Chapter 8
He turned the heater up once we got into the car, with a certain unfamiliarity in his fingers that led me to believe he didn’t use that part of the Volvo very often. Then, he gunned the engine and with relative slowness, the caraccelerated.
“So,” he said, “what about you?”
“Haven’t you figured enough from being in my room every night?” I snapped.
He smiled graciously, as if he was doing me a favor by being in my room. “Well, no.”
“Just another question. Mind-reading,” despite myself, I could feel curiosity in my voice. Damn it. “Just how does it work?”
He took one hand off the wheel. “It’s like hearing really. Being able to pick out voices. The more familiar I am with a person, I can hear their voice farther away. But I just focus on a voice usually. It’s just like hearing, except I get a couple of images thrown in as well.”
“So why can’t you hear me?” I asked. He snorted, staring ahead at the road still.
“You’re just different. Doesn’t mean much, really. You’re one of a few people who have that ability that I've met.”
Nausea crept over me again and I glanced at the speedometer. “A hundred? What’s with you and driving fast?” He grinned roguishly and my ears flushed. “Just slow down, unless you want your precious Volvo spattered with mushroom ravioli.”
He sighed, as if this was going to cost him an extraordinary amount of effort, and the car started to slow. “It takes a while for a Volvo to accelerate, you know,” he whined. Or whatever Cullens did to whine.
“Driving aside,” he said after a couple minutes of silence, “what triggered all your thinking? It’s quite an unusual state, thinking, for you.”
I chose to ignore this veiled insult.
“I went to the beach with some friends,” I could now say that word without questioning myself. I stared ahead, silent for a moment from this realization. There was no sound of breathing beside me. “Somebody asked why the Cullens weren’t there, and a reservation person said that it was because they weren’t allowed. And a guy, Jacob Black,” the Cullen flinched at the last name, “told me the legends about the cold ones. People who drink blood.”
“I didn’t connect it with you immediately,” I said in a rush. “Just the way he said it, like how he implied the pale ones had never left. And then I had the same nightmare for two days.”
“A nightmare?” he said, his voice shaking ever so slightly.
“You were in a meadow, and...drinking human blood. And about to kill me.”
He turned the wheel onto my street. “So you had every reason to be afraid of me.”
I nodded.
“And the mind-reading,” I added.
“That,” he said, as if cursing. “I can’t help it. And your brain is blocked off to me. Strange,” he said, as if talking to himself.
Silence again.
“Have you killed?”
He moved his head in the direction of a nod, but the movement was minimal.
“Long ago,” he murmured, taking an exit. “When I was less controlled. When I was still trying to wrestle with who I was. I think everyone...of us goes through it. Some are a bit more maniacal. Others like to pretend they’re more controlled. I was the latter.”
“But what do you do now?” I said in a small voice. “Do you-“
“Animals,” he said through gritted teeth. “Small to large animals. Normally here we can only take down deer. Emmett,” he smirked, “loves to hunt larger animals. Pumas and bears. Actually all of us do. But he’s the only one who sulks when we can’t hunt larger game,so we endure his grumpiness for months at a time. We use our vacation days fromhigh school to head up north or south, wherever laws are looser, to hunt predators.”
“Sounds like a pathetic life,” I muttered.
“Only when in high school,” he corrected me. “This is our first time through high school. We’re only doing this because Jasper’s having trouble in crowds, and when we move to, say, Vancouver, he almost exposes us. So we thought if we could expose him to ten to twenty other people in a small high school, that’ll be best. We can fit in anyways. It’s agony though. He’s getting better at resisting, but school’s the closest I'll ever get to hell.”
I was snorting the entire time through this rant, but at the last statement, I stopped.
“You’re...How old are you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe a couple decades older than I ought to be. There’s plenty of hackers and people who make fake documents that make sure I’m the age I should be, to the government and whoever else cares.”
“No, really, how old?”
He took a breath that I sensed he didn’t really need, and said, “I was born Edward Anthony Masen, on June 20, 1901. I died on December 31st, 1918.”
“1901,” I murmured. “You’re....one hundred four.”
“I see myself as someone trapped in the body of a seventeen-year-old,” he said, in a strange, formal tone. “Sometimes I’m a seventeen-year-old...with all that implies. And sometimes, I feel my age. I should have died a while back. Been married. Had kids. A career. But I’m just seventeen.”
He turned onto my street and I turned my head away from him, to the window, watching the houses pass by.
He lived on blood.
He was old.
Not only was he bipolar (I clung to my theory), but he was stuck between a child and old man, flitting between both.
How could he even exist like this?
He stopped before my house; the porch light were still on. He got out of the car and I bolted out as well. With dignified long strides, he escorted me as I ran to my front door. Before I could tell him to go away so I could get into my own house, he said, “Is it so bad for me to still hope?”
I blinked. He leaned against the door with his shoulder, rubbing his hair as if it annoyed him. My heart raced and his frown deepened.
I couldn’t even differentiate between fear or...hormones either.
“Hope what?” I said, trying to take a breath.
“That we can be friends.”
“Friends,” I repeated. “We can try.”
His face was ghastly in the yellow lighting, and my heart skittered when my memory presented an image of his face lit by the golden rays of the sun, glorious, down to every drop of blood on his otherwise-pale lips.
“And what type of friendship will that be?” he asked. “You’re scared of me. You know my nature now. I’m dangerous, and you know it. And I...I’m not human, but I’m weak still. In mind and instinct.”
“Do you want to kill me?”
He smiled, and his canines seemed just a little sharper than they should be. “You have no idea,” he breathed. And then he laughed again, softly. “Less than other people though. Believe me.”
Trying to scare me again. “Then why bother being friends with me? I’m not special.”
“No,” he said slowly. “You’re right. You’re not particularly beautiful or intelligent. Pretty in a vague way, smart, but not extremely,” he said, as if to mollify me. It was true though. “But your blood...it sings to me. Like no one else’s has.”
My heart raced again and Edward’s neutral face looked frightening to me. “And I want to prove, to myself, and now to you, that I’m strong. That I can resist temptation,” he whispered.
He disappeared in a blur; the Volvo was pulling out of my street and was speeding away.
I unlocked the door. “Bella!” Charlie ran towards me, his face pale (but nowhere as scary as Edward’s). “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, hugging my dad quickly. “Fine.”
“I just thought since it was a bit late...” he trailed off.
“I got lost in Port Angeles, but Jessica and Angela found me. I guess my sense of direction is still really bad,” I tried to grin; Charlie tousled my hair.
“I swear, you need a tracking device on you. You might as well get some rest now. You look tired.”
It was still early, but I couldn’t blame him. I was exhausted. But then...Edward would...no, he wouldn’t dare after last night.
“Yeah. Good night, Dad.”
AN: Kay, I finally got a purpose for Edward trying to be friendly to Bella; at least he's being blatantly selfish, using this as an opportunity to prove he's not a weak vampire. Maybe not that much better than Twilight.
This is Chapter 8, covering up to Twilight's Chapter 9. Really, Meyer, you could cut SO MUCH OUT.
Chapter 9