Disclaimer: I own nothing. All material belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

Author's Note: Hey, guys. Sorry for the wait. Don't worry about the ending – everything will be explained, and maybe even repealed in the end. Thanks so much for the reviews, everyone. :)

Chapter Nine: Clarity

Her stone face was as unmoving as the fear in my mind. I glanced quickly around us, then grabbed her arm and attempted to tug her into the undergrowth that circled the clearing petulantly, wanting in. My efforts were futile – Rosalie was not moving. I glared and gave a slight head nod towards the other wolves, not wanting anyone else to hear. No one except for Paul and me knew the story. With a giant huff, I sat down again, mocking the bushes. Even the breeze was too afraid to push the tendrils of spun gold into Rosalie's eyes. She blinked once, not because she needed to, but merely to spread the venom back over her eyeballs.

That disgusting thought jolted me out of my half-dazed state. Gross.

"What happened?" Rosalie shifted so she was sitting on her knees, and I felt the same way I did when I had gone to a sleepover with my two best friends, Kim and Christine, when we were younger – and Christine was just about to share the latest gossip with us. A pang of longing hit me, but I pushed it away and winced. There were way too many stupid things that I had done in the past.

The words began to spill out of my mouth, without me consciously thinking about them. I had recited the story so many times in my head that it felt natural. Sam had called up the next two – Seth and Collin. Paul and Embry were celebrating by popping open a couple of beers and corrupting Brady.

A boy and a girl were walking hand in hand, laughing and skipping as their third best friend tried to reason with a pouting seven year old who looked extremely pale and sickly next to the three healthy-looking five year olds. The second boy finally gave up and stomped away, refusing to admit his defeat to the other two. They watched him go for a brief moment, but moved on quickly without asking questions, as toddlers often do.

The cool summer breeze that perpetually permeated any sort of layer they wore – though they wore none – filled their hair and eyes, making the latter water. The little girl broke away and sprinted as fast as her chubby little legs would carry her before jumping into a spin. The boy giggled before running after her and copied her move, falling a bit short, though neither noticed. The raven-haired boy grabbed her hand for a second time and gesticulated towards the woods, which lay – peaceful and open, as if someone had made a map and simply let it unfurl over the rolling hills and flats.

His other fist was clenched as he strained towards the forest, talking excitedly about a spot that would be just perfect for a fort. He described the area with such precision and clarity – the little girl would it remember it for the rest of her life. There was a leaning tree – a fat one, too, which made it look like a little green Santa Clause had keeled over and rested his forehead against the aspen tree next to it. The aspen had little black scores up the entire thing, and they reminded the boy of his father's eyes, which gave both children a little giggle, feeling very grown up as they did so.

There was a neat pile of stones and boulders next to the tree, and almost at a right angle to the obtuse tree. The rocks were gnarled and twisted, with little tiny air bubbles, like a cake. They were grey, but had giant paint splotches of orange and green from the lichen. The rocks looked like they could have been used in the wall of a castle one time, he confided in her quietly, protecting his words from the older kids – who would want to steal their wonderful new secret. Except they were all oddly shaped and wouldn't fit in the wall of a castle very nicely.

The floor of the spot was brown and crunch with brown pine needles and tiny brown bugs. The dirt, he said, was warm and wouldn't hurt if they tried to climb the aspen tree and fell. It was squishy, he laughed, and demonstrated falling down and rolling around in the pine needles. The little girl covered her mouth with her hands, as if trying to contain the giggles that threatened to escape – just like her mother and father. He looked up at her with eyes full of adoration from where he lay on the ground. She offered him her sticky little palm, which he grabbed onto eagerly.

There were more trees, too, he told her. They stretched inward, like his mommy did after a long car ride, and left a rectangular skylight slightly to the left of the dead middle. He told her that if they only gathered some of the sticks nearby that had fallen from the sky – or at least it seemed this way to the children – they could make walls and sit inside and it would be their own sanctuary from the teasing of the bullies in his class and the stifling presence of the girls from her own. And maybe they could even capture the second boy and keep him away from the muddy, demented snowflake (the girl's term, not his own) and keep him in their kingdom.

You be queen, he said, on sudden inspiration. And I'll be the king. The little girl agreed immediately, on the one condition that it was a queendom instead.

He went on. He didn't need to, though. He had her at the word 'fort.'

His excitement was contagious, and the girl found herself bouncing on her heels, waiting impatiently for him to stop talking and take her to the wonderful spot. She pinched his arm. The boy yelped and pointed north-west into the woods. She gave a little bunny-hop of happiness and importance. The boy rubbed his arm, flinching every time he touched the sore spot. He was, however, under the same delusion as many his age – that if it hurt when it was touched, you were to continuously rub at it until the pain went away.

She grinned at him, and at the escape from the girls in her own class that would rather poke fun at her and try on fluffy dresses than run around and make forts. She was also quite happy with the attention she was being paid. With a new baby at home, the girl was often forgotten. Her mother's only instructions were to take a lunch with her and be home in time for dinner. She shook her long hair out of her eyes and off of her shoulders before deciding that she would rather have it over her ears.

The little boy smiled back at her, barring the empty space where his tooth should have been, before running off, the girl hot on his heels. Veering off to the right, he made the decision to take her the long way so as to preserve the mystery and awe it had caused in him when he had first stumbled upon the treasure. Just not in so many words.

The girl panted dramatically when they finally reached their destination and threw herself down on the ground, smiling impishly up at the boy. He fell next to her, not having to fake his exhaustion. Maybe they had strayed a bit too close to the cliff where their dads and occasionally mothers would jump off into the freezing, churning water below, or hadn't made enough noise near the bear cave that was apparently the "best spot for truth or dare," but they had made it there alright, which was the important thing, of course.

The girl jumped to her feet and trotted over to the aforementioned clearing. There was a small intake of breath as she spun on the toes of her well-worn white and blue striped trainers – which were the antithesis of the pink sandals her classmates (excluding the boys) wore. The boy had been with her when she had gotten them – her dad had picked them out with her, while her mother grumbled in the background, holding a pair of purple flip-flops. The little boy sat on a chair while his grandpa measured his feet. The girl had insisted that he and their other friends got the same shoes as she did.

He followed her into the semicircle, pausing only briefly to admire the small, etched in heart on the tree. The girl followed him and frowned with concentration as she studied the drawing. She said the boy's name softly, though he was next to her.

I think this is someone else's spot, she said quietly, disappointed. P and L's. She laughed, then. Pandles!

The boy smirked as well as he could, considering his facial features weren't used to the strange expression. He then explained to her patronizingly, which caused her to shove him into the tree, though she obviously appreciated the gesture. While the boy was rubbing his head painfully, she traced the small heart with a small finger, which she then shoved up her nose.

Finding nothing interesting, she returned it to her mouth and turned to ask the boy whether or not their friend would approve.

She came face-to-face with a pair of blood red eyes and screamed.

The man smiled charmingly down at her. He told her that he was looking for two children to be in a commercial he had written about his new brand of cookies. In fact, he'd brought some with him to share with them.

The little girl first found the hand of her partner in crime before reaching out slowly to touch the stranger's face. He looked up at her, and wondered about the cleanliness of the finger pressing into his cheek. She pressed her palm flat to his face, and told him that he needed a sweater and chicken soup, just as her mother always said. He laughed, handing her a vanilla wafer.

The little boy took a step so he was half-way in front of the girl, and accepted a chocolate cookie warily. The girl removed her hand so as to have both free to shove the cookie in her mouth, and invited the man (through the crumbs sprayed directly in his face) to come in. She looked at the boy, and waited for his consent, which came after a brief pause in which he sized up the stranger.

The boy and man got talking, with the girl adding her input (especially in the sports department) and, more often than not, a snarky comment to go with it. By the end of their meeting, in which the man (who introduced himself as Gideon LeFoghorn – as the girl heard it, anyways) claimed to have gotten a good idea of how to utilize them in the commercial, he was rolling with laughter at almost everything the girl said. The boy felt that he was partially responsible for them meeting in the first place, and grinned along. The girl was oblivious to all of this, busy taking her pinkie and removing all the crumbs from her shorts and t-shirt and stuffing them in her mouth.

I think you'll do perfectly, he said slowly, an almost bloodthirsty smile covering his face. The two kids smiled like fools at each other. Come here, he said to the girl. I want to take your measurements so that I know what size costume to get you both.

Obediently, she stretched and stumbled to his arms, catching herself on his shoulder. He smiled at her, and put his hand on hers, bringing it up as if to see it more clearly. She allowed him, taken in by his good looks and obvious charm. He brought it up and spun her around like a ballerina. She giggled, and the boy smiled.

There was a crashing noise as another man walked through the woods, looking for his daughter and her best friend. The red-eyed man started, grabbing the little girl and biting her in the first place his teeth could make contact – the inside of her neck, where it connected with her shoulder. She squealed indignantly as the man took a second to enjoy the taste of her sweet blood, which pumped itself into his mouth of its own accord.

Agonizingly, he pulled away and looked her directly in the eye. If you ever are confused about what you are, or who you are, come to me, he pleaded. Look me up, he said urgently, before sprinting off.

The second man called out for his daughter. She screamed, her neck now bleeding profusely, and the little boy jumped up to try and catch her as she stumbled – though he only succeeded in breaking her fall seeing as he tripped and her back collided with his.

Her dad was now sprinting towards them, and all the little animals were gone in a blink of an eye as he thundered towards them. Without asking questions, he grabbed her and held her cradled in one arm and grabbed the hand of the little boy. They ran together until they reached the edge of the red dirt road.

The boy looked into the face of the man, and, for the first time in his short life, saw true fear and panic. The man hesitated for the briefest of moments, indecision flitting across his broad nose and thick eyebrows.

Then they were running again, this time towards their missing friend's house. It wasn't a particularly long way, but the boy felt every muscle in his body screaming in tune with the screeches emanating from the girl's mouth.

The stairs loomed in front of them, and the boy tripped up them gratefully, collapsing finally on the wood floor of the house. The man still had the girl, and the boy pulled himself up to follow them into the living room. She had stopped screaming now, and the silence was deafening, banging on the little boy's temples until he put his hands on his ears and pushed down on his head.

The boy leaned on the doorway, breathing hard. His friend was set down on the couch, writhing with pain. The adults (his dad, her parents, and their friend's dad) formed an angry wall next to her, blocking off the sofa. There were loud voices and furious words, though the boy didn't understand most of what they were saying. Because this was the case, he attempted to wriggle his way into the crowd, only to be reprimanded and sent back on his way with barely a sideways glance.

The girl lay quietly, trying to move as little as possible. The bite on her neck still had blood seeping from it, and before she knew it, she was being loaded onto a big white truck with red markings on it. It drove quickly, and she was afraid of a car crash, thinking dryly that that would just be the sprinkles on the ice cream. She was also positive that that wasn't the correct phrase, but she was still a bit confused and blurry, and didn't look too much into the matter.

She started the multiplication table in her head, but didn't know much past one times one and two times two. She needed something to concentrate besides the doctors and white coats and metal equipment that surrounded her. Her head was feeling as if it could just float up and fly away from her. She tried to picture that – a head with long brown hair being carried off into the sky, blood oozing –

She threw up.

The hospital arrivation (was that a word? She didn't remember) came as a surprise to the driver, who seemed to slam on his breaks a bit harder than necessary. Then she was being bundled off again, and finally realized that her father had been in the ambulance with her, sitting as quietly as she had.

The hospital, quite honestly, was not as sterile as she had hoped, even though it was the Forks center. And as she was pushed into the EMERGENCY area, she glared at the doctor weakly and asked in a hoarse, accusatory tone if he had washed his hands.

The boy, who burst in not two minutes after the girl had arrived, ran after her, his palm cut and bleeding. He yelled her name, and she turned her head. The nurse pushing her stopped and let the little boy catch up. The girl asked him why the frog (her version of a word she would use many times in the future) he had cut his palm. He explained his idea, and a slow smile slid across her face.

The nurse moved forward to ask him to leave, but watched with fascinated horror as the girl slid down her sleeve and bared her shoulder to the boy, who pressed his palm to the wound. Both winced, and the nurse finally came forward to yank him away. The little girl waved to him cheerily as she was wheeled away.

There was no need for a transfusion, though it took them ages to find a bandage that wrapped around the wound tightly. And the little girl…

"… Was never able to wear a string bikini again." Rosalie looked at me with shocked eyes, as if I had spouted Shakespeare. "You don't have to look that shocked, you know. I was just kidding about the bikini thing. I just arrange the bow so that it –"

She moved forward slowly and pushed aside the thin cotton of my shirt and stared, open-mouthed at the scar. "Yes, well, if you're quite finished, I was just about to tell you that the bow on your swim suit can just be moved over -"

"You should be dead." I considered saying something about interrupting, but let it pass and raised my eye brows.

"No shit, Sherlock."

"I had no idea – so that's why…?"

"Yeah, me and Paula over there have been inseparable ever since." My tone was sarcastic and biting, even to my own ears.

"But it's more than that, isn't it?"

"We share blood. Yeah. I know. I wonder if that would screw things up if we ever had kids together." I laughed. She didn't.

"Why didn't you die?"

"I thought we had already been through this. I. Have. No. Idea. Comprendes?"

"So you…"

"And Paul. No idea, but my dad thought we were – are – part leech. How much does that suck?"