Disclaimer: I own nothing, it's all Stephanie Meyers. I don't own the show Hell's Kitchen either, but it's good.
Thank you all, as usual, for the reviews and Alert/Favorite Tags; they make me feel so good! I shall work extra hard to pump out as many chapters as fast as possible! Sorry this one was held up... computer errors. Here's chapter 4, hope you enjoy! It's in Bella'sPOV.
Chapter Four: Do You Know What Actually Happens?
BPOV
Last night, I had stayed awake until 10:36 PM, praying that Edward would show up. He never did. I felt hurt and sad, but of course, I still loved him. Nothing could ever change that.
However, I had a hard time falling asleep without the cold, hard rock lying next to me, so I had really only gotten about three hours of sleep in total. Rose and Alice were comforting presences, but nothing like Edward.
Today would be our first official day of Culinary Arts Camp. I was mildly excited, but... really! I had better things to be doing during my summer vacation! At least the Cullens were here with me.
"Bellaaaaa!" Alice shook me by the shoulders, dragging me over to her five, and I mean FIVE huge duffle bags, each a different color with her name embroidered on each one, and began sorting through the masses of designer clothing.
"Alice, I still cannot believe you brought all that stuff! You needed clothes for three weeks, not three years!" My eyes bulged out a bit, as I realized that she had even more clothing, in air-tight travel-size compact bags, buried within the many different skirts and shirts. She shrugged.
"Fashion is like air, Bella. You need to breath it, embrace it–"
"Trip on it?" Rosalie interrupted with a smirk, glancing at me playfully. We laughed. Rose and I were definitely on better terms, but she still had her dark sense of humor and snide remarks.
"Okay, people. Enough dawdling. We need to get dressed and head to Hell's Kitchen. I love that show..." Alice sighed happily, brusquely zoning out, but abruptly snapping back into reality and shoving a ready-made outfit into my arms with a change-or-you-won't-see-the-light-of-tomorrow look. I sighed, and sulked into the cramped bathroom to change.
As we made our way to the cooking hall around 7:00 AM, my stomach growled. I blushed, looking down, but asked, "Isn't there going to be some sort of breakfast?"
Alice chuckled, but then made a face. "Well, sort of. You'll get to...eat what you make, so to say. Ugh." I laughed at her expression, and was secretly relieved. I wonder what we'll be making?
"Omelettes and pancakes." Alice's clairvoyance had its uses, when it wasn't monitoring murderous hordes of vampires stalking Seattle, or anxiously observing Edward's suicide plans in Italy...
"Fabulous." Rose spat sarcastically, clearly not in a good mood. I couldn't blame her.
When we finally made it to the cooking hall, we found we were one of the last to arrive. Curse Alice and her sense of overbearing fashion. We spotted the boys almost right away.
"Edward!" I cried happily, making a beeline for him with my infuriating human speed. When I finally made it to his arms, I remembered last night. "Why didn't you come last night?" I pouted expectantly up at him, searching his expression for answers.
"Oh, just a little holdup, courtesy of my favorite sisters." He glared over my head at Alice and Rose, who had placed immaculate expressions of innocence on their faces.
"You were sleeping, Bella. A desperate, teenage vampire boy crouching pitifully under your window is not worth waking you up." Rose replied sweetly. However, due to Edward's angry huff, her thoughts must have been more descriptive. I blew it off, not wanting to waste any more time.
"We should go inside now, I'm starved. And I'm sure you all are practically dying to start cooking!" I laughed, taking Edward's hand and steering him towards the building, ignoring the unamused grumbles from behind me.
As soon as the double doors shut behind me, I was ambushed by Ms. Yapp, who was about a foot shorter than me and three times as wide. I would have been completely bowled over, if not for Edward, who yanked me to safety before I could crash to the floor.
"YOU ARE LATE!!!" She screeched angrily after steadying herself from her attempted assault. "NO ONE IS EVER LATE IN MY CAMP!!!" Her shouts echoed off the walls, and the already-assembled students behind her cowered into a corner. Edward growled threateningly, stiffening as if prepared to crouch down and attack.
"Calm down, people." I recognized Jasper's calm, tenor voice from behind us, along with the complementary wave of tranquility he sent. Everyone instantly relaxed, even our insane cooking counselor. She almost seemed dangerous for moment.
"Alrighty, children. Gather 'round the counter; we'll be making omelettes and pancakes today." Ms. Yapp's voice seemed detached and dreamy. I raised my eyebrow at Jasper, who shrugged and toned down the joy and tranquility.
Everyone gathered around a circular, granite-topped counter in the middle of the spacious kitchen. I noticed a large array of cooking utensils, such as spatulas and cleavers, hanging precariously on a pegged billboard on an opposite wall. I shuddered, thinking of all the kinds of damage I could do to myself with those things...
Ms. Yap briskly demonstrated how to mix pancake batter and flip the omelette, and then let us loose. Emmett still looked completely dubious.
The Cullens and I secluded ourselves to the back of the room, around an empty counter with pots and pans hanging high above it. I noticed in my peripheral vision a very frustrated Mike Newton and Jacob eyeing me up and probably plotting on how to separate me from Edward. I sighed inwardly. When would they accept I had chosen Edward? They were still my friends, but they needed to take a hint.
I turned my attention back to my own table. "Are you guys going to be alright with the cooking? If you need help, I suppose you can ask me." I grinned and then got set to work, measuring out flour, milk, sugar, salt, and all the other pancakey ingredients. The Cullens took my lead after a few moments of curiously observing me.
It went well, to my immense surprise. I guess that, even being held back by a lacking of taste and smell, that vampires are fast learners. They made the batter perfectly, stirring it with vampire speed when Edward said no one was watching, and had it creamily smooth and chunk-free in a matter of seconds. There went my ability to do something better than Edward. I was still mixing furiously.
But, of course, all things good must come to an end eventually.
It was Emmett. He had just gotten to the stage where he could pour it into the hot frying pan, when he put too much pressure on the glass mixing bowl and it broke apart, batter and pieces of bowl exploding onto everyone in a ten foot radius. Everyone froze, covered in pancake batter, and just stood, openmouthed, at Emmett. My bowl and whisk thunked to the floor, landing precariously, but thankfully not breaking or tipping over.
"Sorry?" He squeaked sheepishly, shakily setting down the remains of the bowl.
"EMMETT!!!" We all shrieked at the same time, wiping blobs of the sticky batter out of our eyes and hair. Edward and Jasper tackled Emmett to the ground, and began a wrestling fiasco that also happened to involve their wildly thrashing limbs to knock other bowls of batter onto the ground and onto other, less fortunate people.
Alice was busy coughing up a storm, with Rosalie thwacking her in the back repeatedly, as Alice had apparently had her mouth open too wide when Emmett blew up the pancake batter, and had swallowed some of the goop.
Among the wrestling, batter-covered boy vampires, and the coughing and thwacking girl vampires, I sat, stunned and dripping with gloppy pancake mixture, which was now starting to become rather dry and crusty. Then I snapped.
"ENOUGH!" I screamed, the heat flooding to my face. I grabbed the nearest pot I could find, and threw it into the melee of wrestling boys. I heard a loud thunk and knew I'd hit someone.
"Ow, Bella!" It was Jasper. He stopped fighting and immediately took in my furious features and pissed posture. I instantaneously felt an overwhelming tsunami of calm wash over me; I was powerless, and dropped to my knees in defeat. One knee sank into my dropped bowl of batter. Ugh. As if I needed more of that.
After my little outburst, things finally settled down. Edward once again took his place by my side, looking at his feet with shame. Emmett looked fearfully at Rose, who was glaring at him with what I could feel from here as the heat and fire of a thousand, white-hot suns. Ouch.
Jasper was preforming the Heimlich (A/N: spelling?) maneuver on Alice who, at last, hacked up a venomy glob of pancake batter. I looked away to stifle my nausea.
Because of the chaos of the exploding pancake mix, we hadn't noticed the increasing audience we had been attracting. Mike, Jacob, and the wolf pack were staring at us with especially perturbed expressions, contrasted to the strangers who knew nothing about us, but by now had probably labeled us as 'irrevocably insane'.
A very out of breath and enraged Ms. Yapp, with her poufy chef's hat bent out at an odd angle and her messy bun undone and flying wildly about like a mad scientist's, growled at us, gesturing to our very pancake-covered selves. She managed to puff out through her anger, "Back...cabins...return...one...hour...alternate...cooking...hall...punishment..." And then she fainted, falling backwards into a puddle of pancake goop.
Edward sighed despondently, "She requires all students to return to their cabins, clean up, return to the alternate cooking hall over there,"– He gestured towards outside–"in an hour, and there we shall receive our punishment." He gulped. The now terrified students nodded meekly, and hurriedly shuffled out the door. The wolves were last to go, and shot us looks of exasperation and mistrust, before also disappearing out the door.
"Well," I quipped, hoping to lighten the mood, whilst wiping a smear of pancake mix off of Edward's chin, "That could have gone better."
A chorus of "You think?"s was vexingly returned.
Alice wiped another smear of batter off of my arm. We had all agreed with the boys that we should get ourselves cleaned up as soon as possible, and then meet then at the rec room and spend our time there before being required to return to the extra cooking hall.
"This really honestly wasn't the best idea Carlisle's ever head, huh?" Alice was busy trying to make small talk with an extremely pissed off Rose, who was now probably going to ignore Emmett for the rest of the trip.
"No, it wasn't, Alice. Well, at least Emmett will win the ludicrous bet with Jasper." She sighed angrily.
Alice giggled nervously, "I wouldn't seem so sure of that, Rose. Jazz is planning some pretty crazy stuff." She shifted nervously, probably reminiscing her last 'dare' experience with Jasper.
Rose exhaled irately
"Go take a shower, someone. We should seriously wind down a bit." I attempted to calm down the tempest before it even got started.
"Is Edward's prudishness rubbing off on you now?" Alice teased weakly, but then complied my request and departed to take a shower.
"Alice can catch up to us." I turned to Rose, shrugging blasely and turning to head out the door of our decrepit and musty old cabin.
The wet ground squelched noisily beneath my feet from an unexpected bout of rainfall last night, my feet making shlurping noises each time I pulled my foot up to take a step. I soon heard Rosalie's almost-silent footfalls beside mine. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, just...silent. Rosalie seemed content to go at my human pace.
"Bella!" My shock of bronze hair called from the rec room porch, quickly jogging over and scooping me up bridal-style, giving me a passionate kiss. Our fingers braided themselves into each others' hair, clutching us closer to each other until...
"Get a room!" I broke away from Edward to glare at the offending Emmett, who goofily smiled, flashing all of his teeth.
"Yeah, well, that's coming from the guy who causes pancake mix to explode!" I snarled, still cross with his mistake. He sombered immediately after the reminder of his slip, and slouched to stand next to a furious and ignoring Rosalie.
And so, for the next half hour, we played pool (which I stunk at, and once ended up hitting Jasper in the eye with one of the balls) in the rec room.
With a glance at his watch, Edward called us to attention. "Time to go." We all groaned, but filed after him outside, only to find an approaching thunderstorm starting to darken the skies. Edward picked me up and ran the rest of the way, just to be safe.
This time, when we walked in through the double door, I was not attacked by a crazy old woman. Thank goodness. We managed to sneak past Ms. Yapp, who was busy forcefully chastising a group of kids with cupcake sprinkles scattered all over their hair. We gathered at the back of the kitchen, like last time.
Abruptly, everyone but me snapped their heads forward, and narrowed their eyes dangerously.
I, much more slowly, turned to see Jacob, with his pack not too far behind.
"I'm surprised you made it through the night, bloodsucker." Jacob sneered. I glared at him disapprovingly, but I was ignored, as Edward replied scathingly, baring his teeth,
"I'm surprised as well, mongrel, but I don't let it bother me." Cool, calm Edward was back.
Jacob shrugged indifferently, but suddenly got a subtle gleam in his eyes. "You up for a little competition, Cullen?" I assumed he was relaying the bet in his mind, because Edward suddenly stiffened, but retained a determined expression on his face.
"Don't do it Edward, it won't be worth it!" Alice warned gravely, probably already having seen the dire consequences.
Edward hesitated, not wanting to wound his pride by backing down, but obviously wary of what might happen.
"Scared, are we, leech?" Jacob taunted, blatantly enjoying the emotional pain he was causing Edward. That was the last straw. Edward straightened up, glaring at Jacob right square in the eye, and nodded determinedly. Jacob smirked excitedly and declared,
"Alright! The one to eat the most food in three minutes and successfully holds it down for as long as they can, wins."
Oh. No. "Edward!" I exclaimed, grabbing his hand in a pointless attempt at restraint, "That's by God the dumbest and most naive idea I have ever heard!"
He shrugged, but look down at me painfully. "Don't worry Bella, I'll make it through. Don't worry about me. I must defend my honor! I love you." This conversation was starting to sound suspiciously like one of those romantically gooey and cheesey soap operas. Oops, better turn down the heat. I glanced accusingly at Jasper, who put up his hands in surrender, before toning down the sorrow/lust emotion.
Jacob and Edward had assumed a "Texas/cowboy/showdown" pose, each facing each other about three yards away in a wide aisle between two long, rectangular counters. I could almost hear the southern 'showdown' music playing in the background. Emmett grabbed a banana from a nearby fruit bowl and sprinted over towards the tow enemies, who were also consequentially my best friend and fiancé at the same time.
Emmett raised his 'pistol'. "One, two, ready..." He started squeezing the fruit, "GO!" Mushy banana flew forcefully out of the peel, landing smack dab in the middle of Ms. Yapp's face, blinding her momentarily, her pudgy arms too fat to reach up and wipe her face. She toppled over after a moment, having slipped on the discarded peel Emmett had so carelessly thrown to the floor, and thrashed about for a while before giving up and laying there exhaustedly.
Edward made the first move, as he was quite faster than Jacob in his human form. He leaped to a plate of freshly-made croissants, shoving away the mortified teen cook, who looked like she had shed both sweat and blood to create them.
It was fascinating to watch Edward eat. He was shoving pieces of croissant into his mouth as fast as he could, grimacing each time he swallowed, but he had an air of elegance that was both charming and hilarious. The fact that Edward was shoveling human food into his mouth at top speed, making the most ridiculous of faces, and somehow, at the same time, acting as gentlemanly as if he were at a King's royal banquet, had me on the floor in hysterics in minutes.
Jacob, however, was a different story. Seconds after Edward had started massacring the croissants, he ran, bowling over a few people to get to a plate of bacon not far off. Because he wasn't hindered by the fact the human food didn't taste like dirt to him, he eagerly began devouring the bacon, cramming strip after strip into his furiously chewing mouth. It was rather impressive, although I did feel slightly nauseous after watching two of the most favorite men in my life become reduced to starving pigs within seconds.
"One minute, up!" Jasper declared, watching his brother with an expression of not only disgust, but admiration as well.
"EAT! EAT! CHEW! CHEW! SWALLOW! SWALLOW!" Emmett, Rosalie, and Alice had started up a raucous chant, pumping their fists into the air and stomping.
Edward had finished the pile of croissants and was looking around wildly for something else. He dashed towards a large bowl of scrambled eggs and started digging in, pieces of egg flying everywhere due to the speed at which he was eating. I was starting to get sick.
It definitely didn't help that Jacob was now busy gulping down a large vat of porridge, his pack members whooping and cheering him on wildly as stray rivers of oatmeal escaped the sides of the bowl, dripping to the linoleum floor. Ugh.
"Two minutes!"
The two were eating even more furiously now; Edward with a heaping pile of hash browns, and Jacob busy with a monster omelette. It was amazing how much they resembled what they were when they were eating with such intensity. Jacob looked like a rabid dog, quite literally foaming at the mouth, and Edward looked strikingly like a puma, crouched ferally over his pile of hash browns while feasting.
"Thirty seconds left!" Jasper announced over the guttural eating noises.
Finally, it seemed, Edward began to look strained. He shuddered violently before forcing himself to resume his less-than-satisfactory meal. Once there were only ten seconds left, he gave up, collapsing against a cabinet in defeat, while panting heavily.
"Nine! Eight!" Jasper counted down, "Seven!" Jacob shoved a last piece of omelette into his mouth, "Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! Aaaaand, ONE!" He whistled loudly.
Immediately, everyone gathered around their designated competitor, making sure they would be OK. They both seemed fine; Jacob full to bursting, but smugly triumphant, and Edward, completely at the end of his rope, but smiling gloatingly.
Suddenly, Edward began coughing. He lurched over and began retching horribly.
Emmett watched in sad silence, as the rest of the family backed up and the wolf pack looked over to see what the commotion was. He turned to me, as I watched my true love gag on the floor. "Do you know what actually happens? You know... when we eat..." He trailed off, but I understood.
I was stunned into silence, so I nodded fearfully. " Isn't there anything we can do?" I knew there wasn't, and that Edward would be OK, but I still hated seeing him an any kind of pain.
"Well…" Emmett began explaining to me the dynamics of what happens when a vampire gets indigestion, or, in other words, whenever they eat human food. "We can physically eat it, it goes down fine and won't choke us or clog us up, or anything." He grinned, but it was short-lived. "But, since our digestive systems were so drastically altered in the 'change', they lost the ability to properly digest human food. And so," He eyed Edward warily as he thrashed about, retching loudly, "There is no other choice but to cough it up. Our poor Edward here will probably be in this state for the next... hour or so, due to the amount of food he ate." Emmett shuddered.
"I told him not to do it..." Alice took on her I'm-a-psychic-you-really-should-know-better-by-now-not-to-oppose-me sort of expression as she sadly assessed Edward attempting to regurgitate his meal.
The wolves were now eyeing Edward with looks ranging from pity, to disgust. The other, human students had wisely fled the premises once Edward's gagging had intensified. I closed my eyes when Edward made one big heave and spit out a lump of hash browns. Eeeew! However, I knew he needed me and so I stayed, bravely comforting him while also avoiding the growing piles of various breakfast; a little scrambled egg here... a little croissant there... all with gobs of venom being spit up as well. It was a very messy business.
By the time it was 9:00 AM, we had successfully caused a pancake batter explosion in cooking hall 1, an unconcious camp counselor, an effective food tornado in cooking hall 2, and one vampire to regurgitate about three large meal's-worth of breakfast onto the floor at my feet.
A good time was had by all, if you ask me.
There! Another chapter done. Hope it was worth the wait. I also have a new story out called 'It Was A Long Ten Years', so check it out! It's a story about how Jacob decides to move to a town called Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, in hopes of turning over a new leaf. He had been mourning over the loss and rejection of Bella for the past ten years, and has finally decided to put his foot down. Unfortunately, the world is smaller than he thought. Which family of vampires do you think he encounters, possibly destroying his bright plans for the future and even the Cullens' (now plus Bella, ooh...drama) lives. I may not update it as often as CullenAry, because I enjoy CullenAry so much more.
Review! Constructive criticism welcome.
Preview of next chapter:
That was it. Jacob was going to pay.
Filled with new determination, I crept silently to Newton's bedside, and rummaged underneath his bed to find his toiletries bag. I searched quietly, picking precariously through deodorant sticks, toothpaste, and...condoms? I quickly dropped those with a shudder, and continued my foray.
And at last, I found my hypothetical Atlantis, holding it up in the moonlight to observe the information panel. Perfect. Jacob would never know what hit him. I cackled softly. AXE.
Oh no! Not the dreaded AXE!
VeggieVamp