Chapter 9
I stared at the two of them in shock, Alice frozen in surprise, halfway around the corner of the house, Nessie standing above me, looking down anxiously. I could see Alice around Nessie's leg. She stood there, sparkling, like there were tiny diamonds embedded in her skin, throwing rainbows onto the side of the yellow house. My head snapped up to focus on Nessie's face. The sun was now almost directly above Nessie's head, and all I could see of her was a silhouette against the bright sky behind her. Impossible to make out her face. But it was still easy to tell the one thing that mattered. Nessie was glowing. I could see that, even with the sun shining brilliantly around her. Glowing.
I would have stumbled backwards, but I was still seated on the blanket, the still-damp-from-the-rain grass soaking through the fabric. Instead my body seemed to be going into overdrive, my heart pumping blood through my body like my life depended on it -- which it did, but that wasn't what I was concentrating on at that particular moment -- and the rest of my body frozen, like Han Solo in the carbonite or whatever it was. I remembered Dad making me watch all the Star Wars movies with him and Kit six years ago. My brain wasn't functioning properly. I couldn't seem to think of anything but a stupid sci-fi movie and that I was immensely glad that Raynee and Dad were at work, Kit at basketball practice and the twins at some new friend's house.
I was still just kind of sitting there, a bump on a log. With eyes. Eyes that were still staring at a glowing Nessie and a sparkling Alice, wondering what the hell was going on. My mouth couldn't seem to form the words to ask it out loud.
"Paisley?" asked Nessie.
I couldn't do anything. I knew that she was talking to me, trying to get me to respond. I didn't move a muscle. I was vaguely aware that Alice had moved in about a millisecond from the corner of the house to a posititon right beside Nessie. Alice was tugging on Nessie's arm, her mouth moving quickly. I wasn't sure if I just couldn't hear her or if she wasn't actually saying anything. The only words that got through to me were the ones that Nessie whispered frantically to me before finally allowing Alice to pull her away.
"You can't tell anybody," she whispered, and then the two of them were gone. I heard a screech of tires that echoed off the trees around the cul-de-sac and then there was silence.
I sat there, still frozen in shock, for God knows how long. I was brought back to life when I heard the garage door opening. I looked around quickly and gathered up the books, the blanket, and the two glasses of lemonade, one empty, one full. I raced inside, spilling Nessie's lemonade all over the stone patio, and checked the clock. 5:28 PM. Nessie wasn't due to leave for another half hour.
"Hi," grunted Dad, carrying in about six full grocery bags at once. "Where's Nessie?"
For a moment there, I thought about telling him everything I'd seen. Then I remembered the desperate look on Nessie's face. You can't tell anybody, she'd said.
"Sick," I lied quickly. "She left school at lunch. Esme came to pick her up..." I trailed off. Overkill, I told myself. Don't give him too much information. "Stomachache," I managed. "Sore throat." Shut up now, I thought.
Fortunately, Dad seemed to take my word for it. He wordlessly started to unload the groceries, packing milk and eggs and sandwich meat into the fridge. I mumbled something about having a lot of homework and shut myself into my room before opening my laptop.
kateluvsthesun: U haven't been on in a while. What's up?
My fingers rested on the keys. I tried to think of what to say. My new friend glows in the sunlight? Her adoptive sister sparkles? What do I say?
paisley23: Not much. U?
kateluvsthesun: Cold. Rain. Yuck.
paisley23: Looking forward to Christmas?
kateluvsthesun: Three more weeks 2 go! I'm soooo excited! I mailed ur present yesterday!
Crap. Presents. What do I do now? Something so simple, yet it seemed like my life was falling apart around me. Just because I forgot to get Kate a present.
paisley23: Dang, I g2g. Talk 2 u later!
kateluvsthesun: Bye! Luv u! xoxoxo 3
I signed off and just kind of sat there, wondering what I could mail to Kate.
There was a knock on my door and then Kit peeked in. "Where's Nessie?" she asked.
"Sick."
"But she was at school," Kit said confusedly.
I gave her a look that said shut up now. "She went home at lunch. Stomachache. Sore throat."
"But I saw her after third block," protested Kit, not taking the hint. She never read my face properly, she could never tell what I was trying to tell her telepathically.
"Kit, she was sick, she went home at lunch," I said forcefully. "Go away."
Kit looked hurt. She stood there for a minute before backing out of my room. A moment later, I heard her climbing the stairs. I made myself comfortable on my bed and got out my Social Studies homework, a stupid green worksheet that took about five minutes to fill in. Then I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the ceiling until dinner.
It was hard to fall asleep that night. I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep, but woke up several times during the night. When it was finally light outside, I practically leapt out of bed and let the two hours of sleep I'd actually gotten energize me enough to get me ready for school. It was Friday. Early dismissal. Thank God. Nessie wasn't coming over today. She never came over on Fridays.
While I wolfed down my cereal, I thought about the Cullens. I supposed I was another step closer to figuring out their secret. Raynee entered the kitchen and commented, as she did every day, on my milk-less cereal. I never poured milk over my cereal. The Frosted Flakes or Cheerios -- today it was Cheerios -- got all soggy, and it was disgusting. I finished my cereal and gulped down an entire glass of milk in less than ten seconds, then rushed out of the room to grab my clothes from my room and beat Kit to the shower upstairs. I'd just stepped under the warm water when I heard Kit pounding on the door, hollering that she had to go pee and could I hurry up. I shouted back that there was a bathroom downstairs, and she screeched something unintelligible at me through the door, and then Dad was shouting from his room that since this was the first day in two weeks that he didn't have to work at nine o'clock in the morning, could the both of us please shut up or he would knock our heads together. Then Chase and Jadin were up and yelling and Dad was shouting that Raynee was taking them to school today and Raynee was screaming that she didn't want to drive them anywhere and she had a spare first block and she was counting on being able to watch some TV show before she went to school.
Welcome to my mornings.
Of course, in the end, Raynee was shoving the twins into the station wagon and racing away down the street with Dad mumbling that he hoped she'd drive safely. Kit had kicked me out of the bathroom the second I got out of the shower, and I'd been forced to wander around wrapped in a towel until Dad got a screwdriver and busted the bathroom lock so that I could get my clothes off the counter.
I finally rushed into English class late, and Miss Hooper glanced up from her book. The class was still doing silent reading -- or, rather, half the class was reading and the other half was throwing crumpled-up balls of paper across the room and Miss Hooper was pretending not to notice -- and nobody seemed to notice me except for Crystal Schneider, who looked up and glared at me for interrupting her ever-so-important daily reading of whatever ever-so-important book she was reading.
Once during the lesson I turned around to look at Nessie, but she wasn't there. In Social Studies, her desk sat beside me, empty. Kit was eating with her new friends from the junior girls' basketball team, so I went alone to the bottom of the stairs by the lockers in the area nicknamed "the Dungeon." The floor was spotlessly clean and the Cullens were nowhere in sight.
On Monday, the same thing happened. The day after that, I arrived at English to find Nessie sitting at her desk, staring blankly at her book. I dropped my bags off at my desk and hopped onto the desk beside Nessie's.
"Hey," I said quietly.
She glanced up at me. "You didn't tell anyone, did you?" she whispered nervously. I shook my head and she relaxed visibly.
"Are you going to tell me?" I asked hopefully.
Nessie looked at me. "I don't know," she said. "The rest of them are still discussing. Be patient, Paisley. Rose is pretty determined that you shouldn't know, but we don't know anyone that's able to make it so you never saw it, so... I've probably already said too much." She wouldn't say another word about it for the whole day.
Then Wednesday came. "They've decided," said Nessie when I came into class. "We're going to tell you everything. Can you stay for a bit after school? I'd ask you to come to my house, but I don't know if you'll want anything to do with us after we tell you."
I swallowed and nodded. "Dad won't be home until five thirty or so," I said.
And so after school, I waved goodbye to Kit, saying that I'd forgotten my textbook in my Social Studies classroom. She offered to come back with me, but I told her to go on ahead and I'd see her at home, and she left me behind without a second thought. I rushed down to the Dungeon to meet Nessie and her family. They were all there, waiting for me.
Wordlessly, Nessie beckoned for me to follow them and we all went outside. I followed them down across the track and the soccer field and the other side of the track, and then down the thin path into the little forest beyond that. After about a minute, we stopped in a small clearing. Out of the trees appeared two forms that, when they came closer, appeared to be Esme and a tall, blond man who could only be Carlisle. The Cullens arranged themselves into a sort of loose circle around the edges of the clearing, with me beside Nessie and Jacob beside her and everyone else slightly further away from us than they were from their family members. I felt like I was going to take part in some kind of ceremony. Carlisle glanced at Edward, some kind of unspoken question in his golden eyes, those eyes just like the rest of his adopted family. Edward looked from Alice to Rosalie. Alice's eyes seemed to glaze over, like a window with the curtain drawn shut behind it, and Rosalie cocked her head to one side and looked intently at the trees, as though she were listening for something. Then the both of them gave Edward a tiny nod and Edward passed the nod onto Carlisle. I watched all of this curiously, trying to figure out what was going on. Then Carlisle spoke. I assumed that it was him who was going to tell me because he was the head of the family.
"Paisley," he said. His voice was smooth and oddly formal. "I'm Doctor Carlisle Cullen. I don't know if Renesmee has mentioned me."
Nessie nodded beside me and Jacob slipped a muscular, dark-skinned arm around her shoulders.
"Before we tell you anything, you're going to have to promise that you won't tell anyone, even if you don't want anything to do with us anymore," continued Carlisle, glancing at Rosalie.
Rosalie's face was stony and when she spoke, her voice was cold. She tossed her long blonde hair out of her face. "If you tell anyone, it could ruin everything for us," she told me. "We've got nowhere left to go after here, not for a long time."
I swallowed and got the feeling that they'd all somehow heard it. "I promise," I whispered.
Nessie took a deep breath and turned away from the rest of her family to face me. "I'm supposed to tell you," she said, and I glanced back to the rest of them, but they were gone. The only thing that gave away the fact that they had been there was the grass at the edge of the path, springing back up to hide the footprint that rested there. My gut was telling me that they weren't gone, not really. "You probably know that we aren't normal," said Nessie, drawing my attention back to her. Jacob was gone, too, I realized. "Got any guesses?" She smiled weakly. I just shook my head. "It'd be kind of hard to guess," she said. "I mean, we're not exactly like what we are, really. Did that make any sense?"
I shook my head again.
Nessie bit her lip. "Here goes," she said, looking up at the tiny bit of gray sky that we could see through the treetops. She looked back to me and there was this pause where I felt my stomach dropping to my feet in preparation for whatever she was about to say. "We're... Oh, God..." There was another silence and I wanted to shout at her to hurry up and say it already. Then she opened her mouth and finally said it. "We're vampires."
"Vampires?" I said, wondering if she was pulling my leg.
She nodded. "Vampires."
I breathed out a shaky breath, trying to get the thought through my head. "Vampires. What about all the myths?"
"See, that's what I was saying before," she said, obviously relieved that I wasn't waving a clove of garlic in her face or something. "We're not exactly the kind of vampires that you hear about in all the myths. We don't burn in the sun. Wood doesn't kill us. Garlic and crosses have no effect at all." She turned around. "You guys can come out now," she said loudly.
Alice was the first to appear. "I don't see this going over too well," she said warningly.
Nessie frowned. "But she's fine," she objected.
Alice shook her head. "She's fine now. Wait a minute."
Edward and Bella emerged from the trees, holding hands. Bella looked worried. "She's not going to tell people, is she?"
Edward shook his head. "No. She's just going to... freak out a little. She'll get used to the idea. Alice saw it," he assured Bella.
I glanced back and forth between Edward and Bella, Alice, and the others that were starting to appear out of the trees. Rosalie dropped down from a branch right above me and I opened my mouth to scream, but somebody clapped a hand over my mouth and I didn't get the chance.
"Don't," hissed Emmett, removing his hand from my mouth. I stared at it in surprise; it had been ice cold.
Jacob shook his head at Rosalie when he appeared. "You know better than to scare her," he said sadly.
Rosalie sighed and locked her fingers around Emmett's. "If you say so, mutt."
"Leech," he retorted.
I glanced back and forth between Jacob and Rosalie. "Are you a vampire, too?" I asked Jacob.
He threw back his head and laughed. "Me? A bloodsucker? Are you kidding me? I find it hard enough living with them!"
"He's a werewolf," said Bella. "Well, not exactly. More of a shapeshifter. His ancestors could've picked anything. They just happened to pick wolves. Jake and the pack can phase anytime, not just at full moon."
"Pack?"
"All the guys back in La Push," explained Edward. "You know at lunch a couple of weeks ago, when you were thinking about that girl whose dad lives in Forks?"
"How do you know that?" I asked, my mind trying to get everything through it and keep me up to speed.
"I read minds," he said. "If you can call it that. Anyways, you were absolutely right. I'm the youngest son. You never knew Bella's last name, did you? Paisley, meet Isabella Swan."
I leaned against a tree. "Your dad's chief of police in Forks?"
Bella nodded.
"And he's okay with you going up here and pretending your parents died or whatever and you got adopted by Carlisle and Esme?"
"He knows all about our little secret," she said. "We had to tell him when he noticed that Ness was growing at five times the speed of a regular child. He took it hard, but he's used to it now. We go to visit him sometimes, and he comes up here sometimes, too."
I felt like my head was spinning, like I'd been twirling around for too long and now the world wouldn't stop moving around me.
"Here she goes," remarked Alice.
"You owe me five bucks," Jasper told Emmett. "Alice is always right." Emmett grimaced and handed over a bill.
"What is it with you two and betting?" exclaimed Esme from across the clearing, and then all their voices started to blur together. I stumbled out of the clearing and the last thing I heard was Alice telling Nessie, "Don't follow her, she'll be fine. Just give her some time."
***
Author's Note: A Christmas present to my readers! I hope that this slightly-longer-than-normal chapter made up for the short chapter and the cliffhanger last time. For those of you reading "Summer," I tried to get Paisley to have a different kind of reaction to vampires and werewolves/shapeshifters than Summer did. Variety's always good. I hope everyone had/is having a a good Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas! If you don't, that's cool too. I made my friends (the one who sold her house online to Paisley's dad and the one who isn't involved in this story) a video for Christmas on iMovie. All these pictures and videos of us from the summer. My little sister's a co-star because my mom and spellbinder112's mom are BFFs so they hang out a lot, and I bring my sister and spellbinder112 brings our other friend. (If you don't care about the details of the video, feel free to skip to the end of this author's note.) Most of the pictures are taken at the beach, which is about two blocks from my house. The second place goes to the tent that we set up in spellbinder112's backyard and stayed in for three nights in a row, and I'd have to say that third place is the road that goes from our school to spellbinder112's house. Our summer routine went kind of like this. Spellbinder112 would go to my house or our other friend's house, and we would meet up at the shopping center that's pretty much exactly in the middle of my house and our other friend's house. (Our other friend is going to be referred to as ilovemyteddybear4 even though she doesn't have Fanfiction, because she does love her teddy bear.) Then we would all buy ice cream and candy and go to the beach and take pictures and then we would go buy energy drinks and then walk up the stairs, past the school to spellbinder112's house and take psycho pictures and then sleep over at my house or spellbinder112's house or ilovemyteddybear4's house. And then the next day it would start all over again. And sometimes spellbinder112's house would take us and the boat up to the lake for the day and we would go out on the boat and go tubing and then go out for dinner at the place at the side of the lake where everyone would be wearing their bathing suits and shorts and flip flops and the seats would always be wet and there would always be sand all over the floor. Okay, so I'm exaggerating. Maybe it was only our table that had everyone in bathing suits and sand and wet seats. But that's not the point. Anyways, moving on. Thanks to my reviewers, HPobsessssssed7, wishfulthinking123, and Cyllena. Also, thank you to anonymous reviewer AnaStasia, I hope you're having a good time in South America! Even though you won't really be able to read this until you get back. When's that, January? Anyways, this author's note is probably the longest I've ever written, so I think I'll stop now. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
