Tossing Stones

Summary: 35 year old Bella Swan was sick and tired of people grinning at her name and asking about 'her Edward'. She read the books, like anyone else, but she still felt it was too bad she couldn't sue that writer for using her name. When she woke up as a 15 year old Bella, with a mother called Renee, that was weird enough, but things were only going to get stranger. Bella Swan rewrites the story that annoyed her from the inside.

…

I'd never given a lot of thought to how I'd die, it seemed so far off. I was only thirty-five, just finally getting settled as an adult, and things were finally moving along for me. I'd put in an offer on my first house and was waiting to hear back on it. My career was established and I had my eye on a promotion. The current training specialist was pregnant and I was pretty sure she was going to quit, rather than just take a leave of absence. My personal life was not as successful, but then it hadn't been my priority. I had years left in me, but apparently fate didn't agree with me at all.

Time was a strange thing, part of my mind noticed, as everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The city bus was sliding sideways, and tipping toward me. I was watching it in the rearview mirror, as my own car was starting to pick up speed as well, in spite of how hard I was hitting my brakes. The bridge was falling into the water and I could see a van and two sedans sliding over the edge in front of me.

Even with my brakes on so hard my leg was shaking, the bus managed to push me over the gap in the bridge. I was staring back in horror as it did that, and couldn't believe that the poster on the bus, that was sending me to my death, had a huge picture of Kristen Stewart on it. Her cheek hit the back of my car and tossed me over the side. It was poetic in a way, that the star that played Bella Swan, was killing me.

My name is Bella Swan, and I actually used to like my name until that book came out. Now it was going to be in the newspapers as a note to who died when the bridge collapsed. For one moment, for the first time, I wished I was that other Bella Swan as I found myself falling from the high rise bridge. I could see the other vehicles that were in the wrong place before me hitting the water and even though I braced myself, I knew the airbag wasn't going to do anything, the drop was too far.

"Bella? Bella?" The voice was frantic and a bit panicked. I groaned as I wished it would go away, because the softness of unconsciousness felt better than the growing pain I was becoming aware of. I'd never been prone to headaches, but this must have been the worst one anyone had ever had. "Oh god Bella, are you okay?"

"What?" I managed and my voice was slurred. I barely managed to open my eyes and blink as my vision slowly became less blurry. A woman with brunette hair was staring down at me. A distracted part of my mind noticed it was sunny out, and something about that didn't seem right.

"Ma'am." A deeper voice spoke up and I tried to turn to see who it was, even as the woman looked up and away from me. I couldn't really look back at the man talking, because when I moved I felt a wave of nausea. "I'm a paramedic. I saw what happened. Can I check her out?"

Why was he asking that woman? I spoke up for myself. "Head hurts." I spoke up. I focused on my body to see if I could identify anything else and slowly my mind reminded me why I was here. I was alive! My eyes blinked as he shown a light in them, but I couldn't help but laugh in spite of the pain it caused. I lived, that should have killed me, I was sure it was going to kill me, and I was alive!

"Can you tell me your name?" He asked and the woman next to him, the one that had woken me up started to speak. I watched him shake his head at her.

"Bella Swan." I muttered and grimaced as I waited for the disbelief, or the jokes. I'd been getting those since the Twilight book became popular. When it became a movie I rarely got to say my name without some smartass comment coming back to me. He proved to be a professional, his eyebrows didn't even move.

"Who's the president?" He followed up, while seeming rather distracted looking at a bump on my head.

"Obama." I told him and watched him move his eyes back to my face. His poker face wasn't perfect, I could see I'd gained some interest from him. The woman watching made some sort of half moan noise and I ignored her. Why was she even still here?

"Where do you go to school?" He asked while looking in my eyes again.

"I graduated." I frowned at him. How was that a standard question? That annoying woman made a squeak of a noise again.

"I think perhaps we should get her admitted to a hospital. I don't see a concussion, but I'm not comfortable with not getting her fully checked out." He turned to that woman to tell her.

"I don't know her, why are you asking her?" I didn't want a stranger making my decisions.

"I'm her mother." That woman looked sick and pale now and I stared at her in disbelief. She was my age, who would believe that lie? "Renee Higginbotham"

"Okay, I'll call an ambulance." He nodded to her and I watched in shock as he took a few steps away and left me with the crazy woman.

"It's okay Bella, everything will be okay." The woman told me and patted my arm. "You'll be okay soon."

I tried to sit up, and when I did the wave of nausea got worse, but when I saw the pool, and the waterslides I froze. Where was the river? I was fished out of the river, I had to have been.

My eyes traveled to the reflective black side panel of a hot dog stand and I stopped breathing for a moment as I watched a teenage girl sitting on the ground, surrounded by towels, in a bathing suit. My hand moved up slowly to touch my forehead and I found her hand moving as well, to touch the stinging spot where some blood was still trickling down from.

I heard a gasp as my vision went black.

It was days later and I felt emotionally numb as I sat in the hospital bed as the doctor talked about my unusual amnesia. I didn't volunteer any more information, because it was clear the time or two when I said this wasn't my body was taken as proof of serious brain damage and they tested me far too many times already.

I wasn't sure if I had died and this was an odd punishment that God was giving me, or if something truly odd had happened, but I was sure that I wasn't a 15 year old girl. I didn't live in Phoenix, and that woman wasn't my real mother. If I was what they said, then all my memories of my real life wouldn't exist, I wouldn't have created an entire life in that moment when apparently there was a waterslide accident.

Doctors were baffled, psychologist were baffled and Renee was beside herself, but I was getting released today in spite of no one having any answers. I was being sent home with the woman who was apparently supposed to be my mother. They were concerned about school, because I was starting my sophomore year in two months, and Renee wondered if I should go. The doctor thought I might recover some by then, but we'd have to wait and see. They were talking about me right in front of me and I just couldn't make myself contribute. I had no idea what I could or couldn't say. I wanted out of here, away from prodding questions, so I could figure out what had happened. It was just because of that, that I was accepting this set up for now.

They used a wheelchair to take me to the pick up, and I watched as Renee pulled up to get me. I made my way into her car and put the seatbelt on in silence, ignoring how she stared at me. It was obvious she was lost as to what to say or do, but I wasn't really any better off. She was a stranger to me, but she thought she was my family. "You'll need to call your father when we get back. I've told him about, well, everything, but he still wants to hear your voice."

I looked over at her as she stared straight out the windshield and drove. "I have no idea what to say to him." I didn't even know who he was supposed to be. This was the first I'd heard that he didn't live at the house I was going to, or that he existed at all.

"Charlie knows that, you could just talk about anything. Talk about the rain in Forks if you have to, it'll be enough for him." Renee's voice rose a little, showing she was more upset than she was trying to let on.

"Charlie?" I muttered, a strange thought coming to me. "Charlie Swan?"

Renee pulled over and we'd barely made it out of the parking lot. She turned to stare at me. "Do you remember him?" Her question was tense and I felt myself paling a bit more as I started to think I might know who he was.

"No, no." I stammered quickly, not wanting to be taken right back to the hospital. Renee didn't look happy, but I sat quietly as she pulled back into the road and stared out the window.

"What do you do for a living?" I asked quietly, but my real question was next.

"I teach kindergarten. We're on summer break, so I have time to care for you." Renee's voice broke at her words.

"And Charlie?" I felt my heart pounding as I asked that question.

"He works as a police officer in Forks Washington." Renee told me and I froze as my heart hammered even more. I was now THAT Bella Swan. Oh my god, I struggled with a panic attack as I realized that I was the Bella Swan of Twilight. It wasn't my body I was in, I knew that, but it was hers. "Are you okay, you look a little pale." Renee asked, and I managed to nod, but my mind was swimming in shock.

Instead of heaven I was stuck living the life of a teenage character in a romance with an overbearing vampire male lead that I felt nothing but loathing for. How many times had I said this Bella Swan was stupid to stay with him as I talked about or read the books, and now here I was? I told a few people that THAT Bella Swan could have marched up to the Cullen house and tossed a stone through the window and hit a better match for her than Edward. I was in her life? Her story?

Did the Cullens exist? Did I really exist or was this some coma induced punishment? What the hell was I going to do now?

…..

A/n: the idea came to me and I wanted to start it up. I don't know if there is interest in another character in a world she knows about, but I've seen a few people do this with Twilight, not this way, but the general idea. They never do what I want to do, so I thought I might toss my hat into that arena.