CHAPTER 9
Nudge POV
Although I had said I was going to play with Renesme, I needed to have some time to play with my power. I flew out to a large tree that over looked the river in the Cullen's back yard. I had spent a lot of time here before I was strong enough to talk to my friends.
I reached back into the depths of my mind, and quickly found what I was looking for. Pulling open Angel's past, I began scanning backwards, searching for the last time she was with her parents. She was only two months old when she was given up. Her mother didn't even seem concerned, she and Angel's father had just taken the money and left, never looking back. Max had been a better mother for Angel than her real parents would have.
I needed to try again, another flock member. One of them had to have a happy story. We now already knew Angel, Gazzy, Max, and Iggy's past. Next Fang. I had tried looking at his past earlier; that was when I ran across the whole valium and cave thing. I shuddered, and decided to work backwards – or forwards – and start at page one of his past. Awwww, he was cute as a baby, and his mom looked nice. Hmm, apparently she did know he lived, unlike what Angel had heard. But she never saw him. Apparently she had known she wouldn't be able to raise him properly, and had put him up for adoption. She had decided she didn't want to see him. She thought it might make it harder to let him go. It was probably a good thing she didn't look, too. She may have noticed the wings.
Searching even farther into the past, I discovered her name was Jennifer Charel. She was nice, like Max had thought she may be. Then I started scanning into her future. I had to fling my arms around the tree trunk to keep from falling. Shaking, I carefully I reread the past more slowly. She had decided she wanted to see Fang a few years later. She had tried to get the address, but couldn't find any. Getting suspicious, she had done some research, and when she found out about the school she understood even less. She had demanded to see Fang, but they wouldn't let her. And she was going to take action. So the school killed her. Her book ended at chapter 20.
By now I was hyperventilating, my fingers digging marks into the tree. The school had taken away everything from all of them. Iggy's parent's would have never had a story to sell if the school hadn't given Iggy the story of a freak, Fang would have had mom if the school hadn't killed her, Max would have had a perfect childhood if it hadn't been taken away, and Angel and Gazzy's parent wouldn't have had a place to sell them, so maybe they would have raised them and loved them. What would I do? I couldn't tell this to them, it would break their hearts. But would it be any better to keep it a secret? My brain swirled away into thought, every idea contradicted by the next. Finally I couldn't take it; my head felt like it would burst. I threw open a random Cullen's book, desperate to escape from my reality to theirs.
Vampire's limbs were torn from one another, pieces strewn across a desolate plain. A large fire was burning brightly in the center of the fight, and occasionally an arm that was dragging itself towards its body would be thrown in. But the story focused on a single vampire, who I recognized as Jasper, looking just the same as he would over a century later. He was clearly the best fighter, and by the color of his eyes, the oldest. Most of the other vampires were only a little older than me, our eyes both nearly the same shade of burning scarlet. I winced as I "saw" Jasper's arm being torn off by another vampire. Another took advantage of his weakness, and tore off a hunk of his side. With his good hand he held his side on, and it mended. Managing to lose the two vamps' he found his arm in a pile of pieces and reapplied that too. Then he ran back into the war as if nothing had happened.
I pulled myself out of his past, breathing heavily. It was like I was reading a real book, like it was all an exciting story and not real. I was curious to read on. It took me only ten minutes to scan all of the Cullen's past, my improved brain being able to process years of their lives in seconds. None of the stories cheered me up though. One had accidently been turned into a creature his own father would have killed, one nearly died of the Spanish influenza, one's child died, then they attempted suicide, one was beaten, and had a the only future she wanted taken away from her to save her life, one was created to fight in a vampire war, and one was placed into an insane asylum by her own parents.
These weren't just interesting books, they were lives. Each story was a someone, or a something, and they had to be there for all of it. In the long scheme, I was just another book, and like every other, mine would have a beginning, pages, chapters, and an ending.
My story! I had read everyone else's, but had completely forgotten my own. Moving so fast that, had it been real, I would have ripped some pages clean out of the spine, I flipped to my first days. My parents were arguing over what to name me, but not really arguing just discussing. My mom looked like me, and had my curly hair. Mom (look, I'm already calling her 'mom'!) wanted to name me Monique, but my dad wanted to name me Aliza. They were still talking, and were starting to lean towards Monique, when a nurse came in, her expression as good as a neon 'bad news' sign on her forehead.
"I'm terribly sorry. I-I don't know what to say. She didn't make it. There was a heart problem, nothing could be done. I'm so sorry."
Mom had tears streaming down her face, and dad was comforting her, his eyes wet too. Now following the pages of their book, I skimmed through the next year. I saw the house when they returned home. They had covered it with baby stuff; there was a room I would have had, complete with crib and mobile, and they had the house toddler proofed, with little padded sticker things on the counter corners and safety things over the electrical outlets. The rare times they talked about me, they referred to me as Monique. It made them sad just to think about me though, they cried often. But after a year they started to get over it. Then after two years my mom had my brother. He lived. They named him Calvin. He had mom's dark hair, but otherwise looked like me. He got my mobile.
Three more years passed, and Calvin and I got a sister. They thought about giving her the name Monique. I hate to say it, but I was happy to see my mom burst into tears at the name. She had really loved me, like a mom. They ended up naming her Aliza. And they were all alive now, and happy. I was in the past. Calvin was in 8th grade, and flunking science. Aliza was ten. She looked just like I did five years ago, minus the wings.
I was crazy jealous. They got my life. Instead of that frilly pink crib, I had gotten a dog crate.
What could I tell the flock about all of this? 'Oh, I'm sorry, your parents are all dead or jerks, but I've got wonderful parents and two nice siblings.' Although it wasn't exactly like that. So what if I had the greatest parents in the entire world? I was a mutant vampire. Not exactly the cute little daughter they always wanted. Besides, I couldn't control myself enough to be near them, I was barely able to handle the flock, and they didn't contain 100% human blood.
An idea / question sprung to mind, and I quickly flipped to page one of my past. My real birthday was in two days. Smiling, I tried to hold onto that one happy thought, and let everything else that had happened in the past 15 minutes slide away.
Jasper POV
I held my head and groaned, glad vampires couldn't get headaches. Nudge's emotions were going haywire, switching from excited to angry to defensive to hopeful to happy to sad to furious to defiant to a little bit insane to scared to curious…. And it went on and on. And on. After about five more minutes, the change abruptly stopped, and settled on happy. Then I noticed the emotion in the living room; Edward changing from reflecting Nudge's emotion to… Mischievous?
"Wha-?" I was asking, but was interrupted by Angel running into the room.
"Did you just sa- think that Nudge's real B-days in two days? Your right, we need to celebrate. I've got to go tell the flock! We need presents!" And she was out of the room again.
"It's been a really weird two weeks," Edward sighed.
I nodded in agreement, then winced visibly as every emotion in the house switched to excited.
"It may get weirder."
