The Next Meaningful Hour

by TricksAndTreats 3 Contest

After finding a lost journal on a game night, Jasper Whitlock falls victim to the allure of its oddly relatable content, unaware of the painful truth that lies therein. Standard Disclaimer: The author does not own any publicly recognizable entities herein. No copyright infringement is intended.

Title of Story: The Next Meaningful Hour

Rating: M

Pairing: Jasper/Edward

Genre: Angst

Word Count: 11,901

Story Summary: After finding a lost journal on a game night, Jasper Whitlock falls victim to the allure of its oddly relatable content, unaware of the painful truth that lies therein.

Standard Disclaimer: The author does not own any publicly recognizable entities herein. No copyright infringement is intended.

The hallways of Forks High School buzzed with hysteria. The loud music pumping through my earbuds drowned out the sound of it, to the point where I felt as if I'd walked into the middle of a pantomime show. Some people were wrapped in tight hugs, their faces awash with trickling tears, and that was a sight that contrasted starkly with what I could feel in the air—a quiet, general undercurrent of guilty annoyance, as if due to whatever had transpired nobody could laugh, party or shove little freshman students against the school lockers anymore.

And just like that, I decided to skid away from the contours of my narrow comfort zone, as a weak, lone spark of curiosity flickered in the back of my head. I never took out my earbuds at school, except during class. But I chose to do it now, for some reason that I couldn't fathom.

It was Jessica Stanley's voice that I heard first.

"Maybe we should just cancel the whole thing."

"Are you insane?" It was Lauren Mallory who spoke, wearing a stunned look as they both stood in front of the principal's office door. "It's Halloween. It only happens once a year. And besides,we've been preparing for more than a month."

"Yeah, but… Somebody just, like, died."

There was a beat of halting silence, during which Lauren appeared to consider the best way to say what was on her mind.

"Look, I get it. There's this junior kid who everyone hates or simply doesn't give a damn about, and suddenly he kills himself. It's super tragic, yes, and we're all feeling incredibly guilty, but come on… Isn't that just a bit hypocritical? I mean, seriously, nobody really liked him anyway."

"Jesus, Lauren."

"Listen, I'm just being honest, unlike everybody else here—"

I stopped trying to listen in, my fingers scavenging the inner pocket of my brown leather jacket in search of my iPod, while my feet carried me away from them—from the depressing topic of their conversation and from the cruel truth that echoed through Lauren's words.

It dawned on me then that I had foreseen this even before I hit the pause button, noticing that there was hardly any trace of disturbed surprise or disappointment inside me. Most likely I had subconsciously readied myself for Jessica's revelation and for Lauren's crudeness, or maybe I had heard so many stories like this back in Texas that my susceptibility had become as coarse as the aging hands of a mine worker. Either way, that tiny flicker of inquisitiveness that had compelled me to get some answers had already burned out, and suddenly I didn't care.

I had Calculus next, and I wondered if there was actually any point in attending. Mr. Varner would always shoot me those passive-aggressive looks whenever I made it clear that it was useless to even try to coax me into paying attention.

I decided to go anyway, turning around just in time to feel the protruding bones of someone's shoulder bump softly against mine.

I lifted my eyes off the linoleum floor— it was Edward Cullen. His wide, evergreen eyes darted quickly in my direction, and I wondered if, like me, he had been too absorbed in his own mind to notice where he was going.

"Sorry," I mumbled, and as I made to step around him, the soft scent of fresh forest snow wafted through the space between us.

Mr. Varner was already scribbling on the whiteboard when I came in, even though only a couple of minutes had gone by since the bell had rung. The classroom looked barren and lonely, and except for the howling of the October wind outside the windows and the faint screeching of his abused marker, it was almost completely silent. I sat in the back as usual, and soon enough, more and more students began to come in.

"Glad you all spared some minutes of your day to do something useful," Varner said sarcastically once he stopped writing. "I'm sure you're all thinking that because of the most recent events this week's test will be postponed, but unfortunately for you, that's not the case."

I tuned him out, allowing my attention to zero in on the idle drawings that crawled over the pages of my notebook. Most of them were of motorbike pieces, but there were some that didn't resemble anything real, like I'd sketched out some of my scariest night terrors.

I let the tip of the pencil brush against the paper, wanting to busy myself with a new creation, but I was stopped by a crippling indecisiveness about what I wanted to draw and how to go about it. The feeling wasn't new. These days I could never follow through on the few vague projects that came to mind—I felt as if the part of my brain concerned with all matters of artistic production had started to rot and shrink back into itself.

With no other distraction to pursue, I was left with no choice but to go outside for a smoke. That would help make it seem as though time was running a little bit faster.

"Mr. Whitlock!" Varner said as I made to slip out of the room. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To the bathroom, sir."

The air that permeated the school's parking lot was cool and heavy with the smell of morning dew, having gathered in a sort of pervasive, insidious mist. I kind of felt as if it were wrapping slowly around me as I stepped out the building —as if I would disappear into their midst.

The nicotine burned at the walls of my throat as I took my first drag, and the minutes dragged by. I wondered again if heading back inside was worth it. It wasn't as though Varner would have an internal, spiritual crisis out of the blue and change his attitude, and it didn't seem likely that I would suddenly gain an interest in numbers either.

Blowing out the smoke from my greying lungs, I watched it disappear into the fog, and that was when I caught sight of a flash of bronze hair in the distance. I recognized the tall, slender silhouette almost right away, as well as the navy-blue raincoat that it was enveloped in. It was Dr. Cullen's kid again, and this time it looked like he was leaving.

Can't blame him.

I decided that I probably should follow him in stride. Fumbling inside the pocket of my jacket for my keys, I left the yellow, burned-out remainder of my cigarette lying on the wet asphalt and walked quickly towards where my black Honda stood, planning to be back just in time to hear the bell ring.

When I came back, everyone was packing their things, and Varner was struggling to make himself heard over the cacophony of chairs scraping against the wooden floor and the growing chatter amongst his students. I could feel his glare puncturing the side of my face as I picked up my books and shoved them in my backpack, but I paid it no mind as usual.

Throughout the rest of the day, however, I actually tried to focus on the supposedly important things, like what I should learn and do in order to bring my grades up and stuff. It was, of course, unamusingly ironic that classes seemed all of a sudden like a nice enough distraction from the utter boredom that had begun to stagnate inside me, but I decided not to mull over that fact.

The hours ticked by, until it was time for me to go into a different building for my American Lit class. I suddenly remembered that there was a group project that we were supposed to finish before the end of next month, and I forced myself to center my mind on that. My partner was none other than Paul Lahote, who'd been transferred here from the Quileute Reservation. People tended to shy away from him and his hostile temper, preferring to comment on it behind his back, and they probably also thought I looked unapproachable or something, so in the end we became the only two people left without a group.

It wasn't exactly difficult to work with him—we had some things in common, like the fact that both of us were content limiting our conversations to the topic at hand. On the other hand, it was in some odd way… draining. His aura seemed to suck everything around, just like a black hole, what with the ominous, raw energy that simmered beneath it. He was always angry, and I had an inkling that a hot temper was not the sole explanation for that.

It was maybe for that reason that I felt kind of relieved when I didn't see him in class, or perhaps it was because I didn't trust myself to interact with anybody right now, when people were supposedly still reeling from the recent news and looking for a sense of stability in the knowledge that other people felt just like them.

I didn't think I had much to offer them as solace.

Anyway… I gathered that Paul had been called into the principal's office again after a fight on the school grounds and decided that I would speak to him about the project next time I saw him.

That was my last class before lunchtime, after which I hopped on my motorbike and headed home.

The days that followed blended into one another with a dizzying sort of fluidity. I spent most of my time at the small storage house in my backyard, surrounded by metal scraps, used motorbike parts, and blackened mechanic tools, and when I wasn't there, gradually building a motorcycle of my own, I was riding through town, watching the mass of dark green, Northwestern forest become a phantom of itself beneath the pale haze of the autumnal fog. Like usual, I skipped classes and slept in late sometimes, and because of this the columns of my schedule easily blurred into one another.

I did notice that Paul didn't show up the four times I attended Lit, and his constant absence reminded me of Lauren and Jessica's conversation earlier in the month.

It occurred to me that Lit was an elective class, so he wasn't necessarily a senior like me.

Maybe he was junior. Maybe I'd hit the nail on the head about his anger. The thought made the whole thing seem a bit more real, and finally I could feel the golden hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end.

Someone I'd come in contact with had killed himself. The realization breached through my blasé composure, muddling my brain until I was left only with shock and the disturbing sense that something was amiss inside me, like a tiny piece of my conscious had fallen out and there was just a void now in its place. I was surprisingly not as concerned with the how, when, and why as I was with the seemingly physical emptiness that echoed through me.

To evade these thoughts, I concentrated on finding another pair. The realization that I needed to do so made another round of chills course through me anyway, but as I caught sight of a head of tousled, copper hair on my way out of the door after the class had finished, I was effectively and thankfully distracted.

"Hey, Edward," I called, without thinking it through.

He looked kind of startled when he whipped his head around to see who had spoken, like he was so used to being ignored that he never really expected anybody to notice him. That was maybe why I'd instinctively picked him. It didn't seem as if anybody besides him was alone, and even if they were, I would be, simply by asking them, opening myself up to likely rejection—which, even for something as insignificant as a school project, was something I'd rather avoid.

"Oh. Hello."

"I was wondering if you're already working with someone. You know, for the project."

"Um…" A flash of acknowledgement flitted through the momentary surprise in his celadon-green eyes. "No, I'm not."

"I think I heard someone say Mason would give bonus points to the people who worked in groups," I said, and then the flames of an unwelcome blush licked up the skin on my neck, as I realized what this looked like. He was a straight-A student, and I was the older guy who'd already failed the year once. He'd probably thought I had come to take advantage of his smarts the moment I'd opened my fucking mouth.

"Yeah, he did."

I began to ramble.

"I don't know if you'd rather do it by yourself… I mean, I obviously don't mind if you do, but it's just… You know, I was planning to do it with Paul, actually, but now that he's… After what happened…"

A flicker of sympathy crossed the wintery color of his irises, and it made my throat feel tight, as if such a subtle display of emotion was some sort of confirmation. It wasn't just my impulsive imagination—here was someone else acknowledging that Paul had offed himself.

"Yes. It's terrible."

"So, um…" It was strange, but all of a sudden I didn't want to follow through on this. I felt as though I'd dared to blindly step out of my nest, only to be faced with the reminder that I was pretty mediocre at it. I wasn't even really embarrassed; I was just… I wanted to put my earbuds in and burrow again beneath the haven of my music. "You know what? Never mind. I think I can pass without those bonus points."

Without another word, I turned to leave, and that's when I noticed the Halloween decorations. Fake spider-webs festooned the walls, interspersed with frayed shreds of black lace and grey tulle, while cardboard cutouts of flying bats hung from the ceiling. The spooky eyes of the owl stickers that'd been plastered onto the lockers watched me closely as I walked towards the cafeteria, where a round table with actual pumpkins—pulped and carved—slumping over a layer of reddish oak leaves stood.

I made to step past the semi-open double doors, but a quiet, gentle voice stopped me dead in my tracks.

"Jasper, wait."

Spinning on my heels, I was once more met with Edward's boyishly handsome face.

"Sunday morning at my house?" he tentatively suggested. "I can pick you up."

My tongue tied itself up in little knots, and it took me a while to register his proposal. It was probably because it was infinitely easier to let my eyes travel down his fragilely angular features than to pay any attention to his words, which seemed like a vague hum filtering through the oneiric quality of his voice.

I suddenly realized that I found him kind of attractive, in a very unconventional, special way.

"Sure," I said once I'd found my voice, and he smiled a bit clumsily, like he wasn't used to doing it and didn't really know how. I could sense the friendliness in that smile, though, and it reminded me of how I'd rudely cut off the conversation and left him standing there, when he hadn't been at all mean or standoffish—which, I remembered, was how some people painted him.

It was a short-lived smile, however, because as his gaze slid over to something behind me, it quickly dissolved into an expression that would've been completely unreadable if it weren't for the pain that tinkled in his eyes like broken glass.

I looked behind me. Tyler Crowley and Mike Newton were tossing a pumpkin around, which shouldn't have bothered anyone that much, except for the fact that they were pretending that it was a human head.

"Who else wants a creep's brains? Hey, James!" Tyler called, flinging the large fruit in his friend's direction. James caught it easily, an obnoxious laugh bubbling out of his mouth. "That's your lunch today. Be careful not to swallow the bullet."

"Wait, wait, he didn't shoot himself. That's not how he did it," Mike corrected, shoving the pumpkin out of James' hands. "Give me that."

A part of the cafeteria was looking on with a mixture of condemnation and amusement, like a Victorian audience watching a scandalous play—aware of how wrong it was to be laughing along, and yet unable to stop itself from doing just that. And then there were those whose jaded indifference couldn't be masked, or those who were so caught up in their music and literature and other forms of escapism that they weren't even aware of what was happening.

It was dismaying to come upon the realization that I clearly belonged to this last group—this scattered crowd of individualists that preferred to set itself apart from the rest of the world and to crystallize into wallflowers. Our usefulness seemed close to none.

I became annoyed by that thought—that we were all enablers in a way—and so, under the fuzzy conviction that I shouldn't be like them, that I should cut the show short, I began to walk towards the three of them.

And that's when Mike decided to take it a step further.

"It's more like this," he asserted, using both hands to flip the pumpkin around and push it down over his head. He suddenly looked both ridiculous and monstrous, like a modern, kitsch depiction of Stingy Jack. The overturned, hollowed-out pumpkin, with its evil eyes and sneering mouth, sat awkwardly on his shoulders, brushing against the collar of his blue baseball coat.

"That's fucking gross," I heard Lauren mutter from behind a nearby table. "His hair's going to stink for, like, the whole day."

"Tyler, you're the train," Mike said. "You gotta come straight at me. Run me the fuck over, man."

Maybe the look in Edward's eyes had unsettled me more than I had expected, or perhaps I was still reeling from the strange feeling that had pervaded me upon coming to the conclusion that Paul was dead. Either way, the sight of their raw malice stirred an anger that had most likely laid inside me, dormant and forgotten, for quite a while now.

Before I knew it, I was standing right next to them, as Tyler prepared to barrel full speed into his friend.

I grabbed a fistful of the former's red sweatshirt, pulling him towards me so he could see the seriousness that crackled in my brown eyes from up close.

"It ain't funny, asshole," I gritted out, mindless of my Southern accent, caring only about making it clear that what they were doing was downright vile. "Go sit your ass down before I lose my shit."

Shoving him away, I watched the instinct to fight back that briefly rippled over his face disappear beneath a resigned frown. He glanced at Mike, who had become awfully still, his baby-blue eyes peering cowardly at me from inside the bulbous pumpkin.

"Come on," Tyler said, patting his friend on the shoulder. "Take that shit off and come sit with the boys."

"Hey, what the fuck?" James shouted, right before Mike put the pumpkin back in its place. "He doesn't tell us what to do!"

"Don't be stupid," Tyler warned, turning to leave with Mike by his side, probably thinking that James would follow them in stride.

But he didn't.

"What the hell's your problem?" he jabbered out. "You wanna fight?"

I didn't want to fight. I just wanted to get this over with.

So I punched him in the face.

Needless to say, I was suspended.

The days that followed the incident were spent in the company of my cigarette pack and my black Honda. I tried to draw a few times, but inspiration didn't find me easily these days, and the more I made an effort to search for it myself, the more frustrated I became. I filled in the familiar, gaping vacuum in my time, therefore, by riding through town and even to La Push, from where I could see the ocean and watch the violent waves crash into the cutting ridges of the fog-covered cliffs. I also slept a lot, because there wasn't much else to do.

I wasn't particularly happy about going back to school, but I didn't miss the lack of at least a vague sense of chronological order in my life either. That was why I was half-excited when I heard that Homecoming was happening on the day after my return. I had an excuse not to go back home right away.

And it was on the night of the football game—which I watched in silence, squeezed between two timid freshmen—that something a bit strange happened, after the people had begun to scatter, and all the chanting and clapping had faded into the cold night, leaving in its wake a faint illusion of their echo.

I remained seated on the empty bleachers for some minutes, watching the white, humming glow from the floodlights spread a silver shine over the recently mowed grass of the football field. The two freshmen had already left, and as I cast a glance towards the place where one of them had been sitting, I became aware of a definite shift in my humdrum semblance of a routine.

What seemed almost certainly like a journal lay abandoned on that same spot.

The black leather cover felt cool and rough under my fingertips, and as I lifted it to my face, I noticed that it was bigger than I'd first assumed. I opened it to see if there was a name on it, so that I could return it to its owner, and when I did, I was faced with the intricate, oblique writing of a surely disciplined hand.

My eyes drifted over the first page in search of a clue as to whom it belonged to.

Dear Somebody, it read.

I don't know how to do this. What to say. It's stupid that… Normally I would scratch that, but I guess the whole point of a diary is to unleash your inner mess and let it splatter across the blank pages. I suppose I just don't deal well with imperfection.

This is my first entry, and I think I just realized something. I mean, it's not like anybody's going to read this, and yet, I'm unbearably anxious. If I'm not afraid of other people's judgment, what am I afraid of?

Yours—

I just realized that this epistolary form thing makes me feel rather empty and terrible. I guess it probably has something to do with the fact that I have nobody to send letters to… I'll keep mentioning the date, though, if only to have some sense of order.

There was no name, nor was there any clue regarding the person's identity. The only thing I knew was that it'd been written in March of this year. I flipped the page, and instead of another entry I found a set of staffs carefully drawn in pencil, overlapped by all sorts of music notes. As much as I took refuge in my music, I actually didn't know all that much about how it was created, and so I felt as though I were trying to read in some sort of foreign, mystical language.

In fact, the journal itself appeared to be wrapped in mysticism, and that stirred in me an odd, almost compulsive desire to read more. Maybe it was the whole mystery around its owner. Why was their handwriting like that? Why didn't they have anybody to send letters to?

I prepared to read the next entry, which had been written almost a month after the first, but before I could a gust of wind swept over the bleachers, rustling the dying foliage of the nearby trees and the delicate, fine pages of the lost journal.

I caught myself—these were someone's innermost thoughts that I was about to have access to. I would be invading their privacy. I couldn't really understand why that hadn't occurred to me earlier. It was as if the fact that the owner didn't have a name and a face yet made them seem less real, like a fictional character.

The night air had become bitingly frigid, helped by the absence of any human heat. I shoved any further thoughts about the damn journal out of my head and decided that I would just let Mrs. Cope add it to her stash of lost and found articles on Monday.

The next day was a Saturday, which would've felt like a delayed extension of my suspension if I hadn't promised myself that I would get started on that Lit project. It was difficult to care about my grades nowadays, but I'd gotten Edward into this, and the weight of such a responsibility managed to ground me. In fact, that was why I'd felt the need to have a partner in the first place. It was easier to do things when other people's interest was also involved.

The work managed to keep my mind off my insistent, unexplainable need to open the journal again—but that was only the case for a few hours. Soon I had it in my hands once more, and after a long inner dialogue where I settled that I would simply try to find a name amidst the following entries, I locked myself inside the storage house and sat on the ground with my back against the wall.

And slowly, attentively, I began to read the second entry.

I hate how my brain works, how it chides me every time I do something it's not used to. I hate that it's taken me well over a month to write again, simply because my mind began to paint this whole writing thing as a waste of time. I hate that I make everything so complicated.

Sometimes I wish someone would hit me hard enough to knock the surplus of drama and deep-rooted pedantry out of my head.

The smell of engine oil enveloped me like a blanket as I mulled over the words, savoring the unfamiliar bitterness that billowed through the text. I couldn't say that I related to it, because I'd always kind of done whatever I wanted or felt like, so I'd never had to struggle with such strict rules.

I'd never quite known what those were. My father had been violent because of the alcohol, not because he'd been trying to instill his inexistent morals in me, and my mother, as religious as she had become after my sister's death three years ago, had at the same time been too devastated by the incident to try to shove her beliefs down anybody's throat. Her faith was of a self-comforting nature—it was better to eat holy crackers and think that everything happened because God decided so than to deal with the raging confusion brought on by the sudden, unfair loss of a child.

As for me, I had a… tense relationship with God. It was hard to accept that he could be totally good and omnipotent and at the same time let twelve-year-old girls like Rosalie be fucking ran over by hit-and-run drivers.

Lighting a cigarette, I willed those thoughts away, choosing to shut the journal in a strange, sudden display of self-discipline. The nicotine numbed out the gash of pain that the memories had torn through my chest, while wisps of smoke faded over the black leather cover. I decided then to keep working on the unfinished motorcycle that stood in the middle of the storage house, up until nightfall.

I had dinner by myself, like usual, and after washing the dishes I hurried off to bed.

Unfortunately, though, sleep eluded me for at least a couple of hours. I considered the possibility of simply taking some of my mom's sleeping pills for a few minutes, but the thought of slipping into her room—seeing her worn face bent over her Bible and her lifeless grey eyes drift uncaringly in my direction—quickly shut down the idea.

Some people said that reading could help, but the only books I had were a copy of A Farwell to Arms and a little biography of Jim Morrison that my mother had given me last year on my birthday.

The memory of the lost journal kept tugging at the edges of mind. Finally growing too frustrated with my brain's inability to turn my fatigue into a few hours of actual rest, I hopped on my Honda and rode all the way down to La Push again.

The sea was rolling gently over the shore when I arrived, alight with pale moonshine. I sat near my motorbike on the cold, graveled ground of the parking lot, listening to the waves whisper hauntingly in the dark, before taking the journal from my backpack and switching on the light on my phone.

The white, glaring beam let me see that the next few pages were covered in amateurish doodles, some of them too careless and abstract for me to understand what they were depicting. My eyes lingered over them for a while, before falling onto a patch of writing.

The words were all squashed together, as if the owner had unconsciously been trying to make them unreadable.

I don't know exactly when it started. I think, perhaps, it was a little after my parents' funeral. Hearing people comment on how peaceful they looked set ablaze a gnawing rage inside me, and the worst was that I could do nothing about it. I couldn't just explode in public, so I had to put a lid on it and feel it corrode my insides.

And there—deep inside me—it festered, until its flames eventually burned out. That's probably when it started, and it hasn't stopped yet. It's been two years already since Mom and Dad have been gone and we moved out of Chicago, and it hasn't gotten any better.

Engrossed as I was in my own considerations of what it could be, it only came to my attention a few moments later that finally some hints had been dropped about the identity of the owner, which meant that now was the time to stop reading. I would ask Mrs. Cope if she knew anyone from Forks High who had been transferred from Chicago and find the person. That was better than simply handing it to her, something that I was actually pretty against, seeing as I didn't know whether she would peer into it, and I frankly didn't want to run that risk.

I didn't want anybody else to read the journal—to access this specific dimension that only I had slipped into and which I'd perhaps become sort of possessive about.

Willing that last, strange thought away, I put the journal inside the backpack, lifted the latter onto my shoulders, and kicking at the starter pedal, rode back home.

The next morning, like promised, Edward came to pick me up. His car was a long, silver Volvo, and inside it smelled like leather and fresh laundry. He was wearing a grey, knitted sweater, worn loosely around his thin body, and from the passenger seat I could see his translucent skin stretch over the strong branches of his collarbones.

I had to force myself to tear my eyes away.

"So…" I started, sure that chitchat would help me look less like a creep. "You're going to that Halloween party everyone's been talking about?"

He was silent for a moment, and I started wondering whether he'd heard me, before he finally replied. "I don't think so. And you?"

"Same."

The forest loomed over us from either side of the road as he drove, the pine trees melding together into a great mass of russet-brown and dark green, as the pale-grey light of morning filtered drowsily through the spaces in-between.

My eyes began to close of their own accord. It had been past two when I had arrived the day before, and I could feel the aftermath of that now. Before I knew it, my head had slumped against the window, and it was Edward's feather-light touch that woke me.

Blinking confusedly up at him, I stifled a yawn.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize you were so tired. We can just do this some other day if you want. Or you can take a nap in my room. I don't mind."

"No, it's fine," I quickly reassured him, wanting the worry in his eyes to disappear. "I'm fine."

He didn't seem convinced, which, for some reason, bothered me a little, but I let it slide.

I noticed that he had stopped the car, and twisting my neck around, my eyes came upon an unfamiliar vision. There his house stood, in an isolated corner of town, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of evergreens, the only thing connecting it to the rest of the world a winding driveway that lay behind us.

It was one of one of those modern, Scandinavian houses—all glass walls and wooden façades—and inside the furniture was scattered evenly across the oaken floor. I followed Edward up the floating steps that led to the second floor, where he guided me into a room that overlooked the expanse of forest outside.

From there I could see the mountaintops rising in the distance, wearing crowns of hardened snow.

"Nice place," I observed, but that was an understatement. It wasn't just nice—there was a sense of ampleness and order in it which was lacking from every other place I'd seen, and the air was clean and light.

Most importantly, Edward looked like he belonged there. There was an ice-like pureness to his appearance that set him apart from everybody else at school and made it seem like he couldn't ever fit in, but here there was no chaos, nor verbal pollution—here the sunlight poured in freely through the glass walls and glided softly over the floorboards, incandescing the copper threads of his hair and melting onto the skin on his face.

Everything was beautiful and immaculate here, and so was he. And suddenly, I began to feel heavy and dirty, like I had brought in with me, attached to my very bones, all the disorder and decay of the outside world. I started to believe that if I stood here for too long, I would end up tainting the place.

"What's wrong?" Edward asked, before raising the corner of his mouth in a smile that was both coy and playful. "Is it too nice?"

"Yeah, kind of," I answered, because I didn't want to explain that the problem was me and not his house.

"We could go somewhere else if you want," he suggested. "There's a library in the center of town."

"It's all right. I was just joking."

I pulled a chair and sat down, grabbing what I needed from the depths of my backpack. Hesitating a little, he ended up doing the same, and soon we started working.

Time flitted by, while his pale fingers clicked away at the keys of his MacBook and I read aloud the notes I had taken at home. We exchanged ideas and suggestions, neither one ever monopolizing the discussion—a discussion which was healthy and respectful without being forced, like both of us had an acute sense of when we should listen and when we should speak.

I could also see why he excelled in his studies. He was swift and practical, and he followed a definite methodology. I openly pointed that out to him, and the subtle, upward slant of his green eyes became more visible as he looked up at me in surprise.

"Thanks," he said, and then his face became thoughtful, haloed by the light that slid in through the limpid glass of the balcony doors, carrying multicolored spirit orbs that waltzed languidly in mid-air. "I… I think what you did was really brave," he said suddenly, and this time it was my turn to be surprised. "When you made Mike and the other two stop what they were doing. I think that was very brave."

"You saw?" I asked, remembering the blood that dripped down James' nose after my fist had collided with it. He nodded, and I shrugged. "I had to be useful for once."

He frowned a bit sadly. "Don't say that."

"Why not? All I do is ride my bike and smoke."

"So what? You shouldn't measure your worth by how useful you are to others."

"I wasn't doing… that."

"Yes, you were. I saw it."

I laughed. "Where did you see it?"

He rolled his eyes, though there was a smile poised over his lips, and suddenly, I was struck by the crystal honesty of the conversation and by how it seemed to pull us closer together for at least a minute—a minute during which I was able to draw in my mind a future where we could speak like this any time we wanted, hidden away from the rest of the world.

It was strange that, with him, I hadn't felt the need to smoke or to pick up the journal. Time had flown by, and yet, I knew that I would remember every part of it afterwards.

"I don't think I would've managed to do what you did," he said after a while, in a very quiet voice. "I would've probably just slashed their tires when nobody was looking or something, like a coward."

"It's not cowardly. It's smarter. I got suspended, you know."

He nodded unhappily, and once again I was made aware by a sudden unease that rumbled in my veins that I didn't belong here, in this clean, well-lighted place, carelessly entertaining the illusion that this boy, who'd probably never been suspended or failed the year like me, could be friends with me. The abruptness of my change in humor gave me whiplash, but I couldn't help it—I felt stuffy and filthy again, like a bull in a china shop.

"I should go," I said. "It's almost lunchtime already."

He didn't say anything, but I knew he was confused and even a bit hurt, and immediately I was filled with a foreign sort of sadness, almost like a painful kind of nostalgia.

I didn't want this to be the last time we had such an honest conversation, but at the same time I was sure that I'd fuck up whatever we had going on between us at some point.

He walked in front of me towards the car, and I could see his shoulder blades rise from underneath the grey wool of his sweater like an archangel's folded wings. I suddenly wished I could wrap my arms around his narrow waist and hold him against me, and that made me mad—at myself. The odd assortment of emotions that surged through me both unsettled and frustrated me, and now I really did just want to go home and distract myself with whatever I got my hands on first.

At my request, he dropped me off at the crossroads near the town church, and I saw him drive away and disappear around the corner with a disconcerting itch under my skin. I struggled to understand what it was about him that triggered these fluctuations between a dreamlike state and a sour, self-aggrandizing mood. Did I… like him? And if I did, more than just in a friendly way, when had it all started?

I smoked a cigarette, and then another. I wanted to anesthetize my overwhelmed insides with fire. I wanted to burn down my newfound feelings for someone I couldn't allow myself to have, before I infected him with the squalid, putrid mundaneness that defined my mind and before they could make me feel everything all at once, indiscriminately.

My eyes travelled over the cross that topped the spire-like church tower, and I remembered how I used to draw the little church near our house back in Texas, before my father set my notebook on fire, in one of his drunken hazes.

I shook my head, swallowing back the simmering anger that suddenly crawled up my throat.

It occurred to me that Sunday mass was about to finish, and people would begin to crowd the sidewalk soon. Wasting no more time, I disappeared into the woods behind the old, tiny church, diving into its depths, and sat on a moss-covered boulder near a slow-moving, narrow stream.

The journal was in my hands almost immediately, and this time I had no qualms about reading it, like a junkie who'd gone too far down the rabbit hole to come back again.

The next entry managed to be a bit longer than the previous one, and for once there was no date.

I'm honestly not sure if being isolated is good or not. Sometimes, I look across the cafeteria, watching all the commotion from the sidelines, and I'm met with the suffocating feeling that there's a glass wall between me and everyone else. It's another thing that I find difficult to trace back. I don't know exactly when people began to distance themselves from me, or even if it was me who distanced myself from them.

The only thing I know is that, through the impenetrable glass wall, they look at me like a strange object at a museum—the kind that you more or less resent because you're not allowed to touch it.

I think it's my fault, but I don't know how to change their perception, or if I really want to, because, despite the sense that I'm listening from underwater, I can hear what they say, and it's meaningless and sick.

Maybe the world is just cruel, and we're all forced to be cruel back.

I was forced to stop reading by a weird ache that tugged at the recesses of my chest. It felt like secondhand pain, like I had at last immersed myself in the separate domain of reality that was this person's journal, but there was something more to it. It was possible that I had understood the meaning of this last entry on a deeper level than I had any of the others.

I suddenly remembered the look on Mike and Tyler's faces when I had warned them off, like I was some sort of strange creature from which they didn't know what to expect, like I ignited in people the fear of the unknown, and I thought of Paul and about how everyone used to shy away from him and his ominous aura.

When had people begun to be intimidated by the mere sight of me?

Was it after Rosalie died or some time before?

I continued reading.

I know what people say about me. I'm not deaf to the whispers. Some say I'm a snob who deems himself superior to the rest of the student population. Others take pity on me—I'm adopted, so I probably just have issues. And although their intentions are good, they've ended up feeding the notion amidst an outspoken minority that I'm some kind of sociopath.

Each day, I feel less and less inclined to go to school.

The wind keened like a banshee, making my blond hair flap against my face and my skin break out in goose bumps under the black cotton of my tee shirt.

My eyes travelled impatiently to the next page, and I was suddenly struck by the despair that seemed to reverberate through the short text. The handwriting clearly belonged to the same person, but it looked shaky for once, and as I drew the journal closer to my face, I noticed the darker spots that were scattered across the paper like dried-out teardrops.

I can't stand it. I know everyone's always said that I think too much, but this is fucking unbearable. The worst is that I'm the only one responsible. I've analyzed and overthought every single flaw of mine ad fucking nauseam, watching myself from the sidelines like I watch everything else in life, and the glass wall between me and the rest of the world has finally grown out of proportion, so that now it stands between me and myself.

That shouldn't even make sense.

Indeed, what they had written should sound crazy and illogical, but for some reason, in a very vague way, I could see what they meant. My fingers turned the page slowly, before lying upon the next one.

The wind quieted as I read the scribbled-out words.

I sometimes wonder if there's something more to it—something to do with my body itself, which would more easily explain why food seems to have lost its taste and why every smells seems to reach me through thick cotton balls. Maybe it's some sort of neurological disease.

I stopped reading right there, shaken by the feeling that something had hit too close to home. I realized that nowadays I ate out of necessity and many times out of boredom, because the truth was that everything had an almost… bland taste. Not only that, but every sound had a sort of subtly distorted quality to it.

It was difficult to experience the world like I used to when I was younger.

My thoughts went back to when I was small and bright-eyed—when the innocence of childhood made every color in my grandfather's farm appear inherently vivid and every smell in the garden behind our house seem long-lastingly intense. For a long while, even after my dad had been arrested and I'd moved to Forks with my mother and Rosalie, I'd been able to hear the echo of the church bells that tolled every morning near our house in Dallas and draw on my notebook the memory of a bird that used to perch on the tree branch that brushed against the window of my bedroom.

All that was left of those things was a very faint idea of them and nothing more, and I'd begun to see my surroundings through a shimmering, watery screen, like the surface of the sea seen from beneath.

I decided to go home. It was time anyway, and I didn't want to think about this any longer.

The next day was Halloween, which meant that there were no classes. I buried myself like a mole under the motorbike that I'd been trying to build for months now, in an attempt to keep myself occupied. For a while, I was able to evade any considerations about the goddamn journal, but in their place, some other thoughts managed pervade my head—namely about Edward and about his unconscious ability to make things infinitely better and terrifyingly worse for me all at once.

At a certain point, I couldn't help linking the image of him with that of the journal. There was something awfully paradoxical to the way both had succeeded in affecting me, and the more I ruminated on it, the more I wanted to banish them from my life.

It was as if they could mirror back to me the silent, inconspicuous wrongness in my head, and it was annoying, because I wanted them to help me forget about everything me-related and not the exact contrary.

Evening was already approaching when I finally grew tired of lying underneath the unfinished motorcycle.

I decided to go for a smoke outside, and that's when I noticed that our street had prepped itself up for the holiday. Our neighbors had littered their front lawns with jack-o-lanterns, which together formed an orange glow that stood out amidst the shadows of twilight. Toilet paper hung from the trees, sometimes accompanied by a few fake skeletons, and all around there were kids trick-or-treating.

A very short girl with black hair and hazel eyes skipped over to me, and as I took a closer look, I realized that I knew her. It was Alice Brandon. We used to be best friends when I was only a freshman and a bit more sociable than I was now.

"Hey!" she said. "I haven't talked to you in a while. Aren't you going to the party?"

I blinked, surprised by her natural, bold friendliness, especially considering that I was the one to blame for us having drifted apart.

"I don't think so," I replied, remembering that that was the same answer Edward had given me.

Her lips pursed into a small, playful pout, and suddenly, I decided that it was better to go to the stupid party with her instead of staying at home, where I would most likely struggle to escape my own thoughts.

The event was held in the school gym. Alice failed to convince me to get a costume at the last minute or even to let her treat my face like a canvas on which she could waste her extensive collection of make-up items, which she rationally used for her incarnation of a forest sprite. Memories flooded my brain once I saw the golden glitter that cascaded down her shoulders and the green art around her eyes, about how we used to bond over our passion for drawing when we were both young and unjaded.

She was as bubbly as I remembered, but the difference now was that I didn't find it funny anymore. Now her cheerfulness felt exhausting, and it wasn't anybody's fault but my own, because I was the one who couldn't complement her personality with anything minimally substantial.

I had nothing to give back to her.

I didn't have to worry about that for too long, though, because once we got there, she scattered her attention around her clique, and I didn't have to do much besides stand there and watch. People were dancing to whatever mainstream song was pounding through the speakers, randomly chosen by none other than Mike Newton, who was standing behind the DJ mixer that stood on top of the tall, square stage that'd been set up in the middle of the basketball court.

All around said stage, there were tables with homemade snacks and alcohol-free drinks, ornamented with pumpkins and black streamers. I contented myself with sipping a cup of coke and munching on some Cheetos and onion rings for a while, but soon enough I'd already grown tired of looking at vampires and murdered brides putting their hands up in the air under the orders of the wannabe DJ.

In the company of my cigarette pack, I went outside, and it was a good thing that I did, because I wouldn't have wanted to see firsthand what happened next.

The first sign that something was very wrong was a lone, shrill scream, stifled by the synthetic beat of one of Nicki Minaj's songs. Startled, I lifted my eyes up to the gym's double doors, and that's when more and more screams began to join the first one, rising in a swelling, strident cacophony that rang through the crisp night air, like the joint echo of anguished voices slipping past Hell's gates.

I went back inside. Though the music was still playing, nobody was dancing anymore. Instead, everyone had gathered into a narrow semi-circle, recoiling like a human shield from whatever had caused all the sudden commotion. I could see the black, gelled spikes of Alice's hair amidst the multitude—she was pressed against Emmett McCarthy's sculpted chest, her eyes squeezed shut as she covered her mouth with a tiny, gloved hand.

But her disturbed shock couldn't hold a candle to the agonized horror that had seized Jessica's vocal cords.

"Oh my God," she was crying. "Oh my God! Oh, God!"

The white and blue spotlights swiveled over the court, casting a terrible, phantasmagoric luminosity on the sea of faces that looked on, appalled, like lost, forsaken specters floating over a graveyard. I pushed my way through, ready to be confronted with whatever sight had left everyone in such an unsettled state, and once I got to the front, I was met with Jessica's grief-stricken face. She was kneeling on the wooden floor, shaking like a lone leaf in the dead of winter, her black eyeliner smudged like a great shadow around her tearful eyes, and right next to her, there lay an unmoving figure, wearing a familiar, blue baseball coat.

It was Mike Newton, and his chest wasn't moving. Blood had cascaded down his body and seeped into the fabric of his clothes, having flowed from the quick, sure cut across the open flesh of his neck. From where I stood, I could make out the muscles of his throat, pulled back to reveal the white tissue of his windpipe.

But that wasn't the most bizarre thing about the whole scene.

What really made it so disturbing was the hollowed-out, vividly orange pumpkin around his head, almost managing to conceal the cut as well.

Just like before, he looked ridiculous.

What followed was a blur of red and blue police lights, accompanied by a chorus of shrieking sirens. People stood around for as long as they could, compelled by the undeniable penchant for drama that most humans had deep inside them. I, for my part, decided to go back home in Alice's car, which Emmett had to drive, because what she'd seen had upset her to the point of catatonia.

Emmett commented at some point on the possibility of the state police and its forensics unit having to be called in to help find the murderer, but other than that, the drive was spent in complete, chilling silence, as the car's headlights tore through the darkness that had settled over the meandering road.

When he dropped me off at my house, it had already begun to rain. Heavy water drops pelted my blond hair and slid, uninvited, under the brown leather of my jacket once I stepped outside the car, giving both Emmett and Alice a quick wave.

The light from the television screen glared into my mother's face as I climbed up the steps to my room, where I sat on my bed, still clothed and reeking of apathetic calm, as if one of my classmates hadn't just been slaughtered. It was true—I didn't give a shit. In a way, I actually thought he'd had it coming, which was an awful thing to think, but I couldn't help it.

All I honestly cared about right now was reading the journal until the very end, like at last my already irrational obsession with it had morphed into a full-blown addiction. Something about the thought of opening it again was still undeniably daunting, and I knew I might regret it, like I had yesterday, but I also didn't want to spend the rest of the night wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn't feel an ounce of pity for Mike Newton.

So, I dived into its contents once more, and by doing so, I came upon a startling discovery, and many more would ensue in the space of a single hour, during which I began to feel more and more like the floor was being whisked away from beneath my feet.

It all started with this spine-tingling, short entry, which once again was dotted with dispersed teardrops:

I can't take this anymore. My God… There are nights when I wake up with a start, gasping for air and clutching at my chest like a madman, like I'm not sure my heart is still there, pumping—like I'm vanishing into thin air.

I need it to stop, for Christ's sake. I've tried so fucking hard, and nothing works.

I want to feel alive, but I don't know how.

I quickly flipped the page, because despite my fear of how the words would dig their claws into my shadowy sense of self, the journal's appeal had somehow, for some unfathomable reason, metastasized, like an ever-growing monster consuming everything all around, including my undivided attention.

I lost count of how many months have gone by since I last wrote here. I know that summer came, and it's made everything worse. I can't feel the sunlight seeping into my skin anymore… Instead, it feels like… it's filtering through me. It blinds my eyes like a great white beam… I don't even know what to write anymore. I'll just shut the blinds and go back to bed.

There were parts that were literally unintelligible, and the perfect handwriting that had stood out to me in the beginning was gone, replaced by a tired scribble.

My curious gaze flitted down to the following entry.

School started again. I'm a junior, and I think next year will be no different, because I'll probably fail. I've missed more times than I should for one, just to be pressed against my pillow and hidden under my bed sheets, and also… I feel like I can't remember anything I hear. And I've given up on trying to read, because the words just don't make sense in my head anymore. It's like my brain has started to rot or something.

I shivered. Hadn't I thought more or less the same thing just some weeks before, when I'd tried to draw and had found myself unable to do so?

I turned the page.

I got used to the verbal abuse pretty early on, but I wasn't expecting anybody to actually hurt me physically. I suppose it was my fault in a way. Paul is known for his outbursts of anger, and I did listen in on his conversation with Jacob Black in the library. I hadn't meant to, but that's how I found out that Paul is planning to drop out of school and move back to Tacoma to live with his mother. Worse than that, I found out that his father is physically abusive.

And that's what pissed him off. He noticed that I had heard everything, and suddenly he pushed me against the bookshelves, squeezing my neck and threatening to bash my head in if I told anyone about his secret.

I frowned, as a strange, angry warmth filled my stomach, upon the thought of anybody laying their hands on this person.

Skillfully ignoring it, I kept reading.

I realized something when Paul had his hand around my throat. There was so much rage swirling in his dark brown eyes as he strangled me, and it made me dizzy and even peacefully numb, like death was just there, within reach…

I wanted him to squeeze harder.

Thunder rumbled through the night sky as my eyes widened at the last words, even if their bloodcurdling nature paled in comparison to what I read next. Throughout all this time, I'd been aware of the silent signs of depression threading through the phrases, but nothing could have prepared me for the decisiveness which echoed through the entry that followed.

The idea haunts my every thought. I never thought that at the mere age of seventeen, I'd seriously consider something like this, but now it's clear there's no other option. I wonder what will hurt less—cutting my wrists, or firing a bullet into my brain. Whatever I decide on, I know what has to be done.

I tried to swim back against the tide, but I can't do it anymore. Every day, it feels like I'm sinking deeper and deeper. I look at my future and see only a gaping abyss, like there's nothing beyond this very moment I'm living now.

Like I'm already dead.

"Who are you?" I whispered into the dark, shocked by the quiet anxiety that gripped my chest all of a sudden. I wasn't sure whether I was genuinely worried, or if, by immersing myself in this person's story out of the need to escape reality, I had simply grown attached to the idea of them, whoever they were, and the possibility of that same idea disappearing from my head… It scared me, like the impending end of my fantasy.

None of that mattered, though, because, when I found a pale green, folded paper tucked into the middle of the next two pages, the mist around the image of the owner started to fade, until this person became more real to me than my own fucking heart, which began to clank wildly against my breastbone.

I opened the paper carefully, absolutely unprepared for what it said. For how it made me feel as though I'd been startled awake from a three-year-long slumber, only to find that in the meantime the world had been ravaged by an apocalypse.

Dear Carlisle and Esme,

If you're reading this, I'd like you to know that I love you both, and I'm so very sorry. Please understand that it was never my intention to cause you any pain. You've helped me beyond reason, and I could never thank you enough for it. You're the kindest people I've ever met, which is why I want you to understand that none of this is your fault.

I chose the train tracks, because I wouldn't have wanted you to be the ones to find me. You deserve better than that.

I swear that I did my best to overcome this, but I've lost the fight. Please forgive me. Once again, it's not your fault—there was nothing you could've done. You've always looked out for me and treated me as your son, and I'm sure life will return the favor to you at some point.

I feel bad that I can't find the right words to truly comfort you. Please don't be sad. Everything will be okay. I promise.

Goodbye. I love you both.

Yours,

Edward

"No," I breathed out, mindful of the sting in my lungs and the pain that suddenly ricocheted off the walls of my ribcage. "No, no, no… It can't be. Not him."

My stomach sunk even further as I frantically leafed the goddamn journal, in a desperate attempt to find more entries—any sign that he wasn't gone. When had I found the journal again? It'd been Friday, right? Three days had gone by already, which should mean that he had given up on the idea. My throat tightened as the memory of the gentleness in his green eyes swam through the fast-flowing current of doubts that flooded my brain. Why hadn't he said anything? Why hadn't he asked for help? How had I not noticed anything? Was he that good at pretending?

"Fuck," I grated out, the same rage storm that had welled inside me when I'd punched James returning to whirl around inside me, as I shut my eyes closed and cursed myself for the stupid, selfish appropriation of this boy's diary as if his pain were simply a figment of my imagination that I could explore and entertain myself with—as if it were my personal brand of antidepressants, to be voraciously swallowed and discarded at random intervals, according to my convenience.

It had been so long since I'd felt my chest ache like this. It terrified me, but I didn't want to suppress my fear this time.

I didn't want to let go of the sense that my heart was finally, truly beating again.

My fingers ran through the rest of the journal, turning page after blank page, in the hopes of seeing something that could assure me he had changed his mind, and that's when I came upon a staggering piece of writing, sprawled over a page that'd been ripped at the edges.

I WILL KILL THEM. I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD THAT I WILL KILL THEM ALL.

For a while, I didn't move, shocked into complete silence by the destructive fury that had most likely seized the tendons of Edward's pale, pianist-like hand. The memory of Mike Newton lying prostrate on the ground, his throat slashed almost to the bone, burned into my thoughts, as a flurry of shivers crawled down my spine.

"Please don't be scared."

My head snapped painfully towards the place where the voice had come from, as my lungs froze over in sudden fright.

Seeing him there, sitting on the edge of my bed, right beside my black military boots, thawed out the paralyzing coldness in my body, however, until the exact opposite of that began to simmer beneath my skin. He was like a white, holy apparition, reminding me that he was still here after all, and the room became suddenly imbued in a disseminated feeling of lightness and cleanness, as if everything was all right again.

He was wearing his signature raincoat, the collar of the grey sweater that he'd worn yesterday peeking at me from beneath its navy-blue hood. The lamplight that streamed from the surface of my bedside table cast an amber-colored glow upon the angular contours of his face.

A dozen questions fleeted through my head—namely about how he'd gotten in here without me noticing and why—but they all got lost amidst the effervescent warmth that surged through my body and the odd ache that the memory of all the things he'd written stoked inside me.

My mind was suddenly swamped by the image of copper hair strands lying on the immense white of his bed sheets, like blood draining away into fresh snow, and the phantom smell of salt water from his tears.

"This is yours," I ended up saying, lifting the journal for emphasis. Once again, I wanted to splay my hands on the middle of his back and bring him close to me. I wanted to make his pain disappear.

"Yes."

"Did you know I had it?" I asked, and only then did the blade-sharp fear that he'd be mad at me puncture the pit of my stomach.

He gave me a tiny smile, and I became aware of the fearful sort of expectancy that swayed inside his green irises.

"I left it on the bleachers on purpose. I wanted you to find it."

I sucked in a quick breath, slipping further into an eerie, trancelike headspace. Nothing about this specific moment made sense, as if none of it were real in the first place. Edward couldn't have possibly been so quiet that I hadn't noticed him coming in, and I would've caught sight of his bronze hair from afar at the Homecoming game.

But then, it also didn't make sense that he'd found my house yesterday without me ever telling him where I lived.

"Why?" I wondered.

"Because…" he started shakily, and a tremor rocked his body. "Because I didn't want to kill anyone. I wanted you to stop me."

My heart stuttered against my sternum, as Jessica's cries reverberated through my head like sparkling glass shards crashing against the floor. It was difficult to combine my obviously made-up, romanticized vision of him with that of someone who could inflict that kind of violence upon anybody else. The two ideas failed to converge, and so, I contented myself with staying in a state of mental limbo.

I realized that he hadn't waited for me to get to the last entry, if it could even be called that. He hadn't given me the chance to stop him.

"Why didn't you let me?" I questioned.

I could've helped him. I would have helped him.

"Anger is… a vicious thing," he said tightly. "When my parents died, I was so angry. I wanted to break everything around me. I wanted to scream. But I couldn't, because I was afraid of giving in to it. I swallowed it back until it fed from every other emotion inside me. Until there was nothing left. But now… I don't understand it myself. It's like I can't control it anymore. Do you… get it?"

I inched closer to him as he spoke, lured in by the way his words seemed to reach into the pits of my soul and drag out into the light what I'd never wanted to admit to myself. As a child, I had been guilty of a hot, fickle temper, but, seeing it reflected in my father's eyes, brown like mine and glazed over with wine, and how it could wreak such havoc upon whatever it touched, I had forcefully tamed it and learned how to bottle up every minute trace of it.

"Yeah, I do."

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. I was close enough to touch him now, and that's exactly what I did, my fingers reaching down to embrace his wrist, my thumb pressing against the translucent, freezing skin over his deadly still, icy-blue veins.

And suddenly, everything clicked into place.

"It wasn't Paul," I muttered, remembering what he'd said about the conversation he'd overhead, about Paul dropping out and going to Tacoma to live with his mother.

"No."

"It was you. Mike said something about being ran over by a train, and then you wrote something about the train tracks. You…" I trailed off, my hair standing on end upon the thought of Edward's slim body being engulfed in a blinding white light, as a thunderous, rumbling sound got louder and louder. "Am I hallucinating?"

"I don't think so."

"Do I have a crush on a ghost?"

He laughed quietly, and it was a broken sound. "That's for you to say."

"Why am I the only one who can see you?"

Why can't I see Rosalie as well?

"I don't know."

I grew quiet.

My mother was the religious one. She had attached herself to the belief that there was life after death, pressured by her reluctance to accept that Rosalie, my sister, was truly and irreversibly dead. I wondered now whether I'd followed in her footsteps—if I had submerged myself in self-deception like her, just so I wouldn't have to face the fact that Edward was lying six feet under the ground.

Maybe everything that had happened since I'd found the journal had been a dream. It was fully possible, in fact, because, while my mother had been busy finding refuge in her faith, I had steeped myself in multiple diversions and in tides of daydreaming, until all of those had been leeched of their allure by a growing, silent restlessness that Edward's journal had unearthed.

It wasn't hard to believe, therefore, that the person sitting next to me now was only a mirage, a culmination of all my attempts to avoid reality. All the few moments spent with him had been coated with an unspeakable feeling of lightness anyway, drenched in the surreal sense that time was not shuffling by anymore—that it was moving at its normal pace instead.

I looked at him. His long lashes whipped through the air as he stared down at my fingers on his wrist, his pale-green eyes brimming with all that he couldn't bring himself to say, and I was yet again confronted with a strange, paradoxical ache that rumbled through my chest and made me wonder how it was possible to feel so caught-up in an illusion and at the same time so… awake.

I didn't want this moment to end. I never wanted any moment with him to end.

"Will you still be here tomorrow?" I asked, burying my nose into the hollow of his collarbone.

His fingers threaded through my hair.

"I'll be here for as long as you need," he said quietly, and I knew I'd never count down the minutes until the next meaningless hour again.