Dear Readers,
Hello again! I am glad to metaphorically see you. I'm sorry I couldn't respond to each of your reviews from the last chapter. Please know, though, that I appreciate them all and am encouraged to keep writing. You have so many thoughtful reflections and creative ideas to share. It is inspiring and rewarding. Keeps me going. Let me say a group thank you here for anyone I may have missed, so you'll know that I know you're out there!
Feel free to scroll down a bit if you just want to dive into this new chapter! Or maybe read my thank you note...
Thanks to klarsen117 (many reviews, many thanks), castaway11 (glad you enjoyed BG, too!) , silkyjacob, readingtilldawn, brandileigh2003, Amanthya, PoisonIvy533, KyleEverdeen (Thank you for your words about the hot and cold symbolism! I agree.), dreamertotheend, BugRhesom, Nesa, Ariel-Scarlett (Thanks for answering all my questions. I liked your thoughts on Emily's character), Jibrah (your take on Ch + J is helpful. Liking the grand gesture idea. And thanks for multi-chapter comments!), teamjacob0729, alixandria (thanks for reviewing every chapter!), LlamaMathilde (thanks for the idea for Ch's grand gesture), joyful journey (Loved the ? you posed re: J relating to B when he doesn't need to "fix" her), lectri (prancing! yes!), Darkchilde (glad to see you! I hope you get your wish. And I'm glad you enjoyed YOUR chapter.), jane (glad you liked Q + B), nothinwring2013 (screaming? awwwwww...), Amanthya (again! Thank you!), PastOneonta (Every time I see your comments, I get excited. So thoughful. Detailed. I eat them up!), corkykellums (Brave Bella, yay!), MissPoisonedAddiction (You are so sweet. Thank you. Thank you for all those detailed answers.), Chickka (glad you liked the funny Paul parts), teacupdestiny (your notes are always a delight. Glad you like Ch + J.), ezinmaful (Thanks for your detailed review! I'm pondering your thoughts about imprinting and emily's char.), pingou (dear, dear pingou. fair as a star. thank you for thoughts on Charlie's love, imprinting, Emily's loneliness, Brave Bella), yuuram2fangirl (thank you for your detailed comments! I appreciate knowing the plot seemed rushed to you. Working on that. Glad you like Embry!), LCB (always glad to see you! You have a good day, too!), Moondancer1818 (glad you liked the ending), sonotalady (sturdy. Yes. Good word for me to keep in mind. Love it.), MelkiSihou (thanks for the details. So glad you're liking Emily.), Ashmerlin (hello!), Taylor9901 (more on Victoria, coming up...), silkyjacob (hello again...thanks!), and all the guest/anonymous commenters.
As Elvis would say, Thank you. Thank you very much.
Now enjoy this new stuff. A rather long chapter. Might take 30 min. to read it. Stock up on snacks. 3, 2, 1, GO.
Chapter Ten
"Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who is the Wolfiest One of All?"
Well, shit, thought Bella. Now what?
Sam's pickup truck was really nice. It had heated leather seats. It had a five disc CD player, a back-up camera, a lower gear option for heavy towing, and adjustable lumbar support. It also had a freezing cold, open truck bed, which was where Bella was riding home after her harrowing afternoon in the woods. Emily sat beside her. There was one small blanket, which Sam had offered to Emily so she could spread it on the seat and sit in the cab with him, but in a show of mud-covered solidarity, Emily chose to freeze in the truck bed with Bella. Sam set his jaw and climbed into the driver's seat.
As they sat with their backs against the cab, Emily put an arm around Bella. "Thank you for trying to save me."
Bella nodded, replaying Jacob's words in her mind: You were so brave. No one had ever said that to her before. Usually it was, You are so clumsy, or, You are so quiet.
This was the second time in four days that Bella was going home covered in an appalling amount of filth. River water, swamp water, swamp mud, forest mud, sweat, wood smoke, and grass stains decorated her clothing, and her hair was tangled with hemlock needles. They were different from other evergreen tree needles because they were smaller, flatter, and thinner, making them harder to get out of her hair. She and Emily groomed one another—sort of like monkeys, thought Bella—as Sam drove them back to La Push through a maze of abandoned logging roads. The meadow hadn't been very far from one of them, so Sam had returned to La Push on four feet and returned to the meadow on four wheels.
"What are you doing after school tomorrow?" said the older girl.
"Working."
"When?"
"Probably three till seven."
"Can you reschedule?"
There was, Bella learned, a high probability of a pack meeting tomorrow afternoon. Emily spent the whole ride back to La Push explaining the concept of the pack, its hierarchy, its obligations, its expectations, its all-consuming importance that trumped everything else in one's life.
"But I'm not in the pack. And I have to work," said Bella. "I already rescheduled today's shift for tomorrow, so I have to—"
"Reschedule."
Shit.
By the time they got back to town, Bella learned that she was at least a pack satellite, if not a pack member. The pack was like the mob. The pack was like Sweet Valley High or The Babysitters' Club. The pack was like the Magic Treehouse and the National Guard and the CIA. The pack was like a frat house where everybody could read everybody else's thoughts—she didn't exactly understand that part—and a band of blood brothers—literally, for they all shared some ancient, recessive gene that was triggered in times of danger—and a posse of underfunded vigilantes.
The pack was like a coven.
"I'm not so sure I want to be—"
"Too late," said Emily. "Be at our house by four o'clock. And bring some cookies; that'll make people hate you less."
"What?"
The pack existed because of the Cullens.
"Oh."
"But trying to save me and Quil will probably win you some points." The older girl's eyes were dark and serious. "You can't participate halfway. You have to go all in if you're going to be in, and congratulations, you're in. The boys need help. Please help me help them because I need some help. Kim is only fourteen. She's— Well, she's fourteen. I need help."
Bella looked at her scarred face and thought about how she had said, Stand up, Bella in the meadow. Meet your death like an adult. She wasn't so sure she wanted to be in the service of Sam's gang‚—the pack, she reminded herself—but for Jacob, for Emily, for Quil and Embry, she said she'd give it a try.
"There is no try," said Emily. "Only do or do not." She put her hands on the sides of her head and held them out horizontally, like Yoda's ears, frowning solemnly. Then she snorted with laughter. Then she clutched Bella's wrist and said, "Please help me. They eat so much. They can't sleep well. Some of them can't wake up well. They stink. They swim in the river and drip on the floor. I do three or four loads of laundry every day because their families aren't supposed to know. Even Sam's family doesn't know. And Allison and Clara think I'm nuts. Maybe I am." Her eyes were very big. "Help me, please."
Okay, said Bella. Give me some laundry. I'll wash it tonight.
When they got back to La Push, Bella drove her truck from Jake's house to Sam's. Emily filled the truck bed with laundry. "Wait a minute—" said Bella and Sam at the same time. "She's helping me," growled Emily, pushing an enormous armful of dirty clothes over the lip of the truck bed. Bella looked hopefully to Sam to moderate the amount of "helping" she had gotten herself into, but it turned out that Sam's "wait a minute" meant that the laundry in the truck bed might blow away when she drove home. "Oh," said Emily. "Of course." Then Sam and Emily stuffed the passenger side of her cab with the laundry and sent her on her way.
"Sam likes his underwear folded twice!" hollered Emily as she pulled out of the drive.
Damn it. Why did I offer to help with the laundry of all things? Now she was in possession of five guys' underwear. How was she going to explain this to Charlie? Or prevent his noticing? The laundry smelled like sweat and animal musk. Sam can fold his own damn underwear.
The Clearwaters' brown Suburban was parked in the driveway when Bella got home.
Excellent, she thought. Maybe Charlie's friends would distract him. She pulled in beside it, close to the backdoor, and used Paul's T-shirt to rub the mud off her truck seat where she'd been sitting. She chose it because it was Paul's, and she knew it was his because someone, presumably Emily, had written the boys' names with a permanent marker on every single item. Then she carried an armful to the back porch and flopped it on the floor. There were some clean flannel pajamas in the laundry room, so she peeled off her own dirty things and dressed in those. Then she squished as many clothes as she thought was safe into the washer, added extra detergent, and turned the dial to "Heavily Soiled."
"Everything okay back there, Bella?" called Charlie from the kitchen.
"Yes." No. I'm in possession of five guys' underwear. "Everything's fine."
Sue and Harry were at the kitchen table, having dinner with Charlie. "What the hell happened to you?" they said when she came in.
Though she had changed into the clean pajamas, her hair and face were still a mess. "I found Jacob," she said with a frown. "He was in the woods." Ignoring their questioning looks, she went upstairs to shower.
The water that poured off her body and rolled down the drain was tinged brown with mud. She washed all over and let the warm water pound on her back as she tried to understand all that had happened that day.
First, Jacob was a wolf. He was a vampire-fighting supernatural being. She wanted him to be his regular self. But the presence of the Cullens—and Laurent—had triggered the magical gene. Jacob was forced or drafted into a responsibility that required the risk of his life, but she knew he would never turn away from it. Her heart ached for him. He had been afraid that she'd hate him if she knew the truth. Well, of course not! But that street went both ways, and she was so thankful that he didn't hate her for what had happened to him.
However, Emily had insinuated that the other wolves—people, she told herself—did blame her for her association with vampires. Bring some cookies, she had said; that'll make people hate you less. Well, wasn't that just great? She felt vaguely guilty, but also angry. It wasn't her fault that the Cullens were the world's worst allergen.
Next, she had to understand that the wolves—the people—were part of a pack whose importance outranked everything else in life: family, friends, food, sleep, school, clothes, the comfort of one's own bed, ordinary fun and relaxation, and the extraordinary cost of one's life. She couldn't expect Jacob to talk on the phone, visit her, have dates, or just hang out whenever they felt like it. His priorities were now fighting vampires, fighting vampires, fighting vampires, fighting vampires, fighting vampires, food and sleep (so he could fight vampires), school (so he wouldn't be marked truant and be forced to attend summer school instead of fight vampires), and nice things. Nice things like spending time with a girlfriend. Bella leaned her forehead on the wall of the shower and thought that this just wasn't fair.
Lastly, she had to promise to keep the existence of the wolves a secret. This would be hard. Keeping the Cullens' secret had been easy because she hadn't had anyone else to talk to, but now she was closer to Charlie, and she had friends like Leah, Angela, and Mike who would notice and be hurt if she dropped them for another obsession. She could recognize now how she must have looked to other people, talking only to the Cullens for months and months. This was going to be really hard. Also, it was connected to Charlie's investigation, and he was trusting her, sharing stuff with her. Tears came to her eyes at the thought of damaging her fragile new relationship with him, but she'd have to make that sacrifice because it meant keeping the wolves—people—out of jail or a government science experiment. She allowed herself to sniffle a little until the water began to run cold; then she dried off, dressed, and returned to the kitchen.
Charlie and the Clearwaters were talking about Joy Ateara.
"That's just how she is, Charlie," said Sue. "It is not her best quality. You know that."
"But I think I—"
"Yep," said Harry. "Totally messed it up."
Bella helped herself to rice and a vegetable stir fry Charlie had concocted from odds and ends. "Where's the meat?" he said as she sat down. "We had a freezer full of meat." Bella shrugged as if she didn't know, and Charlie glared at her in a way that said he'd be asking again when their company left. She took a seat at the far end of the table, hoping to eat quickly and avoid conversation.
"What have you done that's special for Joy?" asked Sue.
"We went to the movies."
"And?"
"And Malone's. In Port Angeles."
Sue and Harry looked at Charlie with a pitying expression. Bella gathered that they had already hashed over the special things Joy had done: two fancy dinners in her home with food that took hours to prepare, and agreeably accompanying him, despite the fact that it ruined their date, to buy gas in Forks when Bella's truck ran dry. Bella almost pointed out that Charlie had bought Joy a blue slushie at the gas station, but she figured this would not impress Sue.
"Well, no wonder she asked if you were embarrassed about her," said Sue.
"She was talking about sex in front of the kids."
"The kids are not interested in that. Are you, Bella?"
"No."
"Look," continued Sue, stone-faced, "you snuck around when you were seventeen, you clam up when she wants to talk about your relationship in front of your families, and you've publicly exposed your relationship to people in Port Angeles who don't know you. And everybody in La Push knows you're seeing her, but they're not seeing you."
"I've been kind of busy," he said defensively.
"You asked for our advice. You need to celebrate your relationship. Do special things for her. Show her you're not an embarrassed teenager stuck in a man's body."
"Ouch," said Bella. She couldn't help it.
"To be fair," said Harry, "she did pin him with that question in front of the kids."
Sue excused that as "because of the baggage." Every person, she said, no matter how sane or content, has baggage. Joy and Charlie have baggage because they snuck around twenty-odd years ago. Their relationship relied on dishonesty and secrecy because of their parents, and Joy was a mess because of Josh Uley, and even if Charlie had assuaged her pain now and then, she still was in pain a lot of the time. Now she was trying to be different. To be cheerful. And now Charlie had to prove that his mindset was different, too. Clearly, Joy wanted him to be open.
"I'm not an open person," he argued. "I'm just not."
"Then you're a lonely person," said Harry.
Charlie mumbled something profane and stared at his half-empty plate.
"Just tell him the rule, Harry," sighed Sue.
"The rule is that Sue is always right."
"Because?" she prompted.
"Because she is the woman." Harry rolled his eyes as he recited what seemed to be a speech he was frequently expected to deliver. "The woman is always right because the woman is the soft, tender flower who deserves the best. Listening, understanding, respecting. Respect the feelings. Learn to recognize the feelings and respect them."
"And?" said Sue.
"And apologize."
The stony expression vanished from Sue's face as she nuzzled Harry under the chin and kissed his lips and cheeks. She scooted her chair closer, slipped her arm under Harry's, and lay her head on his shoulder. Bella had to remind herself to keep her expression neutral. She had never seen Sue acting so... cuddly. It was like seeing Leah wish on a star or hug a bunny, if Leah would ever consent to letting someone witness such things without punching them in the face.
Harry said, "This is how you make it last. You listen and apologize. Even if she runs you over with her car, you apologize for being in the road."
Charlie's eyebrows quirked upward in an expression of hopeless confusion. He looked—Bella was pained to recognize this—he looked like his heart hurt. Like he had lost something really important to him. If he and Joy got back together, she thought, would she have to listen to any more talks about sex? There ought to be a law against that, she thought. Sex talk + presence of offspring = NO. It conjured horrible images that required a lot of effort to ignore. If they got back together, how much time would she—and Quil—have to spend with their fingers metaphorically in their ears and their eyes squeezed shut, thinking, la, la, la, la, laaa! This is not happening! It was—she realized this with a feeling like her guts had just dropped out of her body—it was the reason why she chose to move away from Renee and Phil. They were loud. She used to lay awake with tears rolling down her face and her fingers not metaphorically in her ears. And if that happened with Charlie, where was she going to go?
She put her fork down and her elbows on the table, shoving her hands through her hair and staring at her dinner. Sue and Harry were talking about Joy and what she'd gone through after her husband had drowned. "I know," said Charlie, but Sue said fiercely, "No. You don't." The only person who knew was maybe Tiffany Call, who was silent as the grave. Tiffany Call was like La Push's well of stones; people dropped their secrets into her and knew they'd never see the light of day. As far as most people were concerned, Joy was fine. More than fine. She was a successful woman with a respectable job in PA. She could talk and talk about teens and sex ed, about weird symptoms of infections and gastrointestinal distress, about how to carve up a turkey or a salmon and what to do with its entrails, about crud caught in a bathtub drain, all kinds of stuff that made most people cringe, but she did not talk about Big Quil. The fact that she had invited Charlie into her home and kissed him was a big deal.
Charlie's face flushed pink.
Moreover, said Sue, she had become the subject of gossip, dating a friend of her late husband, a friend who hadn't taken her anywhere in La Push to show her friends his good intentions.
"Why is this a requirement?" demanded Charlie.
"Because it's a very small town, and everybody loves her." To Bella's surprise, Sue had tears in her eyes.
"I'm not going to hurt her," said Charlie quietly.
"I'm not sure she knows that."
Now it was Charlie's turn to put his elbows on the table, his hands in his hair, and stare at his plate. And Bella stared at him. It had never once occurred to her that Joy might be the one whose heart needed protecting. It hadn't occurred to her, either, how very miserable her father would be without her. Damn it. Now she was going to tear up. She could hardly believe she was saying this, but she pushed past her insecurity—You were so brave— and muttered, "You should call her."
"Of course," said Sue, like it hadn't cost Bella a month of her life to say that. "That's what we've been saying."
"But you don't want me to date her," said Charlie flatly to his daughter.
Looking at the table, she mumbled, "I don't want you to be unhappy."
"Awwww!" said Sue, patting her knee. "Good girl." Bella squirmed away. "Aw, look at that, Charlie; she's so much like you."
"Okay, fine," sighed Charlie. "I'll call her. I'll apologize." His confusion and hurt were turning toward stoic resolution. "I'll apologize for making her think I was embarrassed. For saying 'yes' when she asked, even though I meant talking about sex in front of the kids."
"Gross," muttered Bella.
"And then she will apologize for—"
"So close," said Harry. "But not how it works."
Charlie sighed again at the injustice of it all.
"It's not 1984 anymore," said Harry. "Men are supposed to be smarter and more sensitive."
"He's sensitive," said Bella.
"Sensitive and strong enough to apologize. Come on, role play with me."
"No," said Charlie, with a look of disgust. "That's—"
"Oh, Charlie," said Harry in a funny voice. "I borrowed your razor, and now it's all dull and rusty."
Charlie stared at him. Sue looked like she wanted to laugh. Harry looked at Bella, and suddenly she understood this game. She rolled her eyes and said in a deep voice, "Golly, Joy. Sorry my razor was such low quality."
Harry's eyes were twinkling.
"I hope your legs aren't nicked up," Bella continued in her dopey voice. "I was thinking about growing a beard anyway."
Charlie frowned at her as Sue snickered with the back of her hand against her nose.
"But Charlie," continued Harry in his funny voice, "I don't like you with a beard. It's too scratchy on my—"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," interrupted Bella, almost forgetting to use her man voice. "If you don't like beards, I'm so sorry I thought of that."
"I can't believe you didn't remember that I don't like beards," squeaked Harry. "I told you that twenty years ago, and now you've forgotten. You must not think of me very often."
Charlie got into the game, but only as an umpire: "Now that's just unreasonable."
"And you think my feelings are 'unreasonable?'" said Harry, putting his hand over his heart about six inches away from his chest, as if placing his hand over a full-figured bosom. "How long have you been thinking that, eh?"
"Oh, my God," groaned Charlie, "that's—"
"Golly, Joy," said Bella again in her man voice, "I'm sorry. All your feelings are very important to me. Your feelings are perfectly understandable considering what an ass I've been."
Harry gave her a high five.
"Okay, okay," said Charlie.
The washing machine gave a dull thunk at the end of its cycle, and Bella excused herself. On the enclosed back porch, she transferred the wet laundry to the dryer. Most of the dirt seemed to have come out, but there were still some stains. Stains that are about to be set in because I am not scrubbing them out and rewashing this crud.. She went out to her truck and hauled in more laundry, holding her breath, trying to carry as much as possible yet prevent it from touching her face. She stuffed another perilously full load into the washer, and when she turned around, Harry was waiting at the closed kitchen door.
"You found Jacob," he said.
She gave the briefest nod.
"Was he looking well?"
"He was looking about eight feet long."
Harry passed a hand over his unshaven face, looking more resigned than surprised. He mumbled something about the necessity for secrecy, which made her want to roll her eyes. Secrets on top of secrets.
"What's all this?" he continued. "Laundry?"
Yes, obviously, it was laundry. She felt a little irritated as he stooped to look in the dryer window at the swirling clothes, and more irritated when he stopped the machine and pulled out a white undershirt with a green smear on it.
"Most of these boys' families don't know. They can't know. So their clothes have to look normal." He got down on a knee and scooped out more wet clothes, saying, "Grass, grass, blood, ashes, blood, dirt. Mustard." Bella wilted as he put the pile of stained, wet slop on top of the machine and reached for the Fells Naptha soap on the shelf. "If you're in, you have to be all in." It sounded like what Emily had said. He scrubbed at a streak of dark, blackish something on a pair of jeans. Reluctantly, Bella got a small brush and a bottle of color safe bleach. "Thank you," said Harry. "They need you."
"Emily says they hate me."
"Well, it's hard for them to understand your choices. Hard for me and Billy, frankly. And Old Quil. Forget it. It's best to just never talk about this with him."
"He knows?" This mystery, she thought, was like an octopus. She had found one tentacle, and now seven more plus a head with a snapping beak swirled toward her from a cloud of ink. "He knows?" she said indignantly. "Then why didn't he tell Quil?"
Harry's expression sank. "Today?"
"It was horrible."
Sue opened the door. "What's all this?"
"Science experiment," said Harry.
Sue looked at Bella.
"An experiment about stain removal. I'm, uh, making a graph about which kinds of soap work best on which kinds of stains."
"That's an awful lot of—" Sue started to say, but the phone rang and she turned back to the kitchen. Harry followed at her elbow, closing the door behind them.
Old Quil knew? How long? What had he known, exactly? Why hadn't he told Quil?
Furiously, she scrubbed at the stains until she accidentally made a small hole in a shirt. Then she tossed the soap down with shaking hands. She'd have to come back when she wasn't angry enough to shred this whole pile. Old Quil knew? And Billy knew? Had Billy given Jacob any warning? Or had Jacob learned about all this the way Quil had, with a bloody, painful, frightening change, far from home, in the presence of death? She didn't think she'd ever forget the sound of Quil's screams, the sound of his terror and agony. She could never forget the blood, such a lot of blood, dripping down the stems of the grass where he disappeared. Had that happened to Jacob?
She lifted the lid of the washing machine and rinsed her hands in the hot water pouring over the new load. In the kitchen, she dried her hands on a dishtowel and stood leaning against the counter with her arms crossed, in a mood so foul and black that the back of her throat stung with bile. Sue and Harry whispered goodbye to Charlie—he was still on the phone—and put on their coats. Bella followed them outside, and as Sue climbed into the driver's seat, she followed Harry around to the passenger side. Before he could open his door, she hissed, "What am I supposed to tell Charlie? Three loads of boys' laundry covered with God knows what? And what about Joy?" She could hardly believe she was advocating for Joy in any respect, but it seemed obvious that she might want to know—that she deserved to know—what had happened to her only child. "Did Old Quil tell her?"
Harry whirled on her with a harshness she had never before seen on his gentle face. "You have no room to criticize us. This is all on a need-to-know basis. You will keep quiet until further notice."
His anger made her feel like a defiant child. She had to fight the urge to say, You're not the boss of me.
"You were not supposed to know. Only the boys and the Council."
Leaning across the cab, Sue rolled down the passenger side window. "Hurry up."
"You can tell Charlie anything you want," he said coldly. "Except the truth. You're good at that."
Bella stepped back, stung. As Sue backed out of the drive, she saw Harry fasten his seat belt and put his hand over his heart, closing his eyes.
Charlie was on the phone with Joy. He was saying things in a rush, things like, "No, I'm sorry. No, it was my fault," and "I'm so glad you called." Then there were some quieter words that Bella refused to hear as she took the stairs two at a time. She slipped on the last step and cracked her shin so hard it made her cry, and she sat at the top of the stairs, pulling her pajama pants leg up and curling over the spot that would probably be bruised for weeks.
How painful would it have been to listen to Charlie's mushy talk? This painful? This was fricking painful.
"I'll be back in a couple hours," Charlie called, and then she was alone with her barking shin and an equally painful opportunity for self-reflection: Sometimes I am a jerk.
She spent Monday attending school but pretending to be sick. It wasn't that hard. All she had to do was think about her aching shin, already swollen and purple, and the events of the past twenty-four hours. It was easy to let the shivers roll down her spine. Perhaps they would look like fever chills to Mike. He was the one she wanted to convince. In history class, last period, she lay her head on her desk and listened to Mrs. Kranz's lecture with her face turned toward Mike, her mouth slightly open and her eyelids fluttering.
"You want me to take your shift today?" he eventually said.
"No," she feigned. "I'm okay."
"My mom said you were sick yesterday."
Bella coughed weakly, then stopped. What illness was she trying to fake, exactly? Maybe the coughing was too much.
"You look really weird," said Mike. "Just go home. Sleep or something."
"Thank you," she sighed. When the bell rang, she had to make herself walk really slowly to the parking lot. Angela followed.
"You're not sick," she said quietly, putting a hand on Bella's truck door not to hold it shut but to intimate that she wasn't letting her get away with dishonesty. "What's wrong?"
Bella pressed her lips together and pushed her hands into the pocket of her red coat. Sue had returned it yesterday. "Jacob is having a problem," she said, which was true.
"Oh, no. You talked to him?"
"Yes. Finally. And he's— He's—" He's having a huge problem. His body has broken and reformed. The word broken seemed like another kernel of truth she could offer. "He's having a breakdown. Stress. He's seriously freaking out."
"He doesn't seem like the freakout type."
"He hides it well."
Angela pushed her hands into her own coat pockets, shivering, as the wind lifted her hair from her neck. "You can tell me, you know," she said quietly. "That's what friends do."
"I'm sorry." Bella looked at the pocked asphalt, stained with oil. "He has a secret, and he asked me not to say anything about it." That, too, was partly true.
"Well, I'm here. If you want."
Bella stopped herself from apologizing again because she thought it would make her sound as guilty as she felt. "I'd tell you if I could," was the best she could offer. Angela hugged her. Hugged her, even though Bella had lied to her and put her off. That, too, was what friends do, she realized.
She hugged her back and went home to get the boys' laundry. That had taken hours last night. She had done her homework at the kitchen table, getting up every fifteen minutes or so to check on the stuff she was bleaching in Charlie's utility sink and keep the dryer moving so the clothes wouldn't crumple and wrinkle. She had just barely finished packing the neatly folded clothes into three giant plastic trash bags and stowing them in her truck when she saw the headlights of Charlie's cruiser turn the corner at the end of the block. She scurried to her bedroom and lay on her side, pretending to be asleep. Charlie looked in on her, but didn't say anything. In the morning, she repeatedly hit snooze on her alarm clock and stared at the ceiling for nearly half an hour. Then she jumped up and frantically got dressed. Charlie tried to pull her into a conversation about Jacob, but she said she was late for school.
Now it was nearly four o'clock. She figured she wouldn't be able to evade him at dinner tonight, so hopefully this so-called pack meeting would release her from some of the secrecy. Surely immediate family members should know. Bella rolled her shoulders as she drove west on the 110 spur to La Push. Yes, she thought. She would go into that meeting and talk some sense into those people. Joy needed to know. Charlie needed to know. Old Quil needed to know how scared his grandson had been. Sam needed to know how long it had taken her to do all that laundry, and those boys needed to know that they should be more careful with their clothes.
I'm good at organizing things, she thought. Emily said they needed help, and lucky for them, here she was. At least I can get them to organize their stupid laundry. As she passed the reservation boundary, she was frowning with a mixture of irritation and indignation. But when she passed the general store, she remembered that most of these guys hated her and that she was supposed to have baked conciliatory cookies. She turned around in the campground parking lot, bought a package of Oreos—which made her worry about Riley—and drove to Sam's house. The tunnel-like road through the trees was so dim in the late afternoon that it seemed prudent to turn on her headlights.
Ellen Uley answered her knock at the door. She was not quite five feet tall, Bella noticed, since she herself was barely five foot, four. Ellen Uley squinted up at her, changed her expression to one of disgust, said, "They're in the woods," and shut the door.
Bella's indignation returned as she went back to her truck and slung the handles of the three enormous plastic bags over her shoulder. It was almost impossible to walk under the weight of the laundry. She paused to put the package of cookies into a bag and slowly, slowly, crept around the side of the house. Sam's backyard, with its lush and evenly mown grass, was mostly free of sticks, so she set the bags down and dragged them toward the woods. But even with the slick, damp grass, moving them was so difficult that she had to walk backward. She imagined herself as an overworked farmer, pulling three recalcitrant black cows. It made her sweat and the straps hurt her hands. How big was his yard? An acre? Two? Why did he have to mow all this? Couldn't he have left part of it alone? Then the woods would have been closer to the house. She sat on one of the bags to rest. Looking back at Sam's house, she saw a curtain move and a small round face appear just above the windowsill. Claire. Her black hair was cut above the shoulder; black bangs hung in her eyes. She stared blankly at Bella.
"What are you doing?" hissed Sam, striding from the trees. He picked up the three bags in one hand and grabbed her arm with the other, forcing her to trot beside him. A hundred yards or so into the woods, he shoved her into the center of the well-trampled clearing she had discovered with Quil. Emily was there. So was Jacob. Paul leaned against a tree, indolent and insolent, and Embry sat on a stone, his lips pressed together and his eyes on the ground. There was another girl Bella had never seen before, a younger girl with brown hair who looked about fourteen. She was chewing on the end of a braid. When she took a break from that, she nibbled on her fingernails.
Kim, thought Bella. Maybe she's Kim.
"Congratulations," sneered Paul. "You've failed Pack 101."
The thanks she'd been expecting for the laundry turned into a snarling, withering explanation of her failure. Dragging bags of laundry through the yard was the worst kind of idiocy because Sam's family could be looking out the window. What would they think? Sam's face was red. Too many questions, he said. Every day, he snarled, he had to avoid or deflect questions. He had worked too hard for her to blow this in her first few minutes of Packhood.
Packhood? she wanted to say. Is that a word?
Sam growled about secrecy for several more minutes, leaving Bella stranded in the middle of their circle as the others stared at her, or at Sam, or at the ground. She was supposed to help them; for example, she could make herself useful by dishing on some of the information she'd surely gained in the course of her unnatural relationship with their mortal enemies, some of whom were probably out in the forest right now endangering her friends, friends who put themselves in danger to help her and the rest of Klallam-freaking-County; for example, maybe she could do that instead of blowing the cover they worked so desperately to maintain. When he finally finished, she was fuming, confused, and hurt. Jacob held out his hand, grimacing at Sam, but couldn't say anything. Literally, he couldn't. He looked instead at Embry, who looked between Sam and Bella, both red-faced.
"You can't drag the laundry," Embry quietly translated.
Sam sat on a log next to Emily and steepled his fingers, placing them over his nose.
"And Quil says hi," murmured Embry.
Emily passed her a plastic shopping bag. It had been twisted into a tight, perfect rosette. Jacob unwound it for her and spread it on the log beside him; everyone was sitting on these crinkly little things to keep their backsides dry. Bella sat down and turned her face into Jacob's shoulder as he put an arm around her and stroked his palm up and down her back.
The meeting was called to order. Emily did this because she had read a pamphlet about parliamentary procedure in high school. It wasn't much, but it made her the most qualified, and like Bella, she had noticed the boys needed to organize themselves better. Sam was not always capable of this, especially when he hadn't slept or when Paul was feeling hostile toward him. Or toward Billy. Or Jacob. Or vampires. Or Embry. Or his teachers, his father, Old Quil, Harry, or Bella. Or the thoughts of Bella in Jacob's head. He felt this way most of the time. Sam had urged him to direct his anger toward inanimate objects, and last week he broke his knuckles against some exposed granite on one of the ridges in the mountains.
"First," said Emily timidly, "we have to talk about Quil."
Quil had adjusted to the transformation well. He was pleased to be reunited with his friends, and he enjoyed the rush of supernatural speed. He had even accepted the reality of vampires without going half-mad. But there were still the common problems of adjustment, namely, what to say to his mother, and how to phase back. Last night, Jacob had flat out lied to Mrs. Ateara, saying that Quil was spending the night at his house. That went okay. But this morning, while at work in Port Angeles, his mother had received a call from the school, reporting Quil absent. Did he have a cold, the secretary wanted to know. Mrs. Ateara said yes. Then she left work early, drove an hour home, and beat on Billy's door, demanding that he return her son. I don't know what you mean, said Billy. I think you do, said Mrs. Ateara. I think you do.
"How did she know?" said Sam.
"She's not stupid," muttered Bella.
There were six wolves now, and Quil faced the same problem that all the others had faced, except for Jacob. In Jacob's house, finding a false yet plausible explanation for his new appearance, appetite, and absences fell not on the shoulders of the wolf, but on those of the parent. Jacob whispered this to her: what plausible explanation, he kept asking, could his father have had for not warning him when it became clear that the change was unavoidable? "Were you scared?" she whispered. "Yes," he whispered, his forehead pressed to her temple. "I was so—"
Paul picked up a rock and hurled it at Jacob's head; Embry was able to intercept the missile but not the message.
"Grow the fuck up," said Paul.
"Quil," Emily reminded them.
It was decided that Old Quil should come up with a reason that Joy would believe.
"Excellent," said Sam. "Next item."
"No," said Emily. "Item One-B. Phasing back."
He sighed.
Paul's idea was to threaten and bite Quil until he did it. Or starve him. Embry looked at Sam with one eyebrow raised, and Jacob said that Quil just had to be talked through it. It was hard. It had taken him a few days to figure it out, and Sam, with no guidance his first time, ran feral in the woods for two weeks. You are such an ass, Paul, said Jacob. Worked for me, said Paul.
Paul, Bella gathered, had phased back after only two days because he was so hungry and exhausted that he wanted to fit through the door of his father's house to get to the fridge.
"Jared's chill," said Embry. "He can talk him through it."
Jared, whispered Jacob to Bella, was unnervingly at peace with his inner wolf. He would sit in clearings blinking slowly or roll over and let the sun warm his belly. Sometimes he talked to voices no one else could hear. Embry's Psych 101 book said this was called a psychosis. It made them uncomfortable. Was something wrong with his mind? Was he going to snap one day and shred them all?
"Resolved," said Emily. "Old Quil will handle Item One-A, and Jared will handle Item One-B."
Bella figured Jared must be with Quil now; they were the only wolves not present.
"Now we have to talk about the hikers' disappearance," said Emily. "Item Two is Riley Biers and his friend."
Feeling pleased with herself, Bella pulled a folded white piece of paper from her pocket. She had remembered how helpful Charlie thought her information about Riley's boots was, so she had printed out a photo from the Asolo website that showed the tread design. She passed it to Emily, who looked it over and said, "Appendage, Item Two." Then she passed it to the other pack members.
Sam acknowledged that this was helpful. Very helpful. It was necessary for the search, and Charlie hadn't shared this with him because thanks to Bella, he now knew there was "a fucking vampire in the woods," Sam snarled," and Charlie didn't want Sam or Paul to go out there anymore.
Unfortunately for Bella, Item Two was tabled in favor of Item Three, which was her indiscretion.
"Did you tell him?" Sam demanded. "Did you just say, 'Hey, Dad, I dated a vampire. There's a vampire in the woods right now, eating hikers?'"
"No," said Bella.
"So you can keep this secret for the Cullens—" he practically spat the name "—but you can't keep it for us?"
"I didn't know," she protested. "I didn't know about you all. And I didn't tell him about vampires; he read it in my notebook."
"You wrote it down?" All the boys, even Jacob, looked at her like she was mad.
Item Three took up a lot of floor time. Bella sat beside Jacob with her face burning while Sam and Paul tore into her about this. They demanded to know how much Charlie knew about the wolves, and she admitted that she had told him there was a giant wolf in the woods, but that was only because she had thought it was a monster who might hurt Jake.
"So he knows about us, too?" All the boys seemed appalled.
"It was a monster that was eating Jake!" she snarled. "He doesn't really know about you. All of you."
Sam pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, gazing bleakly at the ground. "He's gonna figure it out. We are so fucked."
"Don't you trust him?" said Bella.
"We are alive because we trust no one," he replied, and Paul laughed. The edges of his body blurred, and Sam said, "No... No, no, no, no... NO!"
"Come on, Paul," said Embry.
Clenching his teeth, Paul drew a sharp fingernail over his bare forearm until blood came, then he sucked on his arm while staring at Bella. "Inanimate objects, Paul," Sam reminded him.
"Something is wrong with him," Jacob whispered.
"Heard that," said Paul, lifting his head, leering at Bella with teeth edged in red.
"Hikers," said Emily. Her voice was quiet, her gaze flickering uncertainly around the clearing. The afternoon was fading to twilight. Beyond the clearing, the trees were cloaked in shadow. Bella began to feel uneasy. Obviously, something was wrong with Paul. The shadows, creeping closer as the meeting wore on, reminded her that she was in an ancient forest with a bunch of ancient magic, manifest in these boys who were adjusting to it with varying degrees of success.
"Hikers," said Emily again, more firmly. Bella offered what she could about Riley's appearance and the way he had described the girl he met online. "She speaks French. She has red hair."
"Oh, no," said Embry. The wolves all looked at the ground. At last Jacob whispered that her friend Riley was probably dead.
Bella felt numb. Jacob put his arm around her and she lay her face on his chest, her mouth slightly open, staring at the ferns that grew beside the log. Their green fronds seemed so delicate. Fragile. They uncurled softly with the new growth of spring. And just like that, Riley was gone. He was—he had been she thought—smart and funny and interested in helping kids. He liked the outdoors. He had gotten his heart broken last winter, and he was trying to meet someone new. But that someone—
"Why do you think he's dead?" she asked dully.
"The red-head is a vampire."
A chill ran down her spine. Victoria. It had to be her. She had wanted Riley to show her the trails around Forks. Maybe she had been in the woods for weeks, looking for a way to get past the wolves, feeding occasionally on the unfortunate and solitary hiker, all the while trying to get to town. To get to her.
She closed her eyes and listened to Jacob's heartbeat.
All the boys were looking at her, waiting for her response.
"You know something," said Jacob quietly.
Yes. Yes, she did.
She tried not to cry in front of them all. Staring at the ferns, she described what had happened last spring with James, Laurent, and Victoria. What had happened in Phoenix. How James had tricked her and bit her. How the Cullens had burned him. How Edward struggled to keep her from changing, and to keep himself from draining her. The scar on her hand. Jacob ran his fingers over it, and she felt him shudder. The more she talked, the more he trembled. Sam had to interrupt her more than once to command Jacob to keep still.
"They mate for life," she finished. "Edward took hers, so she wants to take his."
This statement provoked a variety of reactions. Jacob squeezed her hard against his chest, so hard it hurt, but she was afraid to tell him to stop because he didn't seem to be himself. Paul said this cleared up a lot of questions they'd had for a long time; mainly why the vampire kept aiming for Forks and why she was so persistent. It explained what Bella was to the Cullen clan. He spit at her and Jake. Called her the leavings. Jacob was close to boiling over; something bad was almost happening, but she wasn't sure what that would be. Embry got up and smoothed his hands over Jacob's face and scalp. Not true, he said. Not true. And Sam put his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle between them, and said, "What else?"
"What do you mean, 'What else'?" demanded Jacob. "She's not. The end."
"She's the mate." Paul suggested offering her up, a suggestion that made her pallid with fear. Could they really do that?
Sam had to come help Embry, keeping his hands on Jacob's shoulders. "Come away, Bella," whispered Emily.
"No." She put her arms around Jacob's middle. "I'm not the mate." It was hard to choke the words out, so deep was the stabbing pain in her gut. "I'm not anything to him."
"'They mate for life,'" Paul repeated, and it made her feel confused.
"He left me," she said. "I nearly went crazy."
"Because you love him," said Paul. "You love that thing."
"Bella, come now," said Emily, holding out her hand.
Later, she would realize that the boys must have been having this conversation for months. This conversation about her. Was she or wasn't she the mate? Why would she be with him? How had she survived? Why did she keep going back? What were they doing in her room, night after night, when that thing scaled the wall of her house? The outside of the window frame was still reeking with an invisible mark of possession. Of particular interest to Paul was whether or not she had fucked him.
"What?" she managed to say.
"Jake wants to know," he replied. "Why don't you tell him?"
"It doesn't matter," ground out Jacob.
"Oh, I think it does," said Paul. "Can they cum? How does it feel, on the inside? How did he not break you?"
"That's enough, Paul," growled Sam.
"Jake wants to know. It's driving him crazy. He wants to get his tongue on your—"
"Stop!" snarled Jacob.
"Wants to claim your—"
A lot of things happened at once after that. Paul took a step toward her, Jacob shoved her aside, and she slid off the log backward. Simultaneously, she heard a horrible sound, a roar and a wump, like a change in air pressure, and a red monster tumbled into the trees with his teeth on the neck of a gray wolf. Shreds of clothing fluttered over the clearing and a bit of blood dribbled off the log. The wolves rolled deeper into the forest, branches snapping, roaring so loud that she clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. She screamed from fright; she screamed because Emily was screaming about phasing too close; she screamed because Sam had dashed after them with another thunder-crack of air and a little spray of red on the new, spring maple leaves. Only Embry and Kim sat still, the girl looking petrified, the boy looking at Bella. Her face burned as she realized that Paul was talking about her virginity, and that Jake had— "Does he really think about that?" she said, tears coming to her eyes, and Embry blushed and looked away.
"Jacob!" she screamed. After losing Riley and learning that Victoria was after her, she couldn't handle anything more. "How could you think that?" she screamed, crying now, as the extent of the pack mind dawned upon her. "How could you think that with these other people?" She started to go after them, picking up a rock like Paul had done, but Emily grabbed her arm and pulled her away. There were tears in her eyes, too.
"They can't help it," she said.
Seeing Emily's tears made Bella angrier. "How could you think that about her?" she roared. "That is private! What's wrong with you people?"
Kim started to cry, too. Bella stared at her. Wasn't she only fourteen? Bella didn't want to be judgemental or anything; many fourteen-year-olds were very mature; but Kim just looked so young for her age; she looked so young in the expression on her face, in the way she wore her hair in two little braids. In the way she wrapped her arms around her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. She was wearing tight jeans and a berry pink raincoat. Her tan face flushed darker, and a tear spilled down her cheek.
"Come on, Kim," said Embry. "He tries. Sometimes. Not to think about it."
"Sometimes?" sobbed Kim.
Embry slid off his rock in a silver blur, like liquid mercury, his clothes slipping to the moss, and rose again as a wolf, trotting into the forest.
"Let's go," said Bella. She pulled the package of Oreos from one of the bags of laundry and started back toward Sam's house. The other girls followed. As she walked, Bella picked up a long, sturdy stick and thwacked everything she passed, trees, logs, rocks, bushes, and leaves, which fell from their branches in torn, tender green ribbons.
"Boys will be boys," said Ellen Uley, her bowie knife in hand, whittling fat chips off a small log near the fireplace. Bella thought she was trying to send some of them into the fire; when one flew in there every now and then, she looked almost pleased. When the girls came in, she took one look at their faces and said, "Boys will be boys." It made Bella angry. It sounded like something people say when they are tacitly giving boys permission to be idiots or pigs or both, without holding them accountable for at least trying to improve themselves.
"Did you have a fight?" said Ellen.
"No," muttered Emily. She put the Oreos on a plate, fussing with them, arranging them in the shape of a flower while directing Bella to pour five little glasses of milk.
"I don't want any milk," said Ellen when Bella brought her a glass. "Juice of cow. No."
Bella tried to pour it back in the container, but a bit of it spilled down the side.
"Wasteful," said Ellen.
Looking for backup, Bella turned to Emily, but Emily just kept her head down and put the cookies and remaining four glasses on the table. "Claire," she called, and the little girl came out of a bedroom down the hall. "Hate you!" she said when she saw Bella, and she started to cry.
"No," sighed Emily, going to pick her up. "No, no, no. Too many tears today. Bella is very sorry, honey."
"Yes," said Bella, cringing at the memory of the fatal kick she had given Claire's pet baby skunk. "Very sorry."
"Hate you," repeated Claire. She turned her head into Emily's shoulder as Emily hoisted her onto one hip and carried her to the table, where she allowed the little girl to sit on her lap. Claire squirmed to get down until she saw the Oreos. Hesitantly, Bella offered her a cookie. "Look," she said quietly, turning the cookie sideways. "It's stripey." Claire's little eyebrows sank low over her eyes, pinched together. When she turned her face into Emily's shoulder again, Emily offered her a different cookie. Sam's mother and grandmother were not at home. His great-grandmother kept whittling, watching this scene out of the corner of her eye.
"How do you stand it?" said Bella.
Emily shrugged bleakly. "There's no choice, so you just have to stand it."
Twisting an Oreo apart and dragging her front teeth through the white filling, Kim said, "Jared says we'd be married by now if this was five hundred years ago."
"But it's 2006. Would you want to be married now?"
"I don't know."
"But you should know. Don't you think you should know what you want?"
"There's not a choice," Emily snapped. "We're supposed to be together. It's like destiny or something. It's very powerful, and you can't fight it because you don't want to. We get nervous when we're not around each other. How do you think this happened?" she snarled, indicating her scars.
"That's from—"
"From Sam, yes. I said 'No, what about Leah?' and he just fell apart. Or burst apart."
Bella gasped. So did Ellen at the fire. "Oh!" she said.
The three girls at the table turned toward the old woman with big eyes. Emily recovered first, saying, "The bear. Sam was there when the bear attacked."
Stiffly, Ellen rose and shuffled to the table in her stocking feet, where she bent over Emily, laying her wrinkled cheek on the top of Emily's head. She spoke in a language Bella assumed was Quileute. Then she put kisses into her brown, calloused palms and pressed them over Emily's scars. Emily sat stiffly, looking uncertainly toward Bella while the old woman mumbled into her hair, sat in the chair beside her, and held her hand on her lap, patting it. "Bear," she said, gesturing with her other hand as if Emily should continue her story.
"The bear," said Emily slowly. "Right. Well, when the bear wants to be with you, then you want to be with it. Don't you feel this? Don't you feel sick without him?"
"No."
"No? But I thought—"
"No?" said Ellen sharply. She stood up and spoke to—or rather spoke at—Bella with more words she couldn't understand. Coming closer, she put her hands on Bella's face and squished her flesh this way and that, pulling her lips back and looking critically at her teeth. "Stop it," said Bella. "What are you doing?" Ellen flapped a hand at her dismissively and shuffled down the hall. She reminded Bella of Mr. Horowitz.
"Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else," said Emily quietly. Then she put her face in her hands and said, "Oh, I'm so stupid. Stupid."
"No," said Bella.
"Yes. I have one job. One job. Secrecy."
"You have lots of jobs," said Bella indignantly. "Laundry, laundry, laundry, putting up with their shit, and letting them see your personal business."
"Well, their job is worse!" she snapped.
Kim was looking at the table, chewing on her lower lip.
"I want to go home," said Bella. "My friend might be dead. Somebody wants to kill me. And I don't want Jake to think about— that kind of stuff with the others. This is horrible. We kissed one time! And now he's thinking—"
"They have a lot of urges!" said Emily. "They can't help it!"
"Shh," said Kim.
"And if we do that one day," said Bella, "I don't want everybody to see it!"
"Well, how do you think I feel?" cried Emily. "And Kim? And I'm pretty sure Leah's in there, too; it's the kind of thing he would try not to think about, which means it's probably playing 24/7 in everybody's heads. And not just the first time; it's every time. We do it in the dark now so he'll only have a soundtrack to share!"
"Shh," said Kim, but Emily couldn't stop.
"You're worried about something that might happen!" she cried.
"Oh, it's not gonna happen," growled Bella. "I don't want to have everybody looking at me like they know what my underwear looks like. And what does Paul mean with that word, "claim"? That is not the right word to use; it's— Something is not right with—"
"They're very possessive. Like animals. Their brains are not working like normal; they want to growl and pee on everything."
"No, no, no!" said Bella. "I can't date somebody like that."
"Paul used the word, not Jake."
"Well, it's disgusting. Somebody's virgi— Somebody's personal— No one can "claim" that; it's not an object; it's an experience; it's—" A million thoughts were rushing through her head, including an image of stampeding pioneers on the Great Plains, galloping over the hills to be the first to drive a stake into the ground and "claim" a bunch of acres for a homestead. "I don't know how to explain it!" she concluded. "This is really messed up! This is some kind of sexist— objectifi—"
"Talk to Embry. He almost has the right words. Paul is his project. Emb bought a sociology textbook, and a psychology one, and something by Mary Stonemaker—"
"Wollstonecraft?"
"—her, and all these books are still not enough to define how— Well, Paul is an ass, okay?"
"No. This is not okay. Paul is in Jake's head. And I don't want to put up with his nasty comments about—"
"It's not nasty; it's normal," cried Emily. "Sex is not bad!"
"Paul is nasty. I hate him!" She was furious with herself for crying about this when Riley was gone, but she couldn't help it. "I wanted to hang out with Jacob; I wanted to sit with him and see movies and maybe make out on the porch again. I can't think about— You know what? I'm out."
"What?"
"I'm out. I want Jake out, too." She stood up and put her red wool coat on. There was a damp spot on the hem where Jake had knocked her onto the mossy ground. "Sam's the boss? Tell him Jake quits."
She turned away from the stricken look on Emily's face. In the driveway, she climbed into her old truck and savored the bang it made when she slammed the door. At least this rust bucket was good for expressing her feelings. But when she turned the key, nothing happened except for a stuttering, clicking noise. She turned the key again and again, then noticed that she'd left her headlights on, and therefore the battery was dead.
It was too much. The tall green trees seemed to loom over her oppressively. She closed her eyes, leaned her head on the steering wheel, and cried with her fist against her mouth to muffle the sound.
Riley was dead? She hoped the boys were wrong, but if Victoria was out there—if Victoria had tricked him— Oh, it was too awful to think about. And surely she was next. It was just a matter of time before Victoria slipped past the wolves.
Was it only two weeks ago that she and Jacob had kissed on her porch? It felt like forever. Now her relief and joy at finding him were extinguished in less than twenty-four hours. When she had dated Edward, she'd been curious about sex, and since Edward couldn't—or wouldn't—do it, his refusal ironically made her freer to daydream. She had thought about it a lot. But now she could hardly get her head around the possibility. She and Jacob had been friends for so long that it was hard to imagine anything more intimate than kissing. Sex? With Jacob? Oh, my God, I don't know what to think about that.
Unfortunately, it sounded like Jake was thinking about it. And sharing those thoughts with others, albeit involuntarily. It felt violating. And it felt distancing. She and Jake were not feeling the same. It felt like she had just learned to ride a bicycle, and all the while he had been dying to get her into the cockpit of a 747.
Jake meets you where you are, said a little voice in the back of her head.
Well, yes, she thought, but she really hadn't wanted to know that he thought about sex. Suddenly, their relationship had become a lot more serious.
You're worried about something that MIGHT happen, Emily had said.
Nope. Not anymore. And then she realized what she was really crying about. It was the lost potential to have a normal relationship with Jake. One where their decisions could be made privately. She cried for herself, and she cried for Jake, and she cried for the rest of Sam's "pack." They must be miserable over this, too. Embry looked so uncomfortable. He and Quil were her friends, too. And oh, my God, now Embry and Quil had seen Jake imagining—
She cried for everybody except Paul. After ten minutes or so, she just sat staring dully at the trees on the other side of Sam's driveway, wishing her truck would start.
That night, Bella sat alone at Charlie's kitchen table, poking her fork at a braised chicken cutlet and some steamed broccoli over brown rice. She had made a nice dinner for herself and Charlie, but he wasn't home. He had telephoned, just as she was setting the table, to say that he was going to La Push to see Joy.
Joy was upset. She couldn't find Quil, and she suspected he had become wrapped up in the same shady business that had taken several teenage boys away from their families for a week or two and had given them back mysteriously changed. Was it drugs? A religious cult? Smuggling stuff? What on earth could that be? Were they exploiting laws about crimes that could and could not be prosecuted by non-tribal law enforcement? Maybe these young men were involved in a crime circuit. There were lines of black money stretching up and down the west coast, from San Diego to Seattle, in which stolen goods—from car break-ins, to home robberies, to workplace theft—were traded, transported, pawned, or sold in small, hard-to-trace batches. Could the boys be running with a gang like that?
Well, Bella had told Charlie there was a giant wolf in the woods. He didn't know that there were six of them, or that they were also those missing young men touched by magic. But Charlie, like Joy, wasn't stupid. For weeks, he had been reading anthropological texts on Olympic Peninsula tribes, absorbing their legends, histories, customs, artifacts and art forms. It wasn't as if those books were going to talk about a vampire-hunting wolf pack. But knowing about vampires was a primer for believing in magic... and the rest of it wasn't such a stretch. Bella had halfway solved the wolf mystery just by remembering the many wolf images seen in La Push, from decorations on the general store to the carvings on the cedar canoes. Charlie, she had to admit, was smarter than she. All he had to do was stop at the gas pump outside the general store and glance around while filling up the cruiser. Yep, Charlie wasn't stupid. Right now, he could be confronting Billy, Harry, or Old Quil about the disappearance of these boys.
Bella didn't feel like eating, but she made herself take a few bites of everything on her plate before wrapping up the leftovers and putting them in the refrigerator. She labored through her homework, all of which seemed pointless except for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which she hoped fervently was entirely fictitious, and then she went upstairs to soak in the bathtub, staring at the tile with the same miserable torpidity she'd felt when Emily had come outside and tapped on her truck window after she'd been crying in the driveway for a while.
It was funny, she thought, adding more bubble soap to the water, how she could go on a long journey without ever leaving the driveway. Emily had come out and knocked on the door, and it turned out that her interlude of crying in the truck was not the end of her afternoon; it was just a pit stop on the highway of to hell that was her first day of packhood. There was not enough bubble bath in the world to make this go away.
"What?" Bella had said dully, still staring straight ahead.
Emily had opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. "I'm sorry I yelled at you," she said quietly.
"I'm sorry, too," said Bella.
"I'm so ugly," said Emily.
"What?"
"I am." She said it as though it were an objective fact. "I'm glad of the imprint because no one else would love me."
Bella's mind was too exhausted to summon any more emotion. She only said, "The what?"
Emily explained the bond.
"That's—" began Bella, but she didn't know what it was. That's weird? That's wonderful? That's awful? She didn't know. She put her head back on the steering wheel and said, "People would love you. You're like, made of love. You're patient and stuff."
"You don't know me that well yet."
Then, to Bella's horror, Emily burst into tears. "I need help. Please don't go."
Bella only closed her eyes.
"I cook dinner, I wash the clothes, I make the snacks, I crawl around in the woods finding their clothes before anyone else does. I lie to their moms. I lie to my mom. Their parents think we're doing something wrong or dangerous, and I'm like fucking Sacagawea, like, 'Ooh, there's a girl with those boys, so it can't be all bad.'"
"Sack of what?" Bella said dully.
"I was going to go to college. Now I'm using my savings to feed them."
"Make them chip in."
"They do! And— Shit, it's Kim.
Bella opened her eyes to see the younger girl coming down the porch steps, hugging her arms to her sides.
"Act normal," said Emily.
If she weren't emotionally exhausted, she might have thought that was funny. But she couldn't even summon the energy to roll her eyes as Kim opened the passenger door and squeezed inside. She was looking at Bella, who still had her forehead against the steering wheel but had shifted to face her. Kim's brown eyes were wide and staring.
"I think I'm too young to get married," she said dazedly.
Bella snorted.
"My mom hates Jared. She found a condom in the trash."
"Wrap them up," said Emily. "Or don't have sex at your house."
"Maybe I shouldn't get married."
Bella lifted her head and let it flop down again. The truck's horn gave a squawk. Get out of my truck, she wanted to say, but even that felt like too much effort. Then there was a tapping on the passenger door but no one visible through the window. Carefully, Kim opened the door, and Claire, snot smeared on her face, squirmed into the cab and onto Emily's lap.
"Why can't I go home?" she cried. "I want my mommy."
"Shh," said Emily. "Mommy is sick. I'm taking care of you. I'm taking good care of you."
"I want Mommy," wept the little girl.
Emily closed her eyes and rocked the girl back and forth, hugging her. Bella closed her eyes, too, wishing the girl would stop hiccuping and sniffling. You want your mommy? she thought sourly. Well, shut up. Maybe I do, too. Maybe I want my mommy to be normal, to give a shit about somebody beyond the end of her nose. Then that thought made her look at herself. It was like when she'd cracked her shin on the stairs trying to get out of earshot of Charlie and Joy's mushy phone call. I am a jerk, she thought. I am begrudging a three-year-old the right to cry about missing her mommy who is sick. She sighed, her eyes still shut, and reached out a hand until she found Claire's shoulder and patted her awkwardly.
"Maybe we should take the baby, too," said Kim. "Maybe, like, babysit him long term."
"I can't do the baby, too, and she won't let go of him anyway," said Emily. "She's nursing."
"Your sister has a baby?" said Bella.
Emily nodded as Claire smeared her nose on Emily's shirt.
"We could at least watch him once a week or something," said Kim.
"Julie doesn't like to take him in the car."
"We could go there."
"Please stop. This is the best way. To take care of Claire."
Bella wondered what was wrong with Emily's sister.
"Maybe the baby could—" began Kim, but then she stared over the dashboard with a dazed expression again, saying, "What if I had a baby?"
"Do not have a baby," said Emily.
"Not on purpose," said Kim. "But what if accidentally—"
"No. No babies, no accidents. Aren't you and Jared being careful?"
"Mostly. But my mom found the condom, so I thought if there wasn't anything to find, it might be better."
"NO. It would not be better." Emily turned to Bella with wide eyes, and Bella understood instantly that this was another of the jobs Emily needed help with.
"Don't have a baby, Kim," she said. "You might not be able to finish high school, and babies are expensive, and then you'd be stuck with a baby."
"And then your mom would really hate Jared," said Emily fiercely. "Look, pulling out is not going to prevent babies. It's not good enough. There's these little sperm things that swim out beforehand—"
"Pre-seminal fluid," supplied Bella automatically, reciting what she'd learned in health class. Then she blushed and thought Dear God, why are we talking about sex again? Why do I have a fourteen-year-old in my truck who wonders if her mom NOT finding a condom would be better than getting pregnant? Kim was protesting that she certainly wasn't trying to get pregnant; she didn't really want a baby; but maybe holding Julie's baby would help. Sometimes she felt these urges like Jared. Urges to see and smell and hold a baby.
"What?!" said Bella. "Are you out of your mind?"
"We would be married!" said Kim. "And Julie needs help! She should just give us the baby and I'll stop feeling this way!"
"Oh, my God," groaned Emily.
"Or maybe I'm too young to get married," said Kim again, more quietly, and Bella said, "Yes. Stick with that thought."
The truck's door creaked open yet again, and Ellen Uley was there, pulling on Kim's elbow with her gnarled hand until Kim said, "Ouch!" and stumbled out of the cab. Then Ellen pulled on the seat, trying to get a grip on the cracked black vinyl with her nails, her nut-brown, wrinkled face reddening with the effort. Emily offered her a hand up, but she snarled that she could do it herself. And she did, after a couple minutes of scrabbling and straining. Bella thought she looked like an emaciated, scarred walrus trying to climb onto an ice floe, and then she felt vaguely ashamed. Ellen was probably at least ten years older than Vera, and she supposed she ought to respect that. When the old woman finally clawed her way onto the seat, she reached into the pocket of her enormous blue skirt and fished out a sticky, dusty little tin that looked like it was almost as old as she was. The label, if there ever had been one, had peeled off. "Open," said Ellen, shoving it into Bella's hands. As she twisted the lid, Bella tried not to wrinkle her nose at the way the grime came off on her hands. There was a yellowish goop inside, the color of book pages that are so old they crumble at the touch.
"Candy?" said Claire.
"No." Ellen scooped out a greasy handful and plopped it onto Emily's face. Emily said, "Gah!" and Ellen said, "Shut up. Sit still," and smeared it over Emily's face. So Emily held still, squeezing her eyes shut. The stuff smelled like gasoline and grass clippings, but Bella got the impression that when Ellen Uley said shut up and sit still, you kind of had to do it. When she had finished, the old woman extended her hands to Bella. Bella thought she wanted the lid, but instead Ellen wiped her hands clean on Bella's pants. When she was satisfied—either with the cleanliness of her hands or the sliminess of Bella's pants, Bella couldn't tell—Ellen stroked her hand over Claire's hair and spoke to her in the language that was almost dead.
Claire responded in the same tongue. It made Ellen look so, so proud, but it made Bella wonder how long that girl had been in Sam's house, missing her mommy. Claire wiped the back of her hand across her nose and tried to stop sniffling. Ellen murmured something else and nudged her to turn around.
"Okay," said Claire, in a very small voice, looking at Bella. There were still tears trembling in the corners of her eyes. "When?"
"Saturday," said Ellen, nudging her again.
"Thank you," said the girl.
Ellen murmured to her once more, and Claire ducked her head under Emily's chin and sighed, closing her eyes.
Bella had an uncomfortable suspicion that something involving herself had happened. "Um," she began, but then Ellen slid awkwardly out of the cab, and Bella and Emily had to look the other way so she could preserve her dignity. They looked away still longer as she scrabbled into the cab of Sam's truck, parked on the other side of the driveway area, facing Bella's. "Oh, God, no, please, no," whispered Emily as they heard the powerful engine rumble to life and the big, black truck began to advance toward them. The tiny woman was so short that it looked like no one was driving. Just when Bella had braced herself for a front end, tortoise-speed collision, Sam's truck stopped a few inches from her front bumper.
It had been quite an afternoon.
Now, back at home and soaking in the bathtub, Bella reflected that it could have been worse. Not much worse, but still, it could have been a little bit worse. With a sigh, she slid beneath the warm water, letting her hair fan out. When she sat up again, the water dribbled down her shoulders and between her breasts. It had been quite an afternoon, and in her mind she tried to make a list of her new realities.
First, Riley might be dead and Victoria was coming to get her. She knew she'd begin shaking and crying if she thought about it too long, so she bit her lip and forced herself not to.
Second, Jacob thought about sex. She hadn't expected that. It made her feel awkward and uncertain. One thing was certain, though: the fact that he was thinking about it with other people pretty much guaranteed they would never have it.
Third, Ellen Uley was a horrible, manipulative witch. A wrinkly old witch whom she supposed deserved respect for having reached her advanced age, but a witch never-the-less. She and Emily had jumped Bella's truck battery and sent her on her way. "I want to wait for Jake," Bella had protested, rolling down her window to say so, but Ellen banged the hood of her truck with a large, heavy stick, hollering, "What? I can't hear you!" Emily, Kim, and Claire didn't try to take away the stick. Bang, bang, bang! "You're denting my truck!" Bella said, and Ellen said, "Oops! Am I?" She dropped the stick and found a ball-peen hammer on the floor of Sam's cab.
"Ellen," said Emily, "Maybe— Ah, it got in my eye! Oh, it stings!" and Bella's potential rescuer ran into the house, wiping the ointment on her face. Kim stood uselessly mute, holding Claire's hand, and Ellen resumed her work. Ting! Ting! said the hammer. It couldn't inflict the kind of damage that a crow bar might—or Leah's crutch, thought Bella with a groan of contrition—but it was a precise instrument, and Ellen Uley was oddly strong for someone who was nearly a hundred years old. The hood began to resemble the asteroid-pocked surface of the moon. Bella had no choice but to turn her wheels toward the road.
It had been infuriating. She was forced to drive away very, very, very slowly because Ellen kept circling the truck, hammering here and there and everywhere, now and then hobbling in front of it and saying things that nobody understood but Claire. Claire laughed. Bella felt insulted, but it was impossible to respond because A) she didn't speak Quileute, and B) she had to concentrate on driving so that she could both get away and not run over the old lady. In her rearview mirror, after Ellen had been bludgeoning one particular spot, Bella saw a rusty red hunk of her tailgate, a hunk about the size of a tea cup, crack off and disintegrate on the ground.
"Saturday?" said Claire, walking beside the truck, looking up at Bella.
"What?" said Bella. It was hard to hear over the banging and pinging of the hammer.
"Saturday?"
Ellen said, "Yes, honey, Saturday." Ting! "Saturday is the day when Bella will get you a real kitten."
"How many days till then?" said Claire. "One? Is it one?"
"Wait a minute," Bella said, still creeping toward the road at approximately one mile per hour.
"Oh, that's a good idea," said Emily, coming down the porch steps, dabbing at her eye with a paper towel. "That's really sweet of you, Bella. I didn't know you thought of that."
"They cost fifty-five dollars a piece," said Ellen. Ting! Ting, ting, ting! "I called the Humane Society in Port Angeles and I asked."
"Can I have a black and white one?" said Claire.
"You can have as many as you want," said Ellen.
"Yay!"
"Here, honey, here's a stick." Ellen gave Claire a toddler-sized weapon and told her that Bella's truck needed help to get to the road. The three-year-old thwacked the rear bumper obligingly, purposefully, shouting, "Go! Truck! Go!"
Fuck, thought Bella as she soaked in the bathtub. Downstairs, she heard Charlie come in through the backdoor, stamping his feet on the mat. "Did you have a car accident, Bella?" he hollered. "Was there a hailstorm? Are you okay?"
"Me?" said Bella. "Oh, I'm fine. Terrific."
She slid beneath the water again and exhaled. This day could have been worse. At least it was only Jake's imagination that had been shared. And at least she hadn't been manipulated into getting the girl a new skunk.
END OF CHAPTER
Questions? Why, yes, please.
1. What do you think of the pack meeting? Bella's attitude about helping? Bella getting scolded? Jacob not saying (or unable to say) very much? Paul's comments? Embry's efforts to analyze Paul? Embry's method of phasing? Is different okay? Or OOC?
2. What do you think of B's reaction to sex and the packmind? How about Emily's attitude about it?
3. Kim? Urges?
4. Would you like to meet Emily's sister Julie, or should she remain a character who's just mentioned by the other characters?
5. As far as Harry's advice to Charlie regarding his relationship with Joy, do you think it's okay to tell him that the woman is always right? Does that keep a relationship happy? Or is that just as sexist as Paul's comment about claiming? Does it reduce one (or both) of the partners in a relationship? Or is there no harm in that?
6. Should Bella get Claire a kitten? Should Bella feel pissed at Ellen?
7. Funny bits? Favorites? Things you agree or disagree with these characters about?
8. Who is the wolfiest one of all? Why? Define wolfy/wolfish? Hunger? Ferocity? The urge to protect? Craftiness? Intelligence? Endurance? Courage? Risk-Taking? Stone-cold sane, or quite the opposite? Hmmm… What are the qualities you think define a wolf, and who is the wolfiest one of all?
Well! I think that I've actually written more questions than usual! You can pick and choose, mix and match. Do please share your thoughts. You know I love them and am thankful for your interest in my story. Thank you, thank you. I will TRY to send you all a preview of the next chapter, but I guess it's realistic for me to acknowledge that I might have to occasionally prioritize things like eating and sleeping and bathing my kids now and then. ;-) I'll do my best, but my kids are stinky. Love to all.
-AmandaForks