Ever since one Edward Cullen waltzed into my life, it has been utterly, irrevocably fucked.

It all started on my first day of school at Forks High, when he spent a whole Biology class staring at me like he was going to murder me. When I next saw him he became weirdly friendly. Then when he stopped a van from running me over he tried to gaslight into ignoring the evidence that he had done that. He stopped some creeps from attacking me in Port Angeles, and treated me to pasta, which was nice of him I guess.

Eventually I figured out that he is a vampire. He insisted that I must think he is a monster. Bold of him to tell me what I think, when I am the one person whose mind he cannot read. In fact I was quite enamored with the possibility of becoming a vampire myself. Becoming invulnerable? Immortal? Graceful? Hell, sign me up!

Edward on the other hand made preserving my humanity his #1 mission. The most poignant exhibit of this was when I went to watch his family play baseball, and ended up pursued and bitten by a deranged nomad vampire. Long story. The important bit of it is, that while his brothers were busy actually fighting the threat, all Edward could think of was sucking the venom out of my wound to prevent me from changing.

Thus I was still a vulnerable human when I turned 18 that summer. Edward's sister Alice, my "best friend", had insisted on throwing me a very unwanted birthday party. Did I mention yet that my blood smells especially tempting to vampires? Or that to Edward it smells so irresistibly delicious that I am his so-called singer which he is instinctually driven to kill on first sight. Or that Edward's brother Jasper, the least in control of the bunch, has an empathic ability that makes him feel everything the rest feel. Anyway, not a good climate in which to get a papercut on the wrapping of one of the presents at that damn party. Worse to be thrown into a stack of glass plates by your overprotective idiot boyfriend. He claims Jasper was going to take a bite out of me, but I don't know what to believe anymore.

What I do know is that Edward proceeded to break up with me in the worst way possible. Just days after the party he took me into the forest, convinced me I was worthless, and basically left me for dead. What followed were months of depression. Eventually my friends at the La Push reservation managed to drag me out of it and I became alive again. Until my best friend among them, Jacob, turned his back on me as well. While this was later explained when I found out that he had become a werewolf, it destroyed me at the time.

The Cullens eventually returned to my life, to make me fix one of their messes of course. Alice had seen a vision of me diving of a cliff and disappearing. Not knowing that it was safe and for fun, or that the wolves block Alice's vision, Edward assumed that I died and decided to handle that by goading the vampire police into killing him.

Alice carted me off to Volterra to prove to him that I was still alive. It worked, with the added bonus that the Volturi kings learned that I know the secrets of their world. That meant I would have to be turned into a vampire, no matter what Edward had to say about it.

Edward kept stalling though. He actually insisted that I marry him first. That is when I broke down. After all that he put me through, he would make me marry him before allowing me to be turned? Which remember, I would have to be under threat of death by the Volturi guard.

So this time, I broke up with Him.

Also, I decided it might not be so bad to stall my change a bit, now that Edwards age no longer factored into the equation. The appeal of remaining forever seventeen had been to be so together with Edward. On my own, I have zero intention of repeating high school over and over again. If I waited a few years, until I was in my early twenties, I would be able to convincingly pull off a much wider age range. I would not stand out on a college campus, but also be able to hold a job or start my own company. Plus, it would definitely be easier on my poor father to wait with disappearing until I was already off to college.

Moreover, while I hated aging I found that I did not mind maturing. If I was to be frozen at one age forever, I could do without the teenage mood swings. Actually I wondered how much of Edwards irrational behavior could be attributed to the young age at which he was changed. I decided that my brains deserved a bit more time to develop. The only one in the Cullen family with a fully developed prefrontal cortex was Esme who became a vampire at 26, and occasionally it shows.

And thus we ended up here. After Alice and I hauled Edward back from Volterra, the Cullens returned to Forks. Despite me having dumped Edward, the family was beholden to change me per the orders of the Volturi kings.

With my future position in the family secured, I still spend as much time at the Cullen house as when I was dating Edward. Now that he no longer hovers over me and monopolizes my time, I have been able to grow much closer to the other vampires.

Only my former best friend Alice is the notable exception. To my great disappointment she has sided with Edward. When it became clear that I would not take him back she never forgave me. I am also irked by how cold she has been to her husband Jasper. She seems to blame him for setting off all the events through the mishap at my 18th birthday party. I never blamed him, and repeatedly, loudly forgave him, but the censure of his mate weighs heavily on the empath.

She is the only Cullen I am on poor terms though, other than Edward whom I largely manage to ignore.

Carlisle and Esme have quickly become more my parents than my real ones ever were. I had previously loved Renee, but I have always been more her parent than the other way around. Now that I am experiencing for the first time what it is like to be able to fully rely on an adult, resentment for her pushing too much responsibility on me is quickly overtaking the happy memories we have. I equally resent her for taking away what I could have had with Charlie. He had been so sweet when I moved in with him, but after missing most of my childhood we never managed to bond deeply, and now that I am neck deep in the supernatural world I need to keep my distance to protect him. Carlisle has stepped in though. Where Esme dotes on me, he is my rock. We talk, about my dreams, my ambitions, my plans for the future.

Emmett has solidified his position as the big brother I always wanted. We play stupid games together, prank the family and cause general mayhem wherever we go. There is a growing list of house rules, the majority of which Carlisle and Esme had to make up after one of our adventures went south. However, they are not as strict as they could be, and I believe they appreciate the joy we bring to the family. Emmett's long-suffering wife Rosalie also fondly endures every antic, especially since she is never targeted by our pranks.

In fact, while Rosalie remains aloof she seems to have developed a grudging respect for me. One evening she told me her story, how she had been brutally attacked and left for dead by her former fiancé and his gang of goons. She explained that much of her problem with me had been the way I let Edward walk all over me and decide my every choice for me. It still hurts her that I decided to give up my humanity, but now that the Volturi decree has made it inevitable she is much more welcoming. One thing we bonded over is mechanics, which I had actually become quite good at and passionate about after all of Jacob's lessons on motorcycle repair last year. She often voluntarily invites me into the garage, her domain. While my skill is nothing to hers, she appreciates my enthusiasm and patiently explains whatever she does. She has recently deemed me worthy of helping with maintenance on Jasper's motorcycle, which I love not in the least because this forms the bulk of the precious little time I get to spend with this particular family member.

Jasper namely remains firmly under Alice's thumb. Like her Edward never forgave him for the papercut incident on my birthday, and he and Alice collaborate to keep him out of my way. No matter how many times I have tried to convince him that I do not consider him at fault for that mess, the accusations of his family keep weighing him down and he follows their orders. When we are in the same room he barely talks so he does not have to breathe in my presence. When sitting with us in the garage however, he radiates a quiet contentedness.

Spending more time with the older siblings has solidified my conviction that I want to be turned at a later age. As they graduated high school last year and are now allegedly away at college, they have a lot of free time for their own pursuits. Rosalie buys vintage cars, fixes them up and resells them at a ridiculously high profit. Emmett, who is apparently really good with computers, is contributing to some really cool open source software development projects. Jasper has been writing a history book about the civil war, and while he does not really talk about it he sometimes lets me proofread sections.

This is a future I can see for myself in a much more concrete way than I ever imagined when I was with Edward. Eternity to enjoy the love of my family and contribute something meaningful to the world. A few years of patience and this life would be mine.

Author's note: Oh deary I got sucked back into the Twilight fandom. Well enjoy this bit of insanity that is part worldbuilding, part crack and part luvvv. In this house we do not support Edward Cullen being a creepy stalker. At present I have about 12k words of material that I am editing. Probably the fic will turn out 20-30k words long if I have the perseverance to work out the full plotline that I have in mind.