Edythe Cullen Prevents Twenty Murders, And Possibly Causes Three Thousand More
He knows.
I felt it when he looked at me. When his eyes, those maddening, wide, blue eyes met mine. The chaos in them didn't need translation. I could read it in the angle of his jaw, the stillness of his hands, the way he gripped his pen like a weapon. I could feel it humming off him like static.
I heard it in his thoughts. They were loud and jarring, like a discordant orchestra. The words seemed to be written in sharp letters across his mind, bolded, screaming. He couldn't stop repeating them. A broken record of disbelief and fear.
He knows.
The second the door shut behind me, I was in motion—down the hall, around the corner, out the side doors, into the trees. The clouds overhead cast the world in iron and ash, and I moved like smoke through the gaps between trunks, farther from the humans, farther from him.
Beaufort Swan.
He should have been just a new face. A passing glance, a background body. He was no one. Just another human. The kind of fragile, temporary creature I had seen thousands of times, in hundreds of cities, across the years and decades of my existence.
But he wasn't.
I can't forget him. I can't unsee that terrified recognition on his face. I can't pretend I hadn't read the truth of my identity in his thoughts. He knew what I was—what all of us were.
But that wasn't what sent me running into the forest. I could have dealt with that. I had dealt with that. We had been exposed before, and we had to move on. We would do it again, if necessary. The worst he could do was make this little town uncomfortable, and we'd leave.
But his scent...
When Beaufort Swan walked into our Biology class and slid into the chair next to mine, I'd breathed in automatically. It was a background reflex, the way humans inhale in response to a loud noise.
And then the smell of his blood hit me, and I ceased to be.
There was a moment—just one, maybe two seconds—where I planned a massacre.
Not because I wanted to. Not because I chose to. But because I had no other thought available to me. My instincts flooded every synapse, seizing control. If I'd moved my hand, if I'd breathed deeper, if he had leaned even slightly closer, I would have done it.
All of them. The whole class. Eighteen harmless children and a teacher.
I would have crushed the carotid of the boy closest to the window first—Daniel, I think—used the desk leg as a stake through the next one's chest, vaulted the rows, silenced Mrs. Banner before she could scream. I would have been on Beaufort in less than three seconds. No one would have lived. No one would have even known they'd died until several hours after the fact.
There would have been blood on the walls and silence in the hall.
All to cover one kill.
His kill.
Because his scent hit me like lightning through dry bone. Like ozone and rot and fire and sugar, all at once. Like something sacred had been burned to cinders and offered to me on a silver plate. The kind of thing that wasn't meant to exist on this earth. Not just the sweetness, but the rightness of it—tailor-made for me, it seemed. For my palate. For my species. For my damnation. There was no metaphor strong enough for what happened in that moment—I didn't think. I transformed.
Not into something monstrous. No. I was already that.
I became honest.
There was no Edythe Cullen. No daughter of Carine. No classmate. No student. No soul. There was only thirst, and hunger, and the fact of him. He smelled like every good thing I've ever wanted and never deserved. Like sunlight I couldn't touch. Like the answer to something primal and wordless in me.
And I hated it.
I hated that I wanted to kill him more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. I hated that it would be easy. I hated that he smelled like destiny.
I hated that some part of me was ready to make that choice.
It was violence. No warning. No crescendo. Just impact. It flooded my every sense—liquid gold on fire, laced with stardust and the sky. It burned like acid, tasted like glory, and sounded like the most complex melody, the most haunting symphony ever conceived. It was indescribable. It was impossible. It was not simply appealing, it was catastrophic. There is no metaphor that suffices. I am not a woman faced with temptation. I am a fault line splitting open beneath a city.
I can feel the venom filling my mouth like drool, and I have to spit it into the dirt, lest I convince myself it is his blood.
I want to kill him. I need to kill him. More than I have ever needed anything else in my life. The monster in me wants to tear him apart, rip his bones from their sockets, and lick the marrow clean until nothing remains. He is full of hot, sweet blood. My throat burns with the need to drink. His scent is everything. It is the only thing missing from my world. The only thing I will ever need again.
I stop moving only when I reach a cluster of fir trees on the edge of a ravine. The air smells of sap and wet moss. No blood. No copper. No heat. I inhale once—deep and sharp—and let it settle into me like icewater. Then again. Slower this time. I press my back against the rough bark of a tree and close my eyes.
I wish I could sleep.
I've never encountered such a person before. That scent had knifed through every control I had layered into myself across decades. Every boundary, every trick, every mantra and routine and meditation. All gone. Evaporated in an instant. I had been left defenseless, raw and wild in the face of it. One inhale, and I had become something feral and unfamiliar in my own body.
His scent is still in my lungs. It has been an hour, maybe more, and the smell of the blood clings to the back of my throat, to the inside of my teeth, to every inch of my skull.
My hands clench on reflex, and I feel the sharp sting of splintered bark. My fingers are buried in the tree's trunk, like I meant to strangle it. Sap seeps slowly into the cracks of my knuckles.
I let go. It doesn't help.
He knows.
I want to tear the tree from the ground. I want to scream until my throat burns. I want to run until the world beneath me changes shape and color. I want to never stop running.
And so, I run.
I keep to the edge of the forest where no one can see me. I don't run full speed. I don't trust myself not to kill someone on the way. I take the forest path north, shoes skimming moss and rock, faster than I can think. Every mile is a prayer. A mantra. I recite the periodic table backwards. I list every victim I've ever refused to become. I count by sevens, then primes, then the seventy-eight years since the last time I took a life. I run until the school is gone, the town is gone, the scent is a memory, and my muscles have forgotten what instinct feels like.
I run until the forest is a green blur around me, until the sound of my footsteps is a constant, thundering staccato. I run until the sky opens up and drowns the world in ice and rain.
And then, when I'm far enough away from the temptation, I pivot. Not home. Not the house. Not to Earnest's gentle voice and calm analysis. I can't face him right now. I can't face any of them.
Except her.
The walk would have taken nearly an hour at a human pace. Thirty minutes, if one were to run. I make it in eight.
Forks Community Hospital looms out of the haze like a relic, all faded white wood and aluminum trim, squat and boxy against the gray sky. The parking lot is a sea of empty, rain-soaked concrete. No one in town has the energy to be sick today, it seems.
What a blessing that is. If there had been anyone here, any humans in this hospital, wounded, bleeding—
I swallow hard and push the thought away. I can still taste the boy's blood. A river of heat. A promise and a death sentence wrapped into one. A siren call. My throat constricts in protest, and I shake the hunger off.
The hospital is almost empty. I can enter without fear.
The scent of antiseptic hits me before I cross the threshold. I brace myself against it—sterility, chemical sharpness, bleach and ethanol. I see only the nurse at the front desk, her head bowed as she sorts through a stack of charts. She doesn't notice me at first. She's thinking about her husband. About the baby on the way. About the car she wants to buy.
"Hello, Jess," I manage to say.
She startles slightly at the sight of me, but the recognition sets in. "Edythe. Hi," she says.
"Is my mother in?"
"Oh, yeah. You know her. She never leaves," she says with a laugh. Her thoughts echo her words, fond and bemused. "Think she's in the staff room, actually."
"Thank you," I murmur, and leave the desk behind.
My feet know the route, muscle memory guiding me down the linoleum hallways, around the corner, past the waiting room. It smells like the nurse. Like a janitor and some doctors. I hear their voices in a distant hallway. I smell more bleach. A whiff of latex, and a trace of coffee. And then, in the last room, a faint scent of vanilla.
I stop at the open door and lean against the frame.
Carine sits in a chair at the far end of the room, a book on her knees. Her hair is loose around her shoulders in a messy blond tangle, a few strands falling into her eyes. She's in a pair of maroon scrubs, her usual white coat draped over the back of her chair. A cup of coffee sits untouched on the table beside her, a pen and clipboard just beyond that. I can feel her focus like a lighthouse, illuminating a narrow stretch of space.
She sees my face, and for the first time in decades, she looks startled. "Edythe," Carine says, voice low. "What happened?"
She sets the book on the table and stands, moving towards me. Her expression shifts, concern overtaking her features.
I can't form words. I open my mouth, and the memory of the boy's scent drowns my throat.
She sees it in me. "Come here," she says, and I let her guide me into a chair.
"I—" I say, and then stop. My hands are shaking, and I fold them into fists.
She presses a hand to my forehead, as though checking for fever, and I sigh at the contact.
I look up at her, and the reality of what has happened settles in like a storm. "I couldn't stop myself," I whisper, and the words burn.
She frowns, and then kneels in front of me, hands on my knees. "Is someone hurt?"
"No," I say quickly. Too quickly. "Not yet."
Her eyes sharpen. "Where are the others?"
"At school."
"And you're… not?"
"I have to leave."
She's silent for a moment. Processing. Waiting. She never presses. That's part of what makes her so infuriatingly good at what she does.
"I need your car," I say. My voice is flat, controlled. It's the voice of someone planning a crime. Or fleeing one.
She takes a slow breath. "This is serious, isn't it?" Her tone is gentle. It's the one she uses on the dying, on the people she can't save. The people she has to comfort on the way out. It stings.
And I can feel the love in her, even now, when I'm an inch away from ruining everything. She doesn't need to hear the details. She doesn't need to know my sins or witness my shame. She just sees the crisis, sees the fault lines in my expression, and she wants to help. I can see it in her face. In the angle of her eyebrows. In the hands that are holding mine, steady and strong, like an anchor in a storm.
I feel her love. I feel her trust. I feel the weight of it on me, pressing down, relentless.
And I wish I could still weep. Because that love is too much. That trust is a burden I can no longer bear. I don't deserve it. I am not her daughter. I am not her child. I am not the girl she thinks she saved.
I am a monster. And that boy's blood is going to be on my hands.
Carine simply nods without asking any further questions. She doesn't scold nor lecture. She just reaches into her pocket and places her car keys in my hand, her palm pressed against my knuckles. She squeezes once.
I wish I was brave enough to embrace her. I wish I could tell her how much I love her. How grateful I am to have been loved by her. I wish I could thank her for all she's done for me. For being the mother I didn't deserve. For being a woman worth admiring. A creature worth loving.
But I am not.
He knows.
I have to leave.
I stand, and Carine steps back, hands falling to her sides. She watches me go, and her eyes are sad, but not frightened. Not horrified. Just concerned.
"Edythe," she says suddenly, and I stop, my back to her. "Be safe," she says, and then, "I love you."
I can't turn around. I can't look at her. It hurts too much. "I love you too," I whisper, and then walk out the door.
Carine's Mercedes is a silver blur across the highway, tearing through the gray haze at a speed no human driver would attempt. The trees smear into green streaks. The highway winds like a ribbon through mountains I don't see. Rain taps against the windshield, too delicate for the violence in my mind. No radio. No distractions. Just the rain, the engine, the road, and my thoughts.
The road is endless. There's no one else in sight. Just me and the asphalt and the sky. It's empty and bleak and perfect. No one to hurt. No one to tempt.
Somewhere around the Canadian border, I start to breathe again. Somewhere in the snow and silence, the memory returns.
He knows.
But he doesn't know what to do. I read his thoughts. He was so stunned, so lost, so utterly terrified that the fear drowned out the rest of his mind. He couldn't think. Could barely breathe. He had no plan. He had nothing. Just panic and the overwhelming urge to run, to flee, to find some kind of escape from the truth that had just been laid before him.
My foot eases off the gas, if only to keep from tearing a groove into the earth. I can feel myself pushing the car harder than it was built for. Carine's Mercedes is fast, but it's not made for this.
And then I see it—A little orange light on the dash, blinking silently. Fuel Low.
I don't curse. I just stare at the light like it's personally betrayed me. Of course. Of course I didn't check. I was in too much of a hurry to notice that I was operating on fumes—figuratively and literally. I hadn't stopped to consider what I was doing. Where I was going. If there was a point to this. I had just run.
I scan the horizon, looking for a gas station. Nothing but trees and road for miles.
The needle on the dash creeps slowly towards E.
Somewhere just past Vancouver, I find an overlook. The road curves along the edge of a cliff, and the land beyond drops off into the ocean. It's a jagged, rocky drop, all black rock and white foam, waves crashing against the cliff face. The water stretches out for miles. It's dark and grey, a mirror to the sky above.
I pull into the overlook, and turn the key. The engine dies, and I'm left with the silence of the night. The sound of the ocean, the wind in the trees, the rain against the roof. The sound of nothing. It's peaceful. It's lonely.
I sit there for a long moment, staring at the horizon, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof of the car. It's steady and relentless, an endless beat against the metal.
He knows.
...I should feed. Even as I think this, I know that no wildlife will ever be able to compare. I could drain a thousand animals, and it wouldn't be enough. Not now. I can still taste Beau Swan's scent on the back of my tongue, a phantom flavor, a haunting echo.
I swallow hard. I try to shake the taste, the smell, the need.
It's no use. The scent is a part of me now, etched into my bones, a fire in my veins. I will never forget it. I will never be rid of it.
Still, I step out into the cold. The wind bites. The rain soaks into my hair. My boots sink slightly into the pine-needled ground. I stand there for a moment, still and silent, letting the world wash over me. The noise, the scent, the absence of him.
Then I close my eyes, and I breathe.
The forest breathes. It lives. Small things shuffle under leaves. Something hops. Something scurries. Far off, a heartbeat. Strong, four-legged, grazing. Elk.
It will have to do.
The world becomes a blur again, but this time there is purpose behind the speed. I skirt a ravine, leap a creek, weave between trees like water down a mountainside. I'm not careful. I don't need to be. There are no humans here. Nothing with a name. The rain is a haze around me, the wind an echo. The sound of life is an orchestra in the dark, a symphony of breath and blood and beating hearts.
I spot them after two kilometers—a herd of six, maybe seven. A few juveniles, one older male, antlers like branches turned to bone. They haven't seen me—They can't.
My body acts on instinct. It knows the shape of this hunger. I've trained it, refined it, but I can't erase it.
I go for the male. I always do.
He's strong, fast, powerful, even. It makes the kill feel more honest.
I launch from the brush and bring him down in one motion. My hand on his throat. My knee against his ribs. I feel the snap of cartilage. His muscles spasm. He bleats—a desperate, panicked sound—and I silence him with a finger punching into the base of his skull.
Then I feed.
The blood is warm, not hot. Not human. Not his.
But it helps, some.
It slides down my throat like liquid mercy, numbing the fire, cooling the rage. It doesn't taste like victory. It doesn't taste like guilt, either. It just tastes like survival.
I drink until the burn recedes, until I no longer feel like a live wire sparking at both ends. I drink until I remember who I am. Or who I pretend to be.
And then I let go. The elk falls to the earth, bloodless and weightless in my arms. I lay him down gently. I always do.
A funeral without words.
I stand in the stillness afterward, the metallic tang still clinging to my lips. I feel full. Not satisfied. Just… full. The way you do when you've taken exactly what you needed and not one drop more. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, then stare down at the corpse.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
He doesn't answer.
They never do.
I walk back slowly, letting the silence soak into my bones, and the cold settles in again. The blood has taken the edge off, but not the memory. Not the scent.
Beau Swan is still in my head.
Even now, even here, hundreds of miles away from him, body warm with the blood of a creature he'll never know existed, mind clear again after hours of blind panic—he's still there. Not just his scent, though I swear I can still feel it like smoke curling through my sinuses. No, worse than that. His voice. His thoughts.
That voice in his mind, manic and bright and unfiltered, echoing like a song you didn't mean to learn by heart.
I close my eyes and exhale through my nose, sharp and slow.
And I walk.
My boots sink into the mulch, the ground soft and springy from rain. The sky is dark—the sun having set hours ago—but the clouds have parted, revealing a canopy of stars above me. It's a clear night, despite the storm that raged earlier, and the air feels crisp and clean.
I don't know where I'm going. Not yet. Just away.
But after a while, the terrain shifts. The trees thin, and the slope bends downward into a manmade clearing—one of those old, decaying logging sites half-swallowed by forest. There's a rusting steel water tank near the tree line, its legs crooked, its surface streaked with rain and moss and time. A broken path of tire ruts snakes through gravel and brush.
And beside the tank, half-collapsed and choked with ivy, a piece of corrugated steel leans against a rock—warped, slick, and just reflective enough.
I catch sight of movement and freeze. A face stares back at me. It takes half a second for me to register that it's my own.
Even after all this time, sometimes the sight of myself still feels foreign. Like catching a stranger in a mirror and realizing too late you're alone in the room.
I step closer.
The rain has cleared a sheet of the grime, enough to show my reflection in smeared relief—like a half-finished painting, the ghost of a face. My skin is whiter than the snow around me, my eyes dark, rimmed with copper from the blood. I look like something painted in ashes.
But it's the hair that catches my attention. Auburn. Red-gold in the wet light. Copper. Flame. His voice echoes, clear and sudden, like a bell rung inside my skull.
"Double no soul."
A breath escapes me. Almost a laugh. I don't mean for it to. It just bubbles up, sharp and quiet and shocked from my chest.
Had he really thought that?
He had.
I know he had, because I had felt it. That exact phrase, hurled toward the heavens in a fit of desperation and panic, like he was trying to exorcise the terror by being cleverer than it.
A vampire and a redhead. Double no soul. And he'd compared himself to a crackpipe.
I stare at my reflection, lips parting just slightly.
My hair is slicked against my cheeks now, rain-weighed and tangled. And yes—still red. Still proof, apparently, that I have committed multiple metaphysical infractions.
I don't know what to do with that.
So I laugh.
It's small, at first, a quiet, incredulous huff. Then it grows, expanding in my lungs like a balloon, until I'm laughing so hard I have to sit down, my back sliding down the side of the steel tank, knees curling up to my chest. I laugh and laugh until I can't breathe, until I'm choking on my own mirth.
I don't know why it's so funny. I don't know why I'm laughing. I should be horrified. I should be repulsed.
But instead I'm sitting on the floor of an old logging site, laughing so hard my sides hurt.
When the fit finally subsides, I'm left with my forehead resting on my knees, my hair dripping onto the damp earth beneath me. I lift my head, looking out across the clearing. The stars are brighter now, the moon rising over the distant peaks. It's a beautiful night.
"...Zero minus zero is still zero, idiot," I murmur.
And then I laugh again.
This time it's softer, quieter. More controlled. And I realize, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I'm not just laughing at the boy. I'm laughing at myself. At this absurd situation. At the sheer idiocy of it. At the fact that I'm here, in this godforsaken place, on a rainy night in the middle of nowhere, laughing at myself and my ridiculous predicament.
At the fact that my hair, of all things, is what broke me.
I press my hands against my face, trying to stifle the laughter, but it doesn't work. It just keeps coming. It's a release. A relief. A way to purge the madness from my veins. To bleed the fear and horror and anger and shame from my bones.
I laugh until there's nothing left.
I don't know how long I sit there, listening to the rain and the wind and the laughter dying in my throat. It feels like hours, but it could be minutes. Eventually, my breathing steadies, the manic energy fades, and I'm left with only the hollow ache of an empty stomach and a pounding headache.
I close my eyes, letting my head rest against the tank. I feel drained, but somehow lighter, too. Like I've shed a weight I didn't know I was carrying.
And that's when the realization finally hits me, as I'm laughing myself silly in a forest—He knows.
Not "has made an educated guess." Not "suspects." Not "theorizes." Knows.
The clarity of it lands with the force of a falling tree—slow and creaking, then all at once. And I... I just let it happen.
I press a hand to my chest like I can hold the thought back, as if maybe I can trap it between my ribs before it gets too loud. But it's already loose. It's already everywhere.
He knows.
From the moment he laid eyes on me, he knew.
I remember that look in his eyes—the way he froze, the way he tracked me, the complete lack of confusion. He knew the moment he saw me. Not after I flinched. Not after I recoiled. Not when I turned away or hissed or radiated seven decades' worth of hunger.
Just… alarm. Recognition. Like seeing a familiar warning sign in a foreign country. Like, Oh. That. Here.
He wasn't working toward an answer. He started with it. The words weren't shaped by surprise. They were shaped by confirmation. That voice—God, that voice—wasn't saying "I think she might be a vampire."
It was saying "Of course she's a vampire."
He walked into a classroom, saw a girl with strange eyes and paper-white skin and inhuman stillness, and thought: "Yup. There's one."
No hesitation. No denial. No grasping for mundane explanations. And that changes everything. Because if he knows what I am, then he knows what we are.
I shoot upright, knees scraping across gravel, palms sinking into the cold mud. I stare out across the clearing, but I don't see it. I don't see the moonlight or the stars or the mist curling like breath across the ground.
All I see is the face of a boy who looked me in the eye and thought "Please don't kill me for smelling delicious to you."
And suddenly I can't breathe.
Because this isn't a joke anymore. This is exposure.
He knows. And if he knows, he could tell others. He might already have. He could write it down. Post it. Say it aloud in the wrong room at the wrong time. He could ruin everything.
And that's my fault.
It's my responsibility.
That's what it means to be the first to notice. The first to sense danger. The one closest to the breach. The scout at the edge of the line.
I am the warning bell. And I haven't rung—I've run.
I ran from school like a coward, like a child, like someone whose first instinct was panic instead of protocol. And now, sitting in the wreckage of that decision, I realize I've done the one thing I've sworn never to do.
I've put them all in danger.
My family.
Archie and Jessamine. Eleanor and Royal. Earnest. Even Carine.
I've left them vulnerable.
Because I was overwhelmed. Because I let myself feel—feel—instead of act. Because I let a boy get inside my head and turn everything upside down.
Because I couldn't think past his scent, and his thoughts, and that ridiculous, irreverent laugh of a mind.
I drag my fingers through my soaked hair—red, damning red—and curse under my breath.
"Idiot!" I hiss. "Stupid, reckless, selfish idiot!"
And I stand.
My bones feel like steel dipped in ice. My joints ache from stillness. My thoughts are sharp again, no longer blunted by laughter or hunger or horror. The clarity is worse in its own way. It feels surgical. Like I've been cracked open and sorted into folders.
For the first time in years, I feel like I might vomit—though there's nothing in me to expel but dread.
Why am I still standing here?
My throat seizes. My limbs go rigid. The quiet around me collapses into a single, sharp syllable: Run.
I run back to the overlook. I run through the rain and the mud and the muck, the wind at my back, the scent of the forest in my nose. I run until my legs ache and I'm standing beside the Mercedes, my hands gripping the hood, my body bent forward.
I fumble the door open, and I'm already moving again. Already starting the engine, already shifting into gear, already pulling out of the overlook. I barely register the road, the trees, the dark.
There's no waiting for Archie's visions. No hoping Jessamine can feel out the threat. No telling Carine after the fact.
This is mine. It's been mine since the moment Beau Swan walked into that classroom and looked at me and thought, "Oh. So that's what they look like in real life."
I was too distracted to see it. Too shaken. Too hungry. But I see it now.
I see it.
And worse, he might know more.
Because if he knows what I am—knows it like a fact already lived—then what else does he know? How does he know it? Where did he learn it?
Beau Swan has already had hours to act on his knowledge. He's had time to write things down, to go online, to tell someone. To spread it.
He's had time to ruin us.
I press down on the gas, and the engine growls in response. The speedometer creeps from 90 to 100 to 110, the trees whipping past me in a blur of green and gray. The tires squeal on the wet asphalt, but I don't care. I'm not slowing down.
What if he told his father? What if he told someone else? What if he tells the wrong person?
There are laws. Not human laws. Ours.
If the secret of our kind is compromised, if the truth of our existence is exposed, something much worse than us will come.
They will hunt him, and they will hunt my family as well. They will not make speeches. They will not issue warnings. They will simply arrive. And then there will be silence.
And it will be my fault.
All my fault.Like Award Reply424JurassicCoreMay 19, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks 6: Beau Swan Has A Completely Normal And Non Life Threatening Shopping Experience New View contentJurassicCoreNCAA D1 Hater/Creator of Peak FictionMay 22, 2025NewAdd bookmark#3406
Beau Swan Has A Completely Normal And Non Life Threatening Shopping Experience
It wasn't raining yet when I left for school. Just the usual Olympic Peninsula gloom—a dome of gray clouds hanging overhead like the whole sky had called in sick. It was the kind of morning that would've been perfect for sleeping in, but school didn't care about my need for coziness. It cared only for academic progress and my tax dollars.
So, with much reluctance, I got dressed, had breakfast, climbed into my truck, turned the key, and was momentarily startled by the engine roaring to life with the subtlety of a jet turbine. Once again, I mentally apologized to the entire town of Forks for waking up any pets, infants, or unsuspecting elderly with tinnitus.
I pulled into the parking lot with my wheezing vintage tank of a truck and parked in a spot slightly askew from the lines. Not because I was trying to be cool. No, that would imply I had agency. The truck simply did what it wanted and I, like any loyal subject of a four-ton Cold War-era god, accepted its whims.
I shut off the engine and took a breath. I was hoping for a quiet day. Preferably not one that involved being stared at by a celestial murder girl with cheekbones carved by seraphim. And if I was lucky, I wouldn't get hit in the head with a volleyball again. That'd be nice.
The halls still buzzed with the usual "new kid" whispers. I heard my name once or twice—"Beaufort," which immediately raised my blood pressure—but it was way more chill than yesterday. I walked past a cluster of people who barely looked up. Someone nodded at me. One kid gave me a fist bump I didn't know how to respond to, and I'm like 80% sure someone tried to high-five me but got left hanging. Sorry, dude.
I was officially a local. My status was now on par with that of the janitor.
And then, like some kind of social boomerang, McKayla found me. She materialized by my locker, all energy and cheer, the human equivalent of an encouraging sticker. "Beau! Hi!" she said. Her hair, I noticed, was tied back into a braid today, with a few loose strands tucked neatly behind her ear.
"Hey," I said, my mouth still a bit sluggish with sleep. "What's up?"
She gave a little shrug. "Oh, not much. Just wanted to check in. How're you doing after your face-off with the volleyball?"
I touched my forehead. The bruise had faded a little, but not quite. It was still faintly visible. "Oh. Uh, fine, actually. I'm just glad it hit my head and not my jaw. Wouldn't wanna lose my winning smile."
McKayla laughed. "That'd be a real tragedy." She then gestured vaguely down the hallway. "Walk to English with me? I saved you a seat."
"Sure, thanks. Do I get a complimentary welcome packet too, or just the seating privileges?"
She grinned. "Depends. Do you want a map of the school drawn in glitter gel pen?"
"...Honestly, uh, yeah, I kinda do now."
True to her word, McKayla had claimed a spot for me by draping her hoodie over one of the chairs. Jeremy gave me a little nod from two rows ahead. Erica, seated diagonally, gave a tiny wave. And also glared at me. Simultaneously. I wasn't quite sure how she did that.
I sat down, nodded politely at Erica's glare, and made a mental note to stay out of whatever emotional minefield I'd wandered into.
Between classes, McKayla stuck to me like a helpful satellite, guiding me from one hallway to the next like she was on a mission. Erica's passive-aggressive death stares followed us most of the way, but I pretended not to notice. Some wars just weren't mine to fight.
Lunch rolled around faster than expected, and this time I didn't even get lost. McKayla intercepted me just outside the cafeteria and steered me to her table like she'd planned it out ahead of time. I sat with her, Jeremy, Allen, and a handful of other students, most of whom seemed vaguely amused by my presence but not hostile, which was honestly a solid upgrade from the previous day's spooky-ass vampire shenanigans.
Speaking of which; I didn't see Edith Cullen.
Not in the cafeteria. Not in the halls. Not through any window, lurking in the trees like a beautiful, malevolent forest spirit. Just three of her siblings, all seated at the usual vampire table, looking like a catalog photoshoot that had lost the will to live. The guy with the buzzcut wasn't around.
My heart practically sang. It didn't matter why she was out—plague, famine, full moon, black Sabbath—just that she was. And that was incredible. I could breathe. I could eat. I could make bad puns and drink my chocolate milk without worrying that the girl across the room was plotting to bite me and then file a restraining order against me.
So I laughed at a couple jokes, contributed a semi-decent anecdote about my last day in Phoenix—which involved a scorpion and a very unfortunate pair of socks—and even got Jeremy to crack up when I pointed out that our school mascot, a spartan, looked more like he was preparing for a night in Vegas than for war.
I still caught myself looking for Edith once or twice. A nervous tick. But every time I remembered she wasn't here, I felt that tension ease out of my shoulders, just a little bit more.
Biology was next, and I walked there without hesitation for once. No dread, no sense of imminent doom, just… class. I sat at my desk alone. McKayla walked with me again, chatting about an upcoming beach trip she was planning with some of the others.
She lingered near my seat until the bell rang, then gave me a quick smile and a, "Talk later, okay?" before heading to her own desk.
I watched her go, then looked down at my desk.
No vampire, no murder-fucky stares. It was honestly kind of boring. But I'll take boring over emotionally traumatizing any day of the week.
Thriftway was one of the grocery stores of all time.
Nothing really to write home about. It was just... a grocery store. You've been to one, you've been to them all—linoleum floors that had seen better decades, flickering fluorescent lights, and that weirdly comforting smell of onions, plastic wrap, and floor wax. There was a bakery. There was a deli. There was a produce aisle where the apples all had that oddly uniform waxy sheen that made you wonder if they were grown or sculpted. It was aggressively normal. But compared to Dad's pantry of sodium, despair, and four-year-old oatmeal packets, it was an oasis.
The only notable thing was that there were a shit ton of those weird old-fashioned cash registers. You know, the kind with the big buttons that go "ka-ching!"
Last night, I'd discovered that Dad's idea of having a stocked kitchen was to stack TV dinners in the fridge, and cans of soup, ramen, and three boxes of saltine crackers in the pantry. It had been like a culinary time capsule from a divorced man's bunker.
...No, scratch that—It quite literally had been a divorced man's bunker. So I'd made it my mission to hit up the grocery store after school and get some shopping done. Gotta restock the pantry before the apocalypse. Or at least, before Thursday. Because I'll be fucked if I let myself eat another TV dinner this week.
I pushed a cart through the aisles, humming along to the tune of the Muzak as I tossed stuff into the basket: Broccoli, rice, chicken breast, whole-grain bread, peanut butter, potatoes, and some cuts of meat. Because, yes, I was totally just gonna make bachelor-pad food. But, like, bachelor-pad food for bachelors who actually give a shit.
I nearly fell to my knees in relief when I passed by the coffee aisle and discovered that they carried Café Bustelo, even all the way out in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest. I grabbed a few bags of the good shit and kept going. We are so back.
I turned the corner toward the baking aisle, still smiling like an idiot, when I almost crashed into someone else's cart. I looked up, already halfway to apologizing.
And then I froze, almost considered screaming, then bit down on the inside of my cheek to stop myself. Because the guy standing in front of me, with a cart full of vegetables, was none other than the buzzcut-wearing vampire I'd seen in the cafeteria: Damon.
...Uh. Wait, no. Archie.
...Royal?
Ed... No, wait, Edward was a girl now. Jeez, what was this dude's name again?
I stared at the guy for a second. He stared back. Then, after a moment, he blinked and smiled. Not one of those mysterious vampire smirks I was expecting, and not a smolder either. Just a regular, bright, open smile. "Oh hey," he said. "You're Beau, right?"
I nodded. Cautiously. "Uh, yeah. Wassup, man." And then, I added, "Sorry for almost T-boning you with the cart. I wasn't planning on doing some vehicular manslaughter today. Y'know how it is."
He laughed. "No worries," he said. "I wasn't really looking where I was going, either."
I nodded slowly, trying to figure out what the deal was here. Why was he so chill? Was he just luring me into a false sense of security before he pounced?
I eyed him, looking him up and down. He was shorter than Manbun, but still pretty tall. Lean. His features were all sharp angles and smooth, pale planes. And, yeah, I couldn't really deny that, like the rest of this family, he was one hot dude. Like, if you squinted and ignored the vampirism, he was basically a marble statue carved by a horny Michelangelo—One of those sculptures that made art historians say things like "dynamic tension" or "divine proportion" while ignoring the fact that the guy's abs were obviously made with juice.
But instead of lunging at my jugular or telling me my blood had a full-bodied mouthfeel, he just… stood there. Smiling. Like a normal person. A very weirdly pale person. I waited for something else. A twitch. A slip-up. A flash of fang. But nothing happened. He just kept standing there. Casually. Holding a basket of kale like he didn't have the ability to snap my spine with one hand.
"So…" he said. "How's Forks been treating you so far?"
I shrugged. "It's fine, I guess. It's been a bit of a, uh, learning curve. Getting used to the weather and everything. But I'm getting the hang of it. Sort of."
I started breathing again—slowly. Carefully. One breath at a time, like I was defusing a bomb.
This didn't seem like the preamble to an attack. Because, what was he gonna do? Bite my neck in the middle of the supermarket, surrounded by a bajillion potential witnesses? Nah. No shot. Even murder cults have standards. I don't think aisle six by the canned chickpeas is their preferred kill zone.
And that's when the tiniest flicker of logic poked its head out from the mental fog and raised one trembling hand like a kid in the back of the classroom.
Hey, said the logical part of my brain. Just a thought here. But didn't you already read the book once?
I blinked.
Right? Like, you kinda know how this story goes.
My brain was right. The Cullens were so-called "vegans" or pacifists, or something. Edward—Edith—whatever—didn't kill Bella. Ever. Not in school. Not outside of school. Not in supermarkets or on moonlit walks or even in the goddamn ballet studio where people usually do get murdered. Edward got over his murder-fuck impulse almost immediately, and Bella made it to the end of the book. Like… multiple books. That was kind of her whole thing.
And I hadn't really done anything that might change that sequence of events. Bella got through this, so I should, too. Specially if I steer clear of these guys.
Strangely, I felt my heartbeat start to slow down from its initial spike. Not a lot, and certainly not enough to call it peace. But that pulse-pounding, fight-or-flight drumline in my chest from "Imminent death" to "mild tax anxiety." Yeah. I think I might be okay. I let out the tiniest breath, just a little exhale through my nose like a pressure valve had cracked open.
...But fuck, dude. I need to get that murder-boner phrase out of my head.
"That's good," he replied. "I remember moving here was a big adjustment for us, too, but it all worked out." He looked at me, then at my cart. "Doing some grocery shopping?"
"No. I'm actually selling these on the side of the road later. Gotta pay the bills somehow. It's a hustle."
He blinked, then laughed, full of genuine humor. "Oh, wow, okay. That's a bold strategy." Then he added, "I like the truck, by the way," he said. "I heard it before I saw it. Sounds like a monster."
"Oh. Yeah. It's... definitely got character," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "Drives like a tank. Turns like a tank. Parks like a drunk cow. But it's an honest machine."
He chuckled. "Better than my first car. I had this ugly little hatchback that sounded like it was powered by chainsaws."
I blinked. That was… weirdly human of him to say.
We stood there for a second longer, awkwardly united in the sacred ritual of Two Dudes Who Accidentally Made Eye Contact in Public. I realized I should probably say something else before it got weird. Like, weirder than casually running into a fucking vampire going his grocery shopping.
"So… uh. You here doing the family grocery run?" I asked. "Big fan of leafy greens?"
"Not exactly," he said casually, motioning toward the cart. "It's for some friends of ours. Special diet."
Neat. That sounded like a subject I should steer the hell away from immediately. I didn't die. I made small talk with the guy. That was practically a diplomatic victory. So, I just gave him a noncommittal "Hm," and moved to walk around him. "Well, I'll let you get to it. Nice talking to you... Damon?"
He smiled and shook his head, all polite. "It's Archie, actually."
Fuck.Last edited: May 22, 2025Like Award Reply364JurassicCoreMay 22, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks 7: Beau Swan Loves His Parents Very, Very Much New View contentJurassicCoreNCAA D1 Hater/Creator of Peak FictionMay 22, 2025NewAdd bookmark#406Behold, an offering.
As previously stated, there won't be any updates until next week.
7
Beau Swan Loves His Parents Very, Very Much
By the time I got home, the sun was already thinking about quitting for the day, and the clouds were getting ready to do their evening mist performance. I parked my truck, grabbed my groceries, and made my way up to the front door, trying to ignore the creaking floorboards and the chill that lingered in the hall. Dad was still at work, so I was left with the usual soundtrack of an empty house—quiet settling, pipes groaning, and the occasional thump from upstairs that I was pretty sure was just a raccoon and not a poltergeist.
Dinner tonight was white rice, broccoli, and chicken breast. But not some lame-ass boiled chicken breast. I hit that sucker with some olive oil, lemon, oregano, basil, and pepper, then pan-fried it. Again—bachelor food by and for bachelors who give a shit. No more TV dinners in the Swan household.
Goddamn, I was domestic as hell.
I found myself drumming my fingers on the countertop as I cooked, tapping my feet, and even miming out like I was playing an air guitar. Nothing special at first, just a little rhythm in my chest. Something bluesy. Before I knew it, I was singing along, too.
"...And the black smoke rises... from the fires, we've been told. It's the new age crisis... And we will stand up in the cold."
"That Zeppelin?"
I damn near dropped the spoon I was using to stir the rice. Dad stood leaning against the door frame, hands in his pockets, brows raised. Jesus—when did he get home?
I cleared my throat. "Oh. Uh. What?"
"That song." He gestured vaguely toward me. "It sounds like Led Zeppelin. I didn't know you liked that stuff."
"Oh. Uh, yeah," I said. "Yeah, I guess I do. I mean, it's not Zeppelin, actually. It's Black Smoke Rising. Y'know, by Greta Van Fleet."
Dad gave me a look like I told him I was listening to whale mating calls. "...Sorry, who?"
I shuffled in place, feeling awkward now. "Um, it's a new-ish band. W-well, you wouldn't have heard of them. They're kinda underground."
…And haven't been formed yet. And are currently all in elementary school.
Jesus, did I just do the musical equivalent of "I totally have a girlfriend, but you wouldn't know her because she lives in Canada"?
Dad nodded, looking a little bit wistful. "Ah. Shame. Sounded good, though." He walked in, setting his keys down on the table. "I'm glad you're into the classics. You take after me that way. Renee's not big on rock."
"Yeah," I said, trying to keep my tone light. But something about the way he said her name—Renee—made the air feel just a bit heavier. Like someone cracked a window in a warm room and let in a little cold. "So. How was work?"
"Same as always. Some guy lost his wallet in the woods. Another swore he saw Bigfoot. Normal stuff."
"Nice. Bigfoot's got taste."
Dad walked over, peered into the pans. He leaned in a little, squinting at the chicken like he didn't quite trust how good it looked. "You didn't have to cook dinner, y'know. I could've brought something back from the diner. Or we could've ordered out."
"I wanted to," I said. "I needed a change from the frozen meals. Besides, when's the last time you had a vegetable that didn't come in a vacuum-sealed bag?"
He hesitated.
"That wasn't a potato."
"…Is a french fry a vegetable?"
"Jesus Christ, dude," I said, shaking my head. "Level with me here, Dad—How many hours do you work a week, anyway?"
He paused, then shrugged. "I've never really done the math. I work ten hours, six days, so... Averages out to forty, I think?"
"Right. So if you're... Wait, what?" I stopped and did the math in my head. Six days, forty hours... "Wait... that math ain't mathing. Six days? What the hell, you only get the one day off?"
Dad cocked a brow at my strange turn of phrase—whoops again—but didn't call me out on it. Instead, he shook his head. "No, no," Dad said. "I do six days straight, then get four off. Then another six, and four, and so on."
"Oh. Huh. That's actually… not terrible."
"Better than it used to be," he said with a shrug. "Back when I was a patrolman, there were weeks I barely got home."
I glanced over at the fridge, which still looked like it was staging a protest against nutritional value. "And when you did get home, you celebrated with some good old Hungry-Man and a saltine chaser."
Dad laughed. "What can I say? I've got a refined palate."
"Uh-huh." I walked back to the stove, gave the rice a final stir, and dropped the heat down to low. "No offense to your refined palate, but the kitchen's giving off serious 'apocalypse prepper forgot to prep' energy. And my point stands, Dad. You're pulling ten hour days dealing with... whatever it is people get up to out here."
"Usually lost hikers," he said. "Sometimes drunks. A few weirdos. The occasional teenager doing something stupid."
"See, that's what I'm saying. Meanwhile, I'm in school for just about seven hours on the daily. This is light work. So just kick off your boots, hang up your gun, and sit yourself down, Chief Swan. Dinner's on me."
He sighed, but there was a tiny twitch of amusement at the edge of his 'stache. "If you say so, Beau. You sure you don't need help?"
"Sure I'm sure. Relax. Go watch the news, or some old people stuff."
"Hey, hey," he said, giving me a faux-glare. "I'm in the prime of my life, smart mouth."
"Do one push up."
"Do your homework."
Fuck. Low blow. But also... valid. I did, in fact, have homework that I absolutely wasn't procrastinating on.
"Fine. Let's meet in the middle. You're a spring chicken and I'm a diligent student."
"Deal." Dad walked over and gave my shoulder a pat. "Don't burn yourself. Or the house. Or anything else."
"Only if you promise not to do any of that stuff, either." He laughed, shook his head, and headed back toward the living room. A moment later, the TV clicked on.
I stirred the rice again, mostly to have something to do with my hands. My brain, meanwhile, was doing that thing where it started to itch. Not literally. Just that weird, low-grade buzz in the back of your skull that says Hey, you forgot something, Einstein.
I glanced over at Dad. He'd already settled into his chair, cracking open his beer and reaching for the remote. The TV flicked on. Something about the Seahawks.
The feeling didn't go away.
I leaned against the counter. Drummed my fingers.
What was it? What was I forgetting? Something school-related? No. We already established that homework was a distant concern. And I didn't have any tests coming up. Not tomorrow. So...
Then I saw it. The picture frame on top of the TV. Me as a baby, Dad, and Mom.
Mom.
As in, my Mom who's currently in Florida with my stepdad. My Mom, who'd asked me to email her and let her know that I was okay, and that I liked it here in Forks. My Mom, who was probably wondering if her son had died in a tragic car accident because he didn't bother to check in.
Naturally, that was when the phone rang.
Oh fuck.
Dad glanced over at me. I stared back at him, trying to keep my expression as flat and casual as possible. Dad shrugged, and then got up. "I got it," he said, and then went over to the phone.
I didn't say anything. Just tried to act normal. Which, in retrospect, meant that I was standing perfectly still and staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes. But he didn't notice, thankfully, because he picked up the phone, brought it up to his ear, and said, "Swan residence, this is Charlie."
There was a pause as the person on the other end said something. I was holding my breath, and sweating a little, because I just knew it was Mom. It was definitely her. Calling Dad to ask if I'd drowned in a puddle or gotten lost in the woods, or whatever else happens out here in the Pacific Northwest.
"Hi, Renee. Uh. Sure. Yeah. He's here. One second." Then Dad turned to me, and held the phone out. "It's for you," he said, expression somewhat uncomfortable. "It's, uh, your mom."
Fuuuck.
I wiped my hands on the dish towel and reached for the landline—an actual honest-to-God landline, beige and plastic and tangled up in its own cord like it was ashamed of itself. I hesitated for a moment. "...What if you told her I ran away to Canada?"
"...Beau."
"...Right. Yeah. Okay. Cool, cool, cool. I'll take the call." I picked the phone up, brought it up to my ear, and said, "Yellow?"
"Beaufort."
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, she used my full name, I'm so cooked.
"Heeey, Mom," I said, hoping that the fear didn't carry in my voice. "What's up?"
I've always had a pretty good relationship with my Mom. She's kind, easygoing, and supportive. She loves to talk, loves to listen, loves to keep in touch. She's also never really been the type to impose rules or restrictions or anything like that. She had asked one thing of me before I got on the plane. One single, solitary thing.
"You were supposed to email me last night!" she said, already in full throttle. "I told you to let me know when you got in. Did the internet in Forks die? Are you surviving on telegrams and pigeons now, or is this just a case of you forgetting to do the one thing I asked? I was sitting by the computer for two hours, refreshing, waiting for something. Anything. I thought something had happened to you on the way to the airport. I thought maybe Charlie forgot to pick you up. Or maybe there was black ice. Or a bear. And don't tell me that's irrational, Beaufort, because I watched that special on PBS about grizzlies and they're a lot more common than you think—"
I pulled the receiver slightly away from my ear and gave Dad a helpless look. He looked back at me, also helpless. We shared that quiet, knowing look of father and son, as we both silently acknowledged that neither of us knew how to stop the ongoing Mom Tornado.
"—and I didn't sleep at all last night, Beau. Not at all. I was up all night, worrying, and—"
I returned to the kitchen and started stirring the rice again one-handed, holding the phone to my ear like a shoulder-mounted burden. I was only catching every third word, but that was okay. Mom didn't really want answers. She wanted to fire off every possible worry at once and pray to the universe that at least one of them didn't come true.
I waited for a lull in the storm and finally said, "Sorry, Mom. I got in safe, I swear. Dad picked me up on time. I meant to email, but I, uh, got distracted..."
Don't say you were shitposting on forums, don't say you were shitposting on forums, don't say you were shitposting on forums—
"...Because I met a girl."
"What?" Dad asked from the living room, looking like I'd just confessed to committing a murder.
"What?" Mom asked, sounding like she'd just found out I did commit a murder.
"...What?" I asked, mostly to myself, because what did I mean 'I met a girl'? Who? The Fairy Godmother? The Queen of England? What girl, asshole?
"I—Beau, you can't just drop that bomb on me and not elaborate!" Mom gasped, her voice now a mix of concern, excitement, and maternal interrogation instincts. "Who is she? What's her name? What does she look like? How old is she? What's her family like? How'd you meet?"
"Uh—"
"Because I saw that Lifetime movie about those high school cults, and I swear to god if you've been dragged into some Forks-based teenage coven—"
"What? Mom, I—"
"—I will drive up there myself, and I will perform an exorcism if I have to—"
"Mom. Chill! Look, her name's... McKayla," I said, quickly throwing a mental dart and landing on McKayla's name. Because she was, y'know, the person who'd practically adopted me yesterday. "She's... cool, I guess. We share a couple of classes, and so she's been showing me around. She, uh, has a cat. And she's from California." ...This is so damn pathetic. I sound like I'm trying to give a PowerPoint presentation with one slide and no bullets.
"...Ah," said Mom, sounding like a pressure valve in her head had finally released. "Ah. Okay. Well. That's... good, right? You made a friend. That's a good thing. I, um, I'm glad you're making friends. Or, well, more than friends, maybe..."
"Yeah, nope, just friends. I'm just out here making friends. Real social butterfly, me," I said. I shot a glance toward the living room, where Dad was now looking at me with a mix of curiosity and relief. I smiled and nodded, then turned back to the kitchen. "But, um, sorry again about the email. I promise I'll do it next time."
"Good," said Mom. Then she sighed, and said in a much softer tone, "I'm... I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have yelled. It's just..." I could almost hear the way she pursed her lips. "I worry about you, Beau. I'm just... not used to not having you here."
I swallowed. Something in my chest felt tight. "I know, Mom. I'm sorry. But I promise I'll email. Or call. Every day." I felt a small smile creep across my face. "And if I stop, it's because the grizzly bears jumped me."
"...You're not funny."
"I am an entire circus."
Mom didn't say anything. I waited a few seconds, then heard her laugh. A quiet little snicker. "Alright, fine. You're a little funny. But call me next time, Beau. I miss you."
"I miss you too, Mom," I said, and found that I really meant it. "Love you."
I said my goodbyes, hung up the phone, and then glanced over at Dad, who was still in the recliner, still looking at me with his curious, fatherly gaze. He cleared his throat, and then asked, "So, uh. You met a girl?"
"I... Yeah. Kinda? It's not, y'know, not like that."
Dad nodded, then kept on as if I hadn't said anything. "McKayla... Must be McKayla Newton?"
I shrugged. "Maybe? I didn't really ask for her family tree," I said, feeling weird about this conversation already. "But, again, it's not what you're thinking."
Dad held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Hey, I wasn't thinking anything," he said. "Just... She's a nice girl. Her family's good people."
"Yeah. Cool. Still not like that, though." Then, searching for something to steer us well away from this conversation, I said, "Not sure why she went for the landline, though. She could have just called my phone."
There was a brief silence.
Dad blinked at me. Slowly. "What phone?"
I blinked back. "...My phone."
Another pause.
"The one that... y'know. I..." My voice trailed off. My mouth was still moving, but my brain had just hit a 404. I reached into my pocket on instinct. Nothing.
I checked the other pocket. Also nothing.
Then I patted my back pocket like an idiot, even though I knew damn well there was nothing there but existential dread.
I stood there for a second, still as a statue. Then I slowly turned and stared at the beige landline I'd just hung up.
Right. No. I don't have a phone. Not a smartphone. Not a flip phone. Not even a goddamn Nokia. There was no cracked screen. No smashed speaker. No Bluetooth. No Reddit. No Discord. No podcasts. No anything.
I was just some medieval serf stuck scrawling his regrets onto bark with a chicken feather and hoping the winds of fate would carry them to the rest of his village. That's it. That was my life.
...Jesus Christ, how had I not clocked this before?
"You, uh... feeling alright?" Dad asked, brow furrowed.
"No, yeah. I'm good. I'm good. Just... Planning. Thinking. Funny question—Is there a Verizon store or something around here?"
He gave me a look that was somewhere between you're not from around here and bless your little heart. "Not unless you drive out to Port Angeles."
I felt my stomach drop. "O-oh! P-port Angeles! As in... Port Angeles, Port Angeles. The same Port Angeles that we took an hour to get here from."
"...Yes."
"Uh-huh. So, um. Target?"
His brow creased. "...Target?"
"Guess that's a no, too."
Dad's frown deepened. "What's wrong, son? Need to buy something?"
"Nah. I'm just... trying to get used to the area, y'know? Figure out where everything is." I forced a smile. "Also, I guess the nearest Chipotle's gonna be an hour out, too?"
"Chip-what now?"
"Bless you." Don't crash out. Don't crash out. Don't crash out. "Uh... Best Buy? Costco? Also in Port Angeles?"
Dad nodded, calm as a Hindu cow. "...That's a safe bet, yeah."
"Cool. Cool, cool, cool. No doubt, no doubt, no doubt." I turned and looked at the chicken and rice and broccoli. I looked at the landline. I looked at the ceiling. "So, uh. Man. Boy howdy, we're, uh, pretty remote out here, huh?"
Dad shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose. We're a small town."
"Yeah! Man, gotta love small towns. Love 'em. Just. Love 'em to bits."
I'm cooked. I'm gonna die out here. I could already see it: My poor, sweet dad, was gonna come home one day to find me curled up in the pantry like a raccoon, sobbing over the saltines and begging for a chop cheese.
"Beau?"
"...Yeah, Dad?"
"I think the chicken's burning."Like Award Reply364