When Sam let me go, his eyes seemed especially...nervous. "Oh, you can't do that to me, loca," he breathed. His eyes were filled with tears. His hands seemed to be vibrating as he held my arms like he thought I was made of glass. "I thought – "

I didn't need him to tell me what he'd thought. I knew. Charlie's death was still fresh, and the pain of a parent wasn't just something that went away. Besides my grandmother and his family, we were all each other had. Sure, there was the rest of the reservation, but it just wasn't the same.

"I'm not hurt," I told him. "I just got a bump on the head. Nothing more."

He still seemed worried. "You smell like death."

Death?

"Well, I'm fine," I said for the umpteenth time that day. "Nobody died. The other kid is pretty banged up, but it's all superficial."

"I don't care about him, I care about you," Sam gruffed. "Besides, you probably smell that way because of – "

"The hospital. They always have that certain smell," Nonna cut in. She gazed up at me with sympathetic eyes, before pulling me into a hug of her own. I inhaled her perfume deeply. Maybe I'd been more shaken by this entire experience than I'd thought. "Are you sure you're alright, bambina?"

"Yes."

"What did the doctor say?"

"Dr. Cullen saw me," I responded. Sam made a face I had never seen him make before at this, but he said nothing. I was confused. Did he have something against the Cullens too, like Jessica? Well, maybe not quite like Jessica. I'd never been given the impression that my cousin had a homophobic bone in his body. He was too accepting of everyone for that.

Everyone, it seemed, except for the Cullens.

I convinced myself to think about it at a later date. "She said I was fine, and that I could go home," I continued, finishing my sentence. "So, can we go?"

Nonna glanced past me conspiratorially. "You don't want to say goodbye to your friends before you go?"

I followed her sight and saw Mike, Angela, Jessica, Eric, and our other friends, crowded together. I gave them a small wave. Jessica looked like she was about to explode from all of the drama that was going on, but Mike and Angela seemed to understand my need for space. He, at least, would keep the others at bay, until tomorrow. I was sure then that I would be harassed to the point of oblivion, my gossiping friend and Lauren needing to know about anything and everything that had happened to me.

"There, I said goodbye," I informed my grandmother.

Sam barked out a laugh. In an action unlike him, he put one arm behind my back, not quite touching me, and led me and my grandmother towards the glass doors of the exit.

Before we could leave the hospital entirely, I saw a flash of bronze out of the corner of my eye. Turning my head, I saw that it was Edythe: she was standing at the mouth of yet another hallway, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed. I almost stopped to look at her some more, perhaps to try and get my point across in a way that I would've considered passive-aggressive.

But, Sam was right behind me. And just as there had been an undercurrent of tension between Edythe and her mother, there seemed to be one between her and my cousin now, as I saw them make eye contact for the briefest of moments. "Come on, Bella," he whispered in my ear.

He didn't give me a choice to do anything else except step out of the hospital, into the late morning light.

Neither Nonna nor Sam broke the news to me until he drove us back home. Emily was there, baking something in the kitchen, while Levi was sitting in the living room in one of his collapsible playpens. I went over to him immediately, picking him up and propping him on my hip. "Hey there, little man," I said, laughing.

He babbled at me in response.

"Hi, Bella," Emily spoke as she came out of kitchen, her eyes twinkling. "I'm making some lemon blueberry muffins. I hope you don't mind."

"Oh, no, of course not." Truth be told, some of Emily's muffins sounded good right about now. They were a comfort I needed after the craziness of my short day, from one baker to another.

I couldn't get too comfortable with Levi. "Bella," Nonna went to me. "You're going to need to call Renée."

I was appalled. "You told Mom?"

"She's your mother, of course I did," Nonna retorted. But she gave me a knowing look. "The sooner you do it, you know, is the sooner you'll get it over with."

"...Sì," I muttered. "Sì, sì, sì..."

Levi laughed at my mumblings as I set him back down, clapping his hands together.

Naturally, my mother was in hysterics. I had to tell her I felt fine for at least thirty times before she began to calm down. She begged me to come home – forgetting that the house was empty at the moment – but her pleas were easier to resist than I had thought they would be. I had my duty to my grandmother, and there was the mystery of Edythe Cullen. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I know. So was my being more than a little obsessed with her. It made the idea of escaping Forks less tempting than it should've been, the return to sun and clear skies less appealing than it would have been for any sane, normal person.

Sam, Emily, and Levi stayed with us for a couple of hours, my cousin's eyes never leaving me once, as if he was afraid I was about to up and vanish. He didn't really want to leave, either, but became agreeable to the fact after Emily reminded him he had his shift at the firehouse of La Push in a couple of hours. "Seriously, come visit," he said to me before they left.

"My friends are wanting to come to La Push on a weekend soon," I told him.

He placed his fist on my arm in response, though he didn't actually punch me. "Outside of that, too. Like I told you in my note: don't be a stranger."

"Okay." I'll try not to, I tacked on silently.

I went to bed early that night. Nonna didn't watch me as anxiously as Sam had, but her gaze was still getting on my nerves. I stopped on my way to get three Tylenol from the only bathroom upstairs. They did help and, as the pain eased, I drifted off to sleep.

That was the first, and not the only, night I dreamt of Edythe Cullen.

Word Count: 5,217

Next Chapter Title: invitations