Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 1: Forks

((Trigger Warnings for Each Chapter Listed at the Bottom))

Part 1

Dedicated to Sophie who is a beta reader by force.

I'd never given much thought to how I would die — though I'd had reason enough in the last two years — but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

Forks, Washington wasn't so different from how my mother described it when I had told her my decision. The first thing I saw as my dad's beat up police cruiser crossed the town line was the rain. It was coming down in sheets, untethered to the sky it fell from. The second thing I saw was the forest, the bursting trees that rose up to greet the rain and darkening the road as we drove. I sat in the passenger side next to my father as he drove and the only sound to be heard was the rustling sound of the car's heater and the rain rushing down on us.

I had made the decision to leave home without having seen the gloom of Washington in years, and maybe I should have thought about the weather before I told my mom what I was thinking, but now it was far too late. I told myself, I would get used to it. There were parts of my visits here that I remembered from growing up, many of them happy, and if I could be happy then, I imagined I could find happiness now as well.

In any case, there wasn't much of a choice. I'd grown up in Arizona for most of my life. The visits to Forks were short lived and far and few in between. My mother, the ex-Renee Swan hated this place and everything about it, from the cold atmosphere to my dad's quiet presence. Now as I sat in the seat next to him, I couldn't imagine why in the world they would have ever had the bright idea to marry each other anyway. I loved them both dearly, but Charlie and Renee Swan were two very different people. After so many years not seeing my dad, I had thought it was time for another visit. My mom had other things on her mind.

She was wildly and madly in love with a man named Phil Dwyer, and to see her so taken with a man after years and years of just the two of us, I couldn't keep them a part. And I was just the problem. With two years left of high school before I could leave the house for college, I needed someone responsible for me, but Phil, being of course the only person my mom could have fallen in love with, was a minor league baseball player, meaning first and foremost that he traveled a lot.

I saw it first in the earliest parts of their relationship. Phil would be gone for a week and my mom would slink off to bed early in the evening, too tired to spend her days doing much of anything. It only grew worse the closer they got and as the first day of my junior year drew closer and closer, she knew she had to be there for me.

She loved me. I knew that from every smile and every moment we spent together. If I loved her as much as I knew she loved me, I needed to let her go. She'd told me the moment I told her my idea, that it wasn't my responsibility. It wasn't my job to take care of her, but I could see it behind her eyes how happy she was that I wanted to leave. This house and this life had become a burden keeping her from what she really wanted, and I couldn't be the one to keep her tethered there. So I let her go, and she let me go too.

It was my decision. That was the first thing I told my dad when I called him, and that was probably the only reason he agreed. It had been years since we'd seen each other face to face and there was a part of me that was excited to see him. My heart was racing so loudly in my ears while I waited for him in the airport that I had nearly missed him calling for me.

Now, however, that excitement had died down and I knew from our first meeting in the Seattle airport that we had a lot of catching up to do. How to do that, however, was lost on the both of us.