[FIC] home is where you are
Unbeta'd, but, you know, everything I write is. Please enjoy!
home is where you are
otempora01, rated PG, at most.
Twilight, J/B, m/f, alternate universe (well, not really...)
“I was the natural path your life would have taken… if the world was the way it was supposed to be, if there were no monsters and no magic…” Bella’s life comes down to a matter of timing.
Complete in 4,672 words.
*
All this time and everything’s changed but I still feel the same
All good things eventually end and get washed down the drain
What a disaster it would be if you discovered that I cared
A little too much for friends but not enough to share
What if it was you, you that I needed all along?
I felt like a fool now that I’m sure that I was wrong
It had to be you
- It Had To Be You by Motion City Soundtrack
*
Bella’s parents get a divorce when she’s only one year old. Her mother takes her to Riverside, California and then, four years later, to Phoenix, Arizona. For her eighth birthday, she asks to visit her Dad.
Renee smiles as though she’d been waiting for that and summer vacation finds Bella on a plane, Washington-bound.
*
Even in July, Forks, Washington is like a big blob of wet nothing on the face of the US of A. Bella didn’t miss it one little bit. Her dad is still as tall and quiet as she remembers, asking how she’s been and how her mother’s doing. Bella’s only eight years old, but even she knows better than to say anything other than, “I’m fine. We’re fine. How are you?”
She can barely remember when her parents split up, only remembers asking her Mom why they lived in California and her Dad lived in damp and yucky Forks and her Mom had smiled and said, “Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to,” and that was that.
Bella didn’t really understand then, but she understands now that sometimes grown-ups can be just like little kids underneath those wrinkles and grey hairs. And sometimes she has to be the grown-up, even when she doesn’t want to. So she smiles and says that Phoenix is very sunny, like Riverside, and she likes her school very much and, yes, okay, she’ll come with him down to La Push to visit the Billy Blacks.
Charlie Swan drives around in a police car because he’s the chief of police. When she was younger, Bella always used to ask him to please turn on the siren because she wanted people to look at her and know that she was the daughter of a police chief and wasn’t that just the coolest thing ever?
But in Arizona everyone is tall and blond and pretty and Bella is short and brunette and plain and the last thing she wants these days is to be looked at. She sinks down in her seat so she can’t be seen through the window and wonders for the first time if maybe her Dad couldn’t drive something a little more inconspicuous.
Billy Black is tall and quiet like her Dad, but he smiles a lot more and Bella vaguely remembers him from when she used to live in Forks. He’s a Native American and he lives on the reservation and he slips her a jolly rancher when he shakes her hand hello, so Bella finds it hard to dislike him even though he lives in Forks and she’s not too fond of candy.
Billy Black has three children, two of them girls her age. Naturally, Bella gets shoved in a room with them while the big men talk about sports or whatever it was big men talked about. Rachel and Rebecca are ten-year-old twins, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and dark-haired, but almost as pretty as the girls in Arizona. Bella feels awkward already.
“Wanna play dolls?” Rachel asks after a long moment of silence in which Bella looks at her shoes and the twins look at her. “We have one for you, too.”
Bella doesn’t like dolls-they seem so childish-but she doesn’t want to be rude. Rachel and Rebecca lead her down the hall to their room which is very pink and somehow very them. Bella’s room is plain white; it was that color when she moved in and she saw no reason to chance it afterward. She stands by the door while Rachel roots through a big toy chest in the corner and Rebecca drags out a neatly carved doll house.
“Charlie got it for us for Christmas,” she explains when she sees Bella looking and the genuinely friendly smile she follows with helps Bella forget that she only got a card.
“Ozette’s missing,” says Rachel, straightening, a puzzled frown on her face. “How are we supposed to play dolls without Ozette?”
Rebecca frowns as well and then, as one, they shout, “JACOB!”
Bella thinks the name sounds familiar, but can’t put a face to it before the final Black, Jacob Black, comes bounding into the room with a look of practiced innocence.
“Yeah, what?” he asks curiously, then catches sight of Bella. “I think I know you?”
He phrases it like a question and Bella smiles at the unintentional verbalization of her thoughts. Rachel stops her from giving her name by brandishing a doll at Jacob’s head like a weapon. “Where’s Ozette?”
“Who?”
“Ozette,” Rebecca chimes in, pointing at the doll house. “She’s gone and you’re the only one who would have taken her.”
Jacob resentfully insists that he doesn’t play with dolls which sparks a family argument that Bella is all too happy to back away from. Jacob Black looks to be about six or seven, with hair almost past his ears and a certain slant to his shoulders that suggests a genuine politeness that will quickly fizzle out if pushed.
He’s being pushed now, Bella thinks idly as she takes a seat next to the doll house and wonders when she can go home. She catches sight of black thread sticking out from underneath the closet door and rising, carefully easing the door open. Lying on the floor is a hand-sewn doll with black thread for hair and little buttons for eyes.
She holds it up. “Hey, is this Ozette?”
Rachel and Rebecca turn, stop, and look sheepish. “Uh… yeah.”
“Told you,” Jacob says and marches from the room with righteous indignation. Bella expects one or both of them to go and apologize, but Rachel just comes to inspect her doll and Rebecca just pushes the door shut and Bella wonders if Jacob has reached the point where he’s stopped expecting them to come after him.
“You can be Ozette since you found her,” says Rebecca generously, as though Bella is the one that’s been wronged, and Rachel, a sour look on her face that she’s too young to know how to hide, nods reluctantly along with her sister.
Bella is glad when Charlie calls for her, murmuring something about playing another time, passing the doll back to Rachel, and hurrying to the stairs. She passes an open door and sees Jacob lying on the floor inside, watching The Magic School Bus like it holds all the answers to existence.
He sees her before she passes and scrambles into a sitting position. “Hey, wait! What’s your name?”
“Bella,” she replies. “Bella Swan.”
Jacob smiles and Bella’s unable to keep from smiling back. Then Charlie calls for her again and they go home and Bella does not return to La Push before she flies back to Phoenix at the end of the month.
*
“Did you have fun?” asks her mother when she picks her up at the airport, her ‘big little girl, taking flights by herself’. “How’s Charlie?”
Bella says yes she did, Charlie’s fine, and can they pick up a copy of The Magic School Bus on their way home?
*
Next July finds her back at La Push, but instead of staying inside to play dolls, Bella asks if she and the twins can go to First Beach. Billy thinks it’s a great idea and Charlie doesn’t see any reason not to and Rachel and Rebecca walk Bella down to First Beach and laugh as she trips and falls into nearly every cesspool they pass on their way there.
There’s someone on the beach already, someone that looks a lot like Jacob, building a sandcastle half his size. Rachel and Rebecca, eleven and old enough to think “going to the beach” and “lying in the sun” are synonymous, stretch out on their towels, hide their eyes behind huge sunglasses, and ignore the world. Jacob glances at them with the same look of exasperation that Bella is, then asks her if she’d like to help him finish.
Bella’s never been very good at making sandcastles, but it sounds better than lying down to roast in the lack of sunshine. She doesn’t do much more than scoop sand into Jacob’s little red bucket, but, somehow, their sandcastle looks bigger and better than any she’s ever seen and Jacob even lets her add the final shell.
Bella thinks it’s silly to feel as proud as she does, but Jacob beams at her and she feels a little less childish.
They admire their handy work for a moment, then Jacob says, from nowhere, “I can build stuff.”
“I can see that,” Bella says, trying not to smile. “You built this.”
“Not like this. Real stuff. I took apart my toy truck and put it back together, but Dad won’t let me try it on his truck.”
Bella’s experience with toy trucks mainly involves tripping over them, which doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. Instead she says, “I learned how to whistle.”
“Show me,” Jacob demands, then laughs when she does. “I can whistle better than that!”
“Show me,” Bella echoes and Jacob sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles so loudly she goes deaf in one ear and feels the ground shake. The whistle and their laughter jolts Rachel and Rebecca up and, the instant they take off their glasses, it starts to rain.
They run back toward the house with their towels over their heads while Jacob and Bella stand side-by-side on the beach, watching the rain drops slowly destroy the castle.
“Water erosion,” Jacob says sadly.
“The Magic School Bus Rocks and Rolls.”
Jacob grins brilliantly. “Lost In Space was way better.”
“Not better than For Lunch,” Bella retorts, grinning back. Jacob asks if she wants to watch it with him and Bella eagerly agrees. When they run back to the house, it’s hand in hand, and that’s the first time Bella is sad to return to Phoenix at the end of the summer.
*
“Jacob Black?” Renee says when Bella tells her who the tool box she buys for Christmas is really for. “Who’s Jacob Black?”
“My friend,” Bella replies and is warmed by the thought.
*
Bella doesn’t care much for being eleven. She’s one year and some months away from being a teenager (though she feels much older sometimes) and yet still stuck in the awkward days of adolescence. If there’s one thing she doesn’t need, it’s added awkwardness.
Jacob’s only ten so he can’t possibly understand although, he says as they lay side-by-side on his bed, puberty’s much worse for boys than for girls.
“It is not,” Bella says, insulted. Somewhere in the house, she can hear Rachel and Rebecca arguing about who took whose lip gloss and she is so, so happy Jacob isn’t a thing like his sisters. “We-” she blushes. “We grow things in places and-and stuff.”
Jacob grins, but doesn’t tease. “At least your voice doesn’t break. Sometimes I sound like Yosemite Sam and sometimes I sound like Tweety. And then there are all these dreams.”
“I think we should talk about something else.”
“You were in this one dream I had,” Jacob presses on gleefully and Bella’s face, if possible, turns redder.
“No, I was not.”
“Oh, yes you were. You had this entire can of whipped cream, right?”
“Jacob!”
“And you said, ‘Hey, Jake,’ and took the cap off with your teeth-”
“Shut up!”
“-and then you sprayed it on top of my ice cream sundae and said, ‘Want some cherry with that?’”
Bella attempts to push him off the bed, but Jacob digs his feet in as he laughs and she has to settle for hitting him instead. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
“I talk in my sleep.”
His laughter fills the room again and Bella groans for all of five seconds before she’s laughing, too.
Charlie pops his head in the door and looks at the two of them, amused. “I brought your pajamas and toothbrush, Bells. In case you want to stay the night.”
“Can she?” Jacob asks, sitting up excitedly.
“I don’t see why not.”
Bella sits up slowly, afraid to ask and afraid to know, but Jacob instantly erases all her fears by jumping up and saying, “I’ll go see Dad about setting up the cot in here. This is going to be so much fun!”
He runs off, leaving Charlie and Bella alone. Charlie leans against the doorway. “So. Jacob.”
Bella smiles.
When she’s packing her suitcase into the police car, Jacob rides up raggedly on one of his sisters’ bikes. Bella opens her mouth to ask, but he just hands her a slip of paper, shouts for her to call him, and then peddles away again. It’s only after she gets back to Phoenix and calls that she discovers he was grounded and snuck out to catch her before she left.
*
“Jacob called again,” Renee says as she lies, half-asleep, on the couch. Bella keeps telling her not to stay out after midnight, no matter who it is she’s dating, but leave it to her mother to completely ignore reason. “He says you should start watching Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Something about preparing for next summer.”
Jacob doesn’t explain any further when she calls, but the conversation quickly turns to other things and Bella eventually learns to stop calling Jacob at night because their chatter soon turns to calming lulls and she always falls asleep to the sound of him humming in her ear and wakes to the sound of him snoring.
Nice as it is, it kind of runs up the phone bill.
*
“This is Quil and this is Embry. We go to school together,” Jacob says as he stands between Bella and two Quileute boys she’s never seen before, both taller than the average eleven-year-old. “Guys, this is Bella.”
“So this is the girl you’re always talking about, huh,” Quil says by way of introduction. Bella watches in interest as Jacob’s face turns pink. “It’s always ‘Bella this’ and ‘Bella that’ and ‘You’ll never guess what Bella did’. To be perfectly honest, I thought you were making her up.”
Embry shakes her hand. “You look real enough to me.”
“Thanks,” says Bella cheekily. “So do you.”
Quil says something about a bonfire on the cliffs and he and Embry lead the way while Jacob hangs back to tell Bella all about the car engine he’s been taking apart in his spare time. He’s still using the tool box she gave him, although he had to add to it and replace a couple of things and he soon realizes he lost her somewhere between ‘crankshaft’ and ‘piston ring’ and switches to asking her how school’s been.
There are a crowd of Quileutes gathered around the bonfire for the purpose of telling scary stories and Bella takes a seat on a log next to Jacob as the year-long mystery falls into place. Some of the stories are traditional (“the wolves and the cold ones”) and some of the stories are bizarre (“the monkey’s paw”) and Jacob tells a story about the towering twins with morning breath that has everyone in stitches.
It gets a little colder as the moon begins to shine but Bella, wrapped in a sweater and a jacket and Jacob’s arm, feels toasty right where she is. She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but then Jacob is gently shaking her shoulder, whispering that they should get back to the house, everyone but Quil and Embry are gone.
“So, are you two together or something?” Quil asks once Bella is on her feet and stretching.
“Not yet,” Jacob replies, causing Bella’s face to heat up. “But soon.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?”
“Not yet,” Jacob repeats. “I’m going to wait until we’re older and then do it properly and I’m going to be so smooth and charming that the only thing you’ll want to say is, ‘Yes.’”
Bella is amused despite herself. “But what if I say no?”
“You’ll break my heart and you won’t be able to live with yourself afterward. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“My advice to you is to run quickly in the opposite direction,” says Quil with all the wisdom of a boy who had seen Jacob Black’s ‘charm’ in action. “Or ‘forget’ to come back next summer. And the next. And the next.”
“Or date someone your own age,” adds Embry. “How old are you? Thirteen?”
“Almost.”
“Bella doesn’t know any boys better than me,” Jacob insists as though the very idea is laughable. “And if she did, I’d fight for her honor.”
The conversation is getting a little too ridiculous for Bella to handle and so she turns and starts walking down the cliffs, barely able to contain her laughter. Her and Jacob! Jacob was right in saying that she didn’t know any boys better than him, but surely he has to know some girls better than her. Girls who don’t trip all over themselves walking down a single street block or who weren’t quite so-so plain.
She can see Jacob with a couple of the Quileute girls that had been around the bonfire, maybe, when they all get a little older and the girls get a little more interested in boys. Bella can’t think far enough into her future to figure out who she’ll end up with; she has her hands full making sure her Mom takes care of her future.
Jacob catches up to her when she’s half-way down, catching her just as she goes to kick a rock, misses, and nearly falls over. “Careful there, Bells. You might hurt the cliff.”
“Funny,” says Bella dryly, a little too dryly given the direction her thoughts had been going in. “Maybe the cliff should be your best friend, then, instead of me.”
“Cliffs are horrible conversationalists. They listen well enough, but they never want to talk about themselves,” Jacob scoffs. “Besides, you’re irreplaceable as my best friend, Bella Swan. Nowhere will I find a girl as smart, endearing, sarcastic, or pretty.”
“I’m not pretty.”
“You can’t see you, so you probably didn’t notice, but I’m looking at you right now and you’re beautiful.”
Bella is blushing too furiously to respond.
Jacob smirks. “I told you I’ll be so smooth you’ll want to say yes.”
“I just want you to shut up,” Quil interrupts. “As soon as possible, actually.”
Jacob dashes back to grab Quil in a headlock while Bella tries to get her face back to a normal color, feeling warm and just a bit giddy. Embry falls into step with her, smiling. “He really likes you, you know.”
Bella glances over her shoulder, watching Jacob wrestle Quil to the ground, and nods slowly. “I really like him, too.”
The night before she’s due to return to Phoenix, she and Jacob get into a fight. She doesn’t remember who started it or what it was about. One minute they were talking aimlessly and the next they were on opposite sides of her room, snapping at one another. Jacob leaves in a huff and doesn’t come to see her off and Bella calls him, once, but Billy says he’s sleeping over at Embry’s and asks if she wants to leave a message. She doesn’t.
*
“You’ve reached Renee and Isabella Swan. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Uh, hey, Bella. It’s me-uh, you know. Jacob. Look, I’m really sorry about-are you coming back next summer? Because I got you something, sort of an apology present, but you were gone by the time I pedaled it over to Charlie’s and-if you’re still mad, let me know and I’ll stop calling, but I-I miss you a lot and-uh, yeah. Call me?”
*
“If you’re calling for Billy Black, please leave a message and he’ll get back to you at his earliest convenience. If you’re calling for Rachel and Rebecca, they have their own line. If you’re calling for me, Jacob, then leave a message, but I never check this thing, so you’re kind of on your own with that one.”
“Hey, it’s Bella. Um, I got your, um, messages. All fourteen of them. I’ll forgive you if you forgive me. I’ll see you next summer. Um, bye.”
*
The summer between her freshman and sophomore year, the first summer since she was eight that Bella is unable to visit Charlie and Jacob, is when the Cullens move to Forks. Jacob describes them as rather nondescript, kind of pretty in a stoic sort of way, but he didn’t get a really good look.
“Everybody’s talking about them, though,” he says with a hint of resignation. “And they don’t seem so bad-to me. Dad hates ‘em.”
Jacob calls every weekend, but doesn’t mention them again, and Bella soon forgets the Cullens in the sophomore shuffle.
*
“Mom’s getting remarried,” Bella says, twirling the phone cord around her finger as she waits for the kettle to boil. “To this guy-Phil Dwyer. He’s nice and makes her happy, but…”
“But…?” Jacob prompts.
“But he’s a baseball player and travels around a lot and I think I’m holding Mom back a little here and I’m thinking maybe I should, you know, get out of the way.”
“Bella, you’re seventeen years old. You can’t move out over something like this.” A pause. “Can you?”
“It’s not really moving out. It’s just moving.” Bella hesitates a long while before continuing, “Like, maybe moving to Forks to stay with Charlie?”
Jacob is quiet.
“I just want Mom to be happy and Phil makes her happy and, okay, I don’t like Forks, but I love Charlie and I love-and you’re there, so maybe it’d be beneficial for everyone if I just moved in with him.”
Silence.
“You think it’s a bad idea.”
“Bella, anything that involves you being within biking distance at all times is a wonderful idea. I’m just trying really hard not to influence your decision.”
Bella laughs. “Influence away.”
“Cons: Forks is wet, watery, boring, and you hate it. Pros: Forks has your father, me, and me. Pros win.”
The kettle begins to whistle. Bella laughs again. “I’ve got to finish my ramen noodles, but I’ll let you know how it turns out. Either way, I’ll see you soon.”
“Miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
Renee comes in as Bella is stirring her instant noodles, a dreamy smile on her face and one of her buttons undone. Bella focuses on the former, ignores the latter, and makes her choice.
*
“Edward Cullen hates me.”
“Will you go out with me?”
“What?”
“What?”
They are in the garage. Bella is sitting in the passenger seat of her truck while Jacob tinkers with something ‘under the hood’, as he calls it.
Bella’s first day at Forks High was like a roller coaster of confusion, too many downs and not enough ups, the nadir of it all being Edward Cullen’s apparent dislike of her. He and his whole family are almost inhumanly beautiful, but something about her must rub him the wrong way because he shot out of class like a bat out of hell-just because she’d sat next to him. Bella doesn’t understand boys.
She understands them even less now as she climbs out of the passenger seat so she can see Jacob, who is a sweaty, greasy mess, but looking at her with earnest eyes and the contagious smile that brightens her day.
The last ‘what’ had belonged to Jacob, so it is Bella who speaks first. “Say again?”
“There’s a movie playing. I thought maybe you and I could go see it together. Like a couple.” He glances at the ground for the briefest of instants before focusing back on her.
Bella can think of nothing better to say than, “I thought you were going to be smooth.”
“That was smooth.”
“That was-that was abrupt.”
“Bella,” he tugs off one of his gloves and takes her limp hand in his. “Bella, I’ve pretty much been in love with you since you stuck the shell in my sandcastle and I’ve been waiting all these years to fill out and get taller and be everything I thought maybe you’d want in a boyfriend-which is what I want to be. Your boyfriend. If you’ll have me.” He pauses. “Was that smooth?”
“No. That was terrible,” Bella says, a little breathlessly. “First of all, you were always perfect just the way you were. Second of all, what I want in a boyfriend is-” There’s something a little too cheesy about saying ‘you’. Instead, Bella says, “What movie do you want to see?”
Jacob smiles brighter than she can ever remember seeing him smile before. He doesn’t even give her a chance to return it before he kisses her.
*
Edward Cullen doesn’t come back to Biology. Bella hears that he transferred out and, though she tries hard to believe it’s not her fault, she still feels like it is.
Behind her back, Jacob shows up at Forks High to talk to Edward Cullen, which he admits, without a shred of guilt, seconds before she’d been about to ask him about it.
“Angela saw you,” Bella says, slightly taken aback by his lack of shame. “What did you want to talk to him about?”
Jacob looks as though it should be perfectly obvious. “You and why he hates you so much. It’s been bothering you. Rest your weary mind, Bells, it’s not you he can’t stand, it’s that teacher.”
Bella isn’t entirely sure that’s the truth, but Jacob seems to accept it as true and she sees little incentive not to believe it. She and Jacob fall asleep wrapped together on the couch and Bella puts Edward Cullen out of her mind. It’s just as well. She doesn’t see much of him for the rest of the year.
*
“I hear the Cullens are moving out of Forks,” Jacob says idly as he pushes Bella’s tank top up and traces his name on her stomach with his tongue. Bella squirms, face red. They’ve been together for a year, survived family dinners and friendly teasing, and she still can’t stop blushing when he does these kinds of things.
“What? Why?” asks Bella absently, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut when Jacob pulls her shirt back down and sits up.
“I don’t know. Charlie says that Dr. Cullen got a job transfer to another state and the whole family’s going with him or something. I just thought you might like to know,” Jacob looks at her with raised eyebrows. “Seeing as how you probably scared them off. What with Edward Cullen hating you so much.”
“Ha ha,” Bella says, sitting up as well. “Maybe you scared them off what with Edward Cullen hating you so much.”
“He doesn’t hate me. No one hates me. Everyone loves me.”
“I love you,” Bella admits. “I’m not sure about everyone.”
“I love you, too,” Jacob wraps his arms around her and falls back on the bed, taking her with him. “And so does everyone else. Just not as much as me.”
Bella shifts until her head is resting under his chin, pressing a kiss to the line of his jaw. “You know, eventually, I’m going to go off to college and leave you.”
“Bella, you’ve been leaving me for eleven months of the year every year since I was seven. Compared to that, the two years it’ll take me to get into college with you will seem like nothing.”
She pauses. “You’re going to go to college with me?”
“Naturally, so pick a good one. Preferably one where I can major in Auto Mechanics. I’m going to build myself a car collection.”
Bella is too touched to speak. She tries, lips moving without the benefit of words, then simply presses her face against Jacob’s chest and murmurs another, ‘I love you.’
“I know you do,” Jacob says, content. “But I should probably warn you-Emily’s planned our wedding and Quil and Embry have named all fifteen of our children.”
Bella’s groan is lost in the sound of his laughter.
*
END
home is where you are
otempora01, rated PG, at most.
Twilight, J/B, m/f, alternate universe (well, not really...)
“I was the natural path your life would have taken… if the world was the way it was supposed to be, if there were no monsters and no magic…” Bella’s life comes down to a matter of timing.
Complete in 4,672 words.
*
All this time and everything’s changed but I still feel the same
All good things eventually end and get washed down the drain
What a disaster it would be if you discovered that I cared
A little too much for friends but not enough to share
What if it was you, you that I needed all along?
I felt like a fool now that I’m sure that I was wrong
It had to be you
- It Had To Be You by Motion City Soundtrack
*
Bella’s parents get a divorce when she’s only one year old. Her mother takes her to Riverside, California and then, four years later, to Phoenix, Arizona. For her eighth birthday, she asks to visit her Dad.
Renee smiles as though she’d been waiting for that and summer vacation finds Bella on a plane, Washington-bound.
*
Even in July, Forks, Washington is like a big blob of wet nothing on the face of the US of A. Bella didn’t miss it one little bit. Her dad is still as tall and quiet as she remembers, asking how she’s been and how her mother’s doing. Bella’s only eight years old, but even she knows better than to say anything other than, “I’m fine. We’re fine. How are you?”
She can barely remember when her parents split up, only remembers asking her Mom why they lived in California and her Dad lived in damp and yucky Forks and her Mom had smiled and said, “Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to,” and that was that.
Bella didn’t really understand then, but she understands now that sometimes grown-ups can be just like little kids underneath those wrinkles and grey hairs. And sometimes she has to be the grown-up, even when she doesn’t want to. So she smiles and says that Phoenix is very sunny, like Riverside, and she likes her school very much and, yes, okay, she’ll come with him down to La Push to visit the Billy Blacks.
Charlie Swan drives around in a police car because he’s the chief of police. When she was younger, Bella always used to ask him to please turn on the siren because she wanted people to look at her and know that she was the daughter of a police chief and wasn’t that just the coolest thing ever?
But in Arizona everyone is tall and blond and pretty and Bella is short and brunette and plain and the last thing she wants these days is to be looked at. She sinks down in her seat so she can’t be seen through the window and wonders for the first time if maybe her Dad couldn’t drive something a little more inconspicuous.
Billy Black is tall and quiet like her Dad, but he smiles a lot more and Bella vaguely remembers him from when she used to live in Forks. He’s a Native American and he lives on the reservation and he slips her a jolly rancher when he shakes her hand hello, so Bella finds it hard to dislike him even though he lives in Forks and she’s not too fond of candy.
Billy Black has three children, two of them girls her age. Naturally, Bella gets shoved in a room with them while the big men talk about sports or whatever it was big men talked about. Rachel and Rebecca are ten-year-old twins, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and dark-haired, but almost as pretty as the girls in Arizona. Bella feels awkward already.
“Wanna play dolls?” Rachel asks after a long moment of silence in which Bella looks at her shoes and the twins look at her. “We have one for you, too.”
Bella doesn’t like dolls-they seem so childish-but she doesn’t want to be rude. Rachel and Rebecca lead her down the hall to their room which is very pink and somehow very them. Bella’s room is plain white; it was that color when she moved in and she saw no reason to chance it afterward. She stands by the door while Rachel roots through a big toy chest in the corner and Rebecca drags out a neatly carved doll house.
“Charlie got it for us for Christmas,” she explains when she sees Bella looking and the genuinely friendly smile she follows with helps Bella forget that she only got a card.
“Ozette’s missing,” says Rachel, straightening, a puzzled frown on her face. “How are we supposed to play dolls without Ozette?”
Rebecca frowns as well and then, as one, they shout, “JACOB!”
Bella thinks the name sounds familiar, but can’t put a face to it before the final Black, Jacob Black, comes bounding into the room with a look of practiced innocence.
“Yeah, what?” he asks curiously, then catches sight of Bella. “I think I know you?”
He phrases it like a question and Bella smiles at the unintentional verbalization of her thoughts. Rachel stops her from giving her name by brandishing a doll at Jacob’s head like a weapon. “Where’s Ozette?”
“Who?”
“Ozette,” Rebecca chimes in, pointing at the doll house. “She’s gone and you’re the only one who would have taken her.”
Jacob resentfully insists that he doesn’t play with dolls which sparks a family argument that Bella is all too happy to back away from. Jacob Black looks to be about six or seven, with hair almost past his ears and a certain slant to his shoulders that suggests a genuine politeness that will quickly fizzle out if pushed.
He’s being pushed now, Bella thinks idly as she takes a seat next to the doll house and wonders when she can go home. She catches sight of black thread sticking out from underneath the closet door and rising, carefully easing the door open. Lying on the floor is a hand-sewn doll with black thread for hair and little buttons for eyes.
She holds it up. “Hey, is this Ozette?”
Rachel and Rebecca turn, stop, and look sheepish. “Uh… yeah.”
“Told you,” Jacob says and marches from the room with righteous indignation. Bella expects one or both of them to go and apologize, but Rachel just comes to inspect her doll and Rebecca just pushes the door shut and Bella wonders if Jacob has reached the point where he’s stopped expecting them to come after him.
“You can be Ozette since you found her,” says Rebecca generously, as though Bella is the one that’s been wronged, and Rachel, a sour look on her face that she’s too young to know how to hide, nods reluctantly along with her sister.
Bella is glad when Charlie calls for her, murmuring something about playing another time, passing the doll back to Rachel, and hurrying to the stairs. She passes an open door and sees Jacob lying on the floor inside, watching The Magic School Bus like it holds all the answers to existence.
He sees her before she passes and scrambles into a sitting position. “Hey, wait! What’s your name?”
“Bella,” she replies. “Bella Swan.”
Jacob smiles and Bella’s unable to keep from smiling back. Then Charlie calls for her again and they go home and Bella does not return to La Push before she flies back to Phoenix at the end of the month.
*
“Did you have fun?” asks her mother when she picks her up at the airport, her ‘big little girl, taking flights by herself’. “How’s Charlie?”
Bella says yes she did, Charlie’s fine, and can they pick up a copy of The Magic School Bus on their way home?
*
Next July finds her back at La Push, but instead of staying inside to play dolls, Bella asks if she and the twins can go to First Beach. Billy thinks it’s a great idea and Charlie doesn’t see any reason not to and Rachel and Rebecca walk Bella down to First Beach and laugh as she trips and falls into nearly every cesspool they pass on their way there.
There’s someone on the beach already, someone that looks a lot like Jacob, building a sandcastle half his size. Rachel and Rebecca, eleven and old enough to think “going to the beach” and “lying in the sun” are synonymous, stretch out on their towels, hide their eyes behind huge sunglasses, and ignore the world. Jacob glances at them with the same look of exasperation that Bella is, then asks her if she’d like to help him finish.
Bella’s never been very good at making sandcastles, but it sounds better than lying down to roast in the lack of sunshine. She doesn’t do much more than scoop sand into Jacob’s little red bucket, but, somehow, their sandcastle looks bigger and better than any she’s ever seen and Jacob even lets her add the final shell.
Bella thinks it’s silly to feel as proud as she does, but Jacob beams at her and she feels a little less childish.
They admire their handy work for a moment, then Jacob says, from nowhere, “I can build stuff.”
“I can see that,” Bella says, trying not to smile. “You built this.”
“Not like this. Real stuff. I took apart my toy truck and put it back together, but Dad won’t let me try it on his truck.”
Bella’s experience with toy trucks mainly involves tripping over them, which doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. Instead she says, “I learned how to whistle.”
“Show me,” Jacob demands, then laughs when she does. “I can whistle better than that!”
“Show me,” Bella echoes and Jacob sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles so loudly she goes deaf in one ear and feels the ground shake. The whistle and their laughter jolts Rachel and Rebecca up and, the instant they take off their glasses, it starts to rain.
They run back toward the house with their towels over their heads while Jacob and Bella stand side-by-side on the beach, watching the rain drops slowly destroy the castle.
“Water erosion,” Jacob says sadly.
“The Magic School Bus Rocks and Rolls.”
Jacob grins brilliantly. “Lost In Space was way better.”
“Not better than For Lunch,” Bella retorts, grinning back. Jacob asks if she wants to watch it with him and Bella eagerly agrees. When they run back to the house, it’s hand in hand, and that’s the first time Bella is sad to return to Phoenix at the end of the summer.
*
“Jacob Black?” Renee says when Bella tells her who the tool box she buys for Christmas is really for. “Who’s Jacob Black?”
“My friend,” Bella replies and is warmed by the thought.
*
Bella doesn’t care much for being eleven. She’s one year and some months away from being a teenager (though she feels much older sometimes) and yet still stuck in the awkward days of adolescence. If there’s one thing she doesn’t need, it’s added awkwardness.
Jacob’s only ten so he can’t possibly understand although, he says as they lay side-by-side on his bed, puberty’s much worse for boys than for girls.
“It is not,” Bella says, insulted. Somewhere in the house, she can hear Rachel and Rebecca arguing about who took whose lip gloss and she is so, so happy Jacob isn’t a thing like his sisters. “We-” she blushes. “We grow things in places and-and stuff.”
Jacob grins, but doesn’t tease. “At least your voice doesn’t break. Sometimes I sound like Yosemite Sam and sometimes I sound like Tweety. And then there are all these dreams.”
“I think we should talk about something else.”
“You were in this one dream I had,” Jacob presses on gleefully and Bella’s face, if possible, turns redder.
“No, I was not.”
“Oh, yes you were. You had this entire can of whipped cream, right?”
“Jacob!”
“And you said, ‘Hey, Jake,’ and took the cap off with your teeth-”
“Shut up!”
“-and then you sprayed it on top of my ice cream sundae and said, ‘Want some cherry with that?’”
Bella attempts to push him off the bed, but Jacob digs his feet in as he laughs and she has to settle for hitting him instead. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
“I talk in my sleep.”
His laughter fills the room again and Bella groans for all of five seconds before she’s laughing, too.
Charlie pops his head in the door and looks at the two of them, amused. “I brought your pajamas and toothbrush, Bells. In case you want to stay the night.”
“Can she?” Jacob asks, sitting up excitedly.
“I don’t see why not.”
Bella sits up slowly, afraid to ask and afraid to know, but Jacob instantly erases all her fears by jumping up and saying, “I’ll go see Dad about setting up the cot in here. This is going to be so much fun!”
He runs off, leaving Charlie and Bella alone. Charlie leans against the doorway. “So. Jacob.”
Bella smiles.
When she’s packing her suitcase into the police car, Jacob rides up raggedly on one of his sisters’ bikes. Bella opens her mouth to ask, but he just hands her a slip of paper, shouts for her to call him, and then peddles away again. It’s only after she gets back to Phoenix and calls that she discovers he was grounded and snuck out to catch her before she left.
*
“Jacob called again,” Renee says as she lies, half-asleep, on the couch. Bella keeps telling her not to stay out after midnight, no matter who it is she’s dating, but leave it to her mother to completely ignore reason. “He says you should start watching Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Something about preparing for next summer.”
Jacob doesn’t explain any further when she calls, but the conversation quickly turns to other things and Bella eventually learns to stop calling Jacob at night because their chatter soon turns to calming lulls and she always falls asleep to the sound of him humming in her ear and wakes to the sound of him snoring.
Nice as it is, it kind of runs up the phone bill.
*
“This is Quil and this is Embry. We go to school together,” Jacob says as he stands between Bella and two Quileute boys she’s never seen before, both taller than the average eleven-year-old. “Guys, this is Bella.”
“So this is the girl you’re always talking about, huh,” Quil says by way of introduction. Bella watches in interest as Jacob’s face turns pink. “It’s always ‘Bella this’ and ‘Bella that’ and ‘You’ll never guess what Bella did’. To be perfectly honest, I thought you were making her up.”
Embry shakes her hand. “You look real enough to me.”
“Thanks,” says Bella cheekily. “So do you.”
Quil says something about a bonfire on the cliffs and he and Embry lead the way while Jacob hangs back to tell Bella all about the car engine he’s been taking apart in his spare time. He’s still using the tool box she gave him, although he had to add to it and replace a couple of things and he soon realizes he lost her somewhere between ‘crankshaft’ and ‘piston ring’ and switches to asking her how school’s been.
There are a crowd of Quileutes gathered around the bonfire for the purpose of telling scary stories and Bella takes a seat on a log next to Jacob as the year-long mystery falls into place. Some of the stories are traditional (“the wolves and the cold ones”) and some of the stories are bizarre (“the monkey’s paw”) and Jacob tells a story about the towering twins with morning breath that has everyone in stitches.
It gets a little colder as the moon begins to shine but Bella, wrapped in a sweater and a jacket and Jacob’s arm, feels toasty right where she is. She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but then Jacob is gently shaking her shoulder, whispering that they should get back to the house, everyone but Quil and Embry are gone.
“So, are you two together or something?” Quil asks once Bella is on her feet and stretching.
“Not yet,” Jacob replies, causing Bella’s face to heat up. “But soon.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?”
“Not yet,” Jacob repeats. “I’m going to wait until we’re older and then do it properly and I’m going to be so smooth and charming that the only thing you’ll want to say is, ‘Yes.’”
Bella is amused despite herself. “But what if I say no?”
“You’ll break my heart and you won’t be able to live with yourself afterward. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“My advice to you is to run quickly in the opposite direction,” says Quil with all the wisdom of a boy who had seen Jacob Black’s ‘charm’ in action. “Or ‘forget’ to come back next summer. And the next. And the next.”
“Or date someone your own age,” adds Embry. “How old are you? Thirteen?”
“Almost.”
“Bella doesn’t know any boys better than me,” Jacob insists as though the very idea is laughable. “And if she did, I’d fight for her honor.”
The conversation is getting a little too ridiculous for Bella to handle and so she turns and starts walking down the cliffs, barely able to contain her laughter. Her and Jacob! Jacob was right in saying that she didn’t know any boys better than him, but surely he has to know some girls better than her. Girls who don’t trip all over themselves walking down a single street block or who weren’t quite so-so plain.
She can see Jacob with a couple of the Quileute girls that had been around the bonfire, maybe, when they all get a little older and the girls get a little more interested in boys. Bella can’t think far enough into her future to figure out who she’ll end up with; she has her hands full making sure her Mom takes care of her future.
Jacob catches up to her when she’s half-way down, catching her just as she goes to kick a rock, misses, and nearly falls over. “Careful there, Bells. You might hurt the cliff.”
“Funny,” says Bella dryly, a little too dryly given the direction her thoughts had been going in. “Maybe the cliff should be your best friend, then, instead of me.”
“Cliffs are horrible conversationalists. They listen well enough, but they never want to talk about themselves,” Jacob scoffs. “Besides, you’re irreplaceable as my best friend, Bella Swan. Nowhere will I find a girl as smart, endearing, sarcastic, or pretty.”
“I’m not pretty.”
“You can’t see you, so you probably didn’t notice, but I’m looking at you right now and you’re beautiful.”
Bella is blushing too furiously to respond.
Jacob smirks. “I told you I’ll be so smooth you’ll want to say yes.”
“I just want you to shut up,” Quil interrupts. “As soon as possible, actually.”
Jacob dashes back to grab Quil in a headlock while Bella tries to get her face back to a normal color, feeling warm and just a bit giddy. Embry falls into step with her, smiling. “He really likes you, you know.”
Bella glances over her shoulder, watching Jacob wrestle Quil to the ground, and nods slowly. “I really like him, too.”
The night before she’s due to return to Phoenix, she and Jacob get into a fight. She doesn’t remember who started it or what it was about. One minute they were talking aimlessly and the next they were on opposite sides of her room, snapping at one another. Jacob leaves in a huff and doesn’t come to see her off and Bella calls him, once, but Billy says he’s sleeping over at Embry’s and asks if she wants to leave a message. She doesn’t.
*
“You’ve reached Renee and Isabella Swan. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Uh, hey, Bella. It’s me-uh, you know. Jacob. Look, I’m really sorry about-are you coming back next summer? Because I got you something, sort of an apology present, but you were gone by the time I pedaled it over to Charlie’s and-if you’re still mad, let me know and I’ll stop calling, but I-I miss you a lot and-uh, yeah. Call me?”
*
“If you’re calling for Billy Black, please leave a message and he’ll get back to you at his earliest convenience. If you’re calling for Rachel and Rebecca, they have their own line. If you’re calling for me, Jacob, then leave a message, but I never check this thing, so you’re kind of on your own with that one.”
“Hey, it’s Bella. Um, I got your, um, messages. All fourteen of them. I’ll forgive you if you forgive me. I’ll see you next summer. Um, bye.”
*
The summer between her freshman and sophomore year, the first summer since she was eight that Bella is unable to visit Charlie and Jacob, is when the Cullens move to Forks. Jacob describes them as rather nondescript, kind of pretty in a stoic sort of way, but he didn’t get a really good look.
“Everybody’s talking about them, though,” he says with a hint of resignation. “And they don’t seem so bad-to me. Dad hates ‘em.”
Jacob calls every weekend, but doesn’t mention them again, and Bella soon forgets the Cullens in the sophomore shuffle.
*
“Mom’s getting remarried,” Bella says, twirling the phone cord around her finger as she waits for the kettle to boil. “To this guy-Phil Dwyer. He’s nice and makes her happy, but…”
“But…?” Jacob prompts.
“But he’s a baseball player and travels around a lot and I think I’m holding Mom back a little here and I’m thinking maybe I should, you know, get out of the way.”
“Bella, you’re seventeen years old. You can’t move out over something like this.” A pause. “Can you?”
“It’s not really moving out. It’s just moving.” Bella hesitates a long while before continuing, “Like, maybe moving to Forks to stay with Charlie?”
Jacob is quiet.
“I just want Mom to be happy and Phil makes her happy and, okay, I don’t like Forks, but I love Charlie and I love-and you’re there, so maybe it’d be beneficial for everyone if I just moved in with him.”
Silence.
“You think it’s a bad idea.”
“Bella, anything that involves you being within biking distance at all times is a wonderful idea. I’m just trying really hard not to influence your decision.”
Bella laughs. “Influence away.”
“Cons: Forks is wet, watery, boring, and you hate it. Pros: Forks has your father, me, and me. Pros win.”
The kettle begins to whistle. Bella laughs again. “I’ve got to finish my ramen noodles, but I’ll let you know how it turns out. Either way, I’ll see you soon.”
“Miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
Renee comes in as Bella is stirring her instant noodles, a dreamy smile on her face and one of her buttons undone. Bella focuses on the former, ignores the latter, and makes her choice.
*
“Edward Cullen hates me.”
“Will you go out with me?”
“What?”
“What?”
They are in the garage. Bella is sitting in the passenger seat of her truck while Jacob tinkers with something ‘under the hood’, as he calls it.
Bella’s first day at Forks High was like a roller coaster of confusion, too many downs and not enough ups, the nadir of it all being Edward Cullen’s apparent dislike of her. He and his whole family are almost inhumanly beautiful, but something about her must rub him the wrong way because he shot out of class like a bat out of hell-just because she’d sat next to him. Bella doesn’t understand boys.
She understands them even less now as she climbs out of the passenger seat so she can see Jacob, who is a sweaty, greasy mess, but looking at her with earnest eyes and the contagious smile that brightens her day.
The last ‘what’ had belonged to Jacob, so it is Bella who speaks first. “Say again?”
“There’s a movie playing. I thought maybe you and I could go see it together. Like a couple.” He glances at the ground for the briefest of instants before focusing back on her.
Bella can think of nothing better to say than, “I thought you were going to be smooth.”
“That was smooth.”
“That was-that was abrupt.”
“Bella,” he tugs off one of his gloves and takes her limp hand in his. “Bella, I’ve pretty much been in love with you since you stuck the shell in my sandcastle and I’ve been waiting all these years to fill out and get taller and be everything I thought maybe you’d want in a boyfriend-which is what I want to be. Your boyfriend. If you’ll have me.” He pauses. “Was that smooth?”
“No. That was terrible,” Bella says, a little breathlessly. “First of all, you were always perfect just the way you were. Second of all, what I want in a boyfriend is-” There’s something a little too cheesy about saying ‘you’. Instead, Bella says, “What movie do you want to see?”
Jacob smiles brighter than she can ever remember seeing him smile before. He doesn’t even give her a chance to return it before he kisses her.
*
Edward Cullen doesn’t come back to Biology. Bella hears that he transferred out and, though she tries hard to believe it’s not her fault, she still feels like it is.
Behind her back, Jacob shows up at Forks High to talk to Edward Cullen, which he admits, without a shred of guilt, seconds before she’d been about to ask him about it.
“Angela saw you,” Bella says, slightly taken aback by his lack of shame. “What did you want to talk to him about?”
Jacob looks as though it should be perfectly obvious. “You and why he hates you so much. It’s been bothering you. Rest your weary mind, Bells, it’s not you he can’t stand, it’s that teacher.”
Bella isn’t entirely sure that’s the truth, but Jacob seems to accept it as true and she sees little incentive not to believe it. She and Jacob fall asleep wrapped together on the couch and Bella puts Edward Cullen out of her mind. It’s just as well. She doesn’t see much of him for the rest of the year.
*
“I hear the Cullens are moving out of Forks,” Jacob says idly as he pushes Bella’s tank top up and traces his name on her stomach with his tongue. Bella squirms, face red. They’ve been together for a year, survived family dinners and friendly teasing, and she still can’t stop blushing when he does these kinds of things.
“What? Why?” asks Bella absently, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut when Jacob pulls her shirt back down and sits up.
“I don’t know. Charlie says that Dr. Cullen got a job transfer to another state and the whole family’s going with him or something. I just thought you might like to know,” Jacob looks at her with raised eyebrows. “Seeing as how you probably scared them off. What with Edward Cullen hating you so much.”
“Ha ha,” Bella says, sitting up as well. “Maybe you scared them off what with Edward Cullen hating you so much.”
“He doesn’t hate me. No one hates me. Everyone loves me.”
“I love you,” Bella admits. “I’m not sure about everyone.”
“I love you, too,” Jacob wraps his arms around her and falls back on the bed, taking her with him. “And so does everyone else. Just not as much as me.”
Bella shifts until her head is resting under his chin, pressing a kiss to the line of his jaw. “You know, eventually, I’m going to go off to college and leave you.”
“Bella, you’ve been leaving me for eleven months of the year every year since I was seven. Compared to that, the two years it’ll take me to get into college with you will seem like nothing.”
She pauses. “You’re going to go to college with me?”
“Naturally, so pick a good one. Preferably one where I can major in Auto Mechanics. I’m going to build myself a car collection.”
Bella is too touched to speak. She tries, lips moving without the benefit of words, then simply presses her face against Jacob’s chest and murmurs another, ‘I love you.’
“I know you do,” Jacob says, content. “But I should probably warn you-Emily’s planned our wedding and Quil and Embry have named all fifteen of our children.”
Bella’s groan is lost in the sound of his laughter.
*
END