I've been going through my computer and files because I'm merging everything off of Microsoft. And I found this. Almost 100 pages of outlines and chapters of the story of Daybreak before Daybreak became what it is. There's a lot of similarities, but also significant differences. I forgot about this story, but now I can't seem to get it out of my head. I wrote it when I was so young that it feels brand new to me- I read it as if I weren't the one who wrote it in the first place. So please, enjoy.

I'll make you fly

You'll be happy all the time

I know you can make it right

Youth - Glass Animals

July 4, 2003

Bella sat on the patio, lemonade in hand and feet propped up on the chair next to her. The heat in the Phoenix suburbs was cloying, even at night when it had cooled off by several degrees. Bella traced a finger up the side of her glass, collecting the condensation on her fingertip and wiping the cool liquid across her brow.

Her mom, Renee, was in the kitchen with her new husband. Phil was younger, but Renee had always been young at heart anyways. Just then, she was giggling like a schoolgirl and flinging a spoonful of cake batter at her husband. Bella smiled at the scene. It was probably a good thing that Renee was wasting all of that batter on a childish food fight because she was a notoriously horrible cook. Bella had learned how to manage the kitchen before middle school just to save herself from Renee's experimental recipes, which included Fruity Pebble coated fried chicken and peanut butter on green beans.

But Renee had insisted on cooking something patriotic for Independence Day. Bella chose to stay out of the kitchen and out of the way. Renee didn't really need her anymore. Phil was inside and more than capable of operating a fire extinguisher if it was needed, and slicing the strawberries so Renee didn't chop off one of her own fingers as she danced and sang to an 80s pop anthem that was blaring from the radio.

Bella bent the spine of one of her most worn books and tried to focus on the words swimming on the page. The fireworks were starting to pop, and Bella surveyed the rolling sand below as the light refracted on the ground. They were fortunate enough to look out over the expanse of the desert and the rocky mountains way out in the distance. Bella always liked it here. It was home, after all. It hadn't always been, though. Bella was born in an incessantly rainy corner of the Pacific Northwest, in a town called Forks. Her parents had married too young, and Renee took off with Bella before she was old enough to walk, leaving her father, Charlie, behind.

Bella had spent a few summers in Forks, but she couldn't really remember them. All she recalled was how much she disliked it, with the rain and the mud, and Charlie seemed to understand that, like her mother, Bella felt suffocated in the small town in which he resided. They started spending a few weeks together in sunny California every summer instead, and Charlie occasionally flew down to spend very awkward holidays with Bella and Renee in Phoenix.

Bella was cognizant that she was more like her father than her mother, though. She looked up from her book through the sliding glass door that led to her kitchen. Renee and Phil were dancing around the small island, their fingers dyed red with strawberries and flour dusting their cheeks. They were laughing joyfully, completely carefree as their bouncing missed the beat of the music.

No, Bella wasn't like her mother. It was almost as if, while Renee mirrored the childlike happiness of her kindergarten students, Bella had been born middle aged and got older every year. She had been a serious child, and grew into an even more responsible teenager. She and Charlie shared a certain social awkwardness, too.

Maybe it was because she had always been more mature, but Bella had never really fit in with her peer group. She had peripheral friends, people she could eat lunch with in the cafeteria and people who would ask to copy her homework. But she didn't have anyone whose house she slept over at or who braided her hair. And she had never had a boyfriend, either, much to Renee's dismay. Renee remembered being a wild teenager well and fondly, and always not-so-subtly resented the fact that getting pregnant with Bella had put an abrupt stop to that.

But having a child never really stopped Renee, because once she left Charlie and took off to the south, there had always been a steady stream of gentleman callers who looked at Bella warily when she came to the door, since Renee was always digging through her closet to find a shoe or a lost bracelet.

Bella shrugged to herself and returned to reading. It had never bothered her, being more a parent than a child. If anything, she was suited to it. But now she was feeling a bit superfluous. Phil and Renee had only been married for a few months, but the changes were obvious. Renee just didn't need Bella anymore. Phil folded the laundry, and he wasn't a half-bad cook if you didn't mind eating meat and potatoes every night, which Renee didn't. He was even able to reign in her impulse to put umami on mashed potatoes or drizzle chocolate syrup on chicken (in an effort to make what Renee called molé but was certainly not).

It seemed to be growing impossibly hotter, and Bella pressed the glass to her forehead to try to absorb some of the coolness. The fireworks were booming in the distance, and Bella looked up to watch the blaringly loud show of patriotism the city put on every year. She blinked and squinted, trying to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was. She tossed the book onto the stone table and shot out of her seat, stumbling when she tripped on her own foot. But when she looked inside, she didn't see any kind of fire. No, Phil and Renee were still dancing in a more gentle, intimate sway, now to a lulling classical piece of the variety Renee favored.

But no, Bella was sure that there was smoke, and it wasn't possible that it was just the kind that came from fireworks drifting over to them. Bella looked over the balcony down to the floor below and saw it, billowing out of the windows. Just then, the alarm started blaring. Renee looked startled, and ran to the door to the patio to get Bella. Bella righted herself and stumbled into her mother's arms. Renee looked frantic, lines carving into her forehead and around her mouth. She held Bella up and pushed them into the living room.

The smoke was starting to fill their apartment now, too. Phil was coughing, and he grabbed an autographed baseball that he stuffed in his pocket before throwing a blanket over his wife and step-daughter. Renee threw the front door open and they all stepped back automatically.

The hallway was blanketed in smoke, burning into their lungs when they tried to breathe. Bella's eyes were tearing angrily at the harsh bite of the smoke. Phil squared his shoulders and grabbed another blanket which he flung around his neck to cover his mouth. "I'm going to see what's out there!" he yelled, barreling into the hallway before Renee could stop him.

She was crying now, too, and calling out for Phil as his figure disappeared immediately in the thick of smoke.

"Mom, close the door," Bella insisted, trying to pull her mother back as she tried to go after him.

Renee was sobbing, screaming for Phil to come back, but her cries were drowned out by the blare of the alarm and the telling crackle of an approaching fire. Bella could see it now, flickering through the smoke as it crept down the hallway. She could hear a scream of one of their neighbors, but she couldn't make out who it was.

It was absolute madness. Pure chaos.

Bella finally yanked on Renee's arm hard enough to throw both of them back, then Bella threw herself forward to slam the front door shut. The apartment was filled with smoke now too, but the backdoor to the balcony patio was open and providing some slight respite from the unnatural heat.

Bella crawled back to her mom, trying to stay low to the floor where the smoke was less dense. She remembered from all of those fire safety classes in elementary school that hot air rises, and was internally surprised that it had actually come in handy. In the back of her mind, she was hoping they wouldn't need to use the stop, drop, and roll move.

"We need to get outside!" she shouted, each syllable punctuated by a cough. Her cheeks were burning with the heat, and the smoke was stinging her eyes. Renee wasn't listening, just frantically crying and screaming for Phil. It didn't look like he was coming back, and the apartment was only growing hotter.

Under the front door, Bella could see an orange light of flames growing brighter. The fire was moving up the apartment building, and it would be consuming them next if they didn't do something.

Grabbing Renee's arm, Bella stooped down and tried to pull her out of the room and onto the balcony. Renee wasn't moving, and it seemed as though the smoke had overtaken her as she coughed with her eyes closed and her form limp.

Bella was screaming now, too, dragging her mother onto the balcony as fast as she could. The front door and walls were being devoured by the fire. Even after living in Phoenix for almost her entire life, Bella had never felt heat like that.

Then, the roof seemed to cave in on them, and the apartment above- Mrs. Gonzalez's and her daughter Eva, who owned a little terrier that Renee had loved- collapsed into their living room.

It was a disaster. Bella could barely move. Her lungs ached and her body was screaming from the lack of oxygen, and she collapsed beside Renee. The fire was roaring and angrily cracking, snapping at the walls of the place they called home and destroying everything they had collected and treasured over the years. The T-shirts they had collected on their spontaneous road trips, Bella's cobbled-together baby album, the used keyboard Renee bought when she decided to take piano lessons and discarded after three weeks when she realized piano wasn't easy. It was all gone.

Bella wished she could cry, but the tears weren't coming. She looked up at the grey, smoky sky and wished for a drop of rain that would never come. Instead, the balcony above was coming crashing down on them. Concrete was showering them like a summer storm in Bella's birthplace, and the fire raged on, inching closer and moving faster as it fed on the energy and, so it seemed, her fear.

Bella's head drooped to her side, and she glanced down at the rest of her body. Renee's legs were crushed under a solid block of concrete, completely obscured and obviously obliterated. Bella was mostly unscathed at the moment but for the long, deep gash left by a piece of rebar tearing down her leg.

Her bright red blood was dripping out of her parted skin, and Bella's head felt faint at the sight. The concrete under them was cracking, and after any moment it would be coming down, and it would all be over. Bella closed her eyes and waited for it to come.

She remembered a poem by Emily Dickinson, and wondered absentmindedly if she would hear a fly buzz in her final moments. The thought almost brought the ghost of a smile to her mouth. Instead, what she did hear was a hiss. Not that now-familiar hiss of the fire. It was something different, something wrong. She struggled to open her eyes, lids heavy and heated and stubbornly trying to keep her subdued. She wished she had kept them closed.

What she saw was more terrifying than any afterlife she could imagine might or might not be waiting for her. Standing above her was a person. Or, at least, he sort of looked like a person. His skin was a stark white, glowing orange in the cast of light from the approaching fire. It seemed like his eyes had absorbed the fire- they burned a dark, terrifying red.

Bella tried to scream, but her breath was shallow and her throat raw. The man smiled, but it wasn't one of comfort. His teeth were glistening ominously, and before her mind could register, he had bent down beside her and gripped her arm so tightly she thought her bones had broken.

She was powerless, and wondered how she had grown so weak while this man was somehow so empowered that her skin ripped like paper under his fingers. Was he even a man? Was this some demon coming to take her to hell? She felt numb to the pain. He was doing as he pleased, and Bella watched with glassy eyes as he lifted her bleeding arm to his mouth.

He bent down, kneeling beside her and his plain brown hair hanging in his face. She couldn't see his eyes anymore, and thought that that was probably a good thing. A relief. That is, until his teeth sliced through the inside of her wrist. His lips suctioned on, and suddenly a violent, burning pain went screaming through her body.

She jerked, but he didn't even seem to notice. He was oblivious to everything, even the fire licking through the gaps in the floor and ready to embrace them and bring them down into it. There was a cry, and in the blink of an eye, the man had been torn from her body. S

he blinked slowly, but the pain wasn't stopping, and it was like half her body was numb and drifting while the other was being consumed by the demon-man's bite. He was standing over her again, her eyes a blazing red and a perfect match to the dense cloud of hair on the woman standing beside him.

Their argued speech was too quick and low for Bella to hear- or maybe she just couldn't anymore. Could she hear? The fire seemed so loud it was like it was living in her brain and burning her from the inside-out.

Then, they both disappeared. At almost that exact moment, the concrete caved in, and the place where the man and woman had been standing crashed down into the consuming fire. Renee was sliding into it, too. Her body was limp and she had long since passed out, and the concrete she was pinned under was being dragged into that deathly hole.

Bella didn't understand how, but she was moving. She sat up somehow, her leg and arm coated in blood, but that wasn't even the worst of it. There was something in her that was burning everything inside her. She didn't realize that this was what it meant to burn alive. If she had to imagine it, she thought it would have been much quicker, but it was like the fire was living inside of her.

With her unharmed arm, she hooked it under Renee and tried to pull her out of the concrete. Even if she had been totally fine and unaffected by the weakness of the smoke, she wouldn't have been strong enough to lift the concrete, or pull Renee out from under it. She cried out hoarsely, realizing that it was all futile.

She wondered if the man and woman had been hallucinations, and that this was just what it meant to die. A breeze blew in and shifted some of the smoke. The air felt cool against the heat of the fire and smoke, and Bella leaned into it. She glanced out and caught a last glimpse of the expansive desert, black sand and the sky dark behind the distant mountains. She crawled over the hot rubble on the patio. Her body was screaming in pain, but something deeper was driving her to move. She had managed to reach the rail at the end of the balcony.

Bella couldn't look back. She just couldn't. Renee was back there, lying still and lost to the fire. If Bella looked back, she wouldn't leave. And something was telling her that she had to leave.

Her uninjured hand gripped the hot metal of the railing, searing through her skin but not even close to comparable to what she was feeling in her other hand. She looked down and saw two even crescents of teeth marks on the inside of her wrist, but instead of puckered red skin or seared flesh that she expected with that pain, her skin was otherwise unmarked.

She lifted herself up, her left leg limp with the deep gash that had dug through her outer thigh. Something deeper was driving her, and she stared down with solemnity from the balcony to the scruffy garden of cacti and desert flora four stories below.

It was now or never.

Bella launched herself off the balcony, pushing off and dropping limply to the ground just as the fire finally tore apart her home.