Chapter 12- a raspberry
It should take you exactly four seconds to cross from here to that door… I'll give you two. –Breakfast at Tiffany's
As the door flung open, I began to have second thoughts about coming here. How was I possibly going to explain myself in a way that would sound even remotely believable?
Hello, hi Edward. I'm sorry to wake you, but Jacob Black is a werewolf and so is everyone else in La Push, I think, so can I come in?
Yes, that would go down just swimmingly, I'm sure.
However, when the door was pulled back, it wasn't Edward that I saw, but his brother, Emmett. His permanent grin only widened when he saw me. "Hey, it's you! Edward isn't here right now, but come on in." He said, waking me in with one of his big paws.
Well that was easier than anticipated.
The house, like the forest surrounding it was eerily quiet. We followed the overly-welcoming giant into a large, open room with a flat screen TV. In the same room, wearing skeptical glares, were two more Cullens- the blonde chick named after a flower and the dude who always looked in pain.
"What are they doing here, Emmett?" The blonde asked hatefully.
Emmett ignored her completely, addressing Kelsey and I instead. "You remember my beautiful wife Rosalie and her brother, Jasper."
"Yeah, of course." I lied with conviction.
"Great to meet you again." Rosalie purred with biting sarcasm. "Why are you here?" She questioned, talking to us directly this time.
Emmett's brow furrowed, as if the question hadn't occurred to him until now. "Yeah, actually. What are you doing here?" He repeated, sounding much nicer when he asked it.
Kelsey looked between me and him as I struggled for an explanation. I looked to her with pleading eyes, hoping she could provide some sort of help on the matter. "Don't look at me." She said, holding her hands up as if she were being arrested. "I don't know anything, remember?"
"Well you looked pretty freaked, no offense." Emmett pointed out, flopping down on the couch unceremoniously.
"She is." Jasper confirmed from his distant corner of the room.
I could feel the gaze of everyone fixed on me, waiting for me to explain myself. "Um…" I started eloquently. "I think we just escaped a pack of werewolves?" I said, the words coming out sounding so unsure that it became a question.
There was a beat of silence as I waited for everyone to either gasp in horror, send me to a psych ward, or burst into peals of laughter. "Well shit." Emmett finally broke the silence with his inarticulate yet somehow fitting remark.
Rosalie got up with an uninterested eye-roll. "Call Edward or Alice or Bella or someone else who actually knows how to deal with this kind of thing. I'll be in the garage if you need me." The clicking of her stilettos echoed throughout the room as she stalked off.
"Uh, right, right. Jazz, you, uhm… calm everybody down. I'm gonna go call Ed." Emmett said as he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.
And again the room was silent. Kelsey sat next to me, looking confused yet patient. Jasper sat across the room still, rigid and tense. I tried to make conversation.
"So are you like, the family hermit or something?" I questioned, far past the point of caring about menial things such as social etiquette.
Jasper looked up, his normally downcast eyes showing the tiniest glint of humor. "Something like that." He responded tersely. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he seemed to have a bit more confidence. "You're very good at hiding your panic." He said quietly.
"Thanks," I responded, not about to deny it. "But it may partially be the shock. I'm sure in about ten minutes I'll be rocking back and forth in a corner muttering to myself."
He laughed softly. "You're not like Bella at all, you know that?"
"I already knew that."
Just then, Emmett came walking back in with the phone in hand. "He wants to talk to you." He said, shoving the cell into my face.
"Edward?" I asked once I had put the phone to my ear.
"Hello, Skylar. How are you?" He asked in his velvety smooth radio-talk-show-host-voice.
"Why, thank you for asking. I myself am just dandy. Never been better, one could say. I made out with a guy this morning in a parking lot. About an hour ago he morphed into a wolf. How has your day been?"
Jasper coughed back a laugh as Edward responded in a patient voice. "I'm assuming that the sarcasm is a defense mechanism to hide your terror."
I narrowed my eyes. "Sarcasm is a wonderful tool that I use every day for a variety of different reasons and thou shalt never talk down on it again." I declared.
He sighed, but knew better than to argue with me. "I'm on my way back right now. Why don't you tell me exactly what happened."
"I can't." I whispered into the phone, my voice betraying for the first time just how I felt. "I don't know what happened. I don't know." I repeated.
I felt a warm hand grab my own and I looked down to see Kelsey's tan skin clasping my shaking fingers. "Tell me." She said, looking into my eyes.
I swallowed and nodded hesitantly, lowering the phone and ignoring the social conventions that said I should at least say goodbye to Edward. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a white hand quickly swipe the phone away, but I wasn't paying much attention as I began to recount the confusing and terrifying tale to my patient best friend.
When I finished there was a deafening silence. I could hear her deep, even breaths and even Jasper's slow, shallow, practically non-existent ones. "Do you believe me?" I asked in a whisper that sounded pitifully fearful.
Kelsey looked like she was choosing her words with extreme care. "I believe that is what you saw, yes." She said quietly.
That left only the obvious question. "But you think I saw something that wasn't… wasn't…" I struggled to find a proper word.
"Possible?" Kelsey offered. "You have to admit, Sky, it's rather hard to swallow."
"I'm not crazy." I said adamantly, my fear of sounding insane already turning into a dull sting of betrayal that she couldn't take me on my word.
"No one is saying you are, Skylar." Jasper said soothingly, suddenly closer to us, sitting only as far away as the other end of the couch. If I reached out my arm, the tips of my fingers would brush his pale skin. Something warned me, however, that he wasn't used to such physical contact and that I shouldn't press my luck.
"Where did Emmett go with the cell phone? I think I should talk to Edward." Kelsey said calmly, getting up and disappearing into the same room Emmett had just gone into a few moments ago.
As soon as she was gone Jasper took another large, cleansing breath. His eyebrows furrowed and he took another. A look of utter confusion passed across his face. He looked at me, bewildered. "I- I don't smell anything." He stated aloud as if he were trying to convince himself it was true.
I sniffed the air experimentally, unsure if there was something I was supposed to be smelling. "Neither do I." I agreed upon deducing that there was absolutely nothing permeating the air- not the musky smell of undusted furniture nor the lemon-scented spray Kelsey so often used around the apartment.
Jasper shook his head in shocked amusement. "You're not normal, are you?" He laughed, sounding uncharacteristically carefree. "But Bella wasn't either, I suppose."
I rubbed my temples, pondering at how unavoidable the subject of Bella-fucking-Cullen was in this crackpot household. "I swear to God, if you say her name one more time I will roundhouse kick you in the face." I grumbled, trying my hardest to intimidate him.
He gave a looping half-grin at my threat. "Yet somehow you two couldn't be more different." He closed his eyes and took another relaxed breath as his half-grin turned into a full-grin. "Nothing." His said again in a voice of confirmation.
I shook my head and looked away, too caught up in my own drama to deal with any of the Cullen family strangeness at the moment. "Got any Patron?" I asked, as suddenly a shot of tequila sounded like heaven on earth. I would have really settled for any brand of liquor, but judging by the looks of this place, they didn't carry anything but top-shelf.
"No, no." I heard Kelsey chastise me as she came back into the room. "The last thing you need right now is to get wasted."
"Doesn't matter. We don't have any anyway." Emmett said as he followed in a few paces behind her. "Though I admire your choice of poison."
"Edward will be here in a minute." Kelsey informed me, sitting back down in her seat on the couch.
"I don't really care if Edward comes or not." I lied. "We just needed a place to crash until the sun rises and the full moon goes away."
She shook her head in response. "The full moon isn't due for another week and a half."
"Well then tell that to the werewolves, because apparently they don't know."
Emmett's booming laugher filled the expanse of the room and I snuck a casual glance at Jasper, who was once again tense and statue-like.
Kelsey rolled her eyes. "Why are you so scared of wolves all of the sudden? What happened to the Skylar that was out befriending the wildlife a couple weeks ago?" She asked, referencing Fluffy, one of the local "friendly" wolves, as Seth had put it.
"Oh my god." I shot up at the mention of the oddly well-trained animal as a horrible realization dawned upon me. "Fluffy is one of them!" I accused with horror. I felt strangely betrayed by the wolf I had somewhat adopted, now that it turned out to be a mutant, vicious, possibly man-eating creature.
Kelsey locked eyes with me and I could see the same train of thought as it ran through her mind. "But who…?" She started, only to trail off in wonder.
"Jacob." I said immediately, as much to my own surprise as hers. "Don't ask me how I know- I just do. Fluffy was Jacob." I repeated, beyond sure of myself.
She nodded distantly, and I could see her mind was somewhere else. "The other one… it was Paul, I think. I- I know."
I thought back to the other, temperamental wolf we had met briefly. It growled and snapped at us the whole time. "Makes sense." I shrugged.
She shook her head. "No, it does not make sense. None of this makes any sense!" She exclaimed. "I mean, there must be some sort of scientific explanation for this, some genetic glitch to show how this is all possible. I simply cannot accept this at face value. Do you have a laptop I could borrow? I'd like to do some research." Kelsey asked Emmett, who nodded and led her out of the room.
I watched them go again and smiled internally at her antics. "That's her coping mechanism." I explained to Jasper. "Logic. I can't imagine what will happen when she discovers there isn't any."
"What's your coping mechanism?" He asked me curiously.
I opened my mouth to tell him I didn't need one, but I was interrupted. "She has two. Dance and raspberries, of all things." Edward said as she strolled casually in, holding a massive handful of the aforementioned red fruit. "They're fresh picked off the bush. There's a patch of them in the woods just outside the house. Here, take them." He said, turning his palm over and pouring them into my cupped hands.
"Where's the rest of the Brady Bunch?" I asked, surprised his overbearing sister wasn't already flittering around me like a little faerie.
He smirked. "They're just a little bit slower than me."
"Raspberries, hm?" Jasper asked, his apparent fascination with me still not quenched. "Care to explain that one?"
"It's pretty uninteresting." I said with a shrug, popping one into my mouth. "There was a raspberry bush in my backyard and Alex and I used to pick handfuls of them in the summer. We would eat fresh raspberries from April to October. They remind me of home."
Jasper raised a questioning eyebrow. "Well you got your raspberries. Are you going to dance for us, too?"
I rolled my eyes. "Look who got a sense of humor."
"I suppose you have some questions." Edward said, leaning back and folding his long fingers together.
"Funny, I was just about to say the same thing." I responded, suddenly growing suspicious as to exactly how much he knew. There was a guilty pause and I drew back, angered. "You know everything, don't you!" I accused. "You knew and you never said a thing."
He made a face at my not-uncommon reaction. "Sky, it wasn't exactly my place-"
"Like hell it wasn't your place! Last time I checked, it's a bit of a fucking common courtesy to tell someone, like 'Oh, hey Skylar you know those people you're living with? Well, they're werewolves.'" I yelled, imitating his voice to the best of my ability.
Edward pursed his lips to hold in a smirk. "I'm afraid it just isn't that simple."
"Well I'm afraid that you're just going to have to make it that simple, asshole. I mean, this is horror movie shit going down here, Edward! And I'm blonde- and a chick! My horror movie life-expectancy rate is like, here." I said, moving my flattened hand towards the ground to indicate a low amount. My voice had tinged a bit on the hysterical side towards the end there, and I knew the shock and adrenaline were wearing off.
"Jasper? A little help here?" Edward asked, turning towards his step-brother.
Jasper shot him an annoyed look. "There are a lot of emotions bouncing around right now. There's only so much I can do at once."
Edward nodded apologetically. "Right. Sorry. Here, let me get you a bowl for those berries, Sky." I looked down, surprised to find I hadn't crushed them into a pulp in my fist.
"Already on it." Emmett said as a bowl appeared in front of me. Emmett spoke to Jasper as I poured my handful delicately into the bowl. "Oh, and uh, Jazz? The other one is upstairs, freaking out. Can I have your help on that?"
"I'm a bit predisposed at the moment." He replied, obviously frustrated.
Emmett began to whine like a child. "Ugh, but she's asking all these scientific questions about the dogs and I don't really know how to answer them…"
Edward gave him and exasperated look. "It's really not that difficult of a concept to grasp. Wolves have 24 chromosomes, humans have 23."
Emmett pouted. "She uses really big words."
"And you've graduated high school… how many times now?" He countered. "Just get back up there and at least stall until Carlisle gets here and can explain everything to her."
Emmett huffed. "This is hard." He complained. "How did you manage all this with Bella?"
"Bella was…" He paused as if to find the right words. "Quite unique when it came to her reception of all this."
I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might fall out of my head. "Yes, Bella, the angel on earth." I cooed. "Bella, the awe-inspiring goddess, the perfect paragon beauty and wonder. All hail the splendid and majestic Bella!"
Edward's eyes slid over to me, an annoyance in them that only I had the power of creating. "I'm sensing you have something to say about my wife?"
"Your wife," I informed him as I chewed on another raspberry. "Is a bitch."
There was silence as Edward sat with his eyes narrowed at me, glaring.
"This is awesome." Emmett whispered from the background happily.
"Go upstairs." Edward snapped at him before turning back to me. "And, pray tell, how you came to this conclusion? It surely wasn't through your extended amount of time spent talking to her, so it must have been through the second-hand accounts of the wolf pack, am I right?"
I glared back at him. "Anyone who leaves you in the state you were in in Italy is a bitch." I reminded him, in case he had forgotten.
His eyes drifted downward in regret. "I left her." He admitted with a frown.
I looked away. "Well then you're perfect for each other. Bella the bitch and Edward the idiot."
He smiled self-loathingly for a second and I knew his good humor wasn't completely ruined. It was still a slight shock to me every time Edward smiled. After all, I spent half a year living with him in Italy and it only happened but a handful of times. "I fear we're diverging from the topic at hand." He changed the subject again.
"And which topic would that be?" I asked ever-so-politely. "The fact that my some-what-boyfriend is a monster or the fact that you failed to inform me of it?"
Edward sighed. "Preferably the former, but if you really feel the need to berate me for a little longer, then by all means, carry on."
I folded my arms, feeling petulant. "Well you just took all the fun out of it, now didn't you?"
A door slammed and the rest of the family, sans Bella and a few others, walked in. Edward got up and started murmuring to Carlisle in low tones. I looked instead at my now-dwindling supply of raspberries, marveling at how calm I was throughout this whole process.
Typically, I'm one for large explosions of emotion- anger being the most common. Instead, I felt almost a strange, foreign sense of calm rushing through my body.
It wasn't like me at all.
I tried to think, focus really hard on that calmness. It was comfortable, but it wasn't right, it wasn't me. I blow a gasket when there's a scratch on my car, why the fuck am I calm now?
What's wrong with me, damnit? Freak out! Jacob Black it a werewolf- yell, scream, faint- do something!
And just like a light switch being turned on, the panic was back, full force, hitting me like a freight train. I was back.
"Ohmygod." I gasped, slumping back in the chair and suddenly feeling like I had run a marathon.
Edward was by my side in an instant, looking between me and Jasper with shocked and wide eyes. "What happened?" He asked.
"I have no idea." Jasper replied, standing up and looking equally surprised. "She just pushed me out. All at once, in a second."
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god." I repeated like a mantra as the image of Leah exploding into a wolf replayed again and again against my tightly shut eyelids.
"So she's a shield, then? Like Bella?" I heard Alice ask from my other side.
"Not quite." Jasper said with a huff of frustration. "I can feel everything she's feeling. But I can't project anything. It's like my power still works, but-"
"But not completely." Edward finished, nodding his head in understanding as they continued to ignore me completely. "I know the feeling."
There was a big bang on the door and I flinched, ceasing my muttering. I blinked and Alice was gone from my side.
"Let me in." The large rooms echoed, and I could hear Jacob's growled words with perfect clarity. I paled considerably and turned to Edward with wide eyes, shaking my head no, hoping to convey my panic.
"Jacob, I really don't think this is the best place for you right now." Alice said in her high-pitched, completely un-terrifying voice.
"I know she's in there with him. I can smell her. Let me the fuck in." His words were not helping me to calm down at all.
"You're not supposed to be here." She replied adamantly.
"She's my goddamn imprint. I'm supposed to be wherever she is!" He stated heatedly.
"I have a treaty that says otherwise. You're on Cullen land right now, dog." Alice countered, sounding angrier by the second.
"Yeah? Well I have a treaty that says you can't go around biting humans and making potentially dangerous hybrids but look at how that turned out."
He must have pushed past her after he said that, because he appeared in the doorway, shaking worse than me. He looked down at my raspberry-stained mouth, horrified. "You fed her blood?" He whispered hoarsely.
Edward rolled his eyes. "Of course not. It's raspberry juice."
Jacob shook his head as if to clear a particularly disturbing thought from his mind. "Right, right. It's just… All this reminds me so much of…"
"She isn't Bella." Jasper said quietly, echoing the same sentiment I had been repeating all night.
Jacob's eyes flashed. "I know that, damnit, don't you think I know that?" He took two long strides towards me and I held up my hands defensively to shield my face.
"Don't!" I screamed.
I felt a cold arm wrap around me and I realized Edward had me in a protective, defensive stance. "Don't hurt me." I whimpered to Jacob pathetically. "Please, please, just go away."
I glanced up to see him stagger back, a look of utter pain on his face. A part of me ached to know I put it there, but a larger part of me (my brain) screamed that he was a monster- the kind that jumps out of your closet or hides under your bed at night.
"Skylar," I heard him whisper as scenes from the movie "The Wolfman" played through my head on constant repeat.
"Go. Away." I petitioned again.
"Give her time, alone, to process all of this." The soft voice of Dr. Cullen appeared out of virtually nowhere.
I looked at Jake's face and we made eye contact for the first time since I had stared into his glowing wolf eyes. He looked broken, his whole figure slumped as he radiated an aura of defeat.
"They're lying to you Sky." He said pleadingly. "They aren't human either-"
Edward was a complete blur as he disappeared from my side and materialized at Jacob's gripping his upper arm in what had to be a painful clutch. "She doesn't need that right now." He growled loudly.
Jacob ignored him, still maintaining eye contact with me. "You need time? Fine. Take as long as you need, just don't stay here, stay anywhere else! They're-!"
"Get out of my house!" Edward practically roared, shoving him out the door and slamming it shut, stalking back to the couch in a rage.
He tried to sit back down next to me, but I scrambled to the other side of the couch as quickly as I could, done with ignoring all the less-than-subtle hints the universe was throwing at me. "What does he mean you aren't human?" I asked, afraid to know the answer.
Edward signed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I was hoping to do this later, maybe not throw everything on you at once, but clearly Jacob has other ideas."
He looked like he was about to go on, but I held up my hand to stop him. "I only want to know one thing. Do you kill people?"
He exchanged meaningful glances with his family before answering. "It's kind of hard to answer that-"
"Um, no, it kind of isn't. Yes, you kill people, no, you don't kill people. Simple."
Jasper then took the time to offer his two cents. "We have the potential to kill people."
I made a face. "That's a bullshit answer. I have the potential to kill people too, but guess what? I don't."
"I have killed people before." Edward tried again.
I threaded my fingers through the roots of my hair and pulled, not hearing the answer that I wanted. "How many?" I asked, my voice rough with emotion.
"Less than a dozen." He replied, by no means sugar-coating it.
"How long ago?" I continued my assault of questions, hoping to repress the fact that Edward was a murderer by and onslaught of information.
"A while," He said vaguely.
"How long is a 'while'?" I asked bitterly, using finger-quotes around the word. "Hours? Days? Months, years?" I continued, trying to slide farther down the couch away from him but finding there was no cushion left for me to move to.
"Decades." He said, giving me a sad smile.
"Decades!" I repeated, sure he was joking with me. "What, were you like a baby serial killer or something? I mean, you can't be more than a year or two older than me…" I gave him a good once-over just to be sure.
Yup, still the picture of youth.
"I was born in 1901."
"No, you weren't," Was my immediate reaction.
There was a long pause and I guess he was waiting to let it sink in.
When I realized he wasn't going to jump up and just randomly declare 'got'cha', my mouth dropped open comically and I stared at him really hard, unable to find so much as a wrinkle. "But… but-that would make you…" I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to do mental math, wishing Kelsey was here when I needed her. "Really fucking old!" I finally settled on.
"But you don't kill… anymore, right?" I clarified, just to make sure.
"Yes, my family and I are what you would call vegetarians." He stated with irony.
"Really?" I asked, brightening up for a moment. "So am I!"
He smirked. "We only eat animals."
I raised an eyebrow at his apparent ineptitude for the basic English language. "Are you sure you have the definition of the word vegetarian right?"
He smiled at the return of my sarcasm. "Well, technically, I'm a-"
I clapped my hands over my ears. "I don't want to know!" I yelled, taking my hands away only when I was sure he wasn't going to finish his sentence. "Tell me what you do before you tell me what kind of monster you are. Labels freak me out." I said, shivering at just the thought of the word werewolf.
"Alright," He agreed, shifting in his seat. "I read minds."
He shot it at me right off the bat, no time for preparation on my part.
"Holy shit!" I exclaimed, holding my heads around my skull as if that would somehow create a barrier and keep him out. "Like, all the time? Are you reading my mind right now?"
I repeated the phrase 'get the fuck out' over and over in my head just in case.
"My mind reading is like standing in a room full of people all talking at once. There's no way to turn it off, but everything just becomes background noise after a while. You, however, are different. I've only ever met one other person whose mind I could not fully read. I explained it to that person by saying it was as if mind reading was like tuning into a radio station, but I was on a different channel."
"So, you can't read my mind, then?" I clarified, lost in the conversation.
"What are you thinking right now?" He questioned intensely, ignoring me.
"I'm thinking Edward is an annoying fucktard. Did ya get that?"
He shook his head in utter fascination. "Interesting. When I read your mind Skylar, all I hear is music."
"Music?" I repeated skeptically. "What kind of music?" At the very least I hoped my mind wasn't blasting out Justin Bieber, because if it was I can kiss all of my street-cred goodbye.
He shrugged. "All kinds. Usually the music is indicative of your mood, though. Like when you came with your baseball bat a few weeks ago, there was a lot of guttural male screaming and guitar riffs."
"So what you're saying is," I stated out carefully, afraid to get my hopes up. "My life has a built-in soundtrack?"
He laughed. "I never thought of it that way, but yes. Basically, you can manipulate other people's powers. Like Jasper, for example, is an empath. He reads emotions and can force an emotion on a person. But when he tried to calm you down earlier, after a few moments you somehow blocked him out. You twisted his power to be the opposite and suddenly he was absorbing emotion from you, rather than giving it."
"Oh."
"Oh? That's all you have to say 'oh'?"
I shrugged. "What the fuck do you want me to do, jump up and down, give myself a high-five?"
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I don't really know, but I was expecting something a little more climactic than just a tiny 'oh'."
"If you don't mind me asking," Alice piped in from her seat next to Jasper where she had stayed extremely quiet the whole time. "What do you think we are? Monster-wise, I mean."
"At the moment, my best guess is mermaid." I admitted.
All three of them immediately burst out into laughter. "How in the world did you ever come up with that?" Edward asked, sounding on the verge of tears.
"It's not that unreasonable!" I defended indignantly. "I mean, you're all pale and pretty. The mind reading can be chalked up to some sort of underwater telekinetic communicating system, and you don't age, which could be a mermaid thing or not, hell if I know."
"Well, we can breathe underwater. Or just not breathe at all." Jasper said thoughtfully.
"There you go." I spread my arms wide as if to say 'what further proof is necessary?'
"What if I told you we sparkle in the sunlight?" Edward offered, a grin still lingering on his lips.
"Faeries!" I accused, pointing my finger at him.
"Nope."
"Elves?"
"Not even close. You're thinking far too… friendly. We're a bit more intimidating than that."
I sighed. "I give up. Just tell me."
"Promise you won't run away or freak out?"
I smirked, doubting it could be much worse than werewolf. "Promise." I replied, feeling far better off knowing he wasn't completely a cold-blooded murderer.
"Vampire."
A/N: Not the best chapter I've ever written, I'm afraid. It got a little bit better at the end there, but yeah. At the very least, I hope it's entertaining. I'm anticipating more Kelsey and Paul in the next one, and mayyybee some Jacob I don't know quite yet. But sometime within the next, say three or four chapters, you're going to get to meet Tom and Brian and Alex, so that should be exciting. Thanks again for all the support :)
