Turn Scars to Stars [2]

Late, Late, Late

Birds chirping obnoxiously loud outside the Cullen house woke Mel up the next morning. Squinting her post-crying puffy eyes, she read the bright green numbers on her alarm clock. 7:21.

School started at 7:30.

Shit! Mel freaked out. She hopped out of bed in a panic, stumbling over a mountain of clean clothes on the floor.

Why didn't anyone wake her up?

Where was her usual annoying pixie alarm clock?

Speeding around her room, Mel tugged on a pair of skinny jeans from her floor and pulled a hoodie over the tank top that she had worn to bed.

Realizing she got up so fast that she forgot her glasses, Mel backtracked from her bathroom to put on her glasses. Now the world wasn't blurry around her.

Mel multi-tasked to hurry her morning routine. She peed while brushing her hair, then slid on her shoes while brushing her teeth.

She didn't see a single Cullen in the kitchen when she ran down a level. "Okay, where is everyone?" Mel called out.

A breeze alerted her of a presence and she turned around to see her burly vampire brother. "Packing."

Furrowing her brows in confusion, Mel asked, "For school still? We're late."

Emmett shook his head. "We're moving. Edward's idea." His words were too casual.

Mel's mouth dropped open. Her green-grey eyes widened in alarm. "What?"

"Carlisle's at the hospital now, resigning. Esme started packing your things this morning. We didn't want to wake you."

"Do I have any say in this?" Mel had never moved before. Forks had always been her home.

"You can say what you'd like, but Edward's mind is set."

"So this is because of Jasper? It was an accident," she said, defending her favorite brother. "Sometimes addiction can overpower rationality. He's handled himself so well with me over the years."

"Jasper loves you; his control with you was only achieved so fast because of it." Emmett's dark gold eyes hardened slightly. "Carlisle and Edward think it's best if we leave, so we must move on from Forks."

"But what do you think?"

"I go where my family goes."

~*~

Watching Esme pack up Melaina's room was making the girl dizzy, yet she couldn't bring herself to look away. Esme whirled around the light purple room and nimbly filled bags and cardboard boxes of Mel's things with such precision.

Alice had poked her head in to remind them that she would be buying all knew clothes for everyone, but Mel wanted to keep some of her favorites. Plus, she still had things from her old room and precious items that once belonged to her birth mother.

Mel laid on top of her Eiffel Tower blanket and stared up at the stars above her bed. Esme had painted them to accurately represent the constellations, and Mel was partial to the stars that formed her zodiac sign, Gemini--the Twins. She loved to watch them glow in the dark on the nights that it was too cloudy or rainy to see them in the sky.

Mel sighed. "Would you be able to paint more stars for me at our new house?"

Esme stepped out of the walk-in closet and sat down on the edge of Mel's bed. "Of course, I can." She folded another band T-shirt and set it on her lap. "How would you like to have a skylight in your room to more easily view the real stars?"

Mel perked up and turned her green-grey eyes to her adoptive mother. "Really?" She had never had a skylight of her own before. Only the upstairs bathrooms in her old house had them and it wasn't like she was going to lay on the bathroom linoleum to gaze up at the stars.

"I did some renovations on an old house of ours." Mel could imagine Esme cutting a hole in the roof of her new room just so her newest daughter could have a window to view the sky above and leaned over to hug Esme at the amusing thought.

They stayed quiet for a while before Esme went back to emptying Mel's room. "When are we leaving?" the anxious girl asked softly.

"Tomorrow at sunrise. Carlisle is at the hospital now."

"It's not fair," she blurted. Melaina had nothing in Washington but the Cullen family and Savannah, but still, she had never moved before. She was born and raised at 233 Lupine Avenue in Forks.

The only time she had even left the state of Washington was to visit her now-deceased Grandma and Papa in Canada, and Mel was three years old at the time. Her life was, and had always been, in Forks, and she didn't know what the world had in store outside of her familiar small town.

Esme must have seen the panic on her face. "You said that you wanted to see France one day, yes?"

Mel nodded.

"You have to leave the state first. Then the country. It's one step at a time, and soon enough, you'll be viewing Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower at sunset."

"I like that idea," Mel admitted. "But I'm not ready for France. Or New York."

"Ithaca is a small town like Forks; it won't be nearly as busy as New York City. Our home is on the edge of the waters of the Cayuga Lake. Nature surrounds all sides, and we have a waterfall in our backyard. It is quite lovely."

"It sounds nice, I guess."

Esme stood and reached to swing Mel's bedroom door fully open before Carlisle had a chance to knock. She probably heard him coming up the stairs with her advanced hearing.

"How is everything going in here, ladies?" the blond doctor asked.

"I don't understand why we have to go," Melaina said again. "I've had nose bleeds and cuts, paper cuts, before, and I don't think that--"

Carlisle rubbed his temple as if he could suffer from a headache. "Melaina."

"--we need to uproot our lives because of one accident. It could have been worse, but it wasn't," she continued. "Jasper was doing so well before."

"This is Edward's choice."

"Then why doesn't he leave alone? He did that already. We don't have to associate with Bella without him."

"The decision is final and not up to debate. We go as a family." Carlisle's firm words mirrored what Emmett had said earlier that morning.

"It's not fair," she muttered and shoved her head of brunette hair into her pillow. She felt a coldness against her head as one of her Cullen parents brushed a hand through her hair.

"It's for the best," Esme said softly. "For Bella, and for our family."