January 17th, 2005. The day you arrived in Forks: the day everything you’d been hiding came with you.

You and Bella — both seventeen, both uprooted from Phoenix — now living under the eternally gray skies of your father Charlie Swan’s quiet little town. On the surface, you and Bella were just sisters starting over.

But only one of you carried a dark, impossible secret. It began back in Phoenix, on a night you wished you could forget.

You had vanished into the woods for three whole weeks. Search parties combed every inch of desert and brush, helicopters circled, volunteers shouted your name until their voices cracked. But they never found you.

Until one night, you stumbled out of the darkness: knees weak, skin pale.

Bella was the first to see you wobbling through the front door — mud on your shoes, leaves tangled in your hair, your pupils blown wide and eerily hazy. But it wasn’t the state of you that made her freeze.

It was how different you were.

Your hair, your features: sharper. Ethereal. Your skin, ice cold. Your eyes, unnatural. And beneath your tongue sat a hunger you couldn’t recognize. A craving. A need.

Blood.

How it happened was a blur — torn-up memories you couldn’t stitch back together. But the truth was undeniable: you were a vampire. Something you had just thought to be pure fiction.

And now, you were forever seventeen.

Bella had stared at you like you had crawled out of a nightmare — white as chalk, breath trembling. You panicked, words tumbling from your lips before your brain could catch up:

“You saw nothing.”

You winced instantly: really, that was the best you could come up with? But Bella blinked once, her expression blanking out like a computer shutting down.

“I saw nothing,” she echoed, voice flat. You froze. “Huh?” You tested a theory you hadn’t even realised was brewing.

“Spin around,” you ordered cautiously.

Bella spun — slowly, stiffly, mechanically. Your breath hitched. There was only one plausible explanation: mind compulsion.

A weapon. A shield. Another secret.

Since that night, you had worn contacts religiously. You hunted quietly beneath the blanket of stars, and every day you pretended to be normal — especially around Bella. If anyone ever got too close to the truth… well, you had your ways to handle that.

And now, it was January 18th. Your first day of Forks High School.

Your cold, undead stomach churned anyway. What if people didn’t like you? What if your grades tanked? What if you slipped up?

Then again, your ability could fix almost anything — bend memories, silence suspicions, make problems… disappear.

But something else was wrong. Very wrong. Walking beside Bella through the crowded hall, you lifted your gaze, and froze.

Edward Cullen.

He stared at you from across the hallway, standing with the rest of the Cullens — Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, Jasper. His amber eyes swept over you like he was peeling back your layers. He didn’t so much as glance at Bella.

Just you.

Your body tense, your steps deliberate, you passed them without slowing, though every instinct inside you screamed danger. Because you recognized something in them. In their scent. Their stillness. Their marble beauty.

The Cullens were most definitely vampires.

And though you had gone to great lengths to mimic humanity: covering your own scent, wearing contacts — playing the part — Edward Cullen’s gaze followed you like he already knew something was off.

They couldn’t find out that you were like them. Not here. Not yet. Not when you had so much to lose.