Dusk
Chapter 1
I didn't notice her until she turned toward us, noticing Edward's stare, and then quickly turned back. She sat with her back turned away from him. He was looking at her. I'd never seen him look so agitated and angry. She hadn't done anything as far as I could tell. Her flat brown hair glinted in the fluorescent light and her small, timid smile punctuated her plain face. She was sitting with Jessica; the girl who'd pined for Edward last year and now was totally in love with Mike Newton, another kid sitting with her. They were talking about us.
He was, with anger and distaste in his onyx eyes, looking at her in a way that he'd never looked at me, even though I was noticeably prettier than her. My hair wasn't flat unless I wanted it to be. My eyes, thought the distinct gold of my coven, used to be ice blue. My body wasn't rectangular like hers. I was thin and curvy, like one of those immodest models. My skin was a shade paler than hers and while hers gave off a sickly look, my pale complexion made me glow.
I felt eyes on me and turned to find Alice staring intently at me. "What?" I whispered angrily at her. I hated it when she did that. Alice just raised her dark eyebrows and gave a slight head shake. She then turned away from me and looked at Jasper who was looking at me. I felt an eerie calm come over me and I, like always, fought with it. I would not succumb to him. I stood and picked up my tray of uneaten food, gracefully stalked over to the garbage and dumped it. I then turned and jerked my head at Emmet to get him to follow me out of the cafeteria.
"What was that about, Rose?" Emmet asked me. He rubbed his hands over the sleeves of my blue sweater. "She hasn't done anything. She was just curious. Most people would be." He bent and ducked to see me eye to eye. "Calm, Rose." He let go of my left arm but slid his left hand down my right arm to hold my hand. "Let's go back."
We went back to our table without me uttering a word and sat down just as Alice got up and pranced over to dump her tray. After a few minutes, Jasper followed suit. Then Edward got up. Finally, as we were leaving, Emmet dumped his untouched lunch. Emmet and I made our way for language arts as Edward left for biology and Jasper and Alice went off to trig. I couldn't get her off my mind. Isabella Marie "Bella" Swan was her name. She could be an issue.
I didn't see Edward after that for a while. He'd disappeared. Or so we thought. About five days after he left, he came back from Denali where he'd spent his impromptu vacation. He wouln't talk to any of us. He drove us to school as usual in his Volvo. Before and through lunch he acted totally normal. After biology he seemed normal as well. He started making eye contact again. He was normal. He had intellectual discussions with Carlisle about his gravitation towards Bella.
Weeks past during which Edward made a sorry effort to stay away from her. I politely ignored his pituful work towards leaving you alone and let the wiser, more patient Carlisle deal with his moody son. I spend more time at Emmett and my place and less at home with Esme and Carlisle. Emmett and I went back to our usual routine of homework and love making. I spent the usual time in front of my mirrors to make sure I looked like a "human" form of desire. I ignored Bella. I ignored the way Edward wanted her. I chose the easy road out.
Edward gradually stopped driving us places and made me drive everyone in my car. He'd pick up Bella from her house to bring her to school and then he'd bring her home and stay there until the time Charlie'd come home. I tried harder to ignore him and her. I spent days home from school with Emmett just fooling around and trying hard to get her off my mind. I didn't even like her. Why was she so all consuming? Edward couldn't hear her. She was new. She had a hold on Edward nobody had ever gotten.
That winter, she got in an accident. Bella almost got hit by a van. Magically, she wasn't. Edward had done something heroic in other's eyes but extrodiarily stupid in mine. He stopped the van. Simple as that, he almost exposed all of us to the world. At the hospital later that day, I approached him in a nearly deserted hallway. "Are you stupid? Or are you just crazy?" I whispered violently at him. "Edward, if this ends badly, we all go down, you know that."
"Rose," he bagan, taking two deep yogic breaths. "I couldn't let her just die." He said, whiny.
"Sure you could've. Then we'd have no problems. You just have a problem with letting fate happen. You find a sick satisfaction in messing with that girl, don't you?" I snapped.
"Rosalie. I couldn't let her blood be spilt. I would've ruined it for all of us right there and then. Jasper would've joined me, too." He retorted, his voice full of acid and pain. "I couldn't let her die." His eyes dropped and had he been able too, I swear he would've started crying. Over a human girl with no huge affect on the world around her.
"Edward?" A timid voice called from the end of the corridor. Isabella Swan stood there, staring intently at Edward. "Could I speak to you in private, please?" Had it not been for Carlisle appearing and setting a hand on my shoulder I would've ended her in the most inconspicuous fashion possible right there and then. I hated her for being "in" on our secret in the most accidental way. I hated her for being more attractive than me in some twisted way according to Edward.
"Sure." He said and stalked away from me and Carlisle.
"Rosalie, come." Carlisle said sternly, fatherly. He turned and walked in the opposite direction. I followed,