Twilight's Winter (SS#1)

The story that would have happened is someone else wrote the book!

i.e. me!

Twilight’s winter

1. Returning home

Never in my life would I think to be sitting here, waiting. Yep, the ass—which is my overly forgetful father, funny though he’s Sheriff, can you guess how smart the rest of the police force is here.

   I can’t believe this was happening, sitting here, in the cold, crappy fogged up day waiting for a man that was never going to come. Not any time soon. I couldn’t think of anything that could happen that would be worse.

   And of course, the clouds opened up. ‘Cause I couldn’t be anything more than in a crappy B rated movie. Shit, this was a shitty way to end a crappy six months.

   Sigh. Yeah, I even thought it. I’m over this already. Why the fuck did my mum have to run off with that twelve year old who would have looked better on my arm than hers. Not saying anything about her looks, hell, she was beautiful which was the reason that she could cougher it up with a twenty year old. Lucky for me, he had a crappy career and needed to be on the move. Like I said, it was shit. so mum went with him, because let’s not choose the daughter you pushed out then ran away with when there was something better to sooth her loans. Yeah I went there, and even more so I’m being shipped off to this shitty ass town. A town that my mum had been talking me out of since I was old enough to understand and then went onto tell me the greatness of the place—that’s when I knew what her plan was, she wasn’t any smarter than my dad. Honestly.

   The worst thing was for the fact that she then went on and on about if I truly wanted to stay, that she would stay with me if she didn’t. But I saw the crazy in her eye, I saw that she would stay if I asked her to, but she wouldn’t like it, and therefore she would like me even less.

   So what was the choose?

   A police car pulled into the U-turn area, stopping on the curve in front of me. I saw my dad looking at me through the window. It had been a while since I saw him. Hating this place more than anywhere (like I said, hated it from childbirth). I smiled at him, thinking that he didn’t look much different from what I remembered, a little greyer maybe, but the little things where never what you remember are they?

   He seemed struck dumb—wasn’t hard—by my presence, like he wasn’t sure it was me, as well as taking in all the above, the points and notes of the things he’d missed since he saw me last. It had been that long—but you know the great things about the internet? It lets you have a semi relationship with your parent without having to see them.

   “Hey dad,” I said as I got up, I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me, the rain was hitting the tin on this bus shelter that I sat under with a loudness that even if he wasn’t still in the car he wouldn’t be able to hear me. Not fully.

   Stepping out into the rain seemed to snap him out of whatever the hell he was in. the boot popped as the door cracked.

   “Isabella,” he nearly sang and my heart constructed in my chest. It had been so long since I heard that name on his deep voice. It made a life time a missing him come to life, even though I can’t remember missing him in the first place. “How are you, darlin’?”

   “Good dad, but can we get to the dialog in the car, it’s kinda wet out here,” I said as I pulled the bag behind me. I didn’t have many cloths on a good day. Even less when it came to winter crap. Every bit of clothing fit into one large rolling bag, the other two were everything else I would need.

   “Sure, kid,” he smiled as he picked up two of the littler bags and followed me to the back of his car.

   Dumping everything in there I went around to the passenger side and got in. the whole process was done in a brain rush—you know when you try to hurry but it generally doesn’t work at all and you end up taking longer than if you slowed down. And therefore you got wetter then necessary.

   “So kid,” yeah, my dad was a cop threw and threw, one of the reason my mum needed to leave him (her words, she wasn’t to blame at all. no not mum). “How have you been?”

   “Good, dad, you?” I smiled, looking out into the washed out green of this place.

   “I’m good,” he said, but there was something there that made me look over at him. His face was glowing, even though he tried to hold it. Meaning he wasn’t smiling, but he was overly happy that I was here. So much so that the just looking at him got a smile from my lips.

   Back outside and I was glad, even in my wet clothes that dad had the heater barring inside, a vent on me. Still it was so wet outside, the type of wet that got you snuggling on the lounge tucked into your quilt with chocolate and mental agreement that you would run it off the next day. A movie on the plasma, something stomach achingly female with tears and a happy ending full of kisses and reunions. Passion and love and a male that is way better to look at then he is at acting.

   I always chose Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, mmmmm, yum. It may be a little old school but man he’s still hot as hell.

   God the drive is boring. I ask questions that I don’t particularly care for, because I want my dad to stop feeling so stiff. So mostly we talk about his work, how lamn it is. At least he loves it and so on and on he drowned about his life and work, and his deputies, blar, blar, blar. Yeah I care so much, but I needed the rumble of his voice. I needed him to talk. I wasn’t use to a silent anything.  

   Mum talked so much. It was to a point that I didn’t know how to hold a conversation; I was so use to people who did all that for themselves and all they really needed was a nod or shake of the head every so often. Honestly I hadn’t really listened to a word she said most of the time. I just went off her tone and did what she needed. I was great at giving her what she needed.

   We pulled into the driveway of my new full time house. One that held a bit of a winter holiday house. It looked warm and yet not really something you would live in full time. I was about to. Suckage number one for living in a place that only had one real temp—cold. Was that the house looked like they could hold on while a ton or two of snow covered them.

   We pulled my bags out of the boot and hit the stairs that went up into the house. There wasn’t many of them, not that that made me any more comfortable, honestly, the whole house sat on a hill, which meant that the driveway was step enough that if you tripped it was a long way to the ground. Not that it’s ever happened to me. not at all—not since the last time, the time I ended up face planting with a slide so that my face was sore for half my visit and a mess for the rest, to have me get picked up by mum and her yelling at dad that he was incompetent and he wasn’t going to see me here ever again.

   Yeah, happy times!!

   “So your room the same as it was the last time you were here,” dad said trying to make it out as if it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, as if it was nothing, but I heard the pain. It’s what happens when you have a mother so intent on being the centre of attention; you learn how to keep her happy. And being able to read her mind was keeping her happy.

   “Cool,” I said, not that I remembered what the room looked like the last time I was here. Hell it’s not the kind of thing you remember. “Looks to me as if the whole house is the same as last time.” I smile, it so was. The same shitty curtaining, that didn’t at all match the wallpaper. It wasn’t even that a house of an artist, more a colour deaf woman that wants things to be her way. To be honest the house looks to me like she did it on purpose, like she wanted to get him angry and kick her out.

   Evidently making it all about her. Her hurt feelings from being dumped on her ass by dad. But he didn’t, dad loved mum. Still did as far as I knew, which was sad, really.

   Dad looked around the house as if he hadn’t really looked at it in a long time. He shrugged, “Like I would know what to do,” he muttered and headed up the stairs and towards the bedroom.

   Inside the room, he put the bags on the ground next to my bed, the same twin single that I had slept on as a kid. I remember it being so large and soft. It was truly the only thing of this place that I loved. My bed.

   The rest of the room was plan. Nothing on the walls that showed a kid stayed in here. The table had a few pens in a daffy duck cup; the thing had beak and all. Made me smile every time I looked at it. A chair sat in front, nothing special.

   The wallpaper was a dull pink, the drapes a musty purple. Yeah, it was the room of a female new born. Nothing that would make on individual but like all others, like the parents wanted to remember they had a girl whenever they entered the room.

   Dad asked if I wanted to paint it one time that I complained about it. But why bother. I wasn’t going to be there long enough to enjoy it. Maybe I’ll think about that now, or at least getting things to cover up all the pink in this room. Man, it was hurting my eyes.

   Sitting on my bed I let the extortion of the trip here drive me backwards so that I was laying on my bed sideways wishing that everything was unpacked and that tomorrow I wouldn’t be heading for a new school. With new people, that would be new friends, for as long as I could keep them as friends—it was never long. Something always happened and one by one my friends didn’t want to be friends anymore.

   I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled back a yarn that I didn’t want to accept. The effect was a tear rolling down my cheek and an ache to my limbs that had me relaxing to a point that I fell asleep where I was.

2. Newness of Me

The school, like everything else in this shithole was on the main strip of town. Saying this, it isn’t the easiest thing to find. Mainly because there wasn’t a place of tourist in this town, you have to know your way around or you were lost.

   The school was behind a heap of trees and looked more like a retirement village than a school. The only thing that made it different was the splash of graffiti and the gate that wasn’t never going to shut—not with the way one side was hanging crooked on its hinges.

   No matter where you go if teens lived there nothing was going to stay perfect or pristine. Give us a break, you say no, and so why not see how far that no was actually going to take us. No one likes a suck up teen, one that wants you to think there perfect. In my opinion they are the craziest, and the sluttiest. They just have a way with their eyes, and tone that manipulates the hell out of adults.

   Dad packed out front in the drop off section. “You sure you don’t want me to take you in there?” he asked for like the hundredth time. Man, parents and there need to help. Give us a brake I could do this with my eyes pocked out and running down my cheeks.

   “Thanks dad, but I got it. I’ll see you at home.” I clicked the door open.

   “And you’re sure you can walk, you don’t want me to pick you up?”

   Hell no! There was one thing with everyone in this tiny ass town knowing that I was the daughter of the sheriff, another entirely in letting him pick me up in his police car. I may have no social grace but last I check I wasn’t suicidal.

   “No, dad, but thanks, I’ve got it. Anyway I could use a walk, sooths the soul and all that.”

   “Sure as hell will do that up here, also clear you lungs of all that city gunk.”

   Thanks dad, I pushed open the door and headed out. “See you later dad, ‘kay?”

   “Yep, hon. Tonight for dinner,” he smiled like he meant it. Which gave me pause.

   “You cooking?”

   He smiled a smile that scared me more than heading into this lion den of a school and motioned me to close the door with his eyes. I did feeling my stomach empty and hoping that I was never going to fill it again.

   Turning away I walked up the path that headed to a door that I supposed was the office, though it didn’t say a word of it anywhere. Inside was warm, almost too so, I felt the heat pick at my skin under the layers I wore today. There’s nothing like a full blow winter when you’ve spent most of your life in summer.

   The lady behind the desk had that overly friendly smile on her face, the one that showed you how over her rut of a life she was. She had large glasses and brown hair that was starting to grey up the sides, but it wasn’t that noticeable yet, more like her hair was a duller brown that it use to be.

   “Can I help you?” she asked, her voice was aged, but smooth.

   “I’m Isabella Swanson, I start today.”

   “Of course,” she smiled like everything in her mind just clicked onto something interesting. I pretended not to notice. There’s nothing worse than having to deal with gossip, and I was great gossip for these small town folk, what with the scandals of my parent’s quick marriage and even quicker divorce. A runaway and a girl that grew up under there noises with the little glimpse they were aloud of me through the years.

   After a long pause where I looked at her innocently and she shot questions with her eyes. “I’ll just grab your papers.”

   That would be nice....yeah, there wasn’t any sarcasm to my thoughts—no, it’s was dripping with it.

“Hey Isabella,” a girl called out seconds before her arms looped around mine. Her name is Jessica and she was in all the class I had threw the morning. Yeah. She’s decided that I’d be her friend, and walla, I’m stuck with a cheer-squad leader hooked to my arm.

   “So here’s the way things work here,” she said, like she had every right to show me around.

   I let her drown on about people and place’s that where good to hang at. I listened without really listening as we headed towards, what I hope, was the cafeteria. It was lunch and I was starving to a point that I might actually be able to eat something. I don’t know what it is about the first day of something that makes you both hungry and not so much. Nerves, maybe.

   We entered the room, it was large and held nothing but a roped off like and tables and tables, followed by chairs and chairs. It was a very typical room and nothing important.

   Me and Jessica waited in a line as she talked I looked around. First at the food. There wasn’t anything that came out to me. Yeah I was hungry and would have eaten everything on there but nothing really took my fancy so I would get a coke, and maybe a bag of chips.

   We sat down on a table near the back side of the room, it was loud with people talking over people and yet it wasn’t noisy. I could hear what they were saying at the other end of the table, or maybe that was just because it was about me. Like they couldn’t just ask? It’s eye rolling this crap.

   “Isabella?” one of the people I meet, I think he’s name was Mick, not sure though, could have been Bob, but I think I have a better memory than that, even if I wasn’t really paying attention when I got told his name. Really the whole saying there name after you they say it...it works, or it’s the only way I seem to be able to remember names—though that’s not full proof.

   “Yeah,” I replied and even I could hear the not caring in my tone.

   “We want to know why your here.” He said, though I thought it was probably meant to be a question rather than a statement.

   I bite back a sarcastic reply. I didn’t think I needed my nose to start up the first day of school. I have heaps of time for them to perfection it while the year ticked on. “Wanted to,” I lied, but it wasn’t like they knew any different. So why not tell them that—the neat and simple way of saying my mum dumped me here. That too and I didn’t particularly want to go into that type of detail.

    “Oh, there here,” a chick near the middle of the table stage whispered, which was saying that she was whispering a shout.

   “Who?” I asked Jessica who I was sitting next to me. I was smiling just at how she was saying it, even more so at the fact that nearly everyone else at the table had glanced towards the main door.

   “Oh, it’s the celebrities of this small town,” she said with a bit of a goofy smile. “Well, there not real celebs, but to us they are like Rob Patterson in the flesh.”

   “Really?” I asked, “Shame that, being that I’m a Taylor fan.”

   “What?!” Jessica spat back, “You’ve got to be kidding, Rob is like dream boat sexy.”

   I put up surrender hand nearly laughing, “If you say so, I’m just not a fan of that too British look, he’s got going for him.”

   Jessica laughed, yeah, it was girly and a little over the top. Her eyes had glanced, and stayed, off into the distance just behind my head, making me look at what she was spying.

 

This short story was written by Bronwyn Heeley

Yeah, I’m doing to bitchy thing and ending it before I make an ass of myself and write the most sappy shit I can about a bunch of people that I have to change enough to make them different and then keep them simple enough the same so they fit in. yeah, you get it, and if you want more tell me and I’ll gladly write the rest of it—hell, I’ll write all four books if that’s what you want, though mine wont nearly be as long because, well, I’m not going to write it word for word. Hell, just the main shit, and all that, but still. if you’re feeling what I’ve written and want more, I’m happy to oblige.