Out Of Choices - Chapter 2
Title: Out Of Choices
Chapter 2: Fracture
Author:JCAddict/Sher
Fandom: Twilight, Edward/Bella
Word Count: 3,615
Rating: R/M, for sex and language
Summary: An angry young woman is forced to move to the town of Forks, Washington and decides that alone is the best way to be. She buries her heart and puts on a tough façade that very few people are able to break through. Can the love of a teenage vampire get through to the lost girl inside?
NOTE: AU (alternative universe) and OOC (out of character). Bella is uber OOC. Edward, not so much.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and all of its characters. I'm just manipulating them like imaginary playdoh so I feel like I have some power over them **snorts**
A/N: I struggled with whether or not to write this chapter in. It’s all backstory really, a combination of the books and movie and my assimilations of both. In the end I just felt like it was important to show Edward’s mindset and the angle that he is approaching the Bella situation with.
From EPOV…
Fracture
I did not choose this life. I was damned to it. Turned by the most compassionate man I’ve ever known, a man more my father than my father ever was. I understood the reasons behind his choice, but given the task of deciding myself I would have chosen death. At least it would have been my choice. I couldn’t bring myself to resent my creator however. It was just easier to hate myself, to hate the monster inside of me. He was easy to hate, pure evil and uncontrolled rage. And I did hate him. I hated him with every fibre of my being.
To say that I loathed my life would be a bit of a falsehood. It was the day to day routine, the repetition, that I despised, the moving from place to place so no one would catch on, the constant state of pretending, pretending to be something I wasn’t, pretending to live up to the image my father had of me, pretending to be better than I was. I was very disciplined though after so many years of playing the game, scarcely even minutely tempted by a human. In fact they were all rather boring to me, shallow and predictable. I’d seen and heard it all in my eighty odd years as a vampire.
While my days were stale, tedious, and irksome, my nights were buzzing, ebullient and replete. Under the cover of darkness I didn’t have to hide. I could be less of the carefully crafted façade and more of who I really was. I relished the freedom. I took to the forest at night running at full speed as far as I felt like going. The velocity was a high, uncaged and unbridled excitement. If I couldn’t find it in the forests then I took to the roads in my Vanquish. Using my considerable reflexes I could easily take the roads at twice any posted speed limit. I was always pushing the limits of my Aston Martin, never happy until its normally purring engine roared angrily. Then I knew I had my speed. And I had my solitude. I rather think I deserved it, partly as a reward for subjecting myself to such inane and uninteresting subjects every day, and partly because I was a monster who did not deserve company.
My family, an oddity for my kind, was formed in pairs, my father Carlisle and his wife, my mother Esme, and of course my brothers and sisters, Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice. I was the odd man out. None of the seven of us had any blood relation but the bonds of our family extended far beyond biology or genetics, deeper and more impenetrable. The family may have been born out of a choice to live a similar, less conventional lifestyle than others like us, but our affinities were every bit as complex and intricate as those of a normal human family, and perhaps more so due to their duration and shared secrets.
When the newest addition to the student body of Forks High School walked into the biology lab last week my world fractured. Perhaps I’m in some way responsible for bringing this upon myself, retribution for abhorring the human mind, or fate’s cruel joke, but she was the closest thing to heaven that I had ever smelled, the literal perfect design to my individual thirst. My normally easily contained appetite flared in such an intense way that my muscles coiled for the hunt against my will. She may as well have entered the classroom with a target on her body.
Of course there was only one open seat in the whole room, at my own table. When she took the seat next to me her scent assaulted me. It was excruciating, agonizing, and consuming. My mouth swam in venom and my throat burned with a fire so hot I wasn’t sure it would ever extinguish. It was even more painful than transformation.
To make matters worse I could not simply read her thoughts the way I did with other humans. It was much more difficult to see her as anything but prey when I couldn’t humanize her with what she was thinking. She was the only person, human or vampire that had ever rendered my gift impotent. I was shaken at my very core, enraged that I could be so deeply affected by a human this way and infuriated by the monster rejoicing in its bloodlust. There could not be a God that would force such a horrifying temptation into my path, not a fair and righteous one anyway. Maybe she was nothing more than a reminder sent straight from hell to admonish any thoughts that I could be more than the vile monster I knew myself to be.
I ran from her scent, ran from myself really. I needed to clear my head and think rationally. After almost a week away I knew I could not allow this simple human girl to get the better of me. I was stronger than that. She might make the monster inside me roar but I could keep him caged. I refused to give her any undue power over my decisions. I would not allow her to keep me from my family or my life.
I did not like the feeling of power she had over me though. I decided to look at her as nothing more than an inconvenience, an extremely poorly placed and tempting inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless. I would play the role of the indifferent, aloof loner that I had long ago carved out for myself. I was better than her. I would treat her as I would any other human and control our interactions to the best of my abilities. Surely I could handle that. I would prove to myself that I held my own power.
She didn’t seem to notice when I took my seat at our table and watched her curiously for a few moments. I let her scent burn through me and tried to adjust to it, forcing out my cheerful, happy voice before I began. “Hi. I’m Edward Cullen. You’re Bella, right?”
Nothing. She did not turn to look at me. There wasn’t even a hint of acknowledgement on her face. She was absolutely one hundred percent ignoring me. Interesting.
I continued my carefully controlled performance. “I didn’t mean to be rude last week. I had…” Well what did I have last week? It’s not as if I could admit I wanted to murder her. “A bad day.” Yes that would pacify her human mind.
Not even a smirk or a sideways glance. Perhaps she was a stubborn girl?
“So tell me about yourself Bella. How are you liking Forks?” I tried hard not to smile at the girl, watching her slam the slides in and out of the microscope. What had the poor microscope done to her anyway?
Still no reaction. I was going to have to guess.
“I’m guessing that means you don’t like it here.” To anyone with half a brain that was more than obvious. She looked miserable, her face drawn into an almost permanent grimace, shoulders hunched and eyes severe. Her body language practically screamed ‘leave me alone.’
“Don’t make assumptions about me. You don’t know a thing about me.” Her eyes shot daggers at me and I rather enjoyed the paradox of her intent. She wasn’t nearly the monster she thought she was, and I was infinitely more of a monster than she’d likely given me credit for. It was amusing that she thought her calm and cool assuredness would stop me.
I ignored her warning and continued. “Well do you…like it here I mean?” I knew she did not but playing along was more engrossing than any other option before me.
“Whatever,” she assibilated. She wore her annoyance on her sleeve. It was just too easy.
“Like I said, you don’t.” I didn’t mean to laugh but I couldn’t help myself. Apparently I’d hit a nerve.
“What’s to like?” she charged. “This town is a bunch of assumption making freaks who hate on you for no apparent reason.”
Ouch. I believe that one was directed right at me. “Yes, well…” I hesitated. How to steer the conversation away from me and back to her? “We all have our bad days.” A poor excuse for my behaviour certainly, but more than she was asking for. It seemed that my prior behaviour hadn’t bothered her at all. That frustrated me further since her presence in my world had been so colossally altering. Suddenly an idea sparked and I had the redirection I was looking for. “And today seems like one of yours.”
She exploded. “Oh shut the fuck up. Don’t put your shit on me Cullen. You stay on your side of the lab table and I’ll stay on my side. We’ll both ignore the other and we’ll get through this class just fine.”
Her casual cursing shocked me but not as much as her irritation pleased me. My confidence soared. She was making this whole inquisition rather easy with the way she reacted. I continued teasing her with a smirk. “Testy.”
I was met with silence. I let the task of changing a slide preoccupy my empty hands, lost in thought. It was clear to me she wasn’t going to say anything more on the matter. It was up to me to keep the conversation flowing. I made another assumption. “So is it true that there was some sort of custody switch that brought you to town?”
She surprised me when she answered right away. I expected her to ignore me. Perhaps assumptions were the best way to get information from her?
“Something like that.” The edge in her voice aroused my curiosity yet again.
“Something like what?” I pushed.
“Why do you care?” she asked frustratedly.
I searched my head for a simple excuse, trying to make sense of the jumbled mess of possible answers to that question in my head. We were lab partners after all. Not to mention I knew it would bother her immensely. “Just trying to get to know you ‘partner.’”
“We can be partners without being friends.” She liked that idea and that irritated me. Acknowledging my irritation only worsened it. I needed to keep her talking. Staying silent would shift my focus back to my thirst and I could ill afford that. I had to find a way to control my relationship with this girl. The give and take had to be on my terms. It was the only way to make this work to my advantage.
“Well what would be the fun in that?” I mused. And I truly was enjoying pushing her buttons. She didn’t seem to react in a normal way to any of my questions. It was intriguing in a bizarrely twisted sort of way.
“Is this so you can take it back to all your creepy friends that you got the goods on that Bella Swan chick?” Her eyes burned with confusion and misunderstanding, clearly upset by my inquiries. I feared she would shut down on me. Another redirect was in order.
“I don’t have any friends.” That ought to make her think for a moment.
“That makes two of us.” It came out as a mumble and I wasn’t at all sure I was intended to hear it. Surely the girl must have one friend. Jessica Stanley - I shuddered internally - or Angela Weber? I’d observed her speaking with both of them in the cafeteria.
“I’m just curious really,” I quickly added. A more pointed assumption was required. “What would make a sane seventeen year old pick up and move from the glorious heat and sun of the metropolis of Phoenix to the cloud covered back water town of Forks Washington? A lesser girl would have just stayed put.”
Her expression turned smug. “Your mistake is in assuming there was a choice.”
“No choice?” That was difficult to believe. There was always a choice. Why did her choice have to be Forks or more specifically to cross my path and turn my life upside down? “There’s always a choice.”
“In the perfect world of a Cullen there is, but for the rest of us mere mortals there isn’t.” For the briefest of moments I took her words as dogma and worried that she had guessed the truth about me. It was uncommon but not unheard of. I shrugged it off and smoothed out my expression, regaining control, internally marvelling at how ironic her choice of words was. “Not everyone has a Daddy with more money than God or the world laid out at their feet.”
It was impossible not to smile. I wasn’t the only one who’d done some research. “Touché…but now I’m not the only one who’s making assumptions.”
“Let’s both stop making assumptions, shall we?” I saw a flash of anger in her eyes that reminded me of how she’d made me feel last week. We seemed to have that effect on each other.
She wanted me to stop. That was clear, but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re very hard to read Bella.”
“Why are you trying to read me at all?” It was almost a whine the way it came out and I had to stifle the laugh that rose in my throat.
“You’re…interesting to me. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.” It was the simplest explanation and not a complete lie. And it was much better than ‘Your life is in danger of being cut short,’ or ‘you’re the only person who’s mind I’ve never been able to read.’
“If I tell you what you want to hear will you leave me alone?” I could see the wheels turning in her head and I wondered how much she’d be willing to bargain. Less than I would require I was sure.
“I might.” Or I might not. Probably the latter.
“My mother died. I wasn’t allowed to stay in Phoenix. So here I am in this shit hole town to stay until I turn eighteen and finish high school. That’s it! You have all the dirt on Bella Swan. Go and spread it around and leave me alone, k?” Her arms turned wildly in a circular motion in front of her illustrating how far she thought I would spread her story before she turned away from me. I hadn’t anticipated the news of her mother and it caught me off guard, softening my mood.
“I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to lose a parent.” I offered my condolences sincerely.
“Well we’re not all lucky enough to be adopted by Dr. Money Bags like you. In contrast to what you might think most of us don’t have sports cars and trust funds. You don’t know shit.” Her voice was positively dripping with disgust by the time she finished speaking.
“Perhaps.” I couldn’t disagree with her. She was right on both counts.
I wished desperately for a way to keep her talking for I was enjoying her irritation far more than I would have normally allowed myself. It made the time pass by quickly, not to mention that it kept my mind off of the rigors of my thirst. Her last answer was so defensive that I doubted there would be any further conversation today. Occasionally I would sneak a peak at her trying to decipher if her mood had improved but she never returned my glance or removed the detached blankness from her face. I couldn’t even call it sadness. It was much worse than sadness. It was void of any emotion at all, just numbness, a black hole of nothing. I beat down the curiosity that flared. It would have to wait for another time.
She made excuses to the teacher and left class early much to my dismay. I watched her leave, already angry with myself for wondering where she would go. It shouldn’t matter, but somehow it did.
~~~
“Careful Edward,” Alice warned as soon as I got to my car after school. I shrugged and stared at her with wide innocent eyes. My sister Alice was forever overreacting.
“I’m fine,” I assured her with a half smile.
“Are you?” She repudiated my opinion with a sharp scowl.
“Yes.” My grin widened upon remembering Bella’s irritation. At least if I had to be so greatly affected by her then I could displace some of my irritation on to her.
‘You’re not fooling me Edward,’ she thought. She didn’t have to say it aloud because she knew I’d be listening to her thoughts. I raised an eyebrow at her quizzically. I didn’t understand where she was going with this. She let me into her visions, quick indistinct flashes, nothing I hadn’t already seen before. Given Alice’s unique gift for seeing future events it was extremely difficult to keep secrets from her and I rarely tried. She was well aware of the horrors I went through last week, of exactly how close I came to killing the Swan girl and probably even more aware of it than I was at the time. She was attuned to me and was always watching out for my well-being so it’s no surprise that my battle that afternoon started a volley of volitant visions in her mind. She showed them to me again, images of me holding a limp lifeless female body in my arms, the look of self-loathing on my face, my blood red irises. I closed my eyes and gave one quick flick of my head to ask her to stop. I didn’t need to see them to remember them. In fact I spent more time remembering and even a greater amount of time trying to forget them.
‘I’m sorry Edward but they came again this afternoon. What is going on?’ she asked me silently.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. The look of worry on her face was not what I wanted to see. I thought I had been well in control this afternoon so the fact that she saw me killing Bella again had me dumbfounded. I moved one shoulder up and down slightly to shrug so that she would know I wasn’t ignoring her but that I didn’t have the answer she was looking for.
‘I don’t want you to leave but if it’s safer for you I’d rather you be safe.”
Her mental tone was overwhelmingly grief-stricken. I was ashamed and embarrassed that she believed I was going to do what she saw in her head and it registered in my expression before I could hide it from her.
‘No Edward! I don’t mean that. I don’t want to see you in pain. You deserve peace. You said yourself she won’t be here forever. Maybe if you just went away…for a little while…until she goes.’
I knew Alice meant well but I also knew that Alice’s visions were not set in stone. They were always changing as decisions changed. I was firmly in the mindset that I would not kill this girl. I would not allow Bella Swan to drive me from the only home I had. I shook my head minutely at Alice.
‘Don’t be stubborn Edward. You don’t have to be a hero.’
I wasn’t trying to be either. I had to believe that I could rise above this. If I couldn’t then why was I even bothering to try to stick to our ‘vegetarian’ lifestyle? If I gave in and killed this girl then what was to stop me from doing it again, and perhaps more easily for a less appealing scent? No, I had to have faith that I was better than this, better than a mere murderer, better than the monster inside of me, better than the thirst that ruled my instincts. I rolled my eyes at her.
‘You should tell Carlisle then. Keeping this from him is hurting him and you need someone to talk to about this. I’m sure in all of his years Carlisle has had something like this happen to him. Or maybe you could talk to Jasper or Emmett about it? Hiding this isn’t good Edward. We can’t help you if we don’t understand what is going on.’
I shot her an angry glare. I didn’t want anyone else to know. It was bad enough that Alice knew. I was already embarrassed enough about feeling weak without my entire family knowing I was weak as well.
‘Who is she Edward?’
Alice hadn’t seen Bella’s face in her visions yet, only her body in my arms, her face obscured by a curtain of long brown hair. It was the one small secret I kept from Alice. I didn’t want Alice to know Bella’s face. I didn’t want to see Bella’s face in her visions. It would make them all too real for me, perhaps even give me the monster the excuse to indulge in the fantasy. I was already living the horror of it. I didn’t want Alice to live it too.
“She’s no one,” I whispered dismissively.
“Who’s no one?” Emmett asked, arriving just ahead of Rosalie and Jasper who seemed to be engaged in some sort of disagreement. He scanned my face for some clue about what we were discussing.
“Let’s go,” Alice suggested quickly, subverting Emmett’s question before anyone else tried to open the conversation back up.
I got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, repeating my words in my head.
‘She’s no one.’
‘She’s no one.’
‘She’s no one.’
I didn’t believe a single word. She wasn’t no one. And I couldn’t allow her to become someone.
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Chapter 2: Fracture
Author:JCAddict/Sher
Fandom: Twilight, Edward/Bella
Word Count: 3,615
Rating: R/M, for sex and language
Summary: An angry young woman is forced to move to the town of Forks, Washington and decides that alone is the best way to be. She buries her heart and puts on a tough façade that very few people are able to break through. Can the love of a teenage vampire get through to the lost girl inside?
NOTE: AU (alternative universe) and OOC (out of character). Bella is uber OOC. Edward, not so much.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and all of its characters. I'm just manipulating them like imaginary playdoh so I feel like I have some power over them **snorts**
A/N: I struggled with whether or not to write this chapter in. It’s all backstory really, a combination of the books and movie and my assimilations of both. In the end I just felt like it was important to show Edward’s mindset and the angle that he is approaching the Bella situation with.
From EPOV…
Fracture
I did not choose this life. I was damned to it. Turned by the most compassionate man I’ve ever known, a man more my father than my father ever was. I understood the reasons behind his choice, but given the task of deciding myself I would have chosen death. At least it would have been my choice. I couldn’t bring myself to resent my creator however. It was just easier to hate myself, to hate the monster inside of me. He was easy to hate, pure evil and uncontrolled rage. And I did hate him. I hated him with every fibre of my being.
To say that I loathed my life would be a bit of a falsehood. It was the day to day routine, the repetition, that I despised, the moving from place to place so no one would catch on, the constant state of pretending, pretending to be something I wasn’t, pretending to live up to the image my father had of me, pretending to be better than I was. I was very disciplined though after so many years of playing the game, scarcely even minutely tempted by a human. In fact they were all rather boring to me, shallow and predictable. I’d seen and heard it all in my eighty odd years as a vampire.
While my days were stale, tedious, and irksome, my nights were buzzing, ebullient and replete. Under the cover of darkness I didn’t have to hide. I could be less of the carefully crafted façade and more of who I really was. I relished the freedom. I took to the forest at night running at full speed as far as I felt like going. The velocity was a high, uncaged and unbridled excitement. If I couldn’t find it in the forests then I took to the roads in my Vanquish. Using my considerable reflexes I could easily take the roads at twice any posted speed limit. I was always pushing the limits of my Aston Martin, never happy until its normally purring engine roared angrily. Then I knew I had my speed. And I had my solitude. I rather think I deserved it, partly as a reward for subjecting myself to such inane and uninteresting subjects every day, and partly because I was a monster who did not deserve company.
My family, an oddity for my kind, was formed in pairs, my father Carlisle and his wife, my mother Esme, and of course my brothers and sisters, Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice. I was the odd man out. None of the seven of us had any blood relation but the bonds of our family extended far beyond biology or genetics, deeper and more impenetrable. The family may have been born out of a choice to live a similar, less conventional lifestyle than others like us, but our affinities were every bit as complex and intricate as those of a normal human family, and perhaps more so due to their duration and shared secrets.
When the newest addition to the student body of Forks High School walked into the biology lab last week my world fractured. Perhaps I’m in some way responsible for bringing this upon myself, retribution for abhorring the human mind, or fate’s cruel joke, but she was the closest thing to heaven that I had ever smelled, the literal perfect design to my individual thirst. My normally easily contained appetite flared in such an intense way that my muscles coiled for the hunt against my will. She may as well have entered the classroom with a target on her body.
Of course there was only one open seat in the whole room, at my own table. When she took the seat next to me her scent assaulted me. It was excruciating, agonizing, and consuming. My mouth swam in venom and my throat burned with a fire so hot I wasn’t sure it would ever extinguish. It was even more painful than transformation.
To make matters worse I could not simply read her thoughts the way I did with other humans. It was much more difficult to see her as anything but prey when I couldn’t humanize her with what she was thinking. She was the only person, human or vampire that had ever rendered my gift impotent. I was shaken at my very core, enraged that I could be so deeply affected by a human this way and infuriated by the monster rejoicing in its bloodlust. There could not be a God that would force such a horrifying temptation into my path, not a fair and righteous one anyway. Maybe she was nothing more than a reminder sent straight from hell to admonish any thoughts that I could be more than the vile monster I knew myself to be.
I ran from her scent, ran from myself really. I needed to clear my head and think rationally. After almost a week away I knew I could not allow this simple human girl to get the better of me. I was stronger than that. She might make the monster inside me roar but I could keep him caged. I refused to give her any undue power over my decisions. I would not allow her to keep me from my family or my life.
I did not like the feeling of power she had over me though. I decided to look at her as nothing more than an inconvenience, an extremely poorly placed and tempting inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless. I would play the role of the indifferent, aloof loner that I had long ago carved out for myself. I was better than her. I would treat her as I would any other human and control our interactions to the best of my abilities. Surely I could handle that. I would prove to myself that I held my own power.
She didn’t seem to notice when I took my seat at our table and watched her curiously for a few moments. I let her scent burn through me and tried to adjust to it, forcing out my cheerful, happy voice before I began. “Hi. I’m Edward Cullen. You’re Bella, right?”
Nothing. She did not turn to look at me. There wasn’t even a hint of acknowledgement on her face. She was absolutely one hundred percent ignoring me. Interesting.
I continued my carefully controlled performance. “I didn’t mean to be rude last week. I had…” Well what did I have last week? It’s not as if I could admit I wanted to murder her. “A bad day.” Yes that would pacify her human mind.
Not even a smirk or a sideways glance. Perhaps she was a stubborn girl?
“So tell me about yourself Bella. How are you liking Forks?” I tried hard not to smile at the girl, watching her slam the slides in and out of the microscope. What had the poor microscope done to her anyway?
Still no reaction. I was going to have to guess.
“I’m guessing that means you don’t like it here.” To anyone with half a brain that was more than obvious. She looked miserable, her face drawn into an almost permanent grimace, shoulders hunched and eyes severe. Her body language practically screamed ‘leave me alone.’
“Don’t make assumptions about me. You don’t know a thing about me.” Her eyes shot daggers at me and I rather enjoyed the paradox of her intent. She wasn’t nearly the monster she thought she was, and I was infinitely more of a monster than she’d likely given me credit for. It was amusing that she thought her calm and cool assuredness would stop me.
I ignored her warning and continued. “Well do you…like it here I mean?” I knew she did not but playing along was more engrossing than any other option before me.
“Whatever,” she assibilated. She wore her annoyance on her sleeve. It was just too easy.
“Like I said, you don’t.” I didn’t mean to laugh but I couldn’t help myself. Apparently I’d hit a nerve.
“What’s to like?” she charged. “This town is a bunch of assumption making freaks who hate on you for no apparent reason.”
Ouch. I believe that one was directed right at me. “Yes, well…” I hesitated. How to steer the conversation away from me and back to her? “We all have our bad days.” A poor excuse for my behaviour certainly, but more than she was asking for. It seemed that my prior behaviour hadn’t bothered her at all. That frustrated me further since her presence in my world had been so colossally altering. Suddenly an idea sparked and I had the redirection I was looking for. “And today seems like one of yours.”
She exploded. “Oh shut the fuck up. Don’t put your shit on me Cullen. You stay on your side of the lab table and I’ll stay on my side. We’ll both ignore the other and we’ll get through this class just fine.”
Her casual cursing shocked me but not as much as her irritation pleased me. My confidence soared. She was making this whole inquisition rather easy with the way she reacted. I continued teasing her with a smirk. “Testy.”
I was met with silence. I let the task of changing a slide preoccupy my empty hands, lost in thought. It was clear to me she wasn’t going to say anything more on the matter. It was up to me to keep the conversation flowing. I made another assumption. “So is it true that there was some sort of custody switch that brought you to town?”
She surprised me when she answered right away. I expected her to ignore me. Perhaps assumptions were the best way to get information from her?
“Something like that.” The edge in her voice aroused my curiosity yet again.
“Something like what?” I pushed.
“Why do you care?” she asked frustratedly.
I searched my head for a simple excuse, trying to make sense of the jumbled mess of possible answers to that question in my head. We were lab partners after all. Not to mention I knew it would bother her immensely. “Just trying to get to know you ‘partner.’”
“We can be partners without being friends.” She liked that idea and that irritated me. Acknowledging my irritation only worsened it. I needed to keep her talking. Staying silent would shift my focus back to my thirst and I could ill afford that. I had to find a way to control my relationship with this girl. The give and take had to be on my terms. It was the only way to make this work to my advantage.
“Well what would be the fun in that?” I mused. And I truly was enjoying pushing her buttons. She didn’t seem to react in a normal way to any of my questions. It was intriguing in a bizarrely twisted sort of way.
“Is this so you can take it back to all your creepy friends that you got the goods on that Bella Swan chick?” Her eyes burned with confusion and misunderstanding, clearly upset by my inquiries. I feared she would shut down on me. Another redirect was in order.
“I don’t have any friends.” That ought to make her think for a moment.
“That makes two of us.” It came out as a mumble and I wasn’t at all sure I was intended to hear it. Surely the girl must have one friend. Jessica Stanley - I shuddered internally - or Angela Weber? I’d observed her speaking with both of them in the cafeteria.
“I’m just curious really,” I quickly added. A more pointed assumption was required. “What would make a sane seventeen year old pick up and move from the glorious heat and sun of the metropolis of Phoenix to the cloud covered back water town of Forks Washington? A lesser girl would have just stayed put.”
Her expression turned smug. “Your mistake is in assuming there was a choice.”
“No choice?” That was difficult to believe. There was always a choice. Why did her choice have to be Forks or more specifically to cross my path and turn my life upside down? “There’s always a choice.”
“In the perfect world of a Cullen there is, but for the rest of us mere mortals there isn’t.” For the briefest of moments I took her words as dogma and worried that she had guessed the truth about me. It was uncommon but not unheard of. I shrugged it off and smoothed out my expression, regaining control, internally marvelling at how ironic her choice of words was. “Not everyone has a Daddy with more money than God or the world laid out at their feet.”
It was impossible not to smile. I wasn’t the only one who’d done some research. “Touché…but now I’m not the only one who’s making assumptions.”
“Let’s both stop making assumptions, shall we?” I saw a flash of anger in her eyes that reminded me of how she’d made me feel last week. We seemed to have that effect on each other.
She wanted me to stop. That was clear, but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re very hard to read Bella.”
“Why are you trying to read me at all?” It was almost a whine the way it came out and I had to stifle the laugh that rose in my throat.
“You’re…interesting to me. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.” It was the simplest explanation and not a complete lie. And it was much better than ‘Your life is in danger of being cut short,’ or ‘you’re the only person who’s mind I’ve never been able to read.’
“If I tell you what you want to hear will you leave me alone?” I could see the wheels turning in her head and I wondered how much she’d be willing to bargain. Less than I would require I was sure.
“I might.” Or I might not. Probably the latter.
“My mother died. I wasn’t allowed to stay in Phoenix. So here I am in this shit hole town to stay until I turn eighteen and finish high school. That’s it! You have all the dirt on Bella Swan. Go and spread it around and leave me alone, k?” Her arms turned wildly in a circular motion in front of her illustrating how far she thought I would spread her story before she turned away from me. I hadn’t anticipated the news of her mother and it caught me off guard, softening my mood.
“I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to lose a parent.” I offered my condolences sincerely.
“Well we’re not all lucky enough to be adopted by Dr. Money Bags like you. In contrast to what you might think most of us don’t have sports cars and trust funds. You don’t know shit.” Her voice was positively dripping with disgust by the time she finished speaking.
“Perhaps.” I couldn’t disagree with her. She was right on both counts.
I wished desperately for a way to keep her talking for I was enjoying her irritation far more than I would have normally allowed myself. It made the time pass by quickly, not to mention that it kept my mind off of the rigors of my thirst. Her last answer was so defensive that I doubted there would be any further conversation today. Occasionally I would sneak a peak at her trying to decipher if her mood had improved but she never returned my glance or removed the detached blankness from her face. I couldn’t even call it sadness. It was much worse than sadness. It was void of any emotion at all, just numbness, a black hole of nothing. I beat down the curiosity that flared. It would have to wait for another time.
She made excuses to the teacher and left class early much to my dismay. I watched her leave, already angry with myself for wondering where she would go. It shouldn’t matter, but somehow it did.
~~~
“Careful Edward,” Alice warned as soon as I got to my car after school. I shrugged and stared at her with wide innocent eyes. My sister Alice was forever overreacting.
“I’m fine,” I assured her with a half smile.
“Are you?” She repudiated my opinion with a sharp scowl.
“Yes.” My grin widened upon remembering Bella’s irritation. At least if I had to be so greatly affected by her then I could displace some of my irritation on to her.
‘You’re not fooling me Edward,’ she thought. She didn’t have to say it aloud because she knew I’d be listening to her thoughts. I raised an eyebrow at her quizzically. I didn’t understand where she was going with this. She let me into her visions, quick indistinct flashes, nothing I hadn’t already seen before. Given Alice’s unique gift for seeing future events it was extremely difficult to keep secrets from her and I rarely tried. She was well aware of the horrors I went through last week, of exactly how close I came to killing the Swan girl and probably even more aware of it than I was at the time. She was attuned to me and was always watching out for my well-being so it’s no surprise that my battle that afternoon started a volley of volitant visions in her mind. She showed them to me again, images of me holding a limp lifeless female body in my arms, the look of self-loathing on my face, my blood red irises. I closed my eyes and gave one quick flick of my head to ask her to stop. I didn’t need to see them to remember them. In fact I spent more time remembering and even a greater amount of time trying to forget them.
‘I’m sorry Edward but they came again this afternoon. What is going on?’ she asked me silently.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. The look of worry on her face was not what I wanted to see. I thought I had been well in control this afternoon so the fact that she saw me killing Bella again had me dumbfounded. I moved one shoulder up and down slightly to shrug so that she would know I wasn’t ignoring her but that I didn’t have the answer she was looking for.
‘I don’t want you to leave but if it’s safer for you I’d rather you be safe.”
Her mental tone was overwhelmingly grief-stricken. I was ashamed and embarrassed that she believed I was going to do what she saw in her head and it registered in my expression before I could hide it from her.
‘No Edward! I don’t mean that. I don’t want to see you in pain. You deserve peace. You said yourself she won’t be here forever. Maybe if you just went away…for a little while…until she goes.’
I knew Alice meant well but I also knew that Alice’s visions were not set in stone. They were always changing as decisions changed. I was firmly in the mindset that I would not kill this girl. I would not allow Bella Swan to drive me from the only home I had. I shook my head minutely at Alice.
‘Don’t be stubborn Edward. You don’t have to be a hero.’
I wasn’t trying to be either. I had to believe that I could rise above this. If I couldn’t then why was I even bothering to try to stick to our ‘vegetarian’ lifestyle? If I gave in and killed this girl then what was to stop me from doing it again, and perhaps more easily for a less appealing scent? No, I had to have faith that I was better than this, better than a mere murderer, better than the monster inside of me, better than the thirst that ruled my instincts. I rolled my eyes at her.
‘You should tell Carlisle then. Keeping this from him is hurting him and you need someone to talk to about this. I’m sure in all of his years Carlisle has had something like this happen to him. Or maybe you could talk to Jasper or Emmett about it? Hiding this isn’t good Edward. We can’t help you if we don’t understand what is going on.’
I shot her an angry glare. I didn’t want anyone else to know. It was bad enough that Alice knew. I was already embarrassed enough about feeling weak without my entire family knowing I was weak as well.
‘Who is she Edward?’
Alice hadn’t seen Bella’s face in her visions yet, only her body in my arms, her face obscured by a curtain of long brown hair. It was the one small secret I kept from Alice. I didn’t want Alice to know Bella’s face. I didn’t want to see Bella’s face in her visions. It would make them all too real for me, perhaps even give me the monster the excuse to indulge in the fantasy. I was already living the horror of it. I didn’t want Alice to live it too.
“She’s no one,” I whispered dismissively.
“Who’s no one?” Emmett asked, arriving just ahead of Rosalie and Jasper who seemed to be engaged in some sort of disagreement. He scanned my face for some clue about what we were discussing.
“Let’s go,” Alice suggested quickly, subverting Emmett’s question before anyone else tried to open the conversation back up.
I got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, repeating my words in my head.
‘She’s no one.’
‘She’s no one.’
‘She’s no one.’
I didn’t believe a single word. She wasn’t no one. And I couldn’t allow her to become someone.
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