Chapter 3: 12-years-old


"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival." - C.S. Lewis


Renesmee Cullen is 12-years-old when she attends a human party.

Renesmee has never really fit in with the wolf pack. She has known them for years but she still feels as if she has been relegated to 'the girl Jacob imprinted on'. This is not helped that half of the wolves are still wary of anything related to vampires. It's not that anyone is purposefully mean, but she isn't a part of this world. Jacob is her only connection to them and sometimes it feels as if he is a completely different person around them. With her family, he is nice but restrained. With the other wolves-with his family-he is loose and free.

Renesmee doesn't know which version of Jacob she belongs with; who he is with her family or who he is with his pack.

Jacob occasionally brings Renesmee along whenever the packs have parties or gatherings. For a long time, Renesmee would get roped together with Emily's niece, Claire since they were the youngest people there. When Claire was still very little, Renesmee would occasionally put her hand on Claire's cheek and show her pictures to entertain her. But as Claire grows, the more distant Renesmee feels from her too. The only thing Renesmee has in common with Claire was that they were both imprinted on as children. However, the imprinting was being kept a secret from Claire until she was older. As it was, she just thought of Quil as her best friend.

Claire is fun and easy-going with a sharp tongue that helps her to effortlessly fit in with the guys and Renesmee envies how easily Claire can talk to all of them. Everyone affectionately calls her 'Squirrel' due to her trademark ponytail and they would make her giggle endlessly by shifting into their wolf forms pointing their bodies to imitate Dug the dog from Up. The wolves tease her but it is clear they would all do anything for her.

Things start to change late into Claire's freshman year of high school.

Renesmee and Jacob go over to Sam and Emily's house for a Friday night cookout and get-together. The parties get so crowded that people know to bring their own chairs or be prepared to sit on the ground.

Quil gives Claire a lift from her house and she comes in carrying a large duffel bag. Embry snorts when he sees it.

"What's that for, Squirrel? Don't tell me it's homework." He calls out to her, sitting on the couch next to Jacob and Renesmee.

"Yeah right, like I'd do homework on a Friday." "What is it?" Seth asks.

"Change of clothes and some beauty supplies." Claire slides the bag off to the floor. "You know, the essentials."

Sam frowns. "What do you need those for?"

"I have plans after this," Claire responds.

"What do you mean plans?" Sam asks.

"I mean that I planned ahead with some people in my social group to go out to a social event," Claire says snidely.

"What social event?"

"Spring Fling."

"Nice try," Emily calls, entering from the kitchen. "We know that Spring Fling is tomorrow."

"No, that's the dance. Tonight is the bonfire."

"What bonfire?" Sam asks.

"The Spring Fling Bonfire," Claire replies drily. "It's a bonfire on the beach."

"Claire," Emily sighs, "Come on. It would be nice if you could spend time here with us."

"I am spending time with you. I'm here, aren't I?"

"It's still rude to leave early-"

"Who said anything about leaving early?" Claire huffs, beginning to look annoyed. "I'm going to eat here and then go to the beach."

"Claire-"

"My mom said I could go!" Claire cries. "And I'm here all the time! It's just a party."

Claire continues to protest throughout the evening, even after dinner has been served.

"You know, I'm not five anymore," she grunts, angrily stabbing her macaroni with her fork. "You guys are way too overprotective."

Quil decides to intervene. "Squirrel, listen, I think we're just concerned about you alone at the beach at night, that's all."

"You guys aren't my parents. You shouldn't get a say."

"We're still family," Emily scolds, "And we love you."

"I know but..." Claire trails off, upset.

Quil looks as if he might start sweating, he is so distressed by her unhappiness. "Look, maybe if I came with you-"

"Quil, I'm sorry but I can't bring a dude who looks like he's thirty-five to a high school party. You'd look like a weirdo."

"I don't look thirty-five." Quil mutters.

"Well, you either go with someone or you're not going." Sam says, taking a big bite of his cheeseburger.

Claire huffs angrily. Then her face lights up with a broad smile. "Nessie!" Renesmee looks up, startled, from her spot three seats down.

Claire jumps up and scurries over to her. "How about Nessie? She looks like she's in high school. How about I take her?"

By now the whole table is focused on them. Renesmee feels her cheeks grow hot. "I'm not sure if that's a good idea," says Jacob from beside Renesmee.

"Why not? We're basically the same age now anyway. Besides she's strong enough she can beat off any rapists or muggers or whatever."

Jacob and Quil's shoulders tense after that comment. Renesmee's cheeks feel even warmer.

"Yeah, but Nessie isn't really...the type for parties, Claire." Jacob adds, "She doesn't know very many humans."

Claire ignores Jacob and turns back to Renesmee. "Please Nessie. I will owe you one so huge. Besides, it'll be fun!"

Renesmee slowly considers the idea. She has never been to a human party before. She's hasn't met anyone new in years. And suddenly, the idea thrills her.

"Sure. I'll go with you."

Claire squeals and throws her arms around her while everyone stares in surprise.


Renesmee calls her parents to get permission to go. Bella sounds surprised but says yes, earning protests from Jacob.

"Bells, you can't be serious!"

"Jake, why not?" Bella asks, her voice tinny through the speaker phone. "It's just a party. After all, she's grown up now."

"She's only twelve!"

"I'm turning thirteen soon." Renesmee pipes in quietly. Neither acknowledges her.

"She's never done anything like this before," Jacob continues. "Aren't you worried about her at all?"

"Come on, Jake," Bella says teasingly. "I remember when you and I used to sneak out to go to the beach together."

Jacob has no choice but to relent after that.

The two girls leave as quickly as possible before anyone changes their minds about letting them go.

Renesmee is surprised by how excited she feels. She hasn't been around many humans before. She wonders if she can act normal enough. She barely speaks during the Uber ride to the beach but Claire fills the air with excited chatter.

"Can you hold this?" Claire asks Renesmee, handing her a compact mirror. Renesmee takes it but is taken aback when Claire grabs her wrist and adjusts her arm to hold the mirror out for her.

"Okay, and just hold it up...there!" Claire nods, satisfied. She pulls out a lip-gloss tube and begins to apply it.

"Do you need a swipe?" Claire asks, shaking the tube.

"Uh, no. No, I'm good." Renesmee answers. Claire simply chucks her gloss back into her bag but now Renesmee feels all too aware of her bare, makeup-less face. She looks different from how Renesmee is used to seeing her. She has let her hair down from her ponytail and is made up with heavy eyeliner and glittery blue eye shadow. She is wearing an airy sundress with platform wedge sandals. Renesmee wishes she had worn something nicer than shorts and a hoodie.

"Um, do you think I'm dressed okay?" She asks. "I just hadn't expected to go anywhere else."

Claire dismisses her concerns with a wave. "You're totally fine. No one's gonna care what you're wearing. People'll just assume you're, like, a VSCO girl or something." Claire keeps talking before Renesmee can ask her what a VSCO girl is. "You just gotta be careful not to get too much sand in your sneakers."

Claire is absolutely euphoric by the time they arrive at the beach. The sun has just set and the bonfire is only beginning to blaze.

"Hey everyone!" She shouts happily to a group of people standing in their own cluster. She reaches for Renesmee's arm and ushers her forward. "Everyone, this is Nessie. She's a family friend."

Everyone gapes at Renesmee. Renesmee knows they are just reacting to her unusual features but now she feels even more out of place.

Someone pours Claire a beer and she offers Renesmee one. Claire comments that she is under no pressure to drink but Renesmee finds herself accepting the red cup all the same. She immediately regrets it once she tastes it.

Claire snickers. "Ha! You should see your face!"

Renesmee tries to school her features but that just makes Claire laugh harder.

"I don't blame you," says another girl, swirling the liquid in her own cup. "I can't stand Natty Light."

"You fork up the cash for something better and we'll get it," another boy says, his arm resting casually across the girl's shoulders.

"I'm not saying we need better, I'm just saying this tastes like butt," the girl responds. Claire laughs at them, Renesmee joining in hesitantly.

"Nessie, this is Dana and Kevin," Claire introduces and small 'Hi's' are exchanged. They begin a polite conversation that is strained by Renesmee having to think up cover stories on the spot. Renesmee has never felt more awkward in her life, unsure of herself and overthinking everything.

"How come I've never seen you before?" Dana asks.

"Um..." Renesmee starts to answer but Claire chimes in. "It's not like you've met everyone ever, Dana."

Dana rolls her eyes playfully at Claire and asks Renesmee, "How old are you?"

"Fifteen," she says, making herself the same age as Claire.

"Where do you go to school? Are you in Beaver or Forks or somewhere?" Kevin asks next.

"I'm home-schooled. I have family in Forks though," Renesmee says, glad to have a truthful answer.

"One of my aunts is married to her grandpa," Claire adds, also truthfully.

As the talk continues, Claire leaves Renesmee as she does a few rounds around the party to say hi to other people. Kevin and Dana get distracted by a new arrival and Renesmee finds herself alone. She sips on her beer just to have something to do but abandons the cup halfway through.

Renesmee shuffles off to the edge of the beach and sits on the sand, just out of reach of the low tide. Suddenly, Claire plops down ungracefully next to Renesmee, her beer sloshing over the rim of her plastic cup.

"Oh, sorry," Claire apologizes with a giggle, "God, I'm such a sloppy drunk, I'm so sorry." Renesmee can't help but smile as she asks, "What? How can you be drunk already?"

"I'm little, I can only handle so much," Claire defends herself, kicking her short legs out in front of her in the sand. "God, Nessie, what are you, like, six feet tall?"

Renesmee laughs airily. "I'm only five eight."

"Oh, only five eight. Well then!" Claire gestures to herself and Renesmee concedes that Claire is a bit shorter than her.

"A bit? A bit!" Claire exclaims in mock outrage. "Come on. It's bad enough all the guys are big ass wolves, now you're a giant too!"

"Whoa, hold on," Renesmee interjects, holding up a finger, "I'm nowhere near as tall as the guys. They're huge!"

Claire giggles. "You know, when I was little, I thought when I grew up I'd be as big as them!"

"Oh no, seriously?" Renesmee asks, clasping her palm to her face as she laughs as well.

Claire shakes her head and says, "Look, how was I supposed to know how weird they were? Plus, when you're a kid everyone says things seem way bigger than they do when you grow up."

"People say that?" Renesmee asks. For some reason, that makes Claire laugh harder.

"Yeah, right, so what do you know either?" Claire asks with a snorting laugh. "You aged, like, twenty freaking years in five days!"

Claire's laughter is infectious and soon Renesmee is giggling just as much as her.

"Man, I was so jealous of you when I was little," Claire admits, leaning back on her elbows.

"Of me?" Renesmee asks, surprised. "Why?"

"Hmm...maybe because you aged twenty freaking years in, like, five days!" Claire jokes. "I wanted to grow up so bad. I didn't want to wait around, I just wanted to be older."

"Huh," is all Renesmee can say to that. More than ever, Renesmee wishes she could talk to people easily. She is used to using her power to show people her thoughts, not to mention how few people she has interacted with outside of her family. She draws her knees up to her chest and tries to keep the conversation going, "It can be a little weird, being younger and not a member of the pack."

"Oh, I totally get that!" Claire declares.

"You do?" Renesmee asks, relieved.

"Absolutely! Yeah, they all literally know each other's thoughts inside and out," Claire says, sitting up to take another sip from her cup. "I swear, sometimes, it's like they know what each other's thinking even when they're just sitting around on the couch or something."

"Well, I'm used to that at home," Renesmee says.

"Wait, what?" Claire exclaims loudly. She catches herself and looks around to see if anyone else is listening. She lowers her voice to a whisper and asks, "What, can vampires read each other's minds?"

"No, not exactly." Renesmee explains with a shake of her head, "My dad can, sort of, read minds. So he always knows what's up."

"Wait, he reads your mind too? Whoa." Claire says with a grimace.

"Well, he can't control it," Renesmee says, defending her dad. "The same way the packs can't control it."

"Still," Claire shudders, "That would drive me crazy."

"Well, my mom has this...shield power," Renesmee continues, "So sometimes she blocks us from him when he's getting on our nerves."

That startles a laugh out of Claire. "Okay, now that's great!"

Again, Renesmee can't help but giggle along with her. She adds, "It's really funny sometimes. When she blocks him, he acts like someone who lost all his basic motor functions."

"Really?" Claire asks. "I'd kill to see that."

So Renesmee rests a hand on Claire's cheek and shows her a memory of the last time her dad got frustrated by not hearing any thoughts. The two can't stop laughing for a full minute.

"Wow, and you're not even drunk and you're laughing like that," Claire says once they've calmed down. She peers down at her cup, "I'm out too."

"I think I'm just slap-happy," Renesmee says, stretching her legs back out in the sand.

"Well, we better calm down before we go home," Claire says, idly scooping sand up in her now empty cup. "Although I guess you can't lie to your dad anyway."

"Well, he can deal," Renesmee says blithely, looking around at the beach. "I'm having a good time and that's what matters."

Claire pauses and gives Renesmee an appraising look. "You don't go out much, do you?"

Renesmee flushes. "I don't know. I mean, once I stopped aging I got to leave the house more often."

"No, I mean," Claire says, setting down her cup, "You don't hang out with other people a lot, do you?"

"I don't know," Renesmee repeats. She straightens up and says, "I've never really had friends before. Jacob is my best friend, obviously, but he's different. But it's mostly just...me and my family."

"Well your family is all close to one another, right?"

"Of course," Renesmee answers immediately. She pauses and thinks for a moment, adding, "But they kind of stick to their pairings, you know? When your whole family is coupled, they sort of just want to be with one another."

Renesmee stops herself. She had been so concerned about not talking enough, now she thinks she has been talking way too much.

But Claire seems to find all of this fascinating. She asks more and more questions about Renesmee and her family, and Renesmee is pleasantly surprised at how unrestrained their conversation is. After an hour or so in the sand, Claire stands up and insists on taking Renesmee around with her and introducing her to some more of her friends. Renesmee hesitantly follows her but, to her surprise, meeting people slowly gets easier.

Claire announces she has to be home soon and calls for an Uber. She tells Renesmee she needs to check on some things before they go and leaves her close to the fire as she chases after a friend.

"Hey, you're Claire's friend, right?"

Renesmee turns to see a tall, broad shouldered guy, holding a red cup in each hand. He gives her a lazy smile, which she returns hesitantly.

"Yeah, yeah I am."

"Hey. I'm Topher," he introduces himself. Renesmee briefly thinks to herself that Topher is an unusual name but then she immediately feels like a hypocrite.

"I'm Nessie."

"Nessie, huh? Nuh-hess-ie. Nice," he says with a slur to his speech that makes him sound as if he's on the cusp of being drunk. He sways on his toes, coming in a little too close to Renesmee's face for her comfort.

"Yeah, that's me." She says, taking a step back away from him. Undeterred, he closes the gap between them again.

"Now, I must say," Topher says quietly, "You are probably the hottest girl I've ever met."

Renesmee blushes, though she thinks she's more embarrassed by her reaction than to the actual compliment. She chuckles uncomfortably. "Oh, come on."

"I'm serious!" Topher exclaims a little too loudly, taking a swig of his beer.

"Well, that's sweet of you, but I don't think that's true."

"It is! Plus, I mean, standing next to Claire helps you out."

Renesmee furrows her brow in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Topher gives her a lazy smirk and says, "Well, you're all super-model hot next to her dumpy ass-"

"Excuse me?" Renesmee cuts him off sharply.

"No, not in a bad way. She just doesn't come close to how hot you are."

"Don't talk that way about Claire."

Topher just chuckles at her in a condescending manner. "Relax, okay? It's a compliment."

Renesmee scowls at him in disbelief. "You talking badly about my friend isn't a compliment."

"Hey, take it easy. No need to get upset, we're having a good time, aren't we?" Topher says, his voice oily. He leans in close, moving back into Renesmee's personal space. Renesmee instinctively pushes him away but forgets to take her strength into account. She knocks him back off his feet, his beer spilling across his torso. Gasps ring out across the beach as the conversations around them stop abruptly as everyone turns to see what the commotion is.

Topher grunts as he wipes at his now beer-soaked body. He pushes himself up to his feet and starts stalking angrily towards Renesmee. "What the fuck is your problem?"

Renesmee is horrified. She can't let herself react again or she might give away her supernatural nature. Topher steps close to her, leering into her face as Renesmee stammers, "Um, I-"

"Hey!"

A startled Topher jumps back from Renesmee as a furious Claire comes stomping determinedly towards him. When she reaches him, she pokes his arm and angrily asks, "What the hell do you think you're doing, dipshit?"

Irritation flashes across Topher's face as he sneers down at Claire. "Nothing, Claire."

Claire matches his stare, glaring up at him with a fierce anger and protectiveness in her eyes. "Nothing? Nothing? That's bullshit! It looked like you were trying to move in on her!"

Topher rolls his eyes petulantly. "You're overreacting. God, mind your own business."

Claire is about a foot shorter than Topher but it feels as if she is towering over him, standing firm with her hands on her hips. "Listen, asshole. Nessie is my friend, okay? I invited her here so, yeah, I think this is my business. What were you doing to her?"

"Nothing happened! God, calm down!"

"I'll calm down when you're gone, okay dickhead?" Claire pokes him again, this time in the chest. Topher attempts to smack her hand away but misses, looking like a fussy toddler.

Claire continues, "Now she clearly doesn't want you here, so back the hell off!"

There's a long beat as Topher breathes heavily, looking shame-faced. Then he scoffs and mutters, "Whatever. Screw you."

Claire crosses her arms and stares after Topher as he slinks off. Once he's a good distance away, Claire turns to Renesmee, all of her anger replaced with worry. "Nessie, are you okay? Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for dragging you here."

Renesmee stares at Claire for a moment, before breaking out into a beaming smile. "That was...Claire, that was amazing!"

"Well, I mean," Claire waves offhandedly, "He was being a jerk so whatever-"

"No, not whatever."

Claire blinks in surprise at the conviction in Renesmee's voice. Honestly, Renesmee's a little surprised at herself too. But she can't help the overwhelming gratitude that she feels for Claire in that moment.

Maybe it's that shock that makes her confident enough to ask, "Claire, would you like to come over to my house for a sleepover?"

In the end, Claire's family refuses to allow her to spend a night alone over at a den of vampires, so Claire invites Renesmee over to her house instead. By the end of summer Renesmee is staying over at Claire's almost every night.