Chapter 12

"No, dad, I'm not going. I'm going to Seattle that day, remember?" I said with a bit of a tone that he didn't catch.

"Oh, that's right. Well, you might get back in time to go to the dance." he said optimistically.

"Don't count on it." I muttered as I got up to clean my dishes.

It was another sunny day when I woke the next morning. I was hoping for the usual cloudy day, but was disappointed. We finally get good weather and now I want the bad conditions back. I'm going mental.

Even with my disappointment rising, I dressed nicely for the warm weather. My beautiful deep-blue V-neck blouse had been hanging in my closet abandoned because of the rain.

I planned my arrival to school so I just had mere seconds to scurry to first period, easily avoiding awkward conversations with stupid boys. As I pulled into the lot at school, my heart sank even deeper. I knew he wouldn't be there, but I couldn't help but hope he would wear a full on cape or something so he could be. I rushed to English a bit saddened.

It was the same as yesterday; the hoping in the back of my mind being squashed as I saw the empty vampire table and sat at my empty lab table in biology.

The Port Angeles trip was still on and Mike had asked Jessica to go out with him on Thursday. Aw, how sweet? Wonder where he got that idea?

After school, Jessica followed me home in her old white Mercury so that I could ditch my books and we could drive to Angela's and pick her up. I brushed through my knotted hair quickly when I was inside, feeling a slight lift of excitement at the prospect of leaving Forks, even for a few hours. I left a note for Charlie on the table, explaining again where to find dinner and ran out to meet Jessica. Angela was already waiting on her front porch when we pulled up to her house. My enthusiasm increased exponentially as we actually drove out of the town limits.

"Port Angeles, here we come!" we all sang as we drove down the interstate, windows open.

The ride was, to my great and utter surprise, actually fun. Although, Jessica insisted on listening to her crappy cry your heart out girl pop-music the entire way there. Thankfully, Lauren wasn't there, she had been held up by some prior obligation or something. We girl talked most of the time, but no matter how much I liked these girls, they weren't like me. And they never would be.

I was different from them, a whole different being. I missed my old home, even with the ominous dreams I was having about the Weres there.

Port Angeles wasn't quite as quaint as Forks, but still very small. It was a beautiful tourist trap though, the building fronts were festooned with anything old-fashioned.

Jessica and Angela knew it well, they walked straight passed all the interesting looking stores and walked into the only department store. I could smell the bay, which was only a few blocks down, as we entered the store.

The dance was set as semi-formal, and we weren't exactly sure what that meant. They went right to the Juniors section and started picking out dresses. With everyone they snatched they turned to me and the other and asked her opinion.

I sat on the lone chair in the dressing room as they both tried on piles of clothes. Jessica walked out in a lovely long, red, sequined dress.

I made a face of concentration to make her happy, even though I already knew what I would say about it. "It looks like a prom dress."

"Too fancy?" she asks, staring at herself in the wide mirror.

"Yea, a bit." Angela replies as she walks out in a cute, short, pink, sundress.

"Thought so." Jessica mumbles. "Oh, but that one is perfect for you!"

"You think?" She says as she takes Jessica's place in front of the mirror.

"Amazing." Jessica and I say in unison. We dissolve into giggles.

They both go into their rooms to try on another one.

"Aren't you going to try anything on, Bella?" Jessica calls over the stall door.

"No, I'm not going." Not another conversation about this subject.

"What about a prom dress?" Angela asks.

"I'm probably not going to that dance, either." I say.

"But Tyler said you were going with him." Jessica says, walking from her little cubicle.

"Beg your pardon?" I sounded like I was choking.

"Told you it wasn't true." Angela murmured to her as she too walked out, not looking me in the eyes.

"He is so dead." I mutter, vexed by the whole situation.

Neither of them said anything more on the subject. After about an our of trying on dresses, they both found one they liked. Jessica's was a beautiful royal blue and Angela's was a light pink.

We planned to go to dinner at a little Italian restaurant on the boardwalk, but the dress shopping hadn't taken as long as we had expected. Jess and Angela wanted to take walk down the bay after they took their new things back to the car. I told them I wanted to look for a bookstore and would meet them in an hour at the restaurant. They both offered to go with me, but I turned them down. I said it would be very boring, being with me in a bookstore was about as much of an adventure as watching the grass grow. They laughed at this, but agreed to meet me in an hour.

They walked away talking merely about God knows what and I turned the other direction and headed down the sidewalk. The bookstore wasn't like the ones I was used to. Ones with big tall ceilings filled with all the books you could ever want to read, and more, a coffee shop in the back to make the whole place smell wonderful. Aside form Edward, bookstores make my favorite scent; they smell like untouched paper and sweet coffee, delicious.

This one however, wasn't at all like the ones I knew of. It was tiny and cramped, it mostly had books about spiritual healing and wickens. In actuality, it was a bit creepy. I wasn't in there long when I realized I wasn't going to find anything in there that didn't tell me how to turn a boy into a frog or meditate with a certain form of grass. I quickly walked out of the small store and kept going down the sidewalk.

Outside the store sat a shiny silver Volvo. I hoped it was Edward's, but it couldn't have been, it was sunny. Stupid shiny Volvo owner, raising false hopes in a young girls heart.

I meandered down the street, not really caring where I was going. I was in an awful humor. Besides the fact that I was going to murder Tyler Crowley, Edward hadn't been at school. I longed to see him again, to tell him what I was.

Saturday, I decided silently. Saturday will be the day I tell him, if he shows up. I hoped with my entire being that he wouldn't stand me up, but I couldn't be sure.

I chose to forget about that topic for now, and move onto something. Like finding where I was.

I was standing on the side walk next to a bunch of empty stores. How in the world did I get here? I asked myself.

I started to realize, as I crossed another road, that I was going in the wrong direction. The little foot traffic I had seen earlier was nowhere to be seen now, I was completely alone. I decided to take the next left turn and hoped it would lead me back to the main part of town.

A group of four men stumbled around the corner a few yards ahead of me. They were all severely intoxicated, they laughed raucously at some joke I had not heard. I wasn't frightened of them though, they weren't much older than myself. Just out of college at the most.

"Hey, there!" one called to me as I neared where they stood leaning against another empty store.

"Good evening." I said politely, inclining my head to the one who spoke just a fraction of an inch.

"Good evening." two of them mock, as I get ever closer to them.

"How do you do, Miss Hoity-Toity." the last in the mangled line says, bowing to me just as I am about to walk past him.

"Quite well, thank you." I said, forcefully stomping on the foot he has left in front of me as a means to keep me form leaving. Immediately, he pulls it back to him, mumbling slurred curse words. Clearly I've physically hurt him, and emotionally shattered the other men's egos.

"Oops."

"Hey, wait!" the first who spoke says, as I walk away and around the corner.

I found myself on a disserted street, walking past the backs of warehouses with large doors to allow unloading trucks in. The other side has no sidewalk, only a barbed wire fence to protect whatever it is behind it.

It was getting dark, I realized, the clouds finally setting in over the horizon, creating an early sunset. I thanked my spontaneous mutation for once, I was glad for the fact that I had the temperature of a Shifter. With nightfall coming closer by the second, it was getting colder. Much colder. Not even a car passed me as I walked straight down the road.

The sky suddenly darkened fully, it was eerie out there on my own. But I heard something strange maybe twenty or so feet behind me. Two of the men from earlier were following me, just rounding the same corner I had.

I didn't want to have to do what I knew I would. I was having such a streak of good luck, I hadn't on purpose or accidentally shifted in front of a human yet. But if it came down to it, I would. I would do it just to see the scared look on those pansies faces.

I kept walking, I pretended I didn't notice they were behind me. I knew what they were after, and it wasn't my lunch money. I listened to their quiet footsteps, which seemed monumentally softer compared to the boisterous noise they had been making when I saw them last.

Focusing on the next left hand turn in front of me, I tried to calm myself. All the tension from the past few months came crashing down on me. I wanted- no needed- to rip all of their slimy heads off, they deserved!

I sharply turned the corner and almost shifter then and there. The two other men from the group were on both sidewalks, coming toward me with wicked smiles on their faces.

I began to shake uncontrollably. I was trying so hard not to change form, but I wanted to so badly. All four men were coming closer to me as I tried to get a hold on myself.

"There you are!" said the man who's foot I had smashed, he was walking lightly on that side of his body. He seemed to be looking behind me at the other men, but I knew better, it was an ill-played ruse.

"Yea," said a deep voice behind me. I forced myself to move forward, I had been frozen in place with trying not to shift. "We took a little detour."

The man talking lounged against the wall behind him, only a few yards from me. He nodded to the man across the street who came sauntering over, looking directly at me.

The man I had hurt shrugged away form the wall as I got almost close enough to touch him. In a matter of seconds all four were surrounding me, breathing deeply with menacing smiles on their crudely lit faces. One of them reached out to grab me.

With the rapid movement of a cat, I had his arm gripped in my hand. With my nails digging into his flesh I was easily making him bleed, he winced in pain as I brought him to the ground.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." I said with venom in my voice. It didn't even sound like me, I had a slight lisp. With an inconspicuous move, I touched my tongue to my K-9 teeth.

Yep, just as I had suspected. My body was shifting whether I wanted to or not. My teeth were becoming more pointed and menacing with every second I waited there. My fingers becoming more claw-like.

The man I had brought to the ground cried out in pain as my sharp claws sliced open his forearm. I wasn't going to be just any cat, I would be a tiger. I let go of the plump man on the ground, but before I did, I snapped both bones in his arm.

"Servers you right, eh?" I blocked out his screaming.

"What are you?" the frightened men asked, unable to move away from me.

"Do you want to run along like the fretful children you are, or do you wish to stick around an witness it for yourself?" I hissed.

They ran away, but not fast enough. My body craved to have their blood, to rip them apart. This is the monster I fear in myself. This is the fuse I don't want anyone to light. I could have easily ripped them to shreds and no one would be the wiser about the four drunk boys that stumbled out of a pub late at night.

"Faster!" I bark. One of them falls as he tries his damnedest to get away from me that instant.

I lean up against the wall, but can't hold myself up, I slide down to slump on the ground. My body is drained of all energy from fighting of the shift, but I still had the urge to run after them and drag them away.

I hadn't noticed, but I was pinching the bridge of my nose, trying to get the scent of fear out of my nose. Just an FYI, but if a large animals is tracking you, don't run; it excites them, heightens the fun in the chase. Just like real animals, I can smell the fear. I could still smell them even though I couldn't see them any longer.

I could feel my body moving back to normal, my hands were all together the same and my teeth were just a bit sharper than usual. My stomach growled loudly, I was starved, and my mouth had gone totally dry.

"Bella?" a sweet, musical, frantic voice came barreling around the corner. No, no, no, no, no.

I want to cry, but it seems my body doesn't have the strength to shed a tear. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way! You weren't supposed to find out like this!" I croaked.

"Shh, Bella, dear." He said, settling down on the ground beside me. He put his arm around me as if it was the most natural thing for him to be doing. Sitting on the ground with a distraught Shape Shifter that almost slaughter four drunken boys. "Now, calm down and tell me what you mean."

I stare up at him in shock. How could he not know, hadn't he just witnessed this whole thing?

"What? Didn't you just see what happened?"

"No, all I saw was those men running away." In his face I can see that something terrible is registering in his mind. "What were they running from, Bella?"

"I - I have to get back to my friends." I stutter. "They are probably worried about me, I was supposed to meet them."

I stand unsteadily and almost fall on my knees. Edward caught me just in time, but didn't let me go, he held me close to him. "What happened?"

"I don't want to tell you." I said softly, I knew he could hear me.

"You promised me."

"Edward," I wail. "You're really putting me between a rock and a hard place here."

"What do you mean?"

"Because I want to tell you, I really do, but I can't! You'll hate e forever and I can't let you go. You keep me from the monster I really am." I was barely whispering by the time I finished speaking.

"Come on," he said, taking my hand in his. "You can tell me later, but now, you need something to eat."

"Thank you."

We walk silently back into town, back to the bookstore to be more correct. He had been parked there, it was him!

"You followed me, didn't you?"

He smiled crookedly at me and said, "I couldn't just let you wander off to the big city of Port Angeles by yourself, now could I?"