HIGH SCHOOL. PURGATORY NO LONGER, IT WAS NOW PURELY HELL. TORMENT and fire… yes, I had both.
I was doing everything correctly now. Every i dotted, every t crossed. No one could complain that I was shirking my responsibilities.
To please Esme and protect the others, I stayed in Forks. I returned to my old schedule. I hunted no more than the rest of them. Every day, I attended high school and played human. Every day, I listened carefully for anything new about the Cullens—there was never anything new. The girl did not speak one word of her suspicions. She just repeated the same story—I’d been standing with her and then pulled her out of the way—till her eager listeners got bored and stopped looking for more details. There was no danger. My hasty action had hurt no one.
No one but myself.
I was determined to change the future. Not the easiest task to set for oneself, but there was no other choice I could live with.
Alice said that I would not be strong enough to stay away from the girl. I would prove her wrong.
I’d thought the first day would be the hardest. By the end of it, I’d been sure that was the case. I’d been wrong, though.
It had rankled, knowing that I would hurt the girl. I’d comforted myself with the fact that her pain would be nothing more than a pinprick—just a tiny sting of rejection—compared to mine. Bella was human, and she knew that I was something else, something wrong, something frightening. She would probably be more relieved than wounded when I turned my face away from her and pretended that she didn’t exist.
“Hello, Edward,” she’d greeted me that first day back in Biology. Her voice had been pleasant, friendly, one hundred eighty degrees from the last time I’d spoken with her.
Why? What did the change mean? Had she forgotten? Decided she had imagined the whole episode? Could she possibly have forgiven me for not following through on my promise?
The questions had stabbed and twisted like the thirst that attacked me every time I breathed.
Just one moment to look in her eyes. Just to see if I could read the answers there.…
No. I could not allow myself even that. Not if I was going to change the future.
I’d moved my chin an inch in her direction without looking away from the front of the room. I’d nodded once, then turned my face straight forward.
She did not speak to me again.
That afternoon, as soon as school was finished, my role played, I ran halfway to Seattle, as I had the day before. It seemed that I could handle the aching just slightly better when I was flying over the ground, turning everything around me into a green blur.
This run became my daily habit.
Did I love her? I did not think so. Not yet. Alice’s glimpses of that future had stayed with me, though, and I could see how easy it would be to fall into loving Bella. It would be exactly like falling: effortless. Not letting myself love her was the opposite of falling—it was pulling myself up a cliff face, hand over hand, the task as grueling as if I had no more than mortal strength.
More than a month passed, and every day it got harder. That made no sense to me—I kept waiting to get over it, to have the struggle become easier or at least level off. This must be what Alice had meant when she’d predicted that I would not be able to stay away from the girl. She had seen the escalation of the pain.
But I could handle pain.
I would not destroy Bella’s future. If I was destined to love her, then wasn’t avoiding her the very least I could do?
Avoiding her was about the limit of what I could bear, though. I could pretend to ignore her and never look her way. I could pretend that she was of no interest to me. But I still hung on every breath she took, every word she spoke.
I couldn’t watch her with my eyes, so I watched her through the eyes of others. The vast majority of my thoughts revolved around her as though she was the center of my mind’s gravity.
As this hell ground on, I lumped my torments into four categories.
The first two were familiar. Her scent and her silence. Or rather—to take the responsibility on myself, where it belonged—my thirst and my curiosity.
The thirst was the most primal of my torments. It was my habit now to simply not breathe at all in Biology. Of course, there were always the exceptions—when I had to answer a question, and I would need my breath to speak. Each time I tasted the air around the girl, it was the same as the first day—fire and need and brutal violence desperate to break free. It was hard to cling even slightly to reason or restraint in those moments. And, just like that first day, the monster in me would roar, so close to the surface.
The curiosity was the most constant of my torments. The question was never out of my mind: What is she thinking now? When I heard her quiet sigh. When she twisted a lock of hair absently around her finger. When she threw her books down with more force than usual. When she rushed into class late. When she tapped her foot impatiently against the floor. Each movement caught in my peripheral vision was a maddening mystery. When she spoke to the other human students, I analyzed her every word and tone. Was she speaking her thoughts, or what she thought she should say? It often sounded to me as though she was trying to say what her audience expected, and this reminded me of my family and our daily life of illusion—we were better at it than she was. But why would she have to play a role? She was one of them—a human teenager.
Only… she occasionally didn’t behave like one. For example, when Mr. Banner assigned a group project in Biology. It was his practice to let the students choose their partners. As always happened with group projects, the bravest of the ambitious students—Beth Daws and Nicholas Laghari—quickly asked if I would join them. I shrugged my acceptance. They knew I would complete my portion perfectly, and theirs, too, if they left it undone.
It was unsurprising that Mike allied himself with Bella. What was unexpected was Bella’s insistence on the third member of their group, Tara Galvaz.
Mr. Banner usually had to assign Tara to a group. She looked more surprised than pleased when Bella tapped her on the shoulder and awkwardly asked if she wanted to work with her and Mike.
“Whatever,” Tara responded.
When she was back at her seat, Mike hissed at her, “She’s a total stoner. She won’t do any work. I think she’s failing Biology.”
Bella shook her head and whispered back, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch whatever she misses.”
Mike wasn’t appeased. “Why did you do that?”
It was the same question I was dying to ask her, though not in the same tone.
Tara was, in fact, failing Biology. Mr. Banner was thinking about her now, both surprised and touched by Bella’s choice.
No one ever gives that kid a chance. Nice of Bella—she’s kinder than most of these cannibals.
Had Bella noticed how Tara was usually ostracized by the rest of the class? I could imagine no reason besides kindness for reaching out to her, especially with Bella’s shyness in the way. I wondered how much discomfort it had caused her and decided it was probably more than any other human here would have been willing to go through for a stranger.
Given Bella’s grasp of Biology, I wondered if the grade from this project would even save Tara from failure, in this class at least. And that was exactly what happened.
Then there was the time at lunch when Jessica and Lauren were talking about the number-one dream destinations on their bucket lists. Jessica chose Jamaica, only to feel immediately one-upped when Lauren countered with the French Riviera. Tyler chimed in with Amsterdam, thinking of the famous red-light district, and the others began sounding off. I waited anxiously for Bella’s answer to the question, but before Mike (who liked the idea of Rio) could ask for her take, Eric enthusiastically named Comic Con, and the table erupted in laughter.
“What a dork,” Lauren hissed.
Jessica snickered. “I know, right?”
Tyler rolled his eyes.
“You’re never going to get a girlfriend,” Mike told Eric.
Bella’s voice, louder than her usual timid volume, cut into the melee.
“No, that’s cool,” Bella insisted. “That’s where I’d want to go, too.”
Mike was immediately backpedaling. “I mean, I guess some of the costumes are cool. Slave Leia.” Should have kept my mouth shut.
Jessica and Lauren exchanged a glance, frowning.
Ugh, please, Lauren thought.
“We should totally go,” Eric enthused at Bella. “I mean, after we save up enough.” Comic Con with Bella! Even better than Comic Con alone…
Bella was thrown for a second, but after a quick glance at Lauren’s expression, she doubled down. “Yeah, I wish. It’s probably way too expensive though, right?”
Eric started breaking down ticket prices and hotels versus sleeping in a car. Jessica and Lauren returned to their earlier conversation while Mike listened unhappily to Eric and Bella.
“Do you think it’s a two-day drive or three?” Eric was asking.
“No idea,” Bella said.
“Well, how long a drive is it from here to Phoenix?”
“You can do it in two days,” she said with confidence. “If you’re willing to drive fifteen hours a day.”
“San Diego should be a little closer than that, right?”
I seemed to be the only one who noticed the light bulb going on over Bella’s head.
“Oh yeah, San Diego definitely is closer. Still two days for sure, though.”
It was clear she hadn’t even known the location of Comic Con. She’d only chimed in to save Eric from teasing. It was revealing of her character—I was always compiling my list—but now I would never know where she would have chosen for herself. Mike was nearly as dissatisfied, but he seemed oblivious to her real motivations.
It was often like this with her: never stepping out of her quiet comfort zone except for someone else’s perceived need; changing the subject whenever her circle of human friends grew too cruel to one another; thanking a teacher for their lesson if that teacher seemed down; giving up her locker for a more inconvenient location so two best friends could be neighbors; smiling a certain smile that never surfaced for her contented friends, only revealing itself to someone who was hurting. Little things that none of her acquaintances or admirers ever seemed to see.
Through all these little things, I was able to add the most important quality to my list, the most revealing of them all, as simple as it was rare. Bella was good. All the other things added up to that whole: Kind and self-effacing and unselfish and brave—she was good through and through. And no one seemed aware of that besides me. Though Mike was certainly observing her nearly as often.
And right there was the most surprising of my torments: Mike Newton. Who would have ever dreamed that such a generic, boring mortal could be so infuriating? To be fair, I should have felt some gratitude to him; more than the others, he kept the girl talking. I learned so much about her through these conversations, but Mike’s assistance with this project only aggravated me. I didn’t want him to be the one who unlocked her secrets.
It helped that he never noticed her small revelations, her little slips. He knew nothing about her. He’d created a Bella in his head who didn’t exist—a girl just as generic as he was. He hadn’t observed the unselfishness and bravery that set her apart from other humans, didn’t hear the abnormal maturity of her spoken thoughts. He didn’t perceive that when she spoke of her mother, she sounded like a parent speaking of a child rather than the other way around—loving, indulgent, slightly amused, and fiercely protective. He didn’t hear the patience in her voice when she feigned interest in his rambling stories, and didn’t guess at the compassion behind that patience.
These helpful discoveries did not warm me to the boy, however. The possessive way he viewed Bella—as if she were an acquisition to be made—provoked me almost as much as his crude fantasies about her. He was becoming more confident of her, too, as time passed, for she seemed to prefer him over those he considered his rivals—Tyler Crowley, Eric Yorkie, and even, sporadically, myself. He would routinely sit on her side of our table before Biology began, chattering at her, encouraged by her smiles. Just polite smiles, I told myself. All the same, I frequently amused myself by imagining backhanding him across the room and into the far wall. It probably wouldn’t injure him fatally.…
Mike didn’t often think of me as a rival. After the accident, he’d worried that Bella and I would bond from the shared experience, but obviously the opposite had resulted. Back then, he had still been bothered that I’d singled Bella out over her peers for attention. But now I ignored her just as thoroughly as the others, and he grew complacent.
What was she thinking now? Did she welcome his attention?
And finally, the last of my torments, the most painful: Bella’s indifference. As I ignored her, she ignored me. She never tried to speak to me again. For all I knew, she never thought about me at all.
This might have driven me mad—or worse, broken my resolution—except that she sometimes stared at me as she had before. I didn’t see it for myself, as I could not allow myself to look at her, but Alice always warned us; the others were still wary of the girl’s problematic knowledge.
It eased some of the pain that she gazed at me from a distance every now and then. Of course, she was probably just wondering exactly what kind of an aberration I was.
“Bella’s going to stare at Edward in a minute. Look normal,” Alice said one Tuesday in March, and the others were careful to fidget and shift their weight.
I paid attention to how often she looked in my direction. It pleased me, though it should not have, that the frequency did not decline as time passed. I didn’t know what it meant, but it made me feel better.
Alice sighed. I wish…
“Stay out of it, Alice,” I said under my breath. “It’s not going to happen.”
She pouted. Alice was anxious to form her envisioned friendship with Bella. In a strange way, she missed the girl she didn’t know.
I’ll admit, you’re better than I thought. You’ve got the future all snarled up and senseless again. I hope you’re happy.
“It makes plenty of sense to me.”
She snorted delicately.
I tried to shut her out, too impatient for conversation. I wasn’t in a very good mood—tenser than I let any of them see. Only Jasper was aware of how tightly wound I was, feeling the stress emanate out of me with his unique ability to both sense and influence the moods of others. He didn’t understand the reasons behind the moods, though, and—since I was constantly in a foul temper these days—he disregarded it.
Today would be a hard one. Harder than the day before, as was the pattern.
Mike Newton was going to ask Bella on a date.
A girls’ choice dance was on the near horizon, and he’d been hoping very much that Bella would ask him. That she had not done so had rattled his confidence. Now he was in an uncomfortable bind—I enjoyed his discomfort more than I should have—because Jessica Stanley had just invited him. He didn’t want to say yes, still hopeful that Bella would choose him (and prove him the victor over her other would-be suitors), but he didn’t want to say no and end up missing the dance altogether. Jessica, hurt by his hesitation and guessing the reason behind it, was thinking daggers at Bella. Again, I had the instinct to place myself between her and Jessica’s angry thoughts. I understood the instinct better now, but that only made it more frustrating when I could not act on it.
To think it had come to this! I was utterly fixated on the petty high school dramas that I’d once held so in contempt.
Mike was working up his nerve as he walked Bella to Biology. I listened to his struggles as I waited for them to arrive. The boy was weak. He had waited for this dance purposely, afraid to let his infatuation be known before she had shown a marked preference for him. He didn’t want to make himself vulnerable to rejection, preferring that she take that leap first.
Coward.
He sat down on our table again, comfortable through long familiarity, and I imagined the sound it would make if his body hit the opposite wall with enough force to break most of his bones.
“So,” he said to the girl, his eyes on the floor. “Jessica asked me to the spring dance.”
“That’s great,” Bella answered immediately and with enthusiasm. It was hard not to smile as Mike processed her tone. He’d been hoping for dismay. “You’ll have a lot of fun with Jessica.”
He scrambled for the right response. “Well…” He hesitated and almost turned tail. Then he rallied. “I told her I had to think about it.”
“Why would you do that?” she demanded. Her tone was disapproving, but there was the faintest hint of relief there as well.
What did that mean? An unexpected, intense fury made my hands clench into fists.
Mike did not hear the relief. His face flushed red—fierce as I suddenly felt, this seemed like an open invitation—and he looked at the floor again as he spoke.
“I was wondering if… well, if you might be planning to ask me.”
Bella hesitated.
In that moment, I saw the future more clearly than Alice ever had.
The girl might say yes to Mike’s unspoken question now, or she might not, but either way, someday soon, she would say yes to someone. She was lovely and intriguing, and human males were not oblivious to this fact. Whether she would settle for someone in this lackluster crowd, or wait until she was free from Forks, the day would come that she would say yes.
I saw her life as I had before—college, career… love, marriage. I saw her on her father’s arm again, dressed in gauzy white, her face flushed with happiness as she moved to the sound of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.”
The pain I felt while I imagined this future reminded me of the agony of transformation. It consumed me.
And not just pain, but outright rage.