Chapter 11: Thunderstorm
On the way home, Alice fell asleep, and I was glad the alcohol only had that effect on her, rather than making her loopy or sick. When we arrived back at our dorm, I had to nearly drag Alice up the stairs, not an easy feat considering that my ankle was still sore.
Alice, only slightly awake, plopped down on her bed and made a weak attempt to pry into what had happened when I went out walking.
"What… did…how…?" she said, eyelids drooping while I changed into my pajamas.
"Alice, if I tell you now, I will just have to tell you again later," I said, noting how she seemed to be wilting from fatigue and the influence of the alcohol. "I would rather tell you and Rosalie at the same time so I only have to do it once."
"'Kay," she yawned. I laughed silently to myself when she fell over on her pillow, with her clothes and shoes still on. I decided we could both use a late morning tomorrow, and I pulled Alice's shoes off her feet and tossed them towards her closet. Then I climbed into my own bed and made sure my phone alarm wouldn't go off tomorrow morning at 6:30 like it normally did.
Then I remembered. Edward had put his number in my contacts. Trying to talk myself out of calling him this late at night and so soon after I had just seen him, I scrolled through my contact list and smiled widely to myself when I saw the number was listed under "Cougar."
I started to drift off, despite the fact that I wanted to replay everything that had gone on that night, especially when he kissed me. I could have died right then, and I would have died happier than I've ever been. Somehow, being near Edward just did something to me physically. Even thinking about him, my breathing and heart rate sped up, and the blood rushed to my face, embarrassingly. My mom has always told me that she knows exactly what I'm feeling by how I blush. If Edward only knew that I had such a reaction to him…
With thoughts like these running through my head, I finally fell asleep, with one hand clutching my cell phone and resting on my stomach.
-X-X-
A loud boom-crack woke me up, and I glanced at the display on my cell phone: 4:17. I groaned and sat up, running my hand through my hair to get it out of my face. Another bright flash and a crack of thunder erupted outside, and I got out of bed to see how bad the storm was. Living in Texas, I had gotten used to thunderstorms, especially ones that had the potential to make tornadoes. Usually when it rained at home, it came from sporadic, angry storms that raged across half of the Panhandle.
In Seattle, however, the rain was a light and constant drizzle, and I hardly ever heard thunder or saw lightning while I was at college. So when I woke to the vicious crashing and pounding outside the window, I at first thought I was back in my room in my parents' house. It took me a couple of seconds for me to remember that I was in Seattle, not Branching, and I had to shake off the sense that I was back at home as I lifted the blinds to assess the severity of the storm. I was amazed at the enormous volume of rain that seemed to be dumped out of the sky like the water pours over Niagara Falls. Wow.
If I had been any other person who had just been woken up in the ungodly hours of the morning by a mischievous Mother Nature, I would have been frustrated that the sky was trying to keep me from sleeping. But ever since I was a little girl, thunderstorms had never frightened me; I rather enjoyed them. I found that these light rains in Washington were slightly annoying because they made me feel sleepy all the time – but thunderstorms seemed to give me energy. I stared out of my window, taking in the raging sky and wishing I had someone to share the beauty of the storm with.
I shivered when another boom of thunder went off, accompanied by a three-pronged jagged line of lightning. Glorious.
I sighed. It seemed my life was suddenly filled with glory and happiness, to the point where I almost thought it was unfair. Between finding good friends in Alice and Rosalie, finding Edward again, and now this storm, I felt as though I was on some sort of natural high. I wanted to go out and do something, or call somebody and tell them about the wonderful storm outside, but I looked at Alice and she was still sleeping deeply. I didn't think she would wake up on her own for many hours yet, and I didn't even think she would have woken up if I shook her or yelled at her.
So, still in my pajamas, I slipped on a pair of flip-flops, grabbed my cardkey, and stepped out into the hallway. Not really knowing where I was going to go, I hopped down the stairs and into the lobby. Looking out of the glass doors into the pouring rain, I sank into a comfy leather lounge chair and watched the lightning dance to the rhythm of the thunder and pattering of the rain.
I reclined back in my chair and just watched the storm rage on for another ten minutes. It showed no sign of letting up, and I wondered whether there would be flooding anywhere. I was glad tomorrow, or rather today, was a Sunday, which meant I would have nothing to do except relax.
Thirty minutes later, I was still enjoying the sounds of the storm. The gentle sound of the rain and the wind, accompanied by the distant tympanic boom of the thunder was lulling me to sleep, right there in the lobby. It seemed the storm was finally moving off; the thunder just kept getting farther and farther away. I was about to drift off yet again.
It was so peaceful that I couldn't keep my eyes open, and I finally fell asleep there on the leather chair, my head lolling over to where my chin was resting on my shoulder. The cardkey slipped out of my fingers and fell to the floor.
-X-X-
The thunder crashed around me as I stood facing the back door, bag of trash in one hand and flashlight in the other. I opened the door to see rain pouring on the outside of the patio, and I wondered why Mom was making me take the trash out in the rain, especially when lightning was crashing everywhere. I stepped out of the patio, getting soaked immediately as I headed towards the dumpster.
The flashlight was a piece of junk. As soon as the water crept through the cracks of the plastic covering, the light shorted out, leaving me with no illumination except for the random bursts of lightning. I trudged on through the wet grass toward the dumpster, feeling little pieces of dirt and loose grass sticking to my feet. I should have worn rain boots instead of these flimsy little flip-flops, I thought.
Another flash of light erupted, and about twenty feet away I saw the outline of a giant cougar. Its mouth was open and the fangs were clearly visible against the bright white background of the lightning. But the vision lasted only a millisecond, disappearing again when the light dissolved.
I continued on toward the dumpster anyway, ignoring the terror rising in my chest. I lifted the lid and slung the dripping trash bag in, blinking the water out of my eyes as the lid slammed down. The sound of it was like another boom of thunder and the loudness of it made me jump several inches in the air. I turned around to run back to the house, but it had disappeared.
Instead, I was in a dark alley, and turning around again to get my bearings, I felt a slimy hand slither across my shoulder. The hand forced me to face its owner and I gasped in shock when Mike Newton gave me a dirty grin on his boyish face. He smelled like he had been smoking heavily, and after licking his lips suggestively and running his grimy fingers across my exposed neck, he started pushing me down to the ground, much stronger than he was when we were in high school. My left ankle gave out, and I collapsed to the pavement with Mike lying over the top of me.
He was leaning his face down do mine when a flash of lightning filled the alley with bright white light, and again I saw the outline of a furious cougar. The huge cat pummeled Mike and ripped him off of me, and another crash of thunder went off as Mike's limp form unfolded against the wall of a nearby building. With a rumbling growl, the cougar stalked over to where Mike was crumpled on the ground, and it began to lap at the blood that was oozing out of Mike's broken body.
I was about to scream and try to get the cougar away from Mike when the brightest and most focused lightning flashed in the alley. It was blinding, but I could make out the jagged outline of the light where everything else remained pitch black.
To my utter horror, the lightning struck the cougar square in the back, causing it to arch backwards in a spasm of pain. The lightning faded as quickly as it had come, and in the place of the cougar, a man was curled up on the ground with no traces of Mike's body anywhere.
Looking closer at the man, I saw he was Edward, but with a few differences. He had the same bronze, tousled hair and the same perfect masculine features. But his skin was tanner and his eyes were emerald green. Though he looked so vulnerable there on the ground, curled up and moaning as though he were in pain, he was still breathtakingly gorgeous. I felt the urge to comfort him, so I ran to him and sat on the ground next to him, leaning against the building for support.
My heart ached for the pain on Edward's face, but his helpless position on the ground was only more and more endearing the more I watched him. I put his head in my lap and ran my hands up and down his arms, trying to comfort him with simple human contact. Massaging his shoulders, I tried to look him in the eyes, but the vibrant green irises kept darting around, seeing nothing, never focusing on a single object for more than a second. A pitiful whimper escaped his perfect lips, and I stroked his face, trying to make him recognize me.
His eyes finally locked onto mine, but instead of relaxing, his face became a mask of shock and fear.
"Not you, too," he whispered in a horrified tone, just as another boom of thunder sounded and a sharp line of lightning struck me directly in the heart.
-X-X-
I awoke in a cold sweat as the loudest and closest series of thunder and lightning clamored right outside my dorm hall. I flung myself upright, hyperventilating from the shock of being woken up so suddenly. It took a few seconds for me to catch my breath, and I felt a cold bead of sweat trickling down the side of my face.
I looked around the lobby, wondering if anyone had been staring at my antics, but the digital clock over the information desk was glowing 5:53 in bright red numbers. Too early for anyone to be down here, I thought with relief. Then I glanced out of the glass doors to see the rain falling harder than it was when I had woken up in my room. The storm had become even stronger.
I noticed that my cardkey was nowhere on the chair, and I looked on the floor to find it. Once I had located it, I decided to go back up to my room, and I hoped to get a sensible morning's sleep, with no troubling dreams to scare me awake.