She had plans to go out with the other girls - I automatically planned my own surveillance - but these plans were postponed when Mike invited Jessica out on the date he'd planned for Bella.
So I went straight to her home instead, doing a quick sweep of the woods to make sure no one dangerous had wandered too close. I knew Jasper had warned his one-time brother to avoid the town - citing my insanity as both explanation and warning - but I wasn't taking any chances. Peter and Charlotte had no intention of causing animosity with my family, but intentions were changeable things...
All right, I was overdoing it. I knew that.
As if she knew I was watching, as if she took pity on the agony I felt when I couldn't see her, Bella came out to the backyard after a long hour indoors. She had a book in her hand and a blanket under her arm.
Silently, I climbed into the higher branches of the closest tree overlooking the yard.
She spread the blanket on the damp grass and then lay on her stomach and started flipping through the worn book, as if trying to find her place. I read over her shoulder. Ah - more classics. She was an Austen fan.
She read quickly, crossing and recrossing her ankles in the air. I was watching the sunlight and wind play in her hair when her body suddenly stiffened, and her hand froze on the page. All I saw was that she'd reached chapter three when she roughly grabbed a thick section of pages and shoved them over.
I caught a glance of a title page, Mansfield Park. She was starting a new story - the book was a compilation of novels. I wondered why she'd switched stories so abruptly.
Just a few moments later, she slammed the book angrily shut. With a fierce scowl on her face, she pushed the book aside and flipped over onto her back. She took a deep breath, as if to calm herself, pushed her sleeves up and closed her eyes. I remembered the novel, but I couldn't think of anything offensive in it to upset her. Another mystery. I sighed.
She lay very still, moving just once to yank her hair away from her face. It fanned out over her head, a river of chestnut. And then she was motionless again. Her breathing slowed. After several long minutes her lips began to tremble.
Mumbling in her sleep.
Impossible to resist. I listened as far out as I could, catching voices in the houses nearby.
Two tablespoons of flour...one cup of milk...
C'mon! Get it through the hoop! Aw, c'mon!
Red, or blue...or maybe I should wear something more casual...
There was no one close by. I jumped to the ground, landing silently on my toes.
This was very wrong, very risky. How condescendingly I'd once judged Emmett for his thoughtless ways and Jasper for his lack of discipline - and now I was consciously flouting all the rules with a wild abandon that made their lapses look like nothing at all. I used to be the responsible one.
I sighed, but crept out into the sunshine, regardless.
I avoided looking at myself in the sun's glare. It was bad enough that my skin was stone and inhuman in shadow; I didn't want to look at Bella and myself side by side in the sunlight. The difference between us was already insurmountable, painful enough without this image also in my head.
But I couldn't ignore the rainbow sparkles that reflected onto her skin when I got closer. My jaw locked at the sight. Could I be any more of a freak? I imagined her terror if she opened her eyes now...
I started to retreat, but she mumbled again, holding me there.
"Mmm... Mmm." Nothing intelligible. Well, I would wait for a bit.
I carefully stole her book, stretching my arm out and holding my breath while I was close, just in case. I started breathing again when I was a few yards away, tasting the way the sunshine and open air affected her scent. The heat seemed to sweeten the smell. My throat flamed with desire, the fire fresh and fierce again because I had been away from her for too long.
I spent a moment controlling that, and then - forcing myself to breathe through my nose - I let her book fall open in my hands. She'd started with the first book... I flipped through the pages quickly to the third chapter of Sense and Sensibility, searching for something potentially offensive in Austen's overly polite prose.
When my eyes stopped automatically at my name - the character Edward Ferrars being introduced for the first time - Bella spoke again.
"Mmm. Edward." She sighed.
This time I did not fear that she had awoken. Her voice was just a low, wistful murmur. Not the scream of fear it would have been if she'd seen me now.
Joy warred with self-loathing. She was still dreaming of me, at least.
"Edmund. Ahh. Too....close..."
Edmund?
Ha! She wasn't dreaming of me at all, I realized blackly. The self-loathing returned in force. She was dreaming of fictional characters. So much for my conceit. I replaced her book, and stole back into the cover of the shadows - where I belonged.
The afternoon passed and I watched, feeling helpless again, as the sun slowly sank in the sky and the shadows crawled across the lawn toward her. I wanted to push them back, but the darkness was inevitable; the shadows took her. When the light was gone, her skin looked too pale - ghostly. Her hair was dark again, almost black against her face.
It was a frightening thing to watch - like witnessing Alice's visions come to fruition. Bella's steady, strong heartbeat was the only reassurance, the sound that kept this moment from feeling like a nightmare.
I was relieved when her father arrived home.
I could hear little from him as he drove down the street toward the house. Some vague annoyance...in the past, something from his day at work. Expectation mixed with hunger - I guessed that he was looking forward to dinner. But his thoughts were so quiet and contained that I could not be sure I was right; I only got the gist of them.
I wondered what her mother sounded like - what the genetic combination had been that had formed her so uniquely.