Black Nebula

New Creature

After saying goodbye to the meadow, our meadow, I ran back to where I had left my truck and drove over to Charlie's house. I sniffed around to make sure no one was home, before slipping into my bedroom window. I walked down the steps to the family room and turned on the television. I searched for the news and saw that I was only gone for two days. I quickly racked my brain for a story I could tell Charlie that explained where I had been for those two days. I was coming up with nothing. The only thing I could think of was I heard from Alice and I really wanted to see her, so I just drove. But before I went to see them, I decided that the pain was too unbearable but coming back to Forks was unthinkable. I only came home to grab my things and that I'd keep in touch and let him know where I'd settled. I guess that seemed plausible, so I wrote it all down on a piece of paper and left it on his gun rack.

I ran back upstairs and packed some clothes, CDs, and my copy of Wuthering Heights. I looked around my bedroom and hoped I was doing the right thing for Charlie. Making sure I had everything I needed, I jumped out of my bedroom window.

I hopped in my truck and started driving. My classic truck that was once just enough for me, was painfully slow now. I had to dump it quick. Once I reached the city limits, I dug my ATM card out of my book bag and walked up to the ATM at the first bank I saw. I knew my account should be around $3200 dollars. Before moving to Forks, I had saved some money to buy a car, but since Charlie took care of that, I was able to keep the money in my account. Along with the little bit of money I had earned working at Newton's, I had a pretty decent balance. Or so I thought. When I looked at the screen, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. The $3200 was in there alright, but there was an extra $20,000 in my account. I removed my card from the machine and reached in my pocket for my cell phone. I didn't even noticed I had 64 missed calls. I called the 800 number on the back of my card, and after waiting for five minutes, I finally got through to an operator.

"Hi my name is Isabella Swan, I was wondering about the balance in my account?"

"Okay, I'll be glad to help you with that. What's the account number?" I verified my account number, date of birth, and my phone password. "Okay your balance is $23,201.56."

"Yeah, I don't always reconcile my checkbook, but I'm pretty sure that there is an extra twenty thousand dollars in my account that shouldn't be there."

"Oh, well, let me look into that for you." My new hearing let me hear her typing away at her computer. "Ahh here it is, three weeks ago, it shows there was a deposit of twenty thousand dollars into your account. It looks like a wire transfer from another bank."

"What other bank? I only have business with your bank."

"Well, Miss Swan, it looks like there was a telephone number that was attached to the wire transfer. If you'd hold for a bit longer, I can try to see if I can talk to someone over there. Okay, sit tight."

After another six minutes of listening to the dry elevator music that I was forced to listen to, the operator came back on the line. "Miss Swan?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"Okay the money is a scholarship prize that you apparently won from the Pacific Northwest Trust. It's a very prestigious award, only one female student is chosen a year."

"But it's twenty thousand that I haven't earned. I mean I never even filled out an application for this scholarship. I'm not going to take. Is there a way that you can send it back?" I knew exactly where the money came from and it wasn't fair. Edward choose this not me, and now he thought it was okay to buy me? No.

"Well, it's actually more than that. You'll receive five thousand dollars every month for the rest of your college career. The man I spoke with, Mr. Randall, said there was no way to return the money."

"Okay thank you." I instantly changed my mind about the money, I needed to run, and running meant money.

I went back to the machine and withdrew all of my money. I found a used car dealership and purchased a black Nissan Altima, it was definitely faster than my truck. Since I didn't speak car, I simply handed the dealer twelve thousand dollars for the keys. I was feeling good for my purchase since I talked him down from seventeen thousand. Maybe it was cause I was handing him the cash rather than financing. I transferred my bags from my old truck to my cute little car, and started driving.

I didn't know where to go. I honestly considered driving up to Denali, but I knew that Irina and Laurent were close. She might resent me being there, and besides, I had no way of knowing if any of the Cullen's were there. If I didn't settle on my own, I would have to join a coven, and I knew of only two: The Denali's or the Volturi.

A/N:  If you're like me and couldn't get enough of Twilight, and stalked Stephenie Meyers website, you probably read the outtakes of New Moon, which included 'the Scholarship." If you did, you'll recognize most of the dialogue from that. Just another thing that Ms. Meyers owns that I don't.