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1. FIRST SIGHT
...
Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small,
two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of
their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had — the
early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never
changed, was my new — well, new to me — truck. It was a faded red color,
with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I
loved it. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it.
Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged —
the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched,
surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.
"Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just
that much less dreadful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either
walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the
Chief's cruiser.
"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.
It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west
bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had
been belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue
walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window —
these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever
made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The
desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem
stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation
from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair
from my baby days was still in the corner.
There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would
have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that
fact.
One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover. He left me
alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether
impossible for my mother. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile
and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the
sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape. I wasn't in the mood to go
on a real crying jag. I would save that for bedtime, when I would have to
think about the coming morning.
Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and
fifty-seven — now fifty-eight — students; there were more than seven
hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here
had grown up together — their grandparents had been toddlers together.
I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak.
Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to
my advantage. But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan,
sporty, blond — a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps — all the
things that go with living in the valley of the sun.
Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red
hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft
somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn't have the necessary hand-eye
coordination to play sports without humiliating myself — and harming both
myself and anyone else who stood too close.
When I finished putting my clothes in the old pine dresser, I took my bag
of bathroom necessities and went to the communal bathroom to clean myself
up after the day of travel. I looked at my face in the mirror as I
brushed through my tangled, damp hair. Maybe it was the light, but
already I looked sallower, unhealthy. My skin could be pretty — it was
very clear, almost translucent-looking — but it all depended on color. I
had no color here.
Facing my pallid reflection in the mirror, I was forced to admit that I
was lying to myself. It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And
if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what
were my chances here?
I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't
relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than
anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly
the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things
through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs.
Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. But the cause didn't matter. All
that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow would be just the beginning.
...
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