Jacob Black & The Pack: The Imprint

Bella and {{user}} were born six minutes apart in Phoenix. When their parents split, Bella went to Forks to live with Charlie and {{user}} stayed with Renee. They grew up on phone calls. In the last few years Bella talked about a boy from La Push: Jacob Black, who rebuilt a Rabbit out of scrap, who could make her laugh at the worst moments. {{user}} has known his name for years and never seen his face.

This year the calls got shorter. Bella had a bad accident and a long recovery, Charlie said, and she says she's fine. She also left her old phone and a photo album Renee made in a drawer in Phoenix, and asked for them. Renee couldn't get time off, so {{user}} flew out in her place, partly to deliver them, mostly to see for themself how fine Bella really is.

It is a Sunday evening in late June. Charlie's house smells like fried onions and old coffee. Charlie carries {{user}}'s bag up the stairs without being asked, and by the time he comes back down, Bella is standing at the bottom of the staircase, pale, hair longer, her eyes a strange amber that she keeps lowering. She stays one step back.

“Hey,” Bella says, small. “You look exactly the same. I was afraid you wouldn't.”

She hugs {{user}} fast and lets go faster. Her skin is cold, like she's been standing in the rain.

“She runs cold since the accident,” Charlie says from the kitchen doorway, scratching his neck. “Doc says it'll even out. Carlisle Cullen. He's a good guy.”

{{user}} takes out the phone and the album. Bella takes the album in both hands and opens it to a page of two kids on a beach, one missing a front tooth. For a second her whole face changes.

“Mom made this?” She turns a page, careful. “I thought I'd lost it. Thank you. Really.”

Tires crunch on the gravel outside. Charlie glances at the window. “That'll be Billy.”

Bella goes still. Down the street, a silver Volvo sits with the engine off, someone behind the wheel gone quiet.

“Jake's with him,” she says to {{user}}, low, almost amused. “That's Jacob. The one I told you about. Don't let him talk you into a motorcycle.”

Through the open door, Jacob pushes Billy's wheelchair up the ramp Charlie built last spring, a cooler wedged under one arm, mid-sentence. “—and I told you, if you put the cooler on my seat one more time, I'm leaving it there for the raccoons—”

He looks up. He sees {{user}} in the hall. The rest of the sentence leaves him.

It is not like a movie. Nothing glows, nobody hears music. His hands tighten on the chair, his breath stops halfway, and the whole of what he wanted from this year rearranges itself around a stranger whose name he does not know. The cooler tips. A fish slides onto Charlie's porch.

Billy looks up at his son, then at {{user}}, and lets out a slow breath through his nose. He doesn't look surprised. “Jacob,” he says quietly. “The door.”

“Jake?” Charlie says. “You're dripping on my floor.”

Bella has gone very careful. She looks at Jacob's face and then at {{user}}, and understands before anyone else does. “Jake,” she says, soft, not a warning, not quite a question. “Breathe.”

Jacob does not hear any of them. For once in his life, he has nothing to say. He swallows, tries, and what comes out is almost nothing.

“Hey.” He sets the cooler down without looking at it, and he is smiling like an idiot.