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I am born for the first time in 1993 to Sue and Harry Clearwater in mid-morning. I come easily into the world, gently. I have one sister there to greet me. I answer to no one but my parents and nature.
I am born for the second time fourteen years later at dusk. I am ripped from my body, convulsed into a beast. I have six brothers now to greet me; still, one sister, who I am forced to welcome into this new life only seconds later. I answer to Sam Uley above everything else.
Learning this, I sob. Pathetically. My hair, never cut, a symbol of my people, tangles like a cage in branches and brambles above me; Emily Young shears it off with kitchen scissors while her fiancé holds me down, kneeling on my wrists. He looks sympathetic. It occurs to me that when he was ripped from his humanity and born anew, there was no one to greet him. No one to cut his hair. He has done this seven times now, hasn't he? I pity him, and silently resent that he does not seem to pity me.
*
The first thing I ever kill is a fully-grown salmon. Fishing with my father, I watch, frozen, as my barbed hook catches through its gills and it twitches helplessly before finally drowning in air.
Possibly the worst part is that we don't even eat it. Thanked for a sacrifice that it never made. It goes in the freezer, and then goes to Charlie Swan.
The second thing I ever kill is a newborn vampire. It looks completely human in the fog except for its eyes. Blood-tinted, crimson, wild. It begs for mercy, even. Please, please let me go... I'm only fourteen... I didn't mean to.
Its flesh makes the horrible screeching sound of steel on iron as I tear its still-screaming head from its body with my teeth.
*
When I was twelve years old, I watched as my sister's heart was crushed by Sam Uley. She cried for days, grieving her loss. Mourning Sam. Mourning the life they planned to have together.
I cried too; I thought he was going to be my brother. But I did not truly understand. I was too young then to know heartbreak; too young to know grief.
When my father died, I thought I understood. But I didn't... not really. It wasn't until I watched the threads tying my best friend to this world chewed through and replaced with silver chains leading to Renesmee Cullen that I truly understood.
*
When I was five years old, Leah pinned a towel around my neck and I jumped off the top of the stairs hoping to fly like Superman. I did not become like Superman - I got a concussion. When I was seven years old I wanted super-reflexes like Spiderman; to climb walls and shoot webs with my hands. When I was nine I wanted to be Batman, a righteous vigilante.
Now I am like them all.
I can see a leaf drifting through the air a quarter mile away. I can hear my sister's whispering from two houses over. I can run five miles in thirty seconds. I can leap so far into the air it is like I'm flying, then land gracefully as a ballerina. I have not felt the cold since I first phased. I am beautiful like a predator is beautiful. I am perfect like a siren is perfect; like a selkie; like a vampire. I am supernatural as any of them and I despise them for it. The Cullens knew what their presence would do to us, and an eleven-year-old phased last week.