I didn't try to kill myself.
It was the truth and that's what I said to Alice. I could see she didn't believe me. Her golden eyes, once so familiar to me and now so alien once again, were hard and critical. Her beauty was shocking. It was bizarre for me to be stood in front of a vampire again, at least one that didn't want to kill me, and I found the failings of my human memory in every lock of jet black hair and the pristine curve of her marble cheekbones. I had failed to catalog their ethereal quality. I wondered briefly if my hallucination of Edward - a sharp pain shot through my chest, of course, at the mere thought of his name - had done justice to his perfection, but I doubted it.
I had to move away from those thoughts quickly, though (and gladly). Alice was still glaring at me. A statue. She was so still for so long, just the way I remembered her and Jasper in the hotel room all that time ago, that I wondered if this length of silence was a normal amount of time to a vampire or if she had simply forgotten to speak.
"I swear," I said in my most commanding voice (so, still only half as convincing as I'd hoped).
Alice remained still. I was about to start worrying when stone arms flew about my shoulders and crushed me up against the small vampire. I coughed pitifully.
"Alice…" I wheezed.
"Don't you ever do that to me again," her commanding voice was substantially fiercer.
And in a blur, she was gone. I was suddenly alone, breathing again, in my kitchen.
Alone.
Again.
Alice.
Gone.
My breath turned to panicked gulps of air. No, this couldn't be. I couldn't have been abandoned again. Not by her, my friend. I thought she was my friend.
I moved all through the house, not sure if I was walking or sprinting. I searched every room. There was no trace of her. From my bedroom window, I saw Carlisle's car still parked across the street. Hope.
Now, I was sprinting.
"Alice!"
I had to find her before she left me again.
"Alice!"
I returned to the kitchen for a brief second before I flung myself out the door.
Alice was standing out in the yard, her back turned to me. At the sound of the door slamming and my labored breaths, she turned her head casually over her shoulder, revealing a cell phone pressed against her ear. She looked at me quizzically.
"Alice…" I sputtered.
"I don't get reception inside," she tilted the phone slightly toward me to emphasise her point. "I need to tell them you're not dead."
For a moment, everything was right with the world.