The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt: Play
Pen name: Feisty Y. Beden
Pairing: Edward x Bella (but really is about Bella & Charlie)
Rating: M (for language)
Play
"I need more socks. Where the fuck are all my socks?"
"Bella, you're a vampire. Why do you need socks?" Edward asked gently, searching my eyes for signs of the old craziness.
"I can't tell you, Edward. You'll spoil the surprise." I pulled back, resenting how delicately everyone treated me. Rationally, I understood their caution, but I was over it. I was ready to move on, and I didn't want to be reminded. I wanted it all to be in the past. The forgotten past.
"Me? Spoil?" He sounded offended. "My mind is like Fort Knox."
"Please, Edward—do you remember how easy it was to crack you open like a nut about the whole ampire-vay thing? All it took was me getting sort-of-almost-attacked in Port Angeles, and you folded like a cheap hooker punched in the gut."
Behind me, I heard snickering. "You said 'crack.' And 'nut.' And 'cheap hooker.'"
"Yes, Emmett, yes I did," I said, rolling my eyes. I kind of walked into that one. "Are you going to giggle like a schoolgirl at double entendres all day, or are you going to help me find socks, you big lug?"
"Can't I do both?" Emmett pouted.
"Of course. Now help me find some fucking socks."
"Any socks? Or special fucking socks?" Emmett asked with an impish grin.
"Holy Christ. Dude. It's not always about your wang."
"I beg to differ," Emmett sniffed, but he smiled at our old, familiar banter.
Emmett and I went from room to room in the big Cullen manse. It was true; vampires didn't really need socks. Our feet didn't chafe, obviously. We wore out shoes faster with our big granite feet than I guess the twelve dancing princesses from that fairy tale. And we certainly didn't need them to keep warm. I didn't even know why Esme bothered doing the laundry. It wasn't as if vampires sweat or anything. But she insisted—maybe it helped her feel normal, domestic.
It would be far less annoying if she didn't also do that human thing of losing one out of nearly every pair of socks that went in the wash. And damn it, I needed socks today.
We went into the room Emmett and Rosalie shared, and Emmett pulled a few socks out from under the extremely sturdy bed. "Uh, Bella, do the socks need to, you know, bend?" he asked as he held out a tube sock that was glittering and kind of crusty.
"You are so disgusting, Emmett. Of course it needs to bend. Ew. I don't even … ugh. No. Just … no. Put that away. Let us never speak of this again."
Emmett kicked the spunk-petrified socks back under the bed. "We're all adults here, Bella," he said.
"Uh-huh," I said, looking at him pointedly.
He ignored me and turned around. "Oh, oh look, now what could this be?" Emmett asked, foraging around the top drawer of his bureau.
"Please, Emmett. My eyes. Don't make me go blind again. I still haven't recovered from that chin strap-on thing with the … oh god, don't make me say it out loud." If I could still blush, I would have been crimson all over.
"Bella, it's not always about you, you know," said Emmett, waving a plastic packet at me—a new jumbo pack of socks.
"Oh, Em, I love you! Thanks! I can do whatever I want with these?"
Emmett opened his mouth with a devilish look on his face.
"Don't say it," I warned.
"You're no fun," he said, crossing his arms over the package of socks.
I sidled up to him and gave him a big hug. "You know I love you, right, big bro? I tease because I love."
"Yeah, yeah." He handed me the socks, and I stood on my tiptoes so I could peck him on the cheek.
"Thanks, sweetcheeks," I said, giving him a playful pat on the ass.
"Bella, it's nice to have you, you know, back," he said, running his hand through his hair a little nervously.
I shrugged it off. I didn't want to talk about it. Why did he have to acknowledge it? Why couldn't they just let me pretend? "Whatever," I said, crushing the package of socks in my hands.
"Are you going to tell me what they're for?" he called as I dashed toward to Esme's craft room.
"You'll see."
***
"Can I look yet, Daddy?"
"No, hon. You keep those eyes closed."
"Okay, Daddy." I was in Forks for the summer to visit Charlie. We always had a day or two of shyness, of getting to know the other again. It was hard to remember how we were supposed to talk to each other. This is my daddy, I had to remind myself. I always felt a little proud about flying on the plane all by myself. Well, those nice ladies in the smart uniforms helped me and took me by the hand from gate to gate, but still, I sat in that seat all by myself, swinging my legs. Maybe sometimes they had to help me buckle my seatbelt. But other than that, I was in-de-pen-dent (I thought that was the big word my teacher used). Oh yes, and they'd walk me to the bathroom in the back, and sometimes help me with flushing, because the airplane toilet made such a scary sound, like it wanted to suck my bottom out of the plane along with my tinkles.
But other than that, I was all grown up. All six years old and grown up and visiting my daddy, who was a tough policeman.
The kids in school thought it was cool that I was the daughter of a policeman. Half the kids wanted to be policemen or firemen anyway. Some of the meaner kids didn't think my dad was really a cop. They thought I was lying, that I didn't have a daddy. But if they said that out loud at recess, I'd punch them in the face. "I do SO have a daddy!" I'd say, fists flailing.
I got sent to the principal's office a few times, but Mommy didn't seem too upset. She liked that I could stand up for myself. "You're strong, Bella. A strong girl. You know what you want, and you'll fight for it."
I wished Mommy and Daddy could live together, but it was also nice to have both of them happy. Mommy was so much smilier now, no more crying with the door shut. She thought I couldn't tell what was happening in there, but I knew. When Mommy cried, I could feel it in my heart, like someone was squeezing it hard. And now I got special Daddy time too. It was only in the summer, but it was our time and ours alone.
Still, I hated all this waiting. "Can I look now, Daddy?"
"Where's the fire, kid? You got someplace better to be?" Daddy was using his tough-guy voice. I bet he used that voice when he was going after the bad men.
"You don't scare me," I said, jutting my jaw out.
"Okay on three: one, two, three!"
***
"Fucking piece of shit needles!" I swore under my breath. Another needle had snapped in half when I stuck it through the sock and right against my unyielding thumb. In the old days, I'd have pierced myself and maybe grown faint at the sight of my bleeding thumb. But a tiny sewing needle was no match for my impenetrable vampire skin. I thought I was supposed to be more graceful now that I'd been changed. Well, I guessed that was sort of true—I certainly didn't trip as often as I used to, or if I did, I finished with a somersault or back handspring and made it look like I'd meant to do it. But I hadn't gained any special fine motor-control skills. I thought back to nearly flunking home ec back in Phoenix. I probably would have done better in shop.
On second thought, being around those whirring saws and nail guns … I might not have survived to move up to Forks after Renee married Phil. No way. Or I'd be Stumpy McSwan, with stubs for hands.
Could vampires get cricks in their necks? I'd been hunched over this stupid sock for so long, staring these misbehaving buttons, trying to sew the things on. Why hadn't I just used glue?
Because that's not how this is done, I thought, answering my own question. There was a right way and a wrong way.
I tried to think back about thirty years, tried to imagine someone else hunched over like this, probably swearing up a storm too. I got a little lump in my throat, and my hand trembled a little as I tried to thread another needle. I was going to have to go to Michael's or wherever to buy Esme new needles. I must already have gone through a whole pack of them, little glints of silver on the ground around me, like magic pine needles in a mystical forest.
***
"Where are you going, little girl?"
I giggled at my daddy's gruff voice, muffled by the cardboard box he huddled behind, his makeshift stage.
"I'm going to my grandma's house!" he answered himself in a ridiculous falsetto.
I chortled and clapped my hands. He'd put these silly things on his hands that were supposed to be Red Riding Hood and the wolf.
"Don't talk to the wolf!" I cried out. "He's trying to trick you!"
Red Riding Hood looked at me with her button eyes and said, "You're a big, smart little girl! But I am going to talk to the wolf. You can't stop me." She turned to the wolf and said, "My grandma's house is down this lane. Oh look, butterflies!" And Red Riding Hood disappeared behind the box.
"Mwah ha ha ha," said the wolf, the sun in the backyard glinting off his button eyes. "I'm going to run as fast as I can to her granny's house."
"Boo!" I yelled. "You are a naughty wolf!"
"Who asked you?"
"I asked me!" I said, my hands on my hips.
"Mwah ha ha ha," the wolf said again. My daddy brought his other hand up, now naked, and twirled the mustache on the wolf sock.
"Daddy!" I cried out. "Why did you give the wolf your mustache?"
"Pay no attention to the man behind the box," said the wolf sternly.
"You leave that nice Red Riding Hood alone," I said, my hands clenched into fists.
"Little girl in the audience," said the wolf sock, "you can't change the story. The story that's already been told is the one we've got to follow."
***
I finally got those stupid buttons on. Both the socks looked lazy-eyed. I tried to think of Charlie sewing his own version of these. Had he done them himself? My human memories were blurry, an almost-forgotten dream, like remembering a smell but not knowing from where. Come to think of it, I think I must have seen Charlie bent over and swearing, sewing a button back on his oxford shirt. His thumbs were calloused, brawny man's hands. I chuckled a little to myself thinking that some of the toughness came from stabbing himself with needles. I am my father's daughter, I thought as I reached for the bright red headscarf I'd stolen from Alice's closet.
***
"It's a trap! It's a trap!" I cried out, getting up on my legs and jumping up and down. "Don't go in, Red Riding Hood! That's not Granny!"
"Ahem. Excuse me, big little girl who is being rather noisy, but I have to go in."
"Why?" I pleaded. I liked this sock a lot. I wanted to protect her from the mustache sock.
I don't know how my daddy made the Red Riding Hood sock sigh, but he did. "Sometimes bad things happen. But it's going to be okay. I'll be just fine. Do you trust me, big little girl?"
"I trust you," I said. "It's that other sock I don't trust."
"Sock? What is this about socks? I am a little girl," said Red Riding Hood, straightening her sock-self up to full arm's height. She knocked on Granny's door with her entire head.
"Come in!" said the wolf sock in my daddy's voice pretending to be a wolf pretending to be the other sock's granny.
***
He'd found me crumpled to the floor, curled up in a little ball. I heard him, felt him run into the room. He tried to comfort me. "You knew this would happen someday, Bella," Edward said, rubbing my back.
"I know. But it wasn't supposed to be so soon," I said into the carpet.
"I'm so sorry, darling. It's always too soon."
I wished I remembered how to cry, but instead I went for a long run through the woods, branches catching in my hair. I ran barefoot, feeling wild and free. I ran until I almost forgot the news. Edward didn't go with me. He knew I needed to be alone.
I wondered what it had been like for him, waking up with Carlisle for the first time. Did he remember? Did he know who he was missing?
***
"My, what big ears you have!" said Red Riding Hood.
"It's the wolf! It's the wolf!" I shouted.
"Wolf?" said Red Riding Hood, button eyes on me again. "I don't see a wolf. I see my granny. And my granny is sick. She needs her sweet Little Red to comfort her."
"That's not your granny!" I knew it was just a play, but it still made me nervous.
"I'm her granny," said the wolf in his mustache and the granny hat. I think Daddy had borrowed the hat from my baby doll.
"You are not her granny."
"Yes, I am."
"No, you're not."
"I am. Little Red, ask me anything."
The red-hooded sock bounced over to the mustached sock. "Why do they call me 'Little Red Riding Hood'?"
"Because you always wear that little red riding hood," answered the wolf sock.
"You're right!" said the Red Riding Hood sock. "Do you believe Granny now, big little girl?"
"Everybody knows that's why you're called 'Little Red Riding Hood,'" I said, rolling my eyes.
"Do you want us to stop the show?" asked Little Red.
I thought for a minute. I was coming up with a plan. "No," I said. "I'll be quiet now."
***
Forks was a sleepy town. Aside from the, you know, vampires and werewolves running around, it was completely ordinary. Just the usual silly things: teenage vandals, graffiti, mailbox baseball, Halloween toilet-papering and egging. So when Charlie followed up on a call about suspicious behavior at the big foreclosed house a street or two down from his, he was expecting some kids smoking pot or having sex.
He'd surprised them.
And they surprised him right back.
***
"My, what big teeth you have," said Red Riding Hood.
True to my word, I'd been quiet. "Silent as the grave," as my mommy would say when she wanted me to be quiet so she could watch her stories. But I was ready with my plan.
"The better to EAT YOU WITH, MY DEAR!" growled my daddy as the wolf. But I was ready.
I crept up to the cardboard box on my hands and knees and grabbed the wolf sock by his ears, tugging as hard as I could.
"Hey!" shouted Daddy, just being Daddy. I'd surprised him.
I pulled the wolf sock off and threw him on the ground. "You will not hurt Little Red Riding Hood!" I said. I had him pinned under a stick. "You are under arrest. You have the right to read Maine Siren. Anything you say can be used against you in a cord of log." I'd heard Daddy say the … rights … I forgot exactly, but they were named for some lady. Melissa? Melinda Rights? I wasn't sure what the Maine Siren was, but it sounded like a pretty cool book, if they let criminals read it.
"Hey!" shouted Daddy again, but this time he was trying to be Red Riding Hood. "That's not how the story goes!" He was laughing though.
"Nobody is going to hurt you," I said. "This wolf is going to jail."
He came out from behind the cardboard box. His knees were wet from kneeling on the muddy grass for so long. He picked me up and twirled me around and around. "I love you, baby girl. You're so brave."
"Nobody hurts Little Red," I said. "Even if it's only pretend."
***
They were just kids, in the end, but they were scared and surprised. I don't think they'd meant to shoot him. I think they were just scared, and maybe someone's finger slipped. At least, that's what Edward told me when he went by the station to see them. He knew I needed to know.
"They weren't trying to kill him," he'd said when he came back. I wanted to go, but everyone thought it would be a bad idea.
"I know you want to see their faces, to understand who it was who took Charlie away, but you know we can't let you," Carlisle had said.
Deep down I'd known he was right, but I'd been resentful. I knew I would have been a danger, that if I'd seen those little punks, I would have ripped the heads right off their bodies. An accident, Edward kept trying to tell me, as if somehow that made it better, easier.
It would have happened someday.
Yeah, of course I knew that. But I thought Charlie would be old and frail, not still bursting with life and jollity and bad puns and silly surprises for Renesmee. She'd still laughed every time he pulled a quarter out from behind her ear.
It had taken me years to forgive Carlisle, even to speak to him again. Maybe ten years. I couldn't remember. For a while I wouldn't even let Renesmee touch my face, because I couldn't bear for her to know what I saw in my head, for her to feel even an ounce of the pain that went through me every minute, missing my father.
But deep down, I knew I couldn't bear to see her thoughts, her memories of her sweet, doting grandfather.
I tried to be as good a mom as I could. It would have happened someday. So why be so upset?
Maybe because I thought it somehow wouldn't happen to me. My whole life had been a series of impossibilities. Vampires shouldn't exist, but I'd found them. Vampires weren't supposed to fall in love with fragile humans, and yet Edward had with me. And now I was never going to die. I was supposed to be ravenous and crazy for the first few years after I'd been changed, but it had been easy, so easy.
I guessed I figured everything would be like that. That maybe I'd be exempt from the pain.
It would have happened someday.
Yeah, but not for me. I was special, or so I'd thought. I wasn't going to have to give up anything. I'd have it all, the fairytale ending. Happily ever after.
The problem with "happily ever after" is that time keeps going, even when you decide to close the book.
***
"Darling, can you come to the backyard?" I called for Renesmee. She still looked like a child. She would always be my baby.
"Yes, Mama."
I was so thankful she hadn't withdrawn during my years of mourning. I had tried to smile as much as I could, to make up for the fact that I wouldn't let her touch me, but she must have known. My smiles at her weren't lies. She was sunshine to me, and I could still see Charlie in her eyes. That was the sad part of my smile, loving her and missing him all at once. Too many emotions.
I didn't even remember what had made me remember the puppet show. Maybe it was seeing the big box that the new TV had come in, Esme's sewing kit open, buttons spilling out—Emmett was always busting through his clothes like the Hulk.
I set up the big box outside on the damp grass. "Now, you sit over there," I said. I'd laid out a few newspapers so she wouldn't get wet.
"Okay, Mama."
"Now, close your eyes," I said, crouching behind the box. "Are they closed?"
"Yes, Mama."
"Are you sure?" I asked teasingly.
"Of course, Mama. You know I can't lie to you."
This was true.
"All right." I put a sock on my right hand, then the other on my left. It was trickier than I'd thought it would be. How had Charlie done this? I had to pull the second sock on with my teeth.
"Can I look now, Mama?"
"Not yet," I said, the sock still in my teeth. "Almost."
"Now?"
"Okay, now." I popped my arm up behind the cardboard box. "Hi! Do you like my fancy red cape? Do you know my name?" I said in a high, girlish voice.
"Little Red Riding Hood!" cried Renesmee, clapping her little hands together.
I brought my other arm up. "And who am I?" I said in a deep, gruff voice.
"Grandpa Charlie!" Renesmee cheered.
Oh no. That wasn't right. I looked up at my arm from where I crouched, the mustache on the big bad wolf just like Charlie's wolf from a puppet show a lifetime ago.
"Why do you have Jacob ears, Grandpa Charlie?" asked Renesmee.
"All the … better to hear you with?" I said, my voice faltering.
"Silly Grandpa," said Renesmee. "I know you can hear me just fine. You don't need funny Jacob ears."
"Uh … oh yes, of course," I said. "One moment." I brought the wolf puppet down and ripped the ears off with my teeth, the ears that had taken three hours and a dozen needles to sew on. Gone in one moment, tiny holes in the toe of Emmett's sock.
"I'm back!" I said, popping the puppet back up.
"Grandpa Charlie!" clapped Renesmee. "I miss you."
"I … I miss you too," I said, trying to remember the cadence of my father's voice.
"But I know you're here," she said. "All the time, with me, right?"
"Of course, my little bumblebee." I tried to keep my voice steady. I wanted to shield Renesmee from all this grief.
I brought Little Red back up behind the box. "What's going on here?" I made Little Red ask cheerily.
"I'm just talking to my Grandpa Charlie," said Renesmee. "Do you want to meet him? He's ever so nice. He hides most of the time, but I still see him. Today he is a sock."
"That's Chief Sock to you," I said, and Renesmee giggled.
"What story are you going to tell me?" she asked.
"Whatever you want, sweetheart. You can choose."
"Can you tell me the story about the little girl and the mustache grandpa and the robots and the ballerinas from space?"
"Of course, sweetheart," I said in my best Charlie voice, and I could swear I could smell his aftershave as I began, making it up as I went along.
A/N: Please be kind, rewind. I mean, review. So this one was not so happy. I just wanted Fats to rub up against me.