The voice in my head answered with an exquisite snarl. I smiled, and the confident man seemed to take that as encouragement.
"Can I help you with something? You look lost." He grinned and winked.
I stepped carefully over the gutter, running with water that was black in the darkness.
"No. I'm not lost."
Now that I was closerand my eyes felt oddly in focusI analyzed the short, dark man's face. It was not familiar in any way. I suffered a curious sensation of disappointment that this was not the terrible man who had tried to hurt me almost a year ago.
The voice in my head was quiet now.
The short man noticed my stare. "Can I buy you a drink?" he offered, nervous, seeming flattered that I'd singled him out to stare at.
"I'm too young," I answered automatically.
He was baffledwondering why I had approached them. I felt compelled to explain.
"From across the street, you looked like someone I knew. Sorry, my mistake."
The threat that had pulled me across the street had evaporated. These were not the dangerous men I remembered. They were probably nice guys. Safe. I lost interest.
"That's okay," the confident blonde said. "Stay and hang out with us."
"Thanks, but I can't." Jessica was hesitating in the middle of the street, her eyes wide with outrage and betrayal.
"Oh, just a few minutes."
I shook my head, and turned to rejoin Jessica.
"Let's go eat," I suggested, barely glancing at her. Though I appeared to be, for the moment, freed of the zombie abstraction, I was just as distant. My mind was preoccupied. The safe, numb deadness did not come back, and I got more anxious with every minute that passed without its return.
"What were you thinking?" Jessica snapped. "You don't know themthey could have been psychopaths!"
I shrugged, wishing she would let it go. "I just thought I knew the one guy."
"You are so odd, Bella Swan. I feel like I don't know who you are."
"Sorry." I didn't know what else to say to that.
We walked to McDonald's in silence. I'd bet that she was wishing we'd taken her car instead of walking the short distance from the theater, so that she could use the drive-through. She was just as anxious now for this evening to be over as I had been from the beginning.
I tried to start a conversation a few times while we ate, but Jessica was not cooperative. I must have really offended her.
When we go back in the car, she tuned the stereo back to her favorite station and turned the volume too loud to allow easy conversation.
I didn't have to struggle as hard as usual to ignore the music. Even though my mind, for once, was not carefully numb and empty, I had too much to think about to hear the lyrics.
I waited for the numbness to return, or the pain. Because the pain must be coming. I'd broken my personal rules. Instead of shying away from the memories, I'd walked forward and greeted them. I'd heard his voice, so clearly, in my head. That was going to cost me, I was sure of it. Especially if I couldn't reclaim the haze to protect myself. I felt too alert, and that frightened me.
But relief was still the strongest emotion in my bodyrelief that came from the very core of my being.
As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worriedlate in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defensesthat it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them.
Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to liveI had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed.
That's why I was more trapped in Forks than I ever had been before, why I'd fought with Charlie when he suggested a change. Honestly, it shouldn't matter; no one was ever coming back here.
But if I were to go to Jacksonville, or anywhere else bright and unfamiliar, how could I be sure he was real? In a place where I could never imagine him, the conviction might fade and that I could not live through.
Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.
I was surprised when Jessica stopped the car in front of my house. The ride had not taken long, but, short as it seemed, I wouldn't have thought that Jessica could go that long without speaking.
"Thanks for going out with me, Jess," I said as I opened my door. "That wasfun." I hoped that fun was the appropriate word.
"Sure," she muttered.
"I'm sorry about after the movie."
"Whatever, Bella." She glared out the windshield instead of looking at me. She seemed to be growing angrier rather than getting over it.
"See you Monday?"
"Yeah. Bye."
I gave up and shut the door. She drove away, still without looking at me.
I'd forgotten her by the time I was inside.
Charlie was waiting for me in the middle of the hall, his arms folded tight over his chest with his hands balled into fists.
"Hey, Dad," I said absentmindedly as I ducked around Charlie, heading for the stairs. I'd been thinking about him for too long, and I wanted to be upstairs before it caught up with me.
"Where have you been?" Charlie demanded.
I looked at my dad, surprised. "I went to a movie in Port Angeles with Jessica. Like I told you this morning."
"Humph," he grunted.
"Is that okay?"
He studied my face, his eyes widening as if he saw something unexpected. "Yeah, that's fine. Did you have fun?"
"Sure," I said. "We watched zombies eat people. It was great."
His eyes narrowed.
"'Night, Dad."
He let me pass. I hurried to my room.
I lay in my bed a few minutes later, resigned as the pain finally made its appearance.
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. My heart must have been beating, too, but I couldn't hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands felt blue with cold. I curled inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scrambled for my numbness, my denial, but it evaded me.
And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the painthe aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and headbut it was manageable. I could live through it. It didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.
Whatever it was that had happened tonightand whether it was the zombies, the adrenaline, or the hallucinations that were responsibleit had woken me up.
For the first time in a long time, I didn't know what to expect in the morning.
5 CHEATER
"BELLA, WHY DON'T YOU TAKE OFF," MIKE SUGGESTED, his eyes focused off to the side, not really looking at me. I wondered how long that had been going on without me noticing.
It was a slow afternoon at Newton's. At the moment there were only two patrons in the store, dedicated backpackers from the sound of their conversation. Mike had spent the last hour going through the pros and cons of two brands of lightweight packs with them. But they'd taken a break from serious pricing to indulge in trying to one-up each other with their latest tales from the trail. Their distraction had given Mike a chance to escape.
"I don't mind staying," I said. I still hadn't been able to sink back into my protective shell of numbness, and everything seemed oddly close and loud today, like I'd taken cotton out of my ears. I tried to tune out the laughing hikers without success.
"I'm telling you," said the thickset man with the orange beard that didn't match his dark brown hair. "I've seen grizzlies pretty close up in Yellowstone, but they had nothing on this brute." His hair was matted, and his clothes looked like they'd been on his back for more than a few days. Fresh from the mountains.
"Not a chance. Black bears don't get that big. The grizzlies you saw were probably cubs." The second man was tall and lean, his face tanned and wind-whipped into an impressive leathery crust.
"Seriously, Bella, as soon as these two give up, I'm closing the place down," Mike murmured.
"If you want me to go" I shrugged.
"On all fours it was taller than you," the bearded man insisted while I gathered my things together. "Big as a house and pitch-black. I'm going to report it to the ranger here. People ought to be warnedthis wasn't up on the mountain, mind youthis was only a few miles from the trailhead."
Leather-face laughed and rolled his eyes. "Let me guessyou were on your way in? Hadn't eaten real food or slept off the ground in a week, right?"
"Hey, uh, Mike, right?" the bearded man called, looking toward us.
"See you Monday," I mumbled.
"Yes, sir," Mike replied, turning away.
"Say, have there been any warnings around here recentlyabout black bears?"
"No, sir. But it's always good to keep your distance and store your food correctly. Have you seen the new bear-safe canisters? They only weigh two pounds"
The doors slid open to let me out into the rain. I hunched over inside my jacket as I dashed for my truck. The rain hammering against my hood sounded unusually loud, too, but soon the roar of the engine drowned out everything else.
I didn't want to go back to Charlie's empty house. Last night had been particularly brutal, and I had no desire to revisit the scene of the suffering. Even after the pain had subsided enough for me to sleep, it wasn't over. Like I'd told Jessica after the movie, there was never any doubt that I would have nightmares.
I always had nightmares now, every night. Not nightmares really, not in the plural, because it was always the same nightmare. You'd think I'd get bored after so many months, grow immune to 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 thathe was used to it now.
My nightmare probably wouldn't even frighten someone else. Nothing jumped out and screamed, "Boo!" There were no zombies, no ghosts, no psychopaths. There was nothing, really. Only nothing. Just the endless maze of moss-covered trees, so quiet that the silence was an uncomfortable pressure against my eardrums. It was dark, like dusk on a cloudy day, with only enough light to see that there was nothing to see. I hurried through the gloom without a path, always searching, searching, searching, getting more frantic as the time stretched on, trying to move faster, though the speed made me clumsy Then there would come the point in my dreamand I could feel it coming now, but could never seem to wake myself up before it hitwhen I couldn't remember what it was that I was searching for. When I realized that there was nothing to search for, and nothing to find. That there never had been anything more than just this empty, dreary wood, and there never would be anything more for me nothing but nothing
That was usually about when the screaming started.
I wasn't paying attention to where I was drivingjust wandering through empty, wet side roads as I avoided the ways that would take me homebecause I didn't have anywhere to go.
I wished I could feel numb again, but I couldn't remember how I'd managed it before. The nightmare was nagging at my mind and making me think about things that would cause me pain. I didn't want to remember the forest. Even as I shuddered away from the images, I felt my eyes fill with tears and the aching begin around the edges of the hole in my chest. I took one hand from the steering wheel and wrapped it around my torso to hold it in one piece.
It will be as if I'd never existed. The words ran through my head, lacking the perfect clarity of my hallucination last night. They were just words, soundless, like print on a page. Just words, but they ripped the hole wide open, and I stomped on the brake, knowing I should not drive while this incapacitated.
I curled over, pressing my face against the steering wheel and trying to breathe without lungs.
I wondered how long this could last. Maybe someday, years from nowif the pain would just decrease to the point where I could bear itI would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life. And, if it were possible that the pain would ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I was sure that I would feel grateful for as much time as he'd given me. More than I'd asked for, more than I'd deserved. Maybe someday I'd be able to see it that way.
But what if this hole never got any better? If the raw edges never healed? If the damage was permanent and irreversible?
I held myself tightly together. As if he'd never existed, I thought in despair. What a stupid and impossible promise to make! He could steal my pictures and reclaim his gifts, but that didn't put things back the way they'd been before I'd met him. The physical evidence was the most insignificant part of the equation. I was changed, my insides altered almost past the point of recognition. Even my outsides looked differentmy face sallow, white except for the purple circles the nightmares had left under my eyes. My eyes were dark enough against my pallid skin thatif I were beautiful, and seen from a distanceI might even pass for a vampire now. But I was not beautiful, and I probably looked closer to a zombie.
As if he'd never existed? That was insanity. It was a promise that he could never keep, a promise that was broken as soon as he'd made it.
I thumped my head against the steering wheel, trying to distract myself from the sharper pain.
It made me feel silly for ever worrying about keeping my promise. Where was the logic in sticking to an agreement that had already been violated by the other party? Who cared if I was reckless and stupid? There was no reason to avoid recklessness, no reason why I shouldn't get to be stupid.
I laughed humorlessly to myself, still gasping for air. Reckless in Forksnow there was a hopeless proposition.