This chapter takes place on Monday, January 17, 2005 (Martin Luther King Day) when there is no school due to it being a federal holiday in both Washington and Arizona states, so it would correspond to part of the chapter "First sight" in the original novel. The entire beginning is almost identical up to the paragraph I have marked with an asterisk (*).
Translation's Note: This fanfiction has been translated from Spanish with the help of Google's tool. If you want to read more, click on my fics in Spanish and use the English translation function of the web browser.
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CHAPTER 1:
Burdened
My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was an anorak.
On the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington State, there is a small town called Forks, where the sky is almost always overcast. It rains more days in a row in this insignificant town than anywhere else in the United States. My mother ran away with me from that place and its dark, everlasting shadows when I was just a few months old.
I had been forced to spend a month there every summer until I finally got my act together when I turned fourteen, so instead, for the past three years, Charlie, my father, had spent his two-week vacation with me in sunny California.
And now I was exiling myself to Forks, an act that terrified me, since I hated the place.
I loved Phoenix. I loved the sunshine, the scorching heat, and the vibrancy of a city that stretched out in every direction.
"Bella" Mom told me for the umpteenth time before boarding the plane, "You don't have to do this."
My mother and I look a lot alike, except for the short hair and laugh lines. I had a panic attack when I looked into her big, naive eyes. How could I let her fend for herself, she who was so loving and capricious and scatterbrained? She had Phil now, of course, so the bills would probably be paid, there would be food in the fridge and gas in the car, and she could call on him when she was lost, but still...
"I just want to go," I lied. I'd always been terrible at lying, but I'd told that lie so often over the past few months that it almost sounded convincing to other people now.
"Say hello to Charlie for me," she said with resignation.
"Yes, I will."
"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want. I'll be back as soon as you need me."
But in her eyes I saw the sacrifice it would take to keep a promise like that.
"Don't worry about me," I said. "Everything will be fine. I love you, Mom."
She hugged me tightly for a minute, then I got on the plane and she left.
To get to Forks I had a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, and from there to Port Angeles another hour by plane and another hour by car. I don't mind flying, as long as I didn't have a window seat where I could watch the runway roll by, but I was a little worried about spending that whole hour in the car with Charlie.
Charlie had actually taken it all pretty well. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was going to be living with him on a more or less permanent basis for the first time. He had already enrolled me in high school and said he was going to help me buy a car.
But I was convinced that I was going to feel uncomfortable in his company for that hour. Neither of us were very talkative, and I didn't have anything to tell him anyway. I knew that my decision made him a little confused, since, like my mother, I had never hidden my dislike of Forks.
It was raining when the plane landed in Port Angeles. I didn't consider it a bad omen, it was just inevitable. I had already said goodbye to the sun when I took off from Sky Harbor International.
Charlie was already waiting for me in the patrol car, which didn't surprise me since it was the only car he had. To the good people of Forks, Charlie was always "Police Chief Swan" at their service. One of the pillars of the community. The main reason I wanted to buy my own car, despite my meager savings, was that I absolutely refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on the roof. Nothing slows down traffic faster than a cop.
Charlie awkwardly hugged me with one arm as I stumbled down the steps of the plane.
"I'm glad to see you, Bella," he said with a smile as he held me firmly. "You've hardly changed. How's Renée?"
"Mom is fine, she says hi. I'm so glad to see you too, Dad" I couldn't call Charlie to his face.
I had only a few suitcases. Most of my Arizona clothes were too light to carry into Washington. My mother and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but even so, there was little suitable warm clothing to be found in the Phoenix stores. All of it fit easily into the trunk of the patrol car.
"I've found a perfect car for you, and it's very cheap," he announced once we were fastened with our seat belts.
"What kind of car?"
I was immediately suspicious of the way she said "a perfect car for you" instead of just "a perfect car." I've always been good at picking up on nuances and reading between the lines. Or maybe I'm just very persnickety.
"Well, it's a pickup truck, a Chevy to be exact."
I didn't speak Car and Driver lingo, but I could clearly recognize the brand. It could have been a "classic", an extinct dinosaur, or a more modern model.
"Where did you find it?"
At a foreclosure auction? In a junkyard about to be turned into a steel cube? At the bottom of a ravine? From Charlie's slightly sour pout and poor attempt at a poker face, my expectations were plummeting.
"Do you remember Billy Black, the one who lived in La Push?"
La Push is a small Indian reservation located on the coast, west of Forks.
"No."
"He used to come fishing with us during the summer," he explained.
That's why I didn't remember him. I'm good at forgetting painful and unnecessary things. Charlie used the majestic plural even though the one time I'd fished with him I'd nearly torn off his ear with a hook due to my clumsy casting. A memory he'd obviously repressed as well.
"He's in a wheelchair now, Charlie continued when I didn't respond, so he can't drive, and his wife, Sarah, offered to sell me his truck for a bargain."
"What year is it?"
From the way his face changed, I knew it was the question he didn't want to hear.
"Well, Billy and his son have done a lot of work on the engine. It's not really that old either."
I hoped he didn't think so little of me that I would just let the subject drop.
"When did you buy it?"
"In 1984... I think."
"And it was new then?"
"Not really. I think it was new in the early sixties, or maybe late fifties, he confessed shyly.
"Dad, please! I don't know anything about cars!" Checking the oil level and topping up the cooling system with water was the most I had been able to learn in Phoenix. "I couldn't fix it if it broke down and I can't afford to pay for a mechanic."
"Not at all, Bella, the thing works like a charm. They don't make them that good these days.
The thing I repeated to myself. At least it had potential as a nickname.
"And what do you mean by cheap?"
After all, that was the point on which I was not going to budge.
"Well, honey, I already bought it for you as a housewarming gift."
Charlie looked at me from the corner of his eye, his face expectant.
Wow.
Free.
"You didn't have to do that, Dad. I was going to buy a car" I managed to say, amazed.
"I don't care. I want you to feel comfortable here."
Charlie kept his eyes fixed on the road as he spoke. He felt uncomfortable expressing his emotions out loud. I had inherited that from him, so I was also looking at the road when I answered him:
"That's great, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it."
Needless to say, I found it impossible to be comfortable in Forks, but he didn't have to suffer with me. And don't look a gift horse in the mouth or the engine.
"Well, you're welcome." he muttered, embarrassed by my words of thanks.
We exchanged a few more comments about the weather, which was wet, and that was basically the end of the conversation. We looked out the windows in silence.
The scenery was beautiful, of course, there was no denying that. It was postcard-worthy, which was as close to this place as I could have ever stood in the past. Everything was green: the trees, the moss-covered trunks, the canopy of branches hanging from them, the ground covered in ferns. Even the air filtering through the leaves had a hint of green to it.
It was too green, an alien planet.
(*)
"I think you've taken the wrong turn" I exclaimed when we finally saw the front of a house that looked unfamiliar to me. The street looked exactly the same as in my memories, from when I was last in Forks, that August of 2001 when I decided not to return. But a strange residence had been planted where the old and ill-fated home that awaited me had once been. Charlie smiled modestly as he turned the wheel and parked the car in the front yard.
It was the same house, at least in its proportions, but so altered that it almost seemed like another one.
Instead of clapboard siding, yellowed and worn to a dirty gray, there were boards and boards of soft, caramel-colored wood. And, as if that weren't enough, the windows seemed much more spacious and elegant, with a Victorian touch, including the one in my bedroom, if it was still there, which had been replaced by a large circular window divided in two, from which one could easily see the whole road by which we had come. Peeking over the edge of the south facade, a lattice of steel bars supported some climbing plants that I hadn't expected to flourish in this gloomy climate, but which seemed to have grown a great deal in the perennial humidity.
It had gone from being a ready-made set for a horror movie, the typical lonely, creepy house of a serial killer who lives with the mummified corpses of his hamsters, to becoming a revamped remake of Little House on the Prairie.
"I told you I did renovations," Charlie replied, letting out a brief chuckle at my stunned expression and the questions I couldn't formulate. My mouth must have been hanging open because I couldn't get my jaw back into place, and I couldn't feel it, either, as if I had been anesthetized by the dentist's Novocain.
Yeah, I remembered that conversation. Like so many others we had once or twice a week on the phone, where we talked about a lot of trivial things (the weather, oddly, was our only taboo subject) during the few minutes in which we both pretended to be an ordinary family. Charlie mentioned that he had made a few arrangements and suggested, before school break began, that I come to Forks to see him on the Independence Day long weekend this year.
He had even tried to renegotiate our time down to just one week!
But I had simply assumed that he would have replaced the linoleum in the kitchen, put in a proper shower head in the bathtub, or finally fixed that annoying creaking step on the staircase.
Nothing of relevance.
So I had completely rejected his proposal and we ended up traveling to a small California town called Santa Mira, north of San Francisco. I didn't want a week of shadows away from the sun... I bit my tongue to suppress a few tears of rage at the irony of that day, and to recover from the shock, before getting out of the patrol car and taking the smallest suitcase I had left in front of the door.
I should have sensed that Charlie, like I often did with my mother, had downplayed it in an unhealthy way. I was sure he wanted to avoid putting pressure on me. And he had given in to my whim for fear that I would tell him I never wanted to see him again. My stomach turned at the thought of how much all those repairs and the beach vacation must have cost him together.
"Come on, come quickly!" Charlie urged me cheerfully from the entrance, while he carried the rest of my suitcases, which he had already taken out before me because of my delay. "What do you think?" he added, turning on the lights in the hall.
My eyes blinked dazzled, perhaps trying to retain for that brief moment the image I still had in my memory of that place that I had thought was unalterable, but reality hit me with the harsh intensity of the new halogens.
Everything seemed much larger than the exterior dimensions could encompass. Or perhaps in my stupefied state I felt strangely reduced back to the mental height I had at thirteen. Not many of the partitions remained in their original locations, I suppose only a few of the main pillars and load-bearing walls had survived the carnage. Charlie had also gotten rid of most of the doors, widening the doorframe into a crescent-shaped oval. The walls, the wooden floors, and even the welcome mat were various shades of brown, ochre, soft orange, and burnt yellow, instead of the hideous pistachio-green wallpaper that kept peeling off in the humidity.
I followed Charlie in bewilderment when I couldn't locate the flight of stairs that had always been part of the backbone of the house. My heart sank when I realized he'd replaced them with a spiral staircase at the southernmost end of the building, adding more windows that illuminated areas that had been in shadow for nearly eighteen years.
I was a little discouraged at the thought of all the stumbles and falls that awaited me, so I held on tightly to the bronze handrail on the outside edge, which fortunately seemed strong enough to support thirty or so Bellas.
Climbing up to the first floor was a shorter trip than I'd needed to calm myself. Luckily I still had the bedroom on the west side, the one overlooking the front yard, but I took a breath before crossing the threshold Charlie waved at me. I knew the room well; it had been mine since birth. It was all part of my childhood and I couldn't recognize it now. Two different shades of sienna, painted on opposite walls, had replaced the dreary blue paint, and the gabled ceiling shone with the purest white of the new paint, which I could still smell and even taste, illuminated by a line of lights that crisscrossed it like fishing net.
"I hope you like it, Bella" Charlie said as I took in the sight of the new bed. The old, limp-sprung cot had been replaced by a three-quarter bed. Even the old-fashioned, yellowed lace curtains had been replaced by a silk screen printed in amber hues with a dandelion motif. White lacquered aluminum Venetian blinds, now fully drawn, would help on the rare days of blazing summer sun.
Only two things seemed to remain exactly the same as before my departure:
One was the desk that had occupied the former spot of my crib and on which was a secondhand computer: an ovoid, tangerine-colored iMac, very similar to the one I had in Phoenix, and which I had not been able to bring with me because it would never pass the airport check-in, although this one looked much less hectic. Attached to one side was the modem cable stapled to the floor to the nearest telephone jack. My mother had arranged it that way so that we could easily stay in touch.
The second thing that had more or less survived this whirlwind of renovations was the old rocking chair that had belonged to me since I was a child and still faithfully sat in the same corner. But it had been sanded and varnished several times so that, although it looked like an antique piece with a century of patina, it fit like a glove into the new atmosphere of the room…
An atmosphere that disturbed me wherever I looked, it wasn't just the light and the color.
For example, in the detail of the large oil painting above the headboard of the bed, which showed a panoramic view of the Sonoran Desert National Park with its tiny purple mountains on the horizon. Everything reminded me of my little corner of Arizona that I had left just a few hours ago, a piece of my home that filled my heart with homesickness.
This is too much! My head was spinning, it was almost as if someone had surreptitiously crept into the deepest corners of my mind to find my secret happy place.
I didn't deserve it.
"I have no words," I had to resort to the most common euphemism in history, when I noticed the dull longing emitted by Charlie's expectant silence. There has always been a strange non-verbal communication between us that I have never managed to share with my mother. "It's magnificent!" I added, half lying, trying to put together a cheerful, committed face.
One of the great things about Charlie was that he never hovered around you. He left my room when he sensed I needed some personal space and left me alone to unpack and settle in, a feat that would have been impossible for my mother, who would be buzzing around me excitedly the whole time.
I closed the door, threw my backpack onto the soft mattress with a hint of fury, and sat down quickly in the rocking chair. I half expected it to feel different, but I was comforted that, while my trembling feet shook me back and forth from nerves, with the tics of a madwoman in a psychiatric hospital, I could recover something of myself in that point that seemed the epicenter from which to begin my new life.
I could do it.
A year and a half.
Eighteen months.
Then, God willing, some university in the Southeast, or maybe Hawaii, would offer me a scholarship. I focused my mind on sunny beaches and palm trees while imagining myself swinging in a hammock with the sound of the waves in the background and the warmth on my skin…
Charlie unexpectedly shattered my brief bubble of serenity into a thousand pieces.
"I'll take my shaving stuff downstairs to the bathroom," he said as I heard the clatter of plastic and metal jars hitting porcelain. "You can have this one all to yourself in the mornings, Honey."
I stopped rocking and squeezed my eyes shut against the vertigo. I had to put my fist in my mouth to stop myself from moaning and screaming.
But now we have two! I said myself, mortified once again by that feeling of self-loathing.
I didn't deserve such consideration from you. No...
Living with Charlie on holiday had always been a bit of a challenge, and one of the main reasons had been that tiny bathroom at the top of the stairs, which we had to share. If it was already strange that we barely knew each other, waking up every morning, fearing some "embarrassing moment" on our respective parts, made it surreal. It got worse as I left childhood and reached adolescence, with all its complications, obvious to any woman, but not to Charlie.
Putting a lock on it had never solved the underlying problem.
I took a deep breath and tried not to think about it any longer. Rationalizing had become a mental sport for me, with many hours of practice.
I'll take whatever comes my way I thought, opening my eyes after calming down. Charlie might have been having a midlife crisis and one afternoon, while zapping through his favorite games on TV, he'd come across a reality show about renovations and impulsively decided it was time to fix up his house and turn it into something halfway decent. All things considered, he hadn't been like others his age who slathered on self-tanner, whitened their teeth and bought a sports car to show off to young girls on the beach.
But, in reality, he had bought a car...
Of course, that was the exact moment when I had to hear a honk. I sensed, in a kind of twisted premonition, that it was the prelude to my next torment:
The thing.
The nickname promised slowness, placid and welcome slowness.
I jumped out of the rocking chair in such a quick leap that I almost fall down, and I almost hit my nose when I folded the screen awkwardly in my haste.
I got a surprise, not as overwhelming as the previous ones. Two vehicles were coming in a convoy down Fern Hill Street, the first one was an old turquoise blue Volkswagen van that I had ridden in before during my trips to La Push Beach. As a child, it always reminded me of the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine, although with much more rounded edges. It belonged to another of Charlie's old friends, whose name I hadn't wanted to remember, of course.
Next, actually quite a distance away, was what I assumed would be my new pickup truck – well, new to me. The vehicle was a faded red, with big round fenders and a bulbous-looking cab. To my great surprise, I loved how beat up it looked. It seemed like the perfect counterpoint to this unreal moment – I could imagine myself behind the wheel of this cart, its engine audible from this distance. It was one of those solid iron models that never gets damaged, the kind of car you see in a traffic accident with its paint intact and surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it just wrecked.
Tomorrow seemed a lot less terrifying now. I wouldn't be faced with the choice between walking two miles in the rain to school or letting the police chief drive me in his patrol car.
Charlie had already left to greet the entourage, so I hurried down the spiral staircase as quickly as I could to properly introduce myself. There were six of them. They were all from the Indian reservation, and though I tried to remember their names, associating them with their dark-skinned faces in flashes of memory, all I could see was the smiling face of Sarah Black, whom I recognized by the large dimples she always sported when she saw me, while the youngest kid pulled a wheelchair out of the back of the Chevy and unfolded it.
"You've grown so much, little girl!" Sarah said before giving me a bear hug as I carelessly moved within her reach. "It's so good that you're here!"
Yes, she had always been that effusive. But I felt a little relieved to be able to remember her as she had been.
"Hello, everyone" I said discreetly, with a wave of my hand, when I managed to free myself and examine them more closely. I was finally able to name those who had gotten out of the Volkswagen: the married couple formed by Harry and Sue Clearwater, accompanied by a unknown-for-me young woman whom I assumed was their eldest daughter and whom I was quite sure I hadn't only heard about.
She didn't look like the long-haired twin Black daughters I'd tried to entertain during my summers in Forks, and who I also only remembered as having matching or alliterative names. She was beautiful in an exotic way, with perfect copper skin, short, neck-length hair as sparkling as a raven's plumage, and those long, feather-duster-like eyelashes; she seemed far more worried and anxious than I was. But while I wished the earth would swallow me up if I got any of her names wrong, she was clearly upset by this brief social gathering.
She kept glancing indiscreetly at his watch.
"You're finally here, Bella" Billy exclaimed when he finally sat down and could look me up and down.
Despite the years, I recognized Billy's booming voice easily. The sound of it made me feel suddenly younger, like a child. He looked just as I remembered, with his broad cheeks that seemed to reach down to his shoulders and wrinkles that creased his ruddy skin like a worn leather jacket. His eyes seemed at the same time too young and too old for that broad face. It was disconcerting to have to look down, since he had always been as tall as Charlie.
"Charlie hasn't talked to us about anything else since he found out you were coming," he added jokingly, to put us in a difficult position.
"Don't exaggerate," he murmured, his ears turning a little scarlet, while I felt my cheeks begin to swell with warm blood. It was another thing we had in common; we had always been the butt of bad jokes that embarrassed us.
There was some more commentary among the adults at my expense, reminiscing about visits I'd made to the reservation in the old days and some of my more notorious mishaps, but all the chatter and laughter cooled when it began to drizzle and the Clearwaters' daughter grew impatient:
"Come on, Mom, Sarah!" she urged, tapping her foot and folding her arms defensively. "We have to hurry. Sam's mother must have arrived at Beth Crowley's by now, to see if the dress has been altered."
"Dress? THE dress." A shiver ran through my body as I guessed what kind of dress it was that had her upset. I was still suffering from post-traumatic stress symptoms from the five weeks of preparation for my mother and Phil's wedding.
"Leah, don't be so rude," Sue Clearwater chided. "Would you like to come with us?" she said, addressing me with all her good intentions, thinking that a girly plan would cheer me up. But I was already swamped with wedding matters for the next decade and didn't know how to get out of this awkward predicament. The glance from the bride-to-be, which I caught over her shoulder, made it clear that I wasn't invited.
"Or would you rather I show you how this pile of junk works?" the young kid said jokingly when he saw me so overwhelmed, giving the side of the car a loud thump. I half expected some part, one of the hubcaps or the side mirror, to fall off from the smashed state of the thing. But everything stayed in place.
"Yes, yes, please," I half-stammered, grateful for the excuse of being able to take shelter in the Chevy as the rain threatened to get heavier.
Charlie, Billy and Harry were talking about the basketball game that was being played tomorrow between the Nuggets and the Sonics, I had no fucking idea which one they were supposed to be going with, and they let me pass by laughing without paying much attention to me.
I never, ever, ever get into cars with strangers, but if Charlie gave him his blessing, it must have been because the kid was completely trustworthy.
"Thanks, ehh…" I muttered as I took the driver's seat and he closed the door.
"You don't remember my name, do you?" he clarified what was more than obvious with a half smile and a slight frown.
He had a gentle, husky voice. Judging by his appearance he must have been fourteen, maybe fifteen. His long, glossy hair was tied back with a rubber band at the nape of his neck. He had lovely, silky, reddish skin and dark eyes set high above his cheekbones. There was still a hint of the roundness of his childhood around his chin. All in all, he had a very pretty face that looked very much like her mother's.
But it was a face that I couldn't quite put a name to.
"I'm sorry, it's just on the tip of my tongue" I said, clasping my hands together in a poor sign of apology. "I should probably remember you."
I didn't want to add that I didn't remember the names of his sisters either.
I was the worst.
"Well, maybe I can refresh your memory," he said, putting his hand to his chin in a gesture of obvious feigned thoughtfulness. "You once helped me build a sand and pebble castle on the beach when I was nine."
I remembered the castle, and how it had crumbled into a pile of muddy puddles when it had started to rain. I remembered how it had made me sad, and how I had thought of it as an allegory for my time in Forks. Depressing and pointless, no matter how hard I tried. But I didn't remember that kid, and I didn't think I would have made any impression on him after all this time.
I shrugged slightly, embarrassed.
"As I'm the youngest, you never paid attention to me," he muttered dejectedly. "You should remember my older sisters much better."
"Rachel and Rebecca," I suddenly remembered. "And you're Jacob, right?"
His face lit up with a smile from ear to ear, which dug deep dimples into his cheeks, confirming it.
Of course! Biblical names! I was almost ready to say it out loud. But it would have been highly offensive if I had used a mnemonic trick to associate their names with their mother's, as if it were a high school exam or a TV game show.
"My... that purrs!" I said loudly, trying to be heard over the clatter, as I started the engine with the key on the first try. It was a relief that it worked. "Or should I say, it roars?" I added with a restrained smile at the racket. Well, a truck that old had to have some defect.
"More like it's tuberculous" Jacob contradicted me, rolling his eyes. He then immediately pointed to my left. "There's a trick to it, you have to step on the pedal twice in quick succession to shift into gear."
I immediately turned on the heater as instructed and a faint smell of tobacco, petrol and mint gum filled the cabin as it warmed up. It was obvious that Sarah or Jacob had cleaned it thoroughly, but the upholstery was a mess.
Since the bride, Leah, was showing signs of impatience, I backed off, drove a short distance, and let them drive away in the Volkswagen. Since I had mostly been a passenger in cars, I didn't know the streets of Forks and didn't really know of any places I wanted to go. So, as always, I made the most practical decision:
"Can you please direct me to the school?" I asked Jacob as we were almost off the winding Fern Hill Road. After all, this was the route I was going to have to take the most times in the coming months.
"Errrrrrrr…" the vibrant consonant stuck in his mouth. Then he added, a little embarrassed. "I think it goes to… the right."
He didn't say it very convincingly.
"I go to the reserve institute, it's much closer to me," he excused himself this time.
"Oh, that's a shame. I would have preferred to meet someone there tomorrow in advance," I exclaimed, unusually sincere, biting my lower lip out of nerves.
It was easy to spot the entrance to the school even though neither of us had been there before. Like most everything else in town, it was located off the main road or on one of the side streets. It wasn't obvious that it was a school, we only stopped in front of the sign that indicated that it was Forks High School because we were able to spot it in time.
I took a brief look into the distance at what would be my personal plot of hell for the next year and a half:
It looked like a set of holiday exchange houses built of maroon bricks. There were so many trees and bushes that at first I couldn't see it all. Where was the prison-like atmosphere of a typical high school? I wondered wistfully. Where were the barbed wire fences and metal detectors?
I continued to make my way to the gas station slowly, at the pace of a healthy tortoise, to fill up the tank cautiously, trying out all the things I saw on the rickety dashboard, like a little girl with a new toy. The old-fashioned radio worked, an added bonus I hadn't expected.
I just can't get you out of my head
Boy, it's more than I dare to think about
I would later adjust the presets to my taste, or rather my lack of taste in particular, but for now I could settle for a conventional pop station.
There's a dark secret in me
Don't leave me locked in your heart
Jacob remained in a dull silence with a confused expression on his face and his shoulders slumped.
"You don't mind that Charlie bought me this truck, do you?" I asked, seeing him looking oddly dazed, his gaze fixed unblinkingly on the stereo.
Set me freeeee
Feel the need in meeee
Maybe he was dejected because he thought I had stolen his future means of transport. If so, I should talk to Charlie and Billy about it so they would change their minds. I could bear it if he drove me around in a patrol car like a common criminal.
It would certainly be a topic of conversation in one way or another.
Set me freeeeeeStay forever, and ever, and ever, and ever
"Are you okay?" I insisted, worried by his paralysis.
My question brought him out of his trance and he jumped in his seat, coming back to the present.
La-la-la, la la la la la La-la-la, la la la la la
"No, don't worry, Bella" he laughed. "Seriously, I breathed a sigh of relief when Charlie bought it. Dad wouldn't have let me go work on building another car while we had one in perfect condition. It's just that…"
La-la-la, la la la la la La-la-la, la la la la la
"Just that, what? "I was intrigued by the fact that he bit his tongue, figuratively speaking. He didn't strike me as being as circumspect and diplomatic as I was.
La-la-la, la la la la la La-la-la, la la la la la
Jacob shook his head slightly as if he was trying to get rid of an idea. He remained in that somewhat ominous silence until that cheesy song ended and another much more powerful one began to vibrate the cabin.
"I think I've had one of those French things," he said, seeing my stunned expression, inexcusably clearing up. "That weird thing where you remember something from the present as if you'd already dreamed or seen it."
"Déjà vu?" I wasn't sure that was the right word either.
Now I feel like breaking lawsGo on start a civil war
"It must be because I didn't sleep until very late last night, I was trying to get this old thing ready." He gave a short, dry, humorless laugh.
Here's my fist, where's the fight?Your world is collapsing tonight
I smiled as I saw that he had downplayed the situation and put it right into that truck.
I wanna make some noise, alright, alright
I wanna drop some bombs, alright, alright
I turned the music down to almost minimum volume as I noticed that Jacob thought he recognized the next song, his eyes widening. It was most likely nothing more than a greatest hits playlist that was repeated on a loop every day.
"So you build cars…" I commented, impressed.
I wasn't trying to be condescending, or sarcastic. But I wasn't sure how my remark must have sounded to him. I was a mess at communicating with other people. My mother had advised me to practice recording my voice on a cassette, but it was awful to hear myself say things out loud.
"When I have free time and spare parts," Jacob admitted more focused. "Right now I'm working on an 1986 Volkswagen Rabbit." He smiled again.
"But do you already have a driver's license? "I joked, this time knowing that he was a little younger than me.
He looked so like he had swallowed a toad, with warts and all the mud of a swamp, that I couldn't help but get more excited.
It was very entertaining.
"I just turned fifteen," he confessed sensitively. "But I'm very tall for my age."
"I'm a dwarf compared to mine," I admitted, sighing theatrically.
We burst into uproarious laughter as he brought the thing to a stop just below the gas station awning. I was pleased to see that Jacob hadn't been stingy with the brakes, they stopped us so suddenly that if we hadn't been wearing seatbelts our teeth would have been embedded in the old wooden dashboard.
I looked out the glass window to make sure the clouds and rain were still turning the skies gray, because for some incredible reason the day felt brighter. Normally I would have had a hard time starting such a relaxed conversation in Phoenix, even with high school friends I had known for years, but with Jacob I felt strangely at ease, as if he were someone endearingly familiar.
A sort of distant cousin whom I hadn't seen for a long time.
It must have been his resemblance to his mother, Sarah Black, who had always been the only ray of sunshine in this place for me. It was the thing I regretted most about not coming to Forks anymore.
I had no uncles, my parents were only children, and my grandparents were dead… No, I'm wrong, I must still have a maternal grandfather somewhere in New Mexico whom I had never met and whose name I didn't even know. So Charlie's three childhood friends, who also served as witnesses at his wedding, were like a handy substitute. My mother didn't have such deep-rooted friendships, because due to her extroverted and absent-minded nature they tended to remain temporary acquaintances, who came and went through our lives as if it were a parade.
Jacob warned me, when I turned off the engine and we went inside to pay for the fuel, that the battery had two newscasts left and that I shouldn't leave the radio on for too long or I might be stranded on the road.
"I'm sorry It going so slow" he lamented with a grimace of mortification, leaning on the hood and fiddling with a rock on the ground to distract himself. "I couldn't have done better."
"It's not that slow," I said deferentially, then added, to clear his guilt, "I love it just the way it is. It's working just fine."
"That's because you haven't gone over sixty miles per hour yet," Jacob muttered, his head down, as I fitted the hose into the tank. "The engine does some crazy things when you put it in top gear."
"I can survive without putting it in fourth" I said.
"And the cooling system doesn't work properly, so if you go anywhere hot, it's going to fry..."Jacob sounded like a sorry sinner confessing all his faults in a church. He wouldn't have been good as a used car salesman.
"Hey, hey!" I waved my hands at him. "I like it slow, Jacob. Really." I suddenly had a burst of sincerity. "I don't like speed, you know, roller coasters and airplanes and sports cars. I prefer to go at a pace I can handle. So, thank you very much."
Jacob perked up and let out a sigh of relief, sitting up straight at the praise.
I wanted to cut this conversation short, because I didn't know if he was somehow implying that I would leave Forks in the middle of the night like my mother did. He also didn't have to know that my biggest fear was passing out on a carnival ride and rocketing out of my seat.
I found it embarrassing to admit my weaknesses to people, like how I couldn't stand being pricked with needles or how the smell of blood made me nauseous. Not because I had some kind of exaggerated sense of vanity to keep them hidden.
They must have just seemed terribly boring and insignificant to them.
"I had my birthday last Friday," Jacob said as we finished refueling and headed back to Charlie's house. "We would have brought you a piece of cake, but my dad ate it," he added, not noticing my poker face. Birthdays weren't my favorite subject. "Mom tells him to cut back on the sugar a little bit."
"What was it about?" I pretended to be interested, although my voice sounded tight.
"A blueberry trifle with pastry cream and lemon jelly."
I didn't want to drool on the seats but I couldn't help but salivate a little at the thought.
"I'm not missing it next year," I said in such a lame manner that Jacob looked at me sideways with his eyebrow raised. It wasn't that I was thinking of leaving Forks, I didn't really have anywhere else, but giving and receiving gifts was a real pain for me.
I can always give him an envelope with some money, like at a Bar Mitzvah I decided pragmatically, recomposing my smile so that he would abandon his disbelief.
He changed the subject immediately, perhaps suspecting that he had hit a snag, and began to explain what had become of her older sisters with whom we had shared many afternoons on the beach while Charlie and Billy fished. I had never been able to make much progress in our friendship because we were too shy and also because I think they considered me a burden, as if they had to babysit for those long hours.
"Rachel has a scholarship from Washington State and Rebecca married a Samoan surfer she met at First Beach," he said, rolling his eyes in annoyance. "She lives in Hawaii now."
"She's married? Wow," I was stunned.
The twins were barely a year older than me.
"Yeah, it sounds like an epidemic or one of those bad sci-fi movies where they get brainwashed," he grumbled with a resigned snort. "Everyone's just got married as soon as they're eighteen and they're out of here in a hurry." Jacob seemed slightly indignant about something in particular. "By the way, in case you hadn't guessed, you're also invited to Sam and Leah's wedding. It's at the end of March, even if it world's end. And no, there's no human way to turn it down," he added as soon as he saw my expression suddenly fall, and then he burst out laughing.
"Aren't they too young? I mean…?" I hesitated, not wanting to seem rude.
But Jacob did not beat around the bush.
"No, there's nothing cooking bun in the oven" he snorted as if he'd heard it before. "It was coming for a long time; they've been dating since high school. But they've liked each other since elementary school and high school… Ha! If Sam hadn't asked her for her hand this Christmas, I swear Leah would have made him get down on one knee and stuck a ring up… well, where the sun don't shine."
"She sure is determined!" I burst out as I pulled up in front of Charlie's house, clearly impressed to see a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
My mother's wedding, on the other hand, had been so rushed and disorganized that I couldn't stop worrying about the possibility that she might decide, at the last second, to back out and leave Phil at the altar. From meeting him on their first date to saying "I do," it had only been fifteen months. I thought that was a VERY short time for two people to reach that level of commitment, and I feared it would be a repeat of the disaster that had caused her to leave Forks.
We met Charlie, Harry and Billy who came out to greet us at the sound of the clatter of the contraption, and then we were off to La Push. In all the daze of my first impression of the front of the house, I didn't notice that a long, gentle ramp had been built into the side of the porch until I saw Billy Black wheeling his chair down on his own.
Charlie had thought of everything and everyone.
"It's been nice seeing you again, Bella," Jacob said with a big smile, helping his father into the patrol car.
"Me too" I went off on a tangent, with a purely protocolary response.
I would have preferred that this anecdotal reunion had happened in a warmer place, far away from Forks. I immediately felt guilty for being so cold, because her warm smile didn't falter, but I had no more energy for the rest of the day.
After saying goodbye to them, I closed the door using the spare key that Charlie always hid under the eaves above the door… At least he hadn't changed in that small detail either.
It was great to finally be alone in the house, not having to smile and put on a good face for visitors or Charlie; it was a momentary respite that allowed me to shed some tears that I had been holding back since Phoenix. I was in no mood for a big cry. That could wait until I got into bed and thought long and hard about what the next day held for me:
The terrifying student count at Forks High School was only three hundred and fifty-three, now three hundred and fifty-four. My junior class in Phoenix alone had over seven hundred students. All the kids around here had grown up together, and their grandparents had learned to hang out together.
I would be the new girl in the big city, a curiosity, an intruder, a freak.
Maybe I could use that to my advantage if I looked like a Phoenix girl, but physically I didn't fit the expected mold at all: I should be tall, blonde, tan, a volleyball player or maybe a cheerleader, all the things that are typical of those who live in the Valley of the Sun.
On the contrary, my skin was ivory white despite the many hours of Arizona sunshine, without even the excuse of blue eyes, red hair, or a freckled complexion. I have always been thin, but rather weak, and certainly not an athlete. I lacked the coordination, speed, and strength to play sports without making a fool of myself or harming someone, myself, or anyone else who was too close to me.
I climbed those twisted-stairs-of-hell to retrieve my toiletry bag from my luggage so I could clean up once and for all after the long day of travel. More out of habit than fear that Charlie would return soon, I locked the door after entering the bathroom.
Of course, this room had also been renovated, so it was obvious that Charlie must have hired some very, very expensive professional decorator, because my poor sense of color and clothing combinations had been inherited from my mother and from him. Instead of linoleum floors and furniture with flower patterns, there were floor-to-wall tiles and minimalist shelves made of stainless steel lacquered in a very clean white. The solid porcelain bathtub was still the same, but it no longer seemed to clash as it used to. A large crescent-shaped mirror above the sink and a full-length mirror on the perpendicular wall seemed to catch the scant light so that it did not escape.
The only truly striking change to the bathroom was that they'd opened a skylight with a large slanted window in the ceiling that gave a glimpse of the Forks sky, which began to drizzle, of course.
I frowned at the clouds.
I didn't have to fear that anyone would see me when I undressed, unless they happened to climb up to the top of the nearest fir tree. I began to shower with the water from the heater flowing in jets. But no matter how much it scalded me, I didn't feel any comfort.
I stared at my face in the mirror as I brushed through my tangled, damp hair. Maybe it was the natural light streaming in through the glass above, but I already looked sallow and less healthy. I may have nice skin, but it's very light, almost translucent, so how I look always depends on the color of the room, and in Forks there was no color at all.
As I faced my pale reflection in the mirror, I had to admit that I was fooling myself. I would never fit in at Forks, and not just because of my physical shortcomings. If I hadn't made a place for myself in a school of three thousand students, what chance would I really have here?
I didn't usually get along well with people my age. Well, I didn't get along well with most people. Period. Even my mother, the person I was closest to, wasn't on the same page with me; we weren't on the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I saw things the same way everyone else did. Maybe my head just didn't work right.
But the cause didn't matter, only the effect counted. And tomorrow would be just the beginning of the disaster that would be my life.
I had been on edge ever since I had arrived at that house... Charlie's new house, the one that would have to be my home from now on.
I was so far out of my comfort zone that when I walked into my darkened room after returning from the shower I let out a little gasp, loud enough to scare Charlie if he'd been present, as his gaze briefly caught sight of the old rocking chair.
It must have been some strange optical effect of the last twilight lights on that round window or my reluctant mind always predisposing me against Forks and playing tricks on me. But I could have sworn that a shadow, darker than the rest of the gloom in the room, sat staring at me.
Enough! I've made up my mind! I had to reproach myself for my irrational outburst. I'm not a wimp! I wasn't going to go back to Phoenix at the first opportunity.
I had never believed in ghosts, or haunted places, or bogeyman.
My mother had taken me to visit several abandoned towns in Arizona: Alma, Jerome, Cooper Creek, Weaver, Domes… on the short trips we took during the weekends and we had never seen anything like it.
Of course, she said it was because I was too skeptical and scared them… although maybe it was my mother they were avoiding.
I didn't sleep well that night, not even when I finally stopped crying.
The constant hissing of the rain and wind on the roof, which never abated, never let up, did not help to calm me down. I pulled the fluffy duvet over my head and then added all the pillows, but I did not manage to fall asleep before midnight, when the rain finally turned into a soft drizzle. I also tried not to open my eyelids again in the dark, squeezing them tightly shut, like a frightened five-year-old.
I didn't want to see again some random glare caused by the headlights of a car or the crescent moon, refracted in that round window and mistake it like a fool for that pair of insidious silver eyes I had imagined.
To be translated…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Déjà vu: French expression meaning "already seen."
Note on Sarah Black: I added this supporting character to the fic because many years ago, when I read Breaking Dawn, I had the strange theory that Billy Black's atrocious fear of the cold came from the tragic death of his wife, disguised as a traffic accident (hence the closed-casket funeral). At that time, there were no descendants of Taha Aki suitable to become a protector, since they were all either too old or too young. No official source clarifies the circumstances of her death beyond the version given by Jacob in his narration, so consider it an artistic license I have taken.
Musical disclaimer: The songs playing on the Chevy's radio are Can't get you out of my head by singer Kylie Minoge and Alright, Alright (here's my fist, Where's the fight) by the group Sahara Hotnights. In the original saga, the lyrics or titles of the songs never appear (until "Midnight Sun" in which Stephenie Meyer has filled in some gaps) and only the playlists that the author used to inspire some scenes are mentioned. Here I will try to give lyrics and personality to Bella's radio.
Note on Bella's family tree: Stephenie Meyer obviously reduced Bella's family line to zero because as a novice writer she must not have given importance to something that has a key background. The official illustrated guide indicates that the only grandmother Bella knew in life was Marie Higginbotham, but it is unknown if this was her maiden name (which she could have taken up again after their separation). Curiously, a Molly Swan appears in the Ateara family tree, married to Old Quil Ateara III. She could be a cousin of Geoffrey Swan. Which would make Quil Ateara IV (friend of Billy and Harry) a second (or third?) cousin of Charlie Swan. And it would also serve to explain the beginning of the extraordinary friendship between the four. In other words, Quil Ateara V would be a (very) distant relative of Bella.