I closed my eyes as the soundtrack for Twilight buzzed in my ears. My earphones curled tightly against my ears and whispered the ending notes of Bella's Lullaby to me, causing me to breathe out shakily and wish that the song had been written for me. I hugged the book closer to my chest and flipped it open to a random page to begin reading about Edward's beauty in the sunlight. Many believed that Bella was a Mary Sue with no distinguishing character traits, and on some fronts, such as the fact that she read classic novels and held no belief in her own beauty, I tended to agree, but Stephenie Meyer's descriptions left me with my mouth watering and hungry for more.
I lingered over the description of Edward's perfectly chiseled chest and ran a finger over the words, mouthing them as I went. I closed my eyes and repeated them audibly, picturing not Robert Pattinson's body but the body Ms. Meyer presented to me, the image of breathtaking, startling beauty that did steal Bella's breath away. I imagined Edward gripping a tree trunk in his pale hand and hurling it across the meadow; my pulse quickened in fear at the thought and relaxed as I felt his breath on mine, the heady scent of it something like a sedative to my racing heartbeat.
Wait… My imagination wasn't that great. I could smell his breath? My eyes fluttered open almost drunkenly, and there he was, his face inches from my own, whispering not to be afraid; he wasn't going to hurt me; he'd kill himself before he hurt me…
I jerked myself away and tore myself out of the book; that had been a close one, hadn't it? I'd almost taken Bella's place in the story, which my special talent allowed me to do. I hadn't been born with this talent; in fact, it had only appeared a year before, when I'd been picturing Jasper's ravenous face at the scent of blood during my first reading of New Moon. That time hadn't been pretty. I had had an enormous gash in my arm filled with blood, the pain shrieking through me as though it knew I wasn't the original story character; I had to feel pain… I could never do that to myself again.
Or could I? I could promise myself to be careful, and besides, who would it be hurting, to put myself in the story? The books didn't conform to my experiences, but my talent did allow me to drag my own first name along with me into the story; how would it feel to have Edward whisper my name so dearly, as if he could break it as easily as he could shatter my bones?
All right. I would do it. I would enter the story, but I swore I would make the first thing I did different, too: I would enter at the beginning, right at the airport, and prepare myself to meet my "dad"…