“Bella,” I corrected him reflexively. “Actually, she identified three of the five.”
Mr. Banner’s thoughts were skeptical as he turned to look at the girl. “Have you done this lab before?”
I watched, engrossed, as she smiled, looking slightly embarrassed.
“Whitefish blastula?” Mr. Banner probed.
“Yeah.”
This surprised him. Today’s lab was something he’d pulled from a senior-class course. He nodded thoughtfully at the girl. “Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?”
“Yes.”
She was advanced, then, intelligent for a human. This did not surprise me.
“Well,” Mr. Banner said, pursing his lips, “I guess it’s good you two are lab partners.” He turned and walked away, mumbling “So the other kids can get a chance to learn something for themselves” under his breath. I doubted the girl could hear that. She began scrawling loops across her folder again.
Two slips so far in one half hour. An extremely poor showing on my part. Though I had no idea at all what the girl thought of me—how much did she fear, how much did she suspect?—I knew I needed to put forth a better effort to leave her with a new impression. Something to quell her memories of our ferocious last encounter.
“It’s too bad about the snow, isn’t it?” I said, repeating the small talk that I’d heard a dozen students discuss already. A boring, standard topic of conversation. The weather—always safe.
She stared at me with obvious doubt in her eyes—an abnormal reaction to my very normal words. “Not really.”
I tried to steer the conversation back to trite paths. She was from a much brighter, warmer place—her skin seemed to reflect that somehow, despite its fairness—and the cold must make her uncomfortable. My icy touch certainly had.
“You don’t like the cold,” I guessed.
“Or the wet,” she agreed.
“Forks must be a difficult place for you to live.” Perhaps you should not have come here, I wanted to add. Perhaps you should go back where you belong.
I wasn’t sure I wanted that, though. I would always remember the scent of her blood—was there any guarantee that I wouldn’t eventually follow her? Besides, if she left, her mind would forever remain a mystery, a constant, nagging puzzle.
“You have no idea,” she said in a low voice, glowering past me for a moment.
Her answers were never what I expected. They made me want to ask more questions.
“Why did you come here, then?” I demanded, realizing instantly that my tone was too accusatory, not casual enough for the conversation. The question sounded rude, prying.
“It’s… complicated.”
She blinked, leaving it at that, and I nearly imploded out of curiosity—in that second, it burned almost as hot as the thirst in my throat. Actually, I found that it was getting slightly easier to breathe; the agony was becoming a tiny bit more bearable through familiarity.
“I think I can keep up,” I insisted. Perhaps common courtesy would compel her to answer my questions as long as I was impolite enough to ask them.
She stared down silently at her hands. This made me impatient. I wanted to put my hand under her chin and tilt her head up so that I could read her eyes. But of course I could never touch her skin again.
She looked up suddenly. It was a relief to be able to see the emotions in her eyes. She spoke in a rush, hurrying through the words.
“My mother got remarried.”
Ah, this was human enough, easy to understand. Sorrow flitted across her face, bringing the small pucker back between her brows.
“That doesn’t sound so complex,” I said, my voice gentle without my working to make it that way. Her dejection left me oddly helpless, wishing there was something I could do to make her feel better. A strange impulse. “When did that happen?”
“Last September.” She exhaled heavily—not quite a sigh. I froze for a moment as her warm breath brushed my face.
“And you don’t like him,” I guessed after that short pause, still fishing for more information.
“No, Phil is fine,” she said, correcting my assumption. There was a hint of a smile now around the corners of her full lips. “Too young, maybe, but nice enough.”
This didn’t fit with the scenario I’d been constructing in my head.
“Why didn’t you stay with them?” My voice was too eager; it sounded like I was being nosy. Which I was, admittedly.
“Phil travels a lot. He plays ball for a living.” The little smile grew more pronounced; this career choice amused her.
I smiled, too, without choosing the expression. I wasn’t trying to make her feel at ease. Her smile just made me want to smile in response—to be in on the secret.
“Have I heard of him?” I ran through the rosters of professional ballplayers in my head, wondering which Phil was hers.
“Probably not. He doesn’t play well.” Another smile. “Strictly minor league. He moves around a lot.”
The rosters in my head shifted instantly, and I’d tabulated a list of possibilities in less than a second. At the same time, I was imagining the new scenario.
“And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him,” I said. Making assumptions seemed to get more information out of her than questions did. It worked again. Her chin jutted out, and her expression was suddenly stubborn.
“No, she did not send me here,” she said, and her voice had a new, hard edge to it. My assumption had upset her, though I couldn’t quite see how. “I sent myself.”
I could not guess at her meaning, or the source behind her pique. I was entirely lost.
There was just no making sense of the girl. She wasn’t like other humans. Maybe the silence of her thoughts and the perfume of her scent were not the only unusual things about her.
“I don’t understand,” I admitted, hating to concede.
She sighed and stared into my eyes for longer than most normal humans were able to stand.
“She stayed with me at first, but she missed him,” Bella explained slowly, her tone growing more forlorn with each word. “It made her unhappy… so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie.”
The tiny pucker between her eyes deepened.
“But now you’re unhappy,” I murmured. I kept speaking my hypotheses aloud, hoping to learn from her refutations. This one, however, did not seem as far off the mark.
“And?” she said, as if this was not even an aspect to be considered.
I continued to stare into her eyes, feeling that I’d finally gotten my first real glimpse into her soul. I saw in that one word where she ranked herself among her own priorities. Unlike most humans, her own needs were far down the list.
She was selfless.
As I saw this, the mystery of the person hiding inside this quiet mind began to clear a little.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said. I shrugged, trying to seem casual.
She laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Life isn’t fair.”
I wanted to laugh at her words, though I, too, felt no real amusement. I knew a little something about the unfairness of life. “I believe I have heard that somewhere before.”
She stared back at me, seeming confused again. Her eyes flickered away, and then came back to mine.
“So that’s all,” she told me.
I was not ready to let this conversation end. The little v between her eyes, a remnant of her sorrow, bothered me.
“You put on a good show.” I spoke slowly, still considering this next hypothesis. “But I’d be willing to bet that you’re suffering more than you let anyone see.”
She made a face, her eyes narrowing and her mouth twisting into a lopsided frown, and she looked back toward the front of the class. She didn’t like it when I guessed right. She wasn’t the average martyr—she didn’t want an audience for her pain.
“Am I wrong?”
She flinched slightly, but otherwise pretended not to hear me.
That made me smile. “I didn’t think so.”
“Why does it matter to you?” she demanded, still staring away.
“That’s a very good question,” I admitted, more to myself than to her.
Her discernment was better than mine—she saw right to the core of things while I floundered around the edges, sifting blindly through clues. The details of her very human life should not matter to me. It was wrong for me to care what she thought. Beyond protecting my family from suspicion, human thoughts were not significant.
I was not used to being the less intuitive of any pairing. I relied on my extra hearing too much—I clearly was not as perceptive as I gave myself credit for.
The girl sighed and glowered toward the front of the classroom. Something about her frustrated expression was humorous. The whole situation, the whole conversation, was humorous. No one had ever been in more danger from me than this small human girl—at any moment I might, distracted by my ridiculous absorption in the conversation, inhale through my nose and attack her before I could stop myself—and she was irritated because I hadn’t answered her question.
“Am I annoying you?” I asked, smiling at the absurdity of it all.
She glanced at me quickly, and then her eyes seemed to get trapped by my gaze.
“Not exactly,” she told me. “I’m more annoyed at myself. My face is so easy to read—my mother always calls me her open book.”
She frowned, disgruntled.
I stared at her in amazement. She was upset because she thought I saw through her too easily. How bizarre. I’d never expended so much effort to understand someone in all my life—or rather existence, as life was hardly the right word. I did not truly have a life.
“On the contrary,” I disagreed, feeling strangely… wary, as if there were some hidden danger here that I was failing to see. Beyond the very obvious danger, something more… I was suddenly on edge, the premonition making me anxious. “I find you very difficult to read.”
“You must be a good reader, then,” she guessed, making her own assumption, which was, again, right on target.
“Usually,” I agreed.
I smiled at her widely then, letting my lips pull back to expose the rows of gleaming, steel-strong teeth behind them.
It was a stupid thing to do, but I was abruptly, unexpectedly desperate to get some kind of warning through to the girl. Her body was closer to me than before, having shifted unconsciously in the course of our conversation. All the little markers and signs that were sufficient to scare off the rest of humanity did not seem to be working on her. Why did she not cringe away from me in terror? Surely she had seen enough of my darker side to realize the danger.
I didn’t get to see if my warning had the intended effect. Mr. Banner called for the class’s attention just then, and she turned away from me at once. She seemed a little relieved for the interruption, so maybe she understood unconsciously.
I hoped she did.
I recognized the fascination growing inside me, even as I tried to root it out. I could not afford to find Bella Swan interesting. Or rather, she could not afford that. Already, I was anxious for another chance to talk to her. I wanted to know more about her mother, her life before she came here, her relationship with her father. All the meaningless details that would flesh out her character further. But every second I spent with her was a mistake, a risk she shouldn’t have to take.
Absentmindedly, she tossed her thick hair just at the moment that I allowed myself another breath. A particularly concentrated wave of her scent hit the back of my throat.
It was like the first day—like the grenade. The pain of the burning dryness made me dizzy. I had to grasp the table again to keep myself in my seat. This time I had slightly more control. I didn’t break anything, at least. The monster growled inside me but took no pleasure in my pain. He was too tightly bound. For the moment.
I stopped breathing altogether and leaned as far from the girl as I could.
No, I could not afford to find her fascinating. The more interesting I found her, the more likely it was that I would kill her. I’d already made two minor slips today. Would I make a third, one that was not minor?
As soon as the bell sounded, I fled from the classroom—probably destroying whatever impression of politeness I’d halfway constructed in the course of the hour. Again, I gasped at the clean, wet air outside as though it was a healing attar. I hurried to put as much distance as possible between myself and the girl.
Emmett waited for me outside the door of our Spanish class. He read my wild expression for a moment.
How did it go? he wondered warily.
“Nobody died,” I mumbled.
I guess that’s something. When I saw Alice ditching there at the end, I thought…
As we walked into the classroom, I saw his memory from just a few moments earlier, seen through the open door of his last class: Alice walking briskly and blank-faced across the grounds toward the science building. I felt his remembered urge to get up and join her, and then his decision to stay. If Alice needed his help, she would ask.
I closed my eyes in horror and disgust as I slumped into my seat. “I hadn’t realized it was that close. I didn’t think I was going to… I didn’t see that it was that bad,” I whispered.
It wasn’t, he reassured me. Nobody died, right?
“Right,” I said through my teeth. “Not this time.”
Maybe it will get easier.
“Sure.”
Or maybe you kill her. He shrugged. You wouldn’t be the first one to mess up. No one would judge you too harshly. Sometimes a person just smells too good. I’m impressed you’ve lasted this long.
“Not helping, Emmett.”
I was revolted by his acceptance of the idea that I would kill the girl, that this was somehow inevitable. Was it her fault that she smelled so good?
I know when it happened to me…, he reminisced, taking me back with him half a century, to a country lane at dusk, where a middle-aged woman was pulling her dried sheets down from a line strung between apple trees. I’d seen this before, the strongest of his two encounters, but the memory seemed particularly vivid now—perhaps because my throat still ached from the last hour’s scorching. Emmett remembered the smell of apples hanging heavy in the air—the harvest was over and the rejected fruits were scattered on the ground, the bruises in their skin leaking their fragrance out in thick clouds. A freshly mowed field of hay was a background to that scent, a harmony. He walked up the lane, all but oblivious to the woman, on an errand for Rosalie. The sky was purple overhead, orange over the mountains to the west. He would have continued up the meandering cart path and there would have been no reason to remember the evening, except that a sudden night breeze blew the white sheets out like sails and fanned the woman’s scent across Emmett’s face.
“Ah,” I groaned quietly. As if my own remembered thirst was not enough.
I know. I didn’t last half a second. I didn’t even think about resisting.
His memory became far too explicit for me to stand.
I jumped to my feet, my teeth locked hard.
“Estás bien, Edward?” Mrs. Goff asked, startled by my sudden movement. I could see my face in her mind, and I knew that I looked far from well.
“Perdóname,” I muttered as I darted for the door.
“Emmett, por favor, puedes ayudar a tu hermano?” she asked, gesturing helplessly toward me as I rushed out of the room.
“Sure,” I heard him say. And then he was right behind me.
He followed me to the far side of the building, where he caught up to me and put his hand on my shoulder.
I shoved his hand away with unnecessary force. It would have shattered the bones in a human hand, and the bones in the arm attached to it.
“Sorry, Edward.”
“I know.” I drew in deep gasps of air, trying to clear my head and lungs.
“Is it as bad as that?” he asked, trying not to think of the scent and the flavor of his memory as he asked, and not quite succeeding.
“Worse, Emmett, worse.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Maybe…
“No, it would not be better if I got it over with. Go back to class, Emmett. I want to be alone.”
He turned without another word or thought and walked quickly away. He would tell the Spanish teacher that I was sick, or ditching, or a dangerously out of control vampire. Did his excuse really matter? Maybe I wasn’t coming back. Maybe I had to leave.
I returned to my car to wait for school to end. To hide. Again.
I should have spent the time making decisions or trying to bolster my resolve, but, like an addict, I found myself searching through the babble of thoughts emanating from the school buildings. The familiar voices stood out, but I wasn’t interested in listening to Alice’s visions or Rosalie’s complaints right now. I found Jessica easily, but the girl was not with her, so I continued searching. Mike Newton’s thoughts caught my attention, and I located her at last, in Gym with him. He was unhappy because I’d spoken to her today in Biology. He was running over her response when he’d brought the subject up.
I’ve never seen him actually say more than a word here or there to anyone. Of course he would decide to talk to Bella. I don’t like the way he looks at her. But she didn’t seem too excited about him. What did she say to me earlier? “Wonder what was with him last Monday.” Something like that. Didn’t sound like she cared. It couldn’t have been much of a conversation.…
He cheered himself with the idea that Bella had not been interested in her exchange with me. This annoyed me quite a bit, so I stopped listening to him.
I put in a CD of violent music, and then turned it up until it drowned out other voices. I had to concentrate on the music very hard to keep myself from drifting back to Mike Newton’s thoughts to spy on the unsuspecting girl.
I cheated a few times as the hour drew to a close. Not spying, I tried to convince myself. I was just preparing. I wanted to know exactly when she would leave the gym, when she would be in the parking lot. I didn’t want her to take me by surprise.
As the students started to file out the gym doors, I got out of my car, not sure why I did it. The rain was light—I ignored it as it slowly saturated my hair.
Did I want her to see me here? Did I hope she would come to speak to me? What was I doing?
I didn’t move, though I tried to convince myself to get back in the car, knowing my behavior was reprehensible. I kept my arms folded across my chest and breathed very shallowly as I watched her walk slowly toward me, her mouth turning down at the corners. She didn’t look at me. A few times she glanced up at the clouds with a scowl, as if they had offended her.
I was disappointed when she reached her car before she had to pass me. Would she have spoken to me? Would I have spoken to her?
She got into a faded red Chevy truck, a rusted behemoth that was older than her father. I watched her start the truck—the old engine roared louder than any other vehicle in the lot—and then hold her hands out toward the heating vents. The cold was uncomfortable to her—she didn’t like it. She combed her fingers through her thick hair, pulling locks through the stream of hot air as though she was trying to dry them. I imagined what the cab of that truck would smell like, and then quickly drove out the thought.
She glanced around as she prepared to back out, and finally looked in my direction. She stared back at me for only half a second, and all I could read in her eyes was surprise before she tore them away and jerked the truck into reverse. And then squealed to a stop again, the back end of the truck missing a collision with Nicole Casey’s compact by mere inches.
She stared into her rearview mirror, her mouth hanging open, horrified at her near miss. When the other car had pulled past her, she checked all her blind spots twice and then inched out of the parking space so cautiously that it made me grin. It was as though she thought she was dangerous in her decrepit truck.
The thought of Bella Swan being dangerous to anyone, no matter what she was driving, had me laughing while the girl drove past me, staring straight ahead.