"How was your night?" I inquired Uncle Charlie the next morning when he trudged tiredly into the house.

Charlie yawned heavily and ran a hand through his thin brown curls. "Long."

"So, I'm guessing the date went well?"

Uncle Charlie looked up at me, his eyebrows furrowed, "What date?"

Um.

"You said you were going on a date with Sue Clearwater last night."

Uncle Charlie gave me a sideways glance. "Vivianna, I had a night shift last night. I didn't go on a date with Sue. She moved away when you were in Texas, V. Plus, you went to sleep after your appointment yesterday, so I couldn't tell you I had a night shift."

"Oh." I deflated at the fridge, looking inside to make something for breakfast.

I thought over our conversation in the car. He told me in the car he was going on a date with Sue, in the car, not home, and I don't remember laying down. I didn't remember anything but Jacob. Wait… am I officially going fucking crazy? When I looked outside at the garbage bins, there were no broken down pizza boxes, the can looked empty. I woke up in my bed, in the clothes I showered in last night. He has to be lying, or I dreamt it, and I was just crazy. But it didn't make sense, I swear Jacob had been here; I swear we had done something. I can… feel him still, lingering all over my body, in my body.

Now, that seemed weird and strange, but it's the truth. I could have sworn that everything was going to be different because we did what we did and…

"You alright?" Uncle Charlie asks, looking at me while holding his head up in his palm with his elbow on the tabletop.

I nodded; I couldn't talk to him about what I was currently thinking. I don't think he'd want to talk about that, so… I was going to confide in my shrink when I saw her next.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Breakfast?"

Uncle Charlie nodded. "And a pot of coffee?"

I nodded with a hum of confirmation. "You have to work a day shift?" I asked him, opening the fridge again and grabbing the egg carton.

He heaved a tired sigh. "Unfortunately." He rubbed his withering face and ran his hands through his hair.

I made breakfast and a full pot of coffee, and I made another pot of coffee when Uncle Charlie downed two cups full before breakfast was finished cooking. I filled up a thermos like I had over the summer, and I also thought about those dreams I had over the summer and up until I left Texas, all about Jacob, one hundred percent consumed by Jacob, and I truly didn't know if I…

I feel crazy, you know, when your mind is screaming at your mind back and forth all day every day, and then one moment it just goes … silent. My brain went quiet.

It reminded me of when I was forcing myself to change to deserve love. Then … no, no, I wasn't going to let that happen again; there was no need for it to happen again, and I didn't want it to happen. So I had to get myself in a different routine, I had to get myself around more people and I needed a distraction for days when I had free time when I started at Forks High next Monday, and I wasn't graduating in December but in March, and honestly, I was glad about that. I drank a cup of coffee and got ready for the day. I left the house with my thermos of coffee and went looking for a part-time job.

I filled out three applications and handed them in, and then I found myself on the bus going to La Push. The bus dropped me off with a few others near the parking lot of the market in La Push. I knew where I was from, and I continued on my way there. I had to see Jacob. I needed to talk to Jacob. I needed to know if what had happened last night was just one of my delusional dreams or if we had sex. I needed to know for sure; the constant spiral in my head was leaving me to believe I was beginning to go insane. I needed to know the truth so I could move on. If it wasn't true, then I had something to work on with my therapist for… a while; if it was true, then we had to work something out because I… I wanted to have a claim on him in some certain way. Marriage was a major and solid claim, but I'm an idiot, and it's an idiotic idea to bring it up or make it happen through sly mischief, but I couldn't claim him. It was wrong for me to feel this way about a boy I hardly knew, let alone have sex with him or anything else until a proper conversation fledged.

I also had a lot of things to work on with myself. If last night wasn't real, then it was in one way, the anger, these feelings I have. It's acknowledging those feelings more intensely than I like. I want Jacob, but can my mind just agree to be realistic about this? I glanced around the yard as I walked up to the front door of the rectangular, faded red house. I knocked on the door and waited for Billy or Jacob or Rachel. No one answered. I glanced at the window near the door; no movement, no light. I knocked one more time before I turned away and started walking back to the market for the bus.

At the end of the driveway, I looked around the area again before resuming in my direction.

"Vivianna!"

I whirled around. A gust of wind splashed against me, throwing my hair over my shoulders. Rachel called my name but I didn't see her, all I saw was the wet dirt road that dead ended about half or quarter mile, and the trees shuffling softly from the breeze. I froze in my place for a few seconds, I scanned my surroundings and back towards the little house.

"Rachel?" I called, turning back to the dead end, and still getting the same results.

Okay… she had to be playing a game because her call wasn't anxious or stressed, more of a singsong, like she was going to pull a prank. I waited for a couple minutes before heading back towards the store, I stood at the bus stop for fifteen minutes before it arrived. I was disappointed, I was very disappointed. I wanted to talk to Jacob, but Charlie would probably have a coronary if he came home to me not there but stuck in La Push because of the storm. I wanted to talk to Jacob, I really wanted to know what it was between us. There had been something between us, just something. No matter how crazy I felt about myself liking Jacob, there was something there. I knew that much.

Whether last night was a dream or not, I had a feeling it would happen again, and truly, I wanted to know what Jacob and I were before it did. I had a feeling it wouldn't go like that, but I wished it would. I got home during the start of the thunderstorm, shivering head to toe. I got into the bath and sat there feeling sick to my stomach, not just sick to my stomach but to my head. I was cold, but I was hot. I dressed in a hoodie and drawstring pajama pants and laid down in my bed. I sighed and focused on my breathing as my head spun violently.

I laid there for what seemed like hours to fully focus on my breathing. I rolled off my bed, and then that did it. I ran to the bathroom and released my stomach into the toilet. I flushed after throwing up my breakfast, and my head still spun as I cleaned myself up. I started simmering soup and squeezed a lemon in a glass with some honey. I picked out the seeds and then drank the liquid like a shot glass. I felt the acidity of the lemon numbing my stomach before it was fully down my throat.

"Ah!" I choked and almost gagged, but the lingering citrus tang of the lemon stuck on my tongue and helped keep the sour bile at bay.

I washed the glass and laid down on the couch. I fell asleep after a few minutes.

"Vivi!" Uncle Charlie called.

I lifted from the couch with my eyelids barely opening and my stomach twisting in nausea. I barely saw him pushing Billy into the living room before I sprung up from the couch and ran up the stairs to the bathroom and dry heaved on my empty stomach that pulsed with pain with each struggling heave to relax and release the bacteria in my stomach. I had to close my eyes and focus on the chilly floor and the appliances in the bathroom to not pass out or maybe throw up bile everywhere. I lay down in the tub still in my clothes and ran the water over me, I focused on my breathing and the water washing over me.

"Vivian?" Uncle Charlie asked, turning the water off, and I shivered and curled in on myself. "What are you doing? What's wrong, sweetheart?"

"I feel sick. Very sick, everywhere." I replied weakly.

"Laying under the cold water won't help."

"I feel like I have a fever," I said with my eyes closed, and Uncle Charlie checked my temperature.

"You do feel hot, Viv. Come on, let's get in your room." He says turning off the water and draping a towel over me.

"I can't stay here? I feel like I'll combust if I move."

Uncle Charlie very breathily chortles, but I don't think he took it as lightly as his chuckle lead on, "No, honey. Come on."

Getting me out of the tub soaking wet in my pajamas and Uncle Charlie's natural clumsiness worked together well to get me to my room. Uncle Charlie wrapped me up in a towel and went downstairs to grab medicine. I changed out of my current wet clothes and into my thermal pants and another hoodie just in time for Uncle Charlie to come back in my room with a glass of water and a pill bottle. I took a pill and laid down. Uncle Charlie stayed in the room, sitting on the edge of my bed until I fell asleep. I woke up an hour or two later with enough appetite to eat, so I went downstairs and had a slice of pizza and went back upstairs with my head still heavy with tenderness.

A face of a boy flashed in my eyes, wavering my reality for what felt like years but was only a short couple of seconds. Jacob. The moment he first met my eyes, the disappointment and fear that rivalled within me from his absence, and just everything. The increasing pain in my chest that constricted my breathing seemed to increase in his absence and in far distances, I couldn't even remember most of what was going on with me, it was like a switch would flip and then I would be asleep. That switch flipped when I arrived in Port Angeles once again, and I was awake again but the pain was greater. Questions swarmed my head like a band of gnats flying around my skull and ears, I wanted to panic, but I couldn't panic. What was the point of panicking? I wish I was able to find relief and comfort within myself about how I felt about Jacob, I wish he could just attach himself to my hip and never leave.

I fell back to sleep and was back in the bathroom, puking throughout the night and sleeping on the linoleum tile. Uncle Charlie found me on the floor the next morning, and he helped me back into my room and left a glass of water on the nightstand. After a day of no change in my condition, I wasn't able to digest light food or even water, and my body temperature was high, and my skin was tender and covered in gooseflesh. Charlie took me to the hospital to get checked out. They couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, physically, I showed signs of illness, but their tests suggested otherwise. Their tests showed that I was fine, all my vitals and levels were good, but my skin was pasty, and the toilet bowl was filled with bile almost every fifteen minutes; my throat was raw, and I was in more pain than I could ever imagine. They took more tests, and my condition continued to worsen.

I didn't know how long I've been in this hospital room with no progress, and I didn't know how long it was until this heavyweight tender sickness consumed my head and pulled me to sleep. A sleep so heavy, I couldn't move a muscle, speak, or even open my eyes to respond to my Uncle. I felt like I was dying, like whatever was in my body was killing me.

I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to let them know that I could hear them through the deep water in my ears. They threw around words about a head injury finally catching up to me, drawing me into a coma to heal, but that didn't make sense. I wasn't abused, not physically, the abuse was more verbal and emotional than it ever was physical. But I guess they were throwing it again because Uncle Charlie was asking about the differences of the brain scans the doctors were taking.

I wondered to myself if Uncle Charlie was okay, was he eating, was he still focusing on what he needed to do for himself? Like work, sleep, and eating? His voice sounded so… stressed, pained, desperate for hope. It broke my heart, and my brain, whenever it decided to form full thoughts, would torture me with images of watching Uncle Charlie return to his home alone, just alone. It broke my heart to know that I was stuck here and I couldn't even open my eyes or move my mouth to speak to him. I know he was worried, and I didn't want him to worry, and I didn't want him to lose me.

For all I know, he lost Bella, his only child. I didn't want him to lose his only niece, too. But the sleep was too heavy to fight, and I was consumed in a still darkness. Jacob's face flashed in the darkness of my vision, and I felt hot moisture swell under my eyelids and spill out over my temples. My bottom lip quivered, and that irritated beeping sped up near me.

"Jacob." My voice was quiet, and I felt my heart begin to pace frantically within my chest, matching the beeping near me.

The deep water filled my ears after I heard a nurse cry out for a doctor. Just like my dreams from the psych, I felt like I was floating in the sky, filled with dark, thick storm clouds releasing snow, towards an unknown destination, flying through the sky at speeds of the Flash. My vision panned down to a massive field covered in snow and massive battle of creatures of mythical fantasies, my body descended quickly and latched onto the back of a massive animal with the fur of rust and bright tan, the snow clung to the animals fur on his legs as he released vicious snarls and growls as he fought with a stone creature with crimson irises. This animal, this wasn't any normal animal, this was the wolf I saw in the forest outside the psych facility, in the treeline of Charlie's backyard. This wolf brought me comfort here and here, even if he was menacing in these moments. Then I detached from that wolf, and then I was following… Bella, her skin was just like the Cullens, her eyes were no longer brown but amber, and a thin, hazy film resonated out of her body before I fell away from the scene. I heard the same nurse scream again through the darkness of my vision, then it went silent as fast as she screamed, and I heard a body fall to the hard floor.

I felt the IVs tearing out of my skin from the cold, hard hand slamming into my chest and gathering the fabric wrapped around my body, and lifting me from the bed. And then a hard, cold body covered in fabric that smelled like the worst sweet scent in the entire world, the scent alone, besides the harsh speeds, knocked me unconscious.

…

Some point along the way of this quiet sleep, something pierced my waist and dug in deeply. Then there was fire. The fire was intolerant, it knocked me unconscious again before I could even process anything else.

The fire that bloomed from the left side of my waist died when I opened my eyes to a dark room. By the looks of it, I was in an abandoned building. I couldn't remember a solid reason that would explain why I was here, I had no explanation to give myself for waking up on the floor of this room. The sickness within my head and throughout my body died the moment the fire stopped. I felt different. Very different.

I glanced down at my hands when I got to my feet. The wood felt different under my feet. My eyes adjusted easily to the room's darkness, and when my eyes fully took in the smoothness of my hands, I knew something was different. My hands…, my hands reminded me of Edwards when I felt my palms with their respective digits, Alice's when I caught her looking at her hands in the moonlight in June.

Then I heard the toll of a clock tower. I looked around the room, searching for a door since there were no windows. Once I caught sight of the outline of the door, I was in front of it and reaching out to the wood. The littlest of pressure against the knobless door cracked it open a couple of inches to reveal the night sky when I looked up. I put my hand against the door and opened it to an absolute sea of forest covered in snow below, with a drop off about ten to fifteen feet in front of me. This has to be a national park, the mountains were distinctive. But they were the mountains at home, not the Olympic Mountains.

These were the mountains I had seen with my family during a Christmas vacation when Gramma was alive when I was 11. I would never forget these mountains, I would always be able to tell the difference, the mountains of Colorado had been a time in my life where it began to change forever. And now I was here again, in the same place where I knew for a fact something had happened to me, something I couldn't explain, something I couldn't comprehend right now. I was fixating on explaining how I got here, but came up with nothing, absolutely nothing.