More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There was no Gran. That was me. Me in a mirror. Me—ancient, creased, and withered.
I was eighteen. And Edward never would be.
“I think it’s a nice idea. You’re only a senior once. Might as well document the experience.”
My only personal income came from the three days a week I worked at the local sporting goods store.
“What’s wrong with Romeo?” I asked, a little offended. Romeo was one of my favorite fictional characters. Until I’d met Edward, I’d sort of had a thing for him.
“Well, I wasn’t going to live without you.”
“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.
Hey, say hi to Alice for me. She hasn’t been over in a while.” Charlie’s mouth pulled down at one corner. “It’s been three days, Dad,” I reminded him. Charlie was crazy about Alice. He’d become attached last spring when she’d helped me through my awkward convalescence; Charlie would be forever grateful to her for saving him from the horror of an almost-adult daughter who needed help showering.
Alice, I assumed, had covered every flat surface with pink candles and dozens of crystal bowls filled with hundreds of roses. There was a table with a white cloth draped over it next to Edward’s grand piano, holding a pink birthday cake, more roses, a stack of glass plates, and a small pile of silver-wrapped presents.
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.
“It could happen to anyone.” “Could,” I repeated. “But it usually just happens to me.”
“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.” Carlisle’s voice was very soft; he stared out the big window over the sink, into the darkness. “You see, he thinks we’ve lost our souls.”
“But if I believed as he does…” He looked down at me with unfathomable eyes. “If you believed as he did. Could you take away his soul?”
“I’d rather die than be with Mike Newton,” I protested. “I’d rather die than be with anyone but you.”
“Which is tempting you more, my blood or my body?” I challenged. “It’s a tie.”
“Where’s Alice?” I asked Edward anxiously. He looked at the granola bar he was slowly pulverizing between his fingertips while he answered. “She’s with Jasper.” “Is he okay?” “He’s gone away for a while.”
He just needed time, I told myself. He would get over this.
What’s the worst that can happen? I flinched. That was definitely the wrong question to ask. I was having a hard time breathing right. Okay, I thought again, what’s the worst I can live through?
“When you say we—,” I whispered. “I mean my family and myself.”
“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?” I nodded helplessly.
“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.”
He smiled gently. “Don’t worry. You’re human—your memory is no more than a sieve. Time heals all wounds for your kind.”
Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight—a lunar eclipse, a new moon.
Suddenly, there was another sound, startlingly close. A kind of snuffling, an animal sound. It sounded big. I wondered if I should feel afraid. I didn’t—just numb. It didn’t matter. The snuffling went away.
“Bella, honey, are you all right?” That was one voice I would know anywhere—even distorted, as it was now, with worry. “Charlie?” My voice sounded strange and small. “I’m right here, baby.”
Team Charlie for life
The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.
TIME PASSES. EVEN WHEN IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE. EVEN WHEN each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
“I don’t think I can live through seeing you try harder. I’ve never seen anyone trying so hard. It hurts to watch.”
It was a senseless impulse, but I hadn’t felt any kind of impulse in so long.… I followed it.
It was his voice—I was exceptionally careful not to think his name—and I was surprised that the sound of it did not knock me to my knees, did not curl me onto the pavement in a torture of loss. But there was no pain, none at all.
Option one: I was crazy. That was the layman’s term for people who heard voices in their heads. Possible. Option two: My subconscious mind was giving me what it thought I wanted. This was wish fulfillment—a momentary relief from pain by embracing the incorrect idea that he cared whether I lived or died. Projecting what he would have said if A) he were here, and B) he would be in any way bothered by something bad happening to me.
The trade-off was the never-ending numbness. Between pain and nothing, I’d chosen nothing.
I felt too alert, and that frightened me.
Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.
It was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I knew my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasped for air and my head spun like my efforts yielded me nothing.
It didn’t feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I’d grown strong enough to bear it.
But the dream never failed to horrify me, and only ended when I woke myself with screaming. Charlie didn’t come in to see what was wrong anymore, to make sure there was no intruder strangling me or something like that—he was used to it now.
I wished I could feel numb again, but I couldn’t remember how I’d managed it before.
I curled over, pressing my face against the steering wheel and trying to breathe without lungs.
But what if this hole never got any better? If the raw edges never healed? If the damage was permanent and irreversible?
My eyes were dark enough against my pallid skin that—if I were beautiful, and seen from a distance—I might even pass for a vampire now. But I was not beautiful, and I probably looked closer to a zombie.
Sometimes, kismet happens. Coincidence? Or was it meant to be? I didn’t know, but it seemed kind of silly to think that it was somehow fated, that the dilapidated motorcycles rusting in the Markses’ front yard beside the hand-printed FOR SALE, AS IS sign were serving some higher purpose by existing there, right where I needed them to be.
So many promises I kept… It clicked together for me then. I wanted to be stupid and reckless, and I wanted to break promises. Why stop at one?
“Hey, Jacob!” I felt an unfamiliar surge of enthusiasm at his smile. I realized that I was pleased to see him. This knowledge surprised me. I smiled back, and something clicked silently into place, like two corresponding puzzle pieces. I’d forgotten how much I really liked Jacob Black.
Jacob was a gift from the gods.
“I’m Quil Ateara,” he announced grandly before releasing my hand.
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.
It was Jacob himself. Jacob was simply a perpetually happy person, and he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them. It was natural, a part of who he was. No wonder I was so eager to see him.
By the time we got back to La Push, I was twenty-three and he was thirty—he was definitely weighting skills in his favor.
