So I was inspired by the vast genre of – how do I put this? - Actually-Interesting!Bella fanfics I've seen before in this fandom. And if I've insulted you with that, well, there's a reason I read Twilight fanfiction so much, instead of rereading the books. I view those as the building blocks of a fantastic, wonderful fandom that is infinitely better than those first cotton candy reading stones. This is my humble contribution, and I only hope it measures up to my favourites. Wish me luck!

Please note – yes, I am borrowing some wording from the books throughout the early chapters of this piece, in order to underline how, while Bella is not entirely the same as in the books, ahe still has the same core parts of her personality, and the changes in her haven't changed everyone else in the series. Charlie's still awkward, Edward's still broody, and Jessica's still perfectly normal, and Lauren still goes above and beyond all levels of nastiness and scowling.

And if I use any terminology in this that's unfamiliar to you, please, let me know, and I'll address it in-story the next chapter, and PM you what the word/s meant as soon as I see your review. Thanks for reading!

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My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down – Phoenix summers were sweltering, and the car's AC was broken. Again. It was one-hundred-three degrees in Phoenix, not bad for mid-summer, and the sky bright and just a little cloudy. I was wearing my favorite shirt, which my mother was determinedly not looking at – bright blue, with my favorite quote from Frederick C. Schreiber, "Deaf people can do anything that hearing people can do... except hear," fingerspelled. I was wearing it as a hello gesture to my dad. Hopefully he'd be wearing his 'Dad' ASL shirt – he usually did when he met me at the airport, or else held a sign up with my name on it, so I could find him easily.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this wonderful town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its rainy, leafy shade that my mother moved with me when I was three months old. It was on the plane flight from Forks that I caught meningitis, the antibiotics for which caused me to go Deaf. It was in this town that I'd found respite for a month every summer and all of winter break since before I could remember.

It was to Forks that I now happily 'exiled' (my mother's words, not mine) myself- an action that I took with great delight. I loved Forks. I didn't really care about Phoenix. I loved the sprawling city, and my school, Phoenix Day School for the Deaf, but I didn't... love it. It was there, and that was it. It was where I couldn't sign at home because my mother didn't like not knowing everything I said. It was where I was stuck somewhere between oral and Deaf. I was just glad my mother had never been able to afford a cochlear implant – I wouldn't ever want one, my hearing aids worked just fine when I needed them.

"Bella," my mom said to me, waving a hand to get my attention - the last of a thousand times - before I got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."

My mom looks like me, except with short hair, laugh lines, and a distinct lack of green plastic around her ears. I felt a spasm of guilt as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself ? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still... They had only just gotten engaged – what if they broke up? Then what? Would I move back? Would I have to enroll in Desert Voices again and stop signing if I moved back? I shook my head.

"I want to go," I told her, ignoring her frown at my hands. I'd always preferred signing, and it wasn't like she could do anything about it now that I was moving in with Dad.

"Tell Charlie I said 'hi.'"

"Okay, mom."

"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want - I'll take you right back as soon as you need me."

But I could see the relief in her eyes behind the promise. No more blaring lights for a doorbell, no more foot-stamping to get my attention. It'd be easy for her again – hadn't she said a thousand times, she only wished I could be 'really' hearing, and not just able to talk?

"Don't worry about me," I urged, trying to make her feel better. "It'll be great. I love visiting Dad, and you and Phil need some time alone now that you're engaged."

She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she was gone.

It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; I love it, and always try to get a window seat to see the ground drop out from under me. It's an amazing rush.

Not to mention my father was waiting at the end of the flight.

Charlie had really been fantastic about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely happy that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for high school, arranged for an interpreter with the school board, and was going to help me get a car of my own – something my mother had never even considered letting me have.

When I landed in Port Angeles, Charlie was waiting for me, Dad T-shirt, sign and all. I grinned, rushing over. He dropped his sign giving me a tight bear hug when I stumbled into him. "It's good to see you, Bells," he signed, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renée?"

"Mom's fine. She wants you to find me an oral program in Seattle or something. It's good to see you, too, Dad."

He rolled his eyes at Renee's request, and we grabbed my purple suitcases before he led me to the police cruiser. This I was expecting. Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

I had only two bags to stuff into the cruiser's trunk. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington, so I'd only packed my favorites and what was suitable. I would be wearing lots and lots of jeans.

My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my 'tundra gear,' as she called it, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in and the dim car light turned on.

"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he signed "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car."

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it?"

"You know Billy from La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast. I played there with Billy Black's son Jacob, and his older twin daughters all the time when we were younger, though in recent years, it had turned into just Jacob and I throwing mud at one another until we got bored, and I watched him build cars.

I nodded.

"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued, "his diabetes put him in it a few months ago,so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."

"What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask.

My dad dithered for a moment before signing. "Old."

"Old, Dad?" I prompted

"He bought it in 1984, I think."

"Did he buy it new?"

"...No. I think it was new in the early sixties - or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.

Drat. I liked old cars – I thought they looked good, and according to Jacob they were the best thing on this planet to drive, but owning one? "Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic..."

"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."

The thing, I thought to myself... it had possibilities – if I could keep it running.

"How much money does Billy want?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on. I only had so much to spend.

"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression.

Wow. Free.

"Dad..." I stopped short. I wanted to say, 'You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car,' but it seemed ungrateful. I shook my head. "Thanks, Dad. I love you."

"It's fine. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the road when he signed this, one-handed. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. I was very much the same – I generally didn't act serious about my emotions, playing them off, depreciating how much I meant them to others

"Thank you," I repeated.

"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks.

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for conversation. We stared out the windows in silence, the car light off, now. Washington was beautiful; no-one could deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

It was so green – like an alien planet compared to Phoenix.

Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had - the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new - well, new to me - truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab.

I loved it.

I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged - the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.

"Wow, Dad, I love it! Thank you!" Now my fantastic day was just that much more wonderful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the Chief's cruiser when school started next month.

"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.

It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born.

The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window - these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew.

Oh, and the door beacon the summer I was twelve and didn't know he'd knocked – it had been embarrassing for both of us, but thankfully my father hadn't walked in on me changing since it was installed. The desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack, and a round black webcam perched precariously atop the monitor. This was a stipulation from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner.

There was only one bathroom, at the top of the stairs, which I would be sharing with Charlie. I would be keeping my shampoo away from his – he had a tendency to use mine when he ran out, rather than get more of his own.

One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover like Renee, always wanting to help or do something for me. He left me alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether impossible for my mother. It was nice to be alone, to just do things for myself; a relief to stare out the window at the sheeting rain and let myself feel pleased that I didn't have to live with my mother any longer. I wouldn't feel guilty about that. I would save that for tomorrow night, when I would have to video call my mother for her peace of mind.

Until then, I would worry about school starting in a month.

Forks High School had a normal(to me) total of only three hundred and fifty-seven – now fifty-eight - students; a few less students than at Phoenix Day School for the Deaf back home, but massively smaller than the city hearing school had been. One difference from Phoenix, however, was that all of the kids in Forks had grown up together - their grandparents had been toddlers together. At PDSD, everyone had at least one thing in common – Deafness. At Desert Voices, the oral school I went to until I demanded to go to a Deaf school in eighth grade, everyone was deaf or hard of hearing.

Here? At a hearing school? I would be the new Deaf girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak. Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage.

But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond - a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps - all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn't have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself - and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.

Not to mention, I had lime green hearing aids on both ears. I was doomed to stick out.

When I finished putting my clothes in the old pine dresser, I took my toiletry bag and went to the bathroom to clean myself up after the day of travel. I looked at my face in the mirror as I brushed through my tangled, damp hair – the annoying thing about rain, I decided, was that it never just stopped. It stuck in your hair and clothes forever.

Facing my reflection in the mirror, I was forced to admit that I was lying to myself. It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And if I couldn't find a niche in a school where you could relate to everyone at least a little, what were my chances here, where I'd have my own pseudo-stalker in the form of an interpreter?

I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate well to people, period. Even my Dad, who I was closer to than anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.

But the cause didn't matter. All that mattered was the effect. And the next month would be just the beginning.

My Dad and I went to South North for dinner – it's my favorite restaurant in Forks. The only Chinese restaurant, too. The waitresses never stared, and the food was delicious – they weren't skimpy on portions, either. It was something of a tradition between Charlie and I – we always went my first night in Forks. It may be the only night we went, but we went.

I fell asleep that night with a smile on my face. Forks was looking to be wonderful.

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The next morning broke dim and wet, and I decided to finish putting things up in my room before going downstairs for breakfast; my clock read five AM, so I had some time before Charlie woke up and went to work. I pulled my posters out of my larger suitcase, put away the last of my books and DVDs, and found some glue to put up a white board on the front of my door. I'd have to remember to buy some dry erase markers – I must have left mine in Phoenix.

I was almost done making scrambled eggs when Charlie came downstairs, bleary eyed and with his work jacket half hanging from his shoulders. I admit it – I laughed. That seemed to wake him up a little more, and soon he'd eaten all his food, and I was washing the dishes. I hated to leave them stacked, it was too much of a mess.

I looked up when he tapped me on the shoulder. "What's up?" I asked.

Charlie looked sheepish. "I have to work today."

I nodded. Oh. "That's fine, Dad. But... maybe you could pick me up, have the two of us eat lunch together? You could leave me in town after we eat, and walk around for a bit, make sure I know where everything is. Do we need food – I could go to the store."

My dad looked a little confused, and I realized I'd been signing too quickly in my nervousness for him to follow. On one hand, I didn't want him to feel like he had to do everything for me, like Renee had, but I usually only ever went to La Push to play with the Blacks or to the grocery store when I was with Charlie. I wasn't exactly confident about my ability to not get lost, no matter how small Forks was.

"Again? Please?" he asked, and I nodded, repeating myself more clearly. He nodded. "That's fine, Bells. We can go to the Lodge, and I'll pick you up when I get off work at five-thirty. Text me then and tell me where you are, got it?"

"Got it, Dad. Thanks."

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, and he ducked his head, fiddling with his keys. "I'm happy to, Bells. It's fine," he signed.

The morning passed quickly, with me cleaning up a little and making sure Charlie had plugged in all the signalers properly, in case anyone rang the doorbell, called, or – knock on wood – a fire started.

By noon, I was completely bored, and had taken to flicking through TV channels in hopes of finding something interesting on. Charlie's DVD player was broken, and my cello was still on a US Postal Service van somewhere, waiting for me to play it again.

I nearly ran out of the house when I saw the door lights flash. "Dad!" I signed, excited, and would have gone on, except my father was... not the person at the door.

That was... definitely a surprise. I hadn't expected to find Betty Crocker on the front step. I waved. "Sorry," I apologized, "I thought you were my dad."

The woman blinked slightly, and her face took on a slightly pained expression. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're saying, dear," she said slowly.

I sighed. I should have figured that and sim-com'd, but I could hope. "I'm Bella," I said, and held out a hand to shake. "I'm Charlie Swan's daughter – I just moved in here yesterday."

The lady nodded, smiling. "Oh! It's very nice to meet you, dear! I'm Suzanne Baker, I live next door," she said loudly, pointing behind her. I winced and reached a hand up to lower the volume on my hearing aids. I could just make out that she was practically yelling with them, but had to rely on lipreading to understand the words – not easy when she enunciated like she was. "I came to ask if you had any sugar?"

I nodded. "Come on in," I said normally, smiling with my lips closed, trying to seem polite. "I'll just take a second."

Mrs. Baker nodded enthusiastically, and I rolled my eyes once my back was turned. I felt like she thought I was some stupid little puppy, that had to be pet every time it did something even remotely note-worthy. I handed her the almost-empty bag of sugar that had been hiding in the back of Charlie's cupboards, and made a note to add that to the grocery list.

Thankfully, my dad showed up soon after Mrs. Baker left, allowing me to get out of the house.

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So, how did I do? Did you like it? Did you hate it? What did you think of Bella, Charlie, and Renee? Are you curious about what happens next? Please, let me know what you think!

Again, if I mentioned anything that you didn't understand or quite get, please let me know - I welcome the questions, and am happy to answer.

Thanks for reading, and EatYourRikkios. :)