TWILIGHT

First sight I

My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was 

seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was 

wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing 

it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka. 

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 

my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in 

this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I 

was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past 

three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two 

weeks instead. 

It was to Forks that I now exiled myself— an action that I took with 

great horror. I detested Forks. 

I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the 

vigorous, sprawling city. 

"Bella," my mom said to me — the last of a thousand times — before I got 

on the plane. "You don't have to do this." 

My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a 

spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave 

my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she 

had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food 

in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got 

lost, but still… 

"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying 

this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now. 

"Tell Charlie I said hi." 

"I will." 

"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." 

But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise. 

"Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom." 

She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she 

was gone. 

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 doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was 

a little worried about. 

Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed 

genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time 

with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for high 

school and was going to help me get a car. 

But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone 

would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I 

knew he was more than a little confused by my decision — like my mother 

before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks. 

When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen 

— just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun. 

Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too. 

Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary 

motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was 

that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights 

on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop. 

Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the 

plane. 

"It's good to see you, Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically 

caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renée?" 

"Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call 

him Charlie to his face. 

I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for 

Washington. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter 

wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of 

the cruiser. 

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were 

strapped in. 

"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good car for 

you" as opposed to just "good car." 

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy." 

"Where did you find it?" 

"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian 

reservation on the coast. 

"No." 

"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted. 

That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking 

painful, unnecessary things from my memory. 

"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so 

he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap." 

"What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this 

was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask. 

"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine — it's only a few years 

old, really." 

I hoped he didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up 

that easily. "When did he buy it?" 

"He bought it in 1984, I think." 

"Did he buy it new?" 

"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties — or late fifties at 

the earliest," he admitted sheepishly. 

"Ch — Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to 

fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic…" 

"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that 

anymore." 

The thing, I thought to myself… it had possibilities — as a nickname, at 

the very least. 

"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise 

on. 

"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." 

Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression. 

Wow. Free. 

"You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car." 

"I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the 

road when he said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his 

emotions out loud. I inherited that from him. So I was looking straight 

ahead as I responded. 

"That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add 

that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to 

suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth — or 

engine. 

"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks. 

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that 

was pretty much it for Conversation. We stared out the windows in silence. 

It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: 

the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a 

canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down 

greenly through the leaves. 

It was too green — an alien planet. 

Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small, 

two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of 

their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had — the 

early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never 

changed, was my new — well, new to me — truck. It was a faded red color, 

with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I 

loved it. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. 

Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged — 

the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, 

surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed. 

"Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just 

that much less dreadful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either 

walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the 

Chief's cruiser. 

"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.