Instead of answering, I threw the car into reverse. I had to get out of this lot before Bella Swan could follow me here, too. My own person demon, haunting me… I swung the car around and accelerated. I hit forty before I was on the road. On the road, I hit seventy before I made the corner.
Without looking, I knew that Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper had all turned to stare at Alice. She shrugged. She couldn’t see what had passed, only what was coming.
She looked ahead for me now. We both processed what she saw in her head, and we were both surprised.
“You’re leaving?” she whispered.
The others stared at me now.
“Am I?” I hissed through my teeth.
She saw it then, as my resolve wavered and another choice spun my future in a darker direction.
“Oh.”
Bella Swan, dead. My eyes, glowing crimson with fresh blood. The search that would follow. The careful time we would wait before it was safe for us to pull out and start again…
“Oh,” she said again. The picture grew more specific. I saw the inside of Chief Swan’s house for the first time, saw Bella in a small kitchen with the yellow cupboards, her back to me as I stalked her from the shadows…let the scent pull me toward her… （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
22
“Stop!” I groaned, not able to bear more.
“Sorry,” she whispered, her eyes wide.
The monster rejoiced.
And the vision in her head shifted again. An empty highway at night, the trees beside it coated in snow, flashing by at almost two hundred miles per hour.
“I’ll miss you,” she said. “No matter how short a time you’re gone.”
Emmett and Rosalie exchanged an apprehensive glance.
We were almost to the turn off onto the long drive that led to our home.
“Drop us here,” Alice instructed. “You should tell Carlisle yourself.”
I nodded, and the car squealed to a sudden stop.
Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper got out in silence; they would make Alice explain when I was gone. Alice touched my shoulder.
“You will do the right thing,” she murmured. Not a vision this time—an order. “She’s Charlie Swan’s only family. It would kill him, too.”
“Yes,” I said, agreeing only with the last part.
She slid out to join the others, her eyebrows pulling together in anxiety. They melted into woods, out of sight before I could turn the car around.
I accelerated back toward town, and I knew the visions in Alice’s head would be flashing from dark to bright like a strobe light. As I sped back to Forks doing ninety, I wasn’t sure where I was going. To say goodbye to my father? Or to embrace the monster inside me? The road flew away beneath my tires. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
23
2. Open Book I leaned back against the soft snow bank, letting the dry powder reshape itself around my weight. My skin had cooled to match the air around me, and the tiny pieces of ice felt like velvet under my skin.
The sky above me was clear, brilliant with stars, glowing blue in some places, yellow in others. The stars created majestic, swirling shapes against the black universe— an awesome sight. Exquisitely beautiful. Or rather, it should have been exquisite. Would have been, if I’d been able to really see it.
It wasn’t getting any better. Six days had passed, six days I’d hidden here in the empty Denali wilderness, but I was no closer to freedom than I had been since the first moment that I’d caught her scent.
When I stared up at the jeweled sky, it was as if there were an obstruction between my eyes and their beauty. The obstruction was a face, just an unremarkable human face, but I couldn’t quite seem to banish it from my mind.
I heard the approaching thoughts before I heard the footsteps that accompanied them. The sound of movement was only a faint whisper against the powder.
I was not surprised that Tanya had followed me here. I knew she’d been mulling over this coming conversation for the last few days, putting it off until she was sure of exactly what she wanted to say.
She sprang into sight about sixty yards away, leaping onto the tip of an outcropping of black rock and balancing there on the balls of her bare feet.
Tanya’s skin was silver in the starlight, and her long blond curls shone pale, almost pink with their strawberry tint. Her amber eyes glinted as she spied me, half buried in the snow, and her full lips stretched slowly into a smile.
Exquisite. If I’d really been able to see her. I sighed.
She crouched down on the point of the stone, her fingertips touching the rock, her body coiled.
Cannonball, she thought. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
24
She launched herself into the air; her shape became a dark, twisting shadow as she spun gracefully between me and the stars. She curled herself into a ball just as she struck the piled snow bank beside me.
A blizzard of snow flew up around me. The stars went black and I was buried deep in the feathery ice crystals.
I sighed again, but didn’t move to unearth myself. The blackness under the snow neither hurt nor improved the view. I still saw the same face.
“Edward?”
Then snow was flying again as Tanya swiftly disinterred me. She brushed the powder from my unmoving face, not quite meeting my eyes.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “It was a joke.”
“I know. It was funny.”
Her mouth twisted down.
“Irina and Kate said I should leave you alone. They think I’m annoying you.”
“Not at all,” I assured her. “On the contrary, I’m the one who’s being rude— abominably rude. I’m very sorry.”
You’re going home, aren’t you? she thought.
“I haven’t…entirely…decided that yet.”
But you’re not staying here. Her thought was wistful now, sad.
“No. It doesn’t seem to be…helping.”
She grimaced. “That’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“Of course not,” I lied smoothly.
Don’t be a gentleman.
I smiled.
I make you uncomfortable, she accused.
“No.”
She raised one eyebrow, her expression so disbelieving that I had to laugh. One short laugh, followed by another sigh.
“All right,” I admitted. “A little bit.”
She sighed, too, and put her chin in her hands. Her thoughts were chagrined. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
25
“You’re a thousand times lovelier than the stars, Tanya. Of course, you’re already well aware of that. Don’t let my stubbornness undermine your confidence.” I chuckled at the unlikeliness of that.
“I’m not used to rejection,” she grumbled, her lower lip pushing out into an attractive pout.
“Certainly not,” I agreed, trying with little success to block out her thoughts as she fleetingly sifted through memories of her thousands of successful conquests. Mostly Tanya preferred human men—they were much more populous for one thing, with the added advantage of being soft and warm. And always eager, definitely.
“Succubus,” I teased, hoping to interrupt the images flickering in her head.
She grinned, flashing her teeth. “The original.”
Unlike Carlisle, Tanya and her sisters had discovered their consciences slowly. In the end, it was their fondness for human men that turned the sisters against the slaughter. Now the men they loved…lived.
“When you showed up here,” Tanya said slowly. “I thought that…”
I’d known what she’d thought. And I should have guessed that she would have felt that way. But I hadn’t been at my best for analytical thinking in that moment.
“You thought that I’d changed my mind.”
“Yes.” She scowled.
“I feel horrible for toying with your expectations, Tanya. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t thinking. It’s just that I left in…quite a hurry.”
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me why…？”
I sat up and wrapped my arms around my legs, curling defensively. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tanya, Irina and Kate were very good at this life they’d committed to. Better, in some ways, than even Carlisle. Despite the insanely close proximity they allowed themselves with those who should be—and once were—their prey, they did not make mistakes. I was too ashamed to admit my weakness to Tanya.
“Woman troubles?” she guessed, ignoring my reluctance. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
26
I laughed a bleak laugh. “Not the way you mean it.”
She was quiet then. I listened to her thoughts as she ran through different guesses, tried to decipher the meaning of my words.
“You’re not even close,” I told her.
“One hint?” she asked.
“Please let it go, Tanya.”
She was quiet again, still speculating. I ignored her, trying in vain to appreciate the stars.
She gave up after a silent moment, and her thoughts pursued a new direction.
Where will you go, Edward, if you leave? Back to Carlisle?
“I don’t think so,” I whispered.
Where would I go? I could not think of one place on the entire planet that held any interest for me. There was nothing I wanted to see or do. Because, no matter where I went, I would not be going to anywhere—I would only be runningfrom .
I hated that. When had I become such a coward?
Tanya threw her slender arm around my shoulders. I stiffened, but did not flinch out from under her touch. She meant it as nothing more than friendly comfort. Mostly.
“I think that you will go back,” she said, her voice taking on just a hint of her long lost Russian accent. “No matter what it is…or who it is…that is haunting you. You’ll face it head on. You’re the type.”
Her thoughts were as certain as her words. I tried to embrace the vision of myself that she carried in her head. The one who faced things head on. It was pleasant to think of myself that way again. I’d never doubted my courage, my ability to face difficulty, before that horrible hour in a high school biology class such a short time ago.
I kissed her cheek, pulling back swiftly when she twisted her face toward mine, her lips already puckered. She smiled ruefully at my quickness.
“Thank you, Tanya. I needed to hear that.”
Her thoughts turned petulant. “You’re welcome, I guess. I wish you would be more reasonable about things, Edward.”
“I’m sorry, Tanya. You know you’re too good for me. I just…haven’t found what I’m looking for yet.” （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
27
“Well, if you leave before I see you again…goodbye, Edward.”
“Goodbye, Tanya.” As I said the words, I could see it. I could see myself leaving. Being strong enough to go back to the one place where I wanted to be. “Thanks again.”
She was on her feet in one nimble move, and then she was running away, ghosting across the snow so quickly that her feet had no time to sink into the snow; she left no prints behind her. She didn’t look back. My rejection bothered her more than she’d let on before, even in her thoughts. She wouldn’t want to see me again before I left.
My mouth twisted with chagrin. I didn’t like hurting Tanya, though her feelings were not deep, hardly pure, and, in any case, not something I could return. It still made me feel less than a gentleman.
I put my chin on my knees and stared up at the stars again, though I was suddenly anxious to be on my way. I knew that Alice would see me coming home, that she would tell the others. This would make them happy—Carlisle and Esme especially. But I gazed at the stars for one more moment, trying to see past the face in my head. Between me and the brilliant lights in the sky, a pair of bewildered chocolatebrown eyes stared back at me, seeming to ask what this decision would mean for her. Of course, I couldn’t be sure if that was really the information her curious eyes sought. Even in my imagination, I couldn’t hear her thoughts. Bella Swan’s eyes continued to question, and an unobstructed view of the stars continued to elude me. With a heavy sigh, I gave up, and got to my feet. If I ran, I would be back to Carlisle’s car in less than an hour…
In a hurry to see my family—and wanting very much to be the Edward that faced things head on—I raced across the starlit snowfield, leaving no footprints. “It’s going to be okay,” Alice breathed. Her eyes were unfocused, and Jasper had one hand lightly under her elbow, guiding her forward as we walked into the rundown cafeteria in a close group. Rosalie and Emmett led the way, Emmett looking ridiculously （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
28 like a bodyguard in the middle of hostile territory. Rose looked wary, too, but much more irritated than protective.
“Of course it is,” I grumbled. Their behavior was ludicrous. If I wasn’t positive that I could handle this moment, I would have stayed home.
The sudden shift from our normal, even playful morning—it had snowed in the night, and Emmett and Jasper were not above taking advantage of my distraction to bombard me with slushballs; when they got bored with my lack of response, they’d turned on each other—to this overdone vigilance would have been comical if it weren’t so irritating.
“She’s not here yet, but the way she’s going to come in…she won’t be downwind if we sit in our regular spot.”
“Of course we’ll sit in our regular spot. Stop it, Alice. You’re getting on my nerves. I’ll be absolutely fine.”
She blinked once as Jasper helped her into her seat, and her eyes finally focused on my face.
“Hmm,” she said, sounding surprised. “I think you’re right.”
“Of course I am,” I muttered.
I hated being the focus of their concern. I felt a sudden sympathy for Jasper, remembering all the times we’d hovered protectively over him. He met my glance briefly, and grinned.
Annoying, isn’t it?
I grimaced at him.
Was it just last week that this long, drab room had seemed so killingly dull to me? That it had seemed almost like sleep, like a coma, to be here?
Today my nerves were stretched tight—piano wires, tensed to sing at the lightest pressure. My senses were hyperalert; I scanned every sound, every sight, every movement of the air that touched my skin, every thought. Especially the thoughts. There was only one sense that I kept locked down, refused to use. Smell, of course. I didn’t breathe.
I was expecting to hear more about the Cullens in the thoughts that I sifted through. All day I’d been waiting, searching for whichever new acquaintance Bella （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
29 Swan might have confided in, trying to see the direction the new gossip would take. But there was nothing. No one noticed the five vampires in the cafeteria, just the same as before the new girl had come. Several of the humans here were still thinking of that girl, still thinking the same thoughts from last week. Instead of finding this unutterably boring, I was now fascinated.
Had she said nothing to anyone about me?
There was no way that she had not noticed my black, murderous glare. I had seen her react to it. Surely, I’d scared her silly. I had been convinced that she would have mentioned it to someone, maybe even exaggerated the story a bit to make it better. Given me a few menacing lines.
And then, she’d also heard me trying to get out of our shared biology class.
She must have wondered, after seeing my expression, whether she were the cause. A normal girl would have asked around, compared her experience to others, looked for common ground that would explain my behavior so she didn’t feel singled out. Humans were constantly desperate to feel normal, to fit in. To blend in with everyone else around them, like a featureless flock of sheep. The need was particularly strong during the insecure adolescent years. This girl would be no exception to that rule.
But no one at all took any notice of us sitting here, at our normal table. Bella must be exceptionally shy, if she’d confided in no one. Perhaps she had spoken to her father, maybe that was the strongest relationship…though that seemed unlikely, given the fact that she had spent so little time with him throughout her life. She would be closer to her mother. Still, I would have to pass by Chief Swan sometime soon and listen to what he was thinking.
“Anything new?” Jasper asked.
“Nothing. She…must not have said anything.”
All of them raised an eyebrow at this news.
“Maybe you’re not as scary as you think you are,” Emmett said, chuckling. “I bet I could have frightened her better than that.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
“Wonder why…？” He puzzled again over my revelation about the girl’s unique silence. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
30
“We’ve been over that. I don’t know.”
“She’s coming in,” Alice murmured then. I felt my body go rigid. “Try to look human.”
“Human, you say?” Emmett asked.
He held up his right fist, twisting his fingers to reveal the snowball he’d saved in his palm. Of course it had not melted there. He’d squeezed it into a lumpy block of ice. He had his eyes on Jasper, but I saw the direction of his thoughts. So did Alice, of course. When he abruptly hurled the ice chunk at her, she flicked it away with a casual flutter of her fingers. The ice ricocheted across the length of the cafeteria, too fast to be visible to human eyes, and shattered with a sharp crack against the brick wall. The brick cracked, too.
The heads in that corner of the room all turned to stare at the pile of broken ice on the floor, and then swiveled to find the culprit. They didn’t look further than a few tables away. No one looked at us.
“Very human, Emmett,” Rosalie said scathingly. “Why don’t you punch through the wall while you’re at it?”
“It would look more impressive if you did it, baby.”
I tried to pay attention to them, keeping a grin fixed on my face like I was part of their banter. I did not allow myself to look toward the line where I knew she was standing. But that was all that I was listening to.
I could hear Jessica’s impatience with the new girl, who seemed to be distracted, too, standing motionless in the moving line. I saw, in Jessica’s thoughts, that Bella Swan’s cheeks were once more colored bright pink with blood.
I pulled in short, shallow breaths, ready to quit breathing if any hint of her scent touched the air near me.
Mike Newton was with the two girls. I heard both his voices, mental and verbal, when he asked Jessica what was wrong with the Swan girl. I didn’t like the way his thoughts wrapped around her, the flicker of already established fantasies that clouded his mind while he watched her start and look up from her reverie like she’d forgotten he was there. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
31
“Nothing,” I heard Bella say in that quiet, clear voice. It seemed to ring like a bell over the babble in the cafeteria, but I knew that was just because I was listening for it so intently.
“I’ll just get a soda today,” she continued as she moved to catch up with the line.
I couldn’t help flickering one glance in her direction. She was staring at the floor, the blood slowly fading from her face. I looked away quickly, to Emmett, who laughed at the now painedlooking smile on my face.
You look sick, bro.
I rearranged my features so the expression would seem casual and effortless.
Jessica was wondering aloud about the girl’s lack of appetite. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Actually, I feel a little sick.” Her voice was lower, but still very clear.
Why did it bother me, the protective concern that suddenly emanated from Mike Newton’s thoughts? What did it matter that there was a possessive edge to them? It wasn’t my business if Mike Newton felt unnecessarily anxious for her. Perhaps this was the way everyone responded to her. Hadn’t I wanted, instinctively, to protect her, too? Before I’d wanted to kill her, that is…
But was the girl ill?
It was hard to judge—she looked so delicate with her translucent skin… Then I realized that I was worrying, too, just like that dimwitted boy, and I forced myself not to think about her health.
Regardless, I didn’t like monitoring her through Mike’s thoughts. I switched to Jessica’s, watching carefully as the three of them chose which table to sit at. Fortunately, they sat with Jessica’s usual companions, at one of the first tables in the room. Not downwind, just as Alice had promised.
Alice elbowed me. She’s going to look soon, act human.
I clenched my teeth behind my grin.
“Ease up, Edward,” Emmett said. “Honestly. So you kill one human. That’s hardly the end of the world.”
“You would know,” I murmured. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
32
Emmett laughed. “You’ve got to learn to get over things. Like I do. Eternity is a long time to wallow in guilt.”
Just then, Alice tossed a smaller handful of ice that she’d been hiding into Emmett’s unsuspecting face.
He blinked, surprised, and then grinned in anticipation.
“You asked for it,” he said as he leaned across the table and shook his ice encrusted hair in her direction. The snow, melting in the warm room, flew out from his hair in a thick shower of halfliquid, halfice.
“Ew!” Rose complained, as she and Alice recoiled from the deluge.
Alice laughed, and we all joined in. I could see in Alice’s head how she’d orchestrated this perfect moment, and I knew that the girl—I should stop thinking of her that way, as if she were the only girl in the world—that Bella would be watching us laugh and play, looking as happy and human and unrealistically ideal as a Norman Rockwell painting.
Alice kept laughing, and held her tray up as a shield. The girl—Bella must still be staring at us.
…staring at the Cullens again, someone thought, catching my attention.
I looked automatically toward the unintentional call, realizing as my eyes found their destination that I recognized the voice—I’d been listening to it so much today.
But my eyes slid right past Jessica, and focused on the girl’s penetrating gaze.
She looked down quickly, hiding behind her thick hair again.
What was she thinking? The frustration seemed to be getting more acute as time went on, rather than dulling. I tried—uncertain in what I was doing for I’d never tried this before—to probe with my mind at the silence around her. My extra hearing had always come to me naturally, without asking; I’d never had to work at it. But I concentrated now, trying to break through whatever shield surrounded her.
Nothing but silence.
What is it about her? Jessica thought, echoing my own frustration.
“Edward Cullen is staring at you,” she whispered in the Swan girl’s ear, adding a giggle. There was no hint of her jealous irritation in her tone. Jessica seemed to be skilled at feigning friendship. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
33
I listened, too engrossed, to the girl’s response.
“He doesn’t look angry, does he?” she whispered back.
So she had noticed my wild reaction last week. Of course she had.
The question confused Jessica. I saw my own face in her thoughts as she checked my expression, but I did not meet her glance. I was still concentrating on the girl, trying to hear something. My intent focus didn’t seem to be helping at all.
“No,” Jess told her, and I knew that she wished she could say yes—how it rankled inside her, my staring—though there was no trace of that in her voice. “Should he be?”
“I don’t think he likes me,” the girl whispered back, laying her head down on her arm as if she were suddenly tired. I tried to understand the motion, but I could only make guesses. Maybe she was tired.
“The Cullens don’t like anybody,” Jess reassured her. “Well, they don’t notice anybody enough to like them.” They never used to. Her thought was a grumble of complaint. “But he’s still staring at you.”
“Stop looking at him,” the girl said anxiously, lifting her head from her arm to make sure Jessica obeyed the order.
Jessica giggled, but did as she was asked.
The girl did not look away from her table for the rest of the hour. I thought— though, of course, I could not be sure—that this was deliberate. It seemed like she wanted to look at me. Her body would shift slightly in my direction, her chin would begin to turn, and then she would catch herself, take a deep breath, and stare fixedly at whoever was speaking.
I ignored the other thoughts around the girl for the most part, as they were not, momentarily, about her. Mike Newton was planning a snow fight in the parking lot after school, not seeming to realize that the snow had already shifted to rain. The flutter of soft flakes against the roof had become the more common patter of raindrops. Could he really not hear the change? It seemed loud to me.
When the lunch period ended, I stayed in my seat. The humans filed out, and I caught myself trying to distinguish the sound of her footsteps from the sound of the rest, as if there was something important or unusual about them. How stupid.
My family made no move to leave, either. They waited to see what I would do. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
34
Would I go to class, sit beside the girl where I could smell the absurdly potent scent of her blood and feel the warmth of her pulse in the air on my skin? Was I strong enough for that? Or had I had enough for one day?
“I…think it’s okay,” Alice said, hesitant. “Your mind is set. I think you’ll make it through the hour.”
But Alice knew well how quickly a mind could change.
“Why push it, Edward?” Jasper asked. Though he didn’t want to feel smug that I was the one who was weak now, I could hear that he did, just a little. “Go home. Take it slow.”
“What’s the big deal?” Emmett disagreed. “Either he will or he won’t kill her. Might as well get it over with, either way.”
“I don’t want to move yet,” Rosalie complained. “I don’t want to start over. We’re almost out of high school, Emmett. Finally.”
I was evenly torn on the decision. I wanted, wanted badly, to face this head on rather than running away again. But I didn’t want to push myself too far, either. It had been a mistake last week for Jasper to go so long without hunting; was this just as pointless a mistake?
I didn’t want to uproot my family. None of them would thank me for that.
But I wanted to go to my biology class. I realized that I wanted to see her face again.
That’s what decided it for me. That curiosity. I was angry with myself for feeling it. Hadn’t I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the silence of the girl’s mind make me unduly interested in her? And yet, here I was, most unduly interested.
I wanted to know what she was thinking. Her mind was closed, but her eyes were very open. Perhaps I could read them instead.
“No, Rose, I think it really will be okay,” Alice said. “It’s…firming up. I’m ninetythree percent sure that nothing bad will happen if he goes to class.” She looked at me inquisitively, wondering what had changed in my thoughts that made her vision of the future more secure.
Would curiosity be enough to keep Bella Swan alive? （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
35
Emmett was right, though—why not get it over with, either way? I would face the temptation head on.
“Go to class,” I ordered, pushing away from the table. I turned and strode away from them without looking back. I could hear Alice’s worry, Jasper’s censure, Emmett’s approval, and Rosalie’s irritation trailing after me.
I took one last deep breath at the door of the classroom, and then held it in my lungs as I walked into the small, warm space.
I was not late. Mr. Banner was still setting up for today’s lab. The girl sat at my—at our table, her face down again, staring at the folder she was doodling on. I examined the sketch as I approached, interested in even this trivial creation of her mind, but it was meaningless. Just a random scribbling of loops within loops. Perhaps she was not concentrating on the pattern, but thinking of something else?
I pulled my chair back with unnecessary roughness, letting it scrape across the linoleum; humans always felt more comfortable when noise announced someone’s approach.
I knew she heard the sound; she did not look up, but her hand missed a loop in the design she was drawing, making it unbalanced.
Why didn’t she look up? Probably she was frightened. I must be sure to leave her with a different impression this time. Make her think she’d been imagining things before.
“Hello,” I said in the quiet voice I used when I wanted to make humans more comfortable, forming a polite smile with my lips that would not show any teeth.
She looked up then, her wide brown eyes startled—almost bewildered—and full of silent questions. It was the same expression that had been obstructing my vision for the last week.
As I stared into those oddly deep brown eyes, I realized that the hate—the hate I’d imagined this girl somehow deserved for simply existing—had evaporated. Not breathing now, not tasting her scent, it was hard to believe that anyone so vulnerable could ever justify hatred.
Her cheeks began to flush, and she said nothing. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
36
I kept my eyes on hers, focusing only on their questioning depths, and tried to ignore the appetizing color of her skin. I had enough breath to speak for a while longer without inhaling.
“My name is Edward Cullen,” I said, though I knew she knew that. It was the polite way to begin. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself last week.
You must be Bella Swan.”
She seemed confused—there was that little pucker between her eyes again. It took her half a second longer than it should have for her to respond.
“How do you know my name?” she demanded, and her voice shook just a little.
I must have truly terrified her. This made me feel guilty; she was just so defenseless. I laughed gently—it was a sound that I knew made humans more at ease. Again, I was careful about my teeth.
“Oh, I think everyone knows your name.” Surely she must have realized that she’d become the center of attention in this monotonous place. “The whole town’s been waiting for you to arrive.”
She frowned as if this information was unpleasant. I supposed, being shy as she seemed to be, attention would seem like a bad thing to her. Most humans felt the opposite. Though they didn’t want to stand out from the herd, at the same time they craved a spotlight for their individual uniformity.
“No,” she said. “I meant, why did you call me Bella?”
“Do you prefer Isabella?” I asked, perplexed by the fact that I couldn’t see where this question was leading. I didn’t understand. Surely, she’d made her preference clear many times that first day. Were all humans this incomprehensible without the mental context as a guide?
“No, I like Bella,” she answered, leaning her head slightly to one side. Her expression—if I was reading it correctly—was torn between embarrassment and confusion. “But I think Charlie—I mean my dad—must call me Isabella behind my back. That’s what everyone here seems to know me as.” Her skin darkened one shade pinker.
“Oh,” I said lamely, and quickly looked away from her face. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
37
I’d just realized what her questions meant: I had slipped up—made an error. If I hadn’t been eavesdropping on all the others that first day, then I would have addressed her initially by her full name, just like everyone else. She’d noticed the difference.
I felt a pang of unease. It was very quick of her to pick up on my slip. Quite astute, especially for someone who was supposed to be terrified by my nearness.
But I had bigger problems than whatever suspicions about me she might be keeping locked inside her head.
I was out of air. If I were going to speak to her again, I would have to inhale.
It would be hard to avoid speaking. Unfortunately for her, sharing this table made her my lab partner, and we would have to work together today. It would seem odd—and incomprehensibly rude—for me to ignore her while we did the lab. It would make her more suspicious, more afraid…
I leaned as far away from her as I could without moving my seat, twisting my head out into the aisle. I braced myself, locking my muscles in place, and then sucked in one quick chestfull of air, breathing through my mouth alone.
Ahh!
It was genuinely painful. Even without smelling her, I could taste her on my tongue. My throat was suddenly in flames again, the craving every bit as strong as that first moment I’d caught her scent last week.
I gritted my teeth together and tried to compose myself.
“Get started,” Mr. Banner commanded.
It felt like it took every single ounce of selfcontrol that I’d achieved in seventy years of hard work to turn back to the girl, who was staring down at the table, and smile.
“Ladies first, partner?” I offered.
She looked up at my expression and her face went blank, her eyes wide. Was there something off in my expression? Was she frightened again? She didn’t speak.
“Or, I could start, if you wish,” I said quietly.
“No,” she said, and her face went from white to red again. “I’ll go first.”
I stared at the equipment on the table, the battered microscope, the box of slides, rather than watch the blood swirl under her clear skin. I took another quick breath, through my teeth, and winced as the taste made my throat ache. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
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“Prophase,” she said after a quick examination. She started to remove the slide, though she’d barely examined it.
“Do you mind if I look?” Instinctively—stupidly, as if I were one of her kind—I reached out to stop her hand from removing the slide. For one second, the heat of her skin burned into mine. It was like an electric pulse—surely much hotter than a mere ninetyeight point six degrees. The heat shot through my hand and up my arm. She yanked her hand out from under mine.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered through my clenched teeth. Needing somewhere to look, I grasped the microscope and stared briefly into the eyepiece. She was right.
“Prophase,” I agreed.
I was still too unsettled to look at her. Breathing as quietly as I could through my gritted teeth and trying to ignore the fiery thirst, I concentrated on the simple assignment, writing the word on the appropriate line on the lab sheet, and then switching out the first slide for the next.
What was she thinking now? What had that felt like to her, when I had touched her hand? My skin must have been ice cold—repulsive. No wonder she was so quiet.
I glanced at the slide.
“Anaphase,” I said to myself as I wrote it on the second line.
“May I?” she asked.
I looked up at her, surprised to see that she was waiting expectantly, one hand halfstretched toward the microscope. She didn’t look afraid. Did she really think I’d gotten the answer wrong?
I couldn’t help but smile at the hopeful look on her face as I slid the microscope toward her.
She stared into the eyepiece with an eagerness that quickly faded. The corners of her mouth turned down.
“Slide three?” she asked, not looking up from the microscope, but holding out her hand. I dropped the next slide into her hand, not letting my skin come anywhere close to hers this time. Sitting beside her was like sitting next to a heat lamp. I could feel myself warming slightly to the higher temperature. （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
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She did not look at the slide for long. “Interphase,” she said nonchalantly— perhaps trying a little too hard to sound that way—and pushed the microscope to me. She did not touch the paper, but waited for me to write the answer. I checked—she was correct again.
We finished this way, speaking one word at a time and never meeting each other’s eyes. We were the only ones done—the others in the class were having a harder time with the lab. Mike Newton seemed to be having trouble concentrating—he was trying to watch Bella and me.
Wish he’d stayed wherever he went, Mike thought, eyeing me sulfurously. Hmm, interesting. I hadn’t realized the boy harbored any ill will towards me. This was a new development, about as recent as the girl’s arrival it seemed. Even more interesting, I found—to my surprise—that the feeling was mutual.
I looked down at the girl again, bemused by the wide range of havoc and upheaval that, despite her ordinary, unthreatening appearance, she was wreaking on my life.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t see what Mike was going on about. She was actually rather pretty…in an unusual way. Better than being beautiful, her face was interesting. Not quite symmetrical—her narrow chin out of balance with her wide cheekbones; extreme in the coloring—the light and dark contrast of her skin and her hair; and then there were the eyes, brimming over with silent secrets…
Eyes that were suddenly boring into mine.
I stared back at her, trying to guess even one of those secrets.
“Did you get contacts?” she asked abruptly.
What a strange question. “No.” I almost smiled at the idea of improving my eyesight.
“Oh,” she mumbled. “I thought there was something different about your eyes.”
I felt suddenly colder again as I realized that I was apparently not the only one attempting to ferret out secrets today.
I shrugged, my shoulders stiff, and glared straight ahead to where the teacher was making his rounds.
Of course there was something different about my eyes since the last time she’d stared into them. To prepare myself for today’s ordeal, today’s temptation, I’d spent the （C） 2008 Stephenie Meyer
