A/N I really like this chapter, for some reason. Maybe because I wrote it after waaay too much turkey and wine, but nonetheless, I am quite proud. Happy Thanksgiving, all! Please read and review.

''…Ms. Swan?''

My head snapped up. I looked around, momentarily disoriented. I'd been daydreaming again. My face flushed scarlet as I stared into the expectant eyes of my psychology teacher and around the room at the perplexed, amused faces of my classmates. I didn't even know what we'd been discussing.

I cleared my throat. ''Ahem, sorry, could you please repeat the question?''

There were a few slight snickers from around the room. The teacher, Mr. Barrett, looked mildly concerned but repeated patiently, ''Bella, I was hoping that you could explain what Synesthesia is and how it pertains to our understanding of the senses. That is, assuming that you completed the last reading assignment,'' he added.

I tried to clear my head. Focus,Bella. ''Um…Synesthesia is…uh…confusion.'' I said, then cringed.

But Mr. Barrett simply nodded and said ''Yes, it is undoubtedly a kind of confusion, but would you please elaborate just a little?'' His voice became kinder, more encouraging.

''Ah….the senses…'' I racked my brain for the right words, trying not to stammer, ''the senses…get mixed up. People who have Synesthesia can maybe, uh, hear colors or taste sounds. It all gets sort of turned inside out and…you're not sure what something really is anymore. We're taught that blue is a color, but if your senses are so confused then to you, blue might not be experienced as a color but as a smell, or a sound.''

Mr. Barrett nodded, seeming satisfied by this answer, and then addressed the class again, ''Very good, Ms. Swan. Now can anyone else offer…'' He trailed off and lost me again. I breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that I would not be called on again. I'd been having such a hard time concentrating lately. I didn't mean to keep zoning out, but I felt somehow…jet-lagged. I kept hearing music in my head, and the music would carry in colors and feelings, smells and tastes with it. Maybe I had Synesthesia now, on top of everything else.

It wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. My perception had already been changed so radically after meeting Edward. Entirely foreign concepts that I considered at one time in my life to be myth were now as commonplace to me as orange juice with breakfast. I wondered, though…what if it all could change again. What if the things that I knew to be sound, color, smell, taste, feeling….what if my entire experience of all of those concepts was suddenly turned upside down, like puzzle pieces scattered all over the floor?

Edward drove me home after school that day, and I tried to focus all of my energy into keeping my drifting mind on our conversation, but I was having a hard time. I knew that he could tell I was distant, but couldn't know why, and this frustrated him. It frustrated me, too, because I had no answers.

I tried to keep my mind on small details: I went inside, cooked spaghetti for Charlie, did my homework, then went to lay down in bed. Spaghetti was still the same, the chairs were still chairs, and my room was still the same color it had been. Nothing had changed that I could tell. Then I stared at the ceiling, a little too intently perhaps, because I noticed small cracks that I didn't even know were there. They almost looked like a map.

I closed my eyes, and began to drift into sleep when I felt someone sit down on the bed. I blinked myself awake, expecting to see Edward, but instead Jasper was there, looking at me with a blank expression. My heart seemed to catapult itself right into my throat.

''Oh, Jas…'' I groaned and pulled the pillow over my head. ''Go away! How are you going to explain to Edward why you were sitting in my bedroom this late at night? Or, you know, why you were sitting in my bedroom at all?''

He reached over and yanked the pillow off my face. ''I'm sorry about the other day. I didn't mean to make you cry, Bella.''

I glared at him. ''It's fine, Jasper,'' I muttered. I began to nervously twist the blanket in my hands, trying to force myself to escape from the overwhelming feelings that were starting to build in me once again. He didn't say anything. He just stared. And then I exploded.

''I don't know where you get off! It's not fair! You and Edward both, all of you….my life is never going to be the same again, and that's fine but I don't have any special powers, except that I seem to cause chaos wherever I go! And maybe chaos is fine if it's familiar enough. It just seems normal then, but….but sometimes I can't stand it all. It feels like I am being constantly dragged along with some weird current that I cannot control and it's too big for me and it's pulling me under. I love Edward, I do, more than anything…and maybe I have a vague idea of my destiny, but it's not destiny that bothers me. It's life. It's those in between spaces. Destiny…it means that you know. It means that things are certain. They have to happen. But it's the not knowing, the uncertainty, that bothers me.''

Jasper was still silent for a moment, and then he said softly, ''I know what you mean. Even when you live forever, there are still those spaces. And some things become clearer but then again, some things just keep getting stranger. And because I can control and feel the emotions of others, well….''

He paused and pushed his long hair out of his eyes before he continued, ''that makes everything even harder to get a handle on. Emotions don't operate the way thoughts do, they're wild and unpredictable and don't follow rules. And they're powerful; defying logic. We don't know why we…want what we want or love who we love, we only know that those feelings are there, and that they drive us, like a blood lust.''

Jasper swallowed and continued. ''I'm sorry that I have been…trying too hard to…'' He broke off, and didn't finish the thought. Instead, after a beat he asked ''Did you like the music the other day?''

I nodded in the dark. ''I liked it,'' I admitted quietly. ''But there was almost too much. It was too different. For some reason, it almost…cracked me apart.''

I swore I could almost see Jasper smiling. ''Not maudlin and tragic enough for you?'' he asked, almost sarcastically.

I laughed a little. ''No, it wasn't maudlin and tragic. It was more….rough and wild. Less refined. Less…''

''Predictable?'' Jasper supplied.

I sighed. ''I suppose.''

''Good.''

I raised an eyebrow. ''Excuse me?''

''Well, anything that becomes too commonplace after a while fails to challenge you. Even if that which is commonplace to you would scare the living daylights out of someone else. It's all relative.'' Jasper sighed. ''I just wish that you'd stop forcing yourself to think so hard about everything and just….well, feel.'' He sighed.

I twisted the blankets through my fingers a few more times and pondered his statements. I fought the words that came bubbling up in my throat like old vomit, but they came tumbling from my lips nonetheless:

''I'm afraid to feel. I'm…comfortable with the madness in my life the way it is. Falling in love with Edward…learning about the existence of vampires…and other creatures that everyone had sworn up and down and assured me were just simply not real…confronting all of that insanity was enough to send me into a kind of shock. I don't honestly think I can stand another shock, Jasper. I've had enough.''

''Had enough?'' Jasper echoed. He sounded like he was choking, or perhaps trying to cough around a wild fit of laughter. He looked hard into my eyes, the ferociousness of his gaze not allowing me to turn away, forcing me to engage this unholy beauty. I took in a deep, hard breath, not realizing that, when one is concentrating hard enough on it, the simplest and most primitive of tasks can feel like an enormous trial. At that moment, I was not sure that my lungs could hold all the oxygen that I needed; the gargantuan effort that it now took merely to force my chest to rise and fall with the sudden influx of air.

But Jasper seemed to automatically sense it, and so he nodded and said, almost apologetically,

''You see what I mean, Bella?'' He leaned slightly closer to me, that golden, feral look in his eyes nearly paralyzing me, as if Jasper's look could hold a venom all its own. Power over emotion, I mused, and then I once again considered my earlier hesitance to such a gift and re-validated it. Power over emotion was far more dangerous than any other.

''It never goes away, Bella.'' Jasper's voice sounded worn. ''It only gets worse when the centuries begin. At first, you count when you reach that hundred year mark. It's like, when you are a child, and time always seems to crawl along then…one year seems to last forever. Counting the days until your next birthday, the next holiday…the next time for celebration. And it is only when you fully understand how slow time can really move; when you understand that there is no real reason to even count the days, years, decades, anymore…that's when you finally begin to understand.''

My skin felt frozen, but tiny pinpricks were rising along my skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps. Then, Jasper abruptly changed the subject, forcing me down that dimly lit and strange road that I had been desperately trying to avoid.

''Does Edward make you feel safe?'' He asked me. His eyes plunged inside me, as if earnestly seeking the answer before I dared give it.

''Well…yes,'' I offered. It was the truth, as best I knew it to be.

''But I don't,'' Jasper stated matter of factly. ''I make you very uncomfortable. You're afraid of me.''

I blushed and tried to duck away from those probing, shining eyes. I stuttered and stammered and chewed on my words like old gum found in the bottom of my purse before I finally responded. ''Yes.'' I repeated, then swallowed with difficulty and elaborated. I offered Jasper at least that much. ''You make me uncomfortable.''

Jasper nodded, as though he were expecting this answer, as though he'd been expecting this answer for a hundred years. But the nod was a hesitant and sad one. It didn't seem natural; he struggled with the action. He only agreed with me in order to humor me. Me, the human.

''Edward doesn't really touch you, does he?'' He asked. Before I even got a chance to answer, Jasper rushed ahead. ''He refuses you, over and over again. He's afraid that somehow he'll hurt you. As if you could possibly be hurt worse, more emotionally injured.'' Jasper laughed, bitterly and brokenly. His voice sounded like cracked concrete. ''And yet you want more from him, so desperately. How quickly you forget, Miss…'' Jasper's words were now becoming more clipped and formal. The consummate Southern Gentleman. ''…You forget that he once wanted nothing more than to drain your blood. The mere scent of you supposedly drove him mad.'' Jasper laughed a little. The laugh sounded like false politeness, like fine china lying shattered and splintered on the floor.

''Edward,'' he continued, ''is from an entirely different world entirely, even by historical and sociological standards. He's very naïve. And he continues to operate within this ridiculous and antiquated code of chivalry and virtue.

''That's not to say,'' Jasper spoke wildly, ''that his motives aren't pure. But he was young when he was turned, and has not grown with the rest of the world beyond that point. He's….frozen, Isabella. Miz Swan''. He added my surname almost as an afterthought, drawing out the each syllable with a honey-sweet Southern seductiveness, as though he were making love to each word in sinful, wicked ways, and knew it.

''Just by knowing you, by being near you, I can tell that you want more than that. You need more. You crave contact. You need someone who isn't afraid to hold you.''

It felt as though my stomach were dropping clear out of my body. Those dips and spins, you know what they mean. Either you've had way too much cheap shit to drink, or someone has gotten under your skin. Someone beautiful and lean and dangerous. It's a dance as old as time. Those eyes…that hunger…your every cell screams to know what their body could feel like. How they might hold you. Different, obviously from the comfortable familiarity of your lover. The predictable, restrained press of lips. You begin to feel flat and one dimensional. A sketch slashed with charcoal across paper, haphazardly. But you are three dimensions, at least, and those dimensions are continuously, viciously alive, growing and expanding. Life cannot seek love from the dead. I suddenly felt my spirit contort, almost grotesquely, almost groan in pain as I realized that Jacob, my dear friend, had been right all along. It didn't matter, no, no…ever with these new feelings and understandings crashing over me, bathing me, drowning me, I could not allow them to be so…. I had to stave them off somehow, and I ransacked my brain for some scrap of offering, some detail as to how to hold on to something being yanked away from me as primitively as air. I looked as Jasper and felt like I was dying, but some part of me screamed, screamed louder than any sound my consciousness had ever known. It wanted life, it wanted danger and sky and dirt and roads that ran on and on. Every intellectual cell in me fought against it.

''I thought I knew real strength,'' I thought to myself, as I felt some part of me begin it's slow descent to surrender.

I recalled old Biology classes, clinging to the memory, the assurance inherent in that fine print in the textbooks. Drowning,despite all of the psychological trauma associated with the concept, I recited to myself, ''is, in actuality, one of the 'better' ways to die.Once the body succumbs and the water is inhaled into the lungs,a feeling of euphoria sets in before death…''

It didn't matter what the fuck Biology or said. Had Biology ever drowned and then got up and talked about how euphoric it all was? Pretty word, for such a primal, awful thing.

But then again, I thought as I looked at Jasper and felt…well, hungry was probably the only appropriate term…for the most part, people had very much the wrong idea about death, in general.

''Desire,'' said Jasper quietly, ''real desire, anyway, does not pretend to disguise itself. It is a hunger that burns you from the inside out, pure and simple. It doesn't just turn on and off like a faucet. And like the euphoria of drownin', Miz Swan, it's a psychological contradiction. But still real as all hell. Realer, even, somehow.''

Jasper had moved his face perilously close to mine, then, so close that I could feel the abrupt contrast: the icy coldness of his skin juxtaposed against the endless burning of his eyes. That burn, I was beginning to realize, raged deeper, deep into the very core of him.

Some part of me began to burn then. Ignited.

Answering Jasper's challenge, I began to drown in fire