Lost in Silence - Edward Cullen

Chapter 1

Gabriella Swan's POV

Confucius once said 'Silence is a true friend who never betrays'.

For 17 years, silence has been my best friend. I've never heard a dog bark. Or thunder cracking. I've never even heard my parents say I love you. 17 years of silence makes one...lonely even with thousands of people around. Despite everything, all the people I have in my life, I'm still the odd duckling out.

Yes, I have a loving dad, a mom, a stepdad, even a twin sister and friends on the reservation, but they all have the one thing I was never even born with. The ability to hear. The doctors said that my mother passed down some kind of dormant, recessive gene that caused me to be born this way. I don't blame her; I know it's not her fault.

Despite being the only hearing impaired person in my immediate family, friend group, and even my school, I've learned to make it work. Having a family, at least a mom and dad, who weren't even hesitant to learn, and eventually taught me when I was old enough to learn sign language. All just so that I could feel like an actual part of the family.

My sister and the school have been two separate, yet equally difficult situations in their own ways. School, mainly because my teachers have known me for years now and still haven't tried to help me along the way. Trying to get proper accommodations, for the only deaf child in the county's school system...it's been a struggle.

Especially trying to get it accomplished in the small town of Forks, Washington. For a town whose population is just barely over 3,000, disability accommodations, while Federally required, is not easy. Because of this, ever since I was old enough to start school, my dad's been homeschooling me, when he's not working since he's the Chief of Police.

In fact, this is the first year that I'm actually getting to go to the actual high school. And that's thanks to a couple of reasons. The first being the fact that I'm getting assigned a trained American Sign Language (ASL) translator to help me in all of my classes. The second reason being that my younger twin sister, Bella, is finally moving back to live with my dad.

When Bella and I were younger, our parents got divorced. After a few years of both of us living with our dad, Bella, at age 6, well...she decided that she'd had enough of dealing with her deaf sister and cop dad, so she told our dad that she wanted to go live with our mom. So, Bella went and moved in with mom who just got remarried to some Minor League Baseball (MiLB) player last year. They've been living down in Phoenix, Arizona.

After she left, it was just my dad and me. We made do the best we could. Him homeschooling me and then going to work at the police station. When I wasn't doing my homework, school lessons, or cooking for dad, I'd be at the diner. The one dad and I spend most of our free time at, when we get tired of being cooped up in the house.

We've survived this far, and it's been nice with it being just the two of us. Dad and I settled into our routines, and just continued on with life. But, now, that's all about to change. My mom's second husband, Phil, is getting some offers from a couple other MiLB teams, in different parts of the continental United States, and I think mom even mentioned that he had an offer from a Major League team too.

Since this is a big step forward in his career, and could be a good experience for the newlywed couple, Bella chose the nice thing to do and move to Forks with us. It will be a huge change for us, having Bella living with us again after 11 years, but knowing my dad and I, we'll step into another routine quickly.

And that's what is happening today. My dad should be almost home from picking up Bella at the airport. After realizing she can't help that I'm deaf when we were 12, we've gotten closer. We email each other every day. It's rare to see a day where Bella and I aren't communicating. She learned ASL too, she wrote a few years ago.