A/N: This story is dedicated to my favorite green M&M girls whose friendship defies the saying 'you can't go home again.' Thank you for the friendship and prereading!

Each chapter will be named after a tv show. If you don't recognize the show's name then what can I say? I'm old.

This story is a Twilight fanfiction, but draws inspiration from the movie 'Adventureland' and possibly a place I frequented as a teenager.

Chapter 1

The Wonder Years

Alice and I walked through the mall waiting out the sun. It had been completely overcast this morning when Alice begged me to come shopping with her for new lingerie to wear tonight as she and Jasper were planning on celebrating their anniversary. Usually Alice only wanted to go to upscale fancy French boutiques in Seattle, but once she realized the sun was starting to peek through the clouds we decided to more or less take cover in the Port Angeles Mall - a place I hadn't stepped foot in for over seven months.

Seven months ago I was changed.

Alice tugged and pulled on me through the mall, up the escalator, past the kiosks of cheap gold jewelry, and into Victoria's Secret.

"Well it's no Ooh La-La Pearle Risqué but I guess for as long as it will stay on tonight it will just have to do," Alice chirped.

"Oh just tell Jasper he has your full permission to rip'em to shreds and not try to salvage any of it." I replied. Alice flitted her eyebrows at me and smirked.

"Since finding Jasper, all of my clothes are disposable…no matter how exquisite, expensive, rare, or in this case," she said as she held up a frilly pair of royal blue panties, "cheap."

I laughed at my feminine and finicky pixie pal. It has been over seven years now of knowing Alice and her expensive taste in everything still hadn't rubbed off on me-except maybe for my car.

Alice filled up her arms with various delicate contraptions in a variety of colors and then turned to me to ask, "So are you buying anything?" She held up a very lacey pair of black panties with a matching garter, suggesting it for me.

I laughed telling her, "I don't think I need anything that special from this store today, unless you see a better-looking version of Jasper seeking me out tonight."

Alice barked back, "Well after that rude comment I wouldn't tell you even if I did!"

I loved taunting Alice and the best ways to do that were to tease her about her man and her visions.

Alice made her purchases and we headed out of the store, but not before I spritzed myself with Rapture perfume from the tester. Alice scrunched up her nose.

"Ewwww! That is in complete clash with your natural freesia and lavender smell, you know. Even if I did see a hot vamp coming for you he'd be really confused by that scent combination. He might just pass you by."

"Oh well," I laughed in spite of myself, "maybe he'll have to put off finding me until next week." I always used to wear this scent before the change. I still loved it. It wasn't sweet or flowery-it was more sensual.

We strolled through the mall and I, as usual, was acutely aware of the couples walking hand in hand, arms wrapped around each other's waists, an arm around the shoulder, or a hand in the other's pocket. I sighed and thought back to the last time I had that. It definitely was not with a hot vamp. Instead it was with Eric Yorkie, just an average sweet, intellectual boy from Forks.

Eric Yorkie and I had dated during college. He was always nice to me in high school but a little competitive academically and socially overshadowed by his more boisterous athletic friends, Mike and Tyler. By coincidence, we ended up going away to the same college and entering its pre-med program. Once we were in college we realized we were on the same academic path and having both graduated in the top 5% of our class we were both expecting to succeed effortlessly…that was until we realized we were surrounded by the top five percent of so many other high schools. Our once competitive nature in high school then became a backdrop for a new relationship of us helping each other study and encouraging each other to succeed in our shared classes. This led to a comfortable dating zone and shared new experiences. He was sweet and gentle with me and not opposed to tender displays of public affection. Our relationship lasted from the middle of our freshman year to the beginning of summer after our sophomore year. At that point, I think we both realized we had gotten through so much together so easily—the transition into college, becoming secure in our classes, and learning about each other's bodies—that it was almost too easy and we weren't growing as individuals.

It was difficult to leave our little bubble of comfort and familiarity, but we both wanted to move on as our sophomore year ended. I think we both had felt like we had so much exposure to new people and new experiences in life that we were ready to go out and explore our new worlds beyond each other. I kind of remember seeing him on campus the following year holding hands with a girl that he had met on the newspaper staff. She was probably a better fit for him than I ever was. We continued to see each other in classes in college, but neither of us went out of our way to match our schedules like we had done the year prior. Sometimes we chatted after class about assignments for the classes we did share or politely asked about each other's parents. We ended things as friends, but for as small a town as Forks is, we only ran into each other once that summer at a party Jessica had. We chatted about our grades and he told me about the internship he was doing up in Seattle over the summer at the…the…damn, I can't remember.

So many of the memories are muddled now. I don't remember all the details. And some things that I do remember from that summer I would rather forget, like the several attempts Jacob Black made at asking me out. Thankfully I was able to use the 'I just broke up with someone and I'm not ready' line in the beginning of the summer. Off and on over the years I would see Jacob only in the summer before I came to live permanently with Charlie. He lived on the reservation but our dads had been friends since I was born. We didn't go to school together but usually caught up each summer. In summers past, we used to pitch a tent in the backyard and hang out smoking clove cigarettes with his two older sisters while our dads sat inside watching whatever baseball game was on the television, oblivious to us. We used to build a fire pit in the backyard and make s'mores. I always enjoyed being outdoors with them and things with Jacob were always very innocent—Jacob and his sisters were like cousins to me. We felt like families who went on vacation together every summer; at least, that is how it felt to me.

That summer though, Jacob was acting different. His sisters had both moved away so it was just him coming around with his dad. He was taller and more muscular but a whole lot of cockiness accompanied his new physique. After one and a half years of dating Eric-a guy who was kind, modest, and determined-I just couldn't deal with the arrogance and immaturity that Jacob suddenly embodied.

I definitely couldn't deal with his visit to me during my first week back in Forks when he leaned in and tried to kiss me. I turned away and again reminded him I had just gotten out of a relationship.

"With who? That pussy Eric? You should have never wasted your time with him to begin with!" Jacob spat at me. "Let me show you a real man."

"Oh let me guess Jacob Black, you finally lost your virginity this year, cut your hair and suddenly you're big man on reservation?" I knew I was hitting below the belt with the addition of the word finally.

Jacob was smug and smirked out his words. "Yeah, a few times actually. The ladies just can't resist this." He ran his hand down his stomach smoothly over his firm abs. "And you won't be able to either. How about if we camp out tonight? We could pitch a tent in Charlie's backyard, just you and me."

Not likely Jay-cob. Six pack or no six pack, he was positively ugly with arrogance and conceit.

Two weeks into that summer I realized I needed to not be around and available for any more of Jacob's "visits with advances" so I decided that for one last summer I would go back to work at Ski & Skies Adventureland . It was going to be my fourth summer working there. It was located just outside Port Angeles. All the kids went there for the amusement park in the summer and for skiing and snowboarding in the winter. My first summer there I was only seventeen. It was the summer after I had come to live with Charlie, and it was almost... magical.

The first friend I had made at Forks High School when I started in March of my junior year was Jessica Stanley. She already worked at the ski lodge area during the winter months on weekends and was signed up to work within the amusement park section for the upcoming summer. She encouraged me to get the job there. I convinced Charlie the pay was going to be well worth it if I worked 5 days a week, telling him weekends were the busiest and mandatory for me to work. Thankfully the job provided me with a paycheck and a social life outside of Forks, and Charlie seemed to ease up on himself that he didn't have to feel guilty about whether or not he was around all the time. With this job, my life and time were thankfully occupied.

Jessica and I didn't always work in the same area of the park, but at least worked the same shift, so we often shared rides to work. That first year I recognized some other kids from Forks that worked there too, but otherwise, my coworkers were a mish-mosh of kids from surrounding towns and neighboring high schools. That proved to be the best part of the whole job-meeting lots of new and different people and seeing them back each summer under an umbrella of a warm reception with underlying excitement about it being summertime and all the possibilities that it invoked. By my now fourth summer, I knew that the second week after the park opened, there would be a kegger party hosted by Andy, one of the supervisors, but more so than that, I knew without a doubt everyone would be there. The kegger parties had an "all are welcome" open invitation. I knew there would be nights when a certain section of the park would stay open just for employees. I knew no matter what day I came to work there would be a bunch of people I would be happy to see there.

Unlike the cliques in high school, there were limited boundaries with the large number of people that worked here over the summer. We were one big welcoming group, happy to be mingling and happy to be reuniting without the restraints of keeping quiet during a professor's lecture or getting homework done. It was the same excited feeling of being away at summer camp as a kid or going off to college, only without the work….okay but yeah we did still have to work. Sure we all had various jobs to do, but we did them with innocent laughs and the excitement of youth that was even evident in the middle-aged teachers, like my high school biology teacher Mr. Banner, who worked there over their summers for extra money.

For as dull a place as Forks was, if working here meant selling hot chocolate, operating the roller coaster, making funnel cakes, or giving out stuffed animals as prizes, then this was a fun, happy place.

I knew that would be my last summer working there, though… I knew I had to start focusing more on my pre-med path for my summers with internships, like Eric was already doing, but I still wanted to go back just that last summer, just to try to recapture the magic of my first summer there when I was seventeen, when everything and everyone was so new to me, when everything was still so exciting and confusing. Just in case….

I sat down on a bench in the mall while Alice looked through the Disney Store twirling and giggling at all the animated figurines. She breezed back to my side and exclaimed, "Don't you just love Disney stuff? What's the name of the prince the Little Mermaid fell in love with?

I rolled my eyes and replied without hesitating, "Eric."

"Oh right just like one Eric Yorkie. What did you see in him again? Ahhh, never mind. I'm just jealous of him because you went off to college and left me here all alone and I missed you horribly! Don't you just love that story, though? How the mermaid is willing to give up her world and her cute little fins to be a human for him?" Alice bubbled over in her words.

"Yeah I do love that story, and I totally would have given up being human if I had fallen desperately in love with a vampire first," I giggled through my reply. "And I missed you while I was away at college too, but lucky for you, now you and the rest of the Cullens are stuck with me. Forever."

Alice delighted in her own pop culture knowledge and asked me things randomly in an attempt to baffle my muddled human memories. She desperately wished she could be an A-list vampire among the B-list actors and comedians that did commentary on MTV's "I love the 90s" shows.

When you can live forever, it's good to have a dream.

She was helping me remember my other life, and in some cases it was almost like I've had to relearn some things. And as for the things that I can sit and reflect on now, a lot of it has to do with Carlisle encouraging me to write in journals. At some point I figure I won't actually know what I remember in my head versus what I can remember from memorizing what I've written down.

But there were certain things I didn't have to try very hard to remember…some things were ingrained in my brain, almost like they were in their very own clear indestructible box, immune to my change-memories of my goodbye to my mom and Phil at our house in Arizona when they left for Florida, memories of Gran's funeral, and my first week in Forks when I moved in with Charlie. Carlisle suggested these events were all linked to very strong feelings and that is why they survived as fiercely as they did. Seemed like a lot of crushing moments full of anguish and despair to me. Weren't these things I would have rather forgotten? Moments of crushing anguish…moments I haven't felt since, not even after waking up and grasping to understand what Carlisle had done to me. And then there were my memories of the first summer I worked at Ski & Skies Adventureland, the good ole SSA. Yep, still crystal clear, razor sharp.

Alice flitted out of the Disney store humming "Part of Your World" as she came and sat down on the bench by me. "Hey do you remember what Scuttle the bird called forks in that movie?"

"No," I replied firmly.

Alice started laughing and barely got it out.

"Dinglehoppers! Wouldn't that have been a more interesting name for our Godforsaken town?" she asked. I giggled in agreement.

A minute or so later two teenage boys approached us, the taller blonde one seeming more forthright than the other. With his grey beater shirt on, his hat on backwards, and his faded denim jeans barely hugging his hip bones and showing way too much of his striped boxers, he opened his mouth and pointed to Alice's Victoria's Secret bags.

"Aww ladies, put on your lingerie for us tonight and we'll show you our secrets."

I rolled my eyes. Alice spun her fingers in the air to wave them off. When hanging out with Alice before I was changed, guys approached her often in these nonschool, crowded public environments. She usually shut them down before they ever had a chance to speak. What I hadn't realized before I was changed, because I wasn't quite as stunning as I seem to be now I guess, was that when a guy really wants to talk to you, he will open up his mouth and say something, even if it is the stupidest thing that comes out.

I used to imagine that when a guy really liked a girl he would practice what he would say in front of a mirror—how very Kevin Arnold, I suppose. Whoa! I've been watching way too many Nick at Nite reruns of The Wonder Years since no longer needing to sleep! Well at least these types of guys did not. Alice and I were frequently approached when we were together and greeted with similar asinine comments, ridiculous lines, and flimsy invitations that I could not imagine working with any girl, let alone two vegetarian, but still potentially dangerous, vampires.

Alice turned to me with a wicked look on her face. "Hey did you want to stop in Sears and get Charlie a new flannel before we go?"

"I think he has plenty!" I chuckled.

It had been a joke after Carlisle turned me. All of the Cullens gave my dad a heavy flannel to keep him warm when he hugged me to tease him and to remind him, "Don't forget, you asked for this."

Charlie didn't really ask for me to be turned to cold stone and be frozen in time, he just asked that my life be saved, at any cost. He was a good sport about the teasing and would not even give them the satisfaction. Instead he would usually throw out some line about how he could always use a warm flannel for when he goes fishing to amp up his windfall or how the plaid really seems to drive the ladies in town wild.

Oh yeah, that was Charlie, big time fishing expert and famous ladies' man.

"Well the sun has gone back in, are you ready to go?" Alice asked.

"Sure, after all, you have a big night ahead of you," I snickered.

We stood up and started walking. Alice linked her arm through mine and gave me a squeeze.

"I do," she said. She giggled like she was applauding her own private joke and then continued, "I'm pretty sure Jasper might finally ask me to marry him tonight."

My already frozen body froze in place looking at her with wide eyes, "No! Really? I thought you guys were against all that."

Alice smiled and sweetly explained, "Well, it has been a good nine years he has been practicing our lifestyle and finally now feels he has everything under control—I think he has finally had time to think about other things."

I gasped and covered my mouth. This was the most surprising news I had heard in seven months.

"What does the ring look like? Tell me! I know you know," I blurted out to Alice and shook her shoulders, knowing full well she had the vision of this and had been holding out on me the entire day.

"It is stunning and simple! He actually noticed that I prefer to wear silver!" Alice beamed with a grin that was wider than her whole pixie face.

"Jasper really has done well with learning to control his thirst if he was able to notice THAT detail!" I said and giggled to myself.

"You know I have you to thank for some of that—and of course, I know he is thankful too, but it is harder for him to say it. But I'll thank you by making you my maid of honor!"

"What? Alice, me, really? Hey why don't you wait until you have the ring on your hand. You know with my luck, I'll jinx you. Besides your visions can go a little wonky."

"Hey! My visions don't go wonky! They are just a little vague and subjective," she snarked back at me and then laughed grabbing my arm again, pulling me toward the escalator to go back down to the entrance.

We were about ten steps away from Starbucks when I sighed, Mmmmmmmm, at the aroma of coffee. Wow how I missed coffee. It had gotten me through school and I still remember the best cup I ever had had been one I shared at Ski & Skies Adventureland that first summer.

"Alice, do you think we could force feed a mountain lion some coffee?"

She laughed. "Well maybe Emmett could hold one down for you while you pour."

Yeah right! Emmett doesn't ever feel like doing much for me these days. For about three months now he has been acting strangely—distant and all cold shoulder-y at times. I still have no idea what I had done to deserve it.

We turned to head to the exit when I froze, again. "Alice, do you hear that?" I whispered.

"Hear what?" she asked, stopping beside me.

"That heartbeat." Thump, da dun, thump da dun I closed my eyes and felt something, I'm not sure what, travel through me in a gentle wave from my eyes all the way down to my toes.

"I hear lots of them. Which one?" Alice asked concerned, looking at me clearly worried.

"I hear one really strongly, compared to the rest, but I think it is irregular," I said as I looked around trying to decipher where the offending musicmaker was originating.

Every muscle in me tensed, and I felt my facial features drop. I looked at Alice now feeling panicky. "Oh no! Is this…?" I trailed off, worried that this was tied into the bloodlust. We were almost at the door to the outside with no one around us.

Thump, da dun, thump, da dun

"An irregular heartbeat and the aroma of coffee? I think you just tapped into someone's Starbuck's-induced caffeine high. We better get you out of here to go hunt before you lose it. Come on, Bella."

Alice elbowed me and tugged at my arm, but suddenly I didn't want to leave the mall.

If you think you have this story all figured out, you're wrong!