January 4, 2005

The janitor was surprised to find me sitting in his closet.

He was probably more surprised by my state of undress. I watched him scurry off and dreaded what was coming next. The first weird occurrence with my name on it. It would not be the last.

The janitor returned with a gym uniform. He waited patiently outside the door while I changed and told me with a sheepish expression that I was expected in the principal's office. I nodded, resigned to my fate.

He was glad to pass me over to the office aides. They took a report of what he saw, then got on the phone with my mother. I sat quietly in the waiting area. My mind was half a century in the past.

"If it could beat, it would beat for you."

I pressed my fingers to my lips, remembering. That kiss . . . it was electric. The charge between us reminded me of time travel, charging me from inside out. It felt right. It was the only word for it. I could almost feel his arms around me again, pressing me to his chest.

The realization made me miss him all the more. This thing between us was new . . . fragile. I always thought absence made the heart grow fonder, but it only seemed to break mine.

Edward was so tangible to me. But here he was no better than a ghost. No one knew of his existence. The thought of not going back was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

It was bizarre to sit in the school and pretend like nothing happened. Only a few hours passed in Phoenix. My big history test was this morning; by the same afternoon, I was in the hot seat wondering what my punishment was going to be.

Though it was a big school and I was in remedial classes, I suspected the principal would be hard on me. There had been a great reluctance to let me in. Now the principal had a reason to keep me out.

Renee had to wait for her own school day to end before she came for me. I sent her an apologetic look as she passed. No doubt the principal was going to grill her for my behavior. It was sad. Both of us faced the consequences. My condition was not known and could not be known. Therefore, my behavior could not be explained in a satisfactory way.

"Two day suspension," she said as we made our way home. Her eyebrows were furrowed in worry. Though she was used to this sort of thing, I hated how it complicated our lives.

I shrugged. "It could have been worse."

"How long where you gone?"

"A couple of hours," I said quietly. I didn't want to look at her; she might as well have been a mind reader when it came to me. She might see Edward hiding there.

Phil was waiting for us at home. I knew they'd want to talk privately, so I stole away to my room.

Nothing had changed. Sighing, I added the slip to my growing collection of clothes. All courtesy of the Cullens.

I missed them. Edward most of all. They were so accepting of me. They knew what it was like to be different.

I dug around on my bed until I found the phone. Charlie answered on the first ring, and my spirits lifted a fraction. My calls to Forks were becoming more frequent. Despite being a man of few words, talking to Charlie always made me feel better. We talked about regular stuff for some time but he seemed to sense something was wrong.

"How was school?"

"I don't think this one is the best fit for me, Dad," I began, filling him in on the details of my suspension. Appearing in odd places was not an atypical event for me. My parents had heard it all. But rather than transferring to another school in Phoenix, I thought Forks might be a new option.

"I'd have to talk about it with your mom first, Bell," Charlie said, but he seemed open to the idea. The more I talked, the more sense it made.

Renee and Phil were getting married and I wanted them to have some alone time. Much of it was centered around worrying about me. Dealing with my school problems. Even a few months away might do them some good. Plus, I had been wanting to see Charlie for awhile now.

I hung up the phone and sat on my bed, listening. It rang again, Charlie's number flashing across the screen. She wouldn't like it, I knew. She always insisted my condition was not an issue, but I knew it was. Renee had devoted ten years to it. It was high time she had a break.

I waited twenty minutes before going downstairs. Phil was making dinner; my mom was sitting in the living room. The phone was in her lap, her eyes on the window. She didn't look happy. Guilt crashed over me. She must have believed I wanted to get away from her.

"Mom?"

She looked at me. Though my condition made for an exhausting lifestyle, I still took over a lot of tasks in the house. Until Phil came around, I did a lot of things to help my mom out. In a way, it was like I was the parent. And right now she was looking at me like I was about to abandon her.

"You talked to Dad."

Renee nodded. "He told me what you want."

I sat next to her on the couch. "What do you think about it?"

"I just . . . we just moved. I thought you liked it here."

"I do," I said earnestly. "I like it here and I love living with you, Mom. It's just my school. The principal has her eye on me now and you know how it goes. Once I stop coming to school they call you and it becomes a big thing."

"But running away from it isn't the answer," she insisted. "Moving isn't going to change it."

"I know that," I said softly. "But we've been dealing with this for ten years and you're getting married soon. I want to give you some peace."

"You aren't a burden to me, though," she said, tears brimming in her eyes. "I love you and I want you to be with me."

"I'm almost never with you, Mom," I argued. It was true. I spent a week with the Cullens but time here had not gone far. It was as if I was a traveler experiencing jet lag. Except my jet lag was permanent.

"I think me living with Dad will be good for everyone. Yeah, I'll still come and go while I'm there but school's going to be over in a few months. Then I can come back in the summer."

That seemed to calm her. By framing it like a temporary change, I gave her an ending point.

I loved her so much. My condition was a burden. She loved me too much to admit that.

"Charlie said he's open to it if you are," I told her, linking our hands together. "What do you say?"

"I say yes. Unhappily yes."

I kissed her cheek. "I love you, Mom. You know that, right?"

"I do," she sniffled. "I love you, too."

"And I love the both of you," Phil called from the kitchen. We laughed.

We told him about the plan over dinner. Though he too was sad to let me go, I got the feeling he agreed with me about Renee. She did need a break, and they needed to be alone for a bit. It made sense for everyone, but that didn't mean we'd all walk away unhurt.

Mom always said I was born middle aged. Today I really believed that. The things I had done and seen seemed too much for someone of only seventeen. But maybe that was how Edward felt sometimes, when he thought about his immortal life. By my count, he would be fifty-one if he had survived the influenza.

I shook my head. It was too weird. Maybe that was why we were drawn to each other—we were both rather ornery. Ornery but not ordinary.

Once back in my room, I thumbed my new copy of Jane Eyre. I had been meaning to ask his thoughts on the novel, but it always slipped my mind.

I was jealous that he had a photo of me. It was something he could look at to remind himself of me, even with his freaky vampire photographic memory. My memories were not as precise. But I did remember his arms around me. I remembered pressing my ear to his still heart. I only had bits and pieces of our time together, and that made the separation worse.

I wondered if the Cullens were living somewhere in 2005. Somewhere up north, probably. A place they could mingle with humans without being noticed. They'd never settle in the Southwest; it was too sunny and too populated. Hunting would be a high priority, and I wasn't sure they'd enjoy the desert.

Were they looking for me?

I thought that they would have sought me out by now. By going to the past, their past, I began to think I changed history. My timeline had not yet started—the latest I had been to was 1952. I was not due to be born for another thirty-five years. Hell, my parents weren't even alive yet.

But by going in and out of their lives, had I altered the course of events?

Had I interfered with the timeline? Would it matter? The Cullens were immortal. Being vampires had changed their lives already. I was just a bird flying in and out of the picture. I doubted they would move across the country and risk exposure to be close to me. The stakes were too high.

Maybe something happened to them.

That might explain the radio silence in the present. Maybe it wasn't about the conditions in Phoenix. Maybe it was because there weren't any Cullens left.

Bile rose in my throat at the thought. No. They were powerful vampires. I had seen demonstrations of their abilities on multiple occasions. In Scotland, Emmett carried me as if I weighed nothing. Edward moved at the speed of a bullet. If a threat crossed them, I imagined a terrific fight for the enemy. There was strength in numbers, and there were five of them.

I was surprised by depth of my feelings. The thought of their demise frightened me deeply. I was the variable, the freak. Prone to human accidents and slip ups. They were immortal—invincible, even. The idea that they could be taken down was a scary one. And the thought of being alone again, isolated by my own abilities—that thought was even scarier.

But maybe something happens to me.

This was the scariest thought of all. That maybe, in their minds, there was no use looking for me because I wasn't there.

My head was spinning. I thought about death more than the average person should. It came with the condition, of course. Every trip to the past was a risk because they were completely random.

Despite all my running and training and preparing for the worst, there was really nothing I could do if a car in the fifties spun out of control and hit me. I had narrowly avoided death as a child in a similar kind of accident.

Would I be so lucky next time?

I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. No. Nothing was going to happen to me. I was not going to stand back and let fate tear me out of this world. Not after handing me a life of time travel. I was going to fight until my last breath. My life was going to be as normal as I could make it. I was going to fight for me, for Renee, for Charlie, for Edward. Giving up was not an option.

"We're like Penelope and Odysseus. Although I think I'm Odysseus."

"You're off having adventures while I fend off suitors. I'm joking, of course."

It really did feel as if I was away at sea. I drifted, never knowing my destination. Edward was the fixed point that I yearned to return to.

I knew that years were passing in Edward's time. Years that he sat alone in his room as I did now. Years apart, while I only waited days.

But he was waiting for me. Immortality did offer us that. I glanced at the clock beside my bed.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

A/N: Hey, everyone! I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloweekend. Like I said last time, this is the shorter chapter. Chapter Twelve will be posted on Friday.

Leave a comment, and I'll see you all on Friday!