I stared blankly at Alice and Jasper for a second. The next second, I doubled over in laughter.
"What?" Alice demanded stamping her foot and standing up.
"Oh wow!" I said, still laughing. "For a second—I almost—believed you—" I didn't have enough air to keep talking, laughter was using up all my oxygen. I gasped for breath.
"Jasmine, sweetie…" Jasper looked at Alice for a moment, shook his head, and sighed. "Jasmine, we weren't kidding."
"Well, of course you were, Jazz!" I said. "I gave up on make believe when I was little.
Alice shook her head, picked me up again, and sat me down on the couch.
"Jasmine, I was born in 1901. I was turned into a vampire because I was about to be killed. I had premonitions in my human life so I can see the future clearly now. I knew you were my niece, I knew where you were. I saw you in a vision so I went to Mississippi to get you. Jasmine, we're vampires."
I was dumbfounded. I knew this wasn't a joke anymore—not that it ever had been.
"But Nessie!" I screamed. "Nessie, Nessie is normal! Nessie's eyes are normal! They're brown! A perfectly normal, human brown! She can't be a vampire! Alice, you can't be a vampire! You're not evil! You're not bad! You're not a danger to me! You are not a vampire! You don't even have fangs! You—you went out in the day time, you weren't here sleeping in a coffin! Dinner the other day had garlic bread! You see, Jasper, Alice? You are not vampires! I know you don't turn into bats either!"
This time it was Alice and Jasper's turns to laugh. I couldn't believe the laugh attack they went into!
"What is so funny!?" I screamed.
"I'm—sorry—Jasmine," Alice stuttered through giggles.
"Yeah—just the thought of—vampires having fangs—and being afraid of garlic—and burning in the sun—is—preposterous!" Jasper exclaimed.
"And Renesmee is a…er…half vampire, Jasmine. Bella gave birth to her when she was still human. Oh, and Nessie is…three years old." Well, that one was unexpected. When the two finally stopped laughing, their expressions became serious.
"And as for not being dangerous, Jasmine, we are." I'd never seen Alice be so serious. "We are a large danger to you, Jasmine. I'm sorry I brought you into this life, I'm sorry I'm putting you in danger of the Volturi, I'm sorry your only options left in life are to be killed or to be damned to immortality!" Alice had started sobbing tearless again.
"The Volturi?" I asked. The name sounded familiar. "Volterra?" I asked.
"Yes," Jasper said putting his arm around Alice. "The Volturi are the closest thing our world has to a royal family. They keep the peace and keep the secret. When Bella found out about the vampire world, the Volturi threatened to kill her if she wasn't turned into a vampire. So here she is, three years later, frozen forever at eighteen. And, Jasmine, when the Volturi find out about you, they might not stay and chat. They might destroy us all and…um…drink from you."
I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I couldn't form a coherent sentence.
Alice's eyes darted from me to the door as if she was waiting for me to run, screaming as I go. I knew I probably should considering everything I'd just found out about my new family, but I wasn't afraid. Not of the Cullens, anyway. The Volturi I was a bit wary of.
"You're not afraid?" Alice said. It sounded like a question but I knew she wasn't asking me. She knew I wasn't afraid, at least now I knew how she knew.
"No," I said. "I'm not. I know you and your family are good, I know you're not bad. None of you would hurt me, I'm sure of that. I'm aware that you could if you wanted to, I suppose, but I don't think you do. I don't think you're the normal type of vampires. I'm sure of it."
"You're right, Jasmine," Jasper said. "We're not."
"We're vegetarians," Alice said. I saw her lips twitch but I didn't get the joke. "Our little inside joke. We only feed off of animals, no humans."
"No humans?" I asked.
"None at all."
I didn't say it out loud, but I felt my relief in the air.
"You're relieved," Jasper said.
"How'd you guess?" I meant it to be a rhetorical question.
"I have an extra ability, much like Alice does. I can sense and manipulate the emotions around me."
"Huh," I said. Suddenly I was very interested. "I wonder what my power will be when I become a vampire. I wonder what it'll feel like to be a vampire. Wait, does every vampire have an extra ability? I doubt it, I think you guys are special. Alice, you can see the future, can you tell me if I'll have a power or not? Oh and I wonder—"
"Jasmine," Alice interrupted, "you're not going to be a vampire. The Volturi doesn't know you know yet—trust me, I checked—so you have a chance to leave now. I think you'd like living with Charlie, Bella's father, maybe. He likes company."
"Alice," I started. "Alice, what do you mean I'm not going to become a vampire? Of course I am! I want to stay with you and Jasper! I love you both! I love Esme, Carlisle, Bella, Edward, Emmett, Nessie, even Rosalie! I love you all! I can't leave you! Why leave when I have the chance to stay with you forever?"
"Jasmine…" Alice argued. "Jasmine, I didn't choose this life. None of us did—well, Bella did, but she was dying when Edward turned her. Aside from Bella, none of us had another choice. We're all damned to this soulless eternal life. Oh, Edward always told me how it felt to have someone you loved wanting this life!" Alice wasn't talking to me anymore. "And I always thought it was so stupid of him not to just turn her already. Now that it's happening to me, I can't take it! I don't want this for you, Jasmine! I don't want you to be part of the living dead!" she spat the last word. "I want you to have a life, not this!"
"Alice, really, when the time came for you to tell me, did you honestly think I was going to not want this opportunity? That I wouldn't want to stay with you, Jazz, and the Cullens forever? Of course I do!"
Alice mumbled something and I couldn't exactly make out what it was. It sounded like something along the lines of: "I figured you'd be disgusted and run away to someone a lot less dangerous than us."
"Alice, you may be dangerous," I argued, "but I know you're not bad. None of you are. You're all good. I believe that, I believe that to the extent of my soul!"
The word 'soul' seemed to stab Alice in her stopped heart.
"That's just it, Jasmine! Don't you understand? I want you to keep your soul! I want you to keep your heart beating! I want you to keep your chance of going to heaven!"
"What are you talking about, Alice?" I asked. Alice was just shaking her head, so I turned to Jasper. "Jazz, what is she talking about?"
"Vampires are damned, soulless creatures, Jasmine. Neither Alice nor I want that for you. We want you to have a life not some terrible replacement!"
"What about the whole 'keep your chance of going to heaven' thing?"
"Vampires are things that shouldn't exist, Jasmine. We're all bad, we're all evil no matter how good we seem. What we are is evil. If there is an after life for our kind, it belongs in hell, not heaven."
"That. Is. Insane!" I screamed at him. "You—you—you and Alice are the nicest people I've ever met! How can either of you belong in hell, Jasper?! Carlisle, Esme, Edward, Bella, Renesmee, Emmett, Rosalie, you're all so kind and caring! And none of you belong in hell!"
"Maybe so," Alice said. "Maybe us, ourselves don't belong there. But, Jasmine, what we are can't belong in heaven. It just can't."
"Alice, let's just…let's just let this go. You can call the others, I'm fine. I'm not afraid of any of you." And it was true. I wasn't afraid of the Cullens, I simply was not afraid of my family.
"Carlisle, Esme." Alice called. Her voice was the volume of a normal conversation. Still, all the Cullens were in the house and standing behind the couch in a second. They were trying to keep their distance from me, I could tell.
"It's okay, everyone," I assured them. "I'm not afraid of you. I love you all too much." I smiled.
They all relaxed at that news. Rosalie sat down next to Alice and Emmett took the seat next to her. Bella sat down on the floor and rested her head on Alice's knee and Edward sat with one arm around her and Renesmee in her lap. Esme hugged me before she sat down on a chair she had dragged away from the computer and Carlisle stood behind her.
"Jasmine," Rosalie asked me. "Jasmine, do you have any questions?"
"Just a couple," I admitted. Renesmee stood up and sat next to me. She took my hand and squeezed it in encouragement.
"Where do you want to start?" she whispered. With all the questions that were formulating themselves in my head, I could tell that this was going to be a long, interesting night.
Author's Note: Ah yes, I finally figured out how to do this. So, I recently got a question from someone who wishes to remain anonymous (and I have no clue why) who knows me personally and knows how much music influences my life. She knows that music influences all my writing (poems and stories alike) so she wanted to know if there was a particular song I couldn't stop listening to while I wrote Jasmine's story. In fact there was. Dancing by Elisa was the only song I ever played while writing Jasmine's story from chapter 1-7. Not sure if it influenced the story or not, it might have subconciously. I did find myself, at one point, typing the lyrics to the song instead of words for the story in the middle of chapter 5. Listen to the song and let Elisa's voice take you into a different world, that's what it did for me. Also, someone else asked how far along I was going to go with the story (stand up, Nayeli, you know it was you) and, well, all I'm saying is that I'm so where /near/ the climax even. What's that? You thought Jasmine knowing that they were vampires /was/ the climax? How wrong you were. I'm no where near introducing the climax yet. Or maybe I am. Hey, you don't know me, I'm the craziest person that ever lived. The climax can and will come when you least expect it and I think the chapter name might give it away (yes, I already named the next four hundred chapters or so) And I promise that this will be the longest author's note I ever post...maybe...
You are made of Awesome
Until next time, April
