Meyer owns all.

Chapter 3

'There is salvation for the repentant man, but none for me!' – George W. M. Reynolds

BPOV

Last time on Gothic, one Edward Cullen had just requested Ms. Swan's assistance in the search for the killer of Mr. Cullen's former girlfriend. We wait, on pins and needles, for our heroine's response.

I gaped at Edward. I could hardly believe that he meant it. "You want me to help you find Tanya's killer?" I asked stupidly, even though I had heard him clearly enough.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"It's impossible."

"If anyone can solve her murder, it should be us."

I scoffed. "Do I look like I'm in the FBI?"

"The FBI did try. And they failed."

"My point exactly," I said, though I hadn't known that the FBI had actually been involved. That must have been after my part was over. I'd never talked to an agent.

"They didn't have our perspective," Edward insisted.

"That's right. They were just well-trained agents with CSI stuff."

"CSI stuff?"

"Yeah." Dumbass.

"Well, all that CSI stuff led them directly to me. So it didn't them any good, did it?"

I shook my head. "They would have figured it out eventually."

It was Edward's turn to scoff. "Right. They had my car. My hair at the crime scene. They even had an eyewitness who said she saw me pick Tanya up in Port Angeles. There was blood in my car. Tanya's blood. How did that get there?"

"You gave Tanya a ride to school every day for months. You dated. It wasn't that much blood. She could have cut her hand and touched the side of the passenger seat. Besides, your Volvo was sitting in the driveway of your house in Forks when someone picked her up in Seattle. It wasn't your car."

"And my hair at the crime scene?"

"It could have been on her jacket. The two of you had been all over each other for the last few weeks."

"They saw me in Port Angeles."

I paused. "They saw someone who happened to look like you and had a car like yours. Or someone set you up."

"What kind of a serial killer sets up an eighteen year old?"

"Technically, it wasn't a serial unless there was another—"

"Bella—"

I pursed my lips at his use of that name.

He went on. "Whoever it was, they knew me. They knew Tanya. And they hated both of us."

"Case solved. It was me."

"That's not funny."

"I wasn't trying to be."

Edward gazed at me. "They could have killed any girl that day. It could have been you."

"I'm not interesting enough to serial kill."

"That's not a verb. And still not funny."

"When you've watched as many horror movies as I have, 'serial kill' becomes a verb," I explained. "Are you under the impression that I care what you think of me? I'm not your friend. I wasn't Tanya's friend. Girls get killed all the time. Why the fuck should I care?"

"Because you came forward and told the police that I couldn't have picked up Tanya in Port Angeles and killed her that day because I was sitting in a meadow sixty miles away."

Son of a—

He was right.

I paused, thinking about it. Girls did get killed all the time, and if I had a chance to do something about it and didn't, then I would have to bear the responsibility for that. Besides, it still rankled—the accusation that I had lied for Edward Cullen still followed me around. At one point, public disfavor was so strong that my father had almost lost his place on the Forks police force.

Yet there was still a minor point that required clarification. "I don't see how you think that we can solve a case that has everyone else baffled," I said.

"Because we're the only ones who know not to waste time looking at me as a suspect."

I drank the rest of my coffee and thought some more.

He started to plead his case again, "Look—"

"I'll do it," I cut him off.

Edward stared at me for a moment. "You will?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

"There's nothing to thank me for. I don't expect to be helpful."

"I'm sure you will be."

I chose not to comment on that.

He cleared his throat. "So I, uh, I have all my notes and things back at my condo."

"That's why you wanted to meet there for coffee?"

Edward nodded.

"What do you mean? Notes?"

"All of the articles and some police files."

I knew enough to know that sounded suspicious. "The police released all of those files to someone they suspected in an unsolved case?"

"My friend on the Port Angeles police force—I saved his daughter's life after she was hit by a car. That's how we met."

"Was the FBI really involved?"

"Tanya's uncle was a judge. He called in a favor."

If only all dead teenage girls had uncles with favors to call in.

Something occurred to me. "Why do you care this much? I don't buy this explanation that you're plagued by suspicion. You obviously have a successful career."

"You don't know anything about me," he said, parroting my words from earlier. I supposed it was true enough.

"You do seem different," I said, and then felt awkward. Why had I said that?

"What do you mean?"

"Not yourself," I clarified, meaning that he was speaking to me like I was an actual human being. That he wasn't the many tentacled Cthulu beast of my memories.

"That's not helpful."

"See? Already I'm falling down on the job." Perhaps I could convince him to call this project off after all.

"You seem different, too."

There it was again. "I am exactly the same," I declared.

"No, you're not."

What a dick. "Whatever." My repeated use of such a term annoyed me. It was juvenile.

"I just mean that you've done very well for yourself."

What the fuck did that mean? I simply cocked an eyebrow.

"You got your Ph.D. You're a doctor," Edward explained.

"So are you."

"And Jasper says that you're very well liked at the university."

Just what was he getting at? "Well it's not Juliard. They're not very discerning."

"I'm sure it's very prestigious."

"They took Jasper." Really, that was enough to make one question everything.

"Jasper's dissertation was nominated for a national award," Edward told me, as if this was proof of Jasper's excellence.

"Hmph." The nominating committee was probably dominated by southerners.

"Look, I'm just trying to find some common ground with you," Edward argued.

"Why bother?"

"Shouldn't we try to get along?" he asked.

"Get along?" Was he insane?

"Don't you think it would help?"

His suggestion wasn't illogical, but I didn't care to make him think that I agreed. I held my tongue.

Edward changed the topic. "So I have to work tonight, but whenever you're free, and I'm off, you can come around, I'll show you what I've got."

I nodded.

"In the meantime," he looked at his wristwatch.

"Yeah, I've got to go," I lied.

"You do?" he seemed relieved.

"Mmm hmm." I reached for my wallet.

"It's on me," he stopped me.

"Are you sure?"

"It's just coffee."

I supposed that he was right, but I still didn't like the idea of owing Edward for anything. "So when are you off again?" I asked.

"This time tomorrow, but I'm going to be exhausted. What about Saturday?"

I nodded.

"What time?" he asked.

"Whenever." I probably should have specified a time. He wasn't a friend. I didn't care if he wasn't available. In fact, it would be better for me if he wasn't available and this whole business simply went away.

"Noon."

"Fine." What a fucking inane conversation.

We stared at each other blankly for a minute.

"Can I get your address?" I asked, resenting the need for my request.

"Oh yeah," he gave me his address. "And you should probably have my cell, too." He gave that to me as well. I considered not giving him my cell in return, but that would be ridiculous. I didn't give him my address. That would have been overkill.

"Saturday then," I confirmed, standing up.

"Saturday," he replied.

And I left.

Jesus fucking Christ.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

That night was the first time I dreamt of Edward Cullen. The setting was our old stomping grounds, Forks High, of course, the vicious fancy of sleep turning the unhappy images that I still recalled but dimly into a Dantesque nightmare. Dream logic had me wandering endless corridors lined with lockers and cringing away from the too well lit cafeteria—no shade left in which to hide—to the chant of grotesque serenades from the rabble crowding around, the creatures who ought to have been my peers but were instead my tormentors, demonic in my memory perhaps but even worse in my dreams, grimaces distorted into ghoulish masks. How comical the irrational—and yet how visceral the old fear once called back up from where it lay dormant so long. A carnival of mockery for which one has only herself to blame, for it ought not to matter. It ought not to matter. It ought not to matter. All of it too much like a staged production at the Grand Guignol, the florescent lights shining down on me as I lay on the lab table in my biology classroom, pinned and helpless as Jasper Hale and James What's-his-name and a faceless horde of others jeered at me while the modern day leech, physician-in-training, Edward Cullen, took his time going about his examination of my person. Something that had never actually happened but which felt as if it must have happened, or at least something of the like—something physical, something more than just their words—for how else was I to justify the sensations of despair that surrounded all of my memories of high school? Surely words alone could not have inflicted so much pain. Nevertheless, humiliation, terror and disgust were now competing for dominance in the aftermath of this macabre nightmare, a nightmare that was made all the worse by its ability to incapacitate me beyond all reason, because of course it shouldn't matter, and yet it did.

The images of the dream faded quickly after I woke up, leaving an irrational but nonetheless distinct sense of dread in their wake. Like my actual memories from the years in question—the Roiling Abyss—the facts themselves were vague but the emotions were vivid. A different sort of torture from those first few years of undergrad—the Mountains of Madness—but no less fondly recalled. I'd no desire to remember any of that. Safety lay in forgetting. Lock the corpse in the dungeon and throw away the key.

Thus, I couldn't help but look upon the reappearance of JFH and EFC—Jasper Fucking Hale and Edward Fucking Cullen—with a sense of foreboding. I didn't blame them though. Not completely. How could I? There was a natural order to society. Unless one is living in some dystopian teenage novel, social distinctions will emerge.

It only made sense that I would fall to the bottom of the pecking order.

All that was done and we weren't in high school anymore. But what did that mean? We weren't friends, nor would we ever be. Alice was only living out some desperate revenge fantasy in which JFH would be forced to apologize for all the wrongs he had ever done her. If she had really changed as much as she claimed she had, of if she had really gotten over all of it, she wouldn't need his apology. I certainly didn't want it. Even if I got it—

If JFH or EFC ever tried to apologize to me, I would claw their eyes out.

I didn't, to be entirely honest, quite remember the details of all of their crimes. But I remembered the dread that their actions had engendered. It had come alive again with my dream and had filled me with a lingering nausea that morning as I showered and dressed. I stared at the oatmeal that I didn't want to eat, and felt myself wishing that I would never again have to see either one of them.

There was no way to avoid JFH. But he was a co-worker and there were rules governing that relationship. So long as he obeyed the rules of civilized conduct—Sorry, what's that? Are you confused because my mouth is saying 'thank you for holding the door' while my face is saying 'I want to punch you in the throat'? I guess it's just my pesky struggle with your complete hypocrisy. If you really were the sort of gentleman that you go around pretending to be, you'd also pretend not to notice the discrepancy.—then we would be just fine. And if he didn't follow the rules, I would pull rank. I had been at that university longer than him. The other professors were, for the most part, introverted past-geeks like me. They wouldn't side with him. And the admin appreciated my insistence that they be treated as more than subhuman bottom-dwellers. I was the big man on campus now.

Well, sort of.

As for EFC, I would not let my dislike of him interfere with the resolution of this project. That was exactly how I would treat the investigation of Tanya's murder—as a project. I didn't expect us to be successful, but I didn't plan to put any more effort into it than what I already put into arranging happy hours or baking birthday cakes. I would do just enough to fulfill the social obligation of a person touched by tragedy.

Was that what I was? A person touched by tragedy? Tanya's death was a tragedy. I wasn't so monstrous that I couldn't recognize that. But was I really the disinterested star of a Lifetime movie? No. I didn't care enough about Tanya for that. I was the bitch in the first act who retreated to the background while the actual plot played out. I was just playing my role, lest it get around that I had been asked to help and had turned up my nose.

Not that there was really anyone for such a story to get around to. Who would care? Alice? Ha! Not unless she thought that my participation in the project would somehow aid her in her quest to get revenge on JFH, a quest that involved either destroying him or making him fall in love with her, possibly both. I wasn't clear on all of the details.

In any case, I would still play my role in this little mystery. I would do it for the story. I certainly didn't care what Edward Fucking Cullen thought of me.

And with this resolution in place, I opened the front door to leave, and stumbled back in horror at the sight of the dead animal on my doorstep.

AN: Rec: Hit by Destiny. I know, I know. It hardly qualifies as a diamond in the rough because it has so many reviews. But it has the best high school torture scenes that I know of.