More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The little calendar in the corner of the clock’s display informed me that today was September thirteenth. Only a dream, but prophetic enough in one way, at least. Today was my birthday. I was officially eighteen years old. I’d been dreading this day for months.
Bella would be a Virgo.
“How many times have you been a senior?” “That’s different.”
He made a disgusted sound. “I don’t envy him the girl—just the ease of the suicide,” he clarified in a teasing tone. “You humans have it so easy! All you have to do is throw down one tiny vial of plant extracts.…”
Unthinkingly, my fingers traced the crescent-shaped scar on my hand that was always just a few degrees cooler than the rest of my skin.
“The Volturi are a family,” he explained, his eyes still remote. “A very old, very powerful family of our kind. They are the closest thing our world has to a royal family, I suppose. Carlisle lived with them briefly in his early years, in Italy, before he settled in America—do you remember the story?”
Edward had never used the name Volturi for the beautiful trio, two black-haired, one snow white. He’d called them Aro, Caius, and Marcus, nighttime patrons of the arts.…
Edward decided to change the subject. “So, if you won’t let me get you the Audi, isn’t there anything that you’d like for your birthday?” The words came out in a whisper. “You know what I want.”
“If I develop this film,” I said, toying with the camera in my hands, “will you show up in the picture?”
Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm—into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires.
But never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other. Not even the reflection in the mirror.”
“Edward’s with me up to a point. God and heaven exist… and so does hell. But he doesn’t believe there is an afterlife for our kind.”
“Bella, you gave yourself a paper cut—that hardly deserves the death penalty.” “It’s still my fault.”
It was his music, his compositions. The first piece on the CD was my lullaby.
“Come for a walk with me,” he suggested in an unemotional voice, taking my hand. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t think of a way to protest, but I instantly knew that I wanted to. I didn’t like this. This is bad, this is very bad, the voice in my head repeated again and again.
God, this really gave me flashbacks to boys in high school. I would like to think she captures Bella’s inner teen turmoil pretty well.
“You… don’t… want me?” I tried out the words, confused by the way they sounded, placed in that order. “No.”
“Don’t do anything reckless or stupid,” he ordered, no longer detached. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“And I’ll make you a promise in return,” he said. “I promise that this will be the last time you’ll see me. I won’t come back. I won’t put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any more interference from me. It will be as if I’d never existed.”
Not tonight. Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight—a lunar eclipse, a new moon.
“He left you alone in the woods?” Charlie guessed.
It will be as if I’d never existed, he’d promised me.
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
JANUARY
My eyes did not stray toward the black garbage bag that held my present from that last birthday, did not see the shape of the stereo where it strained against the black plastic; I didn’t think of the bloody mess my nails had been when I’d finished clawing it out of the dashboard.
The movie was playing early, so Jess thought we should hit the twilight showing and eat later.
In the instant that I heard his voice, everything was very clear. Like my head had suddenly surfaced out of some dark pool.
Jacob had grown into some of his potential in the last eight months. He’d passed that point where the soft muscles of childhood hardened into the solid, lanky build of a teenager; the tendons and veins had become prominent under the red-brown skin of his arms, his hands. His face was still sweet like I remembered it, though it had hardened, too—the planes of his cheekbones sharper, his jaw squared off, all childish roundness gone.
😏 I am #TeamJacob for this book and this book only.
I smiled back, and something clicked silently into place, like two corresponding puzzle pieces. I’d forgotten how much I really liked Jacob Black.
“You grew again!” I accused in amazement. He laughed, his smile widening impossibly. “Six five,” he announced with self-satisfaction. His voice was deeper, but it had the husky tone I remembered.
Jacob was a gift from the gods.
For the first time in more than four months, I’d slept without dreaming. Dreaming or screaming. I couldn’t tell which emotion was stronger—the relief or the shock.
“Sure, but, considering the difference in maturity between guys and girls, don’t you have to count that in dog years? What does that make me, about twelve years older?”
“What’s today’s date?” I wondered suddenly. “It’s January nineteenth.” “Hmm.” “What is it?” Angela asked. “It was a year ago yesterday that I had my first day here,” I mused.
“They’re just cliff diving, Bella. Recreation. La Push doesn’t have a mall, you know.”
“Sam treats you special?” “Yeah,” he agreed, looking up at me with troubled eyes. “He looks at me like he’s waiting for something… like I’m going to join his stupid gang someday. He pays more attention to me than any of the other guys. I hate it.”
We stood like that for a moment, and it didn’t upset me; in fact, I felt comforted by the contact. This didn’t feel anything like the last time someone had embraced me this way. This was friendship. And Jacob was very warm.
As I began to loosen my grip, I was shocked to be interrupted by a voice that did not belong to the boy standing next to me. “This is reckless and childish and idiotic, Bella,” the velvet voice fumed.
So the hallucinations must be triggered by something else.… I felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins again, and I thought I had the answer. Some combination of adrenaline and danger, or maybe just stupidity.
“Go home to Charlie,” the voice ordered. The sheer beauty of it amazed me. I couldn’t allow my memory to lose it, no matter the price. “Ease off slowly,” Jacob encouraged me. “I will,” I said. It bothered me a bit when I realized I was answering both of them.
I was dizzy and confused. It sounded like there were three things snarling—the bike over me, the voice in my head, and something else.…
Jacob really did look older than sixteen—not quite forty, but maybe older than me.
16 to 40 is a WILD jump
“Bears don’t want to eat people. We don’t taste that good.” He grinned at me in the dark cab. “Of course, you might be an exception. I bet you’d taste good.” “Thanks so much,” I said, looking away. He wasn’t the first person to tell me that.
Both Jacob and Mike had claimed the armrests on either side of me. Both of their hands rested lightly, palms up, in an unnatural-looking position. Like steel bear traps, open and ready.
Again, PTSD flashbacks to high school.
It was so wrong to encourage Jacob. Pure selfishness. It didn’t matter that I’d tried to make my position clear. If he felt any hope at all that this could turn into something other than friendship, then I hadn’t been clear enough.
No Bella, you were never clear enough. You lead this man on for a book and a half.
Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew—knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest—was how love gave someone the power to break you. I’d been broken beyond repair.
“Lie,” the beautiful velvet voice whispered anxiously from my memory.
The wolf closest to me, the reddish brown one, turned its head slightly at the sound of my gasp. The wolf’s eyes were dark, nearly black. It gazed at me for a fraction of a second, the deep eyes seeming too intelligent for a wild animal. As it stared at me, I suddenly thought of Jacob—again, with gratitude. At least I’d come here alone, to this fairy-tale meadow filled with dark monsters. At least Jacob wasn’t going to die, too. At least I wouldn’t have his death on my hands.
There was a darkness in Jacob now. Like my sun had imploded. “Jacob?” I whispered.
“Are you… breaking up with me?” The words were all wrong, but they were the best way I could think to phrase what I was asking. After all, what Jake and I had was more than any schoolyard romance. Stronger.
OMG PICK A SIDE
