"I always feel out of step with everyone around me—stumbling through life like I'm missing the rhythm. It hurts. Everyone thinks I'm broken. They're right. I am. I don't want to be normal!"
Isabella Swan flipped through the diary her predecessor had left behind. The cramped handwriting and jagged sentences painted a clear picture: the girl who'd written this had been damaged—deeply. Years of rejection had ground her down into the kind of exhaustion that settles into your bones and never leaves.
To fit in, she'd tried everything. Mirrored the people around her—teachers, classmates, her mother, her mother's latest husband. Joined clubs she hated. Went shopping with girls who barely tolerated her. Watched boys play basketball while pretending to care. Stumbled through debate practice. Spent weekends doing volunteer work that meant nothing to her. Forced herself to smile through conversations about topics that bored her to tears.
She'd wanted so badly to belong.
But life doesn't work like a slot machine. The harder she tried, the emptier she became. Her pale face tightened into a permanent mask of exhaustion; the bright smile lost whatever warmth it had started with. All that effort, and she still ended up labeled—freak, loner, outcast.
One prank went too far. The frightened girl overreacted.
And that's when the traveler stepped in and took over.
What a naive kid, Isabella thought, sorting through the dead girl's makeup. You mess with her, she gets revenge? I can respect that.
She worked carefully—primer, foundation, powder, eyebrow pencil, lipstick. Light layers, nothing heavy. When she finished, the sickly pallor had warmed a few shades. She studied her reflection and nodded.
That, she decided, had been the main problem all along.
I'm just too damn pretty.
A girl who should've been commanding attention and respect had lived like she was apologizing for existing. Isabella felt a twinge of pity for the old life—but only a twinge. She had fantasies about storming the campus, making all those bullies kneel and beg forgiveness. Grand, satisfying revenge.
Reality was less accommodating. The girl's social skills had been so catastrophically bad that her mother had simply arranged a transfer.
The acceptance letter sitting on the desk killed Isabella's daydreams fast.
"Forks High? Are you serious?" She dragged her mother into the room for confirmation. "Is this a joke?"
If you could birth someone as beautiful as Isabella, chances were you weren't exactly hideous yourself. Near forty, Renée Dwyer still kept a respectable appearance. Her current husband was a broad-shouldered, solid man—the kind of pairing that told its own story without needing words.
Renée stroked Isabella's hair with the kind of gentle patience reserved for explaining things to small children. "Sweetheart, why the drama? You've always wanted to spend time with your father, remember? Go. Stay there awhile. Clear your head. Washington's climate is lovely—much less dry than Arizona."
Isabella heard the real message loud and clear: Get out. The longer you're with your father, the better. We're fine here. Don't worry about us.
The next day, her mother and stepfather left on a trip.
Washington State is not Washington, D.C.—they don't even point the same direction on a map. Washington State sits at the extreme northwest corner of the country: ocean to the west, Canada to the north. A proper northern state.
Isabella was being shipped from sweltering Arizona to damp, perpetually green Washington. Was that a problem? Would she run into danger along the way?
Her mother didn't care.
"Bella's an adult now. She can handle this. When I was her age—" and on went the lecture.
Bella wanted to say: Mom, I literally jumped into someone else's life two days ago. I don't know anything about Washington State!
No point arguing.
Dawn found her wheeling a suitcase out the door.
Sunlight sliced through the trees in scattered beams, gilding the pavement. People hurried past—heads down, lives in tow—and Bella, heavy with thoughts, walked toward the station. She was saying goodbye to a city.
Phoenix. What a name. The mythical bird reborn from flame. Beautiful symbolism.
And in a way, fitting. The girl who'd died at work in her previous life had been reborn.
At first she'd counted herself lucky. Then she learned this world had Stark Industries and Oscorp.
Luck, it turned out, had limits.
Her mother's letter: attend Forks High in Washington State. Lucky and unlucky collided—two strikes that together spelled trouble.
Could this world be a mashup—Twilight fused into the Marvel universe? Bella didn't need to solve metaphysical riddles to know the answer mattered less than survival.
From what she remembered, Forks was an odd little place. North of town lived a pack of werewolves. South, a family of vampires. Every so often, a rogue vampire from out of town would race through. "Dangerous" wasn't quite the right word—more like alive in a way that made the hair on your arms stand up.
What could she do about it? Drop out of high school and start a company? She wasn't bright enough, and she had zero capital—about a thousand dollars to her name.
Her only practical plan: crash with her father in Forks, finish high school, then apply to a college as far away as possible. Preferably in another country.
"Isabella Swan? Global Airlines wishes you a pleasant journey." The attendant recited the corporate script and checked her luggage through.
After clearing security, her phone buzzed. She flipped open the old clamshell and glanced at the number before answering.
"Hey, Mom."
"Hi, Bella! Are you at the airport?" Her mother's tone was breezy and efficient.
Bella's luck, it seemed, had all been spent on the transmigration itself.
Was there no warmth in this family? Not exactly—more like a shallow current that never ran deep. Since the traveler had taken over, her mother's attention had shifted more and more toward her husband. Today's trip merited only a perfunctory check-in call.
"Yeah, I'm fine. You guys have fun." Bella matched her mother's polite detachment perfectly.
A few practiced lines, and the call ended.
She listened to the boarding announcements like a hawk. Too much chatter from the airline could mean delays or cancellations. The previous life had given her beauty but nothing else of practical use. Her English vocabulary was fine, but she'd never actually lived in an English-speaking environment. Listening and speaking required her to translate entire sentences in her head before the words came out. Conversations with her mother were worse—often she'd just decided how to answer when Renée was already two sentences ahead.
She had to stay sharp, or important things would slip past her.