-| Glitch continues |-

All this therapy, and nothing is helping. My psychologists refuse to consider the idea that Edward is real, and I refuse to consider otherwise.

I just really, really need to prove it.

I persist in talking to Edward in various settings and on various topics. I talk to him in my room, in the girl's bathroom at school, and in the woods that nestle my house.

I tell him of my theories about what he is (angel), what Alice's theory is (succubus), and what Dr. K thinks (figment of an abnormally overactive imagination). I tell him about my latest counseling session and how stupid and small everyone is making me feel (despite how I'm trying to hide it). I respectfully request that he come forth and fix this.

But no matter where I speak or what I speak about, I don't see hide nor hair of Edward. He apparently has other plans, plans that don't involve me.

And he doesn't give me any kind of sign—no note, no phone call, no oddly face-like patterns in burnt toast or swirling coffee or the clouds in the sky.

Nothing.

I'm getting a little frustrated at this point.

It doesn't help that Renee's one-week vacation morphs into a semi-permanent residence. The morning after her extreme reaction to my diagnosis, I find her in the kitchen burning toast, all forced smiles and darting eyes. When she delivers my platter of semi-recognizable food, she informs me that she's made reservations at the Pacific Inn Motel here in Forks.

"I thought you said you had an appointment with the sun next week," I mumble around a mouthful of charred bread.

"Actually, I'm finding gray and dreary rather refreshing."

I nod amiably, as if that makes perfect sense. Internally, my hamster wheel goes into overdrive. It was bad enough when Renee was calling every day to pick my life to pieces; having her eagle eye my daily activities is asking for a true mental breakdown on my part.

I need to do something, and fast.

Since merely talking to Edward isn't getting me anywhere, I decide that I need to implement phase two of my plan. Phase two involves getting Edward's attention in some way other than using my voice.

For phase two, I need a partner in crime. A male partner, to be precise.

Therein lies my first hurdle.

I'm not exactly the type of girl who can crook a pointer finger for the boys to come running. Granted, I've had my share of puppy-dog crushes through the years, among them Mike Newton and Tyler Crowley. But I'm pretty sure that they are each going after me only because I'm one of the few girls at school who has actually told them "no" the first time they asked. And every subsequent time.

Plus, I've grown up with these boys. I've seen them cry and burp and sweat. I've seen acne cover their faces and chili bowls cover their heads and their arms when they were the girth of toothpicks. I know exactly who has dated whom and who has done what with whom while dating them. I can count on two fingers the boys from Forks High who I could possibly partner with for phase two—my pointer finger is Mike Newton and my middle finger is Ben Cheney.

And since Ben is clearly gaga about Angela, that leaves me one viable option.

Before you absolutely crucify me about Mike, let me explain. As far as boys at Forks High go, Mike isn't the absolute worst. If I had to pick the worst, I would probably go with Yorkie because of reasons that should be clear to you by now.

But Mike Newton…Mike is like the Backstreet Boys. You know their music, you can sing along, you might even like what they've got going on. Easy on the eyes, easy on the ears. But he's not the type of music I plan on listening to for the rest of my life. Despite the fact that he's friendly, familiar and relatively fun, he's not exactly my fire.

Plus, convincing Mike to go out on a date with me will not be…difficult.

As I'm about to demonstrate.

The Newton's bell announces my entrance. Because I don't immediately see anyone at the counter, I swing the door back and forth a couple more times. Ringing the bell and all that. Unfortunately, the noise doesn't get anyone's attention—other than Mike's.

He pokes his head around a doorway and beams when he sees me.

"The door was stuck," I say and let it close with a final jangle.

"Yeah, happens to me all the time." He waves dismissively, then plants his elbows on the counter. "Hey, there was something I've been meaning to ask you."

His standard greeting.

"What a coincidence," I say. "I also have something to ask you."

"Oh." He's surprised and pleased at my non-standard greeting. "Ladies first."

I can do this.

This being the point at which I'm supposed to open my mouth and ask Mike if he'd like to do something with me this weekend. I'm thinking something public, out in the open, perhaps a picnic in my backyard. Or perambulating through the town square. Somewhere that will allow Edward a front-row seat to all the late-breaking, jealousy-inciting action.

I can do this.

"I was wondering if…"

Mike's eyes are distractingly blue. And hopeful.

"…if perhaps you…"

Mike's eyes blue at me some more.

"…if you have one of those Heddon lures."

I couldn't do it.

"Hm," Mike says, eying a nearby display upon which I already know hang no Heddon lures because of the last time I accompanied Charlie here to look for them. "Maybe. Let me go check the back."

I exhale in relief when those hopeful blue eyes are off looking for the unavailable lures. Despite what I had initially thought, I can't do this to him, can't bear to see the hope in his eyes blossom into full-out joy.

I tell myself that Mike is not a good candidate for phase two.

Edward wouldn't take him seriously.

Since my Backstreet Boy bombed, I have to expand my horizons. I have to look past the boundaries of Forks High. And I look no further than long-time childhood friend Jacob Black.

If Mike Newton is a boy band, Jacob Black is some classic rock group that you've listened to since the cradle. You know, one of those groups that your parents used to like and the reason why your house still has a record player. Nothing brings back those nostalgic memories like vinyl. If I had to chose, I would say that Jacob is like one of the Beatles, with his hippy hair and bright yellow submarine personality. And, like the Beatles, I've known him since I was born.

I suspect that Edward will take Jacob seriously.

As children, Jacob and I were forced together by our fathers' mutual love of baseball and fishing. We are the child of either a divorced or widowed dad; we have a lot in common. Until, of course, we hit puberty and realized that we have less in common than we thought. We go to different schools, we run with different packs. Or at least he does; I'm more of a lone wolf. And I don't run.

We never really had a falling out; it was more of a drifting apart. One day, I didn't come out of my room when the Blacks arrived to watch some big baseball game. The next time, Jacob didn't come to our house because he had another commitment for school. When the dads stopped insisting that we spend every available minute together, we stopped spending every available minute together.

Now, I realize that I haven't talked to Jacob Black in years aside from the occasional "Hey" when our paths happen to cross. I think the last time we'd spoken at length was when Charlie bought my truck from Billy. Jacob had given me a terse crash course (heh) in driving the thing and then had high-tailed it home.

When I approach Charlie for permission to drive out to the rez, he isn't too keen on the idea. I haven't exactly been doing a lot of driving on my own here recently.

"Please, Dad," I say. "It's Jacob."

Charlie's confused, and rightly so. "You haven't hung out with Jacob in years."

I was hoping he wouldn't remember that fact. "Yes," I agree slowly, "but he's practically family. And Billy will be there to keep an eye on me."

Well, I certainly hope he won't. When Charlie still doesn't seem convinced, I add, "I'm going stir-crazy here."

Charlie cracks, but just a little. Probably not from the excuse, but from my casual use of the word "crazy." You certainly don't want to force the crazy girl into activities that will in any way exacerbate her condition.

"Okay," he says, "but I'm going to give Billy a heads up."

Somehow I don't think this "heads up" is merely about the fact that I'm coming.

"Please…don't," I say, letting desperation seep into my voice. "I promise that Jacob and I will be good. I just want to hang out with a friend, someone who doesn't know about all…this." I wave my hand around my head in a gesture that could symbolize a halo but that we both know doesn't.

Charlie hesitates.

I say, "I don't want Jacob and his dad to look at me funny."

Bingo.

"Alright," he says, voice soft. "That's fine. Take your cell and remember to call me every so often, okay?"

Translation: If I don't hear from you every hour, I'll be sending the entire police force out to look for you.

"Got it. Thanks, Dad."

When my truck wheezes up to the Black's little red cabin, Billy is sitting on the porch. I'm not surprised; my vehicle isn't exactly designed for stealth.

"Bella," he says, his eyebrows high. "It's good to see you. Don't tell me Charlie sent you to try and weasel me out of one of my Heddon lures."

"No," I say. "I'm actually here to see Jacob."

"He's out in the garage," he says carefully, flicking his head in the direction I should go. His expression is almost blank, but a pleased kind of blank, the blankness I now remember that Billy and Charlie always affect when Jacob and I spend time together.

Suspicious. Yet so amazingly helpful.

"Thanks."

The garage smells of lubricant and shaved metal and something decidedly male, though not unpleasant. I step through the doorway and see a large form hunkered over a motorcycle frame propped up on cinderblocks. The person is sporting so much height and so much hair that I'm almost not sure it's him.

"Hi," I say.

The person whirls and knocks over a box full of tools that protest loudly against the concrete.

"Oh," the person says, ignoring the mess. Now that I can see his face, I see that it is, indeed, Jacob's face. But he looks…different. The last time I remember seeing him, he was all short and round and cuddly.

Now he's…not.

"You're Bella, right?" he says. Even his voice is different. Deep and tingly.

"And you're funny."

He smiles. "I think so. What brings you out to my neck of the woods?"

There's something in the way that he's looking at me, something in the way that he's not annoying the snot out of me like most guys my age…I decide to give it to him straight. "I'm looking for someone to be illicit with, and I was hoping that someone could be you."

Jacob's eyes do that glazed thing.

"Uh…"

Too much? Too soon? I plow on quickly, "Mostly, I just need to get out of the house, you know?"

"Oh," he says, relaxing. "Yeah. I completely understand. That's why I'm in the garage."

We smile at each other. Standing in front of someone who looks like this, I should probably feel awed and intimidated. But I don't. Although I'm sure Jacob could do intimidated rather well should he so choose, he's not choosing to do so now.

Actually, he's the one looking a little intimidated.

And that won't do.

So I ask, "What's that?" I'm looking at the metallic skeleton he'd been laboring over when I walked in.

Instantly, he lights up. "This," he says, patting the frame with a flourish, "is going to be the fastest dirt bike in the Pacific Northwest. And that one," he says, gesturing to a more unfinished structure nearby, "will be Quil's."

I laugh. "How come Quil doesn't get a fast bike?"

"Because he doubted my mad mechanic skills. We found these bikes at the junkyard over the summer, and he dared to tell me that he didn't think I could get them working."

I decide not to ask if they often hang out in junkyards.

"Can you?"

He smiles smugly and flips a switch. In this confined space, the roar of the bike's engine rivals the roar of my truck. But then Jacob's smile melts away when the noise sputters dramatically and dies.

He tries to cover with, "As you can see, it still needs a little work."

My adrenaline is going from the lion's roar of the bike and the idea of speed and of my arms wrapped around the tight torso only thinly obscured by a tight shirt…

"Do you need any help?"

"That depends. Do you happen to have some mad mechanical skills I don't know about?" he teases.

"Well, no." I remember how quickly I didn't learn to use the clutch on the truck. "I'm zero mechanical, but maybe I could drive you around to get parts or something."

The silence in the garage is so complete that we can hear crickets chirping. Oddly, this seems significant.

"If you think it's stupid—"

"I think it's the furthest thing from stupid." His face is smooth, but his eyes gleam.

"Great." And it really was. "When can we start?"

"How about now? I was actually just about to make a supply run for..." He glances over the tools spewed on the ground. "…a wrench."

"Great. We can take my truck."

As we're walking out of the garage, Jacob side-kicks something that flashes and clatters as it goes sailing under a dilapidated red car.

I smile because I'm pretty sure it was a wrench.

As I'm keying the ignition, he asks, "So how have you been, loca?"

Funny how it only takes an instant to shatter tentative camaraderie. In the same instant, my truck sputters and dies as dramatically as had the bike.

I stare straight ahead, through the windshield. "Did you just call me crazy in Spanish?"

From my periphery, I can see Jacob eying me warily. "I did."

"Did Charlie say something to you?" I clip out. I feel hurt, like Charlie doesn't trust me, like he had told me one thing and done another…

"No," Jacob says slowly, and I belatedly realize that I've given him dots to connect. But then he merely says, "It's kinda my thing, calling people crazy in Spanish."

"Oh." Charlie hadn't betrayed me after all. Relief makes unexpected tears prickle at my eyes. I turn my head to the left, away from Jacob entirely, until they're under control.

"Why, is that weird or something?" His tone is guileless, as though his choice of nickname is purely coincidental. Guess he's not really a connect-the-dots type of person. Exactly the type of person I need right now.

I turn back to him and smile weakly, falsely. "I thought that if you were going to call someone crazy, you would probably do it in Quileute."

My explanation sounds flimsy, even to my ears, but Jacob doesn't push. Instead, he says lightly, "Normally, you'd be right. Problem is, the Quileute word for crazy is five syllables long and translates roughly to 'cow with rolling eyes and lolling tongue.' Loca is more efficient."

"I appreciate you not calling me a cow."

"No problem."

As easy as that, we're comfortable again. At the hardware store, we goof off down each aisle—wear washers for eyeglasses, stick pressure gauges up our noses, sandpaper each other's butts. When Jacob starts pretending to hit home runs with two-by-fours, the guy behind the counter finally looks up from his magazine to ask if he can help us with anything. Jacob answers a solemn "Yes" and sidles over to the counter with his shiny new wrench.

Jacob walks away from our afternoon with a tool that he didn't really need, and I walk away with something I didn't even know I did—a normal, clueless friend.

When I get home, Charlie and Renee are sitting on opposite ends of the couch, looking up at me nonchalantly as I step into the house.

"How's Jacob?" Renee asks.

"Buff."

"That's great!" she enthuses, not quite processing my answer.

My parents are pleased that I'm spending time outside my room.

My room is not.

I walk in and everything looks exactly the same…yet different. I can practically feel the waves of disapproval from Mr. Bear, who is nestled on my pillow, staring fixedly at me. My room's familiar scent is strong, almost cloyingly strong. And since when has there been a macabre trio of naked, beheaded Barbies pinned to my bulletin board?

Oh, right. I had gone all Queen of Hearts on the Barbie's heads several years ago after realizing that Renee was not coming back. She could braid their hair so nicely, but she didn't stick around long enough to teach me. The things you never learn when your mother abandons you...

The abnormally ominous ambiance of my room is not exactly a sign, but it's something. Something I hope means that Edward does not approve of my spending time with Jacob.

So of course, I start spending all my time with Jacob. I fit him in between school and therapy, I hang out in the garage and do homework, I even start calling him some evenings. I'd gone in to fraternize with a boy in an attempt to make Edward jealous. I find instead that I truly enjoy spending time with this boy. When I'm with Jacob, I can almost forget about Edward. I don't feel like I'm being watched by anything except dark eyes. My skin doesn't tingle unless I happen to brush his while handing him tools.

Charlie and Renee are thrilled.

"Jacob's a good kid," Charlie asides one morning as he's leaving for work.

I couldn't agree more.

Too bad I'm going to make this good kid go bad.

"Why didn't you come out of your room the night of the World Series?"

I blink. I'm sitting on a folding chair in Jacob's garage, holding my knees as I watch him (i.e., ogle the muscles in his back as he works that wrench). Jacob's tone is casual, almost too casual. And he's not looking at me.

"You remember that?"

"Of course I do. The day before, I tried to hold your hand for the first time."

Um, what? "You tried to hold my hand?"

"Yeah, we were taking a walk through the woods, and I stepped close and went for first."

I frown. "Are you talking about that time I tripped over a rock and fractured my ankle?" I distinctly remember that day because Jacob had to carry me nearly a mile home.

"Well…yeah. But I thought you 'tripped' because you were trying to get away from my hand."

No wonder Jacob had been so frantic about my little mishap. Here I'd thought that we'd drifted apart, and Jacob thought that I'd catapulted him from our relationship as effectively as I'd catapulted myself over a rock.

He says, "I assumed you didn't come downstairs because you wanted to make it clear that you didn't like me in that way. I wanted to see what you would do if I didn't show up next time. You did nothing."

"Huh," I say. Isn't it amazing how two people can see the same event through very different eyes?

I'm distracted from further contemplation of our little misunderstanding by an odd sound.

"What's that noise?" I demand.

He looks up at me for the first time, both startled by my rapid change of topic and alarmed at my tone. "I don't hear anything."

I'm frozen, staring into the trees. "There it is again. Turn off the music."

He grumbles something about it only being the best song ever but reaches to switch off the radio anyway. We sit quietly for a long time, listening intently. Is Jacob hearing what I'm hearing? That rustling in the trees? That strange, tuneless melody that reminds me of my failed attempt at playing the glockenspiel (aka xylophone) in an empty band room last year?

He's frowning, muscles taught. "All I hear are birds."

Birds. I'm hearing birds. And earlier, I had heard crickets.

"Never mind," I say. "It was just the birds."

I haven't heard birds or crickets in a long, long time.

"Geez, Bella, you scared me," Jacob said, mock-clutching his heart. "I thought I was going to have to leap to your defense against some weirdo stalker in the woods."

Huh.

I wish.

"To be clear," I say, picking up where we'd left off, "I trip all the time; don't take it personally."

"Okay," he says and turns back to his work to hide his sudden glow.

Message received.

Thanks to Jacob, my life is…better. Not great, not like before, but better.

Despite the fact that Edward remains stubbornly silent and non-present, I'm starting to feel like maybe this whole thing could blow over anyway. Look how great Bella is doing, even without the meds. Look how normal and social she's being. See how she hasn't mentioned Edward in weeks? There's no possible way that Bella has schizophrenia.

Charlie and Renee no longer watch me as closely or treat me as carefully as if they think I'm going to crumble to dust at the slightest pressure. Charlie stops trying to hide his smile when I tell him I'm off to the Black's. He no longer requires me to call in every hour. Renee has even been dropping hints about really missing her sunglasses.

Then, of course, I make a mistake.

I let my guard down around Dr. K. I've become so comfortable that I'm not as focused on our sessions, not listening as carefully to his questions, not giving him the answers he's expecting to hear.

One day, I'm telling Dr. K about Jacob. I'm prattling along about how well Jacob's bikes are progressing and how I'm learning more than I ever wanted to know about the anatomy of an engine and does he know that Jacob is like the Beatles?

That last part sorta slipped out.

Dr. K is startled. "Jacob is like the Beatles?"

"Yes."

"Do you categorize many of your friends as musical groups?"

I think about this for a second. "Just the male ones, I guess."

Alice would be a piccolo, so she doesn't count.

Dr. K's eyes are oddly bright. "And what is Edward?"

I sit very still. The dear doctor hasn't mentioned Edward in some time. Although he asked this question as casually as he does every question, something tells me that there's nothing casual about it.

If I were to answer, I would tell him that Edward is a complex classical piece in a minor key, a tangled web of sound that requires an umpteen number of iterations to even begin to decipher. And each time you listen, you hear something new, some small riff buried within the primary melody. You know that there's something there, some substance superseding your grasp.

But I know better than to tell him this.

"I don't know what Edward is," I hedge, hoping that he'll drop it.

He doesn't.

Instead, he sighs. "Bella," he says. There's a tone in his voice I haven't heard before. He sounds almost…bothered. As if to punctuate the gravity of his next statement, he removes his glasses. He looks weird without them, like he's an entirely different person. Or an alien.

"If you're not going to take our sessions seriously," he says, "there's not much I can do to help you."

I frown because, although I'm not taking therapy seriously, I've worked very hard to ensure my actions show otherwise. I do everything I'm asked. I complete the journal assignments I'm given. I answer all questions honestly, although not necessarily thoroughly.

Interpreting my frown correctly, Dr. K continues, "You're going through the motions, Bella. In fact, you're going through them so well that you have your parents fooled. They think you're doing better. They like the fact that you're hanging out with Jacob and that you don't spend all your time up in your room."

He leans forward. "But you and I, we know better, don't we?"

His question is the first snaking of fear into my stomach.

He says, "You just told me that you don't know what Edward is. Edward is, Bella. As in, present tense. As in, Edward exists."

The snake in my stomach starts swallowing my internal organs.

He says, "So my question for you is this: Are you taking this seriously, Bella? Are you taking your condition seriously?"

And I look into his earnest, alien gaze and want so badly to lie. Until now, no one has asked me this question point blank. No one has backed me into a corner and forced me to acknowledge the truth.

"No," I whisper.

Surprise flickers briefly on his face before his professionalism tamps it out.

"Why not?" he asks calmly.

"Because this is all a bit ridiculous."

"What is?"

"This whole thing, everything. It's all been made into this really huge deal. I don't exhibit a majority of the symptoms of schizophrenia. No one has even stopped for one second to consider that this might be something else."

"Like what?"

I open my mouth, but words run and hide. I don't have an answer. I still don't know what Edward is. I still don't know why he's watching me. I have all kinds of increasingly complicated theories, but none of them fits.

Dr. K. regards me with something that looks suspiciously like pity. At last, he says gently, "Bella, after talking with you the past several months, I'm more convinced than ever that you are exhibiting early onset schizophrenia."

He's referring to the fact that the symptoms of schizophrenia sometimes manifest themselves in later teenage years (i.e., right around my age).

"That doesn't make sense," I deny immediately, shaking my head. "I've felt Edward my whole life, not just recently."

"Have you?"

Silence stretches for a moment.

"Yes…" I'm confused, disoriented, not sure where he's going with this.

"Charlie recently told me that you started behaving differently after the incident in Port Angeles. A few months later, he first heard you talking to Edward in your room."

"What?"

Charlie has never said anything like this to me. Breathing has suddenly become difficult.

"He said that after Port Angeles, you became moody, stopped eating well, spent most of your time reading."

"That's right around the time I became a teenage girl," I splutter, as if that explains everything. "And I've always done a lot of reading."

"Charlie said he'd never once heard you talking to yourself before."

Before Port Angeles, he means.

Breathing has suddenly become impossible. Everything is crushing, bruising, grinding. I know where Dr. K is going with this. I know exactly where Dr. K is going with this.

Earlier, he'd postulated that I'd fabricated Edward as a way of coping with my mother leaving. Apparently, he's since come up with a revised hypothesis supported by new data from Charlie. Dr. K thinks that I fabricated Edward as a result of the trauma of Port Angeles.

Is that what I'd done?

Is it possible that this all started that evening in Port Angeles?

The summer before eighth grade, Alice and I had gone on one of those mixed-gender outings that were all the rage that summer, at least for the girls. The boys seemed to just endure it.

We had gone to watch a movie in Port Angeles, some action movie with motorcycles and explosions, the only way the girls had convinced the boys to go in the first place. After the show, we'd tumbled out of the theater to wait for Lauren's mom to come pick us up. Mike and Tyler promptly started to roughhouse in an awkward, gangly recreation of what they had just witnessed on the big screen.

The fight scenes in the movie had looked cool. Mike and Tyler did not.

Alice rolled her eyes at them and pulled on my arm until we were standing in front of a nearby dress shop a few blocks away. She proceeded to point out in excruciating detail why the particular cut or color of each prom dress was sorely lacking. She said that she would be wearing her own design for our prom and that she'd be honored if I'd let her dress me, too.

"Sapphire," she said, "to contrast perfectly with your dark hair and alabaster skin."

I smiled at her contextually—although not realistically—appropriate use of the word alabaster, which had been our favorite new word in the turn-of-the-century novels we'd taken to reading as of late.

Eventually, I realized that I could no longer hear The Mike and Tyler Show above the occasional car heading home for the night. The last thing I'd heard was one of them telling the other that he was going to blow his head off. I looked over, and there was no group from Forks waiting in front of the movie theater. There was no group from Forks anywhere down the street. There was no group from Forks anywhere, period. In fact, the street was starting to look uncomfortably empty.

Later, we would hear that Lauren's mom had miscounted the number of heads that piled into her van. To this day, I contend that Lauren might have "helped" her mom miscount. I contend this because, after we'd mopped up the spilt milk of this particular situation, Lauren had cried the hardest of all. And she had been abnormally nice to Alice and me for weeks afterward.

But right then, Lauren was nowhere to be seen.

"Alice," I said, at about the same time that a new voice spoke.

The voice said, "Well hello there, little ladies." Turning, we saw that the voice belonged to a man.

We didn't say "hello" back. We knew better than to talk to strangers. Particularly a stranger who was looking at us like we were something to eat.

Alice gripped my hand tightly, and we power-walked away from the guy.

Unfortunately, the guy had friends. And this guy and his friends were on the prowl. They were the hunters, and we were clearly their prey. Alice and ducked down a side alley, thinking that we could cut through and double back around to the well-lit streets in front of the movie theater.

We were wrong.

The side alley unhelpfully dead-ended into your stereotypical red brick wall. The guys followed us with the lazy swagger of predators who have their prey cornered. The guys were loud. The guys were rude. The guys had clearly downed one or twenty too many beers.

"C'mon, ladies!" the loudest and drunkest of them said, strutting forward. "We just want to show you a good time."

Something told me that their idea of a good time probably didn't mesh with that of an eighth grade girl's.

"Bella," Alice whimpered.

"Alice," I whimpered.

And then we gripped each other's hands harder and turned to face the strutting males. Everything after that was kind of a blur. The guys circled us, taunting us, teasing us, touching us.

I remember saying, "Don't touch me."

I remember Alice turning into a veritable hellcat beside me, biting one of their fingers when the guy didn't heed my warning.

I remember trying to punch another one in the face. I remember my scrawny little fist connecting with the guy's neck. I remember screaming for Edward.

And then I remember my punch sending the guy backward into his buddies, the force of his fall scattering them like bowling pins.

Then they danced.

I don't know how else to describe it. They kept trying to scramble to their feet and they kept knocking into each other and falling down and the wind kept gusting and my hair kept flying into my face.

When Charlie asked later, I told him it was because they were drunk. I didn't know how to explain the wind.

As the guys danced, a silver mini-van screeched to a stop at the curb in front of the alley.

"Get in the car, girls!" Lauren's mom bellowed, brandishing her pepper spray in one hand and her cell phone in the other.

When the cops arrived, the guys lay face-down in a puddle, unconscious. From what I heard, the Clallam county judge showed no mercy.

Edward's name didn't come up in the police questioning. No one asked if my friend had saved me, had saved us, so I just assumed that everyone knew.

Now, I'm not so sure my assumption was correct.

Did I imagine what had happened that night in Port Angeles? Was the event so traumatic to my pre-pubescent mind that I fabricated Edward as a magical savior who caused those guys to bumble and stumble, when in fact it was nothing but the magic of drink? Had I merely back-filled Edward into my life after my subconscious willed him into existence?

Dr. K clearly thinks so.

Me? I don't know what to think anymore. More than anything, I want to believe in an angel who found me by a creek. I want to believe that something has compelled him to watch over me my entire life. I want to believe that he's kept me safe.

I want to believe in Edward.

But Edward doesn't seem to want me to believe.

Dr. K says, "Renee asked me not to tell you this, but—given your skepticism about your situation—I think it best if you know the real reason why I'm fairly sure of your diagnosis."

I focus on breathing, in, out, in, out. Something tells me I'm not going to like this "real" reason.

"As you know, schizophrenia is a hereditary disease."

I do know this from my extensive research on the subject, but I had discounted the detail as irrelevant to my case.

Dr. K says, "Your family, you see, has a history of schizophrenia."

I frown because I can't think of anyone else in the family who…

Oh.

Oh no.

Nononononononono.

Why do I always know where he's going with this?

He goes, "Renee's mother, your Gran, also suffered from schizophrenia."

Mike Newton's review of this chapter: I would make an excellent Backstreet Boy. And I hear they're one man down.