[A/N: Check out my profile for links to music and lots of useful information]

[Disclaimer: names, sparkles, and other 'Twilight'-y things belong to Stephenie Meyer. Everything else you may blame on me.]

And with Thee Fade Away

"The mind is its own place and in itself
can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n."

Satan to Beelzebub, Line 254
Paradise Lost—John Milton

—

Preface

If there was one thing Bella Swan knew with certainty, it was that sooner or later everybody dies. The mystery lies in the uncertain speed by which fate makes its final judgment. At times death stirs with the light turn of a feather floating on the air. At others it snaps and snarls like a hungry beast in anticipation of the final bite. For Bella, death was both extremes. It moved with a tremendous force, but spoke with the soft glow of twilight.

There was nothing glorious about Bella Swan's death. There was only the cold seizure of sensation from her limbs as Edward Cullen drained the remains of life from her body. There was no burst of light, no memories flashing before her eyes. Angels didn't reach out and grasp her fragile hand at the end.

She held fast to Edward, her murderer, as he took her life, prying from her still-seeing eyes the most precious gift she had ever given.

—

Swan Song

Bella Swan didn't like "goodbye" parties. She found the idea of celebrating the long-term departure of a friend perverse, like laughing at a funeral. Such parties are supposed to have something to do with rejoicing in all the good times spent in the past, in the company of close friends. These parties are, in reality, breeding grounds for excessive nostalgia, sentimental stories, and embarrassing photographs.

But Bella's own goodbye party involved none of those things—except for the embarrassing photographs, which had been discovered in the pages of a very-old photo album. To make matters worse, they had been printed on all of the plates and napkins, by order of some unethical soul, so that guests could wipe their faces on three-year-old Bella.

In honor of Bella's 17 years as a resident of Phoenix, Arizona, Sophie Ellingsdale's basement had been decked out in obnoxiously bright streamers, a giant glittery "Goodbye Bella" sign, and plenty of other extravagant decorations, all of which were coupled with the poignant symphonies of T-Pain and 50 Cent. It was all very excessive, considering the fact that she would only be gone for the summer. By the scale of the revelry, one would have supposed that Bella was permanently relocating to a faraway place, and that her friends might actually be happy about this fact.

Bella drummed her fingers against the red plastic cup in her hand. She dared not drink its contents, which, judging by the growing impairment of the other guests, was most likely vodka-flavored punch. She wished life were a big romantic comedy and that there would be a convenient houseplant nearby to dump it on. Since there was no such plant, she turned to Hana Mochizuki and covertly emptied her cup into her friend's.

"What do I look like, Bella, a dumpster?" mumbled Hana, her words running together slightly. "I have a liver too, you know. And I'll bet he's not too happy tonight." She patted her stomach.

"What was I supposed to do? I couldn't refuse it" replied Bella, tossing her cup into an overflowing garbage can. She had to shout to compete with both the music and Hana's drunkenness. "You know Sophie. She doesn't want anyone to be sober enough to gossip about how ridiculous she gets when she's drunk."

"Why does she care? She's always ridiculous," exclaimed Hana. Her head was swaying around as though her neck wasn't quite strong enough to hold it in one direction for any length of time. Bella instantly regretted augmenting her BAC.

"Maybe we should leave, Hana," yelled Bella at the same time T-Pain yelled "bitch!" Still, Sophie Ellingsdale managed to hear Bella's suggestion from all the way across the dark room, and through T-Pain's expletives. Her head snapped in their direction.

"I didn't know booze gave people super-human hearing," Bella mumbled to herself.

"Bells!" called Sophie, bounding across the room like a giant pink bouncing ball. "You can't leave! This is your party! Aren't you having a good time?"

Sophie Ellingsdale was a bit of a flake, and possibly a budding alcoholic, but Bella knew she was too well-meaning a person to purposely offend. She had, after all, gone to a lot of effort to make this party happen. And alcohol suppliers for the underaged were hard to come by these days.

"Oh, totally!" Bella exclaimed, putting on her best lazy-eyed drunk face and giving her shoulders an earnest shimmy. "This rocks, Sophe, seriously." She hugged the inebriated hostess, and released a sigh that was lost beneath the loud beat of the music. Sophie giggled, gave her trademark wrinkled-nose smile, and bounced off in another direction. Sophie Ellingsdale was ridiculous with or without vodka in her bloodstream, but Bella would miss her even more for it.

Bella had to actually shake her head to remind herself that at the end of the summer she'd be right back to standing in the corner at Sophie Ellingsdale's drunken bashes. But there was a strange permanence to the atmosphere, as if somehow these people expected to never see Bella again. If it were up to her, there wouldn't be any kind of extravagant goodbye for her departure. A simple "see you in while" would have sufficed.

But here she was, standing in a dark basement full of sauced teenagers, looking at her only friends with a foreboding feeling growing in her gut. Her insides recoiled at the moment like a frightened cat; it was the kind of feeling discussed on Lifetime network shows by people recounting prophetic feelings before major disasters. She sincerely hoped that she wasn't going to crash and die on her way out of town the following morning.

Bella's mood combined with her friends' insobriety certainly wasn't the kind of farewell she would have asked for, but at least everyone was having a good time. Everyone but her. And maybe Hana, whose face was starting to look green even in the dark.

"All right, Hana," yelled Bella, directly into her friend's ear. "At this point everyone's so wasted they probably won't notice we're gone. Let's get out of here before you spill your guts on Sophie's decorations."

"Right-o," replied Hana, just before producing a very ladylike burp.

Bella grabbed Hana's arm and led her through the throngs of people, many of whom she didn't actually know, and out into the fresh night air. She didn't have to take the time to thank Sophie's parents for the festivities, because they were both vacationing in Florida for the week, and therefore had no idea that their daughter was contributing to the illegal intoxication of Phoenix's young people.

As much as Bella would have liked to spend the entire night with her friends and acquaintances in any capacity, she preferred them for their sober qualities. And Hana wasn't famous for her high ethanol tolerance. So they both sat on the curb for a few minutes, watching cars fly by as Hana's unhappy liver worked its magic.

At times like these, Bella wished she had a car. At least then she'd have some kind of special value as a designated driver. But without the luxury of easy transportation, Bella was forced to call her mother to pick them up. Disturbing her mother late at night would lead to unpleasant conversations later, but it was a necessary evil that must be endured to escape the party.

However, before she could dial the number, she heard someone calling her name from behind her.

"Bella," said the voice again. She twisted her body around and met the smiling face of Taro, Hana's college student brother, who was emerging from the front door of Sophie's house.

Bella jumped a little at the sight of him, a reaction she had come to expect in herself every time she encountered him. It was like she had been born with a special Taro reflex, something like the twitch in a leg when the doctor taps it, only with Taro it was less of a twitch and more of an embarrassing blushing-hopping thing. He was, after all, everything a girl could want: tidy black hair, Mensa-worthy IQ, formidable battleship opponent.

And here he was, at Bella's own goodbye party. He was probably only there to retrieve his sister, but that didn't stop Bella's overactive imagination from inventing romantic impossibilities.

"Oh, hi, Taro," she said lamely as he took a seat on the curb next to her. She watched as his gaze traveled over to Hana, who was yawning continuously in a very suspicious kind of way. "Sorry. I let Han go overboard a bit."

He laughed a little. "Oh, don't worry about it. This way she'll get it out of her system before she goes to college. A few more mornings like the one she'll have tomorrow, and being drunk'll lose some of its glamour."

Bella loved it when a man talked logically.

"Thanks for coming to get your sister, Taro," she said, in a softer voice this time because Hana seemed to have fallen asleep. "Not having to escort a drunk girl home saves me from answering a lot of my mom's questions about my late night activities."

"Actually," said Taro, scooting a little closer to her, "I came here to see you."

Bella's brain shut down for a split second. "Huh?" she replied, like the intelligent young woman she was.

"Oh, come on Bella. You're leaving tomorrow. Do you really think I'd just let you disappear for the whole summer without any kind of goodbye?"

"Well, since you're here, I guess not," she said to the ground, trying to keep her wits about her.

"I wish I'd had the chance to get to know you better this year." He was leaning forward and had his head tilted upward in an effort to make eye contact with her, even though she was pretending to be completely focused on the pavement. "Hana loves you to pieces, you know," he whispered. "She'll miss you a lot. And, well, I'll miss you a lot too."

Bella looked up at him, straight into his bespectacled brown eyes. Something about the way he was looking at her made her uncomfortable, but she held his gaze anyway. "Yeah, Taro. I'll miss both of you too. But I'll be back in—"

Suddenly, his face was inches away from hers. His fingers were resting on her cheek very lightly. She realized, with a surprisingly unpleasant shock, that he was going to kiss her. She clumsily avoided his advance by simultaneously pulling her head away to the right and pushing back on his shoulder to stop him. The action, however, was poorly planned because, having turned her head away from him, she wasn't able to see that her arm was headed toward his face, rather than his shoulder.

Her palm collided with Taro's left eye, causing his glasses to crash onto the grimy asphalt. Taro himself rocked backward unsteadily, only just stopping his fall by extending his arms behind him. The resulting sound of knuckles scraping against the rough curb was enough to make Bella squirm.

The whole scene was pretty spectacular. It was made even worse by the loud chuckles emanating from a cluster of vague acquaintances positioned nearby outside Sophie's house. One of the girls flicked a half-smoked cigarette in Bella's direction with a wink.

Taro was fumbling around the asphalt, awkwardly trying to cradle his scraped hand and locate his glasses at the same time. Bella leapt to her feet, with one hand clapped involuntarily over her own mouth. "Oh, Taro. I'm so sorry. Let me help you. I'll go get a Band-Aid or something."

He had found his glasses, which looked a little scuffed, and hurriedly placed them back on his face in a way that left them noticeably cockeyed. "No," he said, a little too urgently to sound nice. Upon noticing the red blooming even more deeply in Bella's cheeks, he quickly amended, "I mean, don't worry about it, Bella. It's just a little scrape." It looked worse than that to Bella, but she didn't make any comment.

Bella wished that an earthquake at the upper end of the Richter Scale would suddenly occur and rip open the ground beneath her feet. She could really use a deep chasm to fall into at that moment. "I'm so sorry, Taro. I really am...it's just—"

"No, Bella. I'm the one who should be sorry," said Taro, looking everywhere, it seemed, except at her. "Let me drive you home."

"You really don't have to—"

"I'm already here. It makes no sense to disturb your mom. It's fine, really." His tone was even, but Bella noticed a stiffness in his normally mobile face. She couldn't tell if it was a sign of anger, embarrassment, or something else entirely. Reading people was something she usually did well, but she had already been wrong about Taro once. She had never expected him to be attracted to her, not realistically. And she had responded to his real affection by punching him in the face.

The earthquake Bella was wishing for never appeared; the solid ground beneath her feet stubbornly refused to swallow her up. In the time Bella had spent staring blankly at headlights streaming past through the darkness, Taro had managed to wake Hana and lead her to his black Chevy Impala parked across the street. Having secured his sister in some fashion, he was standing by the driver's side door, passing his keys from one hand to the other impatiently.

Bella briefly considered running in the opposite direction. Braving miles of unsavory city neighborhoods in the dead of night almost sounded more appealing than sitting in the car with Taro and his drunk sister for fifteen whole minutes.

But sense won in the end and Bella hurried across the street between speeding cars, thanking her judgment earlier that evening for not having to dodge automotives while drunk. Taro didn't say anything when she arrived at his car, instead sliding rigidly behind the wheel and turning his key in the ignition. Bella had hoped to sit in the back seat with Hana under the pretense of looking after her in her drunken stupor, but the adjacent seat was occupied by the obligatory college-boy pound of trash.

Bella almost considered attempting to transfer the garbage to the floor of the Impala to make room for herself, but Taro's eyes were glaring at her in the reflection of the rearview mirror in a way that made wasting any more time seem like a bad idea. She took three deep breaths, opened the passenger door, and dropped into the seat with an uncomfortable creak of springs and cracked vinyl. As Taro pulled away from the curb, Bella fastened her seatbelt with a slow intricacy—an activity she pretended required her full concentration to complete.

Taro remained resolutely silent. He turned on the heat, which was entirely unnecessary because it was already hot outside. To augment the stuffiness growing inside the vehicle, he also turned up the volume on the local oldies radio station, which was playing a particularly atonal Bob Dylan song.

Bella spent the following fifteen minutes staring out the car window, which in and of itself was a difficult task, because the layers of dust and grime caked onto the glass made it hard to see anything except for the passing streetlights.

She had a feeling that if she died and went to Hell, it would feel something like the inside of Taro's Chevy Impala at that moment. The heat blowing through the vent straight into her face made the atmosphere feel so thick that the difficulty of moving air in and out of her lungs was about the same as trying to do so underwater. She would've asked Taro to turn the heat off, or even done it herself, but that would require looking at him at the very least, and exponentially increase the possibility of having to speak to him.

And of course the conversation was absolutely scintillating. Bob Dylan was the only one doing any talking, which was mostly incoherent wailing through the car's scratchy speakers. Hana was snoring. Taro was making his scraped knuckles white by wringing his hands against the plastic steering wheel. Bella was trying very hard to keep breathing in an environment that was similar to the inside of a greenhouse that grew filth instead of plants.

Overall, it was a miserable ride. And, Bella reminded herself, the last time she'd see her best friend until school started again. Maybe if the drive had been prefaced by a long-awaited kiss rather than scuffed glasses and bloody knuckles, she would have at least parted with Taro on bittersweet terms instead of plain bitter ones. But Bella had to make a mess of everything, as usual, by planting her fist into her potential boyfriend's face.

Just before Bella was sure she'd die a slow death with Bob Dylan's voice ringing in her ears for all of eternity, Taro pulled up to her house. She was about to hop out of the car and run to the safety of her bedroom, where she could promptly fall asleep and pretend nothing had happened, but she wasn't rude enough to just leave without saying anything.

"Thanks for the ride, Taro," she said to the dashboard.

"Yeah. No problem."

"Look, about earlier...I'm really sorry, I jus—"

"Goodbye, Bella," he said, looking into her eyes at last. What she saw in his wasn't the look of anger or embarrassment at all, but instead one of defeat. He wasn't saying goodbye to her for the night, or even for the summer. He had given up on her completely; he was saying goodbye forever.

She stopped after she had stepped out of the car and looked back at Hana, who was slumped against the vinyl door panel. "Just...tell Hana I'll send her e-mails all the time."

He nodded very slightly. That's the way Taro decided to leave Bella—with nothing but a vague tilt of his head.

Bella ended up rushing into her house and straight to her bedroom after all, where she didn't sleep so much as struggle to shut her brain off. As it usually turned out when Bella had too much on her mind, she didn't genuinely fall asleep until just before she was supposed to wake up.

Yet Bella did drift off with some peace of mind. She knew that when the morning came, the previous night wouldn't disappear, but she would leave Phoenix behind for the entire summer. Forks, Washington would be her escape. Forks, Washington where she could run away from Phoenix's heat, from its Taros and Impalas and Sophie Ellingsdales.

—