"Take care of yourself," he breathed, cool against my skin.

There was a light, unnatural breeze. My eyes flashed open. The leaves on the small vine maple shuddered with the gentle wind of his passage.

He was gone.

Time made no sense as I pushed slowly through the thick undergrowth.

I rushed to my room, shutting and locking the door behind me before I ran to the CD player. The latch unhooked, and the lid swung open.

It was empty.

I lifted the album Renee had given me that sat on the floor beside the bed. I didn't have to flip any farther than the first page, the little mental corners no longer held a picture in place.


To my disappointment, I didn't lose consciousness.

Pulling me under, I did not resurface.

TIME PASSES…

OCTOBER:

The world didn't have much time for me. Even I couldn't get around the world. I couldn't say much for my friends. Pulling me away from them wasn't as hard as to pulling yourself away from your first love.

NOVEMBER:

Family is there for your every second. Charlie tried to help, but I wouldn't budge. I didn't want him to see my suffering, worse yet, I didn't want anyone to see worry about me. For all I know, I've been turned into a monster.

DECEMBER:

Forbidden to remember. Terrified to forget. It didn't matter if I still had to move up my life, but everything right now was much too confusing. I was stuck in a gap where no one could save me.

JANUARY:

I try not to close my eyes, because if I do I see things. Things I pull away from my mind. Each day, I try to sleep without having a nightmare, but without someone to hold on to I feel like that's hopelessly impossible.

WAKING UP…

Impossible as it seems, eventually in every fairy tale, someone has to have an unhappy ending. And as much as I thought everything will turn alright in the end, everything in my world turned upside down. As much as I tried ignoring the fact, waking up was my only choice to set aside the bad ending.

Behind everybody's eyes lies a curtain. That chooses whether or not the life and choices you make can be accepted. It's in your choice. Though, I didn't make that choice. My eyes were torn from that fateful day, they left me blind. I couldn't find anyone to hold on to until I met my sweet friend Jacob. He picked up the curtain to break the curse, and then, I could see again. The revelation made me a choice. The love for a werewolf.

He gave me the light. He would never let go, he wouldn't do anything to hurt me. He promised.

"What is it Jake?" I asked.

"There's something I want to tell you, Bella…but I think it's going to sound kind of corny."

I sighed. This would be more of the same from the theater. "Go ahead."

"It's just that, I know you're unhappy a lot. And, maybe it doesn't help anything, but I wanted you to know that I'm always here. I won't ever let you down―I promise that you can always count on me. Wow, that does sound corny. But you know that, right? That I would never, ever hurt you?"


"Go home Bella. I can't hang out with you anymore."

The silly, inconsequential hurt was incredibly potent. The tears welled up again. "Are you…breaking up with me?" The words were all wrong, but they were the best way I could think to phrase what I was asking. After all, what Jake and I had was more than any schoolyard romance. Stronger.

He barked out a biter laugh. "Hardly. If that were the case, I'd say 'Let's stay friends.' I can't even say that."

"Jacob …why? Sam won't let you have other friends? Please, Jake. You promised. I need you!" The blank emptiness of my life before―Jacob brought some semblance of reason back into it―reared up and confronted me. Loneliness choked in my throat.


"Bella!" it hissed. "Ouch! Damn it, open the window! OUCH!"

I needed two seconds to shake off the horror before I could move, but then I hurried to the window and shoved the glass out off the way. The clouds were dimly lit from behind, enough for me to make sense of the shapes.

"What are you doing?" I gasped.

Jacob was clinging precariously to the top of the spruce that grew in the middle of Charlies' little front yard. His weight had bowed the tree toward the house and he now not a yard away from me. The thin branches at the tip of the tree scraped against the side of the house again with a grating squeal.

"I'm trying to keep"―he huffed, shifting his weight as the treetop bounced him―"my promise!"


As much as I could remember when I jumped from the cliff was Edward. His perfect face as if he were really there; the exact shade of his icy skin, the shape of his lips, the line of his jaw, the gold glinting in his furious eyes. It was what I had been waiting for since the day he left me. That was it, wasn't it? I had never lost hope of him leaving me, even when he said those last words to me. But there was something different as I still drowned there, something that surprised me. As I drifted forward to the ocean floor, shutting my eyes for the last time. I dreamed.

The first time I saw him in the lunch room…the day we spoke…the time he saved me from the car accident…the day he saved me from those men…when I knew what he was…the meadow…our first kiss…the time we played baseball…when he saved me from James…our last kiss.

TO BE ABLE TO MOVE ON YOU MUST BE ABLE TO REMEMBER.

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