Bellamy's pov.
My mother drove us to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite apollo. I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a thick black and purple hoodie.
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 Statesof America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with bella and i, bella was 4, while I was only a few days old. It was in this town that Bella and I were compelled to spend a month every summer until I was thirteen. That was the year bella finally put her foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with us in California for two weeks instead.
It was to Forks that I loved myself- but Bella was exiling herself to action that she took with great horror. Where she detested Forks. She loved Phoenix. She loved the sun and the blistering heat. She loved the vigorous, sprawling city. I love the rain , I love forks, I love the cold, and more than that I hate the city and its constant heat.
"Bella,Bellamy," my mom said to us- the last of a thousand times - before we got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."
My mom looks like me and my sister, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still...
"I want to go," Bella llied. She had always been a bad liar, but she has been telling this lie so frequently lately that it almost sounds convincing now.
" Mom, I'm going and nothing is changing my mind, you go have fun with Phil, and we will update you when he settles." I said as I glared at Bella behind mom's back.
"Tell Charlie I said hi."
"I will."
"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want -I'll come right back as soon as one of you needs 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 before grabbing on to Bella, I walked to the gate where I got on the plane, and she was gone.
It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about.
Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for highschool and was going to help me get a car.
But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I knew he was more than a little confused by my decision - like my mother before me Bella hadn't made a secret of her distaste for Forks.
When we landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as a bad thing, it was good. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun...
Dad was waiting for us with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too.dad is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.
Dad gave Bella an awkward, one-armed hug when she stumbled her way off the plane in front of me.
"It's good to see you, Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied her.
"You haven't changed much. How's your mother?"
"Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." Bella wasn't allowed to call him Charlie to his face.
Bella had only a few bags. Most of her Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement her winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser. I had three bags in total to her five bags and mine contained jeans and hoodies.
"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in. " I know you don't like driving so Bella is getting the car."
I nodded from the backseat behind the safe fence.
"What kind of car?" Bella was suspicious of the way he said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car."
"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."
"Where did you find it?" Bella asked
"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian Reservation on the coast.
"No."
"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.
That would explain why she didn't remember him. She does a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from her memory.
"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when she didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."
"What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping Bella wouldn't ask.
"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine - it's only a few years old, really."
I hoped he didn't think so little of bella as to believe she would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?"
"He bought it in 1984, I think."
"Did he buy it new?"
"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties - or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.
"Ch - Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic..." I glared at the back of her head when she said dad's name.
"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."
The thing, I thought to myself... it had possibilities - as a nickname, at the very least.
"How cheap is cheap?" Bella asked After all, that was the part she couldn't compromise on.
"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." dad peeked sideways at her with a hopeful expression. I smiled at him, dad was a gentle loving man and he show it sometimes
Wow. Free. "You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car." Bella said, why can't she just thank him and smile and tell him he did a good job.
"I don't mind. I want you both to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the road when he said this. Dad wasn't comfortable expressing his emotions out loud. Bella inherited that from him. So she was looking straight ahead as she responded.
"That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that her being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to suffer along with her. And she never looked a free truck in the mouth - or engine.
"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled,embarrassed by her thanks.
We all exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for Conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.
It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green:the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.
It was too green - an alien planet. And i loved it something in me wanted to run through the wood, taking pictures of animals and other things, my blood had always called to the woods and nature itself, that was where me and bella was different where she hated the outdoors, and anything to do with it, i loved and embraced it, i just did not know why? Something told me it was where I belonged.
Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small,three-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 bella new - well, new to her - truck. It was a faded red color,with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, she loved it. I didn't know if it would run,but she looked at it with big shiny eyes, but I could not 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. The truck made me want to throw a big heavy rock at the window, bella caught the look on my face,
" Bellamy! Whatever you think, do not harm my thing" she said as he pointed a finger at him." The thing is my truck and dont touch it, if you don't like it walk to school!"
" i'll walk" i said " that thing is ugly"
Dad suppress a laugh as he walk over to the back of the of his car and pulled out three of bellas bags, i follow him and grab my three and one of bellas, bella was still looking at her monstrosity of a truck, i follow dad up the stair as bella decided to grab the last bag and grab the door of us, dad directed us up the stairs to the room that would bellas, her room had plain white walls, and a bed with purple sheets and blankets, dad told her to do what she wanted to the room. Then I made my way to the room I had used for the past 15 years when I would come and visit dad. Setting my bag on the bed, the walls of my room where painted to look like the night sky with stars and a big moon on the ceiling, then the hard wood floor had fake grass the would need to be replace once a year, the fake trees and flower where new, dad had taken care of my room while i was gone, my dresser was shove into the back of my closet, where i would only place items i would wear to bed, when dad finally walk back into my room i turn to look at him.
" I told your sister that I cleared a shelf off in the bathroom for you both, '' dad said as he looked around the smaller room before leaving. That was one thing about him that i like, he did not hover like mom did. Mom was someone who worried a lot, but after I came out it was all about Bella, dad supported me right off the back, I looked out the window at the receding sun and decided now was the time to take beautiful pictures. I grabbed my camera and ran out the door. I look up and turn on my camera to get a picture of the house, Bella stood at the window of her room staring out at the never ending trees, I sigh and turn and walk deeper into the woods. I took pictures of everything I thought was pretty, a bear laid sleeping under a tree, her brown rusty fur was pretty, her massive paw made a little pillow for her head, holding my camera up and taking a few shots of her only to have a male human jump her biting into her neck. When he hears the click of my camera, the boy looks up blood stained lips, I gasp as a shiver runs up my back to my neck as I turn and run, what is going on? Once I broke through the woods, I turned to look back hoping to see the boy, but no such luck. He was gone the moment I ran. Something called me to the man, just like I was called to the forest. Sighing i open the door to the house, calling out i was back and that i was going to bed early, as i passed bellas room i could hear her crying, it was something she did when she was not happy, stopping at the door, i debated whether to go in or leave her alone, we were not on talking terms. Sighing once more I venture farther from her room and into mine. I put my camera up on the charger and changed, I was laying in bed when it happened.