Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was one-hundred-and-two degrees in Phoenix, Arizona. Too hot for almost September.  The sun was out, the air was sweltering, and the AC was on as my mom drove me to the airport.   I was trying to keep cool the best I could in a tank top and sweatpants – I knew that as soon as I got off the plane the temperature would be brisk, so I wasn’t going to wear shorts only to freeze.

Where I was going, the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington, I wouldn’t need to struggle in oppressive heat, or worry about my car melting.  To Forks, the town my father had become an integral part of, the town where I had grown to the ripe age of 11 months in – before my parents got a divorce and my mom moved me to Arizona.  I had escaped the heat for most of my summers and gone to Forks to hang out with my dad. We liked to camp together, and hike, and I would even fish with him sometimes. Though only when I could convince him to catch and release.  It wasn’t that I was a vegetarian, I had volunteered at one too many farms for that, I just didn’t like watching the poor clueless fish flounder and die.

Even though we differed on our love, or lack thereof, of fishing - I loved my dad.  And I loved Forks, and I was looking forward to living there full time. The thing was, I had gotten all my general education requirements out of the way at the local community college in Phoenix, and I was finally ready to transfer to the Environmental Science program at the University of Washington – the program that was run at a site right near Forks, taking advantage of the broad diversity of life and ecology in the Olympic National Forest and Park.

My mom smiled at me, the soft lines by her eyes crinkled a little, the start of crows feet marked a life filled with lots of smiles. “Are you ready Frizzy?” She used my nickname, the one I was starting to think I had grown out of.  It was alright though, I knew it was a moment of high emotion for her. I tried to feel sad about leaving for a moment, but I was oh so ready to be in a state that had rain and green plants.

“Yes. I’ll miss you Mom.” I hugged her once in the car after she pulled to the side of the ‘drop-off’ section of the airport loop. I gathered my bags, put them on the sidewalk, and pulled her in for a second hug.

“I’ll miss you too, baby girl. So much.” She squeezed me like a nearly empty toothpaste tube. The air left me in a huff, which I turned into a sheepish chuckle.

“Easy, Mom. I need to breathe.” I pulled away and tried to give her an encouraging smile. There were tears in her eyes and that made it hard for me to keep my cool. “It’s okay, we’ll see each other for Christmas, and other breaks too,” I added quickly. Though it was more than what Dad had gotten while I was growing up.

“I know, I know.” She pulled back to smile at me. Maybe she would be okay without me. “Tell Charlie I said hi.”

“I will. Love you Mom.”

“Love you too, Frizzy.”

I was finally able to pull away from her completely and walked into the airport. There was a long line between me and the metal detector. I took care of my checked bag before I got in line, once I made it to the other side of security I relaxed a bit. I found my gate, with an hour to spare, and bought a couple fruity smoothie drinks for the flight.

The flight was four hours to Seattle, an hour to Port Angeles, and then an hour car ride with dad. Charlie was a quiet type. Mostly we sat next to each other in companionable silence, or we hiked in companionable silence, or camped. Some of the best memories I had were of my family sitting around a fire, roasting marshmallows. Though I could never pinpoint the memory chronologically. It didn’t make sense for me to be able to remember anything from before my parents’ divorce, but Charlie and Renee never did want to be in the same spot at the same time.  Until I was 12 my parents would fly with me, but after that I had been an unaccompanied minor. The memory must have been after 1 but before 12 – it was too big a haystack to find my needle in.

When I arrived at Port Angeles it was raining, the grey clouds gave the world a completely different mood than the bright sun of Phoenix. Everything seemed a little cooler, color wise but also temperature wise, a little softer, a little sleepier. Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser at arrivals.  I was expecting as much, Charlie was the Chief of Police in Forks.

“Frizzy!” He pulled me into a dad bear-hug and I had to chuckle against his chest.

“Hi Dad.” It didn’t matter if I rolled my eyes while we were hugging, he couldn’t see it. Would my parents ever let that nickname die?

“So good to see you, kiddo.” He patted my shoulder and helped me put my 2 whole bags into the trunk of the cruiser. “Not a lot of clothes huh? That’s fine, you have your Washington clothes at the house. And I got a couple items I think you might like to help you with the cold.” I was intrigued. My dad knew my fashion sense enough not to come home with anything absolutely heinous, but he was still a bit of a clueless dad.

“Oh yeah?” I tested him as we got into the car. “What kind of items?”

“Oh you know,” he said vaguely. “A hat, a scarf, some gloves.”

“What color?” I started to quiz him in earnest.

“Green,” he said quickly. And with a smirk that meant he knew he was getting a good grade. “ And ,” he started, in a voice that told me he had saved the best for last. “A car.”

“ A car ,” I repeated, a little dumbstruck. Of course, I wanted a car to get to and from classes. That was kind of the point of being a commuter. I was going to live at home to cut out most of the cost of attendance, and then since my dad lived in Washington full time I was able to get in-state tuition and a couple scholarships. The University of Washington was going to pay me to go to school. Which meant I had been planning on buying my own car – whatever cheap rust bucket I could find that would do the very simple job I needed it for. “Where did you get it? For how much? You didn’t need to do that dad, I was going to buy my own.”

He shrugged, as if that hadn’t been a factor in his thought process. “For cheap, don’t worry Friz. Billy sold it to me. Remember his diabetes?”

I nodded, of course I remembered. Billy was one of Charlie’s oldest friends. A year or so ago his diabetes caused nerve damage to his legs. “Bertha? He sold you Bertha?” Bertha was his old 1998 Subaru Forester. She was a plain gray and black, but she was big and beautiful in my eyes. And more importantly, she had four-wheel-drive. An important feature in the rainy land of the Pacific North West.

“Yu-up,” Charlie said with a smile. “Jacky got them a slightly newer car and outfitted it with those levers, so Billy can drive it. She’s a good kid. And damn good with cars, pardon my French.”  Part of me thought that Charlie wished I was ‘damn good’ with cars instead of just knowledgeable enough to recognize makes and models and change tires.

“So I get Bertha…” It was a novel thought, and I found I liked the sound of it. Isabella and Bertha, driving down to the college of environmental science, crashing through the snow and the mud and getting down and dirty in the Olympic Forest.  The best perk was that I knew Jacky well enough that I wouldn’t feel awkward asking for her help if I had problems with the car. “Thanks dad!”

“You’re welcome, Friz.” He was obviously proud of himself. Maybe all this was to feel like he deserved the ‘world's best dad’ mug I had gotten him last Christmas. All the same, he was a good dad – if not the best dad – he knew what I liked, he knew what I needed, and he was always willing to help me out.

For the remainder of the drive I got him caught up on what was happening with mom, with Phoenix, and my last semester at the community college. I told him about all the scholarships I had gotten, the thank you letters I had to write, and the potential money that I would get for them. It sounded like I wouldn’t need to work while I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree. Which would be a boon to my grades. Maybe if something at the college opened up, like research or a teaching assistant gig, I would look into it.

In return he tried to tell me about some interesting cases that had happened since the last time I visited. Though not much happened in Forks. The town was too small for that. Mostly he complained about college students…

“Please tell me you’re not going to be one of those college students.” At that I had to roll my eyes, in an obvious way, in a way he would notice.

“Come on dad, how long have you known me?”

“’Bout 21 years,” he started. “Okay, I guess ya’ got a point there, kiddo.”

“If you’ve known me for 21 years, am I a kiddo?” It was a gentle prod, but it was a prod all the same. He sighed loudly.

“Okay, I guess ya’ got a point there, my wonderful mostly adult daughter.”

“Better,” I said with a laugh.

Eventually we lapsed into silence. I turned on the radio and the soft trickle of music and the view out the window was enough to keep me content.  Washington was a fairy wonderland in comparison to Arizona. Everything was green, the trees, the moss that grew on the trees, the ferns (and more moss) that covered the ground. Even the light filtered down greenly through the clouds and leaves. I couldn’t wait to take my bryology class. What a nerd thing to think, but it was true. There must have been hundreds of different kinds of mosses out there, I just needed a class about it to teach me what I was looking for.

When we reached the house, I was starting to feel the exhaustion of travel. I took a moment to say hi to Bertha in the driveway. She was just as beautiful as I remembered.

“I’m glad you like the car so much,” Charlie said with a chuckle.

“I love her dad.”

“So it’s a she?”

“You think me and Jacky would name a ‘he’ Bertha?” He just shook his head and laughed at me.

 The cozy two-bedroom house tucked into the woods was also familiar and comforting. I waited for dad to unlock the door and took the stairs two at a time up to my bedroom. I fell into the lavender colored blankets and sighed. “I’ll sleep well tonight,” I said to no one in particular.

I only did a little unpacking, just what I needed to start getting set up. What I needed to go to – ugh – orientation tomorrow. I could unpack the rest of the way later. I put my laptop on my desk. I plugged my phone in and turned my alarm on.  I took my toiletry bag out of my bigger bag, bagception, and brought that to the bathroom. There was still some juniper shampoo in the shower, leftover from my last visit. Good, one less thing for me to buy.

While I was setting things up in the bathroom I caught a glance of myself in the mirror and had to make a funny face in it that showed off my double chins. Then I smiled softly and tried to make a pretty model face. I was too tired and frazzled (frazzled Frizzy as my parents would say) from traveling to look my best, but I wasn’t ugly by any means. My skin was too ambiguously tan to look pallid, my hair was dark and thick and fell a couple inches past my shoulders when it was down. I did have little dark bags under my dirt brown eyes, but those would go away after a good night's sleep. While I was at the mirror I pulled my hair into a quick braid, so it wouldn’t get tangled as I slept.  At the sink, I cleaned my face and brushed my teeth and did all my usual bedtime rituals.

The sun had gone down and hidden the green wonderland outside. And I was too tired to stay up with Charlie and watch a little TV. So, I trod halfway down the stairs and said goodnight. Dad asked if I wanted anything to eat but I told him I had plane food and would have a big breakfast tomorrow. He grumbled a little but said goodnight after a moment. Charlie didn’t hover, and he tried his best not to worry over me. I appreciated it.

I was right about sleeping well. The soft pitter-patter of the rain lulled me straight to sleep. I woke up warm and cozy in my comforter. I didn’t want to get out of bed but I knew I had to make it to the college by 11 for orientation. My alarm blared and I knew I had to get up. Though I wanted to stay warm in bed, listening to the rain. I was a little surprised that it had kept going through the night.

Blearily, I stumbled out of bed, turned off my alarm and pocketed my phone. I dressed warm, I knew I would need a couple layers. Tank-top, flannel, jeans. That was good enough, I would put my raincoat over it. I grabbed whatever I could find in the kitchen, which ended up being apple cinnamon oatmeal, nice. I would have to do a little shopping to stock up on fast breakfast foods. Sometimes waking up in the morning was hard.

As I walked through the mudroom, in the light of day, I noticed the hat, scarf, and gloves that I hadn’t noticed the night before. They were deep pine green and soft. Charlie did know me pretty well, at least he knew my favorite color was green and I had a special weakness for soft fabric. They were perfect, but it wasn’t cold yet enough to need them, and I didn’t want to get them wet. The keys to the Subaru were on the same coat hanger as my green accessories – on a lanyard that said something about libraries being good – no arguments there. I took a moment to clip the lanyard with the car keys onto my keychain. The keychain itself had been a present from a cousin, and it already held the two house keys.

The drive to the college was about thirty minutes, but I could probably cut that down once I was more familiar with the drive. Though the addition of snow or ice might slow me down.

Finding a place to park was easy the first day, since not everyone was trying to get a parking spot. Plus I was a little early. I parked by the campus police and went in to get the parking pass I had ordered online. The very skinny woman with hair taller than she was wide looked at me with tired eyes and told me that if I wanted to get my parking pass I would need to show her my school ID, something I didn’t have yet. I thanked her anyway and left. So where did I go to get my ID? I followed the signs for orientation up a hill to a big gymnasium type building. There were helpful people in t-shirts with the school colors, and big letters that spelled out ‘ORIENTATION LEADER’. Alright, one of them would know. I asked and in return was asked my last name and given a folder with my name on it. I looked in it and found my schedule printed out, something I already had saved on my phone, along with a list of activities. Oh, heck no, I wasn’t interested in awkwardly telling people about myself all day.

Thankfully, the folder also had a map of the campus and the name of a building where I could get my ID. I fled the gymnasium and walked up another hill to the bookstore and campus outfitter. There wasn’t a line yet, so I was able to take my picture quick and easy. Even though I had tried not to close my eyes as I smiled, they still had crinkled shut on my ID. Seeing my features even smaller made me look even more ethnically ambiguous. My wide round nose didn't offer any particular race except ‘probably not completely white’.  I wondered vaguely if anyone would have enough courage to ask during the orientation. Part of me hoped they wouldn’t, but it was something that I was used to, and had learned to find some entertainment in it. Back in Phoenix everyone usually just assumed I was Latina – which meant my Spanish had gone from middle school level to conversational relatively quickly. But in Washington, I usually got more varied guesses.

Even though I had already signed in for the orientation, I felt like my presence would probably be missed by my assigned orientation leader. The rule following part of my soul chastised me for wanting to skip it, and I glumly walked back to the gymnasium. In what seemed like a consolation prize, there were cookies waiting for me when I got back. Chocolate chip, sugar, and oatmeal. I ate a chocolate chip cookie and shoved two more in my raincoat pockets.

“Are you Isabella Swan?” Embarrassing to say, but I jumped, as if I had my hand in the proverbial – and literal – cookie jar.

“Mmfeah,” I tried to say around my cookie.

“Yay! You were the last person missing from our group!” The tiny blonde orientation leader almost bounced with joy to find her missing sheep. “I’m your orientation leader. Let’s go outside and we can start getting to know each other.” Ah yes, getting to know each other , aka the worst part of any orientation. Resigned to my fate, I nodded and followed her outside, along with the handful of other transfer students that made up our group.

The game that the orientation leader (Laura Lentil) started explaining to us was annoying and pedantic, but I put on a brave face and got ready to remember a bunch of first names along with a food that happened to start with the same letter. As we went around the circle, we had to repeat all the names and foods that had been said before us, and then add our own. Bad luck that I had, I was at the end of the circle. Right next to Laura as she started the game and then passed it to the person on her other side. Drat.

“Laura Lentil, Eric Egg,” said the lanky guy to Laura’s right.

“Laura Lentil, Eric Egg, Angela Apple.” The girl to the right of Eric had the right idea, just go with the easiest, and most boring, food.  Angela had an aesthetically pleasing round face, and I caught myself admiring her eyebrows. So, I almost missed when the next person said:

“Laura Lentil, Eric Egg, Angela Apple, Mike Melon.” Mike was built like a brick house, with shoulders that made his head look too small. Even though he was a giant, he had a small sheepish smile and friendly eyes.

“Laura Lentil, Eric uhm…. Egg, Angela Apple, Mike Melon, Jessica… Juice?” The girl immediately to my left said, sounding like she was looking for approval. Her voice seemed too small for her size. She was model tall, with dark ringlets that fell to her waist. In fact, everything about her seemed model pretty, from her small nose, to her full lips, except that she had big round glasses on her face.  Jessica looked like exactly the kind of girl that had her hair in a ponytail and glasses on, who would take both off at the end of the movie and surprise! She was beautiful. I didn’t need to wait for the end of the movie to know she was pretty. I was a little lost in the curve of her lips when everyone turned to look at me and Laura cleared her throat.

“Laura Lentil!” I yelped. “Eric Egg, Angela Apple, Mike Melon, Jessica Juice, Isabella…” I was so focused on paying attention to what everyone else had said that I hadn’t thought of a food for myself. “Ice,” I said dumbly.

“Ice isn’t a food,” said Mike Melon.

“Ice can be a food,” Angela Apple tried to defend me and I immediately liked her.

“I think it needs to have a flavor to be a food,” Jessica said shyly. I felt betrayed.

“But it is something that people eat. And I know plenty of people who like to chew on it,” the orientation leader chimed in. If Laura Lentil said it counted, it counted. And I nodded along with what she said. “I’ll count it!” Yes! I couldn’t stop myself from pumping my fist. “Now that that heated, haha, debate is over. Let’s go get your student IDs!” Everything Laura said she seemed to chime, like a loud bell.

“I uhm,” I leaned close to her and started in a hushed tone. “I already got my student ID, can I go?” Laura’s face twisted into disappointment, it almost looked like she actually wanted me to get IDs with everyone, and that by leaving I would be depriving her of one of her closest friends. She was a good pick for orientation leader.

“Well… I guess… if you already got your ID…” She talked herself into letting me go, then suddenly perked back up. “Transfer team meetings are once a week, I’ll send an email out soon for info for next time!”

“Next time?”

“Yeah, being a transfer is hard, so we make these groups and well, it makes it easier to acclimate and make friends.” She smiled at me, and it looked like the sun was shining out of her happy face. “You already have me and Eric, Angela, Mike, and Jessica!” I was impressed when she had remembered everyone’s names perfectly, but then I realized that she had probably been looking at a list with our names on it for a few days already.

“Oh… okay, I’ll see you next week then.” I waved at my Transfer Team ™ and started toward the campus police again. This time I would get my parking permit.

As I walked across the mostly empty campus, I found myself getting anxious. It felt like someone was watching me. I looked around, giving into my nervous monkey brain, and was surprised when my eyes caught a flash of movement. I did a double take and saw that the movement was a petite girl with a TWA (teeny weeny afro), a style of close cropped natural hair. She had on a red shirt that brought out the warmth in her brown skin, and dark skinny jeans that matched the curve of her legs perfectly until they ran into her knee-high boots. She was breathtakingly beautiful, but what made me stare was her eyes. They were golden, like two twin topazes caught in her smooth face.

Her round nose flared and her look turned into a glare. Had I offended her by staring? She was the one that had walked up behind me. There seemed to be a battle going on behind those gorgeous eyes for a moment before she turned around and quickly stalked off in the opposite direction. Weird.  

I continued my walk to the campus police. Where I did, finally, get my parking pass. Bertha was a quiet reprieve away from loud orientation leaders, awkward Transfer Teams ™, and beautiful glaring women. I sighed and took a few moments to mentally recover.

As I drove home, I turned on the heat to see if it worked. It did, and I silently thanked Jacky. I would have to get together with her soon, she would be happy to hear that I was going to school close by. I turned the radio on, that worked too, to try and drown out some of my thoughts. I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl who surprised me on the way to get my parking permit. 

Chapter Text

The next day was a Saturday. I didn’t know why the college set things up so orientation was on a Friday. Maybe so people could still trickle in during the weekend.  But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It meant that I had a whole weekend to myself before classes actually started.  Charlie was gone by the time I woke up, but when I went downstairs I saw a note he left, asking me to buy corn muffins if I went out.  A quick sniff and a look at the crock-pot on the kitchen counter told me he was making chili for tonight.  Dad made the best chili.

As for breakfast, I just grabbed some cocopuffs and started a list on my phone of things to grab at the grocery store. Cornbread/muffins, healthier cereal, quick breakfast food , I typed into a note.  While I ate I texted Jacky.  I hadn’t seen her in what felt like years – though maybe it had only been one year. Nine months? The last time I had been in Forks was for Christmas.

I: Hey Jacky, what’s up? I’m in Forks full time now! We should hang out

I ate my sugary cereal, not expecting a quick reply. But since I was already being that millennial, I texted my mom. It seemed like she was doing well, she had sent me a lot of irrelevant GIFs. I told her that I had an ‘okay’ orientation and that I was looking forward to my classes. As I typed to mom, messages from Jacky started to display across the top of my phone.

J: No shit? Cool dude. You should have told me before.

J: I’m working this weekend. We should hang during the week. What’s your schedule like?

A couple taps later I had sent her my schedule and was waiting for her to tell me which days and times worked best. I was excited to see my friend after so long. We were the kind of friends who were aware of the distance that was usually between us but didn’t let that get in the way of anything. I always knew that I could go over to Jacky’s house and be welcomed, even if we hadn’t talked in months. And she knew that she could go months without texting me but call me at 11 at night if she needed someone to talk to.

The next thing on my list was school emails. I had my new school email up on my phone a couple weeks ago, but between starting classes and getting everything else set up, waiving insurance, finalizing scholarships, moving across multiple states – well it had gotten to be a little much for me to keep track of. However, a few minutes of focused inbox cleaning narrowed it down to a couple important emails from new professors. Apparently, the bryology professor had high expectations. He wanted us to read the intro and chapter one of our textbook before class on Monday. Thankfully, he also sent a link to an open source textbook – we didn’t have the textbook for the class, but he made a note that we should have a physical copy of the bryology field guide – that was a lot cheaper than a textbook though.  His name was at the end of the email and I laughed when I realized he was Dr. Greene who taught botany classes. The other professor who emailed us was the genetics teacher. Whose name was Dr. Banner, which also made me laugh because it made me think of Bruce Banner. She didn’t require a textbook at all, her email included a little spiel about how genetics research was always updating and linked us a few articles about CRISPR. One less book for me to buy.

At the end of my dive into my email, I cleaned up my kitchen mess (bowl, spoon, cereal). And washed whatever dishes were in the sink.  After that I finally felt awake enough to go to the store. The supermarket in Forks was small, but it had most things that people needed, food, toiletries, a baked goods section, and even an ‘international food’ aisle.  I picked up a couple granola bars, breakfast shake type things, and one of those honey oat nut cereals that was supposed to be good for heart health. Charlie needed to be eating that, not cocopuffs. The corn muffins were in the bakery section and I grabbed a couple nice ones – enough for dinner and maybe breakfast the next day.

While I was inspecting muffins, the hairs on my arms stood up and I had to suppress a shudder. That uncomfortable being watched feeling seemed to be following me around. Maybe I was being too paranoid, but the last time it felt like someone was watching me the beautiful glaring girl had been behind me. So, I tried to casually glance around. Of course, I was in a public supermarket, and the glance didn’t find much out of the ordinary. There were people milling about on all sides, a bakery worker was helping an elderly couple choose a birthday cake; a teenager pulled out his phone and started crunching numbers and comparing coupons, and a very pale tired mom looking woman seemed to be comparing canned foods.

There was something familiar about the woman I had dubbed a ‘mom’, and I tried to look a little closer without seeming like a creep. She had a big pile of chestnut hair in a bun on the top of her head, and her thin pale neck looked a little too fragile to hold it all up. There was a definite triangle shape to her, and while her neck was thin and her shoulders were narrow, her wide hips blossomed into thick thighs that looked like they could crush a man’s head. Very rarely did I see women that actually looked like pears, but the description fit her.

Apparently, her powers of paranoia were more accurate than mine, because she turned to look at me, caught me staring, and smiled sweetly at me – displaying teeth like a row of pearls, shiny and white.  The sides of her amber brown eyes wrinkled in amused mirth. She was adorable. I had no choice but to smile back, but really, I wanted to crawl into a ditch and cover myself in leaves, dirt, and pine-needles. I grabbed the corn muffins and fled to the nearest cashier.

Why was I so terrible at interacting with people? It wasn’t like I was going to introduce myself and apologize, no way, that would be ridiculous. But at the very least I could learn not to stare like a rude child. What was it about Forks that drove me farther away from humanity? For not the first time I wondered if I had some form of anxiety, maybe the social kind. When I was little everything seemed to be easier, I could make friends in minutes and play with them for hours. Maybe that was just a kid thing, maybe all adults felt like this.

Even though it was getting late in the day, I had eaten my breakfast so late it was more like brunch. When I got home I had half a corn muffin to hold me over until Charlie got home and we could have dinner. Then I sat down with my laptop and read the first couple sections of my moss textbook. I learned so much about the different kinds of bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts), and a little about the ways different cultures looked at them. Because of bonsai culture the Japanese had whole words to describe mosses that we didn’t have in English. The Scandinavian countries also seemed to be gaga for mosses. When my mom found out I was taking a whole class on just moss she was a little confused, but eventually shrugged and said something noncommittal and parental like: “as long as it makes you happy” or “if that’s what you’re interested in”.

At best, she didn’t really understand my love of nature and the environment. At worst, she thought I was playing into stereotypes of my Ojibwa blood. Mom and dad were both mixed – making me a grand total of very mixed. Renee was a little more into assimilation than Charlie. For the most part, I thought Charlie just wanted to live his life without interference from anyone. Which, I hypothesized, was part of why he had moved away from his childhood home in Minnesota and had been in Forks ever since. However, that meant I didn’t get to know my Italian grandmother, or my Ojibwa grandfather – and Renee’s side of the family was just as much of a mystery. Consciously, I knew I was French and Indonesian on her side, but I had no connection to any of the cultures besides a few dishes and superstitions that I had been taught by my parents.

“Hey Frizzy!” I had been so engrossed in my moss reading that I hadn’t heard Charlie’s cruiser drive up.

“Hey Dad,” I greeted him as I closed my laptop and headed down the stairs.

“Did you get the corn muffins?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I grabbed the muffins from the kitchen counter and shook them close to his face.

“Easy there, Iz. I see them.” He turned off the crock-pot and started spooning chili out into a bowl. He passed the bowl to me and filled another for himself before he sat at the table in the kitchen, just big enough for the two of us.

I sat across from him and smiled. “How was work?”

“More of the same,” he said gruffly. Then he seemed to think a little more and added: “Actually. Someone did come in to greet the police and introduce their family since they’re new in town. I always thought that was an antiquated thing. At least, no one has done it in years. But they’re a… well they have adopted kids that don’t look the same, I mean… race wise.” He shook his head. “Maybe it was a smart thing to do, with the state of this country, and the police force.” I knew it was a sore subject for Charlie, and something he thought about a lot as a mixed-race chief of police. While the Forks police wasn’t homologous, Charlie still made everyone do the same racial sensitivity training. One time he brought in a psychologist to teach the force de-escalation techniques, and the proper way to respond to people with mental illness that needed help. No matter how gruff Charlie seemed on the outside, he cared. He cared deeply.

“How many kids?” I asked, trying to get him off the subject and onto something lighter. Maybe telling me about the family would smooth over the sore spot.

“Three kids, well, I guess two of them are adults. That is … two of them are in college. Maybe you’ll have classes with them Iz, one of them is an ecology student. One of them is in high school. The dad is the new doctor at the hospital. He seemed… nice, a little old fashioned maybe.” His eyes narrowed for a moment. “Italian, still has the accent and everything,” he said with a chuckle. At the new information I wondered if this doctor really was old fashioned or if he had just reminded Charlie of his mother. “Calogero Cullen, what a name. Esme is the mom.” 

“What does she do?”

“Stay at home mom, as far as I can tell.”

“Oooh,” my voice tilted up and settled on a ledge. “Is that why you think the husband is old fashioned?”

Charlie made a grumbly noise through his chili that could have been ‘maybe’. “You know,” I started. “That feminism is about encouraging women to choose whatever makes them happy. And for some women, that could be staying at home with their kids.”

“I know Izzy, the guy just seems… old.”

“Well, is he old?” I asked, a grin in my voice.

“Doesn’t look a day over 35.” He took a big bite of corn muffin, which kept me from asking anymore questions for a minute. “How was orientation? I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

It was my turn to take a page out of dad’s book. I grumbled and groaned and didn’t make any sounds that could be construed as English words. It only made Dad laugh. How the tables turned. “Come on Isabella,” he coaxed. “How was orientation? Make any friends? Learn anything interesting?”

“I got my ID, and my parking pass, and I met some people, yes.” My head fell heavy against my closed fist. “I just want to learn. I’m not overly interested in making friends.”

“Young adults need friends.” I had no idea where he got that fact.

“I have Jacky,” I shot back.

“Need more than one friend,” he specified.

“Well, I did meet a few people. They put us in groups and made us do, ugh, ice breakers.” I shivered at the mention of it. “There were a couple people that I think I could be friends with. We’ll see if I have any classes with them.” Even if I didn’t, I would be seeing them once a week anyway, I could still try to be friends with them.

Dad smiled, angelic over an empty bowl of chili. “Good. You deserve some more friends, Izzy.” He got up, patted my arm as he walked past, and put his bowl in the sink. Usually when I was around we switched jobs, since he made dinner, I was on dish duty.

The way he said it stuck in my head though. Not need friends, not should have friends. Deserve . What an off way to phrase that. What an odd thing to think when dealing with other people, other human beings. It had the potential to make sense, humanity was social after all, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what he meant.

I grabbed my phone so I could play music while I washed the dishes, and was happy to see that Jacky had texted me back.

J: Busy week for me. You can come by the bar Friday or next weekend while I’m working. Or maybe next week we can hang Thursday night.

I: Okay, I’ll message you again later. We’ll figure it out.

Suddenly we had all the time in the world to be together. We didn’t have to try and jam our hangouts into the small openings of when I visited. It was freeing. But it made me feel like we might become lax about finding a time that worked for both of us. We’d figure it out. That’s what I'd told Jacky, and I meant it.

The dishes went quickly once I put a little music on. When I was done I went back to my room to finish my reading assignments. I finished up the chapter on moss and moved onto the CRISPR articles. For some reason people always had to talk about the ‘ethics’ involved in genetic modifications, even though people had been doing it for years. Probably because GMO had become a buzzword. But I doubted most of the people writing about GMOs could explain what they were and why they might be ‘bad’. It wasn’t my area of biology, but it was still interesting.

By the time I was finished, it was almost eleven. Part of the reason why I could never be a lawyer or an English major, I was a slow reader. I enjoyed it, and I had read a lot for fun as a child, it just took me a while.

After spending a few minutes in the bathroom, I crawled into bed and went to sleep.

The next day I could afford to be lazy. Since I had finished all my readings for school, I didn’t have anything important to do for classes.  I had only been in Forks for a couple days, which meant I didn’t have laundry. Even though I was awake by the time Charlie left for work, I didn’t get out of bed. I rolled around a couple times, picked up a novel I had started on the plane and read a little. A couple hours and an embarrassingly small number of chapters later, I got out of bed, mostly because my bladder was unignorably full.

Around noon I ate a leftover corn muffin and drove toward the National Forest Information Center. It was a small building, with a handful of peppy Summit Stewards and Forest Rangers who seemed to love their jobs. Who wouldn’t? Being in nature all the time, it was enough to make anyone happy. Though the customer service parts of their jobs weren't really up my alley. Still, I was glad they were there to answer my questions and tell me which of the maps it was in my best interest to buy. It wasn’t exorbitantly expensive, and it had all the hiking trails. The maps that Charlie had were terribly outdated.

They had a lot of other little items that were tempting but I didn’t need them. Easy set up camping hammocks, sturdy water bottles, and those fancy magnesium fire starters. I had a sturdy plastic water bottle, I didn’t need a metal one. And matches lasted just as long as the silly metal thing, lighters you could get in any gas station might not last well in storage but they were cheap and waterproof. While I could logically tell myself that I didn’t need the fun stuff, I was still tempted. Mostly by the hammock. But that was 30 dollars I wasn’t willing to spend just yet. Maybe after a few google searches to see if I could find the same thing, but cheaper. And maybe once the winter came and went and I had all summer to lay around between trees and read.

As I was (chastising myself for) staring at the hammock and seriously thinking about buying it – a couple walked through the information center. I did a quick double-take, they were gorgeous, and they looked so cute together. It was like a couple of models had walked out of a valentine’s day advertisement and into the forest.

They both had hiking pants on, the kind that wicks away moisture and had an overabundance of pockets. Somehow, they made the utilitarian pants look fashionable. The man was big, with broad shoulders and biceps that looked like they had the same diameter as my waist.  The woman was big too, but in a softer way, with curves that made me think of fertility goddesses and Renaissance paintings. Looking at them together though, it made me think she would have just as easy a time slinging me across her shoulders and carrying me away. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. 

Her hair fell in golden ringlets to the middle of her back, an impressive length when it was tied back into a ponytail. An oversized jacket hid half of her body – it looked like it belonged to her friend, and even that seemed glamorous on her. Her top lip was a perfect cupid’s bow and her bottom lip pouted as she said something to her companion. As she spoke I was distracted by her cheek, it looked just as soft and pale as a Japanese white peach. Just like a peach her cheeks had splashes of pink. It took me a moment to realize the pink was a birthmark, and only marked one cheek. It looked like she put it there on purpose, as a fashion statement. I pulled my eyes away from her face, even if it was because she was beautiful, I was sure she wouldn't want me staring at her birthmark. 

They both laughed, his natural hair bounced, and her ringlets did the same. With one arm he pulled her against his mossy green vest - which went well with his bark colored skin, he looked as strong and steadfast as an oak tree - he crushed her into what looked like the most warm and comfortable hug. A hug by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson would be the only hug that could rival what I witnessed. 

I caught myself wishing I was in the middle of their hug, the thought surprised even me, and jolted me back to reality. Gosh, what a mess I was, fantasizing about two perfect strangers. Two perfect strangers who looked perfectly happy together and didn’t need an ecology gremlin knocking in on their lives. Even if I tried, it didn't look like it was possible to home-wreck two people who fit together so perfectly. 

They left the information center with a jingle of the bell that hung over the door, and I went in the opposite direction, toward the trails. Maybe a nice long walk would make me forget about all the enigmatic and beautiful people that lived in Forks, Washington - of all places.

Chapter Text

The beginning of syllabus week passed in a blur.  It was just as boring as the name suggested.  Mostly I listened to teachers read from their respective syllabi and wondered if it was the same at all colleges. There must be a better way to start classes. At least my teachers seemed to be excited for their classes, they all seemed to sincerely love what they were teaching, which was a breath of fresh air. I looked forward to learning from people who wanted to teach.

I was also able to learn the faces and names of all my teachers, which maybe was one good aspect of syllabus week. While none of the students seemed to even consider each other. Fine by me, ice breakers were a torturous form of fresh hell that I didn’t want to experience again in my life, let alone twice in one month.

Lanky Egg Eric and Pretty Nerd Jessica Juice were both in my bryology class. When lab rolled around on Wednesday we wordlessly sat together and started looking through our lab manuals. Even the lab was something of a soft ball – we just figured out how Dr. Greene wanted us to type up lab reports and share them with him on the college cloud system. We acquainted ourselves with the layout of the lab manuals and were told that we would need the field guide soon.

When lab was done we ambled toward the library and stopped in the adjoined café type building for coffee. I learned that Eric had a lit degree but had discovered he was more into ecology, and Jessica had pulled something similar to what I had done – all of her general education requirements were taken care of.  But that also meant she was taking far too many lab courses and was going to live off coffee and willpower for the next 2 semesters. According to her, that was all the time it would take her to graduate.  In theory I would only take 3 semesters, one more than Jessica, to graduate, but it felt like a long time.

We all exchanged phone numbers, in case anyone wanted to share bryology notes. It still made me feel accomplished, like I had made friends.

Thursday and Friday passed in the same blur of pedantic instructions and reading syllabi. That is, until genetics lab on Friday. It was my very last class of the week, and I was shocked when the beautiful girl with the topaz eyes sat next to me. Especially when I took into consideration that the lab wasn’t full yet, and the way she had glared at me the first time she saw me. I still didn’t know what that was about, and I was nervous to find out. What if I had done something embarrassingly stupid or offensive? But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what that could have been.

“Oh hi,” I started.

“Hello,” she said at the same time. I immediately shut my mouth to hear her talk again. Her voice was soft but poignant, it seemed like something very important would drop from her mouth next. In a single quick moment, she already reminded me of a fairytale – specifically the girl who was mutually cursed and blessed so that gems would fall from her mouth as she spoke. Maybe if I could get her to talk again, topaz would fall from her mouth to match her eyes.  I bit back the urge to shake all the silly dramatic thinking from my mind. I spent too much time in my own head, everything turned into fairy tales and romance novels. What I really needed was to experience reality for a bit.

“Sorry, hi,” I tried again. And she watched me silently. Her lips pursed, they looked very soft. But that was something that wouldn’t help me to think about. I forced my eyes up, to the empty space above her head. I couldn’t romanticize the curve of the top of her head. Could I? “I’m Izzy. I think we’re going to have lab partners so…”

“My mistake.” She grabbed her backpack, and my eyes flickered down. I hadn’t noticed her putting it down. But now it looked like she had changed her mind about sitting next to me.

“Wait no, I mean…” Her eyes were daggers being shot directly toward me. My mind revved up and I realized I had made it sound like I already had someone in mind and was waiting for the person I wanted to be my lab partner to show up. “You can be my lab partner if you want. I just wanted to make sure you want me I mean. I’m not dumb, but I’m definitely a macroscopic biologist. I can’t really wrap my hand around the cellular stuff. So, having this class with me might be… not fun,” I finished lamely. It was like I was shooting a commercial about why I sucked. Not very productive, or good for my self-esteem. I would have to work on that.

Slowly, as I babbled, her eyes softened from daggers to welcome mats – and she put her bag back down and sat next to me. “I’m sure we can manage,” she said, in the same soft and articulate way I was quickly starting to associate with her. A kind word from her was all I felt I needed to pass the lab with flying colors. I hoped desperately that she was smart, but at the same time I didn’t want to mooch off her work.  I wanted to ask her more about herself, I actually wanted to talk and try to make a friend, but the lab instructor started explaining what we were doing.

It sounded like an easy lab. We were going to calibrate the micropipettes, practice our pipetting, and do a worksheet to brush up on our metric conversions.

As soon as the lab instructor was done instructing I turned back to my partner. It didn’t seem like she was particularly interested in talking, she was already fiddling with the micropipette. She made 10 perfect cookie cutter drops of water on wax paper before she handed the pipette to me. “You should practice if you’re not familiar.”

Her hands had made the pipette warm. She was so quick at everything. I did my best to follow her example, but my hand wasn’t used to the coordinated movement of the pipette. It had been a few semesters since I had needed to use one. “Uhm,” I started as I made my slower drops of water. “What’s your name?”

She blinked at me slowly. It reminded me of a cat, when they just stared and blinked and there was no way to tell what they were thinking. I couldn’t begin to guess what was happening behind her eyes. “Edythe,” she said slowly, as if tasting her own name. “Edythe Cullen.”

“Edythe,” I repeated. “That’s very…”

“Old, I know.” She took out a notebook and started working on the conversions. It looked like she already had the metric system memorized, because it took her no time at all to go through the problems.

“No. Well, yes, a little. But it’s a very pretty name. And unique, I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone named Edythe before. At least not someone our age.” I kept pipetting. I wanted to be sure I could do it right, seamlessly, like Edythe – before we went up to test its calibration. If there was a problem, I wanted it to be with the equipment and not with me.

“Oh… well, thank you.” It was hard for me to get any sort of emotion from the inclination of her voice, but that time I almost had something. She sounded almost surprised, almost. But not quite. I’m sure she had heard it a lot, people telling her how beautiful her name was, of course they did, it belonged to her. How could anything be less than beautiful when it was attached to someone who could be easily mistaken for an angel?

“Whenever you’re done with the pipette, I’ll bring it up to be calibrated.” She glanced at the growing line of students at the front of the lab, all waiting to pipette out their 100 microliters to be weighed. I glanced at my growing army of water droplets. They seemed uniform enough, so I reached out and put the pipette in her hand. As I did, I felt her skin for the first time. It was hot. Not in an attraction way, in a very physical temperature way. Without thinking I wrapped my hand around her wrist to see if she could really be that hot. It was like putting a hand on a stove and I pulled my hand back.

“What are you doing?” She asked, with what I thought sounded like suspicion in her voice. It would make sense if it was.

“Sorry,” I said again. Would I be constantly apologizing to her, or would she realize that I was a mess and find a new lab partner? “It’s just, are you feeling okay?” I asked. “You feel really hot, like you have a fever.” As I explained myself, there was an infinitesimal tightening in Edythe’s jaw, and I hoped I hadn’t said something to make her mad again.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I run a little warmer than most people.” She didn’t give me time to respond or ask anymore questions before she flew over to the front of the room. I say fly, but really, she walked. She just walked with such grace and speed that the best way I can put it into words is to say fly. Faster than a float, but just as elegant. While I knew that some people could run a degree or two above or below the average, having a burning fever constantly didn’t seem like a typical or healthy way to live.

I could mull over that mystery or I could work on my conversions. I decided it would be better to work on my conversions. There had been so many teachers and professors that had tried to build the metric system into my mind. But none of them had gotten it to stick. Not while the good old USA still used the imperial system. Still, I had a framework left over from the one physics class I took, and I wrote out the number of decimals I had to move things around for each. After I did that it was only a matter of counting to convert. It was a much more straightforward and easy to use system, it was a shame that everything could be so ass-backwards, starting with something as small as how we learned to measure. And there was something completely, and infuriatingly inefficient about teaching children to measure one way and then trying to unteach them once they graduated high school.

Edythe was back in a few minutes. She put the pipette back in its holder and looked over my shoulder at my work. “You missed a decimal,” she said soft and concise. She pointed to a problem near the top of the page and I counted again. She was right, I crossed it out and rewrote the correct answer.

“Thanks.”  I finished up the work, mindful of my decimals. And looked up. Edythe was still there, even though she was done with everything she needed to do. Her worksheet was in one hand. “You don’t need to wait for me.”

“Of course I do.” She flashed a wide smile and I stared a little longer than I meant to. Her teeth were just so perfect, like the rest of her, white and straight and canines a little sharp. “You’re my lab partner.” The idea of being a team, of being partners sent a little jolt of joy through my heart. I would be okay if I had her on my side, she seemed so competent and self-assured with every little thing she did, from walking to pipetting to understanding the metric system.

I wrote the last answer and smiled back at her. “I’m done!” I looked around to make sure I didn’t say that too loud, and to gauge to see if my speed was good in comparison to the rest of the class. A few people had left, but not that many. It made me feel a little better, a little more self-assured, like Edythe. “Should we…” I looked her over and noticed her outfit for the first time. Another sweater, this one a less vivid color, a sort of burnt orange instead of red. It went well against her warm skin and gold eyes.

“Exchange numbers?” she asked gently and held up her phone with her free hand.

I nodded. It would be easier to be lab partners if we kept in touch. Especially if we had to do any work on experiments outside of class. She let me key my number into her phone and I sent myself a text. Edythe Cullen, in all her glory, was in my phone. I felt like I had climbed mount Everest. And I had only known her name for about 30 minutes. It was silly, but the only way to stop idealizing her was to get to know her better. I had to think of her as a person instead of an enigmatic apparition.

“Here you go.” I handed her phone back to her and smiled. She smiled back, but it wasn’t as joyful as the last grin. I wanted to make her smile like that again, showing all her teeth and wrinkling her nose just a bit.

“I’ll see you next week, Isabella Swan,” she read my full name off her phone screen and I chuckled.

“I should have just put Izzy, that’s what everyone calls me.”

“Well, which do you prefer?” I finally thought of the word I wanted to use for the way she spoke. Precise, that was it. Soft and precise.

“Izzy, I think.” I hadn’t really given it much thought before. For a hot minute I had played with the idea of going by Isabella when I started college, but Izzy was so ingrained in my mind as who I was. I wasn’t really Isabella, I was Izzy.  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound more decisive. “Call me Izzy.”

Edythe nodded and got her things together. “Well then, Izzy , I’ll see you next week,” she said it with a smile and walked off with a certain bounce in her step that made me watch as she left the room. God. I need to get it together, I thought to myself. I couldn’t start living for Friday lab, not when I had school work to do.

Soon after Edythe left the lab, I packed up my own things and followed after. It was officially the weekend.  As I walked to my car I texted Jacky. Maybe she would want to hear about my first week at school.

Chapter Text

I: Done with my first week !

J: How was it?

I: Kind of boring bc syllabus week, but I like all the classes I’m taking. And all the teachers seem cool.

J: That’s goooood

I: When do you start work? Can I swing by before?

J: I’ll come to you! Your house is on my way. Work starts @ 5

I: Yessss good pls

By the time I was done texting Jacky, I was in Bertha, keys left unturned in the ignition. I had always felt that there was something strange in that transition time, when school or work was done and I’m about to drive home for the day. Maybe it’s some kind of liminal space, but instead of being a space it’s a time. A liminal set of moments that last until I turn my keys and put the car in drive. Even then my brain still felt fuzzy until I made it off campus and onto the state road that would take me home.

Charlie was still at work when I got home. I pulled Bertha up and saw a big black van parked by the edge of the pine trees. Jacqueline Black in a Big Black Van , my inner monologue shouted before I had time to bite it back. Of course. I only had to park Bertha before I saw Jacky coming to greet me, she had been sitting on the porch waiting.

“Sorry, did I take that long to get here?”

Jacky grinned, showing off a radiant and slightly lopsided smile. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I just got here.” It didn’t sound like she just got there, but her smile was infectious, and I couldn’t bring myself to care when we started hugging each other and smiling. She was taller than me by a head, I don’t know how or why. It’s unfair when our dads are the same height. I know I get my height from my mom, maybe Jacky’s mom was tall too. I never met her though, so I can’t make the comparison. She has Billy’s face, oval where mine is round, with far more angles. Sharp cheekbones and dark eyes that are just as pointed grace her face. Her thick black hair brushes against my face when she pulls away from the hug, one side is shaved, but the other side elongates in an asymmetrical cascade.

“Charlie at work?” she asked as she pulled up the long part of her hair into a lopsided bun, it matched her lopsided smile, making my heart sing with love for my friend. So much about her ran opposite of me, how I look, how I act – at the same time we’re so much the same. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been mistaken for sisters, at this point, we might as well be. Ever since I was little, I always wanted a younger sister. Jacky never had to wish for siblings, with two older brothers. Though I think having me in her life as a feminine presence may have done her some good.

“Yeah, still working,” I confirmed. “Do you want anything to eat?” There were a couple things I could heat up for her, though Charlie said he would bring burgers home that night. She was already shaking her head before the question was out of my mouth though.

“I’ll eat at work, best part of working there is the free food.” She shrugged her shoulders and glanced at her watch. It was a little after 4, and we didn’t have a lot of time to hang out. “Let’s go for a walk,” she offered and turned on her heel. She walked toward the black van and I followed her. I peeked in the passenger window, it was clean with soft looking seats. There were wires that ran from the steering wheel down toward the pedals, those must be the mods Jacky added so Billy could drive the van.

“Was it hard to install the hand pedals?”

Jacky shrugged as she ducked under the pines. “Not particularly. Not for me at least.”

“Ah that’s right, the star mechanic.” Jacky was a star mechanic, and a star waitress at the ripe age of 20. There was a certification that she still needed before she started working as a mechanic full time, but now I wasn’t sure if she wanted to quit her restaurant job. Some nights she made a killing on tips, and some nights it seemed she was lucky that it wasn’t her only source of income. In any case, how hard and how often she worked made it hard to get visits in edgewise.

“That’s meee,” she said with a chuckle. “Tell me more about your classes. Sit next to anyone cute?” A little ways into the woods she found a heavily moss covered log and sat on it. I took a look at the moss and found a couple different species. I would have to come back and collect them once I knew more about the bryology project I had to do.

“Well…” I started, immediately thinking of my genetics lab and Edythe. “There is this girl in my genetics lab.” It wasn’t that I was in the closet, it was more like… I didn’t have a reason to tell anyone yet. Jacky knew, but not my parents. If I ever found a girlfriend, that was when I’d tell them. But as of yet, no such luck. Just the thought was enough to make me feel old and unattractive, I had to continually remind myself that it was harder for people attracted to the same gender to date, especially women, especially in high school. College was supposed to be easier, but I had never lived on campus, that was where all the flirting happened. At least that’s what I assumed.

“And?” Jacky coaxed. “Give me more deets. Did you talk to her? I’m not a dentist, I’m not here to pull teeth.” She rolled her eyes and I sighed.

“She’s very pretty,” I said lamely. “Elegant, fashionable, likes boots.” It was amazing how my brain could sing Edythe’s praises when I was looking at her, but trying to recount the graceful way she moved, the enigmatic pull of her eyes, the writhing energy I felt when looking at her…well my description fell flat. “She just, she just has this pull. Like all eyes should be on her. What a model should be. You know?” I pursed my lips, it felt kind of gross just talking about her looks and nothing else. “Really good with a micropipette,” I added. “Very exact, and fast.”

Jacky sighed, and her head fell into her hands. “Isabella,” she used my full name and just hearing it made me sit up a little straighter. “It’s okay to notice a girl is attractive and talk about how pretty she is.”

“I know but I don’t want you to think I like her just for her looks,” I mumbled sheepishly.

“Like her? I didn’t think you were going to marry her. I just thought you noticed someone hot and wanted to tell me about her.” Jacky’s smile grew. “But if you have a crush, I guess you can tell me about her other qualities.”

“It’s not a crush,” I said, but I blushed as I said it. I could feel my dumb face get hot. “Not really, not yet. I’ve only seen her twice.” I rolled a squishy piece of moss between my thumb and index finger. “I did talk to her today. Her name is Edythe.”

Jacky scoffed, and I turned my head to glare at her.

“Sorry, sorry. Just, Edythe ? How old is she? Iz, do you have a crush on a grandma?”

I shook my head vigorously. “Jacky! It’s not her fault she has a grandma name. And it’s not a crush.” There was only so much I could say about someone I just met. “What about you, anything interesting happen lately?”

The look Jacky gave me made me regret asking. “No, you know nothing ever happens to me. Just the same-old-same-old.” She seemed to shrink, curling in on herself deeper. “You’re the one who has things to talk about, college girl. Tell me about your classes.”

“You know,” I started. “You could be a college girl too. If you wanted.” Jacky was smart, and auto-mechanic was a good profession, but the way she said ‘college girl’ made me think she wanted to have that experience. 

Jacky pursed her lips, her mouth turning down into a thin line. “I don’t want to leave my dad,” she admitted. “Besides that, I don’t know what I would major in. It would be a waste of money.”

“It wouldn’t be a waste if you learned something useful and got a good job,” I coaxed. “You’re so good with fixing things and making things and numbers. You could be a mechanical engineer.”

That made her pause, and she seemed to think about it for a moment. “I’ve thought about it. Engineers do make the big bucks. But still, my dad.”

It was a good reason to stay. “Have you talked to Billy about it?” From the look on her face it looked like she hadn’t.

“No…”

“Maybe you should.”

Jacky eyed me and rubbed her chin. “Maybe.” She slid down the log and onto the forest floor. “Maybe. You know this wasn’t what I wanted to talk about today.”

I slid down the log too and sat next to her, my side leaning against hers. “Sorry. But I think it’s worth thinking about. If it’s something you want to do. If you don’t want to though, don’t let me bully you into it.”

“Do you really think you could bully me into doing something like that?”

“Probably not. You’ve very stubborn.”

Jacky laughed and bumped her shoulder against mine. “Yeah, you’re right.” She rubbed my head and I tried to duck out of the way. Then she stood up and started brushing the damp dirt from her jeans. “I should probably get going.”

I frowned and followed her lead. “If you must.” I rubbed my dirty pants off. “What’s a good day for us to hang out?”

Jacky was already walking toward the van, out of the woods. “Well, you can always visit me at Padrino’s.” (Padrino’s being the Italian restaurant where Jacky spent most of her evenings). She gave me a conspiratorial wink. “You’re old enough to drink, right?”

I rolled my eyes and she opened the driver’s door. “Yeah well, at least one of us is.” Jacky chuckled as she closed the door and stuck her tongue out at me as she started the engine.  I waved as she pulled away. Once the van was out of  sight I went into the house and looked around. The start of the weekend emptiness was settling into my chest. I wasn’t going to work on homework on Friday night, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.

After a minute of feeling amorphous and useless I decided to make fries to go with the promised hamburgers. I put some music on, washed some potatoes, sliced them up, seasoned them, and put them in the oven to get crunchy. I knew that fries were usually… fried, but baking them sounded healthier. Not to mention cooking with oil scared me a little, and I didn’t want to fry anything alone in the house. Maybe that made me a baby, but at least I was a safe baby.

I put the kitchen timer on and went to read my book. I was getting there. It was an interesting book, fiction, with a ton of worldbuilding. It was sci-fi so far in the future to be fantasy, which wasn’t the most original concept, but the author had done unique things with it.

When the timer rang, I had only gotten through one chapter. I cursed my slow reading for not the first time and went to check on the fries. They weren’t crunchy yet, so I slapped the timer on again and went back to my book.

Before the timer went off, Charlie opened the door. “Hi dad!” I yelled.

“Hi Iz.” After his greeting I could hear the crinkling of a grocery bag and went to see if he needed any help bringing things in. There was only one bag that he put on the counter. While he was at it he opened the oven for a peek. “Oh, I bought fries.” He pulled the frozen fries out of his grocery bag along with the ground beef.

“More fries,” I said with a shrug. I put the frozen fries on a tray and added them to the oven. “We can fill up on delicious carbs.”

“Sure, Friz.” Charlie chuckled a little. “Could you get the burgers ready while I get cleaned up?”

“Sure can.” Sometimes Charlie treated me as more fragile than I felt, or maybe he just forgot my age. But I could cook. He ambled up the creaking stairs and I got to work prepping the food. First, I put a couple buns in the toaster oven, so they could also get crunchy while I got my hands dirty seasoning the meat. I shaped the beef into patties and laid them out ready for dad. If he took a long time I would just cook them on the stove, but I was 90% sure he meant to grill them outside. In the meantime, I did little things, cleaned up some of the mess I made, crushed the fry box and put it in the recycling, and sliced some onions and tomatoes.

Charlie came back downstairs, he had swapped his beige-green uniform out for black sweat-pants and a gray t-shirt that had ‘Forks PD’ in the corner, the cherry on top were his tube-socks. What a dad, was the only thing I could think as he grabbed the plate of burgers and headed out back to grill them.

I took the assorted fries out of the oven. Some of the homemade ones were a little burnt, but all of them were the right level of crunchy. That was another thing that dad and I had in common thankfully, we loved crunchy foods and didn’t mind a little extra carbon. The mixed fries went into a bowl and the buns and vegetables went on two plates. Everything went to the table, where I waited for dad to come back with the burgers. I had enough time to get through half a chapter of my book.

“Aaaand dinner,” he said as he set the burger plate down with a flourish.

I clapped dramatically before grabbing a burger. It was too hot to eat yet, so I munched on some fries, which had cooled down while the burgers were cooking. It was a little uncoordinated, but I was happy we had worked together to make dinner.

Plus, it was tasty. Charlie and I sat in companionable silence, other than the sound of our chewing, until he cleared his throat and asked: “How was your first week?”

“Good, I’m excited for all my classes. Genetics might be hard…” I paused as my mind drifted over Edythe. “What was the name of the new family? The one that went to the station to introduce themselves?”

“Cullen,” Charlie said easily, sometimes I worried that his memory was better than mine. Not usually what kids worried about when it came to their parents and memory.

“The ecology major is my lab partner in genetics. Edythe Cullen.”

“She seems like a nice kid, really quiet.” He eyed me cautiously. “Are you nice to her, Friz?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m nice to everyone,” I defended myself. What kind of monster did Charlie think I was at school? He had known me for 21 years and I think I kicked another kid once when I was 5 because I saw them stepping on a caterpillar. “She’s smart. I’m happy she’s my lab partner.”

Charlie smiled so wide his mustache fluffed and I couldn’t help but smile back. “Good. It’s nice to hear you’re making friends.”

“Woooo-ah, friends? Moving a little fast there Officer Swan.”

“Iz, you’re the pickiest kid I know.” He rolled his eyes and tossed a particularly burnt fry my way. I picked it up off the table and started eating it. “I think she could use a friend too, new place, new school… not a ton of brown people in Forks.”

Charlie had always been wary of childhood bullies, I think he blamed himself a little for how antisocial I had become later in life. It wasn’t that, it was, well, maybe related. Mostly it was that I couldn’t find a place where I belonged. Sure, I could blend in with almost any group, but I couldn’t feel at home with big friend groups. I blamed the fact that they tended to group along lines of ethnicity, and I wasn’t one thing enough to join a group. I suspected this was his way of trying to remedy that, a Black girl adopted by white parents might feel the same way I did. I didn’t tell him about my analysis, instead I just chewed on the fries. Even if I was right, there was always the chance that he was doing it subconsciously.

“I’ll be friendly,” I finally grumbled after a few too long moments of Charlie staring at me with his sharp dark eyes and a slight frown. “I really do like her, you don’t have to worry about that.” Maybe he did have to worry about that, but not in the way he was thinking. In pretty much the opposite way, in fact.

Chapter Text

Saturday was beautiful, but a quick check of the weather app told me that Sunday would be rainy, maybe even hail or mixed ice and rain and snow. So, if I wanted to go out I would have to do it now and procrastinate on my homework until Sunday. That was fine, my classes hadn’t picked up yet, I only had a couple readings to do really. Yes, I was a slow reader, but not slow enough to need more than a day to read an article and an abridged chapter of a bryology textbook. 

I rolled out of bed and pondered the shower situation. I was due for one, I could tell by how greasy the top of my head looked, but there wasn’t much point in taking a shower in the morning if I was going to play in the mud. I could shower when I got back. I ran my brush through my hair and put it up to hide its sorry state.

If I was going to be away playing in the woods and collecting my needed moss samples, I would need some lunch. A quick toast and hazelnut spread breakfast was enough to hold me over, and an almost as quick packed tuna fish sandwich and an orange would be a good lunch. Charlie was up, slowly eating the ‘heart healthy’ cereal I had gotten. I smiled at the change from the marshmellowy sugary trash I had found earlier. “Enjoying those?”

Dad pursed his thin lips, making them disappear from his face. “Yeah, they’re fine,” he grumbled, but then he smiled at me. “Going hiking?”

“Planned on it,” I said as I dropped my lunch into a brown paper bag. “Want to come with me?”

He shook his head, with the same day-off-pace as he ate his cereal. “Rain check, I’m going fishing with the Clearwaters.” Sue and Harry were both good friends to Charlie, and it was nice that they all did things together. Sometimes I worried that Charlie would feel like a third wheel with the married couple, but I had seen the three of them together, they got on like peas in a pod.

“Okay.” I thunked my forehead affectionately against my dad’s shoulder. “What time will you be back do you think?”

He shrugged, making my head bob for a moment. “About six.” He set his spoon down in his bowl and patted my back. “What about you?”

I shrugged, a lagging mirror of him. “About six,” I said with a bit of a smirk.

Charlie chuckled his deep belly chuckle and pushed me away. “Good, we can have dinner together then. Want to go out?”

I pursed my lips, knowing that my lips would disappear just as his did. Our faces were the same, there was a trickle of my mom in my face, but the base of the structure screamed Charlie. Plus, my eyes were a perfect match to my dad’s, deep and dark as a well that never went dry. “I don’t know yet,” I wouldn’t know what I wanted until the time came to choose.  “If I have service in the woods I’ll text you.” Charlie still had a flip-phone, but it got the job done.

He nodded and I gave him another affectionate headbutt before I left.

As I hiked I kept my eyes out for moss, which was like keeping your eyes out for nitrogen if you could see it in the air. Everything was covered in moss, the trees, the sidewalk, the road, the side of the ranger station. Washington was absolutely drowning in moss. And yet it all looked pretty much the same to me so far. Once I was out of my car and on the trail, I was able to take a closer look at it, and discovered I could tell them apart a little more than I thought. There were two main forms of moss – acrocarps, the ones that could look like little pine trees, the ones that went straight up reaching for the sun; and pleurocarps, the ones that fell over each other and looked like masses of tiny ferns.

That was just a way to describe their morphology though, not a phylum or any other kind of taxonomic group. I broke out the pieces of scrap paper I had in my bag and started tentatively collecting the things that I thought looked different from each other.

The information collecting, and the labels were the part that took up the most time. I had to write down the date, area, and environment. The environment was the part that was odd, I knew a lot about plants, but some of the trees in the PNW looked awfully similar. Maybe I should have taken a dendrology class before my bryology class. The basic botany I had taken in Phoenix left a little to be desired. But anyway, I ended up just writing down ‘under pine tree’, or ‘on deciduous tree’. Things like that. In wet places, or in dry places, in shade or on hills or on sidewalks. It seemed like it would matter later, when I was trying to ID what I had collected.

As I wrote down the descriptions of the tree I scraped some moss off, I felt a shiver that started at the base of my spine and spread up to my scalp – which tingled even after the shiver ended. I was sure that there would be goosebumps (hehe swanbumps) on the back of my neck and on my arms if I looked. But I was more interested in the feeling of eyes on my back. I turned slowly. In case it was an animal, I didn’t want to scare it away, or into attacking me.

But it wasn’t an animal. It was the terribly cute couple I had seen the other day in the store connected to the park station. Along with someone else. The new person was much smaller, that was the first thing I noticed. Incredibly pale, with black eyes. Not that black eyes are particularly rare, especially not in non-white people. But this girl was so small and still and she was staring at me, with those dark, dark eyes. Midnight eyes. When she saw me look back at her she smiled, grinned, showing off perfect white teeth. The look on her face made me shudder again. Something about her face was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, because she looked like a model too, but a little young to be a model. Maybe that was where my dis-ease stemmed from.

She waved at me and took a step forward and I fought the urge to run away. Jesus, what was wrong with me? Here was a tiny, frail looking girl. Young, maybe in high school. Clad in warm layers and with a messy ink black pixie cut, she was cute and friendly and wanted to talk, and I was staring with Lord knows what kind of look on my dumb face. I rearranged my face into something a little more inviting, a polite smile.

That seemed to make her giggle, a sound like windchimes that failed to comfort me. My hind-brain was still yelling to get away, but I didn’t move. I watched as she trot over to me.

“Hi! What are you doing with all that moss?” The way she spoke was quick and clipped. She looked over my forest gremlin clothes and my bag of moss with a curious look on her face. “Are you a student at the ecology college?”

I nodded and cleared my throat. “Hi, yes, I am. I’m collecting moss for my bryology class. My name is Izzy.” With my instincts wrapped in chains of logic and polite society I held my hand out for a shake, suddenly feeling like an old man. Who still shook hands?

The girl giggled again but shook my hand. Her skin was very warm. A little too warm. Was that why she looked so pale? Was she sick? “My name is Alice Cullen, pleased to meet you Izzy.” Her tone shifted to antiquated and I wondered if she was making fun of my overly formal way of introducing myself and shaking hands.

I blushed and pulled my hand back as I recognized the last name. “Cullen? Are you related to Edythe Cullen?” 

“Yes! She’s my sister!” I hadn’t noticed that Alice was radiant, just like her sister, but mentioning Edythe did the trick. She lit up like a firecracker - her dark eyes sparkled and I could see more pink around her perfect teeth. The joyful and human shape of her grin made me feel calmer. But something else bothered me. Did Calogero and Esme only adopt super pretty kids? Or did the doctor experiment on them? It was probably just a coincidence. But I still didn’t trust white people to adopt kids of color. There was too much hurt there in the past, too much misunderstanding, too much kidnapping and colonization.

“I know her,” I said, settling into the conversation a little. None of this was a bad mark against Alice, she was just a little odd and looking for friends. I could only imagine what it would be like to be not only adopted but moved to a new area and a new school in the middle of high school. “We have a genetics lab together.”

She nodded as if she already knew that. But maybe she was just being polite. “Lucky, Edythe is so smart. She loves biology.” Alice rubbed her round chin with one hand thoughtfully. “I never really got the hang of biology, but she likes it.” She shrugged and smiled at me. “I guess you must like biology, if you’re an ecology person.” She eyed my bag of moss again. “How many species do you think you have there?”

As she spoke the attractive couple came up behind her. The blond looked a bit… perturbed, but the man looked amused, maybe even cheerful. “Come on Alice. We’re supposed to meet for lunch….” The way the blond spoke was cautious, as if she didn’t want to say too much. Her eyes were surprisingly dark for her hair and complexion, almost matching Alice’s black eyes.

Alice looked back and up at her with a pout that made me want to cheer her up. “Just a minute,” she turned back to me and smiled. It was a smile with a lot of emotion behind it, ones I couldn’t really place. “This is Rosalie, she’s our sister too.”

“Alice.” Rosalie’s lips pursed, and her hands went to her hips in an angry mom gesture. Somehow, I didn’t think Rosalie wanted me to know her name. Or anything else about their family for that matter.

“Fine.” Alice let out a little huff of frustration but smiled at me once again. “I’ll see you later Izzy, bye!” She skipped off and waved at me. I waved back, feeling confused and kind of clueless. Were we friends? Would we see each other again?

Rosalie looked less than content with the way things had gone, but she followed her sister deeper into the park. The man straggled for a moment, then flashed me a playful smile. “I’m Emmett,” he said, by way of a quick introduction. “Boyfriend. Not sibling,” he added with a wink that made his curls jiggle, before turning on his heel and following after the sisters.

Well that was weird. I stood there watching the three of them hike off. It felt like the world was skewed just a little to the left, nothing about that interaction screamed normal. But none of it screamed ax murderer either. It was just… odd.

I shouldered my backpack and started toward the edge of the park, where I had left my car. That’s when the big oddity hit me. If they were going to meet someone for lunch, why would they go deeper into the preserve? There was nothing that way except woods and mountains and maybe some deer.

Chapter Text

I made my way back to the house with a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. And I wondered if I would ever feel normal again. Was there a time when I did feel normal? Even back in Arizona I usually felt out of sorts, there was something in the back of my head that was constantly telling me everything was fake and that I was being watched, something like the Truman show. It was always worse in public for me. At home I felt safe and alone, usually. Even some days in public I could feel normal. Did everyone feel like this or was it just me? As I drove I tried to pinpoint the feeling, when it started, and realized it was somewhere in puberty. Yeah that made sense, everyone felt weird during puberty. But didn’t they usually grow out of it?

By the time I got back to the house it was almost 5pm. The sun was already sitting heavy and orange on the edge of the horizon, filtering low through the clouds. Winter was a fine season, but sometimes I did miss the sun. I think it hit Charlie harder than it hit me – he always got a little more sullen during the cold and dark seasons.

I went upstairs for a hot shower, finally getting clean from the mud and gunk that I had been ignoring for a couple days. It was fine, no one had seen me anyway. Besides the Cullens, and they seemed like the kind of people who didn’t care about that. Or maybe they did, and I was just making excuses to myself to keep from having anxiety over it. Generally speaking, the kind of people who hung out in the forest weren’t fussy about dirt.

Once I was out of the shower and getting dressed, I heard a car pull up. There was the tell-tale thud of the car doors, and then the front door. So, Charlie was back, and judging by the noise and muffled conversation, Sue and Harry were with him.

Sue and Harry had known me since I was a child – they had seen all the embarrassing bits of being a kid – from running around naked to breaking my arm falling out of an apple tree. They felt safe, like an extended aunt and uncle. Safe enough that I pulled on my pajamas before wrapping my hair in a towel and plodding downstairs.

I saw Charlie first, he was cleaning some fish in the kitchen, what I assumed was the catch of the day. “Hey Frizz, did you have a nice hike?”

I smiled and nodded at my dad. “Yeah, I collected a lot of moss too.”

Charlie raised one dark eyebrow but didn’t make a comment.

“We collected lots of fish!” Sue said happily, she stood in the doorway to the living room. Where I could see Harry behind her, sitting on the couch unlacing his boots.

I turned my smile toward her, she was round, and her face was wrinkled a little in all the places that spoke of happiness – just seeing her made me feel happy too. She looked like such a mom. Which she was, I knew her kids, though I wasn’t as close with them as I was with Jackie. Her daughter Leah was a bit older than me and Jackie, and never wanted to hang out with the two of us, and her son Seth was a little too young for us to tolerate.  “Hey Sue, did you have a good time?”

“Of course,” she nodded. “I always have a good time on the boat.”

“And how are you enjoying retirement?” She had recently retired from her job as a psychiatrist, but Charlie had told me that she still tended to go into the office – and wasn’t letting any of her certifications lapse. So really, she had just cut down her hours, but wasn’t willing to wholly let go of the office she had built from the ground up – especially not to those new young doctors who thought of things differently than she did. Maybe, usually , that wouldn’t be a big deal, but older folks, especially older Natives were less likely to trust the new doctors. And trust was an important part of psychiatry.

Sue just shrugged. “I’ve had more time to spend in the garden…” she said. “You and Charlie should come over for dinner once we take in more of the vegetables we’ve grown. We can have a party, once Leah and Seth are home.”

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked as I grabbed a mug from the kitchen cabinet and put on the kettle. I wanted something hot to drink.

“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Sue said with an easy smile. She always seemed so confident and comfortable with herself. I hoped to be like her when I was older. More than once, I wondered if Charlie hung out with Sue and Harry to give me good role models who happened to look like me. But that was probably overthinking it too much. He seemed to genuinely enjoy their company, and they seemed to enjoy him right back. They were constantly on the boat together – when all three of them had time off from their busy jobs. Time off was coming more and more frequently as they got older. Was Charlie thinking about retirement yet?

“Izzy, can I get some water?” Harry called sheepishly from the couch.

“Sure,” I said to both. It was a simple matter of turning on the sink and getting a glass for Harry’s water, so I brought that to him while I left the kettle to boil. “Those two tire you out, Harry?” Sue followed into the living room and settled herself across from me and Harry – on a small yellow chair with a frankly ugly flower pattern. It was comfortable though.

“They always tire me out. I’m the only one who acts my age,” he said with a sigh as he took the water. He sipped it slowly and leaned back.

“You are the oldest of us,” Sue added. Harry had recently retired from his job as well, he had been a school teacher. There had been a lot of tears and heartfelt thanks at the last graduation ceremony. I had missed it though. I had still been at the community college in Phoenix, and the college semester had gone longer than the high school.

“You don’t need to remind me,” he mumbled into his drink. Though they ribbed each other, I was sure Sue and Harry were still very much in love. It was just a soft and comfortable love. They spent so much more time together than I thought most married couples did. They fished together, and cooked together, and attended the same community events. Whenever they could be together they were. They were good role models in more than one regard.

“Stop reminding Harry that he’s old,” I tried to tease along with them. “How are Leah and Seth doing? Is Leah still at Portland U?”

Though Sue had been in a good mood before, somehow, she perked even further at the mention of her kids. “No, actually, Leah is at OHSU getting her MD,” it was a simple statement, but the pride with which Sue said it made it very clear that she loved the idea of her daughter following in her footsteps. Which made sense, there was a definite shortage of doctors, not only in America, but within Indian Country.

“Has she chosen a specialty yet?” I asked. Leah had always seemed a bit too… callous for psychiatry.

“Not yet, but she has time.” Sue shrugged. “Seth decided not to do the whole college thing,” she waved her hand dismissively. “He just finished welding classes though. He should get his certification within the month.” It was a similar choice to the one Jackie had made or had seemed to make at least. Welders and mechanics could both make a comfortable living without going into debt for college. It had the potential to be a smart move.

“Underwater or regular?”

At that Sue frowned. “He wants to do underwater but it’s just so…”

“Damn dangerous,” Harry finished for her.

I nodded in understanding. They were worried about Seth, while underwater welding was good money, really good money, it was also extremely dangerous. It was understandable that they would be worried. “I see…”

“We’re proud of him, of course, but it does feel a little extreme.” Sue looked down at the palm of one hand as if it had the answer to their predicament on it. But I doubted that her palm would tell her how to talk her son out of the path he had chosen. 

I pursed my lips and clasped my own hands together. I didn’t know what I could say that would make this better, or even console them. It was a difficult thing for parents to deal with. But I had a lot of empathy for Seth too. I would want my parents to be proud of me and encourage my path. But how could they do that when they were worried about his health?

“Sorry hon, this is a little dark for you, huh?” Harry patted my shoulder and my face melted back into a smile as he smiled apologetically at me. “You don’t have to worry about it. We’ll sort it out, or we’ll come to terms with it. Depending on what Seth chooses.”

“I bet it would have been easier if he had followed Harry and become a teacher.”

Sue snorted in a derisive tone that I hadn’t expected from her. Especially not when talking about her husband’s profession. “Like that would be any safer these days.” But it soon became clear what she was talking about. The heinous number of school shootings that happened on and off the TV.

That’s when Charlie decided to butt in. I had no doubt he could hear everything from where he was in the kitchen. “That’s not fair, Sue. You know it’s safer here than in any of the cities.”

For a moment she looked at Charlie with eyes of dark steel, but then she sighed and nodded. “I suppose.”

“Plus, it was just last year that we finally had to stop letting people bring their hunting rifles to the high school to go shooting after class. I would say we’re in a pretty safe place as far as guns are concerned.” It was hard to think of yourself as safe, but Charlie had a point. For where we were…

“What aren’t you supposed to talk about at dinner? Religion and politics?” Harry stood and patted Sue’s shoulder as he passed her on the way to the kitchen. “I’ll help you with the fish if we drop it,” he offered to Charlie. Who made a grumbling noise in the back of his throat but nodded. It must be hard not to take the safety of the town personally when you were the chief of police of such a small town.

The men retreated to the kitchen, leaving me with Sue.  Her face was cloudy, but I watched her take a couple deep breaths until the sun breached the clouds again, and she went back to looking happy and safe and familiar.

“Sorry, hon. Harry is right. We don’t need to worry you about this kind of stuff.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “How is school going? You were talking about moss earlier. What class is that for?”

It was my turn to perk up. “Oh, it’s going well. That’s for my bryology class! It’s the study of mosses, liverworts, and hornworts.” I knew it was dorky to be excited for such a weird class, but Sue just kept on smiling.

“That sounds fun. What other classes are you taking?”

“Evolution, International Issues for Water Development, and Genetics. Genetics seems to be the hardest so far. I’m good with things on the macro-scale but once we get down to things as small as DNA then I get a little confused.” Sue would know what I was talking about, though maybe she had been better with microscopic biology when she was in school. She had probably been better at school in general, to become a doctor. She nodded along as I spoke.

“Well if you ever need any help, I’d be happy to try. Though it’s been awhile since I’ve dabbled in genetics. We have a whole new career to help doctors out with that one. Genetic counselors are becoming very sought after.”

“Yeah, my professor didn’t have us get a book, because she said the science is changing and updating so fast for genetics.”

Sue made a face that said she was no expert on this subject. “If you ever take a psych class…” she furthered her offer. “I could help with that a whole lot easier.”

“No, I know.” I shrugged. “You don’t need to help me with genetics either. I’m not even that far in the class, it's just… So, I also have a lab partner that seems smart in genetics. But I don’t even know if I’ll need the help yet.” I was babbling a little, and the thought of Edythe didn’t help.

Sue moved to the couch to give me an encouraging embrace. And that’s when Charlie called from the kitchen: “Come and get it!” 

Chapter Text

After a nice dinner of perch, wild rice, and spinach with dad and the Clearwaters: I was able to get my genetics reading done. I would have all of Sunday to do my bryology reading, and then maybe I could finish my book. Knowing that I wouldn’t be stressed for the rest of the weekend, I plugged in my phone and melted happily into bed.

Shoot, I should probably text my mom. And Jackie.

I could do that in the morning. I closed my eyes tighter and pulled the blankets up around me in the dark.

That was the first night I dreamed of Edythe Cullen.

I was walking through the woods, though not any woods I recognized. Yet, I still knew where I was going. The forest was familiar to me even if I couldn’t remember ever having been there. And my feet knew which way I was going.

As I walked, the sun started to go down. It lit the forest in reds and oranges. It slowly got darker. Until I was walking by the blues and cold grays of moonlight. Even though I knew it was dark, I could still see everything. It was akin to the movies, when scenes took place in the night, but everything was still visible.

The creepy crawly feeling of eyes on my back made me shiver. And I turned around to see who could be there. But my body moved slowly, so much slower than even possible. I was swimming in clear molasses. When I finally made my snail speed 180 I saw a smiling girl. It took me a second to recognize her as Alice. The Cullen I had met in the woods recently. She seemed so happy, and I had to bite back the feeling of unease.

I stared at her, and she never blinked, her large dark eyes looked like marbles in her head. Hard and cold and unmoving.

“What are you doing, Isabella?”

“Walking…” I didn’t want to tell her anything, but I didn’t want to be unfriendly. There was something I needed to do. Somewhere I needed to go. And I couldn’t get distracted. “I have to go,” I told her before I turned around, still incredibly slow, and started walking again.

Alice was suddenly in front of me, moving at speeds that made her invisible to my slow eyes.

“There’s danger ahead. Do you still wish to continue?”

Why was she warning me? Why did she want to be friends with me? I guess kids, or teens as the case was, always wanted to hang out with people older than them. Alice probably looked up to her adopted sister. The thought of Edythe usually made my face get warm, but this time it just made my heart race.

“Yes.” I took a step forward. Alice started to shift and change. The moon rose behind her head, giving her a halo. The cold light glistened on her pale skin. And then she vanished. The moon vanished with her, and with it, the light.

I was in the dark. There was no sense of direction, no clue to my path, the night was an abyss. Immediately, I regretted taking the light and the moon for granted, now that Alice had taken it with her. But I kept walking, I had no choice. I couldn’t stand in the dark forever.

My feet still seemed to know where they were going. I held my hands out in front of me to keep from bumping into any trees. But I didn’t walk into any. I was thankful for my connection to the earth. As long as the land was under my feet I would be okay.

The walk continued. I thought the sun must be coming up soon. I had been walking for so long in the dark. Or at least the moon could come back.

Soon after I thought it, a dim red light appeared in the distance. I knew I had to reach it. Now that I had at least a little light, I could follow it. It got brighter as I walked. It was bright red, rubies given the gift of the sun. Or blood. The light throbbed like a star, or like a heart. So maybe it was blood, glowing and warm.

It was neither. I made it close enough to the light to see that it was coming from the flowing red robes of a person. And as soon as I saw her, she was suddenly in front of me, as close as in genetics lab. The red light cast dramatic shadows across her face. That’s when I noticed her eyes, instead of the amber color they were in reality, Edythe’s eyes were blood red. The same color as the gown she wore.

Edythe was silent. After a moment of staring at me blankly, the edges of her lips curled up in a smile. She held up one hand, palm up.

I took her hand. Maybe the gown was made from fire. Maybe Edythe was made of fire. Because suddenly my hand was cast into a blistering heat. I tried to pull away, but the heat didn’t end. Edythe clung to me.

Then her smile turned into a grin.

The grin was so wide, I thought I could see all her teeth. Each and every one of them ended in a sharp point. 

I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I suddenly knew that it was a dream. It had to be. A bad one, but a dream all the same. I could make it through this. All I had to do was wait to wake up.

But Edythe didn’t stop. Her mouth was opening, and my heart felt like it would pop right out of my chest. Then she could eat it whole.

Her jaw unhinged, and in her mouth was darkness, even deeper than the dark of the woods. It was the real abyss and it filled me with dread.

I woke up with a jolt. My body was surprisingly cold for how warm I had been in my dream. My nightmare. It was still dark in my room, but I heard a clap of thunder and realized that it was late in the morning, it was just storming and cloudy.

The first thing I did was search in the low light for the dreamcatcher that had been hanging near my window, so it could catch the light in the morning. But it wasn’t there.

Where was it?

I rolled out of bed, still not thinking completely clearly, and ran downstairs.

Dad was enjoying his Sunday, already in front of the TV, a bowl of cereal on his lap. Usually I wouldn’t bother him about something like this until later, but in my sleepy mind it was of the utmost importance.

“Dad, where is my dreamcatcher?”

He glanced over at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. And then he seemed to soften, his dark eyes turned from hard obsidian to liquid, a deep well that held pure cold water that I could use to refresh myself. He patted the spot on the couch next to him, and I sat. He pulled the blanket on the back of the couch over me and put an arm around my shoulders.

“You’re an adult now, Iz. Dreamcatchers are for kids who don’t know how to deal with their dreams yet. Ye’ always tell me you’re an adult anyway…” He said it with no malice, just a soft smile and a gentle rub on my shoulder.

“I had a nightmare,” I told him, even though he had probably already gathered that.

He nodded. “Tell me about it. Maybe I can help you with this one.”

I pursed my lips. I trusted my dad. But it was embarrassing. And I wondered if he would think badly of me for having such bad anxiety about a couple of kids. Or if he would be able to tell it was a weird anxiety dream from being a repressed lesbian with a crush. Probably not. Being weird about telling him was probably worse.

“Uhm…” Where did I even start? “I was in the woods, trying to walk somewhere. And then Alice, Alice Cullen, Edythe’s little sister. She showed up and took the moon away. And I was in the dark. But I kept walking. And then I ran into Edythe, but it wasn’t really Edythe. I mean, it was… a scary thing, not a person. And it tried to eat me, I think.”

What monsters lurked in the hearts of strangers? Maybe the dream was reminding me that I still didn’t know Edythe. How many times had I even talked to her? Twice maybe.

Charlie hummed and nodded. There was a moment of silence, and I wondered if the dream was too weird for even him. But then he sighed and smiled. “Are you anxious about making a new friend?” he asked softly.

I leaned my head against his shoulder. What a silly and wonderful father. “Maybe…”

“When did you meet the little sister?”

“Yesterday. I ran into her on the hike. I think I saw the other sister too. She wasn’t as friendly.”

Charlie hummed again. It was easy to forget how thoughtful he was, since he didn’t talk about his thoughts often or openly, but he was always thinking behind that silent mask. “And the least friendly sister, she wasn’t in the dream…?”

I shook my head. Rosalie had been cold enough that even my subconscious knew she wasn’t allowed in there. Probably didn’t want to be in there, but I doubted Edythe and Alice were very eager to spend any time in the inner workings of my brain either.

“You know how you feel more than I do. It’s your dream. But maybe, running into the other two sisters made you worry that Edythe would be unfriendly too.” A big, calloused hand rubbed the side of my head and made me smile.

“Maybe.”

“Don’t take my word for it. Think on it while the sun is up. Maybe you’ll figure something out.”

I nodded but didn’t move. There was time enough in the day to curl up on the couch with my dad while the local news played in the background. The warmth and bulk of him at my side was comforting. I always felt safe with my dad around.

My nightmare was kept at bay by his logical approach to considering it, and what might have caused it. So, it was no surprise when I fell back asleep.

Chapter Text

The rest of my Sunday was lazy and passed in a pleasant enough blur. Charlie went fishing again while I was taking my nap. He returned without anything to show for it, except some shepherd’s pie he had picked up from the diner. I finished my bryology reading and started back on my novel for fun – I spent a few hours with it before I started texting with mom and Jackie. And then my reading speed slowed down to a molasses pace, and my comprehension took a bit of a dive too. But I did make plans to get together with Jacky the next weekend. For a longer visit than the last time. Maybe we would go do something, like see a movie. But we hadn’t picked one yet. 

It was dreary, and it only got drearier as the night came. It must have dipped below freezing in the night, because it was icy when I left in the morning for my classes 

My green hat and gloves kept my head and hands warm when I climbed into Bertha – as soon as the engine turned over, cold air started pouring out of the vents, sending a shiver down my spine. I fiddled around with the heat and turned the fans down to the lowest setting. My accessories and my old purple downy coat would have to do until the car warmed up.

It took most of my willpower to go slowly on the roads. I hadn’t put my snow tires on yet and I didn’t want to crash so soon in the school year. It sat in my chest uncomfortably, the thought of crashing the car, just another thing to be anxious about. At least this anxiety had a name, even if it was illogical to think a crash was imminent.

By the time I finally got to the college and found parking, there wasn’t much time left to get across campus to my class.

Which shouldn’t have meant I had to rush now, on my two little legs unprotected by anything except flesh and skin, instead of in my car with inches of metal between me and the world. But I did, I rushed in that careless way that most college students seem to have. Without looking very hard when I trot across the road. The thing was, pedestrians had the right of way. I was in the crosswalk. But the thin layer of ice on the road, along with the inertia of the van that was coming toward me, and the bald summer tires it was traveling on. Well… when the driver pressed on the brake to let me cross, nothing happened. Okay, something happened, but that something was the tires stopping as the van slid toward me.

My mind slowed down and went blank at the same moment. It seemed I had all the time in the world to think things over – even if there was nothing I could do to change the way events were taking me. There was no point in thinking about the past, if I had done something different, if I hadn’t rushed across the street, if I had gone a little faster in the car. It wasn’t worth it, and even if it was, my brain had been shut off to words.

Instead I took things in. Every detail of the chipping black paint of the van, of the sparkle of the wet asphalt, of the way my legs felt, of the way the anxiety screamed through my body – turning me to jelly, of the horrified look on Edythe’s face as she stared at me and the van. She was all the way in the pavilion, by the building where we had genetics together. The horror blended into frustration for a moment, and then her face was getting closer at an alarming rate. A rate that made no logical sense as mere seconds ticked by.

Suddenly I was on the ground, not in as much pain as I thought I should be. My butt, back, and elbows hurt, but they weren’t in searing pain, just a dull throbbing. I was more concerned with the feverish heat and weight of Edythe on top of me. There was a dull thud and a second loud crunch. I was scared, for me and Edythe, but I couldn’t see anything except her angry face and her molten amber eyes.

“Di mi, girl! Maybe you are daft.” She rolled off me, where her hands came away, my skin burned. The heat at my front and the ice at my back made me shiver. Maybe I was daft, my mind was still blank of any useful thoughts. My head swiveled around as I tried to figure out what had happened.

Edythe was already up and hurrying toward the van - the crosswalk sign had stopped it and made a sizable dent in the front of it.  

Edythe kicked the van once; it could have been mistaken for simple frustration – but I saw the hand print before her foot turned the dent into something that made more sense. Then she was helping Mike (Melon) out of the car. He looked just as confused as I was. There was a little drizzle of blood coming from his nose as he stumbled toward me. “Izzy! Fuck, sorry. Are you okay?” 

He took a dive but little Edythe was fast, and strong enough to grab him by the wide shoulders and settle him on the side of the road in the grass next to him. Her cell phone was already between her shoulder and her ear as she tended to me and Mike. 

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I mumbled to him and put my hand on his arm, to ground him and me. My head felt like it was floating six feet above me, and a little voice somewhere in the back of my head said that’s shock Isabella, you’re in shock. But it wasn’t like I had seen someone get blown up. I just had a little fright. Maybe that made me a delicate southern blossom, but it wasn’t anything serious . I wasn’t even hurt. Mike was in worse shape than me. 

If I wanted to be a forest ranger, or any kind of person who did ecology in the field, then I would have to learn to be calm in emergencies. I took a deep breath and looked at Mike’s pupils. “Did you hit your head?” I asked, trying to channel the same workable energy that Edythe seemed to have as she spoke calm and clipped to the dispatcher. I heard her give an abbreviated account of what happened, where we were, who was involved, and that we weren’t bleeding profusely, were both conscious, and had no broken bones that she could see. 

I did my best to tune her out and focus on Mike, who just kept repeating apologies. “Hey, hey, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I want to know if you’re okay now, Mike.” I pulled out my phone and shined my flashlight in his eyes. His pupils contracted right away, good. 

“You know that’s not really what you do to test for a concussion right?” 

“What?” 

“Yeah, you’re not supposed to shine the light, just look at the pupils and see if they’re different sizes,” Mike explained calmly. At least he wasn’t apologizing anymore. 

“No. I mean yeah, but if you shine a light on them and they both get smaller then that’s good.” Maybe I would have preferred it if he was still apologizing, and not arguing with me on how to test for a concussion. 

“But if you artificially constrict them, then how is the ambulance supposed to see if they were dilated badly?” 

“If they both get small then that isn’t even… a…” I trailed off as I realized the bell-chime sound of Edythe’s laughter was getting louder, she was no longer speaking to the dispatcher. She was looking at me and Mike sitting on the grass together and laughing at us, right after our accident. “What’s so funny?” I wasn’t mad at her; I couldn’t be mad when she was so beautiful and airy and full of life. I was more curious. 

“You’re arguing about this. Right now. While I’m on the phone trying to get your dad.” 

“My dad?” I asked, dumbfounded. What did he have to do with this? 

“Officer Swan, chief of police?” She said with one dainty raised eyebrow. She shoved her phone in her pocket. “He should be here in a minute to take you two to the hospital. I didn’t think you wanted an ambulance and I figured…” she shrugged, as if she wasn’t sure what she had figured. 

But she was right. I didn’t want an ambulance. And I didn’t know Mike’s insurance situation, but I was pretty sure no one in America ever wanted an ambulance. It was basically a superbly overpriced taxi ride. 

“Uh… right,” I muttered as she crouched down to look at my face. Her hot hands went to my cheeks and my body froze in response. 

“Hmm…” She gently pushed my head around and I went limp at her touch. “Nothing hurts?” She asked, voice as gentle as her hands. I bit back silly thoughts and words. What was she doing? What had she done? I kept the image of the perfect hand print in my mind. I wouldn’t forget to ask her questions - but first we had to be alone. I don’t know why I felt the need for privacy, maybe I thought she could trust me more if Mike wasn’t around. 

“I’m fine,” I repeated. 

Edythe nodded and then gave Mike all her attention. I was almost jealous. Right, I was jealous. Had she looked at me the same way? With a hard and serious look in her eyes? With her jaw set in an equally hard angle? I thought she had looked at me in a softer way. But was that a good thing or a bad thing? 

It didn’t take long before I heard the sirens, and from there it was only seconds before two cruisers pulled up. Officer Swan got out of one cruiser with a worried look on his usually stoic face, and he made a beeline for me. “I’m fine!” I said quickly, trying to cut off some of his worry. 

Rosemary Foster - another officer - got out of the first cruiser and went to talk to Edythe. I saw a few more familiar faces get out of their cruisers and head toward the office. I didn’t even want to think about the bureaucracy we would have to deal with for having an accident on college property. 

Dad looked me over in much the same way Edythe had. It made me think that she probably had first aid training. I knew dad did at least.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” He asked, dark eyes boring into mine. “How does your neck feel? Your head?”

“I’m perfect, dad, I swear. The van didn’t even touch me. I’m just lucky Edythe…” At the sound of her name her body went rigid, it felt like she was suddenly vibrating at a higher frequency, making me incredibly aware of her standing there – looking even more petite in comparison to Officer Foster. “Edythe was there to help me.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. “Well, thank you Edythe.” He looked at my classmate with a mix of emotions on his face, nothing that could be easily parsed. “Mike, I’m taking you to the hospital. We wanna check you for a concussion at least.” Mike groaned but didn’t make a real verbal objection. Rosemary smiled sympathetically at him and helped him into the cruiser. Poor kid. First, he almost runs over the daughter of the chief of police and then that same cop takes him to the hospital in a cruiser…

“Friz, you can come if you want but if not, do you think Edythe would do you one more favor and drive you home?” He looked back at both of us. I knew he would take me home if I asked, he would trust Rosemary to take care of Mike. But I didn’t want to be a bother, and if I was being honest with myself, I wanted the easy excuse to be alone with Edythe. I looked at her, wondering if that was too much to ask of her, but her face was a mask of politeness.

“Sure, Officer Swan,” she agreed.

“Oh no need for that, if you’re friends with Izzy you should call me Charlie.” His hands were fiddling with the key of the cruiser, which told me he was anxious. Even if his face never changed.

“Right, Charlie.” Edythe was harder for me to read, but something about the way she spoke to Charlie was icy. Always polite but never warm. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she didn’t see him as Charlie, but as Officer Swan. I knew that maybe, if I hadn’t been raised by a cop, I would have radically different feelings about them.

“I appreciate it.” He tipped his head in a small nod and got into the cruiser, leaving me standing there with Edythe Cullen.

Chapter Text

“So… I could drive myself home. I mean, if you drove me, how would you get back?” A little too late I was thinking of the logistics of it. The only thing I could think of was Charlie coming home and then driving Edythe back, which… stressed me out a little. The thought of Edythe and Charlie in a cruiser together.

Edythe shook her head. She looked a lot looser once the cruiser pulled away – solidifying my theory that she wasn’t overly fond of cops. “Rosalie can pick me up.” She winced. “Or Alice.”

“Does Alice have her license?” I assumed that was the reason for the wince, a little sister who was new to driving might make any older sibling worry. Not that I – an only child – was any expert on siblings, especially adopted ones.  

“Yes, she just got it. She loves showing it off.” Edythe heaved a big sigh and held out her hand, palm up. It took me an embarrassingly long string of seconds to realize she didn’t want to hold my hand but needed my keys to drive me home. Edythe’s wry smile as I rummaged around in my pockets didn’t make me feel much better.

We walked together, only a few feet to the crosswalk that would lead us back to the parking lot. Edythe grabbed my sleeve and I stared at her; blood rushed up my neck to make my ears hot.

“Look both ways before crossing,” it sounded like a tease. But then she very carefully looked both ways before stepping into the street, her boots making a click on the asphalt. I pursed my lips and followed. “Too soon?” she asked as her foot made contact with the thin patch of grass that still separated us from the parking lot.

“I didn’t know if you were joking.”

“Only partially.” Her head turned slightly, and she gave me a full tooth smile that almost knocked me over. In the dreary, misty, light of the Pacific Northwest, she was the closest thing to the sun, radiant and beautiful. I almost tripped, but that only made her bell chime laugh start again. “You’re very accident prone, you know that?” 

I nodded as I followed her to my Subaru. Edythe unlocked the car and slid, somehow elegantly, into the driver seat.

Bertha accepted me back into her familiar cabin, maybe she was a little surprised when I settled into her passenger seat instead of the driver’s seat. But her soft gray upholstery was still welcoming. Damn, I really anthropomorphized the heck out of my car. 

Once I was safely buckled in, Edythe rolled over the engine. The air coming from the engine was still warm. Her graceful fingers brushed all the excess keys and my beaded key-chain. She had short nails and dainty fingers. “I like your key-chain,” she said as she reversed out of the parking spot, never looking at me. 

“Thanks, my cousin made it.” My cousin who had been taught to bead by her mother, who still held cultural ties, was enrolled, and lived in Minnesota. 

“Are you… close to your cousin?” Edythe asked, eyes still glued to the road. All of her little driving movements were so beautiful - but more than beautiful, they seemed so practiced. Edythe seemed to float through the world while I was constantly stumbling, or almost getting hit by vans. 

“Uhm,” I thought about that. “We were closer when we were little. Charlie was more serious about going to family reunions.” And there was a little bit of an age difference. Just enough that we didn’t have the same kinds of things to talk about. I had her email, but it was still a child's email, kittycandace1995 or something, it wasn’t a real email. And I honestly wasn’t sure if she still used it. I had her phone number too but I seldom used it. “She made that when she was eleven, I think? And I had just gotten my learners permit.” 

That was the year that Charlie had taken me to Minnesota for a real white Christmas. I still remembered leaving the airport in Duluth after departing from Phoenix - there was snow everywhere and a blast of freezing air had chilled me to the bone.

“Do you have cousins?” I asked, mostly because that’s where it seemed the conversation was supposed to go. I was so bad at small talk, if I didn’t have movies and tv to tell me how to talk to people, I would have no idea how to do it. But that wasn’t the right question to ask someone who was adopted, I quickly realized. When would I stop putting my foot in my mouth with Edythe? And for the love of God, why had I asked that mundane question when there were more important questions to ask. Like how she had saved me from the van? How she had left a hand-print in the metal? What was she made of? How did she become this way? I doubted it was a special diet, exercise regimen, or spider bite.

“No. Or if I do, I don’t know about them. I’ve been with Calogero most of my life.” She carefully angled the air vents away from her face. 

“Sorry, we can turn the heater down.” I turned the dial to the left and settled back down in the passenger seat. The cabin was still warm, and as long as there was a little hot air coming out we would still be able to see out of the windows. “Did Calogero adopt you first?” 

Edythe nodded and turned Bertha down a new road. “You’ll have to give me directions from here,” she warned. I could do that. I sat up a little straighter and kept my eyes forward. 

Was it the right time? 

“How did you get to me so fast?” I asked her, not looking at her reaction. Maybe if I didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be that bad. I knew that was a logical fallacy, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head and look at her. Instead I focused on the dull black and gray of the road and the green of the Pacific Northwest. 

“What do you mean?” Her voice sounded tight, in comparison to the usual loose bellchime sound of it, but I still didn’t look. “I was almost next to you, Izzy.” 

“But you weren’t. You were by the pavilion. Near the building where we have genetics. I watched you, Edythe. I saw you run. ” At an inhuman speed. 

“ No ,” she said the one syllable word so slowly. So carefully. “You didn’t. Isabella.” 

That’s when I looked at her. To my surprise and horror, she was looking at me. Staring at me with those amber eyes, trying to bore a hole in my head with the sheer force of them. And yet the car still moved along at the same perfect 55 miles per hour pace. Even as the road curved. 

“E-Edythe, the road!” 

A tiny twitch of a smile played on her lips, but she didn’t look, didn’t even glance. “Do you really think I need to look? You say you saw me run.” I had the sinking feeling that I had burst some dam that Edythe had very carefully built. Or unlocked a door that was usually shut tight to the world. The sinking feeling told me that she had hidden this secret away for an important reason.

“Left. Left up here on Pike Creek.” I still had to get home. Or at least try. Maybe I had a concussion like Mike, maybe I was just confused. 

Bertha still turned left, and Edythe slowed the car down to 45, then 35. “Which house?” She asked, her tone resigned and dry. Not loose or tense or musical anymore. 

“The blue one. White trim.” My own voice was starting to sound robotic to mirror hers. 

The car slowed to a stop in front of the house, in the same spot where I usually parked, enough so the grass was pushed down in the general shape of Bertha’s tires. Edythe got out of the car and, slowly, walked over to the passenger door. She opened it, while I waited, frozen in anxiety. “Welcome home.” She pressed the keys into my palm with her feverish hand. The metal of the keys and the key-ring had taken on her incredible warmth. 

Maybe the overwhelming heat wasn’t comforting, I thought for the first time. Maybe it was a warning.

“I’ll see you soon, Izzy,” she said as she started to walk back in the direction we had come. And I couldn’t tell if that was a promise or another warning.

Chapter Text

I went to my desk and booted up my laptop. Before I could forget, I sent emails to my professors explaining my absence and asking if there was anything I should read to keep up or if I should go to office hours to get info on the missing lectures. Thankfully, neither of my labs were on Monday. 

There was finally an email from Laura (Lentil) about the Transfer Teams ™ meeting. She wanted it to be on Friday evenings, so I shot back a reply that I had my genetics lab on Friday evenings. I was hoping that was the only time she had available, and that it would mean I could skip. 

Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do, but I was physically and emotionally exhausted. When I was done with my serious business I took a nap. And I woke up, so at least it was a successful nap and not the kind of concussion nap that people didn’t wake up from. 

I laid in my bed, surrounded by the comfort of home and the light of early evening. I stared at the ceiling and pondered Edythe. I hadn’t meant to. It was just the first place my mind wandered. How was she so strong? How had she stopped the van? Maybe she was just really buff. Or maybe she had been born with superhuman strength. Maybe it was a sickness. I grabbed my laptop again and opened a new tab in my browser. I searched for something that would give someone a fever and strength. I read a few pages about myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy. Which didn’t fit at all. Nor did Cushing’s disease. 

There was a chance it could have been hysterical strength. That wasn’t a disease so much as a commonly repeated anecdote of parents lifting cars off babies. Was I a baby? Maybe. But that didn’t sit right with me either. Edythe knew what she could do. She knew she was different. And it didn’t explain her constant fever or her speed. 

My quick search turned just as quickly to me falling down the rabbit hole. I followed link after link to explanations of Furor Teutonicus (a phrase made by the Romans because the Germanic tribes they fought were so tough) , Berserkers (bear warriors among the Norse), and Ulfheðnar (wolf warriors among a few different groups). I followed the supernatural stories to more realistic explanations of PTSD and fungal spores. 

Nothing made sense, and a quick glance at the clock in the lower right corner of the screen told me I was only wasting my time. 

I ambled down the stairs and got hit with the smell of bubbling tomato sauce. “Dad?” I turned the corner and sure enough, there he was, standing by the stove with a big pot and a wooden spoon. I must have been so engrossed in my (useless) research that I hadn’t heard him come in. 

“Frizzabella,” he said with a smile as he turned to look at me. I made sure to roll my eyes at the thing that was too long to be called a nickname. It was even worse than Friz or Frizzy. But Charlie didn’t seem to mind. “How are you feeling?” He left the wooden spoon horizontally perched on the open pot to keep the sauce from boiling over and stepped close to put the back of his hand on my forehead. 

“Not too bad. I did take a nap,” I admit to him. There was a grumble and a twitch of the mustache before he turned back to the stove. “I’m still alive though.” 

“And thank the Lord for that.” I was always vaguely surprised when Dad pulled out the Catholicism. As far as I was concerned the religion was like fancy silverware for Charlie - he didn’t use it everyday. Instead, he only pulled it out if there was company he needed to impress. Like his brothers. 

I ignored the comment and pulled out the regular plates, with the regular silverware, not the metaphorical Catholic silverware. Dad piled both plates with irregularly shaped noodles, red sauce, and meatballs. It only took me a moment to realize he had made everything from scratch. Maybe the sauce had been in a jar waiting for this moment for years. But judging from the flour still clinging to his t-shirt, he must have just made the pasta. 

“You’re going to spoil me. Why the princess treatment today?” 

“You ain’t the only one who likes to cook, Friz.” 

We ate in relative silence for a little while. With only gentle clicks of our forks against our plates. I enjoyed all the subtle flavors that were lacking in store bought pasta sauce. Dad knew just the right spices to add, and when he warmed up his sauce he added carrot shavings for sweetness that hid the bitter without being overly sugary. I had watched that trick once when I was 12, on one of our first visits without Mom hovering around us, and I hadn’t forgotten it since. I wondered if his mom taught him to cook.

“Besides,” he surprised me by starting the conversation back up. “You had a bit of a shock today. I figured I could make some comfort food.” It was comfort food. It was one of our visit foods. Or maybe it was what he fed himself and I only associated it with our visits because of that. 

“Thanks, Dad.” I smiled without looking up from my half eaten plate of pasta. “Did Grandma teach you to cook like this?” It was something I had just been thinking about so I figured I would ask. There was another lull, this one without the sound of his fork. I looked up then and there were more lines on his face than normal. Mostly between his eyebrows. He looked older, tired. All that just from mentioning Grandma? Or was there something else on his mind?

“A bit,” he finally said, as open and honest as ever. Just at a slower pace that evening. “More from watching than from being taught.” 

I could imagine that. I only knew my grandma (both of them) through second hand stories. But it was easy to think that Charlie had always been the quiet, wide eyed, easily overlooked middle child. There was something comforting in the sameness of it all. I had also been a quiet, wide eyed, easily overlooked child. But that meant I could observe. This was the first time that I realized Charlie had found the same power when he was just a bit smaller, with a smoother face, and less wrinkles. He was a person with an ever present personality. A person who had been young at some point. I was so much like him, not the other way around. 

It only made the disconnect seem deeper, a canyon instead of an arroyo, between me and my grandparents. He had known them, but I never would. There were more questions that I could have asked, that I should have asked, but instead I put another fork full of pasta into my mouth and tried to suss the knowledge of my family through the spices in the sauce. 

“Dad,” I picked the conversation back up to try one more time, like a football that kept being dropped. “Are you feeling okay?” 

“Yeah, fine.” He grabbed both empty plates and started toward the sink. 

“I can do the dishes,” I said quickly, and got up to follow after him. “You cooked.”

Dad gave me one more little smile. His deep well eyes looked darker and more sunken than usual. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? “Let me baby you just for tonight. You can do chores tomorrow.” 

I pressed my lips together in the way that made them disappear. He needed something, but it definitely wasn’t more dishes to do. “Dad, you can tell me if something is bothering you.” It was something that he had told me time and again. And I thought it should probably be true in both directions. It wasn’t that he was being quiet, he was usually quiet. But his silence was more profound, deeper and sadder. “How can I help if you don’t tell me what’s happening?” 

“I’m the dad here, Isabella.” At the sound of my name - my actual name, not Frizzy, Frizzle, or Friz - my ears turned hot. Had I done something wrong? But there was no anger in his voice. It wasn’t really a reprimand. It was a deep emotion that I didn’t recognize on my father’s usually stoic face, or in his usually stolid voice. “I’m supposed to be the strong one.” Suddenly his well dark eyes were looking red around the edges. 

“Dad…” I didn’t know what to say. And I still didn’t know what was wrong. So I hugged him, as tight as I could. He smelled like salt, Old Spice, and flour still. I had never felt so small and so mature at the same time. I was an adult, Charlie could confide in me. I felt like I could help, if he only told me what was hurting him. But at the same time I was scared. If something could hurt my dad, the strongest and most loyal man I could imagine. Then it would surely destroy me .  He set the dishes down on the nearby counter and hugged back for a minute before pulling away and starting toward the stairs. 

“Goodnight. I’m going to bed.” 

I would be doing the dishes after all.