"I told you there was a change coming. I don't know, Edward." But she locked her jaw, and I could see that there was more. She was trying not to think about it; she was focusing very hard on Jasper suddenly, though he was too stunned to have progressed much in his decision making.
She did this sometimes when she was trying to keep something from me.
"What, Alice? What are you hiding?"
I heard Emmett grumble. He always got frustrated when Alice and I had these kinds of conversations.
She shook her head, trying to not let me in.
"Is it about the girl?" I demanded. "Is it about Bella?"
She had her teeth gritted in concentration, but when I spoke Bella's name, she slipped. Her slip only lasted the tiniest portion of a second, but that was long enough.
"NO!" I shouted. I heard my chair hit the floor, and only then realized I was on my feet.
"Edward!" Carlisle was on his feet, too, his arm on my shoulder. I was barely aware of him.
"It's solidifying," Alice whispered. "Every minute you're more decided. There're really only two ways left for her. It's one or the other, Edward."
I could see what she saw...but I could not accept it.
"No," I said again; there was no volume to my denial. My legs felt hollow, and I had to brace myself against the table.
"Will somebody please let the rest of us in on the mystery?" Emmett complained.
"I have to leave," I whispered to Alice, ignoring him.
"Edward, we've already been over that," Emmett said loudly. "That's the best way to start the girl talking. Besides, if you take off, we won't know for sure if she's talking or not. You have to stay and deal with this."
"I don't see you going anywhere, Edward," Alice told me. "I don't know if you can leave anymore." Think about it, she added silently. Think about leaving.
I saw what she meant. Yes, the idea of never seeing the girl again was...painful. But it was also necessary. I couldn't sanction either future I'd apparently condemned her to.
I'm not entirely sure of Jasper, Edward, Alice went on. If you leave, if he thinks she's a danger to us...
"I don't hear that," I contradicted her, still only halfway aware of our audience. Jasper was wavering. He would not do something that would hurt Alice.
Not right this moment. Will you risk her life, leave her undefended?
"Why are you doing this to me?" I groaned. My head fell into my hands.
I was not Bella's protector. I could not be that. Wasn't Alice's divided future enough proof of that?
I love her, too. Or I will. It's not the same, but I want her around for that.
"Love her, too?" I whispered, incredulous.
She sighed. You are so blind, Edward. Can't you see where you're headed? Can't you see where you already are? It's more inevitable than the sun rising in the east. See what I see...
I shook my head, horrified. "No." I tried to shut out the visions she revealed to me. "I don't have to follow that course. I'll leave. I will change the future."
"You can try," she said, her voice skeptical.
"Oh, come on!" Emmett bellowed.
"Pay attention," Rose hissed at him. "Alice sees him falling for a human! How classically Edward!" She made a gagging sound.
I scarcely heard her.
"What?" Emmett said, startled. Then his booming laugh echoed through the room. "Is that what's been going on?" He laughed again. "Tough break, Edward."
I felt his hand on my shoulder, and I shook it off absently. I couldn't pay attention to him.
"Fall for a human?" Esme repeated in a stunned voice. "For the girl he saved today? Fall in love with her?"
"What do you see, Alice? Exactly," Jasper demanded.
She turned toward him; I continued to stare numbly at the side of her face.
"It all depends on whether he is strong enough or not. Either he'll kill her himself --" she turned to meet my gaze again, glaring-- "which would really irritate me, Edward, not to mention what it would do to you--" she faced Jasper again, "or she'll be one of us someday."
Someone gasped; I didn't look to see who.
"That's not going to happen!" I was shouting again. "Either one!"
Alice didn't seem to hear me. "It all depends," she repeated. "He may be just strong enough not to kill her--but it will be close. It will take an amazing amount of control," she mused. "More even than Carlisle has. He may be just strong enough... The only thing he's not strong enough to do is stay away from her. That's a lost cause."
I couldn't find my voice. No one else seemed to be able to either. The room was still.
I stared at Alice, and everyone else stared at me. I could see my own horrified expression from five different viewpoints.
After a long moment, Carlisle sighed.
"Well, this...complicates things."
"I'll say," Emmett agreed. His voice was still close to laughter. Trust Emmett to find the joke in the destruction of my life.
"I suppose the plans remain the same, though," Carlisle said thoughtfully. "We'll stay, and watch. Obviously, no one will...hurt the girl."
I stiffened.
"No," Jasper said quietly. "I can agree to that. If Alice sees only two ways--"
"No!" My voice was not a shout or a growl or a cry of despair, but some combination of the three. "No!"
I had to leave, to be away from the noise of their thoughts--Rosalie's self-righteous disgust, Emmett's humor, Carlisle's never ending patience...
Worse: Alice's confidence. Jasper's confidence in that confidence.
Worst of all: Esme's...joy.
I stalked out of the room. Esme touched my arm as I passed, but I didn't acknowledge the gesture.
I was running before I was out of the house. I cleared the river in one bound, and raced into the forest. The rain was back again, falling so heavily that I was drenched in a few moments. I liked the thick sheet of water--it made a wall between me and the rest of the world. It closed me in, let me be alone.
I ran due east, over and through the mountains without breaking my straight course, until I could see the lights of Seattle on the other side of the sound. I stopped before I touched the borders of human civilization.
Shut in by the rain, all alone, I finally made myself look at what I had done--at the way I had mutilated the future.
First, the vision of Alice and the girl with their arms around each other--the trust and friendship was so obvious it shouted from the image. Bella's wide chocolate eyes were not bewildered in this vision, but still full of secrets--in this moment, they seemed to be happy secrets. She did not flinch away from Alice's cold arm.
What did it mean? How much did she know? In that still-life moment from the future, what did she think of me?
Then the other image, so much the same, yet now colored by horror. Alice and Bella, their arms still wrapped around each other in trusting friendship. But now there was no difference between those arms--both were white, smooth as marble, hard as steel. Bella's wide eyes were no longer chocolate. The irises were a shocking, vivid crimson. The secrets in them were unfathomable--acceptance or desolation? It was impossible to tell. Her face was cold and immortal.
I shuddered. I could not suppress the questions, similar, but different: What did it mean--how had this come about? And what did she think of me now?
I could answer that last one. If I forced her into this empty half-life through my weakness and selfishness, surely she would hate me.
But there was one more horrifying image--worse than any image I'd ever held inside my head.
My own eyes, deep crimson with human blood, the eyes of the monster. Bella's broken body in my arms, ashy white, drained, lifeless. It was so concrete, so clear.
I couldn't stand to see this. Could not bear it. I tried to banish it from my mind, tried to see something else, anything else. Tried to see again the expression on her living face that had obstructed my view for the last chapter of my existence. All to no avail.
Ali
ce's bleak vision filled my head, and I writhed internally with the agony it caused. Meanwhile, the monster in me was overflowing with glee, jubilant at the likelihood of his success. It sickened me.
This could not be allowed. There had to be a way to circumvent the future. I would not let Alice's visions direct me. I could choose a different path. There was always a choice.
There had to be.
* * *
Chapter Five
Invitations
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. Everyday, I attended high school and played human. Everyday, I listened carefully for anything new about the Cullens--there never was anything new. The girl did not speak one word of her suspicions. She just repeated the same story again and again--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 that 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 and 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 burned 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, and 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 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 stuck 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 it get easier. 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 that was the extent, just pretense and not reality.
I still hung on every breath she took, every word she said.
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 or something of the sort, 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 quietly 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 to 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 like 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. Unless I wrong about that, just imagining things. Why would she have to play a role? She was one of them--a human teenager.
Mike Newton was the most surprising of my torments. 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 the annoying boy; more than the others, he kept the girl talking. I learned so much about her through these conversations--I was still compiling my list--but, contrarily, Mike's assistance with this project only aggravated me more. I didn't want Mike to be the one that unlocked her secrets. I wanted to do that.
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 that 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, he 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 kindness behind that patience.
Through her conversations with Mike, 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 loving and brave--she was good through and through.
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 the 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 class 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. r />
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 even broken my resolution to change the future--except that she sometimes stared at me like 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 when she was about to stare; the others were still wary of the girl's problematic knowledge.
It eased some of the pain that she gazed at me from across a distance, every now and then. Of course, she could just be wondering what kind of a freak 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 like humans; absolute stillness was a marker of our kind.
I paid attention to how often she looked my direction. It pleased me, though it should not, that the frequency did not decline as the 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 mood these days--he disregarded it.
Today would be a hard one. Harder than the day before, as was the pattern.
Mike Newton, the odious boy whom I could not allow myself to rival, was going to ask Bella on a date.
A girl's 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--because Jessica Stanley had just asked him to the dance. He didn't want to say "yes," still hopeful that Bella would choose him (and prove him the victor over his rivals), 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 Jessica's angry thoughts and Bella. I understood the instinct better now, but that only made it more frustrating when I could not act on it.