How I Spent My Summer Vacation

"You can't be serious," I complained, my voice rising an octave. Charlie's fist comes down on the table.

"You're going. I've already sent your application to Aro." I groaned.

Aro Volturi was the owner of the Fun Forest Amusement Park in Seattle, and I had gotten a job there last summer, staying with my aunt and uncle, working in the arcade. A clumsy girl working game machines. They knew how accident prone I was, so they decided not to put me working the rides. Good choice, I shuddered to myself.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because I'm tired of you moping around all the time, crying over Jacob. It'll be good to get out of Forks for a couple months, and when you come back, you'll be off to college. It would be good to have some spending money when you go."

"But you know what happened last year. I almost killed myself."

"You broke your ankle, you did not almost kill yourself."

"Uncle Tom snores, and Aunt Mary chain smokes and talks a lot."

"You're going. It's either Seattle or Jacksonville to stay with Renee and Phil, but either way you're getting out of Forks this summer." I took a deep breath and sighed, and Charlie noticed. You couldn't get anything past the Chief of Police.

"Bells, I know you're upset about Jacob, even Billy is upset, but you're both young. You're going to have a couple of broken hearts before you find the one."

Jacob Black had been my first boyfriend. I first moved to Forks last year, the middle of my junior year, so Renee could go on the road with Phil, who was a minor league ball player. I knew that staying home with me made her unhappy, so I decided to finish high school with my dad in Forks, one of the wettest cities in the United States.

I had grown up in Phoenix, which was three times the size of Forks, but in Phoenix at least I didn't stick out like a sore thumb. My first day at Forks I had guys come out of the woodwork. Eric Yorkie, Mike Newton, and Tyler Crowley had all asked me to the Prom within a week of me being here.

I knew Jacob Black from when I was younger and had spent a couple weeks every summer in Forks, and Charlie and Billy Black spent a lot of time together. Jacob was a Quiluete and went to school on the reservation at La Push, but after hanging out with Jacob a few times, we just started dating. Jacob was two years younger than I was, but he was a lot more mature than I was.

A couple times Billy had walked in on me and Jacob making out on his tiny bed, but the most embarrassing moment had been when Charlie had walked in right after Jacob and I had just finished having sex on the living room sofa. Charlie had been downright furious, but he eventually got over, he loved Jacob to death. Jacob had taken my virginity, as I'd taken his, and after that we were always careful not to do it where we could get caught.

He'd been acting weird for a couple months after Christmas, but I had just chalked it up to male hormones. It wasn't until I went to his house and found out the truth: he'd been cheating on me with Leah Clearwater, another Quiluete that was my age. He said that he and Leah were always together because Billy and his father Harry were always hanging out together, and he said one thing led to another, and he'd been trying to find a way to tell me that it was over. When Charlie had found out, he had nearly ripped Jacob's head off. It took him a full two months to talk to Billy again.

Last summer things had been wonderful at Fun Forest. Billy had given Jacob permission to work at the amusement park too, working at one of the food stands, and Jacob had stayed with another coworker. My aunt and uncle had chuckled over walking in on us making out on the couch.

Everything had been fine until the maintenance man and Aro's son, Felix, had started flirting with me. Jacob blew up, accusing me of having an affair, and had quit and hitched a ride home. In my haste to try to go to Jacob to reassure him, I had tripped over Felix and Demetri, another maintenance man, and had broken my ankle. Long story short, Jacob accepted my apology and we had finished the summer on that note.

It wasn't until Halloween when we finally made love for the first time. I was scared to death, because I had been 18 and he'd been 16, and technically he'd been a minor and I could have gone to jail over it, but Billy and Charlie seemed to accept it after a while, even though Charlie took me right over to the hospital to get me on birth control pills. Now I wonder if Jacob had been lying about being a virgin when he'd been with me. If he'd lied about Leah, who knows what else he lied about?

"Who knows? Maybe you'll have fun this summer. I did talk to Dr Cullen and he said that his kids are going to be there." I groaned again.

Dr Carlslie Cullen was the main doctor here in Forks, and his wife Esme was an interior designer. Esme had actually wallpapered my room and redone my bedroom to a more teenage theme, since Charlie had still had it pretty much the same as I was a kid. He did add a desk to it as I grew, and my old computer was on it now, and the old rocking chair from my childhood days was still in the corner, I refused to let Esme take it away. I wanted some of my childhood intact at least.

Esme was unable to have children of her own, so she had adopted three and taken in two fosters. Emmett Cullen was the oldest, at 20. Jasper and Rosalie Hale were 19 and twins. Edward Cullen was 18, and Alice Cullen was 17. Emmett had dark curly hair and large hazel eyes, and was built like a wrestler or a football player. Jasper and Rosalie were both blonde with blue eyes and were drop dead gorgeous. Edward had auburn hair and green eyes, and Alice was tiny, pixielike, with dark hair and brown eyes. Then there was boring me, with long mahogany hair, chocolate brown eyes, and a small stature, and I was pale. I had no color here, but maybe spending the summer in Seattle would change that.

I had spent most of my second semester in Forks talking to Edward in Biology class, and I had learned that he'd been an infant when his parents, Edward and Elizabeth Masen, had both died tragically in a car accident, and Carlslie and Esme had taken him in. Emmett had been adopted first, he'd been given up by his birth mother. Alice's father had been killed in the line of duty before she'd even been born, and shortly after Alice was born her mother had died from hemorraging. Jasper and Rosalie had been moved from foster home to foster home until Carlslie and Esme took them in, and they'd been with them ever since.

"I thought you liked the Cullens," Charlie said.

"Just Alice, Edward is always moping, Jasper keeps looking like he's constipated, Rosalie glares at me all the time, and Emmett scares me."

"Well, Alice will be there. You used to hang out with her all the time before you and Jacob broke up."

"Fine, I'll go, but I won't like it."