Deep in the Woods (A Twilight Imprint Story)

Prologue

~Harper~

As a kid, I used to love visiting my dad Charlie, and the small town of Forks, Washington every summer. My older sister (only by a year and a half) Bella didn't really feel the same. She had always been closer with our mother, but I always bonded more with Dad. Not to mention I much preferred the chilly forests of Washington to the Arizona heat. Eventually she decided to stop making the trip with me every year, and I started staying longer than the one week we usually did.

My first summer in Forks without her I was 12 and she was 13. Before that we had always been close, but this change seemed to drive a wedge in our sisterhood. She had always been kind of shy, so now that she wasn't hanging out with me anymore, she spent most of her time by herself.

So 4 years later, when Bella suggested we go spend some time with Dad while our mom went traveling with her new husband, I was surprised and beyond excited. I hoped it would be the start of our reconnection. And for a while it was. Forks High School was much smaller than our old school in Phoenix, so we saw each other much more often and even got to sit together at lunch. We had the same group of friends. We had family dinners with Dad, most of which Bella and I cooked together. We were bonding again.

But that only lasted a few weeks. Bella had told me about Edward Cullen, the gorgeous, angsty loner boy who had saved her life. I was happy to see she was excited about making friends again, but I didn't realize at the time just how all-encompassing her infatuation would become. Eventually she started to spend all her time with him and his family. I became officially worried when I came home from one of my many solitary nature walks to hear that she had suddenly left for Phoenix after she had a fight with Edward and yelled at Dad. 

After she came to her senses and came back home, I kept trying to connect with her again, but to no avail. Her room being next to mine, I heard Edward sneak into her room just about every night, and he monopolized all her time during the day too. And when Edward suddenly left town and left Bella practically catatonic, I quickly realized she wasn't going to respond to my attempts to comfort her. So I decided her mental and emotional state wasn't my responsibility. What she needed was therapy, but she was too stubborn to agree to that. Dad was so worried about her, and understandably so, that I kind of felt forgotten.

So I spent my time reconnecting with an old childhood friend, Jacob Black. Jake was funny, and a good listener, and he always knew how to cheer me up. He was spontaneous and always up for an adventure. He never pried, even when I knew he could tell there were things I wasn't telling him. He was the first person I came out to. Apparently he had already kind of guessed and was super supportive. He didn't even pull that whole 'you're like one of the guys' bull that I thought he might. He didn't treat me like a lost opportunity or a bro, he treated me like a sister. And his family always made me feel welcome. His dad Billy even let me stay in his sister's room sometimes while she was away at college.

Jake was my best friend. The only problem? I think he had a crush on Bella. I just had to break the news that she was completely and totally emotionally unavailable.