I tried to sound like a normal person. Light, funny. Maybe I could ease her apprehension, if not my own. “I said there was a trail at the end of the road, not that we were taking it.”
“No trail?” She said the word trail as if she were referring to the last life vest on a sinking ship.
I squared my shoulders, formed my lips into a false smile, and turned to face her.
“I won’t let you get lost,” I promised.
It was worse than I’d been braced for. Her mouth actually fell open, like a character in the kind of sitcom that had a laugh track. She did a quick double take, her eyes running up and down my bared skin.
And this was nothing. Just pale skin. Well, extremely pale skin, bent in a slightly inhuman way over the angularity of my inhuman musculature. If this was her response to no more than my skin in the shade…
Her face fell. It was as if my former despondency had transferred to her, had landed with the weight of all my hundred years. Perhaps this was all that was needed. Maybe she’d seen enough.
“Do you want to go home?”
If she wanted to leave me, if she wanted to walk away now, I would let her go. I would watch her disappear, and endure it. I wasn’t quite sure how, but I would find a way.
Her eyes flashed with some unfathomable reaction, and she said, “No!” so quickly, it was almost a retort. She hurried to my side, coming so close that I would only have had to lean a few inches to brush my arm against hers.
What did it mean?
“What’s wrong?” I asked. There was still pain in her eyes, pain that made no sense combined with her actions. Did she want to leave me or not?
Her voice was low and nearly inflectionless as she answered. “I’m not a good hiker. You’ll have to be very patient.”
I didn’t believe her entirely, but it was a kind lie. Obviously she was concerned about the lack of a conventional trail to follow, but that was hardly enough to create the grief in her expression. I leaned closer and smiled as gently as I could, trying to coax a smile in return. I hated the shadow of misery lingering around the edges of her lips, her eyes.
“I can be patient,” I assured her, lightening my tone. “If I make a great effort.”
She half smiled at my words, but one side of her mouth refused to turn up.
“I’ll take you home,” I promised. Perhaps she felt she had no choice but to face this trial by fire, that she owed it to me in some way. She owed me nothing. She was free to walk away whenever she wished.
I was taken aback by her response. Rather than accept the out I was offering with relief, she quite distinctly scowled at me. When she spoke, her tone was caustic.
“If you want me to hack five miles through the jungle before sundown, you’d better start leading the way.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded, waiting for more—for something that would make it clear how I’d offended her—but she just lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes as if in challenge.
Not knowing what else to do, I held my arm out to usher her forward, lifting a protruding branch higher with my other hand. She stomped underneath it, then swatted a smaller limb out of her way.
It was easier in the forest. Or maybe I had just needed a moment to process her first reaction. I led the way, holding the foliage to clear her path. Mostly she kept her eyes down, not as if she were avoiding looking at me, but as if she didn’t trust the ground. I saw her glare at a few roots as she stepped over them and made the connection then—surely a clumsy person would be nervous about the uneven terrain. However, that still didn’t explain her earlier gloom or her following anger.
Many things were easier in the forest than I expected them to be. Here we were, totally alone, no witnesses, and yet it didn’t feel dangerous. Even the few times that we reached an obstacle—a fallen log across the way, an outcropping of rock too high to step over—and I instinctively reached out to help her, it was no more difficult to touch her than it had been at school. Not difficult was hardly the correct description. It was thrilling, pleasurable, just as it had been before. When I lifted her gently, I heard her heart drum in double time. I imagined my heart would sound just the same if it could also beat.
It probably felt safe, or safe enough, because I knew this wasn’t the place. Alice had never seen me killing Bella in the middle of the forest. If only I didn’t have to hold Alice’s vision inside my head.… Of course, not knowing that possible future, not preparing for it, might have been the very ignorance that would lead to Bella’s death. It was all so circular and impossible.
Not for the first time in my life, I wished that I could make my brain slow down. Force it to move at human speed, if only just for a day, an hour, so that I wouldn’t have time to obsess over and over again about the same solutionless problems.
“Which was your favorite birthday?” I asked her. I badly needed some distraction.
Her mouth screwed up into something that was halfway between a wry smile and a scowl.
“What?” I asked. “Is it not my day to ask questions?”
She laughed and her hand fluttered as though she was waving away that concern. “It’s fine. I just don’t know the answer. I’m not a big fan of birthdays.”
“That’s… unusual.” I couldn’t think of another teenager I’d met who thought the same way.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” she said, shrugging. “Presents and stuff. What if you don’t like them? You’ve got to get your game face on right away so you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. And people look at you a lot.”
“Your mother isn’t an intuitive gift giver?” I guessed.
Her answering smile was cryptic. I could tell she would say nothing negative about her mother, though she’d obviously been scarred.
We walked for a half mile in silence. I was hoping she would volunteer more, or ask a question that would tell me where her thoughts were, but she kept her eyes on the forest floor, concentrating. I tried again.
“Who was your favorite teacher in elementary school?”
“Mrs. Hepmanik,” she responded without a pause. “Second grade. She let me read in class pretty much whenever I wanted.”
I grinned at her. “A paragon.”
“Who was your favorite grade school teacher?”
“I don’t remember,” I reminded her.
She frowned. “Right. Sorry, I didn’t think—”
“No need to apologize.”
It took me another quarter mile to think of a question she couldn’t turn around on me too easily.
“Dogs or cats?”
Her head tilted to one side. “I’m not really sure.… I think maybe cats? Cuddly, but independent, right?”
“Have you never had a dog?”
“I’ve never had either. Mom says she’s allergic.”
Her response was oddly skeptical.
“You don’t believe her?”
She paused again, not wanting to be disloyal. “Well,” she said slowly, “I caught her petting a lot of other people’s dogs.”
“I wonder why…?” I mused.
Bella laughed. It was a carefree sound, totally lacking any kind of bitterness.
“It took me forever to talk her into letting me have a fish. I finally figured out that she was worried about being stuck at home. I’ve told you how she loved to take off every weekend we could—go visit some little town or minor historical monument she’d never seen before. I showed her those time-release food tablets that can feed the fish for over a week, and she relented. Renée just can’t stand an anchor. I mean, she already had me, right? One huge life-altering anchor was enough. She wasn’t going to volunteer for more.”
I kept my face very smooth. This insight of hers—which I didn’t doubt, she’d always seen through me so easily—put a darker spin on my interpretation of her past. Was Bella’s need to be a caretaker based not on her mother’s helplessness, but on a feeling of needing to earn her place? It made me angry to think that Bella might ever have felt unwanted, or that she needed to prove her worth. I had the oddest desire to wait on her hand and foot in some socially acceptable way, to show Bella that her merely existing was more than enough.
She didn’t notice me trying to control my reaction. With another laugh, she continued. “It was probably for the best that we never tried anything bigger than a goldfish. I wasn’t very good at pet ownership. I thought maybe I’d been overfeeding the first one, so I really cut back on the second, but that was a mistake. And the third one”—she looked up at me, baffled—“I honestly don’t know what his problem was. He kept jumping out of the bowl. Eventually, I didn’t find him soon enough.” She frowned. “Three in a row—I guess that makes me a serial killer.”
It was impossible not to laugh, but she didn’t seem offended. She laughed with me.
As our amusement subsided, the light changed. Alice’s promised sunshine had arrived above the thick canopy, and immediately I felt jittery and anxious again.
I knew that this emotion—stage fright was the closest term I could come up with—was truly ridiculous. So what if Bella found me repulsive? If she rejected me in disgust? That was fine, better than fine. That was literally the smallest, tiniest sort of misery that could hurt me today. Was vanity, the fragility of ego, truly that strong a force? I’d never believed it had that kind of power over me, and I didn’t think so now. Obsessing over this reveal kept me from obsessing over other things. Like the rejection that would follow the disgust. Bella walking away from me, and knowing that I had to let her go. Would she be so frightened by me that she’d refuse to let me lead her back to the truck? Surely I would have to at least get her safely to the road. Then she could drive away alone.
Though my whole frame felt like it might crumple with the pain of that image, there was something much worse—the looming test Alice had seen. Failing that test… I couldn’t imagine. How would I live through that? How would I find a way to stop living?
Bella noticed the change in light as we passed through a thinner patch of forest. She frowned teasingly. “Are we there yet?”
I pretended to be equally lighthearted. “Nearly. Do you see the brightness ahead?”
She narrowed her eyes at the forest before us, the concentration line forming between her brows. “Um, should I?”
“Maybe it’s a bit too soon for your eyes,” I allowed.
A shrug. “Time to visit the optometrist.”
The silence seemed heavier as we progressed. I could tell when Bella spotted the brightness of the meadow. She smiled almost unconsciously and her stride lengthened. She wasn’t watching the ground anymore; her eyes were locked on the filtered glow of sunshine. Her eagerness only made my reluctance heavier. More time. Just another hour or two… Could we stop here? Would she forgive me if I balked?
But I knew there was no point in delay. Alice had seen that it would come to this, sooner or later. Avoidance would never make it easier.
Bella led the way now, no hesitation as she pushed through the hedge of ferns and into the meadow.
I wished I could see her face. I could imagine how lovely the place would be on a day like this. I could smell the wildflowers, sweeter in the warmth, and hear the low burble of the stream on the far side. The insects hummed, and far away, birds trilled and crooned. There were no birds nearby now—my presence was enough to frighten all the larger life from this place.
She walked almost reverently into the golden light. It gilded her hair and made her fair skin glow. Her fingers trailed over the taller flowers, and I was reminded again of Persephone. Springtime personified.
I could have watched her for a very long time, perhaps forever, but it was too much to hope that the beauty of the place could make her forget the monster in the shadows for long. She turned, eyes wide with amazement, a wondering smile on her lips, and looked back at me. Expectant. When I didn’t move, she began walking slowly in my direction. She lifted one arm, offering her hand in encouragement.
I wanted to be human so badly in that moment that it nearly crippled me.
But I was not human, and the time had come for perfect discipline. I held my palm up, a warning. She understood, but was not afraid. Her arm dropped and she stayed where she was. Waiting. Curious.
I took a deep breath of the forest air, consciously registering her scorching scent for the first time in hours.
Even trusting Alice’s visions as much as I did, I wasn’t sure how there could be any more to this story. It would have to end now, wouldn’t it? Bella would see me, and be all the things she should have been from the beginning: terrified, disgusted, appalled, repelled… and done with me.
It felt as though I would never do anything more difficult than this, but I forced my foot to lift and shifted my weight forward.
I would face this head-on.
With all that… I couldn’t bear the first reaction on her face. She would be kind, but it would be impossible for her to disguise that initial instant of shock and revulsion. So I would give her a moment to compose herself.
I closed my eyes as I stepped into the sunlight.