"Come on Bella!" Alice urged me, using her free hand to grab my forearm and drag me after her. The other arm was piled with clothes, so many clothes.

I sighed and decided I wouldn't fight Alice, mainly because I knew I wouldn't win. I followed her into the dressing room and let her play dress up Barbie on me, my mind far, far, away.

I was thinking about the tenuous agreement Edward and I had come to the week before. He had agreed, begrudgingly, to leave the werewolves alone, on the one condition that I also left the werewolves alone. Not being able to see Jacob hurt, but I knew it was the best thing for both of us, and for Jacob's face.

Thanks to Jacob's insane healing abilities he had no permanent damage to anything but his right wrist, it had grown back slightly wrong, and so his wrist was at a slightly wrong angle to his arm. The only doctor in the area with enough expertise to fix it, and not be freaked out by him being a werewolf, was Carlise. Jacob wasn't going to let the 'bloodsucker' touch him, let alone put him under.

Charlie was still on his anti-Edward campaign, which Billy wasn't helping. The old man was reminding Charlie of everything Edward had ever done wrong in an attempt to get him to force me to stop seeing Edward. It wasn't doing anything but make things increasingly uncomfortable at home though.

"Bella? Are you listening to me Bella?" Alice tugged on my arm again, snapping me out of my reverie.

"What?" I asked, startled.

"I asked you what you thought of the dress. I'm not sure about the sequins; they're just a little to 1930's flapper esque. Maybe the blue one instead? What do you think?"Alice asked impatiently.

I looked at the mirror and gasped. Alice had decked me from head to toe in a pink glittering ball gown. It clung tight to my torso, then flowed out around my legs, with a train long enough for a wedding.

"Where am I ever going to wear this Alice?"

"Well I was thinking maybe we could throw a ball at the house. I bet no one in this little town had ever been to a classic renaissance masquerade! We could move the cars out of the garage and use it as a dance floor…. Of course I'd have to add some lights… maybe some pillars…" Alice speculated aloud to my horror. A ball? A masquerade ball? What in god's name was she thinking?

"Alice…" I started in a warning tone.

"I know, I know. You're going to tell me I'm crazy, but maybe if we made up some excuse, like we could do it around graduation!"She exclaimed excitedly. I had a bad feeling about this.

Jasper's POV

I sat in the living room with Emmett, watching the game. It was my job to make sure he didn't get too over-excited about who was winning, he had a habit of breaking Esme's nice furniture when he got angry about the Seahawks losing again or some such thing.

I suppose I couldn't complain; there wasn't much else to do as long as Alice was away. I noticed shift in the emotional climate in the room, someone was angry behind us. Edward probably.

I turned around and saw Edward pointedly ignoring Emmett as he walked through the room. I had guessed correctly. Edward still wasn't speaking to Emmett because he had put Bella in danger. Emmett argued she wasn't in danger at all. Edward argued that a fight between werewolves and vampires was hardly a padded room.

Emmett didn't seem to notice Edward's passing, probably due to the fact that someone had just scored a touchdown and it obviously wasn't the team he was rooting for. Emmett crunched a leg of Esme's latest coffee table under his foot, without even noticing. Opps. I reached out and soothed him, mentally berating my lack of discipline, I was supposed to be watching him. Esme was going to kill him, and when she was done with him, she was going to kill me.

BPOV

"Alice, what was the point of buying all of those clothes again?" I asked her, pointing at the piles of clothes in the backseat of the Volvo. We had probably spent at least $15,000.

"Three reasons. First: you really need a better wardrobe." She held up one finger.

"Of ball gowns?"

"do you want to hear the reasons or not?" Alice tapped her other hand impatiently against the center console.

"will you put your hands back on the steering wheel?" I asked in a panicked voice, she had simply let it go.

"Yes." She sighed, and moved the hand she had been impatiently tapping back onto the black leather of the steering wheel.

"then shoot."

"Second: It's fun." She held up another finger.

"I disagree." she glared at me.

"I thought you wanted to hear them?" her hand drifted away from the wheel again, and then back when she saw my face.

"Sorry. Keep going." I said, once her hand was securely placed on the wheel.

"Thirdly, and finally: the economy could use a little stimulation right now."

"As you are only one person, how is that going to work? Don't you need lots of people spending money if you want to fix an economy?"

"I have taken the economy's failure as a personal challenge. I plan on single handedly bailing out all companies within a three hundred mile radius." Her voice was solemn and serious. She actually meant it.

"Ha!" I blanched, she wasn't actually capable of bailing out everyone, was she?

"You only think I'm joking.' Alice grinned broadly. I had a bad feeling about this as well. Alice definitely needed someone capable of stopping her (like another vampire, possibly with mind control abilities) to keep her in check.