A/N: Thank you, SecretlySeverus and Reamhar, for another super-illuminating beta job. As always, thank you to everyone who is sticking with this story, particularly those who take the time to review week after week. It's soooo much fun for me to hear how your thoughts on my story are developing…we still have a long way to go, and I hope you like the new installment. Yay for Stephanie Meyer letting me take you all on this wacky (and unprofitable) idea trip!

" "I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all?" " --Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

~Renesmee~

The fiasco of meeting Angela's mom did a lot for my social confidence. Angela was embarrassed; she assumed that her mom had shocked me, implying that she saw me as a nice girl from a family that behaved pretty normally.

Relieved of the worry that she'd think my parents were weird beyond belief, I nevertheless had a lot of freaky quirks left to worry about. Maybe my too-hot skin would make her think I was hiding a case of ebola, or maybe she'd find it bizarre that I never got paper cuts while reading. Then there was the minor detail of my having made up my whole life's story. My memory made it unlikely that she would catch me in a lie outright, but my anecdotes might ring fake like Edward's cheesy pseudorandom "sex hair."

The one thing I never really worried about was being a freak because of what I ate. Sure, I worried that I knew too little about human food, but not about the fact that I preferred to hunt live animals. Not until Angela showed up to our coffee date with two colors of post-its and a favor to ask.

Ninety minutes later, we're lounging on her bed skimming Quileute origin myths. Angela is skimming, rather, meaning that I can get away with speed-reading. As I read, I run my thumb along the slim plastic lip of the post-it holder, idly clipping it to the collar of my shirt instead of the cover of my book. The post-it holder feel like the official badge of a graduate student, a token that turns spying on people into something legit and scholarly.

Fingering the badge the way I've seen Charlie play with his, I pretend that I'm hungry but not starving, ignoring the mention of deer with a sniff that turns seamlessly up into disdain. But wait…the next story title is wafting something else up my nose. K'wa''iti kills the wolf chief. Hmm…better read this one carefully.

I unclip my post-it badge and let it hover about the page like a divining rod. A heroic predator should be marked with green; a villainous predator with red, thereby tiling the tribal stories with a foundation for Angela's thesis.

The story is pretty strange…I can't really make out the point, much less a colorable hero or villain. The wolf chief gets killed because he's hogging natural resources, but then the blue jays cry like they miss having him eat their eggs or something. All I know is that it sure is creepy when K'wa''iti puts on the wolf skin.

I settle for marking each instance of "wolf" with a post-it of its own, making sure to choose red at least a third of the time. Sneaking a glance at Angela, I'm relieved to see that she's used a lot of each color.

"What do you think is the answer, Ang? I mean, about whether they're villains."

She shrugs. "My undergrad adviser said you shouldn't write a thesis on something where you think you know the answers. You'll interpret things wrong, or get disappointed, or both."

"What do you think for yourself, I mean, if you don't know for sure about the Quileutes?"

"Well, I thought of this topic because my boyfriend's vegetarian. He's kind of self-righteous about it, and I go back and forth on how much to agree with him."

My ears prick up at the mention of the word 'vegetarian.' I think this is the first time I've heard it used un-ironically. "About vegetarians," I say, practicing nonchalance, "what would you think of a predator that tried to become one?"

"They'd be heroic for sure, right?"

"But what if they only wished they were vegetarian? Like, they'd die without eating meat, so they settle for killing less often or something. Eating stupider animals."

"Hmm, sounds different from being a vegetarian for real. The thing that gets me about Ben--he's a vegan, actually--is that he and his friends think that going partway is worthless. I mean, it would cut animal suffering in half if people ate half as much meat, but in his mind it's more of a good versus evil thing. Vegetarians are innocent and everyone else is guilty, period. So if a predator tried to be good, but it still had to hunt and kill things? Calling it a vegetarian would put it in the evil camp, for sure. Because you're saying that its nature is evil, and it can't ever give up that evil completely."

Angela frowns in sympathy with the expression on my face. I can tell she's trying to figure me out, and I hope I haven't said too much.

"I'm sorry," she says at last with a tentative little smile. "You must be pretty bored with helping me. I always seem to take on these huge, boring jobs, and my friends have to suffer for it. Did Bella ever tell you how many graduation invitations she addressed for me?"

"No…" I say, ashamed that Bella doesn't talk about humans she isn't related to.

"Oh, thank goodness." Angela shakes her head. "That was a worse job than this one, if you can believe it. I had a nice time talking to Bella, though." She smiles with a faraway look that makes me feel extremely young. "You know how it is when you're eighteen years old and boys are this bottomless mystery."

"You talked about Edward?" Remember the nonchalance, Nessie. "And, um Ben?"

She nods, "Jacob too, actually." I frown at her and jump when she claps a hand over her mouth. "Oh God! You know about Jacob and Bella, right?"

"Yeah Ang, I know." I don't tell her that, as a matter of fact, I've known for a whole twelve hours.

Jake might not have told me at all if I hadn't lost my temper in La Push. Who knew that a little self-righteous shouting could accomplish so much so fast? He left me several messages after we parted on the beach, but they sounded like messages from a boyfriend, not a warden. His wrongness and caddishness featured front and center and he never even mentioned my curfew.

He wanted to take me out on an apology date to the movies, but we ended up staying close to home. Normally movies are my favorite, but I wanted to walk in the woods just then. I'd spent the morning at the bookstore with Angela, reading about plant evolution, and I wanted to search for some of the plants I'd been studying, memorizing the nicest ones to show to Leah later. She's leaving, stupid, growled a voice at the back of my mind. You'll never get a chance to show her anything ever again. But the lazy whorls of leaves were just soothing enough to help me to keep that voice in check.

I thought about plants and Leah and--goddammit, focus on the plants!--while I walked arm in arm with Jake by the river on our property. It was nice to feel him pulling me back from the abyss of what I couldn't afford to feel.

"What did you do this morning?" I asked him, the abyss looming much too close for comfort.

"I went to see Leah, actually," he told me, grimacing and shaking his head. "You're right, Ness…I might not always get how Leah's mind works, but all that drama she causes…it definitely hurts her worse than anybody else. Quil and I were being A-holes for acting like she makes life hard for us on purpose. So I went and told her it's okay if she wants her privacy. We'll draw up a schedule and phase at different times; we're old enough that neither of us should have trouble sticking to the plan. She can go wherever she wants this way, try to move on again, you know?"

"What did she say?" I asked with a dry mouth.

He shrugged. "Didn't deny that she wanted privacy. But I might've reconsidered the plan if I knew she wanted to go back to the Yukon. I'm sorta helping Leah get out of town again, and Sue's gonna kill me when she finds out."

He was starting to make me feel queasy, and I knew we needed to change the subject. Luckily, Jake was thinking along similar lines, not having gotten to the topic that he was working up the nerve to bring up. "I really need to thank you for being honest with me and calling me out when I was wrong. That must have taken a lot of courage."

I wrinkled my nose at the idea that I'd been brave. The outburst had felt inevitable, a simple Newtonian reaction to his action. But his words and his voice sounded so nice and reverent that I couldn't protest out loud.

"I've been a scared-y-cat compared to you, Ness," he went on, "and I feel like crap about it now. I wanna tell you some things that I've been scared to have you know…you shouldn't have to hear them from someone else later, so I'm just gonna tell you now, okay?"

Now that I'm face to face with Angela's horror at nearly having said too much, I wouldn't put it past Alice to have spurred Jake on with some kind of warning. At the time I just nodded, my thinking drowned out by the pounding of my heart.

"It's not really that big a deal," Jake hedged, dashing my hopes of striking gold. "See, your mom and I had kind of a thing back in high school. Just for a few months, when she was broken up with your dad."

Huh. This is pretty random. "What do you mean, a 'thing'?"

"She loved me; I loved her; she loved your dad more. Awkward as hell at their wedding, but things were fine by the time you were born."

"Um, wow. Okay."

After a bit of a pause, Jake's voice came back with a tinge of panic. "Please, Ness, tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking…eww?"

"Look at it this way. At least your bf's only old flame is happily off the market."

"Jake, um, I'm glad you told me, but…eww?" Nonchalance, Nessie, nonchalance, I screamed to myself, hoping a cool reaction would encourage future confessions. I was grateful that he looked like he wouldn't mind at all if I changed the subject straightaway.

"When is Leah going back to Canada?"

"In two days. I'm dropping her off at the bus stop."

Jake's confession weirded me out enough that I headed to my own room that night. He looked like a hurt puppy dog when I wished him sweet dreams, and I hoped I could get over this soon.

I burrowed under my covers with Anna Karenina, desperate to get lost in its labyrinthine plot. By morning, the pages were rumpled beneath my cheek. My neck hurt like a bitch, but at least I hadn't dreamed about Jake kissing Bella.

Trying to remember what I had dreamed about, I got quickly snarled up in familiar Russian names. My unconscious had carved up the plot of the novel and made a few mistakes trying to put it back together, Anna falling in love with Kitty instead of with Vronsky and not dying at the end like she was supposed to. Someone else had died in her place, weirdly enough: Levin, the guy who's supposed to live happily ever after. Marrying Kitty after trying and failing to court her two older sisters.

I tried to remember how Kitty had felt about accepting a guy her sisters had rejected. She seemed too proud to mention it, even to the narrator, which definitely meant that it bugged her. Still, it didn't escape me that she'd gotten everything she ever wanted while her sister ended up cheated on and Anna ended up dead.

Maybe Bella's "being friends with Jacob" was the best thing she could have done for me, preparing Jake to be my perfect match before I was even born. She knows that we're made for each other because she was the one doing the making, letting Jake crave her flesh and blood and creating me to satisfy that need.

But she could have just taken him for herself, an inner voice nagged, backing the rest of my mind into a corner. Instead, Bella had chosen to renounce her family and her species. She'd given up sunlight, the taste of ice cream, and, as far as she knew, motherhood…none of it could make up the difference between Jake and Edward, in her mind.

I am one of the things that could never compete with her love for her husband. Is that why she thinks that the man she rejected is good enough for me? I've had twelve whole hours to get used to what Jake told me, but part of me is still thrown enough to want to pack a bag and take off. A certain greyhound that's leaving in two days' time could put thousands of miles between me and Bella's schemes, taking me up north to a new country full of new experiences and…yes, new feelings. Feelings that I can't possibly ignore any longer.

I still can't believe that my mother, of all people, was once in love with two people at once. As jarring as that is, it makes it easy to believe that the same thing has somehow happened to me. Jacob is a part of me, but Leah sets me on fire, and I can't process how much it'll hurt if she leaves me behind for good. I'll never feel this again, and I'm not ready for it to be over, not so soon.

I called Angela this morning because I had to have a distraction. I had to stop thinking about Leah because I can't let that part of me win. Last time we saw each other, we agreed without words that we're stronger than the force we feel between us. We both love Jake desperately, and we could never do anything to hurt him.

My family would never be the same again if I decided to break Jacob's heart; it would be no different from what Bella did when she left Renee and Charlie for Edward. I'd probably hate myself like Anna did when adultery got her son and her whole world taken away from her. I decided where I stood on love before the funeral when my head was clear, and I will not be a hypocrite now that things are getting complicated. I will not get stuck in the trap of vegetarian vampire ethics, beating myself up for being an evil, evil creature and taking that as license to indulge in a few choice 'slip-ups.'

A cool hand on my arm reminds me that I'm still in Angela's room, probably doing a good impression of Edward looking tortured.

"Nessie, talk to me. Are you okay?" She asks with a tremor in her voice. "I'm usually more discreet, I promise. It slipped out; I don't know what I was thinking."

"Ange, it's okay, I don't want you to be all careful with me." My voice is shaky too, but hopefully tells her I mean what I'm saying.

"Alright," she says doubtfully. "You gave me a bit of déjà vu just now…I always worried about saying the wrong things in front of Bella when we hung out. She and Edward were really private about their relationship, and it was hard not to make her uncomfortable while everyone talked about what they were doing after high school. I thought they might grow out of it, but they seemed more guarded than ever at the funeral, like they preferred didn't want to talk about the last six years at all."

"I don't want to be like that, Ange, I promise. Bella and Edward do really like their privacy, and it's a pain in the butt for me to, you know, make sure I don't say anything they wouldn't want me to say."

Angela's face softens a little, making me think that my deflection is working. It would be awesome if I could get away with blaming my evasiveness on other people's secrets.

"See, Jake told me about his thing with Bella in high school, but I don't really know what to make of it." My stomach lurches with shame, and I realize I don't want to talk about this, not even with Angela. "It weirded me out a little, but it also made me feel like there are worse things Jake doesn't know about me." Okay, this started out as a defection and got confessional really fast. I lean forward, preparing to whisper something I've never said out loud before. "Like, I'm starting to think that I, um, like girls, and I don't know how big of a problem that is." To my surprise, I feel a weight lift off my shoulders. Angela and I now share a secret of our own, a counterweight to all the things I'm not allowed to tell her.

"Like, you only like girls? That sounds like a pretty big problem, potentially…"

"No, um, I think I like both. Some people like both, right?" I probably sound like such a small-town girl, but it isn't like the vampire world has much of a sexual counterculture. All of my knowledge about girls liking girls comes from a few quick Google searches that I purged from my browser history at once.

"As long as you like both, it shouldn't be a bit deal, right? Don't some guys find that--" She turns crimson. "--sexy?"

"Hmm, no idea about the sexy part. I'm just afraid he'll get the wrong idea if I say something right after getting with him, you know? Like, being with him is making me realize that I want something else?" Voicing that idea makes my stomach flip, and I pinch the side of my knee to punish my body for the reaction.

"I'm not sure that hiding it from him is the way to keep him from being insecure. If a guy starts thinking that you're trying to spare his feelings, he'll make up his own reasons to be insecure, worse reasons than what you're trying to hide."

"Yeah." I'm quickly losing my enthusiasm for this topic. "I should get going." I grab my bag and follow through before I can read to much into the new concern on Angela's face.

It's only mid-afternoon when I get home. Hours and hours before I can attempt to sleep and forget. Thank God for the huge stack of must-reads Angela lent me.

"Sweetheart, you're home," calls Bella from the cottage garden, straightening up and walking slowly toward me. "Did you have fun at Angela's house?"

"Hi Mom. Yeah, it was great," I say as I hug her, trying to spruce up my voice a bit.

Before I can head inside, Edward purposefully exits the house. "Hello, love," he tells me, kissing my cheeks and slipping an arm around Bella's waist. They're standing squarely between me and the door, Edward looking tenderly down at Bella. Stern encouragement is shining through the sweetness in his eyes, and I brace myself for what they've apparently been planning.

"Renesmee, honey," Bella addresses the floor. I was certainly much closer to the floor in stature the last time anyone called me that name. "I was wondering-- um, your father and I thought that you might want to talk about what Jake told you yesterday."

Oh Christ, no.

"Uh, thanks for offering, Mom, Dad, but I'm good." I am a bit pissed that they hid this from me for so long, but calling them out would involve mentioning what, in fact, they hid from me, something I absolutely refuse to do. It's humiliating enough that I failed at nonchalant thoughts and Edward is now looking sorry for me.

"Glad to hear that you're 'good,' sweetie," Bella addresses my knees, "but Jake is afraid that you're upset with him, so I thought…you might want to talk," she repeats lamely.

"I'm not mad at Jake, Mom. I'm going with him to the bus station tomorrow, remember?" So does she actually care whether I am, in fact, upset, or just about the effect my feelings might have on her precious little plans? "Honestly, it's not a big deal."

There is one jab I think I can deliver without losing more pride. "I like the way Jake is starting to tell me important things, you know? It's a brand new feeling, having someone love me enough to do that."

Edward takes a second to cradle Bella's cheek, wiping an invisible tear from her lashes. When he speaks, it's to me, though he only turns partly away from her.

"Darling, I'm glad that Jacob is showing you a new kind of love. When you're a mother someday, you're going to discover still more kinds of love. Until then, please trust that you are everything to your mother and me. Don't you see that we were right to keep this from you until you were ready to understand?"

Edward doesn't seem eager to stir up the ghost of his wife's love for Jacob, but I have no way of knowing how long his reluctance will hold out. A couple of smiley excuses later, I'm shut up in my room gripping a book for dear life. For the sake of both the wolves I love, I must forget the one I cannot have.

A/N: I wanted to spend a little quality time with each of my heroines alone again, as it's hard for them to reflect on things when they're busy dazzling each other :-p We all need to rest up and get ready for the drama of the next time they meet. Please review if you liked, got confused, or just want to say hi!