Chapter Text
Bella spends an hour in the bathroom, that first morning.
She showers, water so hot it's scalding. She scrubs harshly, with soap that smells like musk and rainy days, because they haven't had a chance to pick her up anything yet. The water pressure is better than she's used to. It pelts her skin. She stands under its assault for so long, the water runs cold. She keeps her eyes closed. It feels like standing in a hail storm.
It can't last forever. The whining of the fan above the shower is grating in her ears, and she can hear Charlie hovering awkwardly in the hall, probably working up the courage to knock. She knows he's worried. A part of her, which she buries somewhere in her chest like a rock, wonders if he's scared. She wouldn't blame him. She is, too.
She leaves the bathroom, still toweling her hair dry. She deliberately doesn't look in the vanity mirror as she passes.
"Morning, Dad," she says softly, giving him a half-smile.
Charlie jumps a little, hand still half-raised to knock. "Bella! I'm about to head off to work." He pauses for a moment, clears his throat. He belatedly remembers to drop his hand. "Will you be okay today? You don't need to push yourself into anything—"
"I'll be fine, Dad," Bella gently interrupts, a sudden swell of love rushing in her chest. He's so adorably awkward, but he cares and he's trying.
And this is new for both of them.
A week ago, she'd been relatively happy in Phoenix with—
Well, she'd been happy.
Deliberately, she shakes her head. "I'm going to take it easy, I promise."
His brow scrunches. "Bells, I still think Billy is right. This is so soon…"
"He also said a routine is good, it will keep me steady, focused." She bites her lip. "I won't let it happen again, Dad."
Something like alarm shoots across Charlie's face. "You won't, Bells," he sets a hand on her shoulder, ignoring the wet patch her hair has left on her shirt. "You're tough, kiddo. You can do this. I just don't want you to get ahead of yourself."
"Thanks, Dad." She gives him a smile again, this one a shade more genuine. "It'll be okay."
"You'll do fantastic." He smiles. He has the same simple she does, on the right corner of their mouth. "But I'll keep my phone on, okay? If anything happens, or if you need to come home, you just let me know."
The tight ball in her stomach eases a little. "Okay."
"Okay," Charlie echoes. They stand there for a moment, awkwardness creeping in a little. He lets go of her shoulder, awkwardly scrubs a hand at the back of his neck. "Okay. Well, I better get to work. Drive safe, and have a great day at school, okay?"
Bella nods. "Be careful, Dad."
"Your old man always is," he chuckles, stepping around her and wandering towards the staircase. "See you tonight, Bells."
"Bye, Dad."
"You are so much more than you were before," Billy had told her. "Too much, maybe. A force of nature, in all the ways that matter. It will get easier with time, but you can't tame an animal in a day."
He was right.
She barely holds her shape through the day.
There are moments when her blood sizzles. It scorches and consumes, like magma through her veins. It makes her ache, quake, like her body is going to fall apart. It takes all her effort to contain it, to not spill a drop in a body full to bursting.
It starts with a boy named Mike Newton, with his wide-eyed stare and mutters of "damn girl, you're tall."
It's minor thing, a passing comment.
She clenches her fist until her nails cut crescents in her palm.
"I prefer Bella."
The cuts heal by the time she opens her fist. She wipes the blood on her pants.
She sinks in and out of classes.
She keeps her earbuds in, as often as she can, tucks them behind her hair so the teachers don't see.
Bella has always been a good student, but she can't focus. High schools are loud, she's always objectively known this, but the reality is staggering. It's deafening. The thumping of hearts, the tapping of feet, the cackling laughter. It grates in her ears, her nerves, like nails on a blackboard.
She turns her music up louder—something rock, with shrieking guitars and thrashing drums.
Turns it louder again, when the girl in front of her begins tapping her pencil.
She turns it so loud that the dark-haired boy beside her gives her weird looks.
It helps.
There is a girl, Angela.
Bella likes her immediately.
Angela walks with her from the class where they had sat as silent partners. She asks soft questions, about what Phoenix was like and how she likes Forks, but she doesn't push for answers and she doesn't take any offense to the lapses in Bella's attention. She is patient, kind, and every bit the friend she wishes she had back home.
She invites Bella to sit with her at lunch, and beams when Bella agrees.
"Here," Angela says, after they get their trays, sliding her a Tylenol and her apple juice. "You look like you've got a headache."
Irrationally touched, Bella takes them with a soft, "thanks."
Surprisingly, it does help. The overwhelming press of voices feels a little less stifling, and she manages to relax enough to finally take stock. She does an admirable job of following along with the story being told over the table, something about a pair of hikers that came into Mike's family shop, that he was pretty sure walked right out of Woodstock.
Mike laughed, "I'm telling you, I could smell the weed from the parking lot, and neither one wore shoes."
She snorts, just slightly.
At her left side, that apparently is enough of a reaction to awaken the rest of them to her presence.
"So, Bella," one of Angela's friends, Jess, starts in. "How is Forks treating you?"
"It's…wet."
"Welcome to Forks," Eric grins. "You'll get used to it."
She grimaces. "Not likely."
"Not so rainy in Arizona, huh?"
"Never."
Jess smirks softly, leaning in. "Well, Forks does have it's own unique flavors."
Bella squints at her.
"I present to you, our resident celebrities," Jess points over Bella's shoulder. "The Cullens. They're Dr. and Mrs Cullen's foster kids. They moved down here from Alaska, a few years ago now."
Bella turns her head, just in time to watch a group of the most beautiful people she's ever seen walk in.
They look fresh of the runway, all of them. Beautiful in a way that isn't normal.
"They keep mostly to themselves," Angela says, voice low.
"Yeah, because they're all together. Like, together, together," Jess chimes in, flashing her a scandalized smile. "The big, dark-haired guy is Emmett, and the drop-dead gorgeous one, Edward—they're, like, a thing. A tragedy for women everywhere. Then, there's the short girl with the dark hair, Alice. She's…weird. And she's dating Jasper, the one who looks like he's in pain."
Bella watches them walk into the cafeteria like the own it, like they're on a runway.
There's something about them, something that makes her skin itch and a crawling feeling start in her spine.
"Doctor Cullen's some sort of foster dad slash matchmaker," Jess continued, oblivious to her distraction.
Angela laughs a little. "Maybe he'll adopt me."
But there's one more, trailing behind her siblings and looking for all the world like she doesn't want to be anywhere near Forks High.
"Who's she?"
Jess looks. "That," she says, at length, "is Rosalie. Probably the most gorgeous girl to ever grace Forks. But she's got the worst attitude you've ever seen. She'll chew up anybody brave enough to speak to her. She's above all of us."
She speaks with all the certainty of someone who's tried, and been scorned.
Bella watches the blonde flick her hair over her shoulder, hears a muffled scoff, almost in response. But she's too far away, there's no way she would have heard them whispering over the roar of the cafeteria.
Even though she's scowling, Rosalie is still the prettiest girl she's ever seen.
Her eyes follow her all the way to the table, where she sits down with the rest of her family.
The five of them talk, but it's so quiet Bella can't make out what they're saying. It infuriates her, for some strange reason.
The boy, Edward, suddenly looks back at her.
They hold the eye contact for a moment, his frown matching hers.
"Don't waste your time," Jessica says. "They'll never give you the time of day."
"Yeah," Bella responds, as something she can't name scratches at the back of her skull, "I wasn't planning on it."
It takes her another moment to look away.
Biology is where things fall apart.
It is the last class of her day, a mere fifty-minutes between herself and freedom. It should be a breeze, considering she'd been well ahead in her class back in Phoenix. She's only one period away from fresh air, and counting the seconds down.
But, when she steps into the class, all the air leaves her lungs.
A low, wounded noise drops from her lips.
There, across the room, sits Edward Cullen.
The windows are open behind him, letting the light and breeze from inside in.
Bella's standing in front of an oscillating fan.
Each of them catch each other's full scent at the same time, and they freeze in their tracks.
To Bella, it's like the time her mother dyed her hair and didn't turn the extractor fan on. It's like bleach, pure and burning in every sense of the word. It's a shock against her system, and she visibly recoils.
What it is, she doesn't know. But something deep and snarling inside her does, and all at once her blood roars in her ears.
Suddenly, the world narrows down to a tunnel, and all she can see, all she can smell, is him.
Edward sits up sharply, grimacing like he smells something foul, and she sees his eyes shift from amber to pitch black.
Her wrist throbs.
Her soul knows, before her brain does.
And suddenly, startlingly, it comes in sharp relief.
The Cullens.
Their scent, their attitude, their color.
Her teeth bare.
She can feel it coming, scrabbling and clawing to get out. The piece of her soul that loves these lands, these people, even if she doesn't know it yet. It fights tooth and nail against the scent of the monsters its sworn to hunt. It howls inside of her.
Her spine tingles, her jaw aches, her hands fist themselves in her own hair to try and restrain it.
Her Biology teacher opens his mouth, "Ah, Miss Swan—"
"No," she hears Edward hiss, too low for a human to hear, barely audible over the sound of something snarling inside of her. "Not here!"
Her voice takes her by surprise, pained, rough. "I need to go!"
Bella bursts back into the hall, backpedaling frantically.
She stumbles blindly, hot and sluggish and shaking down to her very soul.
"Miss Swan!"
Bella doesn't hear her teacher shout after her, not over the sound of her own heaving breaths.
She barely makes it into the trees outside before she explodes out of her own skin.
She doesn't go back to school.