“He was my best friend, Edward,” I muttered. It stung to use the past tense. “Of course the idea offends me.”
“Please forgive my thoughtlessness,” he said, still very formal. “I shouldn’t have suggested that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I stared at my hands, clenched into a double fist on the table.
We were both silent for a moment, and then his cool finger was under my chin, coaxing my face up. His expression was much softer now.
“Sorry. Really.”
“I know. I know it’s not the same thing. I shouldn’t have reacted that way. It’s just that . . . well, I was already thinking about Jacob before you came over.” I hesitated. His tawny eyes seemed to get a little bit darker whenever I said Jacob’s name. My voice turned pleading in response. “Charlie says Jake is having a hard time. He’s hurting right now, and . . . it’s my fault.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Bella.”
I took a deep breath. “I need to make it better, Edward. I owe him that. And it’s one of Charlie’s conditions, anyway —”
His face changed while I spoke, turning hard again, statue-like.
“You know it’s out of the question for you to be around a werewolf unprotected, Bella. And it would break the treaty if any of us cross over onto their land. Do you want us to start a war?”
“Of course not!”
“Then there’s really no point in discussing the matter further.” He dropped his hand and looked away, searching for a subject change. His eyes paused on something behind me, and he smiled, though his eyes stayed wary.
“I’m glad Charlie has decided to let you out — you’re sadly in need of a visit to the bookstore. I can’t believe you’re reading Wuthering Heights again. Don’t you know it by heart yet?”
“Not all of us have photographic memories,” I said curtly.
“Photographic memory or not, I don’t understand why you like it. The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others’ lives. I don’t know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn’t a love story, it’s a hate story.”
“You have some serious issues with the classics,” I snapped.
“Perhaps it’s because I’m not impressed by antiquity.” He smiled, evidently satisfied that he’d distracted me. “Honestly, though, why do you read it over and over?” His eyes were vivid with real interest now, trying — again — to unravel the convoluted workings of my mind. He reached across the table to cradle my face in his hand. “What is it that appeals to you?”
His sincere curiosity disarmed me. “I’m not sure,” I said, scrambling for coherency while his gaze unintentionally scattered my thoughts. “I think it’s something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep them apart — not her selfishness, or his evil, or even death, in the end. . . .”
His face was thoughtful as he considered my words. After a moment he smiled a teasing smile. “I still think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality.”
“I think that may be the point,” I disagreed. “Their love is their only redeeming quality.”
“I hope you have better sense than that — to fall in love with someone so . . . malignant.”
“It’s a bit late for me to worry about who I fall in love with,” I pointed out. “But even without the warning, I seem to have managed fairly well.”
He laughed quietly. “I’m glad you think so.”
“Well, I hope you’re smart enough to stay away from someone so selfish. Catherine is really the source of all the trouble, not Heathcliff.”
“I’ll be on my guard,” he promised.
I sighed. He was so good at distractions.
I put my hand over his to hold it to my face. “I need to see Jacob.”
His eyes closed. “No.”
“It’s truly not dangerous at all,” I said, pleading again. “I used to spend all day in La Push with the whole lot of them, and nothing ever happened.”
But I made a slip; my voice faltered at the end because I realized as I was saying the words that they were a lie. It was not true that nothing had ever happened. A brief flash of memory — an enormous gray wolf crouched to spring, baring his dagger-like teeth at me — had my palms sweating with an echo of remembered panic.
Edward heard my heart accelerate and nodded as if I’d acknowledged the lie aloud. “Werewolves are unstable. Sometimes, the people near them get hurt. Sometimes, they get killed.”
I wanted to deny it, but another image slowed my rebuttal. I saw in my head the once beautiful face of Emily Young, now marred by a trio of dark scars that dragged down the corner of her right eye and left her mouth warped forever into a lopsided scowl.
He waited, grimly triumphant, for me to find my voice.
“You don’t know them,” I whispered.
“I know them better than you think, Bella. I was here the last time.”
“The last time?”
“We started crossing paths with the wolves about seventy years ago. . . . We had just settled near Hoquiam. That was before Alice and Jasper were with us. We outnumbered them, but that wouldn’t have stopped it from turning into a fight if not for Carlisle. He managed to convince Ephraim Black that coexisting was possible, and eventually we made the truce.”
Jacob’s great-grandfather’s name startled me.
“We thought the line had died out with Ephraim,” Edward muttered; it sounded like he was talking to himself now. “That the genetic quirk which allowed the transmutation had been lost. . . .” He broke off and stared at me accusingly. “Your bad luck seems to get more potent every day. Do you realize that your insatiable pull for all things deadly was strong enough to recover a pack of mutant canines from extinction? If we could bottle your luck, we’d have a weapon of mass destruction on our hands.”
I ignored the ribbing, my attention caught by his assumption — was he serious? “But I didn’t bring them back. Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“My bad luck had nothing to do with it. The werewolves came back because the vampires did.”
Edward stared at me, his body motionless with surprise.
“Jacob told me that your family being here set things in motion. I thought you would already know. . . .”
His eyes narrowed. “Is that what they think?”
“Edward, look at the facts. Seventy years ago, you came here, and the werewolves showed up. You come back now, and the werewolves show up again. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”
He blinked and his glare relaxed. “Carlisle will be interested in that theory.”
“Theory,” I scoffed.
He was silent for a moment, staring out the window into the rain; I imagined he was contemplating the fact that his family’s presence was turning the locals into giant dogs.
“Interesting, but not exactly relevant,” he murmured after a moment. “The situation remains the same.”
I could translate that easily enough: no werewolf friends.
I knew I must be patient with Edward. It wasn’t that he was unreasonable, it was just that he didn’t understand. He had no idea how very much I owed Jacob Black — my life many times over, and possibly my sanity, too.
I didn’t like to talk about that barren time with anyone, and especially not Edward. He had only been trying to save me when he’d left, trying to save my soul. I didn’t hold him responsible for all the stupid things I’d done in his absence, or the pain I had suffered.
He did.
So I would have to word my explanation very carefully.
I got up and walked around the table. He opened his arms for me and I sat on his lap, nestling into his cool stone embrace. I looked at his hands while I spoke.
“Please just listen for a minute. This is so much more important than some whim to drop in on an old friend. Jacob is in pain.” My voice distorted around the word. “I can’t not try to help him — I can’t g
ive up on him now, when he needs me. Just because he’s not human all the time. . . . Well, he was there for me when I was . . . not so human myself. You don’t know what it was like. . . .” I hesitated. Edward’s arms were rigid around me; his hands were in fists now, the tendons standing out. “If Jacob hadn’t helped me . . . I’m not sure what you would have come home to. I owe him better than this, Edward.”
I looked up at his face warily. His eyes were closed, and his jaw was strained.
“I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you,” he whispered. “Not if I live a hundred thousand years.”
I put my hand against his cold face and waited until he sighed and opened his eyes.
“You were just trying to do the right thing. And I’m sure it would have worked with anyone less mental than me. Besides, you’re here now. That’s the part that matters.”
“If I’d never left, you wouldn’t feel the need to go risk your life to comfort a dog.”
I flinched. I was used to Jacob and all his derogatory slurs — bloodsucker, leech, parasite. . . . Somehow it sounded harsher in Edward’s velvet voice.
“I don’t know how to phrase this properly,” Edward said, and his tone was bleak. “It’s going to sound cruel, I suppose. But I’ve come too close to losing you in the past. I know what it feels like to think I have. I am not going to tolerate anything dangerous.”
“You have to trust me on this. I’ll be fine.”
His face was pained again. “Please, Bella,” he whispered.
I stared into his suddenly burning golden eyes. “Please what?”
“Please, for me. Please make a conscious effort to keep yourself safe. I’ll do everything I can, but I would appreciate a little help.”
“I’ll work on it,” I murmured.
“Do you really have any idea how important you are to me? Any concept at all of how much I love you?” He pulled me tighter against his hard chest, tucking my head under his chin.
I pressed my lips against his snow-cold neck. “I know how much I love you,” I answered.
“You compare one small tree to the entire forest.”
I rolled my eyes, but he couldn’t see. “Impossible.”
He kissed the top of my head and sighed.
“No werewolves.”
“I’m not going along with that. I have to see Jacob.”
“Then I’ll have to stop you.”
He sounded utterly confident that this wouldn’t be a problem.
I was sure he was right.
“We’ll see about that,” I bluffed anyway. “He’s still my friend.”
I could feel Jacob’s note in my pocket, like it suddenly weighed ten pounds. I could hear the words in his voice, and he seemed to be agreeing with Edward — something that would never happen in reality.
Doesn’t change anything. Sorry.
2. EVASION
I FELT ODDLY BUOYANT AS I WALKED FROM SPANISH toward the cafeteria, and it wasn’t just because I was holding hands with the most perfect person on the planet, though that was certainly part of it.
Maybe it was the knowledge that my sentence was served and I was a free woman again.
Or maybe it wasn’t anything to do with me specifically. Maybe it was the atmosphere of freedom that hung over the entire campus. School was winding down, and, for the senior class especially, there was a perceptible thrill in the air.
Freedom was so close it was touchable, taste-able. Signs of it were everywhere. Posters crowded together on the cafeteria walls, and the trashcans wore a colorful skirt of spilled-over fliers: reminders to buy yearbooks, class rings, and announcements; deadlines to order graduation gowns, hats, and tassels; neon-bright sales pitches — the juniors campaigning for class office; ominous, rose-wreathed advertisements for this year’s prom. The big dance was this coming weekend, but I had an ironclad promise from Edward that I would not be subjected to that again. After all, I’d already had that human experience.
No, it must be my personal freedom that lightened me today. The ending of the school year did not give me the pleasure it seemed to give the other students. Actually, I felt nervous to the point of nausea whenever I thought of it. I tried to not think of it.
But it was hard to escape such an omnipresent topic as graduation.
“Have you sent your announcements, yet?” Angela asked when Edward and I sat down at our table. She had her light brown hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail instead of her usual smooth hairdo, and there was a slightly frantic look about her eyes.
Alice and Ben were already there, too, on either side of Angela. Ben was intent over a comic book, his glasses sliding down his narrow nose. Alice was scrutinizing my boring jeans-and-a-t-shirt outfit in a way that made me self-conscious. Probably plotting another makeover. I sighed. My indifferent attitude to fashion was a constant thorn in her side. If I’d allow it, she’d love to dress me every day — perhaps several times a day — like some oversized three-dimensional paper doll.
“No,” I answered Angela. “There’s no point, really. Renée knows when I’m graduating. Who else is there?”
“How about you, Alice?”
Alice smiled. “All done.”
“Lucky you.” Angela sighed. “My mother has a thousand cousins and she expects me to hand-address one to everybody. I’m going to get carpal tunnel. I can’t put it off any longer and I’m just dreading it.”
“I’ll help you,” I volunteered. “If you don’t mind my awful handwriting.”
Charlie would like that. From the corner of my eye, I saw Edward smile. He must like that, too — me fulfilling Charlie’s conditions without involving werewolves.
Angela looked relieved. “That’s so nice of you. I’ll come over any time you want.”
“Actually, I’d rather go to your house if that’s okay — I’m sick of mine. Charlie un-grounded me last night.” I grinned as I announced my good news.
“Really?” Angela asked, mild excitement lighting her always-gentle brown eyes. “I thought you said you were in for life.”
“I’m more surprised than you are. I was sure I would at least have finished high school before he set me free.”
“Well, this is great, Bella! We’ll have to go out to celebrate.”
“You have no idea how good that sounds.”
“What should we do?” Alice mused, her face lighting up at the possibilities. Alice’s ideas were usually a little grandiose for me, and I could see it in her eyes now — the tendency to take things too far kicking into action.
“Whatever you’re thinking, Alice, I doubt I’m that free.”
“Free is free, right?” she insisted.
“I’m sure I still have boundaries — like the continental U.S., for example.”
Angela and Ben laughed, but Alice grimaced in real disappointment.
“So what are we doing tonight?” she persisted.
“Nothing. Look, let’s give it a couple of days to make sure he wasn’t joking. It’s a school night, anyway.”
“We’ll celebrate this weekend, then.” Alice’s enthusiasm was impossible to repress.
“Sure,” I said, hoping to placate her. I knew I wasn’t going to do anything too outlandish; it would be safer to take it slow with Charlie. Give him a chance to appreciate how trustworthy and mature I was before I asked for any favors.
Angela and Alice started talking about options; Ben joined the conversation, setting his comics aside. My attention drifted. I was surprised to find that the subject of my freedom was suddenly not as gratifying as it had been just a moment ago. While they discussed things to do in Port Angeles or maybe Hoquiam, I began to feel disgruntled.
It didn’t take long to determine where my restlessness stemmed from.
Ever since I’d said goodbye to Jacob Black in the forest outside my home, I’d been plagued by a persistent, uncomfortable intrusion of a specific mental picture. It popped into my thoughts at regular intervals like some annoying alarm clock set to sound every half hour, filli
ng my head with the image of Jacob’s face crumpled in pain. This was the last memory I had of him.
As the disturbing vision struck again, I knew exactly why I was dissatisfied with my liberty. Because it was incomplete.
Sure, I was free to go to anywhere I wanted — except La Push; free to do anything I wanted — except see Jacob. I frowned at the table. There had to be some kind of middle ground.
“Alice? Alice!”
Angela’s voice yanked me from my reverie. She was waving her hand back and forth in front of Alice’s blank, staring face. Alice’s expression was something I recognized — an expression that sent an automatic shock of panic through my body. The vacant look in her eyes told me that she was seeing something very different from the mundane lunchroom scene that surrounded us, but something that was every bit as real in its own way. Something that was coming, something that would happen soon. I felt the blood slither from my face.
Then Edward laughed, a very natural, relaxed sound. Angela and Ben looked toward him, but my eyes were locked on Alice. She jumped suddenly, as if someone had kicked her under the table.
“Is it naptime already, Alice?” Edward teased.
Alice was herself again. “Sorry, I was daydreaming, I guess.”
“Daydreaming’s better than facing two more hours of school,” Ben said.
Alice threw herself back into the conversation with more animation than before — just a little bit too much. Once I saw her eyes lock with Edward’s, only for a moment, and then she looked back to Angela before anyone else noticed. Edward was quiet, playing absentmindedly with a strand of my hair.
I waited anxiously for a chance to ask Edward what Alice had seen in her vision, but the afternoon passed without one minute of alone time.
It felt odd to me, almost deliberate. After lunch, Edward slowed his pace to match Ben’s, talking about some assignment I knew he’d already finished. Then there was always someone else there between classes, though we usually had a few minutes to ourselves. When the final bell rang, Edward struck up a conversation with Mike Newton of all people, falling into step beside him as Mike headed for the parking lot. I trailed behind, letting Edward tow me along.
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