Twilight: Chapters 4–8

I wondered to myself why no one else had seen him standing so far away, before he was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause—no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was.

But he didn’t broach the subject until I was in my seat and he was perched on my desk.

“What? Are you speaking to me again?” I finally asked, an unintentional note of petulance in my voice.

“It would be more...prudent for you not to be my friend,” he explained.

His eyes were gloriously intense as he uttered that last sentence, his voice smoldering.

“Thank you for joining us, Miss Swan,” Mr. Mason said in a disparaging tone.

“Edward Cullen is staring at you again,” Jessica said, finally breaking through my abstraction with his name.

“So, in plain English, are we friends now?”
“Friends...,” he mused, dubious.

I looked up into his deep gold eyes, became befuddled, and, as usual, blurted out the truth.
“I’m trying to figure out what you are.”

“Are you having any luck with that?” he asked in an offhand tone.

“What are your theories?”
I blushed. I had been vacillating during the last month between Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker.

“No,” I disagreed quickly, my eyes narrowing, “I can’t imagine why that would be frustrating at all—just because someone refuses to tell you what they’re thinking, even if all the while they’re making cryptic little remarks specifically designed to keep you up at night wondering what they could possibly mean...now, why would that be frustrating?”

“Or better,” I continued, the pent-up annoyance flowing freely now, “say that person also did a wide range of bizarre things—from saving your life under impossible circumstances one day to treating you like a pariah the next, and he never explained any of that, either, even after he promised. That, also, would be very non-frustrating.”

His mood shifted suddenly; his eyes turned brooding. “I wonder why that is.”

I swallowed convulsively, my stomach heaving.

His eyes seemed to narrow infinitesimally.

“You don’t seem seventeen.”
His tone was reproachful; it made me laugh.

I managed to wedge Jess in between Mike and me in the front seat of the Suburban. Mike could have been more graceful about it, but at least Jess seemed appeased.

Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs.

The bouquets of brilliant anemones undulated ceaselessly in the invisible current, twisted shells scurried about the edges, obscuring the crabs within them, starfish stuck motionless to the rocks and each other, while one small black eel with white racing stripes wove through the bright green weeds, waiting for the sea to return.

“You know Bella, Jacob?” Lauren asked—in what I imagined was an insolent tone—from across the fire.

“Yes, do you know them?” she asked condescendingly, turning halfway toward him.

Jacob strolled to a nearby driftwood tree that had its roots sticking out like the attenuated legs of a huge, pale spider.

I stared at him earnestly, hoping to disguise my impatience as admiration.

He smiled, elated by my inept flirting.

I smiled at Jacob warmly, and he grinned back.
“Well,” Mike paused, carefully reassessing the situation as he watched our camaraderie.

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete.

I read carefully through the descriptions, looking for anything that sounded familiar, let alone plausible.

I decided that most of the blame belonged on the doorstep of the town of Forks—and the entire sodden Olympic Peninsula, for that matter.

I ignored my truck and started east on foot, angling across Charlie’s yard toward the ever- encroaching forest.

And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first-century classroom.

My homework was done—the product of a slow social life—but there were a few Trig problems I wasn’t sure I had right. I took out my book industriously, but halfway through rechecking the first problem I was daydreaming, watching the sunlight play on the red-barked trees.

“What did you do yesterday?” His tone was just a bit too proprietary.

Of course I was happy about the sunlight. But that wasn’t completely responsible for the euphoric mood I was in, not even close.

“Is it normal for the...Cullens”—I kept my eyes on the shoes—“to be out of school a lot?” I failed miserably in my attempt to sound nonchalant.

They were joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other’s arms.

That displeased him; his alabaster brow furrowed.

“Usually you’re in a better mood when your eyes are so light,” I commented, trying to distract him from whatever thought had left him frowning and somber.

"...If there is anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you.”
“And you put yourself into that category?” I guessed.
His face turned cold, expressionless. “Unequivocally.”

“Thank you.” My voice was fervent with gratitude.