[SOME THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO SAY FIRST:
In this story there is not blood-craziness when you are a newborn, so Bella doesn't feel the thirst so much. I did it so the story would go faster and Bella wouldn't have to be so self-conscious about it
I do not speak English as my first language so, I may have some mistakes, if you found something, please tell me and I will correct it.
The characters may not be exactly as Stephenie wrote them, sorry, I imagine them this way and that's why they are like this.
I accept theories of what might happen, I love to know what you might think of my story so don't doubt about criticize or tell me something is wrong.
PLEASE REVIEW!!! ]
**Paula
PREFACE
I'D NEVER GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO HOW I WOULD DIE — THOUGH I'D HAD REASON enough in the last few months — but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.
ONE
I fainted. That was the only explanation I could find to what had happened. The thing I could not understand was why my shoulder hurt so much…
It felt like it was burning, I felt it burning.
I tried to open my eyes but a heavy force was keeping them down.
I tried to hear something around me. At first I didn't succeed, and then, as if I was turning up the volume of a radio, I started hearing everything.
"Oh, Bella, no, no, no, no, Bella, Bella, my love, my life, oh Bella."
"She's not dead, she's changing." A matter-of-fact girl's voice said, I could not remember her name; all I knew was that I knew her.
"Go help Emmett and Jasper, tell Alice and Carlisle I need them" the same voice from the beginning said, it was a boy.
A second passed and then I heard a growl, really close to me, to my ear?
"Oh my! I thought she had had a blackout" A different girl said.
"Is she changing or is she dead, Carlisle?" the boy said.
"She is definitely changing; don't you smell it in her blood? The poison?" Carlisle said.
"Then, why isn't she screaming? Why is she so still?"
"I don't know."
Because I don't feel, I can't move, I just— the pain in my shoulder started scorching me, it was spreading to my arm, to my hand.
I screamed and opened my eyes.
Edward was there with me, he had me in his arms.
Alice and Carlisle were looking at Edward with their eyes wide, shocked.
"There you've got, now she is screaming" Rosalie said as she passed next to us to a black racing car.
"Smoke? Why is there so much smoke?" I almost choked with the words before starting screaming again.
"It's the ballet studio, we killed them and then burned them" Edward said taking me to another car.
He spoke over my screaming; that I was sure as hell it would wake up the neighbors.
Them? I wanted to ask, them who?
But no sound came from my mouth as my voice, my hearing and my sight disappeared again.
I was screaming in the dark. I knew I shouldn't but it was like when you are scared of something and you know you shouldn't bite your lip because you are hurting yourself, you know closing your eyes won't make it disappear, but biting your lip or closing your eyes to the fear is the only thing that is keeping you sane, so you do it, you do it maybe with a little stupid hope that it will disappear, or maybe you know it is hopeless and you do it anyway because, what do you have to loose?
I knew that screaming wasn't going to make my pain disappear, I knew touching the sheets of the bed I was on now wasn't going to make the thick darkness around me disappear and God help me if I didn't know that repeating his name like a mantra wasn't going to protect me from this endless fear of being dead, of not have been able to make it.
So I screamed.
I had been moved to somewhere where I was in a bed, a big bed.
I started feeling the light through my eyelids when I started hearing voices. No, not voices like the crazies hear voices; I mean I started recovering my senses.
I could feel the air coming in and out of me through my lungs. I could feel the soft sheets under me and the thin fabric of the dress covering me. I could see the light through my eyelids and feel the movement of a person close to me.
I had stopped screaming, I was only shaking a little and the pain was retreating from my hands and toes. But it didn't mean the pain was less scorching, on the contrary! It was concentrating in my heart, making me shake and arch my back a bit. It didn't ease the pain.
"At least she's alive" Said a voice. Emmett.
"Alive? Do you call whatever we are alive? I call it damned, I am damned and now… and now she's damned too."
That was Edward.
"Damned? She might as well be damned if she doesn't have a sense of fashion when she wakes up" said a girl.
It was definitely Alice.
"Get out Alice, you are talking nonsense."
"Yeah!" Emmet said happy "You, my little girl are going to be the first mad vampire! Congrats Alice!"
"Get out!!" Edward roared.
"You are mean," she said "and now I won't tell you when she will wake up."
"You can't hide things from me, Alice."
"The hell I can't! I will sing the American anthem all my life if necessary my dearest brother…"
"You are evil."
"You are an angry old man" said Emmett still in a happy tone.
"Then, you might as well respect the older man"
"Oh goodness!" said Alice "We lost him!"
"Stay strong man!" Emmett said "If you feel a little down later, just call me and go and hunt some old ladies for you" he teased now.
Alice chuckled and left with Emmett.
"Bella…?" Edward said softly "Please don't be like them when you wake up, please don't" he said, a little as a joke and a little scared.
I laughed softly and that made me scream some more.
Time passed fast after that little inconvenient that provoked a little more pain than the necessary.
That time passed fast didn't mean I hurt less, God no! Every painful second hurt more than the last and I only took comfort in Edward, who was always by my side and sometimes he even hummed my lullaby.
I could feel the burning everywhere, my legs, my arms, my head, my stomach and specially my heart. Although I started feeling other things too, I felt my veins dry up and my lungs reacting as if the air was something there, that came in and out just because I made it, not necessarily an annoying thing and neither an appealing and needed thing.
My heart fluttered a bit and the pain started to run to my heart, the burning was running through me to find my heart.
And then, it stopped.
"Edward?" I asked without moving an inch, without opening my eyes.
"Yes, my love? I am here."
At the same time, I heard the others coming.
"Bella's awake?" I heard Alice saying "And I didn't know? Stupid, stupid distracted me and New York's Fashion week!" she said frustrated.
Everyone laughed.
I opened my eyes then, but I didn't breathe again or moved.
I saw Edward, so breathtakingly beautiful, more than usual now I could see him clearly.
There was a weird glow coming through the window. Snow? Yes, indeed, there was snow covering the ground outside the window.
"But, where am I?" I asked not sitting and seeing the others on the doorstep. My voice sounded weird, more beautiful, like I was singing.
"Hey, I don't bite, right? I mean, yeah I do, but not you, just… God I am still lame, and I am a vampire!"
Everyone laughed at that. Except Edward who looked as if he might throw up.
"We are at the Denali's, Carmen, Eleazar, Tanya, Irina and Kate are hunting now, they are coming back later, but you need to hunt first" Edward answered my question in a quiet and restrained voice.
"NO! No, no, no, no, no, no!" said Alice "She's got to see herself in a mirror first!" now she sounded just like a little kid telling their parents she wanted an ice-cream and that she wanted it now.
"Now, can we do something to stop you? Is there anything in the world that stops you, Alice?" Edward said.
"No" she said simply.
"Then bring the good damn mirror here."
Alice brought me to a room that had a wall that was a mirror, my mouth popped open when I saw myself. I was as breathtakingly beautiful as any of them.
My hair, dark brown, hung loose almost to my waist in soft waves. My body — that always seemed to me to have a lazy posture— now was straight and perfectly positioned as a Top Model. My skin, always pale and simple, now looked amazingly white and perfect. All myself was perfect, without a flaw or thing that may have troubled me in the past.
Now, I was beautiful.
I saw how I was dressed and saw I was wearing an ocean blue dress, it was light and short and I loved it.
"You know, Alice, I really like this dress" I was amused by my voice.
She chuckled lightly and took my hand.
I did meet her eyes in the mirror and realized I hadn't seen my eyes, not really… In less than a second, I was inches apart from the mirror; looking at myself with horror.
My eyes were crimson red! So red they shone with the weird light the snow casted through the windows.
"Oh!" I said.
"Uh, yeah… the eyes, I… Bells don't worry they will change, you need to hunt right now" Alice said.
Slowly, Edward came into the room.
"Yes, Alice, in a month or more. Don't tell her half truths, it isn't right" He said putting a hand on my shoulder. His voice was ice-cold and tortured.
"I think I am ready to hunt" I said shortly.
"Let's go" Edward said with the same inexpressive voice.
"No, Edward, I want to go with Alice" I said in the same inexpressive voice as him, he just looked at me "Would you go with me?" I asked Alice.
"O-of course" she said a little shaky.
"Would you wait me at the door?" I asked her.
She was gone before I had even stopped talking.
"I love you, Edward, but you are acting as if it was wrong to me to be here. If you want me to leave, I will, I won't complain if you don't want me anymore… now that I am not a human fragile girl anymore" I sighed as I headed to the door and looked back, he had an annoyed look on his face and I ran to the door before he could even answer.
Alice was grim all the time.
"Why did you say that to him?" she said with an exhausted look once we finished hunting.
I discovered it came naturally to me, as much as running and being a vampire.
"You know I think I am a natural being a vampire, you know? Like I was destined to be one" I evaded her question.
"You are evading me" she simply said.
I sighed and sat on a high branch of a tree, climbing it easily as if I had done it all my life.
Alice was next to me before I had even time to start talking.
"I- I just saw how he looked at me, okay? I mean, if he doesn't want me anymore, he can just say it and get over it, right? I would accept it, I just can't see why he is so upset with the fact I am a vampire" I told her "Is it that he doesn't love me? Tell me Alice."
"Bella! You are so stupid!"
"Thanks, that is just what I needed" I said sarcastically.
"No! I mean, he loves you, of course he does. It is that he was always weary and scared that you would take off when you realized we really are monsters, and now…"
She didn't finish her sentence but I didn't let her "Alice! You know I don't think of you, of us, as monsters!"
"Right, but now it's too late, you can't go back, you are one of us now and he's afraid you aren't ready, he's afraid you are going to regret it, he fears you are going to be mad at him for not being able to protect you!" she talked fast and without any pause.
"My lord! He's the one who's stupid! Can't he see I love him? Can't he see he's the most important thing in my life? Doesn't he know I am madly in love with him and that I wouldn't care less being a vampire if that's the only thing I had to do to be with him for ever?"
"Really?" a voice said softly, it wasn't Alice, it came from the ground.
I looked down to find Edward looking at me with the biggest of the smiles in the world.
"You mean a lot to me, Edward; I would never, ever blame you for what James did"
He was next to me in half a second, his arms around me.
Alice was gone.
He hugged me hard until I lost my balance and fell to the snowy floor of the pine forest.
Everywhere you looked, it was white or either green.
I looked at the white and full of clouds sky with amazement. The sky was so full of clouds it was white, and when being a human it would have hurt my eyes, now, being a vampire, it was easy to look at the never-ending white sky or the ephemeral white snow without it hurting me.
"I love you" Edward said in an adoring voice.
"I know" I told him.
He chuckled and struggled to get up while I stood quiet in the floor, a bit distracted.
"You know we have all the time of the world now, but, do you really think the snowy floor is the most comfortable place to lie?"
He was towering me, with a big smile and shining golden eyes.
"Edward, I want to go to school" I said, and closed my eyes, not wanting to see him.
"Okay" he simply said. I could not see his face, so I could not know if he was mad or not.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. His expression hadn't changed.
"Really? I mean, going back wouldn't be risky?"
"Bella, I mean here, going to school here, in Denali, not in Forks. Sorry…"
I closed my eyes again, but this time in defeat.
I was sad not to be able to see my dad or my mother again; I was even going to miss Phil, my mother's new (maybe not so new) husband.
"Okay, maybe Alice and Jasper might like to go too."
