Twilight: Chapters 9–13

He looked at me, his eyes enigmatic.

I tried to modulate my voice.

His voice was bleak. “Don’t you want to know if I drink blood?”

“Don’t let that make you complacent, though,” he warned me. “They’re right to keep their distance from us. We are still dangerous.”

“I can’t be sure, of course, but I’d compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our little inside joke. It doesn’t completely satiate the hunger—or rather thirst. But it keeps us strong enough to resist. Most of the time.”

“I wasn’t joking when I asked you to try not to fall in the ocean or get run over last Thursday. I was distracted all weekend, worrying about you. And after what happened tonight, I’m surprised that you did make it through a whole weekend unscathed.”

“I suppose, being you, it could have been much worse—and that possibility tormented me the entire time I was away. It was a very long three days. I really got on Emmett’s nerves.” He smiled ruefully at me.

First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him—and I didn’t know how potent that part might be—that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Last night all the walls were down...almost all. I didn’t know if we were still being as candid today.

He shrugged as he parked next to a glossy red convertible with the top up. “Ostentatious, isn’t it?”
“Um, wow,” I breathed. “If she has that, why does she ride with you?”
“Like I said, it’s ostentatious. We try to blend in.”

But outside the door to our Spanish class, leaning against the wall—looking more like a Greek god than anyone had a right to—Edward was waiting for me. Jessica took one look, rolled her eyes, and departed.
“See you later, Bella.” Her voice was thick with implications.

“Won’t you want to tell your father that you’re spending the day with me?” There was an undercurrent to his question that I didn’t understand.

“You should tell Charlie, though.”
“Why in the world would I do that?”
His eyes were suddenly fierce. “To give me some small incentive to bring you back.”

“Of course,” he said, and his tone mirrored mine, “we have to be careful not to impact the environment with injudicious hunting. We try to focus on areas with an overpopulation of predators—ranging as far away as we need. There’s always plenty of deer and elk here, and they’ll do, but where’s the fun in that?”

A movie day—the lift in the class atmosphere was almost tangible.

I could see a few of the other kids in class eyeing me furtively.

Mercifully, some vestiges of Mike’s chivalry still survived; he came to stand beside me.

His eyes burned with sincerity for a protracted moment—playing havoc with the rhythm of my heart—and then turned playful.

He shook his head, still gazing morosely at the heavy clouds.

Flickers of the electricity I’d felt this afternoon began to charge the atmosphere as he gazed unrelentingly into my eyes.

How ghastly it would be, I thought, shuddering, if Charlie had even the slightest inkling of exactly what I did like.

I sighed in relief again when Mr. Banner turned the lights on, finally glancing at Edward; he was looking at me, his eyes ambivalent.

He reached across to open my door for me, and his sudden proximity sent my heart into frenzied palpitations.

He reached across to open my door for me, and his sudden proximity sent my heart into frenzied palpitations.

I recognized Billy’s resonant voice easily, despite the years.

“I should have let you drive yourself today,” he announced, apropos of nothing, while I chewed.

“Having the advantages I do,” he murmured, touching his forehead discreetly, “I have a better than average grasp of human nature. People are predictable. But you...you never do what I expect. You always take me by surprise.”

Her slight frame was willowy, graceful even in absolute stillness.

She left without another word; her walk was so fluid, so sinuous that I felt a sharp pang of jealousy.

“I’ll do the laundry tonight—that ought to be fraught with peril.”

I fluctuated between anticipation so intense that it was very nearly pain, and an insidious fear that picked at my resolve.

I deliberately took unnecessary cold medicine—the kind that knocked me out for a good eight hours. I normally wouldn’t condone that type of behavior in myself, but tomorrow would be complicated enough without me being loopy from sleep deprivation on top of everything else.

Five miles of treacherous roots and loose stones, trying to twist my ankles or otherwise incapacitate me.

I’d never seen him so completely freed of that carefully cultivated façade. He’d never been less human...or more beautiful.

I looked down at his hand and doodled aimlessly across his smooth, iridescent palm.

“No, no!” He was instantly contrite. “Of course there’s hope! I mean, of course I won’t...”

Poor Ms. Cope; I shivered again at how close I’d come to being inadvertently responsible for her death.

“Okay, then,” I said flippantly, trying to alleviate the suddenly tense atmosphere.

His eyes were wild, his jaw clenched in acute restraint, yet he didn’t lapse from his perfect articulation.

“You are only human, after all.”
“Thanks so much,” I said, my voice acerbic.