"Bella, I don't like you playing with Angela."
Bella turns in her chair, surprised. That whisper is more than enough to interrupt her thoughts, which had been wandering somewhere between math and history. "But, why?"
Alice purses her lips and shakes her head. Bella returns to her notebook, exasperated, but without a name for this feeling that wells inside her every time her new friend says such things.
Alice's murmurs are insistent. "She's not good for you. Don't you see? She wouldn't understand about us!"
Bella limits herself to shrugging her shoulders and looking furtively at Angela. She has to admit that having Alice as a playmate is interesting. She is not like the others. But she doesn't know why she should give up certain things without argument.
And at the same time, Bella knows that she will stop speaking to Angela, until one day she won't even notice her existence. Such is the power and jealousy exerted by Alice's eyes.
Angela herself already looks at Bella with sadness and confusion. She has lost, and she doesn't have a word for what she feels when she sees Bella and Alice together. Time will teach her to recognize that she is hurt.
Bella concentrates on the numbers and dates before her. Silently, she tacitly accepts the rules of Alice's game. It's only fear that keeps the words on the tip of her tongue, never to leave her mouth.
-X-
