When Izzie died and was given the choice between purgatory and reincarnation, she chose reincarnation. It seemed an obvious choice. A chance to start over? Live a whole other life? Who wouldn't want that?

Sixteen years of living as Isabella Swan later, she wished she'd taken purgatory.

It took a while for her to stop being in denial about where she was... Who she was. Up until now, she'd convinced herself that she was just Izzie, reincarnated into a normal-ish teenage girl with a dad she barely saw and a mom with the attention span of a rabbit in heat. Up until now, she'd just considered being an acquaintance of someone called Jacob who she used to play with in mud puddles to be a coincidence. And lots of people must have a baseball playing step father named Paul, right? Right.

Even now, as Izzie was riding in the passenger seat of Charlie Swan's police car and into a town named after a utensil, she was holding onto that irrational sliver of hope that she hadn't been living out the backstory of one of the most irritatingly dull fictional characters she had ever had the misfortune of reading about.

Izzie didn't want to be in a creepy relationship with an old man who was tempted to eat her every time he smelled her! What kind of moron would?

You may be wondering why she didn't just stay with Renee and Paul in Arizona.

Let's set this straight.

It wasn't because she thought she'd be a burden to then; anyone with eyes could see that Renee was going to miss her terribly.

It wasn't because she hated her new step father; Paul was actually a pretty decent guy, as far as Renee's taste goes.

It wasn't even because her old school mates were assholes, or too attractive for her to cope with or something. They were actually all pretty decent, and respected the fact that she sucked at sports and had the skin pigment of a baby's ass.

Hell, she's even had a boyfriend there, once upon a time, who she'd met at dance class (she had to get rid of the stupid clumsiness somehow).

And he was great, up until Izzie caught him making out with her cousin Alex. She was cool with it. He liked dudes. Nothing she could do about that.

He was more of a friend than a boyfriend during the time they were together, anyway.

Fucking Robert.

Moving on.

The reason Izzie decided to come to Forks of all places was quite simple: the weather.

What? Arizona's hot as hell. If she spent more than ten minutes in the sun, she ended up looking like a crab and feeling like her skin was melting off.

That may have had something to do with her outright refusal to wear sunscreen, but it still sucked.

Here in Forks (who named this town?), there was virtually no risk of sunburn. In fact, it was practically always raining. That was her dream come true. So, crop tops and leather were now pretty much off limits, which sucked for her wardrobe, but at least here she could dance out in the rain for a bit until she caught pheumonia and died. She wouldn't have to go to school then.

Okay, that may have been a bit extreme, but Izzie had decided that she would absolutely avoid the Cullens at all cost during her stay in Forks. Accept maybe Alice. She seemed like her kind of girl.

No. No Cullens. Cullens equals Edward equals stalker equals bad.

Wait.

Didn't he come into Bella's room to watch her sleep before he'd even talked to her?

Fuck.

Sulkily, she looked out the window at the rain. Note to self: find out what actually repels vampires in this universe, and drown myself in it.