I was grateful to Jessica—though she was even more resentful now—because Bella’s head snapped up and her eyes searched until they met mine.
There was no trace of sadness in her face now. I let myself hope that she’d felt unhappy because she’d thought I’d left school early, and that hope made me smile.
I motioned with my finger for her to join me. She looked so startled by this that I wanted to tease her again. So I winked, and her mouth fell open.
“Does he mean you?” Jessica asked rudely.
“Maybe he needs help with his Biology homework,” she said in a low, uncertain voice. “Um, I’d better go see what he wants.”
This was almost another yes.
She stumbled twice on her way to my table, though there was nothing in her way but perfectly even linoleum. Seriously, how had I missed this? I’d been paying more attention to her silent thoughts, I supposed. What else had I not seen?
She was almost to my new table. I tried to prepare myself. Keep it honest, keep it light, I chanted silently.
She stopped behind the chair across from me, hesitating. I inhaled deeply, through my nose this time rather than my mouth.
Feel the burn, I thought dryly.
“Won’t you sit with me today?” I asked her.
She pulled the chair out and sat, staring at me the whole while. She seemed nervous. I waited for her to speak.
It took a moment, but finally she said, “This is different.”
“Well…” I hesitated. “I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”
What had made me say that? I supposed it was honest, at least. And perhaps she’d hear the unsubtle warning my words implied. Maybe she would realize that she should get up and walk away as quickly as possible.
She didn’t get up. She stared at me, waiting, as if I’d left my sentence unfinished.
“You know I don’t have any idea what you mean,” she said when I didn’t continue.
That was a relief. I smiled. “I know.”
It was hard to ignore the thoughts screaming at me from behind her back—and I wanted to change the subject anyway.
“I think your friends are angry at me for stealing you.”
This did not appear to concern her. “They’ll survive.”
“I may not give you back, though.” I didn’t even know if I was trying to tease her again, or just being honest now. Being near her jumbled all my thoughts.
Bella swallowed loudly.
I laughed at her expression. “You look worried.” It really shouldn’t be funny. She should worry.
“No.” I knew this must be a lie; her voice broke, betraying her fraud. “Surprised, actually.… What brought all this on?”
“I told you,” I reminded her. “I got tired of trying to stay away from you. So I’m giving up.” I held my smile in place with a bit of effort. This wasn’t working at all—trying to be honest and casual at the same time.
“Giving up?” she repeated, baffled.
“Yes—giving up trying to be good.” And, apparently, giving up trying to be casual. “I’m just going to do what I want now, and let the chips fall where they may.” That was honest enough. Let her see my selfishness. Let that warn her, too.
“You lost me again.”
I was selfish enough to be glad that this was the case. “I always say too much when I’m talking to you—that’s one of the problems.” A rather insignificant problem, compared to the rest.
“Don’t worry,” she reassured me. “I don’t understand any of it.”
Good. Then she’d stay. “I’m counting on that.”
“So, in plain English, are we friends now?”
I pondered that for a second. “Friends…,” I repeated. I didn’t like the sound of that. It wasn’t… enough.
“Or not,” she mumbled, looking embarrassed.
Did she think I didn’t like her that much?
I smiled. “Well, we can try, I suppose. But I’m warning you now that I’m not a good friend for you.”
I waited for her response, torn in two—wishing she would finally hear and understand, thinking I might die if she did. How melodramatic.
Her heart beat faster. “You say that a lot.”
“Yes, because you’re not listening to me,” I said, too intense again. “I’m still waiting for you to believe it. If you’re smart, you’ll avoid me.”
I could only guess at the pain I would feel when she understood enough to make the right choice.
Her eyes tightened. “I think you’ve made your opinion on the subject of my intellect clear, too.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but I smiled in apology, guessing that I must have accidentally offended her.
“So,” she said slowly. “As long as I’m being… not smart, we’ll try to be friends?”
“That sounds about right.”
She looked down, staring intently at the lemonade bottle in her hands.
The old curiosity tormented me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked. It was an immense relief to say the words out loud at last. I couldn’t remember how it felt to need oxygen in my lungs, but I wondered if the relief of inhaling had been a little like this.
She met my gaze, and her breathing sped while her cheeks flushed faint pink. I inhaled, tasting that in the air.
“I’m trying to figure out what you are.”
I held the smile on my face, locking my features, while panic twisted through my body.
Of course she was wondering that. She had a bright mind. I couldn’t hope for her to be oblivious to something so obvious.
“Are you having any luck with that?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could manage.
“Not too much,” she admitted.
I chuckled with sudden relief. “What are your theories?”
They couldn’t be worse than the truth, no matter what she’d come up with.
Her cheeks turned brighter red, and she said nothing. I could feel the warmth of her blush.
I would try my persuasive tone. It worked well on normal humans.
I smiled encouragingly. “Won’t you tell me?”
She shook her head. “Too embarrassing.”
Ugh. Not knowing was worse than anything else. Why would her speculations embarrass her?
“That’s really frustrating, you know.”
My complaint sparked something in her. Her eyes flashed and her words flowed more swiftly than usual.
“No, I can’t imagine why that would be frustrating at all—just because someone refuses to tell you what they’re thinking, even if all the while they’re making cryptic little remarks specifically designed to keep you up at night wondering what they could possibly mean… now, why would that be frustrating?”
I frowned at her, upset to realize that she was right. I wasn’t being fair. She couldn’t know the loyalties and limitations that tied my tongue, but that didn’t change the disparity as she saw it.
She went on. “Or better, say that person also did a wide range of bizarre things—from saving your life under impossible circumstances one day to treating you like a pariah the next, and he never explained any of that, either, even after he promised. That, also, would be very non-frustrating.”
It was the longest speech I’d ever heard her make, and it gave me a new quality for my list.
“You’ve got a bit of a temper, don’t you?”
“I don’t like double standards.”
She was completely justified in her irritation, of course.
I stared at Bella, wondering how I could possibly do anything right by her, until the silent shouting in Mike Newton’s head distracted me. He was so irate, so immaturely vulgar, that it made me chuckle again.
“What?” she demanded.
“Your boyfriend seems to think I’m being unpleasant to you—he’s debating whether or not to come break up our fight.” I would love to see him try. I laughed again.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said in an icy voice. “But I’m sure you’re wrong, anyway.”
I very much enjoyed the way she disowned him with one indifferent sentence.
“I’m not. I told you, most people are easy to read.”
“Except me, of course.”
“Yes. Except for you.” Did she have to be the exception to everything? “I wonder why that is?”
I stared into her eyes, trying again.
She looked away, then opened her lemonade and took a quick drink, her eyes on the table.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.
“No.” She eyed the empty space between us. “You?”
“No, I’m not hungry,” I said. I was definitely not that.
She stared down, her lips pursed. I waited.
“Can you do me a favor?” she asked, suddenly meeting my gaze again.
What would she want from me? Would she ask for the truth that I wasn’t allowed to tell her—the truth I didn’t want her to ever, ever know?
“That depends on what you want.”
“It’s not much,” she promised.
I waited, curiosity flaring excruciatingly, as usual.
“I just wondered…,” she said slowly, staring at the lemonade bottle, tracing its lip with her littlest finger, “if you could warn me beforehand the next time you decide to ignore me for my own good? Just so I’m prepared.”
She wanted a warning? Then being ignored by me must be a bad thing. I smiled.
“That sounds fair,” I agreed.
“Thanks,” she said, looking up. Her face was so relieved that I wanted to laugh with my own relief.
“Then can I have one in return?” I asked hopefully.
“One,” she allowed.
“Tell me one theory.”
She flushed. “Not that one.”
“You didn’t qualify, you just promised one answer,” I argued.
“And you’ve broken promises yourself,” she argued back.
She had me there.
“Just one theory—I won’t laugh.”
“Yes, you will.” She seemed very sure of that, though I couldn’t imagine anything that would be funny about it.
I gave persuasion another try. I stared deep into her eyes—an easy thing to do with eyes so deep—and whispered, “Please?”
She blinked, and her face went totally blank.
Well, that wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d been going for.
“Er, what?” she asked a second later. She looked disoriented. Was something wrong with her?
I tried again.
“Please tell me just one little theory,” I pleaded in my soft, non-scary voice, holding her gaze in mine.
To my surprise and satisfaction, it finally worked.
“Um, well, bitten by a radioactive spider?”
Comic books? No wonder she thought I would laugh.
“That’s not very creative,” I chided her, trying to hide my fresh relief.
“I’m sorry, that’s all I’ve got,” she said, offended.
This relieved me even more. I was able to tease her again.
“You’re not even close.”
“No spiders?”
“Nope.”
“And no radioactivity?”
“None.”
“Dang,” she sighed.
“Kryptonite doesn’t bother me, either,” I said quickly—before she could ask about bites—and then I had to chuckle, because she thought I was a superhero.
“You’re not supposed to laugh, remember?”
I pressed my lips together.
“I’ll figure it out eventually,” she promised.
And when she did, she would run.
“I wish you wouldn’t try,” I said, all teasing gone.
“Because…?”
I owed her honesty. Still, I tried to smile, to make my words sound less threatening. “What if I’m not a superhero? What if I’m the bad guy?”
Her eyes widened by a fraction and her lips fell slightly apart. “Oh,” she said. And then, after another second, “I see.”
She’d finally heard me.
“Do you?” I asked, working to conceal my agony.
“You’re dangerous?” she guessed. Her breathing hiked, and her heart raced.
I couldn’t answer her. Was this my last moment with her? Would she run now? Could I be allowed to tell her that I loved her before she left? Or would that frighten her more?
“But not bad,” she whispered, shaking her head, no fear evident in her clear eyes. “No, I don’t believe that you’re bad.”
“You’re wrong,” I breathed.
Of course I was bad. Wasn’t I rejoicing now, finding she thought better of me than I deserved? If I were a good person, I would have stayed away from her.
I stretched my hand across the table, reaching for the lid to her lemonade bottle as an excuse. She did not flinch away from my suddenly closer hand. She really was not afraid of me. Not yet.
I spun the lid like a top, watching it instead of her. My thoughts were in a snarl.
Run, Bella, run.I couldn’t make myself say the words out loud.
She jumped to her feet. Just as I started to worry that she’d somehow heard my silent warning, she said, “We’re going to be late.”
“I’m not going to class today.”
“Why not?”
Because I don’t want to kill you.“It’s healthy to ditch class now and then.”
To be precise, it was healthier for the humans if the vampires ditched on days when human blood would be spilled. Mr. Banner was blood typing today. Alice had already ditched her morning class.
“Well, I’m going,” she said. This didn’t surprise me. She was responsible—she always did the right thing.
She was my opposite.
“I’ll see you later, then,” I said, trying for casual again, staring down at the whirling lid. Please save yourself. Please never leave me.
She hesitated, and I hoped for a moment that she would stay with me after all. But the bell rang and she hurried away.
I waited until she was gone, and then I put the lid in my pocket—a souvenir of this most consequential conversation—and walked through the rain to my car.
I put on my favorite calming CD—the same one I’d listened to that first day—but I wasn’t hearing Debussy’s notes for long. Other notes were running through my head, a fragment of a tune that pleased and intrigued me. I turned down the stereo and listened to the music in my head, playing with the fragment until it evolved into a fuller harmony. Automatically, my fingers moved in the air over imaginary piano keys.
The new composition was really coming along when my attention was caught by a wave of mental anguish.
Is she going to pass out? What do I do?Mike panicked.
A hundred yards away, Mike Newton was lowering Bella’s limp body to the sidewalk. She slumped unresponsively against the wet concrete, her eyes closed, her skin chalky as a corpse.
I nearly took the door off the car.
“Bella?” I shouted.
There was no change in her lifeless face when I yelled her name.
My whole body went colder than ice. This was like a confirmation of every ludicrous scenario I’d imagined. The very moment she was out of my sight…
I was aware of Mike’s aggravated surprise as I sifted furiously through his thoughts. He was only thinking of his anger toward me, so I didn’t know what was wrong with Bella. If he’d done something to harm her, I would annihilate him. Not even the tiniest fragment of his body would ever be recovered.
“What’s wrong—is she hurt?” I demanded, trying to focus his thoughts. It was maddening to have to walk at a human pace. I should not have called attention to my approach.
Then I could hear her heart beating and her even breath. As I watched, she squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. That eased some of my panic.
I saw a flicker of memories in Mike’s head, a splash of images from the Biology room. Bella’s head on our table, her fair skin turning green. Drops of red against the white cards.
Blood typing.
I stopped where I was, holding my breath. Her scent was one thing, her flowing blood was another altogether.
“I think she’s fainted,” Mike said, anxious and resentful at the same time. “I don’t know what happened. She didn’t even stick her finger.”
Relief washed through me, and I breathed again, tasting the air. Ah, I could smell the tiny bleed of Mike Newton’s puncture wound. Once, that might have appealed to me.
I knelt beside her while Mike hovered next to me, furious at my intervention.
“Bella. Can you hear me?”
“No,” she moaned. “Go away.”
The relief was so exquisite that I laughed. She wasn’t in danger.
“I was taking her to the nurse,” Mike said. “But she wouldn’t go any farther.”
“I’ll take her. You can go back to class,” I said dismissively.
Mike’s teeth clenched together. “No. I’m supposed to do it.”
I wasn’t going to stand around arguing with the moron.
Thrilled and terrified, half-grateful to and half-aggrieved by the predicament that made touching her a necessity, I gently lifted Bella from the sidewalk and held her in my arms, touching only her rain jacket and jeans, keeping as much distance between our bodies as possible. I was striding forward in the same movement, in a hurry to have her safe—farther away from me, in other words.
Her eyes popped open, astonished.
“Put me down,” she ordered in a weak voice—embarrassed again, I guessed from her expression. She didn’t like to show weakness. But her body was so limp I doubted she would be able to stand on her own, let alone walk.
I ignored Mike’s shouted protest behind us.
“You look awful,” I told her, unable to stop grinning, because there was nothing wrong with her but a light head and a weak stomach.
“Put me back on the sidewalk,” she said. Her lips were white.
“So you faint at the sight of blood?” A twisted kind of irony.
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together.
“And not even your own blood,” I added, my grin widening.
We arrived at the front office. The door was propped open an inch, and I kicked it out of my way.
Ms. Cope jumped, startled. “Oh my,” she gasped as she examined the ashen girl in my arms.
“She fainted in Biology,” I explained, before her imagination could get too out of hand.
Ms. Cope hurried to get the door to the nurse’s office. Bella’s eyes were open again, watching her. I heard the elderly nurse’s internal astonishment as I laid the girl carefully on the one shabby bed. As soon as Bella was out of my arms, I put the width of the room between us. My body was too excited, too eager, my muscles tense and the venom flowing. She was so warm and fragrant.
“She’s just a little faint,” I reassured Mrs. Hammond. “They’re blood typing in Biology.”
She nodded, understanding now. “There’s always one.”
I stifled a laugh. Trust Bella to be that one.
“Just lie down for a minute, honey,” Mrs. Hammond said. “It’ll pass.”
“I know,” Bella said.
“Does this happen a lot?” the nurse asked.
“Sometimes,” Bella admitted.
I tried to disguise my laughter as coughing.
This brought me to the nurse’s attention. “You can go back to class now,” she said.
I looked her straight in the eye and lied with perfect confidence. “I’m supposed to stay with her.”
Hmm. I wonder.… Oh well.Mrs. Hammond nodded.
It worked just fine on the nurse. Why did Bella have to be so difficult?
“I’ll go get you some ice for your forehead, dear,” the nurse said, slightly uncomfortable from looking into my eyes—the way a human should be—and left the room.
“You were right,” Bella moaned, closing her eyes.
What did she mean? I jumped to the worst conclusion: She’d accepted my warnings.
“I usually am,” I said, trying to keep the amusement in my voice; it sounded sour now. “But about what in particular this time?”
“Ditching is healthy,” she sighed.
Ah, relief again.
She was silent then. She just breathed slowly in and out. Her lips were beginning to turn pink. Her mouth was slightly out of balance, her upper lip just a little too full to match the lower. Staring at her mouth made me feel strange. Made me want to move closer to her, which was not a good idea.
“You scared me for a minute there,” I said, trying to restart the conversation. The quiet was painful in an odd way, leaving me alone without her voice. “I thought Newton was dragging your dead body off to bury it in the woods.”
“Ha ha,” she responded.
“Honestly—I’ve seen corpses with better color.” This was actually true. “I was concerned that I might have to avenge your murder.” And I would have.
“Poor Mike,” she sighed. “I’ll bet he’s mad.”
Fury pulsed through me, but I contained it quickly. Her concern was surely just pity. She was kind. That was all.
“He absolutely loathes me,” I told her, cheered by that idea.
“You can’t know that.”