Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ A Believer In Fiction ❯ Found Out ( Chapter 4 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Kate the InuYoukai01 
Non Anime: Twilight Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Fantasy / Romance | Type: Self Insertion | Uploaded On: 10.29.2010 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.3K | Visits: 360 | Status: Work In Progress
Non Anime: Twilight Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Fantasy / Romance | Type: Self Insertion | Uploaded On: 10.29.2010 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.3K | Visits: 360 | Status: Work In Progress
A/N: Back with another chappy for Mandy. It seems my story isn’t very popular, and I understand. I’m just writing this for my friend, and she loves it so it doesn’t really matter to me if others like it or not. That only matters when it comes to my anime/manga fan fictions, because those are solely for the fans-be them friends or people I don‘t know! ^_^ Oh, and Mandy, I know you like Emmett because of Kellan Lutz, but I’m using the book’s description of him just so you know.
Found Out
I stayed in my bathroom the night before I started school, rehearsing for my assumed identity as Aimee Smith. I was always one for acting when I was in high school and attended plays often after I graduated, and I thought of this as just another role to prepare for in the play called ’A Normal Life’. I dressed in a black tank top with a purple button up shirt and skinny jeans, tied my hair into a high ponytail and slipped on my new black leather boots. Thankfully the store I went to was alright with requesting orders to be sent in, so I didn’t have to purchase a lot of things I didn’t like. They had school supplies, too, so I didn’t ever have to step foot out of Forks for anything.
It had been a week since I started living in Forks. People were kind and welcomed me everywhere I went. I even found a job at the store where I shopped for everything I had. Normalcy wasn’t as difficult to obtain as I had first suspected. All I really had to do was smile and be polite. I took a deep breath as I stared into the mirror. Even though I didn’t have to breathe, I had to teach myself how to do it again so people wouldn’t find me suspicious. When I took in a breath, I could smell everything around me, from the old paint on the walls to the wet grass outside. I kept my thirst sated by going into the woods and eating a small rodent for dinner every night. I couldn’t allow myself to get hungry, because humans might smell more appetizing and I might go berserk. Especially since I had to breath regularly now.
I finally came out of the bathroom at 5:30 a.m.. I found it somehow ironic that when I was human I couldn’t help but sleep until the last minute before I had to catch the bus, and now I didn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t even if I tried, and believe me, I’ve tried just for the sake of retaining some form of normalcy when I was first turned. I didn’t have a car, so I just tossed my shoulder bag over my shoulder and picked up an umbrella to walk to school. It wasn’t really that far of a walk, but if I wanted to make it on time I had to leave right at 5:45. I just hoped I didn’t get splashed by passing cars.
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Forks High School. Not much of a school, really. Much like my high school back in Texas, the entire student body totaled little more that three hundred. But back where I came from, students came from all over. We even had foreign exchange students from Cambodia, Holland, China, Japan and Germany. But here in Forks, everyone knew everyone and a new comer was automatically an outcast until they could find their own friends. I entered the school as a junior, but I already knew everything they were teaching. When I was human, I was actually a college student that had an associate‘s degree, so technically I was supposed to be a ‘junior‘ in college headed toward a bachelor‘s degree. I even enrolled myself in honors classes to try and give myself a little challenge, but it was still all too simple. All morning I found myself searching for other pale faces with golden eyes, but sadly I found none.
Lunch time rolled around and I found myself sitting alone. No one had approached me yet, and I wasn’t about to walk up on unsuspecting humans to introduce myself. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested. I could hear everyone whispering about the pretty new girl from Ohio. They would ask questions among themselves. Questions that couldn’t be answered unless someone came to talk to me.
All too suddenly, the cafeteria went into new whispers. Whispers about beautiful people who had been there for a while. I found my eyes wandering around the cafeteria, searching for the subjects of those whispers. My eyes landed on a table to the far side of the room next to the windows, where six people were taking their seats. I could smell them. They were just like me, and the motionless heart in my chest seemed to flitter at the realization. These were the infamous Cullens. All except one. My eyes landed on the pretty girl sitting next to one of the vampires. She was almost as pale as they were, but her eyes were a dark brown, and she had a cast on her hand.
“That Bella Swan is some lucky girl,” I heard a brunette girl say at the table across from me. I could only guess that she was talking about the human girl. “She comes back last year after being gone so long and swipes away one of the hottest guys in the school.”
“I know,” the girl next to her said enviously. “Edward didn’t show any interest in any of us, and then she comes in and he’s all over her.”
“They do make a very attractive couple, though,” another girl muttered. Then their eyes landed on me and if I could of blushed I would have.
“Hey,” the brunette girl said with a small smile. “You’re Aimee Smith, right?”
I was startled by the question, but nodded in answer.
“Would you like to eat with us? We’ve been wondering about you all day.”
I smiled and picked up my almost empty tray, I would put food in my mouth and discreetly spit it out into a napkin that way everyone thought I was eating, and went to sit down with them. They were all dark haired and dark skinned compared to me, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I glanced back over to the table where the Cullens were, only to see all of them staring at me except for the human girl. I sat down with the girls and they introduced themselves, and we spent the rest of lunch getting to know one another. I was all too aware of the five sets of amber eyes burning a hole in the back of my head.
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The day ended faster than I anticipated, and I started walking home by myself. The girls at lunch were nice, but they gossiped way too much, and I didn’t think I could handle hanging out with them outside of school. I got half way home before I heard a horn honk behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see a big red jeep stopped a few feet behind me. I knew it was one of the Cullens. I could see him through the windshield; could smell him. I was actually a little scared. Would they hurt me for being on their turf or something of the sort? I didn’t want to imagine it. So, I gathered my bearings and slowly walked to the vehicle.
“Y-yeah?”
The guy glared slightly at me, as if he was thoroughly assessing my appearance, then a big, lopsided smirk came over his face, “So, Alice was right. You are like us.”
I just stared at him until he reached over to the passenger side of the car, he was actually tall enough to do this in a jeep, and popped open the door.
“Hop in. My family wants to talk to you.”
I hesitantly did as he asked, and buckled myself in out of habit, “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
“I gathered that much,” he said as he turned the jeep around and headed in the opposite direction of my house. “Your eyes are like ours. You’re a vegetarian.” He seemed to notice I was confused and chuckled. “You don’t feed off humans.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t talk much.”
How could I? I was sitting in a monster of a vehicle with an extremely handsome ‘vegetarian’ vampire sitting next to me. He had dark curly hair, and was built like he went to the gym at least twice a week. His eyes were gold, just like mine, and he always seemed to have a lopsided grin on his face.
“Emmett.”
“Huh?” was my intelligent response as I blinked. That’s when I noticed I was staring, and I would have blushed but again I didn’t have the ability.
“My name. It’s Emmett Cullen.”
“O-oh. I’m Aimee-”
“Now, now,” he interrupted, that lopsided smirk still on his face. “I know who you are, so there‘s no need for that. You’re that missing girl from Seattle, right?”
“Yeah, I’m Mandy Frost,” I muttered noncommittally. “I was turned the night I moved to Seattle.”
“Where are you originally from?”
“Texas.”
He chuckled, as if my being from Texas was humorous in some way, but he didn’t say anything else as we suddenly turned down a little dirt road that I wouldn’t have noticed even if I was walking by. We winded down the little road for about two miles, the road seeming somewhat like a snake, until the trees thinned a little and there was a bit of open space where the house was. It was a pretty, three-story, rectangular structure among all of the trees. It was painted off-white.
I could smell the others, even the human girl, all congregated in the first story of the house, and again I was a little worried. Emmett may have been nice, but what about the others? Would they smile and welcome me, or would they ask me to leave? I was there to try and be normal, not to cause any trouble. To ask me to leave because of that would be bothersome. Where would I go? I’d already spent most of the money my mother gave me on the house I had, and clothes and anything else I might have needed. There wasn‘t enough left to travel with. Would I have to go back into the woods, where Victoria had been and was sure to find me?
Emmett got out of the jeep first, and motioned for me to follow him. I did so, hesitantly I might add, and entered the house. Seven people stared at me as I entered the spacious living room. The only one that didn’t stare was the one who brought me there, and he went to wrap his arm around the slender shoulders of the pretty blonde I saw at lunch that afternoon.
“Mandy?”
My eyes landed on a tiny slip of a woman with pixie-cut black hair and a kind smile.
“Y-yes?”
“I’m Alice!” the girl smiled as she stepped forward and gave me a hug. She felt as light as she looked. I couldn’t help but smile. She seemed like a nice person. She turned from me and rested her hand on the shoulder of a thin young man with medium length blond hair. “This is Jasper.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded slightly in my direction.
Three down, five more to go.
“I’m Carlisle,” a handsome blond man stepped forward and offered his hand to me. “This is my wife, Esme.” he continued, indicating the pretty caramel-haired woman next to him. “We just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But could the rest of you introduce yourselves?”
A bronze-haired boy spoke up, “Edward Cullen. There’s no need to be frightened. We know you mean no harm and we aren’t intending to cause you any.” He tilted his head slightly to the human girl next to him. “This is Bella.”
The girl seemed a little timid, but gave me a small nod, “Hey.”
“I don’t see why we have to be nice to this person.”
“Rosalie,” Emmett warned.
“No, she came here to find us. That’s what Alice said. We’ve been waiting for her to show herself for months. Who cares if she doesn’t harm humans. Who’s to say she isn’t here to harm us?”
“I just said she didn’t mean us any harm,” Edward sighed. “She came here to find us, yes, but only because she’s like us and wants to learn from us. Am I right?”
“I didn’t even know you were here until my landlady asked me if I was related to you, but after I knew you were here I decided that I would want to learn from you. I heard from someone that you didn’t feed off humans, and since I wanted to do the same it seemed only right to find you.” Then what Rosalie said registered in my mind, “Wait, you’ve been waiting for me for months?”
“Alice can see the future,” Jasper spoke up, and I was surprised to hear a slight Texas drawl, though it was more dignified, as if he was from a different time. “Though, it is only suggestive. If someone were to make a last minute decision the vision would change.”
“I see,” I said quietly. “I guess you saw me coming when I first heard about you from the one who made me.”
“That poses my first question,” Carlisle interrupted. “Who made you?”
My eyes hit the floor. I knew Victoria and the Cullens were enemies just by the way she talked about them with her minion Jerrod. I was hesitant to answer because I didn’t want to get killed or be kicked out of Forks.
“Victoria,” Edward answered for me. I shot him a glare. This person could read my thoughts and probably anyone’s in the room.
“See!” Rosalie sneered, “She was sent here by Victoria-”
“I ran away from Victoria,” I almost yelled at her. “She was trying to kill me!”
Why wasn’t this girl listening to me? I didn’t do anything to anyone in that room, so why was she so obstinate when it came to not trusting me? I knew that, even if everyone else came to trust me, that she wouldn’t even put forth the effort of trying. I’d seen her in the cafeteria, shooting envious looks at the human girl and I knew she didn’t trust her, either. I knew that at some point, Rosalie would try to talk Emmett into getting Carlisle to make me leave. But by the frustrated glares he was sending her way I doubted he would listen. She was still shooting her mouth off even as I was almost trembling with the fear of being rejected by the one group of people that I could truly befriend and learn from. Plus I was trying my best not to rip Rosalie’s pretty little head off.
“Why would she do that after she went through all the trouble of making you-”
“Now, enough,” Carlisle said slowly, but sternly, effectively shutting the blond vampire up.
“She’s afraid we’re going to kill her or make her leave Forks,” Edward explained. “That’s why she was so reluctant to tell us everything.”
“Really,” I said with a desperate look. “I wish you wouldn’t read my thoughts.”
“I’m the only one she will listen to concerning you because of my abilities,” he said as he tilted his head to Rosalie. Said blond just huffed and crossed her arms like a spoiled child that wasn’t getting her way. Emmett just rolled his eyes.
I looked around the room, “I’m really not here to hurt anyone. And I wasn’t sent here by anyone. I came here to get away from Victoria and try to live as normal a life as I could considering my… condition. I lived in the woods until a week ago. I ate off of the animals just so I wouldn‘t eat off of humans, and I hung around campsites to get used to the smell of humans so I wouldn‘t attack them or the hikers that come around. But Victoria had been in the woods not too long ago, and I needed to get away from there so she wouldn‘t find me so easily. I‘m telling the God honest truth.”
“And we believe you,” Carlisle said softly with a kind smile. “I just needed to make sure you were harmless.”
“About as harmless as a fly,” Emmett said with a chuckle. I just glared at him for the slight insult.
Carlisle spoke up again, “How long have you been a vampire, Amanda?”
I cringed at the use of my full name, but answered anyway, “About four months, now.”
The looks that went around the room told me that it was hard to believe.
“So, we knew you were coming the day you completed the change,” Carlisle mused aloud, “but how were you able to keep yourself from harming anyone at such a young age?”
I shrugged, “I’ve never had human blood. I refused the minute I was told I was changed. I told Victoria that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with harming humans or do anything she told me to do. That’s why she wanted to kill me. I wanted to warn my friend of her, but I wasn’t able to because I was afraid I was going to kill her… She’s married, has two babies and another on the way… She’s due some time next month, actually… It was too risky.”
“So, there’s a chance an entire family could be changed,” Carlisle said with a worried look in my direction. “How old is everyone?”
“Her husband is 26, she’s 23. Their son is three and their daughter is a year and two months.”
“Those babies won’t be able to handle the change,” Esme said, her face looking as if she would cry, but I knew she couldn’t. “They would die in horrible pain!”
“That‘s not happening,“ Emmett growled, “Next week we’ll go and warn your friend. She has to know that you‘re alright.”
“You have to tell her that you can’t come home. The risk of Victoria finding you is too great,” Carlisle warned. “They might have to move away.”
I nodded, “I’ll just tell them to go back to Texas. It’s safe there.”
“Now we have to make a plan to stop Victoria,” Jasper spoke up again.
I sent a questioning look to Carlisle. He noticed and answered quietly, “We know what’s been going on in Seattle, and we figured Victoria was behind it all. You just confirmed our suspicions. Edward?”
“Yes, I’ll take her home. I was about to have to take Bella home anyway,” he said as he picked up aforementioned girl’s jacket and handed it to her. “I’ll let the Quileutes know what is happening.”
“Do that,” Carlisle said with a serious look in my direction. “Explain the situation more thoroughly to her as well. Since she’s a new ally in all this, she needs to be told.”
Told what? I thought as Edward led me to his shiny silver Volvo in a large garage out to the side of the house.
“Victoria is getting an army of newborn vampires together to attack us,” he explained as he gently buckled Bella into the passenger seat of the car. “She wants to kill Bella here because of past incidents. And since she’s after you as well for betraying her, we have to work twice as hard. Emmett is quite fond of you.”
I would have blushed at that if I could have. “So, she changed me to be a part of her army. That’s why she was so willing to kill me after I refused to stay with her. She didn’t want me to come to you guys.”
“Precisely,” he nodded as he sped off towards my house. How he knew where I lived, I had no idea. I guess it had something to do with his mind-reading ability. Bella was casting worried glances back at me.
“So I guess we’re in the same boat, huh?” she asked with a somewhat sheepish smile.
“Yeah… I noticed that Rosalie doesn’t like me that much.”
Edward chuckled, “She’s jealous. Back before the two of them got together, Emmett had a predilection for red-heads and told us so on several occasions. She thinks he’s going to leave her.”
I nearly laughed at that. Rosalie? Beautiful, statuesque Rosalie, jealous of me? She could have been a super model, and me? Not so much.
We stopped at my house first, but to my surprise, Bella got out of the car as well.
“What are you doing?” we said in unison.
“I live here,” I said, indicating the little white house in front of me.
Edward was smiling, looking like he was trying not to laugh at our shenanigans.
“You live next door to one another,” he explained, letting a chuckle escape as he stepped out of the car.
My eyes lit with realization, and I pointed to the red truck still parked in the driveway of her home, “That awesome truck right there is yours?!”
“Yes,“ Bella laughed, seeming to have warmed up to me. “You know, you don’t seem anything like a vampire-”
“She sure smells like one.” Bella’s smile disappeared when a darkly-tanned boy with short black hair stepped out from behind her truck. He was wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts and a glare. He was huge; tall and muscled but with a boyish face. He couldn’t have been more than 17 years old.
“Jacob.”
“Hey, Bella,” he said with a smoldering look, before his eyes landed on me and hardened. “Just what we need. Another leech.”
“Hey, what did I ever do to you, buddy? ” I said in a defensive tone. Then I caught a whiff of him and my nose wrinkled, “And, for the record, you don‘t smell too nice, either. You smell like a wet dog took a piss on your leg.”
He growled impressively and took a step toward me, but Bella got in front of him and pushed him in the chest toward her house. Edward just looked amused. Probably because of my insult.
“Jake, just go. I’ll be inside in a minute.”
“He wants to talk to you about Victoria. Tell him everything. We need them to help us as much as possible,” Edward explained, then he turned to me. “If you could, keep an eye on Bella for me. I’m sure Charlie would like to meet Bella’s new friend. Plus I want to make sure the werewolf keeps his paws to himself.”
I nodded and he gave Bella a slow, lingering kiss that made me avert my eyes in embarrassment before he climbed into his car and drove off.
“Who’s Charlie?” I asked as we made our way to her house.
“My dad,” Bella whispered as we came onto the front porch. “And he doesn’t know what you guys are, so keep it hush-hush, okay?”
“No problem-o,” I said with a toothy smile as we entered her house.
Jeez, what a day! I thought as I shut the door behind me.
Found Out
I stayed in my bathroom the night before I started school, rehearsing for my assumed identity as Aimee Smith. I was always one for acting when I was in high school and attended plays often after I graduated, and I thought of this as just another role to prepare for in the play called ’A Normal Life’. I dressed in a black tank top with a purple button up shirt and skinny jeans, tied my hair into a high ponytail and slipped on my new black leather boots. Thankfully the store I went to was alright with requesting orders to be sent in, so I didn’t have to purchase a lot of things I didn’t like. They had school supplies, too, so I didn’t ever have to step foot out of Forks for anything.
It had been a week since I started living in Forks. People were kind and welcomed me everywhere I went. I even found a job at the store where I shopped for everything I had. Normalcy wasn’t as difficult to obtain as I had first suspected. All I really had to do was smile and be polite. I took a deep breath as I stared into the mirror. Even though I didn’t have to breathe, I had to teach myself how to do it again so people wouldn’t find me suspicious. When I took in a breath, I could smell everything around me, from the old paint on the walls to the wet grass outside. I kept my thirst sated by going into the woods and eating a small rodent for dinner every night. I couldn’t allow myself to get hungry, because humans might smell more appetizing and I might go berserk. Especially since I had to breath regularly now.
I finally came out of the bathroom at 5:30 a.m.. I found it somehow ironic that when I was human I couldn’t help but sleep until the last minute before I had to catch the bus, and now I didn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t even if I tried, and believe me, I’ve tried just for the sake of retaining some form of normalcy when I was first turned. I didn’t have a car, so I just tossed my shoulder bag over my shoulder and picked up an umbrella to walk to school. It wasn’t really that far of a walk, but if I wanted to make it on time I had to leave right at 5:45. I just hoped I didn’t get splashed by passing cars.
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Forks High School. Not much of a school, really. Much like my high school back in Texas, the entire student body totaled little more that three hundred. But back where I came from, students came from all over. We even had foreign exchange students from Cambodia, Holland, China, Japan and Germany. But here in Forks, everyone knew everyone and a new comer was automatically an outcast until they could find their own friends. I entered the school as a junior, but I already knew everything they were teaching. When I was human, I was actually a college student that had an associate‘s degree, so technically I was supposed to be a ‘junior‘ in college headed toward a bachelor‘s degree. I even enrolled myself in honors classes to try and give myself a little challenge, but it was still all too simple. All morning I found myself searching for other pale faces with golden eyes, but sadly I found none.
Lunch time rolled around and I found myself sitting alone. No one had approached me yet, and I wasn’t about to walk up on unsuspecting humans to introduce myself. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested. I could hear everyone whispering about the pretty new girl from Ohio. They would ask questions among themselves. Questions that couldn’t be answered unless someone came to talk to me.
All too suddenly, the cafeteria went into new whispers. Whispers about beautiful people who had been there for a while. I found my eyes wandering around the cafeteria, searching for the subjects of those whispers. My eyes landed on a table to the far side of the room next to the windows, where six people were taking their seats. I could smell them. They were just like me, and the motionless heart in my chest seemed to flitter at the realization. These were the infamous Cullens. All except one. My eyes landed on the pretty girl sitting next to one of the vampires. She was almost as pale as they were, but her eyes were a dark brown, and she had a cast on her hand.
“That Bella Swan is some lucky girl,” I heard a brunette girl say at the table across from me. I could only guess that she was talking about the human girl. “She comes back last year after being gone so long and swipes away one of the hottest guys in the school.”
“I know,” the girl next to her said enviously. “Edward didn’t show any interest in any of us, and then she comes in and he’s all over her.”
“They do make a very attractive couple, though,” another girl muttered. Then their eyes landed on me and if I could of blushed I would have.
“Hey,” the brunette girl said with a small smile. “You’re Aimee Smith, right?”
I was startled by the question, but nodded in answer.
“Would you like to eat with us? We’ve been wondering about you all day.”
I smiled and picked up my almost empty tray, I would put food in my mouth and discreetly spit it out into a napkin that way everyone thought I was eating, and went to sit down with them. They were all dark haired and dark skinned compared to me, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I glanced back over to the table where the Cullens were, only to see all of them staring at me except for the human girl. I sat down with the girls and they introduced themselves, and we spent the rest of lunch getting to know one another. I was all too aware of the five sets of amber eyes burning a hole in the back of my head.
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The day ended faster than I anticipated, and I started walking home by myself. The girls at lunch were nice, but they gossiped way too much, and I didn’t think I could handle hanging out with them outside of school. I got half way home before I heard a horn honk behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see a big red jeep stopped a few feet behind me. I knew it was one of the Cullens. I could see him through the windshield; could smell him. I was actually a little scared. Would they hurt me for being on their turf or something of the sort? I didn’t want to imagine it. So, I gathered my bearings and slowly walked to the vehicle.
“Y-yeah?”
The guy glared slightly at me, as if he was thoroughly assessing my appearance, then a big, lopsided smirk came over his face, “So, Alice was right. You are like us.”
I just stared at him until he reached over to the passenger side of the car, he was actually tall enough to do this in a jeep, and popped open the door.
“Hop in. My family wants to talk to you.”
I hesitantly did as he asked, and buckled myself in out of habit, “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
“I gathered that much,” he said as he turned the jeep around and headed in the opposite direction of my house. “Your eyes are like ours. You’re a vegetarian.” He seemed to notice I was confused and chuckled. “You don’t feed off humans.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t talk much.”
How could I? I was sitting in a monster of a vehicle with an extremely handsome ‘vegetarian’ vampire sitting next to me. He had dark curly hair, and was built like he went to the gym at least twice a week. His eyes were gold, just like mine, and he always seemed to have a lopsided grin on his face.
“Emmett.”
“Huh?” was my intelligent response as I blinked. That’s when I noticed I was staring, and I would have blushed but again I didn’t have the ability.
“My name. It’s Emmett Cullen.”
“O-oh. I’m Aimee-”
“Now, now,” he interrupted, that lopsided smirk still on his face. “I know who you are, so there‘s no need for that. You’re that missing girl from Seattle, right?”
“Yeah, I’m Mandy Frost,” I muttered noncommittally. “I was turned the night I moved to Seattle.”
“Where are you originally from?”
“Texas.”
He chuckled, as if my being from Texas was humorous in some way, but he didn’t say anything else as we suddenly turned down a little dirt road that I wouldn’t have noticed even if I was walking by. We winded down the little road for about two miles, the road seeming somewhat like a snake, until the trees thinned a little and there was a bit of open space where the house was. It was a pretty, three-story, rectangular structure among all of the trees. It was painted off-white.
I could smell the others, even the human girl, all congregated in the first story of the house, and again I was a little worried. Emmett may have been nice, but what about the others? Would they smile and welcome me, or would they ask me to leave? I was there to try and be normal, not to cause any trouble. To ask me to leave because of that would be bothersome. Where would I go? I’d already spent most of the money my mother gave me on the house I had, and clothes and anything else I might have needed. There wasn‘t enough left to travel with. Would I have to go back into the woods, where Victoria had been and was sure to find me?
Emmett got out of the jeep first, and motioned for me to follow him. I did so, hesitantly I might add, and entered the house. Seven people stared at me as I entered the spacious living room. The only one that didn’t stare was the one who brought me there, and he went to wrap his arm around the slender shoulders of the pretty blonde I saw at lunch that afternoon.
“Mandy?”
My eyes landed on a tiny slip of a woman with pixie-cut black hair and a kind smile.
“Y-yes?”
“I’m Alice!” the girl smiled as she stepped forward and gave me a hug. She felt as light as she looked. I couldn’t help but smile. She seemed like a nice person. She turned from me and rested her hand on the shoulder of a thin young man with medium length blond hair. “This is Jasper.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded slightly in my direction.
Three down, five more to go.
“I’m Carlisle,” a handsome blond man stepped forward and offered his hand to me. “This is my wife, Esme.” he continued, indicating the pretty caramel-haired woman next to him. “We just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But could the rest of you introduce yourselves?”
A bronze-haired boy spoke up, “Edward Cullen. There’s no need to be frightened. We know you mean no harm and we aren’t intending to cause you any.” He tilted his head slightly to the human girl next to him. “This is Bella.”
The girl seemed a little timid, but gave me a small nod, “Hey.”
“I don’t see why we have to be nice to this person.”
“Rosalie,” Emmett warned.
“No, she came here to find us. That’s what Alice said. We’ve been waiting for her to show herself for months. Who cares if she doesn’t harm humans. Who’s to say she isn’t here to harm us?”
“I just said she didn’t mean us any harm,” Edward sighed. “She came here to find us, yes, but only because she’s like us and wants to learn from us. Am I right?”
“I didn’t even know you were here until my landlady asked me if I was related to you, but after I knew you were here I decided that I would want to learn from you. I heard from someone that you didn’t feed off humans, and since I wanted to do the same it seemed only right to find you.” Then what Rosalie said registered in my mind, “Wait, you’ve been waiting for me for months?”
“Alice can see the future,” Jasper spoke up, and I was surprised to hear a slight Texas drawl, though it was more dignified, as if he was from a different time. “Though, it is only suggestive. If someone were to make a last minute decision the vision would change.”
“I see,” I said quietly. “I guess you saw me coming when I first heard about you from the one who made me.”
“That poses my first question,” Carlisle interrupted. “Who made you?”
My eyes hit the floor. I knew Victoria and the Cullens were enemies just by the way she talked about them with her minion Jerrod. I was hesitant to answer because I didn’t want to get killed or be kicked out of Forks.
“Victoria,” Edward answered for me. I shot him a glare. This person could read my thoughts and probably anyone’s in the room.
“See!” Rosalie sneered, “She was sent here by Victoria-”
“I ran away from Victoria,” I almost yelled at her. “She was trying to kill me!”
Why wasn’t this girl listening to me? I didn’t do anything to anyone in that room, so why was she so obstinate when it came to not trusting me? I knew that, even if everyone else came to trust me, that she wouldn’t even put forth the effort of trying. I’d seen her in the cafeteria, shooting envious looks at the human girl and I knew she didn’t trust her, either. I knew that at some point, Rosalie would try to talk Emmett into getting Carlisle to make me leave. But by the frustrated glares he was sending her way I doubted he would listen. She was still shooting her mouth off even as I was almost trembling with the fear of being rejected by the one group of people that I could truly befriend and learn from. Plus I was trying my best not to rip Rosalie’s pretty little head off.
“Why would she do that after she went through all the trouble of making you-”
“Now, enough,” Carlisle said slowly, but sternly, effectively shutting the blond vampire up.
“She’s afraid we’re going to kill her or make her leave Forks,” Edward explained. “That’s why she was so reluctant to tell us everything.”
“Really,” I said with a desperate look. “I wish you wouldn’t read my thoughts.”
“I’m the only one she will listen to concerning you because of my abilities,” he said as he tilted his head to Rosalie. Said blond just huffed and crossed her arms like a spoiled child that wasn’t getting her way. Emmett just rolled his eyes.
I looked around the room, “I’m really not here to hurt anyone. And I wasn’t sent here by anyone. I came here to get away from Victoria and try to live as normal a life as I could considering my… condition. I lived in the woods until a week ago. I ate off of the animals just so I wouldn‘t eat off of humans, and I hung around campsites to get used to the smell of humans so I wouldn‘t attack them or the hikers that come around. But Victoria had been in the woods not too long ago, and I needed to get away from there so she wouldn‘t find me so easily. I‘m telling the God honest truth.”
“And we believe you,” Carlisle said softly with a kind smile. “I just needed to make sure you were harmless.”
“About as harmless as a fly,” Emmett said with a chuckle. I just glared at him for the slight insult.
Carlisle spoke up again, “How long have you been a vampire, Amanda?”
I cringed at the use of my full name, but answered anyway, “About four months, now.”
The looks that went around the room told me that it was hard to believe.
“So, we knew you were coming the day you completed the change,” Carlisle mused aloud, “but how were you able to keep yourself from harming anyone at such a young age?”
I shrugged, “I’ve never had human blood. I refused the minute I was told I was changed. I told Victoria that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with harming humans or do anything she told me to do. That’s why she wanted to kill me. I wanted to warn my friend of her, but I wasn’t able to because I was afraid I was going to kill her… She’s married, has two babies and another on the way… She’s due some time next month, actually… It was too risky.”
“So, there’s a chance an entire family could be changed,” Carlisle said with a worried look in my direction. “How old is everyone?”
“Her husband is 26, she’s 23. Their son is three and their daughter is a year and two months.”
“Those babies won’t be able to handle the change,” Esme said, her face looking as if she would cry, but I knew she couldn’t. “They would die in horrible pain!”
“That‘s not happening,“ Emmett growled, “Next week we’ll go and warn your friend. She has to know that you‘re alright.”
“You have to tell her that you can’t come home. The risk of Victoria finding you is too great,” Carlisle warned. “They might have to move away.”
I nodded, “I’ll just tell them to go back to Texas. It’s safe there.”
“Now we have to make a plan to stop Victoria,” Jasper spoke up again.
I sent a questioning look to Carlisle. He noticed and answered quietly, “We know what’s been going on in Seattle, and we figured Victoria was behind it all. You just confirmed our suspicions. Edward?”
“Yes, I’ll take her home. I was about to have to take Bella home anyway,” he said as he picked up aforementioned girl’s jacket and handed it to her. “I’ll let the Quileutes know what is happening.”
“Do that,” Carlisle said with a serious look in my direction. “Explain the situation more thoroughly to her as well. Since she’s a new ally in all this, she needs to be told.”
Told what? I thought as Edward led me to his shiny silver Volvo in a large garage out to the side of the house.
“Victoria is getting an army of newborn vampires together to attack us,” he explained as he gently buckled Bella into the passenger seat of the car. “She wants to kill Bella here because of past incidents. And since she’s after you as well for betraying her, we have to work twice as hard. Emmett is quite fond of you.”
I would have blushed at that if I could have. “So, she changed me to be a part of her army. That’s why she was so willing to kill me after I refused to stay with her. She didn’t want me to come to you guys.”
“Precisely,” he nodded as he sped off towards my house. How he knew where I lived, I had no idea. I guess it had something to do with his mind-reading ability. Bella was casting worried glances back at me.
“So I guess we’re in the same boat, huh?” she asked with a somewhat sheepish smile.
“Yeah… I noticed that Rosalie doesn’t like me that much.”
Edward chuckled, “She’s jealous. Back before the two of them got together, Emmett had a predilection for red-heads and told us so on several occasions. She thinks he’s going to leave her.”
I nearly laughed at that. Rosalie? Beautiful, statuesque Rosalie, jealous of me? She could have been a super model, and me? Not so much.
We stopped at my house first, but to my surprise, Bella got out of the car as well.
“What are you doing?” we said in unison.
“I live here,” I said, indicating the little white house in front of me.
Edward was smiling, looking like he was trying not to laugh at our shenanigans.
“You live next door to one another,” he explained, letting a chuckle escape as he stepped out of the car.
My eyes lit with realization, and I pointed to the red truck still parked in the driveway of her home, “That awesome truck right there is yours?!”
“Yes,“ Bella laughed, seeming to have warmed up to me. “You know, you don’t seem anything like a vampire-”
“She sure smells like one.” Bella’s smile disappeared when a darkly-tanned boy with short black hair stepped out from behind her truck. He was wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts and a glare. He was huge; tall and muscled but with a boyish face. He couldn’t have been more than 17 years old.
“Jacob.”
“Hey, Bella,” he said with a smoldering look, before his eyes landed on me and hardened. “Just what we need. Another leech.”
“Hey, what did I ever do to you, buddy? ” I said in a defensive tone. Then I caught a whiff of him and my nose wrinkled, “And, for the record, you don‘t smell too nice, either. You smell like a wet dog took a piss on your leg.”
He growled impressively and took a step toward me, but Bella got in front of him and pushed him in the chest toward her house. Edward just looked amused. Probably because of my insult.
“Jake, just go. I’ll be inside in a minute.”
“He wants to talk to you about Victoria. Tell him everything. We need them to help us as much as possible,” Edward explained, then he turned to me. “If you could, keep an eye on Bella for me. I’m sure Charlie would like to meet Bella’s new friend. Plus I want to make sure the werewolf keeps his paws to himself.”
I nodded and he gave Bella a slow, lingering kiss that made me avert my eyes in embarrassment before he climbed into his car and drove off.
“Who’s Charlie?” I asked as we made our way to her house.
“My dad,” Bella whispered as we came onto the front porch. “And he doesn’t know what you guys are, so keep it hush-hush, okay?”
“No problem-o,” I said with a toothy smile as we entered her house.
Jeez, what a day! I thought as I shut the door behind me.