Thanks to MeSh17 for looking over an earlier version – all mistakes are my own! And to Ms Meyer for the inspiration.
Published Monday 14/5 6:30ish PM (AEST). 1761 words.
(for those who got teasers - some changes to that passage...)
Chapter Ten – Which Bella?
By the time Alice arrived on Saturday morning, Bella had been up for several hours. Unwilling to risk more sleep after she'd woken from another unpleasant dream, she'd been up at 5am. As soon as she heard Charlie leave for a day of fishing, she'd started a load of laundry and then spent the rest of the morning cleaning.
The loud knock on the front door made her jump and bang her head on the top of the cupboard she was scrubbing.
"Ow!" She answered the door rubbing the back of her head and was surprised to see Alice already.
"Hi Bella!" Alice trilled in her melodic voice, pushing a takeout coffee at Bella. "For you," she said. "Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?"
"I'm fine," she said automatically, taking the coffee. "Thanks. Come in. Is it ten o'clock already?"
"Yep! What have you been doing?" Alice asked, wrinkling her nose as she followed Bella into the living room. "It smells like cleaning products in here."
"Yeah, I'm kinda spring cleaning." Bella sniffed the air, surprised that Alice could smell anything—she hadn't started on the downstairs yet. "I swear some of the cupboards haven't been cleaned out since before Renee left. In fact, knowing my mom, they probably haven't been cleaned since my parents moved in!"
Alice's laugh chimed, bringing an involuntary smile Bella to face. "Time for a coffee break then. You look tired, have you been cleaning all morning?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess."
"Actually, you looked tired at school yesterday too, are you sure you're okay?"
Uncomfortable, Bella turned and led the way into the kitchen. "I just haven't been sleeping well," she said quietly. "Not used to the constant sound of rain I guess." It was true enough, if not the whole story. She had struggled to adjust to the constant rattle of rain when she first arrived from Phoenix. Of course, that wasn't the main problem anymore. She put the kettle on the stove to give herself something to do.
"Can I make you a cup of something?" She asked politely.
"Oh no, I just had something. That's why I got that for you." Alice said, indicating the cup Bella had set down on the counter.
"Oh, of course." Bella felt her cheeks heat up. She picked the cup back up, turning off the stove, and then stood awkwardly for a moment. "Oh," she said again suddenly. "I should grab that homework, for Jasper. Have a seat, I'll be right back."
"No rush," Alice said, sitting down at the table. "Sit and drink your coffee first."
They chatted briefly about school, the rain, and why Bella had come to Forks. Everything but the one subject Bella was most interested in—Alice's absent brother. She couldn't figure out how to bring the subject around to him, until she finished her coffee and remembered again to get the homework.
"Sorry," she said, "I'm sure you have other things to do today, I'll just go get my notes for you to photograph. And there was a handout too, so I got an extra copy for Jasper." She followed her words with action and grabbed the handout and her notebook from her room.
"Does he go away often?" she asked, as she watched Alice photograph the relevant pages.
"Pretty often," Alice said (somewhat non-committally, Bella thought). "And thanks for this. But I told you, there was no rush. What do you have planned for the rest of the day?"
Bella admitted that she was just planning to clean some more and then get started on her own homework.
"Excellent," Alice said. "I'll help you clean and we'll get it done in half the time, then we can study together."
Bella found herself agreeing, after Alice refused to take no for an answer, and she couldn't deny that cleaning was more fun with Alice helping. They chatted companionably as they worked, Alice sharing titbits about the other members of her family in between quizzing Bella about her life growing up with her mom, how she liked Forks, and what she planned on doing after graduation.
The last question was one she found hard to answer. Internally she acknowledged that she'd been so caught up, in recent months, in worrying about Jasper and the Civil War and what her parents there had planned for her future, that she'd found it hard to focus on a twenty-first century future.
She'd applied to colleges in Washington, Arizona and Florida, but she wasn't passionate about any course. In fact, she found it hard to imagine her future at all. If only Jasper Whitlock would survive the war and marry her, everything would be okay. But at the same time, she couldn't help but think her waking life would just be a lifetime of loneliness and longing. Except that—now she'd met Jasper Hale. And suddenly, everything was feeling a little different.
When they were done cleaning, Alice asked if Bella would mind coming to her family's house to study.
"Because I don't have my work here with me, of course," Alice said.
"Oh sure," Bella replied, "if you don't mind waiting while a throw I piece of beef in the slow cooker, then I can follow you in my truck."
She walked into the kitchen, only stopping when she realised Alice wasn't following her. She turned around to see her new friend standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring into space.
"Alice?" The girl visibly started then turned to Bella with a smile.
"Oh, sorry," she said. "I just remembered something. But yeah, of course, that's fine. I'll just give Esme a call and let her know we'll be there for lunch."
"Oh, um... If you're sure that will be okay? We could just as easily eat here before we go."
"No, no, it's fine. Esme loves to cook and she'll be thrilled I'm having a friend over. And this way we can focus on studying and just eat when it's ready."
That brought to mind a question Bella had been wondering about—namely, why Alice was being so friendly if, as Jess had said, she normally never spoke to anyone outside her family. But she couldn't find any polite way to ask about it, so she decided to simply put the question aside for now and enjoy spending time with her new friend.
Besides, she told herself, she was very likely right in her first assumption: that the Cullens had been made to feel less than welcome, with their unusual family structure. It wasn't that the other kids at school were actually malicious, she thought, but Forks was a small town, and when new kids arrived they were naturally very much under the microscope, just as she had felt herself to be these past couple of weeks. Alice was probably just happy to have found someone she didn't feel judged by.
.
While the two girls set themselves and their homework up at the Cullen's large dining room table, Esme prepared them a plate of mixed sandwiches, which Bella thought looked like those a catering company might provide.
She realised Alice was right in her estimation of Esme, who welcomed her effusively.
"Oh Bella, it's lovely to meet you. I've heard so much about you from Alice and Jasper—he'll be disappointed to have missed your visit."
Finally, a natural opening to ask about him!
"How long is he away for?" She asked, "Should I collect his homework on Monday too?"
"Oh no, Bella," Alice broke in. "He'll be back tomorrow night. Didn't I tell you?"
.
.
Driving back to Washington on Sunday, Jasper couldn't stop his mind repetitively running over their discoveries in Texas. They had found Mary's journals in the exhibit, but they hadn't been able to actually access them while the library was open, as they were behind glass, and unfortunately the microfiche records were incomplete.
At first, they had both been infuriated. "You'd think either that librarian this morning or Peter would have told us they weren't actually accessible to the public," Jasper had growled. "I guess we'll have to break in after hours, but that had better not make us too late for whatever Peter is worried about happening in Forks."
"Wait a minute. Come and look at this," Edward had responded. "It's her."
There was a blown-up newspaper clipping on display with a photo of Bella and a significantly older man, with a caption that read "Miss Isabella Williams marries Mr Robert Johnson."
If he'd had a beating heart, Jasper felt sure it would have stopped then. He already knew she'd married, but to see it... She didn't look happy, but she didn't look sad either. She looked dead. Of course, the photo was grainy and old, but to Jasper's acute eyesight, her eyes looked glazed; her skin, pasty. And she had clearly lost weight. He felt the growl he was suppressing rumble out.
"Calm down, Jasper," Edward said while taking a photo of the clipping on his phone. "You're projecting your rage to everyone!"
As Jasper took an unnecessary breath and forced himself to pump calm through the room, Edward's phone started ringing.
Apparently, their decisions were finally giving Alice visions left, right and centre, which was making it difficult for her to act "normally" for Bella.
She'd seen his meltdown this morning, though not what caused it, and more importantly she'd seen the effect of their decision to come back later to look through the journals, and their consequent conversations about what they'd found: Mary's record of watching Bella's health deteriorate as she mourned Jasper and prepared for her wedding.
"I'll tell you about that later," Alice said. "But I think it's probably better if you don't put Jasper through the misery of actually reading them—I think I already know everything you'll find out. But Edward, there's something else."
"Just tell me Alice!" Edward always got impatient when he couldn't read people's minds and had to wait for them to actually speak.
"You just a took photo of a photo of Bella, right? Of Isabella Williams that is?"
"Yes, and she is the spitting image of our Bella."
"I know, but Edward, Carlisle hasn't met Bella yet, but when you took the photo it sparked a vision of when you show it to him. Edward, he met someone who looked exactly like that, only it wasn't during the civil war, and it wasn't in the present—it was in Chicago in 1918, during the Spanish influenza outbreak. Her name was Isabel Dawson."
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Reviews make me grin.
I'm kinda abandoning the idea of strictly weekly. This is only a week since the last one, but I meant to get back on track. But the chapters from now on are all unedited, which means I'm editing, realising I need to add something, sending to Meha, changing it before she looks at it, waiting for her to get back to me, changing it again after she does... Plus, May is a stupidly busy month for me, work-wise.So – I'll try to stick to roughly weekly. But no promises.
And yeah, this chapter is a little shorter than usual.
Recs: Just one: Supernormal by Cupcakeriot. It's a WIP, but has 212 chapters (some drabble short, some not), and is regularly updated. s/12597569/1/supernormal
This is sort of Bella-Edward, but really, it's can only loosely be termed Twilight fan fiction (which the author says, somewhere or other, I'm sure). It is VERY fun though. I am enjoying it a lot. Summary: "She is different. She is magic. And her life is unbelievably beyond normal - it's supernormal. Featuring: M-rating for language and violence, magic rituals, strange creatures, stranger deaths, some citrus, realistic character development, and a super, super slow burn."