Chapter 2

"Oh, life it seems a struggle between what we see and what we do."

Dave Matthews-Seek Up

Jasper

After the exchange with Edward he seemed to get lost in Alice's gaze. Which is not a rarity in this family. I needed to get out. The ghost of her was sitting not 30 feet away. I needed to breathe fresh air. I felt suffocated by lovers on each side of me. I mumbled some excuse and left them to their mutual ogling.

I just wanted to run full speed out the cafeteria doors, but I would have to settle for a brisk human walk. When I reached the exit I felt my back burning. A miniscule amount of the pain a venomous bite made, but still I felt a significant burn on my back. My instincts kicked in and I whirled around and crouched in a stance that could leave no attacker guessing at my intentions, a snarl ripped through me. No one was there. I did not release my position. I was not fool enough to let my guard down so easily. I would play no games. 'Fight fair, show yourself!' I nearly shouted.

Edward and Emmett were on the defensive too; I could see their motions from the corner of my eye. They stood with tension in their limbs, their emotions only lent to the curious nature of an attack in the middle of the Forks High cafeteria. Edward breathed under his breath, too low for the humans to hear. "What's wrong Jasper?" I realized then, that they were not on the defensive for an outside attack, but were on guard, anticipating me to attack. What was going on? Edward had garnered from my thoughts that I was not about to attack a student, but that there was another; I had felt the pain on my back. He hissed. Low in his stomach, a rumble formed. His voice was calm though, "I sense no threat Jasper. Stand up, the students are beginning to stare." I was still by the exit. Edward and Emmett were not far from our table. They really did not sense the threat. I opened my senses, feeling around me for evidence of an attacker.

That's when I noticed an emotion. It soared above all others that I was feeling. It smothered them. It was curiosity, a different flavor from my siblings' own curious feelings at the moment. The feeling came with a taste. It tasted so sweet that I wanted to lick the air around me. It must have been a full five seconds since the initial burn on my back. The pain was gone; I could feel no shadow of the flame.

Someone was approaching me. It was the curious one. I stood automatically and turned to leave. A voice stopped me. A girl. "Wait!" I turned, it was her. She bent down where I had just been crouching and plucked something off of the ground.

Her eyes…chocolate, deep, dark, not red, never red. She was human. She was not her.

She was examining something in her fingers, between her forefinger and her thumb. The dirt, could she see that? She put the invisible find into her palm and took two steps toward me. Her scent nearly made me fall to my knees, just so that I might drink from the warmest part of her body first. I stopped breathing. Edward advanced from the corner of my eye, Emmett a step behind him. Alice stood then.

"I found it." Her voice demanded my full attention; I ignored the vampires and their increasingly agitated emotions. I pressed them to the back of my mind. Her eyes caught mine, lashed onto my torso, and then again forced their way back up to mine. Ahh, the pain. Again. It hurt. That burn. Her gaze, stronger than any force I had felt before, surely. It gnawed at my chest, something…beneath my chest. No. Never again. It's not her.

She was staring at her hand now, the loss of her eyes in mine, hurt greater than the fire before. Was she the burn from before, on my back? She gestured her hand out to me, I didn't take my eyes from her face. She looked at me with a stone expression in her eyes; they kept lifting and then going inward. She was pleading, I think. "Your contact, I found it for you." Her emotions were now embarrassed and I realized that the blood had rushed to her face; she was looking out of the corner of her eyes at the table she just vacated. Embarrassment again, and fear. I decided to speak to her. "I don't wear contacts." I deliberately pulled my eyes from her eyes, wretched them away, more like. Slow torture. No, it's not her! Brown, not red. I looked at her outstretched palm, which wavered slightly. I lifted my lips in a hopeless excuse for a smile and then turned and walked out of the cafeteria.

It was raining outside. I was thankful for the fresh air, and even more thankful for the water. Rain ran down my face. It was light, the pounding, forceful pour would come later, I was sure. I would wait. The harder the fall, the better.

Footsteps, then sloshing. They were heavier than my siblings' light gait. But the reminder made me make a mental note to Edward to let me be. I tilted my face upwards. The water felt good. It felt like a message, like a touch. I couldn't remember what touch felt like. But I always liked the rain; it's a weighty substitute.

The footsteps stopped behind me. I felt the emotions stronger than any I'd ever felt. It nearly capsized me. Then the voice, "I was just trying to save your ass back there." Exasperated.

I took a deep breath and turned around, not daring to breathe again. She was wet. Her clothes just beginning to cling to the skin beneath. Her face was harder outside, like the petal of a lilly withstanding the forces of nature. The drops falling down her cheeks, dew building upon her brow. She curled both her lips in, clenching them between her teeth. Her breath blew out forcing them to retain their original place on her face. Pink. The center of the flower. I lingered there. I cannot tell the amount of time that elapsed. The number eludes me.

Her emotions staggered, her eyes became slightly lidded, and her breath hitched in her throat. The taste. I was delirious. She stepped closer and I shifted my weight to inch further away. I could not steal my eyes away from her throat; she lifted it, under my gaze, making it inconceivably more desirable. "What, How did you save me?"

Her emotions then were like blows to me. Anger, curiosity. "You looked..." She stopped and blew out an angry burst of air from between her lips. The scent toppled me. I leant forward infinitesimally. My jaw clenched against the burn in my throat. She summoned up her confidence and continued, her voice barely a whisper. "You looked savage. You growled." Her eyes darted about, she was embarrassed again. I was surprised that she noticed my growl; I hoped that she was the only one. I was about to make up a story to relieve her worries, before she opened her mouth again, her mood was lighter but she was still curious. "It looked like you were ready to take out one of the lunch ladies for selling you a bad orange."

She stopped and her face was red again. She averted her eyes from mine. And her hands went into her jean pockets. When she spoke her next words were softer, less frustrated. "I know what its like to be laughed at. I just didn't…I couldn't sit with the crowd at my table and do that, to anyone." She paused again and I realized that her hair was now drenched and along with it the rest of her body and clothes. She had followed me outside without a jacket. My eyes roamed her body, and her partly exposed forearms, which had showed the raised bumps of the chill she was feeling.

I felt something. I felt bad. I felt regret for this human who would no doubt get sick for following me out into the cold and wet. What I must look like to her, savage. The word she used, echoed in my mind. I was savage. This I knew. But, again, I felt regret. I regretted that she recognized my inhuman nature. She saw the creature, the monster before her, and yet she stood there still.

I shrugged off my jacket and wrapped it around her arms. The proximity took hold of my venom and bought it to the gates of hell, clawed its damnable way to the tips of my teeth. I hadn't realized that I started breathing again. It was too instilled in my habitual nature. Everything else about this girl was distracting me. I was still holding onto the collar of my jacket at her neck. My collar. Her collar. Her neck…

She looked up, her face, so much paler than the rest of the humans. "I'm Bella." She just barely breathed out. She swallowed deeply. "Bella" I repeated. She just stared, thinking of what, I would never know. Then I wanted to know. The thought redirected me for a moment; I would ask Edward what she was thinking. But instantly I hated that I wanted to know. That I would, without a doubt, be Edward's constant companion now, never leaving his side, garnering all that I could from her through him. I sighed, a sting bringing me back to the warmth between my hands. The twinge was her emotions.

She was…content. How could that be, she should be cringing away. Fleeing from the monster. Running away from me. My fingers instinctively tightened around the collar. Just as soon as the peace came it went. She was anxious, excited, and nervous. And her cheeks. Her cheeks. Let me die, now. Right now, before she. Take me, oh shadows of death, so that she might be spared my eternal bite. No, not eternal. I would drain her, surely. Take me before I take her. I was pleading with the unknown. I took a step backward, releasing my grasp on the jacket as I did so. "Bella, you should get inside. The nurse."

She looked confused. "Why?" Her brow puckered again, as it had in the cafeteria. "People get sick from prolonged periods outside in the rain and cold." I put on a smirk for her benefit, and added, "You could die." Her brow unfurled and she smiled a little. "Get inside, please. I don't need your death on my conscience." Too many crowd that darkened street already, I thought.

As she turned to leave she slipped her arms into the jacket that I'd placed around her. Another blow of emotion from her, intoxication. Interesting. She was burying her nose into my collar. Her collar, now. She sighed. She chuckled under her breath, as she stared up at me again, half turned back toward the school. I inclined my head, an instinctual reaction…I was gravitating toward the sound of her laugh, slight as it might be. "What?" I asked her. Then she rolled her eyes and laughed openly. "It's nothing. Thanks for your jacket Jasper."

I heard words escape my mouth without my permission. "How did you know my name Bella?" Of course I knew, but it would seem strange if I didn't inquire. She was blushing again, red was too bland a color for the color her cheeks. I decided it was rouge, cherry pink. Unique among all the other cherries. On top of her skin, which reminded me suddenly of a soap bubble, glistening as it floated in the air, turning to and fro finding a rainbow to catch within it. The pink, the most prominent shade now.

She was telling me what I already knew, words of gossip from my fellow students describing the Cullens to her. I was more interested in her voice, the tone. It seemed to reach a hand down my throat into my stomach and clench it. This feeling in my stomach seemed to retract the venom that I was trying to swallow in vain. It was throaty and calm, and abated my raging venom. Coaxing it back down my throat. I nearly thrummed from the feeling of it.

I was mesmerized by this entire encounter. Everything she did there was a spotlight on, and nothing went unseen. I took in everything. She started to turn and walk away and I realized that I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to entertain me some more, with her ever-staggering emotions and movements. Her voice...and her laugh...

This was not the woman that I loved in 1944. They were all together different. This was not Vera. When I had first seen Bella in the halls her skin caught my attention first. The pale, and soft milk. Though their hair was the same shade brown, Vera's had been all chopped off. No. It was more than this that drew me to Bella at first. She smelled of Vera. Moss and flowers, the particular smell of soil and sweet. And underneath it all, something that struck me to compare them in the first place, freesia and lavender. So sweet. But taking in Bella now, before me, so close I could reach out and dip my fingers into the bubble, I didn't see Vera. And for a moment I hated Bella for it. I wanted to rip her throat out, for taking away any flimsy reminder of my Vera. Though the anger was immediately replaced when I took in her smile. When I ran my eyes over her cheeks. When I stepped forward not of my own accord to be closer to the sweet soil. Sweet. Soil. Like a garden flanking a lake. Water and soil and flowers. Rain, never cease your journey. Not when this is the prize, the destination. Bella.

Watching her start to walk back toward the school brought my attention back to earth. I saw two shadows lingering in the trees by the cafeteria. Edward. Alice. Their emotions were on guard, anticipating. Waiting for me to slip up and make a slight movement in the direction of Bella, of her sweet, translucent skin. How long had they been there, hiding in the trees? Immediately I was ashamed for risking such close contact with a human. I wanted to spit on the ground. I wanted to feel the pain of a bite just to place some name to the agony of such of a feeling. Regret, shame.

Bella was already ten feet away from me when Edward started to make his way from the shadows. Alice lingered beneath the trees. His hands were stiff in his pockets, like he was forcing all his energy into the small space there rather than hitting the pavement at his feet. He was furious. And the barely concealed glare on his face solidified that fury. Bella noticed him, her face darted back and forth between Edward and me, and then she narrowed her eyes, returning the glare Edward was now directing at her. They were nearly ten feet from one another; Edward gave himself some distance from her. I felt it, the change of his emotions, a direct reaction from the wind that blew then. It whipped around Bella's hair and made its torturing dance in Edward's direction, bringing with it her crippling scent.