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Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight Saga. I own twitchy fingers that enjoy writing for no profit.

Chapter 18: Cliffs and Concussions

Bella POV

Seen by itself, the phone call was really nothing. An innocent call from one friend to another. No hidden agenda, no deliberate intent to create chaos and mayhem in my life. But had I known that that innocent little call was going to be the catalyst for the most dramatic change my life had seen to date, (and bearing in mind the huge changes my life had faced so far, that was really saying something) I might not have picked up.

It wasn't quite 10am when the phone rang that Sunday. I'd been out fishing with Charlie the day before, and so my plans for the day mainly revolved around housework. I was shoving a load into the washer when I heard the house phone ringing, so I hurried into the kitchen to listen to the machine as it picked up the call. Charlie and I had started this screening process a few days after the 'Mrs Newton gossip incident' as Charlie and I referred to it. We had both grown tired of answering the phone at all hours, only to find it was yet another brainless idiot, desperate to either spread a new piece of gossip, or to express their disgust at whatever new lie they'd heard about me. So we began letting the machine pick up the calls. If it was important, we would call whoever it was straight back. If it was a friend, they knew why we were screening our calls through the machine, so they'd just say who it was, hang up and call back straight away, in which case Charlie or I would answer.

The machine clicked on just as I got into the kitchen.

"Bells. It's Jake." He hung straight up, and less than five seconds later, the phone rang again. This time. Grabbed it before the machine could.

"Hey Jake. How's it going?" I asked, going to the sink and filling the kettle.

"Great. Better than great. In fact I'd say awesome." He said in an excited voice. I was instantly intrigued.

"Awesome because...?" I prompted him. Luckily, he wasn't the sort who believed that drawing out the suspense was fun, and he got right to the point

"They're done. The bikes are finished."

I was instantly excited and terrified. "Am I ready to make this change? To become the sort of person who takes risks, even if they're carefully controlled ones?" I had been asking myself this same question ever since I first saw the bikes sitting on that lawn, waiting for someone to come and take them. For the first time I realised I had already made that change. I had begun making it on that same day. I made it when I walked out on Mrs Newton and her money grabbing, gossiping ways. I made it when I collected the bikes. I made it when I stood up to the horrible gossiping women in the supermarket, and when I sat in my hollow searching for calm, and when I played poker with Jacob, Quil, and Embry. The change was already made in tiny increments over the last few weeks, and it was too late now to sit back and worry that it might not be the right change, or that I might not like what it led to.

"I'll be right over." I said, and hung up. I grabbed my purple D.M.s and yanked them on, leaving the laces untied and tripping over them three times before I even got to the front door. Picking up the Forks PD hoodie which I'd permanently commandeered from Charlie's closet, I jogged/tripped out to my truck and clambered in, failing several times to get the seatbelt clip actually done up before I finally raced off to the Rez as fast as my geriatric truck could take me. Now I had accepted that I'd made the change, I was anxious to get on with it. I drove by muscle memory, not at all aware of the journey itself as I was thinking over all the differences in my life that I'd barely given any notice to before.

First there were the physical changes. I had put on around eight to ten pounds, and while Charlie thought I could still bear to gain a little more, I was relatively happy switch my current weight. I wasn't consciously trying to gain any more, but with a normal diet and lifestyle, it would just settle at whatever it was intended to be. Being out of doors so much now was improving my skin, making it less dry and slightly less pale.

Almost more satisfying to both Charlie and I than the rest though, was the fact that the bags under my eyes were all but gone now. My 'Alone in the Forest' dreams had begun to lessen. I still had them most nights, but they were shorter and less excruciating, the silent observer which had just added more tension to the dream the first time I noted it, now served to lessen the loneliness of the dream itself. I no longer felt the watcher was completely disinterested in my fate, merely curious as to what I would do to save myself from it, and knowing that I wasn't completely alone made the dream more bearable. As for my dream scenes which repeated night after night, well they too had decreased a little, leaving me with only the occasional replay of the 'Victoria attacks the village' scene, and nightly repeats of the kinky sex scene, and while that one was irritating as I was always jolted awake every night as the dream ended, the dream itself was so hot that a part of me was glad I continued to have it. If only I wasn't joined by Taha Aki every night it would've been great. But there the old man was, every night, telling me to "watch", which I was going to do anyway, but would rather do so without worrying he was too. The dream had altered somewhat, the sweaty writhing couple and I were still alone in the room apart from the big black wolf in the corner, oh and the old man, who now snorted in amused irritation and turned around in a way I could only describe as sarcastically indulgent before I could even ask him to each night. However one night Taha Aki had stood by a window that had never been there before and pointed outside, telling me to "look", and when I did, I saw outside a silver wolf and a brown wolf lying down and staring into the forest, then a dark grey wolf with black spots on his coat walked out of the forest and joined them. From that night, even when Taha Aki didn't get me to look out the window, I always knew they were out there, guarding the naked sweaty me who was moaning and panting with lust and passion inside with the huge man, who as the days went by and my crush on Sam grew, looked more and more like Sam himself, from whatever might be heading my way. "Stupid subconscious. Showing me what I can't have, and am still undecided about whether or not I should even be wanting."

As often as I returned to think about this dream, and the 'Victoria attacks the village' dream too, I still couldn't reconcile one very important fact. I knew that the shape shifters were extinct. Carlisle had told me so, and he aught to know - he had met the last few to exist. With them being extinct, I couldn't understand Taha Aki's insistence that I "watch" these scenes over and over. An extinct species wouldn't be able to help me, and no amount of wishful thinking was going to change that.

The mental an emotional changes were, of course, less noticeable to those who didn't know me well. But to those that did, they were probably more startling than the physical. I was surprised myself at how well I'd managed to fortify that door that led into the room where my pit lay, still open and not forgotten, but deliberately avoided. My time in the hollow had done much of the work there. As I drifted inside my own mind I was able to distance myself from the memories enough that thinking of the Cullens caused me no pain, and I was even able to hope that one day I would think of them freely whenever I wanted with love and affection, and without the pain the memories had brought me before. I wasn't quite there yet, but maybe one day. I still avoided thoughts of Him, even when in my hollow, but I was letting the ties my heart still maintained loosen and weaken, allowing my crush on Sam to help pick at the threads, although I wasn't sure how sensible that was. The crush wasn't likely to lead to anything. He wasn't interested, and even if he was, nothing serious could come of it as I would have to leave one way or another once Victoria showed up to take her revenge.

I arrived at Jake's about twenty minutes later, completely unaware of a single moment of the drive there. I honestly thought a child could've run out in front of my truck and I would've just run straight over them without even noticing, I had been so distracted while driving. I couldn't allow that to happen again. A little controlled danger like riding my newly repaired motorcycle was one thing, but driving around whilst my head was elsewhere was quite another. Far too dangerous. For others as well as myself.

Jake came out to meet me, far too full of anticipation to wait for me to leave my truck and go knock on his door.

"Come on, Bells. Hurry up. Come and see!" He was bouncing up and down on his toes like a four year old eager to show his parent his latest Lego creation, it was sweet, but rather weird to see this huge man-child behaving like a toddler.

"Ok, ok, I'm coming. Calm down." I said as he pulled out of the truck and off towards his workshop. The bikes looked great. Well to be honest they looked like two rusty pieces of crap, but they were working rusty pieces of crap, and that was the important point here. Jake switched on each one and turned the engines over to show me that they were indeed running and then went over the basics of how to ride them. Before long, my mind was over-run with information about clutches, brakes, gears and gas, and I just hoped I'd be ablew to keep it all straight once I was actually riding mine.

"So are we going to take them out now?" I asked him, eager to get started.

"Yeah. I checked with charlie a few days ago when I knew I was nearly done and he agreed I counted as someone who knew what they were doing enough to teach you." Jake told me. "You told me you promised him, so I thought I'd best check." I was glad he had. I'd completely forgotten about it in my excitement, and I would've felt dreadful when I remembered.

"Well then let's go." I said, pushing my bike out of the workshop and over to the truck. jake followed behind and lifted them both into the back, making it look even easier then when he lowered them down a few weeks ago, if that's possible, and we headed out.

"So where are we going then?" I asked him as we reached the end of the road.

"Go left here, then we need to get over to the other side of La Push. There's an old loggers track over there that's fairly level, and open, so well be able to ride up and down over there safely." I followed his directions as he gave them, and ten minutes later we were driving along the coast road overlooking the cliffs. As I always did when I drove on this road, I glanced over to catch the view, taking in the impressive waves crashing against the cliffs, and the half naked man that was falling over the edge into the water. Wait.

I slammed on the brakes, throwing Jake and I forward in the cab, and jumped out of the truck yelling

"NO! Oh my God! Oh fuck no. Jake. Someone just fell. I saw him hit the water. We need to call the coast guard and an ambulance. Shit, shit, shit. Where's my phone?" I looked desperately over to Jake for my cell, and was astonished and more than a little disgusted to see him still sitting relaxed in the truck, laughing.

"What the fuck, Jake. It's no joke. I saw someone fall from the cliff. Pass me my phone. NOW" He laughed again.

"Relax, Bells, calm down. He didn't fall. He jumped."

"As if that makes any difference!" I yelled at him. "He'll be just as injured either way. We need to get him some help."

"No, I mean he cliff jumped. You know, for fun? It's something we do around here when the tourists aren't around to try and join in. See look" he pointed back over to the cliffs "there goes another one." My eyes followed his finger all the way up to the top of the cliffs, and there, throwing himself from the edge, was another half naked guy. We watched as he fell, turning a summersault, down, down, down, until he finally straightened into a dive just before he hit the water. Up above, one of the two left on the cliff slapped the other on the back and walked back into the trees, obviously not taking his turn but leaving instead.

"Most of jump from a little lower down, but not those show offs. Sam and his gang just have to do everything one better than everyone else." His tone was bitter and angry. Knowing how he, Quil and Embry all felt about Sam and his friends, I had given up arguing about it with them. We agreed to disagree, and from then on avoided the subject as much as possible. But this time Jake had real animosity in his tone and I wondered what had changed to cause it.

"Have they done something to piss you off, Jake? Only I hear more than your usual dislike there."

"Of course not." He answered, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Sam, Jared, and Paul, and their new little buddy Embry can do what they want. It's no skin off my nose." He hit the dashboard angrily.

"Embry? That's Embry up there with them? What the hell? I thought he was still sick." I said, troubled by what I was hearing.

"He came back to school two days ago." Jake told me. "He was completely freaked out, but refused to ell Quil or I why. Then he hung out with Paul and Jared at lunch, and left with them after school both days, and he won't answer any of our calls. He gets his mom to tell us he's out." He went on, that bitter anger back in his voice. "Looks like Sam's got himself another disciple." I couldn't understand what had happened. Embry had disliked Sam and his friends just as much as Jake and Quil had. But here he was hanging out and messing around with them, suddenly their best buddy, and cutting his two friends who he loved like brothers completely dead. "Probably me too." I thought. "I'd be easier to give up than the others as he's not known me as long." A deep sadness hit me at the loss of Embry as a friend, and I truly felt for Jake and Quil. If I felt this bad, how must they feel?

"You want me to see if I can get him to talk to me? Or ask Sam what's going on?" I offered, climbing back into the truck and giving him a one armed hug across the bench seat. Jake forced a smile.

"Nah. It's not gonna do anyone any good for you to get stuck in the middle, Bells. Neither one of them would give you a straight answer anyway, so you should just leave it. If Embry's any kind of a friend, he'll come explain himself before long." I hoped he was right. He squeezed my hand again and gave me a more natural smile. "Come on now. I don't want today's adventure ruined by all this shit. Lets go ride some two wheeled death machines." I laughed at his description. That's what Charlie called the bikes whenever we discussed them with him. I pulled the truck back onto the road from the lay by where I'd skidded to a halt, and after a few more turns we were at the old logger's trail.

After giving me a recap on everything he'd shown me back at the workshop, I climbed into my bike and kick started it. It took me four tries, but I managed to do it by myself.

"Ok now, Bells. Slow and steady. Keep your feet out to start with, so you can catch yourself if you need to, and give it just a little gas as you slowly release the clutch" he coached me, and I did as he said, the bike gently moving off. Jake jogged along next to me for a few hundred yards until I'd picked up a bit more speed. Growing more confident, I gave the bike a little more gas, and gradually got faster and faster. It wasn't until I was reaching the turn that I realised I was going too fast to make it, and I slammed my right foot on the rear brake, figuring it would be safer, so I wouldn't fly over the handlebars. Unfortunately I was wrong. What actually happened was the rear tyre locked up and I went into a huge skid, finally tumbling from the bike and narrowly avoiding having it fall on top of me. I continued to skid along the floor without the bike, the wet mud slowing me a little, and it was probably this that prevented me from a much worse injury when I finally stopped by smashing head first into a tree stump.

In cartoons, when a character hits their head, they often see stars or little tweeting birds flying around their head. I'd had enough knocks to my head over to the years to know that this is actually not far from the truth. Well the stars part anyway. On this occasion though, it wasn't stars I could see, but flashes of red, fading in and out, almost as if it was dodging between the trees. It looked like fire, jumping from branch to branch, and I watched it, mesmerised, as I dimly registered the sound of another motorcycle approaching. I finally managed to drag my attention from the red flames, and turned my head to see Jake skidding to halt near me and jumping off his bike. I wished I hadn't turned my head immediately. The pain instantly flared, and I felt nauseous, my eyes were proving difficult to focus too. My mind kept attempting to wander off, refusing to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. Q

"Bells? Bella? BELLA?! Are you ok? Did you hit your head? Can you move everything?" He sounded irate, so I gave him a reassuring smile. Or I tried to. I suspected it had come across more as a lazy grin. He began patting down my limbs, running his hands over my legs, looking for injuries.

"Heeeey Jakey." I grinned. "Watcha doooin'?" My voice sounded slow and slurred, like when an old tape player ran out of batteries.

"Just checking you've not broken anything, Bells. Relax. I'm not getting fresh or anything." He gave me a little smile. "You hit your head?"

"Yup." I grinned again. "Haaaard."

"BELLA! You ok? Is she ok? Bella?" I hadn't known Jake could throw his voice like that. It was coming from a few yards behind him.

"That's clever." I slurred. "Do it again." Jake shot me a confused look, then turned to look at something behind him. When he turned back to me he looked more pissed than he had before. Sam's face suddenly floated behind Jake's.

"Bella! Are you ok?" It said.

"No, no, noooo. That's not how you do it. Get Jake to show you how. He can say it without his lips moving." I told Sam's face. "I can see your lips moving. They're pretty. You've got a pretty mouth, Sam's face. It's a shame the rest of you isn't here. I like looking at your cheese grater." I continued, still slurring my words. "No. Wait. I don't mean cheese grater. Hey! Did you see the pretty fire in the trees?" The face, which had been smirking a little at the beginning of my little speech clouded over with worry, and it turned to look at the trees, seeming to almost sniff at the air. Maybe he was trying to smell the smoke. Fire makes smoke. Yeah that must be it.

"She must've hit her head pretty hard." Sam's face told Jake. "We'd better get her to the clinic. My truck's right on the bend there. If I carry her to it, can you ride your bike back to her truck and drive it to meet us there? We can pick her bike up later." Jake looked like he wanted to object, but couldn't think of a good reason. His jaw tensed.

"Fine. But you be careful with her. I'll only be a few minutes behind you. He warned. "Bell's. Sam's gonna drive you to the clinic. I'll meet you there, ok?"

"Silly Jakey. A face can't drive. Sam's face should've brought the rest of him. It's got arms. They're very muscly. They could help." I suggested helpfully. "Also you could grate abs on his cheese. No. That's not right either. Cheese on his abs. That's it. You could cheese abs on his grates." I stated authoritatively. Jake rolled his eyes at me and stood up. The rest of Sam came into view. "Hey, there's the rest of him now." My slurring was getting worse, and I was growing sleepy. My eyelids started to droop. "Now his arms are here, he can drive." I felt Sam pick me up. My head was throbbing badly and I was feeling more and more like I would puke, but the strong, hot arms that lifted me and pulled me into a strong, hot body settled my stomach a little. A musky, woodsy scent filled my nose. It reminded me a little of my steamy, sweaty, naked dream scene, and for a wild moment I wondered if Taha Aki was watching, and about to pop out and tell me to "watch". I forced my eyes open again. "Taha Aki's seen your butt." I told the rest of Sam. "But it's ok, cos you smell good." His footsteps faltered for a moment, like he'd tripped, then settled into a slightly faster rhythm. I nuzzled my face into the crook of his neck and let my eyes drift shut. I was so very tired.

"So do you, Bella, so do you." Sam's face said so quietly I wasn't sure if I'd imagined it. I was falling asleep, barely aware of being quickly, but gently put into a vehicle. "Stay awake now. Keep those pretty eyes open for me, Bella." We'll be at the clinic in just a few minutes." I tried hard to do as I was asked. It was hard though. It felt like weights were attached to my eyelids. I fought hard against the seeping blackness, even though it was very tempting to let its velvety darkness envelope me in lovely, lovely sleep. I was being carried again. I breathed in the wonderful woodsy scent, and once again, the urge to puke receded.

"We're here. Stay awake now. No sleeping." Sam's voice cut through the velvet like a pair of gleaming silver fabric scissors. I once again forced my eyes open, wincing at the pain in my head as the bright lights of the clinic.

A lady was shining a tiny flashlight in my eyes. "Hello, Bella. I'm Sue Clearwater." She told me, switching the flashlight from one eye to the other, then back again.

"Can I go to sleep now please?" I asked her. "I just want a little sleep"

"In a little while. First I need to check you over and take a couple of X-rays. But once I'm done, you can sleep."

The X-rays only took about ten minutes, and after Sue and some guy in a white coat and looked at them, mumbling and gesticulating between themselves, then finally. Finally. I was allowed to sink into the cozy warm, velvety sleep. Just as I drifted off it occurred to me. "Sam never let goff my hand once."