"I've always felt out of place, like I'm stumbling painfully through a world that doesn't quite fit me. Everyone thinks I'm strange. They're right. I am strange. I don't want to be normal."
Isabella Swan closed the worn leather diary that had belonged to the girl who once lived in this body. Between the lines, she could see the quiet fractures in that former life. Years of subtle exclusion had hollowed the girl out, leaving her exhausted in both body and spirit.
She had tried so hard to belong.
She mimicked the people around her: her teachers, her classmates, her mother, and even her mother's new husband. She joined every club she could sign up for. She went shopping with the girls, watched the boys play basketball, stumbled awkwardly through debate competitions, volunteered on weekends, and forced herself to chat about topics she found painfully dull. She swallowed her disinterest and practiced smiling at the right moments.
All she wanted was to blend in. To stop looking like an anomaly.
Effort, unfortunately, does not guarantee reward.
A faint shadow settled over the girl's beautiful face. Her bright smile dimmed day by day. Despite everything she did, she was still labeled. Strange. Quiet. Uncooperative.
Her emotions spiraled downward. During what was meant to be a harmless prank, panic seized her. One accident later, she had handed over her body to a wandering soul without charging rent.
Isabella Swan set the diary aside and opened the makeup case left behind. "You sweet, foolish girl," she murmured softly. "If someone bullies you, you fight back."
She sat before the mirror and began to work. Primer. Foundation. Setting powder. Brow pencil. Lipstick. Each layer was applied with careful restraint, just enough to soften the pallor of her skin. When she finished, she tilted her chin and examined her reflection.
She nodded with satisfaction.
This, she decided, was precisely why the previous version of herself had been rejected by the world.
"I'm too pretty."
It was not arrogance. It was an objective assessment.
This girl could have been a princess who commanded storms and bent the wind to her will. Instead, she had lived like a maid confined to the kitchen. Isabella felt a flicker of genuine pity.
She had once fantasized about marching into school, forcing every bully to kneel and publicly apologize. In her more dramatic versions of the daydream, they would even sing songs of surrender.
Reality, however, was less cinematic.
Her disastrous social instincts had ultimately pushed her mother into filling out a transfer application.
The cold acceptance letter finally broke Isabella out of her repetitive spiral of admiration. Yes, I'm beautiful. Extremely beautiful. Why am I this beautiful?
"Forks High School? You're serious? This isn't a joke?" she asked, staring at her mother.
Renee Dwyer was still striking despite nearing forty. Anyone capable of giving birth to someone like Isabella could hardly be plain. Renee's new husband was tall, broad-shouldered, and conventionally handsome. The rest of that story was easy enough to imagine.
Renee reached out and stroked her daughter's hair. "Sweetheart, why are you so worked up? You've always said you wanted to spend more time with your dad. Go. Clear your head. Washington's climate is mild. It's not like Arizona's scorching heat."
The subtext was clear.
Go stay with your father. We're doing fine here. Don't worry about us.
The next day, her mother and stepfather left for a trip of their own.
Washington State, Isabella reminded herself, had absolutely nothing to do with Washington, D.C. They were not even close to each other. The state sat in the far northwest corner of the United States, bordered by the Pacific Ocean and Canada. Damp forests. Endless gray skies.
Whether a girl raised in southern Arizona might struggle in the northern reaches of Washington did not seem to concern her mother much.
As Renee had once said, "Bella's practically an adult. She can handle something like this. When I was her age, I was already…"
Bella had desperately wanted to shout back, I've only known about this for two days. How could I possibly understand Washington?
Early the next morning, suitcase in hand, she stepped out alone.
Dappled sunlight filtered through the trees, scattering flecks of gold across the pavement. People hurried along the sidewalks, preoccupied with their families and their routines. Bella walked toward the station in silence, lost in thought.
She was saying goodbye to Phoenix.
Phoenix. The capital of Arizona. The name conjured images of rebirth from flames, wings outstretched in blazing ascent. A promising omen.
In a way, it was accurate.
In her previous life, she had died from overwork. When she opened her eyes again, she had been reborn into this world.
At first, she had felt blessed.
Then she learned that Stark Industries and Oscorp existed here.
That was the moment the blessing began to feel like a curse.
And now she was being sent to Forks.
Forks, a place that, in her memory, was hardly ordinary. A small town where werewolves camped north of town, a family of vampires resided in the south, and the occasional wandering immortal might pass through without so much as a warning. Calling it dangerous felt insufficient.
Was this a fusion of Twilight and the Marvel Universe?
Existential dread was above her current pay grade.
Dropping out of high school to start a business crossed her mind. She quickly dismissed it. She had neither the capital nor the genius for such a gamble. Her entire net worth amounted to one thousand dollars.
So she would grit her teeth, move to Forks, live with her father, finish high school, and then apply to a university as far from the United States as humanly possible.
"Isabella Swan? Global Airlines wishes you a pleasant journey." The airport staff delivered the standard greeting while tagging her luggage with brisk efficiency.
After passing through security, her old flip phone began to ring. She glanced at the caller ID and answered.
"Hey, Mom."
"Hi, Bella, honey. Did you make it to the airport?"
In the instant of transmigration, Bella suspected that all her luck had been spent on surviving life with a mother like this.
It was not that they had no feelings for each other.
But close was not the word she would choose.
After Isabella arrived, the already fragile mother-daughter bond had grown thinner. Renee's attention now revolved primarily around her new husband. Calls like this were the extent of her maternal concern.
"Yeah. I'm fine. You two have fun."
Her mother's parenting style was quintessentially American. Bella's response was equally textbook.
A few polite exchanges later, the call ended.
Bella listened carefully to the airport announcements, afraid she might miss a gate change. Beauty was the only gift her predecessor had left her. Her English was passable in vocabulary but clumsy in instinct. She had never truly lived in an English-speaking environment before. Every sentence required thought. Every word had to be weighed.
When she chatted with her mother, by the time she formulated a response, the topic had already shifted. Important details often slipped through the cracks.
So she stood there now, listening intently.
If she was careless, she might miss something crucial.