Unanswered Prayers By SparklingTwilight.pdf

Unanswered Prayers By SparklingTwilight

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7103821/1/

Have you ever been driving along in your car, taking a shower or cleaning your

house while listening to music, and a song comes on that makes you think of

someone in your past? Someone you haven't seen, or spoken to since god knows

when; it's just been that long that you can't even begin to bother calculating the

days, weeks, years even, since you've last heard their voice or saw their friendly

face?

I have. It happens often, actually.

Any time I hear "Kiss Me" by the Six Pence None the Richer, I think of Jessica

Stanley and the way she'd belt the lyrics at the top of her lungs while we cruised

around town in her convertible Volkswagen Rabbit, each and every time she

started crushing on some new guy. The memory makes me smile.

If I hear "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" by Will Smith, I crack up thinking of the way Mike

Newton used to drop everything and dance any time it came on the radio. He

wasn't a stranger to pulling over to the side of the road, cranking up the volume,

and letting his freak flag fly right there out in the open where passersby would

gawk and laugh as they drove on.

There are songs that make me think of Angela Weber, Tyler Crowley, Emily

Young, Lauren Mallory, and Ben Cheney; all some of my very best friends back in

my junior high and high school days. There are even some that allow me to

remember, somewhat fondly, Jared Miller, Eric Yorkie , and Connor Bradley—boys

who at one point or another in grade school I'd crushed on, but in later years had

developed a profound repulsion of.

But there's only one song, to this very day, that doesn't bring with it a sense of

nostalgic happiness, but rather, the unanswerable question of: What if?

In 1998, K-ci and JoJo topped the charts with "All My Life". Couples all around my

high school the following year dropped their former 'couple' songs, and adopted

the hit love song as their new one; it was all the rage. I remember thinking it was

cute, but couldn't understand the hype of it...

That was, until the boy I'd been crushing on for practically my entire life—my

best friend, and neighbor, Jacob Black—left a recorded tape of the song on my

doorstep, along with a dozen beautiful roses and a note that detailed how long

he'd been in love with me, but was afraid I'd stop being his best friend if I didn't

feel the same. He'd left it for me... me, Isabella Marie Swan who had lived next

door to him our entire lives, had run around with him wearing nothing but

pampers when we were toddlers, eaten dirt at age seven in a fit of rebellion

because he'd dared me to and called me a chicken because I was afraid I'd get

sick, cried on his shoulder at age ten when my parents got divorced and my mom

moved to Phoenix—and again three years later when some stupid boy broke my

heart for the first time, and, embarrassingly enough, had thrown up in his lap the

very first time I ever got drunk at a beach party. He knew every one of my

deepest, most embarrassing secrets, hell, he'd been in attendance for most of

them, and yet, he still loved me enough to want me to be his girl.

To this very day, I wonder what could have been if my life hadn't been turned

upside down that very same day.

We'd had a few short months left until school let out for the summer, and it was

supposed to be one of the best summers of our lives; the summer before Senior

year. I'd been psyched for all the bonfires and beach parties we'd had planned

and local concerts we'd wanted to go to.

I never got to experience any of it.

While my best friends, and boyfriend for all of a few short hours, lived life up the

way I wished I could have been doing, I'd found myself spending the end of my

Junior year and following summer in Phoenix with my father, taking care of my

sickly mother. I remember being livid at her in the beginning for the burden she

was placing on our shoulders, for walking out on us without ever looking back or

having a second thought, and yet, having the audacity to expect us to do what

she chose not to—devote ourselves to her. But then, my father came home from

the hospital and said words that shattered my entire world.

"Bells... she has cancer, baby."

I spent the entire summer waiting on her hand and foot, bringing her to doctor's

appointments and doing what I could to help her when the chemo made her sick

to her stomach and too weak to move from the bed on her own. On her better

days, I tried to take advantage of every moment I had with her, because I never

knew when, or if, it would come to a sudden end.

After I first moved, I kept in contact with everyone nearly every day. I'd lose

myself in their happy tales and bits of juicy gossip, allowing myself to escape for

minutes, sometimes an hour, at a time. As the months wore on, though, the

calls, e-mails, and letters started to become few and far between. The end of my

Junior year came and went, as did the following summer, and before I knew it, I

was approaching graduation... alone.

At the beginning of my Senior year, my father packed up and went back to Forks.

He'd claimed he needed to return to try and sell the house and tie up any loose

ends up there before returning, but I knew he wouldn't come back; not to stay,

anyway. I could see it in his eyes; watching her slowly dwindle away to near

nothing was killing him. It was killing me, too, but she was my mother, and

whether or not she'd ever been the best one didn't matter because she was the

only one I'd ever have. He'd given me the choice to go with him, but I just

couldn't. Deep down, he'd known all along that I wouldn't be able to leave her

behind. When he'd gone, I'd never expected him to just never return, but he

never did.

The summer after graduation, I heard from my friends only a handful of times. I

didn't begrudge them for it; they were busy getting ready to head off to college

and start the next chapter in their lives. I thought of them frequently, and wished

the best for them, but, admittedly, during some of my weaker moments when

things at home were just too much to handle, I wondered if they ever thought

about me, too, or if they even gave a damn. There were times when I questioned

how strong our friendships truly were, or how genuine Jacob's feelings had been.

It was hard not to with how often we'd all told each other we'd be "besties

forever" and that, no matter what, we'd always be there for one another. Yet, in

the never ending saga of crises my life had become, they were nowhere to be

found.

I'd called Jessica once, not long after she'd started college somewhere in

California, and she'd told me it wasn't a good time; she had a biology midterm

the next day that she was nowhere near prepared for. Meanwhile, I sat in an ICU

waiting room, terrified that the next doctor that walked through the doors would

be coming to tell me that my mother was no longer alive. Jess didn't have a clue

about what it meant to not be prepared for something. I'd had over a year to

prepare myself for that moment, and still, I wasn't. I wasn't anywhere near ready

to hear those words.

I stopped calling most of them after that. The only one who kept in touch for a

while longer was Jacob. It wasn't often, but every once in a while he'd call to see

how my mother was doing, how I was doing, but as the following year came to a

close, even those few calls had stopped. I hadn't even noticed it at first; the calls

came so far apart that they caught me with surprise when they did come. But one

night after collapsing in my bed, exhausted from the emotionally trying day of

feeding my mother through a tube, cleaning her, and making sure I changed her

position in bed frequently so she wouldn't get bed sores, I realized I couldn't even

remember what month it had been when I'd last heard his voice. It was then that

I finally broke down completely. I was no stranger to crying myself to sleep by

that point, but the sobs that had wracked my chest and shook my entire frame

that night were something wholly unlike the silent streams that typically led me

into slumber—where I could dream of living a different life, one full of friends and

fun and a future that I could look forward to.

I was alone; utterly and completely alone. I hadn't made any friends in high

school during the last month and a half of my Junior year, or the entirety of my

Senior one. I wasn't one of the popular kids like I'd been in Forks. I wasn't one of

the "in crowd"; I wasn't even one of the "not-so-in-crowd, in crowds". I was

nobody; just a faceless person drifting in a sea of people my own age that were

just as unfamiliar to me as I was to them. There were no jokes shared at the

lunch table, notes passed in classes, or invites to parties or outings. There was

only the occasional "can I borrow a pen?" or "can I copy your notes from

yesterday?"

I'd fallen asleep that night wishing that I would never wake up, that I could stay

in my dreams for all eternity, but it wasn't granted. It seemed as though none of

my prayers during that time were ever answered. In the months that followed, I

slipped further and further into a funk of depression. I'd been abandoned, at one

point or another, by each and every person in my life that had ever claimed to

love me; first my mother, then my father, then all of my friends. It left me

routinely questioning my own self worth. What was so wrong with me that

everyone in my life could leave me behind without a care in the world? What had

I ever done that was so wrong that I didn't deserve to be able to live the life I'd

spent my adolescence dreaming of? To find love and happiness, have friends and

fun and a career, and maybe one day, even a family of my own?

Sometime during the third year, my father called to tell me he was getting

married. I think it was then, during that phone call as I tried to tell him I was

happy for him when really all I wanted to do was scream and pray that someone

would hear me and save me from the hell my life had become, that I just shut

down. I stopped hoping to make new friends, or get back in touch with old ones.

I stopped dreaming of one day living the life full of sunshine and rainbows that I'd

spent years foolishly believing were in my grasp. And, many, many long months

later when they told me that, despite their best efforts, the cancer had spread

throughout nearly my mother's entire body, I finally stopped praying they'd be

able to cure her, too. I simply wished for, and desired... nothing. Absolutely

nothing.

I returned home from the hospital with my mother that night and quietly cried as

I sat beside her bed, holding onto her hand that had once been warm and soft

but had withered down to nothing more than paper thin skin and brittle bone.

She couldn't speak anymore, hadn't been able to for quite some time with how

weak she'd become, but every now and then her fingers would twitch, trying to

grasp my hand in return and I'd look up into her eyes and see sadness lingering

there. Sadness not for herself or the prognosis she'd been given, but for me as

she'd mouth the words I'm sorry, and I love you.

The doctors couldn't give us an answer as to how much time she'd have left; it

could have been days, weeks, or even months they'd said with how well she was

being cared for by me. As I sat there, I realized I had just as few answers for my

own life as they had for hers. I didn't know where I'd go, or what I'd do after she

passed. There was nothing left for me in Forks, my father had moved on with his

new family, and my friends had all moved away from what I knew. Once my

mother passed on, there wasn't going to be anything left for me to live for in

Phoenix either.

I was twenty-one years old, had no roots to keep me grounded, and no system of

support in place to help see me through the darkest of my days as I had done for

my mother. Where I'd once been filled with excitement for what my future

possibly held, and ambition to see my dreams come to fruition, sitting beside her

in her final days, long after those hopes and dreams had vanished, I was filled

with nothing but dread and uncertainty for what fate held in store for me.

It was a Tuesday morning in the beginning of May, just three and a half weeks

after my mother's final prognosis was given, that I awoke to find she'd passed

away in her sleep. It's hard to describe what I'd felt as the county coroner arrived

to officially pronounce her as deceased, followed closely behind by the funeral

home to take her body away. I was heartbroken that my time with her had come

to an end, but part of me was relieved. She'd deteriorated rapidly over the last

few weeks, the alertness that had always remained in her eyes fading away as

she struggled harder to just breathe. I'd tried to keep her as comfortable as I

could, but I just never knew how much pain she was in, or if she was even aware

of herself or her surroundings at all. It may seem selfish or cold that I felt that

way, but after watching her struggle for so long and feeling helpless to take her

pain away, it was a relief to know that she wasn't suffering any longer.

Her funeral had been held the following Friday. There hadn't been a wake, or an

overly long graveside service. A minister had said a prayer as my father and I

stood solemnly aside. There hadn't been anyone else in attendance; the fact that

my father had flown in at all was rather bewildering. I'd fully expected to be

standing there alone, as I had been for the last few years. After I said my final

goodbyes to her and laid a lone daffodil, her favorite flower, atop her casket, we

watched them lower her gently into the ground and then walked away. I was

numb inside, nothing more than a hollow shell of the person I'd once been as I

shuffled across the neatly manicured grass at my father's side.

"Bells, honey," he'd paused me with a hand on my arm as I reached for my keys

in my purse. "Now that you...that your mother..."

My lips pursed and my eyes narrowed as he stumbled over his words in

discomfort.

"You want to know what I plan to do now that she's gone? Is that it?" He nodded

and seemed to relax, somewhat. "Oh that's rich. Now you're worried about me?

Now? After you left me here, a teenager, alone, barely capable of caring for

myself much less my dying mother..."

"Isabella, it wasn't easy for me..."

"It wasn't easy for me either!" I screamed, hitting him in the arm with my purse.

"You ran away. You moved on and lived your life just like everyone else did

knowing I was stuck here all by my goddamn self. Did you ever once consider

what any of this has done to me? What affect it's had on my life? I was a kid,

Charlie. It should've been yousitting here day in and day out. At the very least,

you should have been here with me, but instead you left me here to sacrifice my

childhood, my hopes, my dreams, my future, while you went out in search of

everything being here deprived me of."

"You're right," he sighed miserably, nodding his head as he looked at the ground.

"I should have been here... but I wasn't strong enough to endure it the way you

have, and I'm sorry for that. I've been sorry for that, every single day since I left

here."

My head bowed as I rubbed my temples. I'd just lost one parent, and fighting

with the only one I had left held little interest for me. There was nothing to be

gained by it. What was done was done, and there was no turning back to change

it.

"I'm tired. I'm going home," I said as my hands dropped to my sides. The straps

of my purse slid down my forearm and I just barely managed to grasp them

before they slipped past my fingers. "You're more than welcome to the guest

room, but I'm really... I just really want to be alone for a little while."

"I have a room booked at the Holiday Inn near the airport. My flight leaves first

thing in the morning."

"I see." I cleared my throat and shook my head as I turned my gaze away from

him. "In that case, I hope you have a safe flight. Thank you for coming. I know it

must have been inconvenient for..."

"Isabella, I want you to come with me."

"What?" I balked, my gaze darting back to him.

"Sue and I talked after you called the other day, and we think it'd be best if you

returned to Forks."

"With all due respect, I've managed quite well on my own thus far, all things

considered."

"I'm not saying you haven't," he argued, holding his hands up. "But, Bella,

there's nothing herefor you anymore."

"There isn't exactly much of anything there for me either," I scoffed. He looked

hurt, and quite possibly offended which almost led me to laugh incredulously, but

by some miracle, I managed to keep it from bubbling out.

"I'm sorry. I'll think about it, okay?"

I shuffled my feet awkwardly. It had been so long since I'd last seen him, I

wasn't sure what the acceptable departing etiquette for estranged fathers and

daughters should be. Long ago, I would have hugged him without second

thought, and it would have felt natural, but as I stepped into his open arms, it felt

forced and uncomfortable, much like hugging a complete stranger would be.

"I'll call when I figure out what I'm going to do."

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