Bella slept so soundly through the night that it was unnerving.
For what seemed a very long time now, from the first moment I’d caught her scent, I’d been powerless to keep my own state of mind from careening wildly from one extreme to the other every minute of the day. Tonight was worse than usual—the burden of the hazard immediately ahead had pushed me to a peak of mental stress beyond anything I’d known in a hundred years.
And Bella slept on, limbs relaxed, forehead smooth, lips turned up at the corners, her breath flowing softly in and out as evenly as a metronome. In all my nights with her, she’d never been so at peace. What did it mean?
I could only think that it meant she did not understand. Despite all the warnings I’d given her, she still didn’t believe the truth. She trusted me too much. She was wrong to do so.
She didn’t stir when her father peeked into her room. It was still early; the sun had not yet risen. I held my place, certain I was invisible in my shadowed corner. Her father’s shrouded thoughts were tinged with regret, with guilt. Nothing too serious, I thought, simply an acknowledgment that he was leaving her alone again. For a moment he wavered, but a sense of obligation—plans, companions, promised rides—pulled him away. That was my best guess.
Charlie made a great deal of noise gathering his fishing things from the coat closet under the stairs. Bella had no reaction to the commotion. Her lids never so much as fluttered.
Once Charlie was gone, it was my turn to exit, though I was loath to leave the serenity of her room. Despite everything, her peaceful sleep had calmed my spirits. I took one final lungful of fire, and then held it inside my chest, cradling the pain close until it could be replenished.
The tumult resumed as soon as she was awake; whatever calm she had
found in her dreams seemed to have vanished in the light. The sound of her movements was hurried, and a few times she tweaked the curtains, looking for me, I thought. It made me impatient to be with her again, but we had agreed on a time and I didn’t want to prematurely interrupt her preparations. Mine were made, but felt incomplete. Could I ever be truly ready for a day such as this?
I wished I could feel the joy of it—an entire day by her side, answers to every question I could ask, her warmth surrounding me. At the same time, I wished I could turn my back on her house this moment and run in the opposite direction—that I could be strong enough to run to the far side of the world and stay there, never to endanger her again. But I remembered Alice’s vision of Bella’s bleak, shadowed face and knew that I could never be that strong.
I’d worked myself into a fine dark mood by the time I dropped from the shadows of the tree and crossed her front lawn. I tried to erase the evidence of my state of mind from my face, but I couldn’t seem to remember how to shape my muscles the right way.
I knocked quietly, knowing she was listening, then heard her feet stumble down the last few stairs to the hall. She ran to the door and fought with the bolt for a long moment, finally yanking the door open so forcefully that it smacked into the wall with a bang.
She looked into my eyes and was abruptly still, the peace of the previous night evident in her smile.
My mood, too, lightened. I drew in a breath, replacing the stale burn with fresh pain, but the pain was so much less than the joy of being with her.
An errant curiosity drew my eyes to her clothes. Which outfit had she decided on? I remembered the ensemble at once—now that I thought about it, this sweater had been laid in the most prominent position, draped over her obsolete computer, with a white button-down underneath and blue jeans just to the side. Light tan, white collar, medium blue denim… I didn’t have to look at myself to know the shades and styles were nearly identical.
I chuckled once. Something in common again. “Good morning.”
“What’s wrong?” she responded.
There were a thousand answers to that question and I was taken aback
for an instant, but then I saw her glance down at herself and inferred it was to search for the reason behind my laugh.
“We match,” I explained.
I laughed again as she took this in, examining my clothes and then her own, with a surprised look on her face. Suddenly, the surprise shifted to a frown. Why? I couldn’t think of a reason to find the coincidence anything more or less than mildly amusing. Was there some deeper reason she’d chosen these clothes, some reason that made her angry when I laughed? How could I ask that without sounding strange? I could only be sure that her reason for choosing thusly had not been the same as mine.
I shuddered internally at the thought of the purpose behind my wardrobe and what it portended. But I shouldn’t shy away from this. I shouldn’t want to hide myself from her. She deserved to know everything.
Her smile returned as she walked with me to her truck—suddenly smug. I wasn’t going to back out of the promise I’d made, but I didn’t particularly like it. I knew it wasn’t rational. She drove herself around in this antique monstrosity daily and nothing bad ever happened to her. Of course, the bad things seemed to wait until I was there to be their horrified witness. My expression must have led her to believe I was upset about the arrangement.
“We made a deal,” she gloated, leaning across the seat to unlock the passenger door.
I could only wish my concerns were that trivial.
The decrepit engine coughed its way to life. The metal frame vibrated so violently I worried something would shake loose.
“Where to?” she half shouted over the cacophony. She wrenched the gearshift into reverse and looked back over her shoulder.
“Put your seat belt on,” I insisted. “I’m nervous already.”
She threw a dark look at me, but snapped her buckle into place, and then sighed.
“Where to?” she said again. “Take the one-oh-one north.”
She kept her eyes on the road as she drove slowly through town. I wondered if she would accelerate when we were on the main road, but she continued at three miles per hour below the posted speed limit. The sun was still low in the eastern horizon, shrouded in thin layers of cloud. But according to Alice, it would be sunny by midday. I wondered if—at this rate
—we would be safely in the woods before the sunlight could touch me. “Were you planning to make it out of Forks before nightfall?” I asked,
knowing she would object to the defamation of her truck. She reacted as expected.
“This truck is old enough to be your car’s grandfather,” she snapped. “Have some respect.” But she goaded the engine slightly faster. Two miles above the speed limit now.
I felt a little relieved when we were finally free of downtown Forks. Soon there was more forest than civilization outside the window. The engine droned on like a jackhammer biting into granite. Her eyes never strayed from the road for a second. I wanted to say something, to ask her what she was thinking about, but I didn’t want to distract her. There was something almost fierce about her concentration.
“Turn right on the one-ten,” I told her.
She nodded to herself, then slowed down to a crawl to take the turn. “Now we drive till the pavement ends.”
“And what’s there?” she asked. “At the pavement’s end?”
An empty forest. A total lack of witnesses. A monster. “A trail.”
Her voice was higher, tighter, when she responded, still staring only at the road. “We’re hiking?”
The concern in her tone worried me. I hadn’t considered… The distance was very short, and the way was not difficult, not so different from the trail behind her house.
“Is that a problem?” Was there somewhere else to take her? I hadn’t made any backup plans.
“No,” she said quickly, but her voice was still a little strained.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “It’s only five miles or so, and we’re in no hurry.” Truly—suddenly feeling a wave of panic as I realized how short the distance was indeed—I would love nothing more than a delay.
The furrow was back. After a few empty seconds, she started to chew on her lower lip.
“What are you thinking?”
Did she want to turn around? Had she changed her mind about all of it?
Did she wish she’d never answered the door this morning?
“Just wondering where we’re going,” she replied. Her tone aimed for casual, but missed it by a few inches.
“It’s a place I like to go when the weather is nice.” I glanced through the window and she did, too. The clouds were no more than a thin veil now. They would burn off soon.
What did she think she would see when the sun touched my skin? What mental image had she conjured to explain today’s field trip to herself?
“Charlie said it would be warm today.”
I thought of her father, pictured him beside the river, enjoying the pleasant day. He didn’t know he was at a crossroads, a possible life- destroying nightmare waiting, so close, to engulf his entire world.
“And did you tell Charlie what you were up to?” I asked the question without hope.
She smiled, eyes straight ahead. “Nope.”
I wished she didn’t sound so happy about it. Still, I knew there was one witness, one voice to speak for Bella if she didn’t come home.
“But Jessica thinks we’re going to Seattle together?”
“No,” she said, complacent. “I told her you canceled on me—which is true.”
What? I hadn’t heard this. It must have happened while I was hunting with Alice. Bella had covered my tracks for me as if she wanted me to get away with her murder.
“No one knows you’re with me?”
She flinched slightly at my tone, but then her chin came up and she forced a smile. “That depends. I assume you told Alice?”
I had to take a deep breath to keep my voice even. “That’s very helpful, Bella.”
Her smile disappeared, but she gave no other indication that she’d heard me.
“Are you so depressed by Forks that it’s made you suicidal?”
“You said it might cause trouble for you,” she said quietly, all humor gone. “Us being together publicly.”
I remembered the exchange perfectly, and wondered how she had gotten it so backward. I hadn’t told her that so she would try to make herself more vulnerable to me. I’d told her so she would run away from me.
“So you’re worried about the trouble it might cause me,” I asked through my teeth, trying to place the words in exactly the right order so that it would be impossible for her not to hear the inherent ridiculousness of her position.
“If you don’t come home?”
Eyes on the road, she nodded once.
“How can you not see how wrong I am?” I hissed, too angry to slow the words down into something comprehensible for her. Telling her never worked. I would have to show her.
She seemed nervous, but in a new way, her eyes almost shifting to look at me, yet never quite breaking away from the road. Frightened by my anger, though not in the way she should be. Just worried that she’d made me unhappy. I didn’t have to read her mind to anticipate the established pattern.
As usual, I wasn’t truly angry with her—only myself. Yes, her responses toward me were always backward. But that was because, in another way, they were right. She was always too kind. She gave me credit I didn’t deserve, worried over my feelings as if they mattered. Her very goodness was what put her in this danger. Her virtue, my vice, the two opposites binding us together.
We’d reached the end of the paved road. Bella pulled the truck onto the loamy shoulder and killed the engine. The sudden quiet was almost shocking after the long auditory assault. She disengaged her seat belt and slid quickly from the truck without looking at me. With her back to me, she pulled her sweater over her head. It took her a few seconds’ struggle, and then she tied the sleeves around her waist. I was surprised to see that her shirt mirrored my own in more than color; it too left her arms bare to the shoulder. This was more of her than I was used to seeing, but despite the fascination that immediately sparked, what I felt most was concern. Anything that interrupted my concentration was a danger.
I sighed. I didn’t want to go through with this. There were many serious reasons, life and death reasons, but in this moment, my greatest dread was the expression on her face, the revulsion in her eyes, when she finally saw me.
I would face it head-on. Pretend to be brave, to be bigger than this selfish fear, even if it was no more than a charade.
I slipped my own sweater off, feeling glaringly conspicuous. I’d never uncovered so much of my skin around anyone but my family.
Jaw clenched, I slid out of the truck—leaving the sweater so I wouldn’t be tempted—and shut the door. I stared into the forest. Maybe if I got off
the road and into the trees, I wouldn’t feel so exposed.
I felt her eyes on me, but I was too cowardly to turn. I looked over my shoulder instead.
“This way.” The words came out clipped, too fast. I had to get my anxiety under control. I started to walk slowly forward.
“The trail?” Her voice was an octave higher than usual. I glanced at her again—she looked nervous as she walked around the front end of the truck to meet me. There were so many things that might be frightening her, I couldn’t be sure which it was.
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?
We were so close.
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.
