DISCLAIMER: SM owns all Twilight characters and settings. No copyright infringement intended.
WARNING: Please don't read if you don't want to know the truth about Santa Claus. ;o)
Thank you so much for reading!
"Okay are you ready? I'm going to give you a push and let go."
Edward nodded, not really sure if he was ready, but not willing to admit he wasn't.
"Here we go, make sure to pedal."
He gripped the handle bars as tight as he could and concentrated on keeping the wheel straight, trying not to think about anything and trying to forget that Emmett wasn't going to hold the bike up forever, eventually he was going to let go. He was worried about falling down. Not that he was afraid of getting hurt, but he didn't want Emmett to think he was a baby. Most seven year olds already knew how to ride a bike; most seven year olds had probably owned a few different bikes already, but for Edward this was his first one and before that the only bike he ever tried to ride was Jacob's and that was when it still had training wheels on it.
"I'm going to let go now, you're doing great."
He nodded again; too busy steering and pedaling to talk. It felt like he was going really fast, but Emmett was right there with him and didn't seem to have any trouble keeping up at all.
It had been two weeks since he first saw the bike sitting under the Christmas tree with a big bow on it, but this was the first time he tried to ride it, the first day it wasn't raining cats and dogs. He still couldn't believe he actually owned a bike. He hadn't understood why it was there in the living room when he first noticed it. The bike was too small for any of the Cullens to ride and he didn't think they knew any other little kids that might want a bike like that, but he had never gotten any real presents at Christmas time before and no one mentioned that it was a possibility, so it hadn't occurred to him that the bike might be for him. He pretended not to notice it or any of the other presents under the Christmas tree either even when Alice made the comment about Santa Claus paying a visit overnight.
He knew there was no such thing as Santa Claus…had known if for a long time. He wasn't sure when he first found out, but it was before he went to live with George and Karen and before Mike told him that only snot nosed babies believed in Santa. When he was really little he thought that maybe Santa only brought presents to kids that lived where there was a lot of snow on the ground. But when he started school he realized that almost all kids got presents from Santa and the ones that didn't were on the naughty list.
Edward wasn't too sure about being on the naughty list, because he didn't think he was any naughtier than most kids but he was a foster kid and everyone knew that foster kids couldn't live with their real mom and dad because they were bad, so that explained a lot about Santa Claus and why he didn't get presents.
When Mike finally told him the true story, he wasn't sure if he believed him given the source, but it sort of made sense and he felt a little better knowing the real reason that he didn't get any gifts, was because there was no such thing as Santa Claus. That didn't explain why he didn't get gifts from his mom and dad or George and Karen who only had to pretend to be Santa, but at least he wasn't on any naughty list.
Except he wasn't with George and Karen any more, he was with the Cullens and when he walked by the living room on Christmas morning he hadn't expected to see anything under the Christmas tree and when he did see the presents and that shiny black bike with the orange handles and red racing stripes, his heart did a little flip flop and for just a second he thought maybe the bike was for him and maybe there was a Santa Claus after all.
He tried to ignore the living room and the Christmas tree and all the presents, but he couldn't ignore Esme when she took him by the hand after breakfast and sat next to him on the sofa and everyone else came in and they gave him almost all the presents under the tree and the last one was the bike with the bow on it. That was when he finally believed it. Maybe he didn't believe that there was a Santa Claus, but still it was nice to know he had that option and all the Christmas presents said From Santa, so it was possible.
Now he was actually riding the bike for the first time and he was glad no one else was around but Emmett who didn't seem to care that he wasn't able to ride it by himself even if most kids his age could. He didn't even know that Emmett had let go until he heard him clap his hands and realized Emmett couldn't do that and hold onto the bike at the same time.
"You're doing it buddy, just keep pedaling."
Edward managed to pedal to the sharp turn in the driveway before he felt the bike wobble under him and then he didn't feel anything, because Emmett had picked up the bike with him still on it and spun him up in the air, putting him and bike back on the driveway facing the house
"Good Eddie. Let's go show Rosalie," Emmett said cheerfully, jogging next to him and letting go of the back of the seat so he was pedaling the bike by himself again.
Rosalie hadn't been outside when he first started riding his bike but Edward could see her now standing by the garage and he aimed for her, concentrating on pedaling and steering and forgetting that he needed to apply the brakes until he almost ran over her. But then he was up in the air and spinning around again and he couldn't help but giggle because it was almost like flying. She put him back down on the ground in exactly the same way Emmett had done and he was going in the opposite direction again heading straight for Emmett who pretended to stand in his path but jumped out of the way and grabbed his bike and him, spinning him around so he was facing Rosalie again.
"You might want to teach him how to use the brakes," Rosalie scolded but she didn't sound mad and that was good. When Rosalie got mad, watch out or at least Emmett should watch out. She never got mad at him.
"I did teach him how to use the brakes, but the kid's got a rebellious streak in him."
"I do not," Edward said pedaling hard toward Rosalie, not bothering with braking since apparently she could just stop him by grabbing the bike and lifting it up. He didn't know what a rebellious streak was, but he didn't think it was a good thing.
"He's a wild man." Emmett countered.
"I am not." He was biking hard toward Emmett, but this time Emmett didn't stop the bike and stepped aside letting Edward continue down the driveway.
Edward loved the feeling of flying across the ground and he was pretty sure he was going too fast for even Emmett to catch him, but when he glanced over his shoulder he saw that Emmett was right there trotting along side of him, hardly moving much at all. He pedaled harder.
"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, maybe you boys should come in," Rosalie called after them.
Esme had gone with Carlisle to the city so Rosalie was responsible for fixing dinner and that thought was scary enough to make Edward pedal even faster.
"In awhile Rose, one more trip down the driveway."
Edward decided riding a bike really wasn't all that hard and he didn't understand what all the fuss was about. He thought if he could just go up and down the driveway a couple more times he would know how to steer it and brake too, though braking didn't seem necessary when someone was always there to catch him and spin him around in the air.
"Hear that Eddie, sounds like the mailman. I'm going to run down and get the mail. Besides, you're doing a great job, you don't need me anymore," Emmett said, jogging past him.
Edward didn't know how Emmett knew the mailman was here and he wasn't so sure that he didn't need Emmett anymore but he wasn't going to say anything. He wasn't even going to tell him to quit calling him Eddie. He sort of liked the name. It sounded more like a kid's name then Edward did, but every time Emmett would say Eddie, Esme or Rosalie or sometimes both of them would scold him. So he guessed that they didn't like the name very much or maybe they just liked Edward better because it was old fashioned.
Now that he knew how to ride it, he was beginning to think the bike was the best Christmas gift he got, even better than the chess set Carlisle gave him, the one in the library with the blue and red army men. Carlisle said Esme had bought it for him on one of their first Christmas' together and it was really really old but since Edward played with it the most, he should keep it in his room.
At first Edward felt bad that Carlisle would give up his chess set so he could play army men with the pieces and not use them to play chess, but then he saw Esme's new present to Carlisle, another chess set made out of smooth glass with weirdly shaped pieces that looked nothing like kings and queens and soldiers.
Esme said it was much older than the other chess set and Carlisle looked happy with it even though Edward couldn't understand how giving old gifts would make someone happy. He had gotten plenty of old toys in the past and most of the time they weren't very nice or were broken or both. New stuff was much better. But he had to admit that the chess set that he never used for playing chess was about the best gift he ever got even if it was really really old.
But now he decided his bike was the best gift and even if it was from Santa Claus who really didn't exist he wouldn't tell Carlisle that he liked the bike better than the army chess set because he didn't want him to feel bad.
Emmett had disappeared down the long windy driveway, but Edward wasn't too worried because he thought he had the biking thing pretty much under control and it wasn't that hard except when he slowed down to steer around a curve and his bike wobbled a little.
He thought about Bella, and imagined her biking with him. He guessed she had a bike though she never mentioned it to him and he hadn't seen one when he was at Charlie's house a couple of weeks ago.
Bella hadn't changed since the summer and when she saw him for the first time, she gave him a big hug and even though he felt stupid with Charlie watching, he hugged her back and decided she smelled even better than Alice. Bella was in Forks for seven whole days but he only got to see her twice and both times it was when Carlisle dropped him off to play for the afternoon.
He wished Bella could come to the Cullen's house so he could show her all the toys he had and all the clothes that Alice had bought him. He thought it important that she know he wasn't that weird little kid anymore with the mean foster mom and dad and foster brothers that bullied him. He thought it would be nice if he could bring her to meet Esme and Carlisle and Rosalie and Emmett and Alice and even Jasper, but when he mentioned it, he saw the adults share a look and then he knew that he made a big mistake and should have remembered that Carlisle told him he couldn't have friends over to play when he came to live with them.
But being with Bella made him forget his hurt feelings and he decided it didn't much matter that Bella couldn't come to the Cullen's house, he was just happy he could be with her. Her room was all purple even the carpet and she had lots and lots of books; not as many books as Carlisle had in his library, but a lot for a little girl that didn't live in Forks most of the time.
The nicest thing about Bella's room was that she had a bunch of butterflies that lived there with her. He wasn't sure exactly what she meant when she first told him, because as far as he could see, she didn't have any butterfly cages or any other place to keep them and with the door wide open they could just fly out of the room anyway. So she shut off her big light and turned on her little light and shut the bedroom door which sort of made him nervous because Charlie told them to leave the door open. Then she had him lay down on the floor and she laid next to him and pointed out all the butterflies that flew around her room. He didn't really see any butterflies himself no matter how hard he looked where Bella pointed. He just saw the light from the small lamp bouncing off the walls that made funny patterns on the ceiling, but no butterflies at all. But Bella insisted and he just needed to look harder, so he didn't say anything else about not seeing the butterflies and concentrated on listening to her pretty voice as she described each one in vivid detail.
Thinking about Bella made him bike even faster. He guessed he was almost half way down the driveway, but still no Emmett. He wouldn't make it all the way to the mailbox before Emmett started back but he wanted to get as far as he could. It might rain cats and dogs again so he wanted to get as much bike time in as possible.
He heard a phone ringing in the distance and thought Rosalie must be calling Emmett to tell them dinner was ready. He saw the sharp bend in the driveway approaching fast and tried to decide how slow he had to go to get around it. He sort of wished Emmett was here to help him and as if he could read his mind, Edward heard his voice.
"Edward STOP."
Never, ever had Emmett spoke to him like that and Edward felt his stomach clench up. He wasn't sure what Emmet meant. He wasn't doing anything wrong, but maybe Emmett could see he was going too fast and he wasn't going to be able to make the turn though he didn't know how Emmett saw that since he couldn't see Emmett at all.
He tried to remember what he had been told by both Emmett and Jasper when it came to stopping. He just had to pedal backward and he would stop. He didn't understand how that worked with his legs going super fast forward, but he knew he wasn't going to make the turn now so he concentrated really hard and tried to remember how he'd been shown to apply the brake then he stood a little, stepped back…and he stopped.
But that wasn't quite right. Only his bike stopped, but he just kept going and he knew it was going to hurt before he even hit the ground because he had been going super fast, faster even then he could run and he had a lot of experience with falling down when he ran and it always hurt.
He felt himself fly through the air and he stuck his hands out to protect his head, guessing that his bruised brain would hurt a lot worse if he landed on it and then he rolled over and over before he finally hit, what he thought was a tree, but it turned out to be Emmett who was suddenly there stopping him from rolling any further.
But then Emmett wasn't holding onto him anymore and he was lying just off the driveway on the corner of the really sharp bend. He saw his bike and it looked all crumpled up and there was a big scratch across the frame and he thought it might be wrecked and that made him want to cry. He raised his hands to his face to wipe his eyes and that's when he saw that they were both scraped up really bad from bracing himself.
He wasn't afraid of the blood he saw on both his palms and he didn't cry when he saw his torn jeans and the big cut on his knee. None of his injuries really hurt that bad, but then he looked up at Emmett to see how much trouble he was in and he knew he was in a lot of trouble. Probably more trouble than he had ever been in before.
Emmett's eyes were black, as black as Jasper's had been that night in the woods and even though it wasn't dark out and only a little cloudy, it still looked like maybe Emmett didn't have any eyes at all and there were just two holes in his head where his eyes should have been. But the worst thing about Emmett wasn't his black eyes or the way he was looking at him just like Jasper had looked at him, like he might be something good to eat; the worst thing about Emmett was that as far as Edward could tell, there was nothing about the big man in front of him that resembled Emmett anymore. What he saw now was just a big giant Emmett-monster licking his lips and when he blinked, Emmett was gone.
Then he started to cry.
Rosalie's sudden appearance in the middle of the driveway didn't surprise him. He was use to the Cullens appearing out of nowhere. They were always sneaking up on him even if they didn't mean to and it had been one of the first things he noticed about Rosalie and Esme when he saw them in the woods; how they floated and moved without any sound or effort.
Most of the time he guessed he wasn't paying good enough attention to what was going on around him, but this time he was pretty sure he had been staring at his broken bike lying in the driveway and then he was staring at Rosalie holding his bike and he couldn't remember that he had looked anywhere else or even blinked, yet there she was.
But that wasn't what scared him. In his brief time with the Cullens he knew they were different and he tried not to notice, tried to pretend that they were just the same as everyone else. Normally that wasn't so hard, but this time was different. This time Rosalie wasn't looking at him; she wasn't talking to him or helping him stand up or brushing him off; this time it was like she almost didn't see him at all and that scared him, scared him almost as much as when he heard George or Karen coming down to the basement to punish him.
He let out a whimper.
Rosalie cocked her head but was looking at the house. "Can you walk, Edward? Are you badly hurt?"
Her voice sounded funny, like she was having problems breathing. But at least she wasn't pretending he wasn't there anymore.
"I'm not hurt bad; I can walk." He stood up abruptly and flexed his knee.
Rosalie started walking, holding his bike in one hand. He thought she might reach back and take his hand, but she didn't. She didn't even look to see if he was following her. He knew he did something wrong, something even more wrong than falling off his bike and scratching the paint; probably something so wrong that they would send him away but he still didn't know what it was. First Emmett had looked at him with inky black eyes and runaway and now Rosalie wasn't looking at him at all, wasn't making sure he was alright or helping him walk or even suggesting she carry him which he thought she would probably have at least offered to do because she always liked doing things like that for him.
It was a long walk back to the house and the entire way Rosalie didn't look at him once and only spoke to him to tell him that Carlisle was on his way home from the city and would fix him all up. He wanted to tell her that he didn't need Carlisle to fix him up. He wasn't hurt that bad and had been hurt a lot worse and never had a doctor have to fix him up once except for when he bruised his brain and rib, but she didn't seem like she wanted to talk about it so he decided he wouldn't say anything and he tried not to cry. But every once in a while a little quivering noise would come out of his mouth before he could stop it. Still, she wouldn't look back even though he knew she had to hear him, because she always heard him.
"I'm going to put your bike in the garage. Can you go into the house and clean yourself up?" she asked when they got to the front door.
When Edward didn't answer she looked back for the first time and that's when he saw what he was sort of expecting to see all along. Her eyes were black, as black as Jasper's and Emmett's and he understood right then and there that he was right that night in the hospital when he wondered if Carlisle's eyes could change from black to gold. They all could change color, from black to gold and from gold to black and when they did that, it was bad…very bad for him.
"I'm not a…a baby, I can clean myself up," he whispered.
"Okay, Carlisle will be home soon. I'll…I'll be right back."
He barely heard her as she moved away from him carrying his bike. She wasn't as fast as Emmett, but she was still pretty fast.
He got the front door open, using the sides of hands and limped into the bathroom in Esme's office. Jasper had brought him a little stool so he could stand by the sink and see into the mirror and when he looked he saw that his face was all red and his eyes were all puffy and he looked just about as bad as he felt. Rosalie would have seen all that and thinking about that made him feel even worse.
He sort of liked it when she would mother him around and he could tell that she liked it too, but this time she hadn't mothered him around at all. This time she had ignored him and his red puffy face and swollen eyes and scrapes on his hands that were bleeding and the cut on his knee that hurt and was bleeding even worse than his hands were. This time she ignored all of that and he thought he knew why. Like when George would start swearing or Karen would scream and stomp around, he knew that the Cullens eyes would get really black when they were mad at him and when their eyes got really black he had to watch out for himself, because that's when it was most dangerous for him.
He thought about that as he washed the blood from his hands, then pulled off his ruined jeans to check his knee. That cut was a lot worse. The blood had run down his leg and dried on his skin so he had to get a wash cloth and scrub it, but when he tried dabbing at the cut it started to bleed again so he was back to square one.
He carefully considered what he had done wrong that would make Emmett and Rosalie so mad at him that their eyes would turn black, but after running the entire incident over in his mind he couldn't come up with a good explanation. He put a scratch on the bike, a big scratch, one that would be noticed right away, even from a distance and it was his fault because he didn't know how to stop even when Emmett and Jasper told him.
He wondered if having a rebellious streak was worse than being a weird little kid. No one liked weird little kids so it would be reasonable that no one would like a rebellious streak either. But Rosalie never seemed to care that he was a weird little kid, so he had a hard time understanding why she would care that he had a rebellious streak.
He didn't want to think anymore about how he had ruined a good thing and he couldn't get the blood to stop on his knee anyway, so he took the wash rag and his torn bloody jeans and went back into Esme's office. The house was quiet, Rosalie hadn't come back to check on him and this more than anything proved how mad she was at him. Even when he didn't need her help she was always around, but not this time; this time the house was quiet and the only thing he could hear was the tick tock of the big clock in the hallway that chimed at the top of the hour.
For the first time since he came to stay with the Cullens he felt alone. Really alone, not like at night when he would wake up and no one would be in his room or when he sat down and ate and no one else would eat with him. Now he felt like maybe he was the only person left in the whole world and he would be by himself forever and ever in the big giant house that didn't have any neighbors for him to visit or any garbage cans for him to eat out of and thinking about that made him almost start to cry again.
He wondered when Alice would be home. Would Rosalie tell her about the torn jeans? He guessed she probably would but he didn't know for sure so he shoved them under the bed thinking maybe he could just hide them and that would be one less person that would be mad at him. It only took him a second to think that maybe he could hide himself too, so still holding the rag to his knee and hoping he wasn't getting blood on the floor, he crawled as far under the bed as he could.
He didn't know how long it would take Carlisle to drive from the city but he supposed it would be a long time. Probably close to bedtime before he and Esme got home and since no one was around to check on him or feed him dinner, he thought lying under the bed was as good a place as any and he sort of liked it. It was like a fort. He thought about getting his chess army men to keep him company but he wasn't sure that he could hold them and the rag over his knee so he decided it would be more trouble than it was worth.
He guessed he fell asleep for a little while because the next thing he knew Carlisle was calling his name and Edward could see his brown shiny shoes from under the bed. He knew it was wrong and he would probably get in more trouble than he already was but he didn't say anything, not a word and he hoped that Carlisle would just go away. He didn't want to see him with black eyes too and he was sure that whatever he did to make Emmett and Rosalie mad would have the same effect on Carlisle and turn his eyes as black as theirs.
But he should have known that hiding under the bed would be the first place anyone would look for a missing boy and the next thing he knew the bed wasn't there anymore and it was just Carlisle staring down at him. He supposed the sudden disappearance of the bed should have aroused some curiosity in him but he was more interested in Carlisle's eyes and so far they were still as golden and sparkly as they always were.
"So you learned to ride your bike today," Carlisle said, picking him up and standing him on his feet.
That was the last thing Edward expected Carlisle to say. He looked at him cautiously then remembered he didn't have any pants on and he felt stupid standing around in his underwear. He was glad Esme wasn't around.
"I fell," he managed to say, guessing Carlisle would want an explanation.
"I see that. Well it isn't the first time a little boy fell from a bike. Come, let's go to my office and I'll patch you up." Carlisle took his hand, but when Edward resisted, he read his mind. "Don't worry, everyone is outside, it's just you and me in the house."
He nodded, but he still felt embarrassed. At least Carlisle didn't look mad at him and that was something, though maybe he didn't know about the bike yet.
"I scratched my bike," he offered.
"That will happen, but we can have Rosalie paint it so it will look as good as new."
Carlisle lifted him up and put him on the corner of his desk in the same spot where he sat for his breathing exercises when he had a bruised rib, then he rummaged in his black doctor bag looking for something and that made Edward worried.
"Do you have to give me a shot," he said anxiously and sighed when Carlisle shook his head and smiled.
"No shots and no stitches. I just want to clean this up a little bit," he said opening a package of gauze.
He dabbed at the cut on Edward's knee, swabbing over it with orange stinky stuff and Edward winced when it started to sting.
"Why are Emmett and Rosalie mad at me?" he blurted out.
Carlisle looked at him surprised. "Why do you think they're mad at you, Edward?"
"Because Emmett ran away when he saw me and Rosalie wouldn't look at me and she didn't…she didn't help me." His voice cracked and he realized he was on the verge of tears, again.
Carlisle put down a package of bandages and gripped Edward's shoulders. "Edward, no one is mad at you, I promise you that."
Edward nodded but looked away. He had a lot of experience with people being mad at him so he wasn't too sure about that.
"Edward, look at me."
He did as he was told but Carlisle's face was blurry so he knew his eyes were filling with tears. He didn't understand why he had to be such a baby all the time. No one had even hit him.
"You trust me don't you?"
Edward nodded. He didn't know what that had to do with anything though.
"When I say Rosalie and Emmett aren't mad at you I mean it. It wasn't your fault that you fell off your bike and got hurt. And you understand that Rosalie would always help you if she could, right?
He nodded again automatically. He might have believed that earlier in the day but now he wasn't so certain. He couldn't think of a single good reason why Rosalie would ignore him unless she was mad at him but he couldn't tell Carlisle that. Rosalie was his adopted daughter and he was just a foster kid, so what he thought didn't really count.
"If you had been hurt in any other way she would have been right there to help you and so would Emmett."
Edward didn't understand what that meant but he wasn't in a position to start asking questions; tears were sliding down his face and he was pretty sure his voice would be too shaky to talk.
"Remember when we talked about how we are different from other people and how living with us would be an adjustment, how it might be hard because we don't eat like most people or sleep like most people or even look like most people. Do you remember that talk?"
Edward nodded. He was thinking about how Esme sparkled when she worked on her garden when the sun was shining. At first it was creepy but she told him it was because their skin was so white; they all sparkled when they were in the sun and he guessed that was another example of the differences that Carlisle was talking about and he really couldn't complain about that, because Carlisle had warned him right from the start.
"That's why Emmett had to leave you and Rosalie couldn't help you like she wanted to. That's why Esme isn't in here right now holding your hand while I patch you up."
Carlisle had let go of his shoulders like he just remembered why they were there and covered the cut on Edward's knee with a big bandage, securing it with white tape. "It's the blood…none of them can handle the sight of blood; it makes them sick."
Edward's eyes widened at that comment and at first he thought Carlisle was joking but when he rubbed his eyes and studied his face he knew he was serious. Carlisle had a face that he made when he was joking and a face he made when he was serious and he definitely had his serious face on.
"Does it make Jasper and Alice sick to?" he asked holding his palms out so Carlisle could clean his hands with the same orange stinky stuff that he guessed must be medicine.
"Yes it makes them sick too."
"But it doesn't make you sick?" Edward asked skeptically, studying Carlisle's face to see if Carlisle had a sick face.
"It use too. A long long time ago; but I got use to it and it's a good thing too. I wouldn't be a very good doctor if I got sick every time I saw blood." This time Carlisle sounded like he was joking or at least he wasn't serious any more so Edward relaxed a little.
Now he was curious. "Is that why Emmett's eyes were black?"
The moment he asked the question he wished he could take it back, because Carlisle stopped what he was doing and stared at him intently, like he was studying his face to see if he was joking.
"There are a lot of things that can change our eye color to black, but yes getting sick is one of those things."
"Do your eyes turn black?" He knew he should probably stop asking questions. He had a feeling he was in dangerous territory now.
"All of our eyes can turn black, but it's nothing for you to worry yourself over. It's just part of how we are different."
Carlisle stopped staring at him and turned his attention back to Edward's hands. Edward winched and cried out a couple of times but he felt a lot better. He was happy that Emmett and Rosalie weren't mad at him and he hoped Alice wouldn't be mad when she saw his torn jeans. He was curious about why the Cullens were all so different from anyone he had ever known before but for some reason, he thought it was probably best if he didn't ask too many questions. Most people didn't like to talk too much about things like black eyes and sparkly skin and not eating or sleeping like normal people and it didn't matter anyway.
"There you go. How do you feel? Does it hurt much?" Carlisle let go of his hands and rubbed his fingers through Edward's hair like he did when he was examining his bruised brain. "You didn't hurt anything else did you? How does your head feel?"
Edward thought his head might hurt a little but he wasn't ready for any pain medication, because that meant he would have to go to bed and he wanted to find Emmett and Rosalie and see if they were really mad at him or if what Carlisle said was true.
"It doesn't hurt too much." He looked down at the bandage on his knee, then back up at Carlisle holding out his hands, palms up. "Am I still going to make them sick?"
Carlisle smiled a little and sighed and Edward wished he could take it back. He thought he probably asked more questions than a normal kid would and he had to learn to keep his mouth shut so he wouldn't piss anyone off like he always seemed to do after they got to know him.
"No of course not sweetheart, you've been all patched up and everyone is anxious to see you." Esme said from the doorway.
Edward wasn't sure but he thought he saw her smell at the air.
"Are you hungry? Rosalie has something all fixed up for you," she said brightly, holding out her arms to him and lifting him from the desk before he even realized she had moved.
"Does it look good?"
He knew that question would make Esme laugh and he wasn't disappointed. He liked it best when Esme laughed because that made Carlisle laugh and keeping Carlisle happy was important.
"Well, why don't you taste it and tell us." She said putting her hands on either side of his head and giving him a kiss on the top of it. Alice has some new jeans for you in your room; why don't you go try them on and then come out to the kitchen."
Edward put his arms around her, giving her a big hug, pulling back just in time to see her give Carlisle the look that adults shared between each other when they didn't want to say something out loud. Edward wasn't sure but he thought the look had something to do with what happened today. Maybe getting sick at the sight of blood was the final straw. Maybe even if it wasn't his fault that he got cut and scraped and bled, they were tired of dealing with it. He felt a little better when Esme wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly to her like she meant it.
He didn't want to leave Esme and Carlisle in the room alone; he didn't want them to talk about him, but eventually she loosened her grip and he knew he had to go and get dressed and eat whatever it was Rosalie had made for him and he didn't have any control if they decided to get rid of him so making a big fuss about it wasn't going to help the situation anyway.
Author Notes:
Though Edward's situation has improved considerably with the Cullens, living with vampires has its dangers and I will continue to emphasize these dangers throughout this story. Are you wondering about the butterflies? Yeah, so is Edward.
I have one or maybe two more chapters left of Edward as a seven year old (I'm still trying to figure out how to write it), then back to the hospital with seventeen year old Edward for a chapter, then the pace will pick up.
I'd love to hear from you.
