Chapter Text
She woke up feeling far away from herself.
At first, she thought that she was something like watercolor, spreading thinly on a page. She thought that the paper she’d been painted on would buckle beneath her with hardly any warning.
But then she realized that she had eyes—they were crusted shut, yet they were there, and so because of them, she understood that she was something greater than paint.
Her hands moved slowly, though eventually they hit her cheeks. They rose higher, and she scrubbed at her eyelids, dislodging the dried mucus that had made itself at home in her tear ducts. When she finally opened her eyes, the world, in all its muted beiges, appeared to her like it was swimming.
She breathed in and tried to count to five, but got lost before she could even get started. She stuttered a breath out and lolled her head back and forth, annoyed. The earth jolted beneath her feet, and panic lodged itself in her chest, right beside her rabbit’s heart. There was a window to her right, and through it, she saw only pale blues and smokey whites.
She realized she must’ve been thousands of feet high in order to see above the clouds. She wondered how she got there; she wondered who she was.
The longer she was awake, the faster the paint dried, and the steadier the world appeared. Grounded in the sky, she looked to her left and saw that she was alone. The two seats next to her were taken by ghosts.
She looked down and saw that there was a backpack between her feet, partially unzipped. She trapped it between her calves and dragged it inwards, pulling it up onto her lap once it was close enough to reach without bending over too much.
Inside, stretching out of the darkness like a little plastic beacon of hope, was a Ziploc bag with a tiny blue pill nestled in its corner. She peeled the bag open and fished the pill out curiously; it was blank on one side with a divot down the middle, but on the other side, it simply read: XANAX, 1.0.
She rolled the pill between her forefinger and her thumb, then dropped it back inside of the Ziploc unceremoniously. She folded the bag up and stuffed it beneath her thigh, feeling strangely protective of such a small thing.
Dipping her hand into the shadowy depths of the backpack revealed little more than this: an empty bottle of water, and one that was half-full; a fuzzy tartan blanket, crumpled up into a messy ball that caused one side of the backpack to protrude like a tumor; a plain black zip-up wristlet, light enough to seem empty on the inside; and an awkward hunk of plastic and metal, headphone wires wrapped tightly around it, half-obscuring the Apple logo on its backside.
Again, turbulence struck like a storm. She dropped everything back into the backpack and peered out of the window nervously, but nothing seemed amiss.
A crackle sundered the air, and a voice pooled in the fissure like glue. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As we start our descent into the city of Port Angeles, Washington, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position…” And so it droned, on and on, as she followed its instructions mechanically. Seat and tray table, upright; backpack, tucked neatly under the seat in front of her; and seatbelt, strapped tight around her hips.
She found herself lingering there long after they’d landed, strapped in and safe. She only unbuckled and checked the overhead compartment at the concerned prodding of the flight attendant. A duffel bag, deep emerald, and a small suitcase, mustard yellow, awaited her there. She considered the possibility of someone else having left them behind, but a glance over both shoulders told her that she was the last passenger on board. She pulled both bags down to the ground, and she made sure to swing the backpack straps over both of her shoulders before she struggled to carry it all off of the plane.
And so it went, just like that. She, alone, even a little bit lonely, presenting one foot in front of the other, over and over again—from the plane, to the bridge, to the gate—and she was certainly lonely then, for nothing awaited her outside of the gate, like some hidden part of her had hoped.
She was reminded, a bit callously, that she couldn’t even remember her own name. She didn’t know who she was, what she was doing here, or who could possibly be waiting for her, wherever she’d found herself.
She sequestered herself in a bathroom after facing the fact that there would be no answers that came easily to her. Back pressed against the door, head leaned back, eyes squeezed shut, one—“… two, three, four, five…” a breath in, followed by a shaky breath out. She sounded like a stranger to her own ears.
She stopped counting out loud, but it was too late. That strange voice rattled the numbers off even inside of her head, and whatever she’d thought she would sound like before she opened her big fat mouth was gone.
She reached into her back pocket, mindlessly desperate, and pulled the Ziploc bag out like it was meant to be her salvation. Plastic cradled in her palm, she looked down at the little blue pill and rued the fact it was the last of its kind, inexplicably regretting its inevitable extinction.
Yet down the hatch it went with a gulp of water, the time for mourning over.
Kneeling on the floor, she stuffed her nearly empty water bottle back inside her bag and pulled out her wallet. Inside, she discovered she had seventy-three dollars and thirteen pennies to her name. A prayer card removed from the front pocket revealed a phone number and a meaningless string of letters scribbled on the back of it, as well as an Arizona driver’s license underneath it.
The girl in the photo was unfamiliar to her. Pale skin, dark hair and eyes; Swan, Isabella M. She rose to her feet, hand clenched so tightly around the card that it began to dig into the skin of her palm, and walked over to the sinks. The mirror above them practically stretched the whole length of the wall.
She pressed the license against the mirror, fingerprints smearing all over the glass, and compared the girl in the reflection to the girl on the card. Long, dark hair; skin so sickly pale she could see purple bags beneath wide, brown eyes; thin enough for her collarbone to be poking out, and blue veins along with it. The longer she stared at herself, whispering her name in that strange voice of hers, the more she could swear something wriggled at the back of her mind, begging to slither right up to the tip of her tongue and hiss its way out.
Familiarity, warning, censure. It sat there, not quite stagnant—like something was bubbling in the water, stone cracking from the heat, steam burning the skin on her lips.
The card slipped from her hand and clattered into the sink. The pads of her fingers squeaked against the glass as she dragged them down to the countertop and dipped them into the porcelain basin to fish out the license. Her hands shook as she tucked the card back into her wallet, then tossed the whole thing into the front pocket of her backpack.
Something cracked.
Stupidly, she checked the mirror, but there were only her fingerprints and the smudged trails they’d left behind. Inside the bag’s front pocket, however, she found papers wrapped around themselves, wrinkled down the middle where her wallet sat atop them. She moved the wallet, lifted the papers, and unraveled them gently.
The top sheet was a receipt, confirming the purchase of two plane tickets, non-refundable. Below it sat her boarding passes. Underneath those was a map of the country, thick red lines connecting Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Then, finally, there was a map of Washington state, one thick red line starting between Seattle and Tacoma, across the Puget Sound, to a dot on the coast labeled Port Angeles and then further southwest, stopping in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere.
Protected at the heart of all of those papers was a key, so small she couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of lock it would fit into. She gazed at it for a moment, then wrapped the papers around it and threw it all back into the bag.
When she stood back up, she thought that she would fly away if she wasn’t careful. She leaned back on her heels heavily, praying she wouldn’t make like a rocket and blast off head-first into the ceiling.
Eventually, she felt rooted, and so she stretched her branches out to pick up her bags. Leaving the bathroom felt like a mistake, but she knew, at the very least, that she wasn’t meant to stay there. The map had told her that much. The signs hanging from the ceiling told her the rest.
The conveyor belts in baggage claim were silent and still; despite the rain, the lone security guard outside circled the parking lot in their stead. When she exited the airport and lingered at the doors, he initially spared her naught but a glance—then another, followed by an exasperated, “Oh, there you are, Bells!”
Do I know you, she almost asked him. Her ears were ringing and her face felt warm. He’d called her Bells and all of a sudden she could hear them inside her head. Ding, dong, like a doorbell, and when she answered the door, all she said was, “Hi.”
“Hi to you too,” he sighed. “Didn’t know you could get lost in an airport this small. Maybe I should’ve waited at the gate for you.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“You all right?” he asked, scratching at his beard awkwardly. “And is that all you brought?”
She glanced at her bags and shrugged as best as she could with all of them hanging off of her shoulders. “I’m fine.”
He squinted at her doubtfully, then peered over her shoulder. “I think you left a suitcase in there, Bella.”
“Did I?” she thought she asked, but the bells were clanging louder that time. She couldn’t even hear herself think. Her mouth burned at the edges.
He said something to her and then walked past her. She watched the rain hit the asphalt until the bells stopped ringing. He reappeared at her side carrying a large yellow suitcase that looked like it was a bigger version of the one she’d carried off of the plane.
“You must be tired,” he said as he unlocked the trunk of the car parked on the curb. FORKS POLICE, its doors declared proudly.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
He held his hands out to her, and she stared at them blankly. “Your bags, honey.”
“Oh.” She passed them over to him one at a time, and he stacked them in his trunk carefully before slamming it shut.
He stood in the rain then, just watching her. His uniform got damp at the shoulders. “How’s your mom?” he asked.
“Fine,” she guessed. She couldn’t even remember what her mother looked like.
Water pooled and dripped from the ends of his hair onto his forehead. The ones that slipped down from his temples to his cheeks looked like tears. He walked around the car and pulled the passenger side door open, gesturing her inside. “That’s good,” he said, “real good. And it’s good to see you. You oughta take a nap on the drive back, though. You look dead on your feet.”
Even though she had no idea who this man was or where he wanted to take her, she got into the car. A nap sounded like a great idea. She pressed her forehead to the window and watched as the raindrops raced to the bottom. The car rattled when he slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him. The racers hesitated for a moment before they started to run again.
He flipped the radio on and began to drive. There was nothing more to say. She felt sick, but she ignored it. She closed her eyes as he hummed along to unfamiliar songs.
When they hit a pothole in the road, she awoke from her doze with a jerk. She made eye contact with her reflection in the side-view mirror. Her stomach roiled. “Pull over,” she slurred.
He glanced at her, confused. “What?”
“Pull over,” she repeated desperately, and that time, he obliged. She tried to open the door, but her fingers slipped on the handle at first; the second time was the charm, and she scrambled out of the car like the devil was in the backseat.
“Christ, Bells!” She heard the driver’s side door open, and then she puked on the verge.
Ding, dong. She was Bella Swan.
The man—he must’ve been Charlie Swan, of course he was Charlie Swan, who else would he be?—kneeled behind her and gathered her hair back in one hand. He reached around her with the other to press his palm to her forehead. “You don’t feel warm,” he muttered to himself nervously. She retched again. “Did you eat something bad on the plane, hon?”
She dry-heaved in response.
Charlie rubbed her back. The calluses on his fingers caught on the fabric of her parka and made the most wretched sound to her ears. She gagged and coughed out whatever remained in her mouth onto the grass. Her throat stung, her eyes burned, and when she sat back on her haunches to run her hands through her hair, both rain and tears dampened her cheeks.
“You alright?”
“Yeah,” she lied, “can you pop the trunk?” Although Charlie didn’t know what for, he was quick to indulge her. She unzipped her backpack and sought out her nearly empty water bottle in order to drink what little remained.
“If you’re not feeling well, you don’t have to start school tomorrow, Bells,” Charlie offered. He sounded hopelessly out of his depth. She felt it.
“I think I did eat something bad,” she told him, closing the trunk and letting herself back into the car.
He cursed under his breath as he opened the driver’s side door. “Could be food poisoning, then.” He cranked the heat up a bit higher and turned the radio’s volume down low. “We can stop at a gas station before we get home. I’ll get you something to drink and some medicine, alright?”
“Mhm,” she hummed, rolling her forehead against the window.
“Let me know if you need me to pull over again,” he told her. “I’ll drive a little faster, though.”
“Okay.”
She leaned back in her seat and stared listlessly out of the windshield. The yellow lines in the road were so faded she could barely see them with Charlie going sixty miles per hour. The sky was gray enough that if she crossed her eyes, she could see Bella Swan’s reflection in the sky. It almost made her sick again.
That was not her face. This was not her body. This was not real. She was not Bella Swan. If she thought about it hard enough, maybe she would start lucid dreaming; maybe she would start flying for real, and not just because of the Xanax.
Yet despite it all, she stayed grounded in the passenger seat of Charlie Swan’s cruiser. Every time she glanced in the side-view mirror she caught Bella’s eye. Her empty stomach pounded at her mercilessly. Charlie made good on his promise to stop at a gas station, though. He handed her a Pedialyte and some Emetrol in the Shell parking lot, and she dutifully chugged away for him before he drove the rest of the way home.
He didn’t point out the red truck parked in front of the house, and she pretended that she didn’t see it, either. Instead, she rushed up the front steps and lingered on the porch anxiously.
Charlie struggled to carry all of her bags alone, but he struggled silently because she probably looked as green as the forest that surrounded them. He stumbled up the steps with her backpack on one shoulder, her duffle bag on the other, and her two suitcases rolling along at his feet—although they nearly tripped him up on the porch.
“Oh, boy,” Charlie huffed, righting himself roughly. The duffle bag hit the doorbell. Ding, dong. As Charlie stuck the key in the lock, the bag laid itself on the doorbell lazily. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding—he tugged at the bag, chagrined—dooong—and the door creaked open at last. “Ladies first,” he offered tiredly. The bag dislodged itself from the small of Charlie’s back, but he caught it before it could hit the doorbell again.
She swiftly shuffled inside and went up the steps two at a time. The bathroom was right at the top of the stairs, and she found herself kneeling before the toilet in supplication. The room was so small that when Charlie followed behind her, her feet pressed against his shins uncomfortably. So much for him not hovering, she thought, and then she vomited once more, with feeling.
She rested her cheek on the rim of the toilet bowl. Charlie was used to leaving the toilet seat up. “I’ll put your bags in your room,” he said. He closed the bathroom door behind him, and after a minute, she crawled over to lock it.
After five more, she rose to her feet and mustered up the courage to face Bella head-on. “What the fuck,” they said to each other. Watching Bella’s mouth move when she was the one speaking made her want to punch the mirror. “Shut up!” they demanded.
“Shit,” she whispered, glaring down at the drain stopper. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Not her face, not her body, not real, not Bella Swan. This had to be a dream. None of it made any sense. She pinched her arm hard enough to break the skin; blood welled up in the cracks, and so did tears in her eyes.
Her nose burned. She flushed the toilet, slammed the seat down, and the lid on top of it. Then she sat there and buried her face in her hands, swearing that she wouldn’t cry. It was just a dream. There was no reason to cry.
“Bella?” Charlie called through the door.
“No,” she whispered into the palms of her hands.
Charlie knocked softly, just once. She pretended that she didn’t hear it. “Are you alright?” he asked again.
“No,” she repeated around the knuckle between her teeth. He probably couldn’t hear her.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No,” she warbled wetly to her knees.
“What?” he asked, louder, as though she was the one having trouble hearing him. When she didn’t respond, he knocked a few more times. “Honey?”
“No!” she shouted at the door.
The silence rang just like the doorbell had. Her stomach churned with guilt—she felt lightheaded with the strength of it. She pulled her legs up to her chest and pressed her face to her knees. Charlie mumbled something too lowly for her to make out through the door, but she heard his meandering footsteps loud and clear. He made his way downstairs while she pressed her hands to her ears and pretended like her knees weren’t damp with her tears.
“This isn’t real.” But if it wasn’t real, what would saying it out loud do? Make its unreality real? “Fuck.”
She swiped at her cheeks viciously, then got up to wash her hands. She didn’t look in the mirror, but she did look for a toothbrush after rinsing her mouth out with water. There was a single blue toothbrush in the cup that sat precariously at the edge of the sink, but there was an unopened pack of four in the cupboards underneath. She chose the one that was puke green.
Once she’d rinsed her mouth out with Pedialyte, she dropped her toothbrush next to Charlie’s and pushed the cup closer to the faucet. Then she pulled the door open slowly, tiptoed across the hallway, and slipped into Bella’s room.
Charlie had left her backpack and duffle bag on the bed, and her two suitcases at the foot of it. The quilt was a patchwork of faded colors, the lace curtains were aging poorly, and the walls were a baby blue which made the curtains look yellower than they were. The desk, the dresser, and the rocking chair were all made from a light wood. There was a landline next to a chunky desktop computer that looked more like a small television her grandmother owned. All it was missing was the alien antennae.
Maybe Bella hadn’t minded it, but she did. It was ugly and dated and she hated it.
She dragged the bags off of her bed and they dropped to the floor like cinder blocks. She crawled under the blanket; it was too thin, and the mattress was too soft. Charlie knocked on the door. She wondered if he’d gone out to Party City and bought a helicopter costume just for her.
“Come in,” she groaned, because at least he didn’t go ahead and open the door right after he knocked.
“Bells…” he said from the doorway. She sighed and buried her face into a pillow. “Maybe you should stay home tomorrow,” he said. “You don’t feel good, and it’ll give you more time to unpack.”
“Alright,” she told the pillow. Maybe she’d stay home the rest of the week. Maybe she’d wake up in her own bed.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not even soup?” he pushed.
She flopped onto her back and gazed at the ceiling. “Do you even have any?”
“Well,” Charlie spluttered, “no. But I can get some from the diner. Chicken noodle?”
“I don’t like chicken noodle,” she said.
“Oh, um,” he muttered, “tomato?”
“I’m not hungry,” she reminded him.
“If you’re sure,” he said with no small amount of reluctance.
“I have my Pedialyte.” She crawled to the end of the bed, picked the bottle up off the floor, and shook it at him for good measure.
“That’s not really a meal,” he protested, then sighed at the quelling glare she shot at him. “Right. Never mind. Try to get some rest, hon.”
She hummed. He closed her door and went back downstairs. The rain picked up from a drizzle to a storm, pounding against the window like somebody was trying to break it open. She sat up in bed and watched it, wondering if the glass would crack, splinter, then shatter across the floor like fairy dust.
She gathered the quilt in her fists and tried to steady her breathing. She was… so many things. Angry, upset, scared—alone, for the first time in a long time, and very lonely because of it. She didn’t want to cry again, because it felt too real when she cried.
She was not Bella Swan. Bella Swan was a character in a book who made terrible choices and fell in love with terrible men. She was Phoebe Halloran. She was real. She hated making decisions and always seemed to make the wrong ones, too, but somehow she’d fallen in love with an amazing man.
She was so used to pressing her back to his at night and feeling his warmth seeping into her. How the fuck was she supposed to sleep without him by her side?
Phoebe dropped the quilt and pressed her fists against her eye sockets hard enough to see floaters. Her chest felt so tight, she couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the tears from flowing either.
“Please, please, please, please,” she sobbed silently into the sheets, “please let me go home.”