Barely even friends: then somebody bends. [Bella]

[Kyle Orson]

   The wrought iron gateway, black as a midwinter's midnight, leered intimidatingly overhead as the brisk fall New York wind raked angrily at Kyle's exposed skin. A brief snap of the icy breeze bit at his hands as, crunching over the hazel-leaved sidewalk, he pulled his dark leather jacket tightly over his frame. Stupid wind.

   Today, in the city of Newark, was any other Friday afternoon to anyone. Ask any regular citizen of the New York town what was special about October seventeenth, and they'd do naught but raise an eyebrow or tell you there was only two weeks to Halloween. October seventeenth, to any regular Newarkian, was unremarkable.

   Which, for our purposes, leaves one Kyle Orson as a very, very remarkable citizen.

   Today, October seventeenth, was a day unlike any other. And not in a good way.

   He coughed as the wind took a graze at his face, stinging smartly his exposed upper cheeks and brow and making him sharply gasp in shock. It was as if the clouded sky of the city wished to add insult to injury of today, just as it had so long ago... the day he'd met... her. The very echo of a memory of her, inevitable on this day, had already pulled him into such a numb apathy towards all that would come nowhere near absolving itself anytime soon, but there was no solution but what had always pulled his head back to the surface before- life. Whether through minutes or weeks, life always marched on, and it dragged him back to his feet and kicked him in the butt to keep going. And today would be no different, if only Kyle could get time. Time alone, time to breathe, time to think... or to not.

   Without ever really making a conscious effort, he found himself suddenly deep within the cemetery, the russet, gray, brown, and mossy gravestones melting in confuddling monotony around the sun beaten cobblestone path he now stood on. His mind, just as vaguely empty as always, directed him straight for the small wooden bench located just off the path behind him. The faded chocolate wood was freezing as he sat, but, really, who cared? Folding his arms across his chest vaguely, he let his head fall back loosely. Just let today pass quickly. Sleep wouldn't be so bad.

[Isabella Cullen]

They hadn't been in New York for long. Just over a month. They'd arrived only days before the start of the school year in September. And of course, they were already alienated. Bella supposed she could understand why. They all looked like albino models. Halloween was upon them. It would be Bella's forty-eighth. The brisk winds of the season's did nothing the phase Bella's body temperature. She left her red trench coat open, regardless of how strange it must look to others.

Since her "rebirth," Bella had grown to love autumn. She loved the smell, how everything was damp and getting ready for winter. She adored the way the leaves crunched under the stilettos that Alice insisted she wear.

That was the whole reason she decided to spend the afternoon at the cemetery. Well, not the whole. She always liked them, as they were a nice quiet place for her to think. Bella did a lot of that now, especially since her brain could think about so much more.

She happened upon a bench in the middle of a secluded part of the graveyard. She could smell humans around her, and though it burned her throat, she had no desire to hunt. Not even feeling the need to sit she did anyway. She observed the world around her, getting a feel for the East Coast way of things. Everything was new and exciting. She'd never been this far east, except when visiting Renee in Jacksonville when she... lived there. She missed her parents, but she knew everything living had an expiration date. She accepted that, and was fine with it.

Shaking the thought out of her mind, she looked at the graves. It wasn't difficult to read their dates, even from where she sat. Her mind was distracted when the wind came quickly, carrying the scent of a nearby human.