When Bella and Edward first started hanging out together, I thought it was so weird. It wasn't like every girl in school wouldn't have sold her soul to be sitting next to Edward Cullen at his lunch table, but he never really gave them a chance. I don't think he'd even so much as borrowed a pencil from one of us before, let alone had a conversation with us, walked us to class, studied with us. And then Bella came, and it was like he was a whole new Edward. Even more, Bella changed. I saw my friend fall in love before my very eyes.
They started spending all of their time together-he even changed his schedule to be with her. I had never seen Bella so preoccupied. Her very motions seemed to echo his, like she was she was orbiting his presence, growing more definite every day. She was a moon, he was her Earth.
It was more than that, though. Her eyes sparkled with a new vigor, her body moved with a new passion set aflame. I thought it was great. Bella was most zealously in love.
Then, one day late last September, Bella wasn't in school. Neither were the Cullens. They often went camping together when the weather was nice, so I figured maybe Bella went with them. But the Cullens didn't return.
Bella did-but she was hardly the same Bella she was the Friday before. Her eyes had lost their sparkle, her movements were dead. She was still a moon-except now her planet was lost, and she was left to revolve around the ghost of its existence. She moved back to sitting at our table, although I don't think it would have a made a difference even if she was sitting alone. She didn't talk to anyone. Eventually I learned through the grapevine that the Cullens had left. No other explanation was to be discovered.
I wanted to help her, I really did. I wanted to reach out to my best friend. Yet every time I tried to talk to her, she would push me away. Help was unwanted. There was nothing I could do but sit there and watch my friend die.
But today- it was amazing! I'd never seen her so animated since Edward deserted her. Her eyes sparkled for the first time in months. It was like a fire that had come this-close to falling to ash had suddenly caught a gust of wind, and flared up again. She even said something at lunch today! She was the Bella I remembered. The Bella I loved.
We missed you, Bella.
Welcome home.