Well, I got an idea and decided to run with it. I hope you enjoy and I hope this chapter makes you very interested in what happens next. I think you'll be very surprised.

I listened to Scar tissue by RHCP over and over again while I wrote this, it's good to set the whole tone.

Oh, and this story is rated M because of violence and future adult situations.

So how do I explain this?

I am so normal. I am so boring. I am so not worth even mentioning.

That being said, I don't know why the things that have happened to me have happened. I'm not special in any way. I'm not amazing. I'm no Alice in Wonderland. I'm not Dorthy Gale from Kansas. I'm just Bella. Boring Bella Swan.

Sorry, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. I suppose I should just start from the very, and I do mean very, beginning.

Let's see... Where to begin? Ah, I know where...

I was the maid of honor at my mother's wedding.

My mother and father divorced when I was less than a year old. She never liked being confined and he didn't want to leave the house unless it was to fish. Opposites attract apparently but how long do they stay attracted? Not very long, I suppose. As soon as she thought I was old enough to handle a long car ride, she bolted. It took nearly seventeen years to find another man she thought was worth being connected to in some way. Phil, her new husband, was a restless spirit just like my mother. Oh, they had their glaring differences, but it was this one thing that they had in common that made them perfect for each other.

And for that reason, I was moving in with my dad.

My mother didn't make me, I wanted to. I wanted to give them the gift of privacy on their almost year long honeymoon. Phil used to be a major league baseball player and now had all the money and time in the world to see it all. And now my mom could too without having a daughter attached to her hip. Besides, I only had a year of high school left before I went to college. I could handle it.

Handling it and enjoying it are two very different things.

My father awkwardly hugged me in the airport, patting my back before releasing me and looking down at the ground. "You look great, Bells," he said with a soft, sort of chocked up voice. I sniffled before looking to the ground and whispering my thanks. That was the extent of our conversation until we arrived back to his home nearly six hours later. Neither of us were talkative and it didn't help that neither one of us knew what to say to the other. We had hardly seen each other over the past few years, the odd week here and there.

Well, at least we both had awkward in common. I must have gotten it from him because I certainly didn't get it from my wild and very out there mother. I sighed at the thought, rubbing my forehead as I tried to lug my luggage up to my bedroom. I had only a small bag of clothes, my thin clothed and short sleeved things from Arizona doing me little good in misty Washington, but I had a huge suitcase of the only things that really mattered to me. My books.

My new room was rather bare, but that was okay. I wasn't going to get attached to it. It was only a place to sleep until I could move on to something bigger and better. I placed my bag on the bed before opening the large suitcase with a soft and somewhat contented smile. The smell of dusty books hit me hard, making me feel a little more at home than I had been before. So, with great care and affection, I arranged the bookshelf just so. It wasn't my entire collection, but at least I could have a little taste of my former home.

"Wow, Bella, quite the collection you have there," a gruff voice said from behind me, making me jump out of my mediative state. I turned to give my father a small smile, albeit an awkward one, before shrugging.

"Yeah. I, um, love to read," I stumbled stupidly over my words before clearing my throat. "Do you need something?"

"Oh, I was just letting you know that there is pizza and soda on it's way. It a meat lovers, your favorite," he said, giving me a large and rather proud smile.

I hated meat lovers. I liked ham with mushrooms, but I wasn't going to tell him that today so I gave another smile. There was no need to burst his bubble yet. I didn't want to make things any more difficult than they already were. "Sounds great. I'll come down when I finish unpacking my books."

He left me alone, nodding his head while mumbling something about him watching sports and getting a beer. I turned back to the books and sighed. He had his ways to relax and I had mine.

It was going to be a very long year.

My book shelf was an interesting mix. The most read were the classics, of course. I read almost everything though from 1984 to Grimm's fairy tales. Romance to Horror. I adored the written word and most of the time I felt like it was my best friend. People were constantly changing but books always remained the same. They were a stable place to rest.

When I could finally waste no more time I made my way downstairs, the pizza, or at least half of it, already waiting for me. My father had already poured me a soda, a Sprite, and I wrinkled my nose. Once again I wasn't going to say anything tonight but I only drank diet sodas. It was one of the things from my mother's diet kick that stuck around. I plopped down on the old creaky brown leather couch and grabbed myself a slice.

"So, excited about starting school tomorrow?" My dad began, muting the TV. There was no doubt in my mind though that he was paying more attention to the football game than to my answers but still, I had to give him a reply. If he was going to try, so was I.

"Not really," I shrugged, "school is school. I don't think any teenager is ever really excited about it. I'm just ready to get it over with at this point."

"I guess that's true," he muttered through a bite of pizza. "Not nervous at all?"

"No."

"I remember," he chuckled in a way to signal an embarrassing detail from my past was about to spew out, "when you were like what? Ten or Twelve and you were nervous about going surfing out in California. Man, you worked yourself into a little fit. You hardly went to sleep and when you did you started sleep walking! When I asked you what you were doing, you said you were going to surf. Obviously you were still asleep so I put you back to bed but you just kept getting up! I had to stay up the entire night to keep you from walking out of the damn beach house!" He chuckled. "I hope you've grown out of that."

"I have," I said my cheeks flushed. The night that he was talking about was not because I was nervous about surfing but the surf instructor. The drop dead gorgeous, blond haired blue eyed super tan nineteen year old surf instructor with the lean body and muscled stomach. And I was thirteen, not ten.

"That's good," he chuckled, taking a big gulp of his beer. "This old man needs his rest."

"No worries, dad," I smirked, looking down at large bits of Italian sausage in disgust. "I haven't done that in like two or three years."

"You were such a klutz when you were younger," he continued, fueling my annoyance. "How many broken legs and arms have you had?"

"Three broken legs, two broken arms, six broken fingers, eight broken toes, and a broken collarbone," I muttered in anger but he didn't stop there.

He laughed, taking a big swig of his cheap beer. "You are an accident waiting to happen, I think I'm going to have to warn the school nurse about you."

"I haven't done anything that klutzy in ages," I all but growled. I knew he was just trying to make conversations but this wasn't exactly what I wanted to talk about at the moment. Not in the mood was an understatement and a half.

"Good, good," he said, realizing that he had hit a nerve finally. He cleared his throat before taking another piece of pizza. "So, I figured we could go this weekend to get you some clothes and stuff."

"Yeah, sounds good," I replied as I sat down the half eaten piece of pizza. I had suddenly lost any desire to eat. Perhaps it was the mere thought of going clothes shopping with my police chief father. But, since there was no way I could do it on my own since he had the only mode of transportation, I suppose I just had to suffer through it. Looking into a car of some sort would be my main goal over the next couple of months before Christmas. There was no way that I could survive this year without one. If I didn't get a car, I knew I'd lose my mind.

So, we pressed on with some difficultly through a little more conversation before I decided I couldn't take anymore. I excused myself claiming to be tired even though I was totally wired up and went to take a shower in the single bathroom that I was now sharing with my father. I grimaced at the dirt ring around the bottom of the tube, thinking of the amount of cleaning I'd have to do in the next week to make this place livable for normal human beings.

It certainly was a mighty task to undertake.

I brushed my teeth and blow dried my hair before slipping on a night gown and robe. My bed, though it didn't really feel like my own, was calling to me. Perhaps not to sleep, but instead to relax and read. Plunking down on the mattress, I could easily reach the book shelf from my position.

I had finished the last book I had been reading on the plane so it was time to start something new. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to read at this point. It would have to be something comforting in it's own way. Something familiar.

I smiled at the thought of reading Harry Potter. It was simple in a way, perhaps too simple. I needed something more complex. Something with a bit more bite but not romance. Lord of the Rings was far too complex for my current mood though. I didn't want to think that hard. I could have read Inkheart again, the idea of having the ability to turning words into real life making me smile. I wish I had that ability.

No, that wasn't it either. I rolled to my side, laying down fully on the bed as I gazed at each title carefully. I was so engrossed in my search when my father knocked on the door I almost fell off the bed.

"Bells? You asleep?"

"No, Charlie!" I sat up quickly, pulling my robe more tightly around me. "What do you need?"

He opened the door slowly before peeking inside, giving me a shy and very nervous smile. "I just wanted to, um... say that, uh, I'm really glad, you know? I'm glad you're home, I mean, here. Kid, I just-" He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I hope you're happy here and that I love having you here."

"Thanks, dad," I smiled weakly, flushing as I gazed down at the tattered quilt my grandmother had made for my dad before she passed a decade or so ago. The emotional tones of his voice made me nervous and I bit my lip as I thought of something to say. I grasped in my mind, not wanting to lie to him but not wanting hurt his feelings either. "I... I'm glad we're getting to spend some time together."

"Me, too, Kiddo. Me too. Alright, well, goodnight. You should be ready by 7:30 to go. Class starts at eight but you want to have enough time to check in and everything," he said, playing with some invisible spot on the door frame.

"Alarms set," I assured him. "Goodnight."

"Yeah," he said, shutting the door and leaving me alone. I sighed heavily as I melted against my worn white cotton sheets before glancing over at the overstuffed bookshelf.

"Tomorrow," I promised myself out loud. It was already after eleven and my alarm was set to go off at six. I needed to at least try to get some sleep, but I was certain it wouldn't come easily as my nerves began to twist into tight ball in my stomach. Maybe I was just a little bit nervous about my first day at school.

My predictions proved to be correct as I tossed and turned for nearly two hours. The last thing that I remembered, I mean really normal thing that I remembered, was glancing at the clock around one in the morning, the bright green letters taunting me. Some point after that, I fell asleep.

My dreams were fluid, swirling and changing constantly. They were there but nothing was solid enough to grasp. I expected to wake up with a jolt when the alarm went off but it never came. That annoying honking like buzz never cut through the waves of sleep.

Instead, I woke up with my face pressed against something wet. I took in a deep breath before I opened my eyes, testing the waters. It smelt green. Like my face was shoved into a pillow of freshly mowed wet grass. My eyes shot open as I sat up quickly, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

In my robe and night gown still I was laying in the middle of a meadow overflowing with dew covered wild flowers of all shades and colors. The sun was beaming down at me from one direction while dark clouds threatened me from the other, like a battle line was drawn between the two and I was right in the middle of the war.

Had I slept walked again? Had my nerves got the best of me, forcing me into an old habit? Was I in the middle of the Washington forest outside of my father's home? It seemed possible, but I had my doubts for some reason. Just something told me that theory was wrong.

That's when a new scent hit my nose. It... it was impossible to describe. It smelt like cookies and sugar mixed with sparkles and sunshine with a tangy spice in the background, just tickling my tongue as I breathed in deeply. It was wonderful and frightening all at the same time.

"I must be dreaming," I spoke out loud as I turned to take in my surroundings. It certainly didn't seem like Washington State. I almost snorted when I thought that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. "I am dreaming," I assured myself, preparing for the interesting ride I was about to take. I usually figured out I was dreaming in my dreams and wondered through them like they were an art museum on a lazy Sunday.

But, I had no idea how strange that ride was going to be. Or how dangerous.

"No, you're not," a gravel roughened voice growled from somewhere in the tree line. I twisted my body towards the sound, looking for who had spoken. It was like no voice I had ever heard before.

But, all I could see in the thick darkness was a pair of golden and rather large eyes looking back at me.

"This, I can promise you," he voice continued as he came closer, his eyes becoming larger with each passing moment, "is no dream. This is very real."

And then the monster appeared.

Sorry for my poor grammar. I know it's far from perfect.

Let me know if I should continue or not. I'm not sure if I want to.