VIOLENT DELIGHTS | Rosalie Hale

CHAPTER ONE

THIS LOVE

MOM DROVE US DOWN to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was listening to Johnny's mixtape in my walkman — his last mixtape. I tried not to think about that too much.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that mom escaped with me and my twin sister when we were only a few months old. It was in this town that we'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen.That was the year Bella put her foot down; these past three summers, our dad, Charlie, vacationed with us in California for two weeks instead.

It was to Forks that we now exiled ourselves — an action that Bella took with great horror. I didn't mind Forks. I loved the rain. I loved the quiet. I loved the woods. I loved sweater weather.

But I'd miss the sun. I'd miss my friends, I'd miss the parties. I'd miss soccer and concerts, and battle of the bands. I'd miss arguing with my lovable, erratic, suffocating mother. But more than anything I'd miss my boyfriend...if that was what Johnny even was anymore.

I knew that was half the reason Bella had brought up moving to Forks. Ever since mom found out about him, we'd been arguing worse than ever before. The guilt nagged at me every time I found Bella listening in on the staircase, too scared of confrontation to mediate but too torn apart by the shit that flew from my mouth. Bella had always been the well-adjusted one. She was a good kid.

Forks would be good for me, I thought. It'd be good for us both.

"Girls." Mom said to us — the last of a thousand times — before we got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."

Bella looks more like mom than I do. They have the same red-brown hair, except mom wears hers short and it curls as wild as her personality. Her laugh lines split her face, her baby blue eyes wide and childlike. I only got the eyes.

I didn't worry about mom. She had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, someone to call when she got lost, and for the first time in my life I didn't have to keep up with it all. The liberation hadn't really sunk in yet.

"We want to go." I held more conviction in my voice than Bella ever could.

"Tell Charlie I said hi."

"We will." Bella nodded.

"I'll see you soon." She insisted. "You can come home whenever you want — I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

I rolled my eyes with a soft snort. "We're going to Forks, not Iraq."

Bella didn't look so convinced. "Don't worry about us. It'll be great. I love you, mom."

Their embrace was long, and tight, a final farewell. Mom gave me a look when it was my turn. "You look after your sister."

"Always." I mumble, hugging her just as hard. I was willing the frog in my throat down. "Love you."

It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying had never bothered me, I usually slept like a log on planes and I think Bella was grateful for it. She'd never been the greatest conversationalist. I wasn't looking forward to the hour in the car with Charlie that would follow.