Chapter Text
I’d be lying if I said I’d never given much thought to how I would die. It’s the kind of thing you try and block out, but it creeps up on you anyway. At least I’d had reason to think about it in the last few months. But I’d always imagined it as something sudden. Out of the blue. Falling too hard or hitting something too fast. An accident.
Nothing like this.
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
Surely it was a good way to die. In the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. Not like this. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. Was it, I wondered, that I could not be happy without conflict? Or just that I had to go through one – this one – to get a look at what happiness could’ve been? Hardly reasonable to think about it right now. But, in the face of impending doom, reason sort of goes out the window.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.
***
My mother’s hands sat on the steering wheel, less ten and two than nine and one, her right hand resting lazily as her fingernails tapped back and forth. Light from the high Arizona sun danced through the rolled-down windows, sending stripes over my mother’s arms. It made her skin look orange against the perfect cloudless blue of the sky. Everything in Phoenix looked that way, blue and orange, high contrast. And too hot to wear anything thicker than paper. I was in my favorite shirt – sleeveless, white eyelet lace. It was at once coarse and light against my skin, a bittersweet sort of comfort. I knew this would be the last time I wore it for a long while. The suitcases in the backseat stopped me from imagining that our destination was anything other than the airport.
“Bella,” I heard mom’s voice say. “You don’t have to do this.”
That didn’t help. It was the last of a thousand times, the same intonation, concerned and guilty and I thought just a little hopeful that this time my answer would be different.
A sharp short breeze, a grim reminder of the cold to come, whipped past my face and through mom’s hair. It was short and brown, a few shades lighter than mine, and given more vibrancy with the sunlight. I liked the way brown looked here, against the oranges and bright blues. Everything looked like it felt. Deep, and safe, and warm.
In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.
It was to Forks that I had now exiled myself. The dullest, darkest, rainiest place in North America. The complete opposite of my beloved Phoenix. I hated cold, and I hated rain. I detested Forks.
“I want to go.” I said finally. It was a lie. I’d always been a bad liar, but I’d been saying those words to frequently lately they almost sounded convincing now.
Mom sighed beside me. Not so convincing then. Not for the first time, I worried about her. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? It had always been the two of us, supporting each other, making sure we were okay. Of course, she had Phil now. But no matter how much he seemed competent and caring, it still felt like I was leaving her all alone in the world. Too late to doubt it now, though.
“Tell Charlie I said hi.”
“I will.”
She stood with me before I got on the plane with my carry-on, a heavy green parka. I had no idea if I’d actually need it right away (I had two sweaters and a Monty Python t-shirt as backups) but it seemed poetic.
"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want -I'll come right back as soon as you need me."
But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.
"Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."
She hugged me tightly for a minute, for once letting myself sink into it for more than a second. It had been years since I’d hugged her like this, but I wasn’t sure when the next one would be. And then I got on the plane, and she was gone.