A/N: Sorry it's been so long since I've updated! My sincerest apologies but my transition back to Academia was very rough.
Now that I am settled, more or less, I will be updating regularly. Chapter 15 will be up very shortly. I'm currently finishing it.

Chapter 14: Stalker

Bella walked in to her AP Biology class with her mind entirely occupied. It had been three days and she hadn't heard from him, not even one measly phone call back. It was unlike Jacob to go so long without contacting Bella. They usually talked on the phone at least once a day and certainly chatted on the internet while they each did their homework. It was their thing. But he hadn't been online. He didn't answer her calls or return her texts. It was unlike him.

"Is something bothering you?"

Bella looked up at Edward who sat awkwardly at the other end of the lab desk. She hadn't noticed him when she walked in which was bizarre because he was usually the first person she noticed. Their exchanges in Biology were often intimate; he would inquire about her life and she would inquire about his. She knew what he liked: Debussy, hiking, and reading. She knew what he liked, sure, but she felt like she didn't know who he was, on the inside at least. Little matter, her exchanges with him in biology class had brought them closer to one another and she'd even go so far as to call him a good friend. After all, he could tell something was wrong with her simply by the expression on her face…

"Yeah, something up with a friend….they're acting kinda weird," Bella confessed.

"A friend from Arizona?" Edward inquired. His curiosity in her personal life reminded her immensely of Hannibal Lecter. She quickly shook the screwed up thought from her head.

"No," Bella stated. She didn't really want to talk about it. She constantly thought about Jacob and she just wanted to talk about something, anything else, to get her mind off of him and his well-being. "They're just going through a hard time, I guess." She hoped that this simple explanation would get curious Edward off her back.

He seemed to get the hint because he sat there quietly and Bella felt bad, so she decided to inquire about him: "So, how about you? How was your weekend?"

Edward smiled, flashing perfect white teeth that seemed to glow even within the classroom. It amazed Bella how perfect he was. He looked like a model, almost too perfect to be true and his personality was that of a gentleman. If she wasn't so sure of their friendship, she would question her sanity as to why she didn't like him. He had all the elements that she could ever want in a person. It was almost curious to her, to even think about it now.

"It was …complicated," Edward confessed. He didn't even know how to begin to describe the long weekend he had. Taking Alice to the airport after revealing to her that she had essentially broken the heart of her lesbian lover was not simple, at the least. On top of that, preparing his family for the prospect of moving to Volterra was also nerve wracking. He didn't know what was going to happen. All of these new circumstances that his family had to face, the new vampires and these new werewolves, it was all too much for him. He usually prided himself in being able to resolve conflicts but this was too large to resolve and it was very much out of his hands.

"Why was it complicated?"

Edward's train of thoughts was broken by Bella's innocent inquiry. Edward didn't know how to explain and anger started to build up within him. It was all so fucked up. "It just was." The words came out harsher than he meant it and Bella seemed to have taken it the wrong way, for she turned her head, flipped open her notebook and simply minded her own business after that. Edward was too flustered, now, with thoughts of how to fix his family's situation, how to fix Alice's situation. It was all too much. With that, he immediately stood up and left the classroom.

Bella watched in utter amazement as her lab partner stood from the lab and walked out of the classroom, mere moments before the teacher walked in. What was the point of showing up at all if he was just going to ditch?

A sound came from Bella's backpack and she realized it was her phone receiving a text. She reached down to turn her phone on silent before she heard the teacher condone her for leaving her cell phone aloud during class hours. She quickly apologized and reached in deep to her backpack, glimpsing at her text quickly and was surprised to find that it was from Jacob: "meet me l8er." Surprised and excited, Bella responded with a quick: "K" while putting her phone on mute.

Bella ran in to her house, all the way to her room, from her truck. He was going to be here any minute and she wanted to make sure her room wasn't messy. Browsing around her room, she tossed all her dirty clothes in to the hamper in her closet and threw all the random stuff on her floor in to various drawers in her desk. When she was satisfied with how her room looked, Bella sat on her bed and waited for Jacob, periodically checking her phone to make sure he hadn't called or texted. Twenty minutes later, she heard his ringtone.

"I'm outside…"

It was all he said before he hung up. It was weird of him to do so because she was about to invite him up. Bella sighed and grabbed a jacket before racing down the stairs to the door. At the end of her drive way, Jacob stood there eying the horizon. She ran out the door and approached him, "Where have you been? I've been trying to get a hold of you for, like, a week!" Bella practically yelled at him. He should never leave her in the dark like that again and she was going to make sure he knew that.

"I've been…kinda…preoccupied," Jacob answered. Bella didn't like the tone that he used. It was a suggestive tone, as if the elaboration of the truth would be unbearable to say.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked. She wanted to know what was up with Jacob that he couldn't call her back, couldn't return her texts, and couldn't even pop online to say he was okay.

Jacob looked around, looked at everything else except Bella. It seemed as if he was having a hard time formulating the words to answer her question. Bella waited patiently as she watched him struggle to even look at her.

"Let's…take a walk…" Jacob finally said, eyes averted to the ground.

Fair enough, Bella thought to herself as they both began walking to the woods that resided right behind her house. She knew the trails like the back of her hand, having walked them so many times in her childhood as well as recently to clear her mind. There was no way that they could get lost, especially it being mid-after noon and the sun wasn't to set in another couple of hours. She began to lead him there.

When they walked through the start of the woods, Jacob began to slow down and found a tree stump to sit upon. Bella, herself, sat opposite him on a low tree branch. It was her usual sitting spot whenever she came to the woods to clear her mind and she was rather fond of it. "So what's up?" Bella initiated the conversation. Her curiosity on why he was acting so bizarre was driving her practically insane.

"I don't really know how to say this…" Jacob began as he scratched the back of his head.
"It's just…" Bella waited several moments of silence, watching him fiddle around with his thumbs and the ends of his shirt. Between "um" and "well," he had averted his head to glance at every aspect of the scenery around him but had yet to look directly at her.

"Jacob, just spit it out," Bella said after the long moments of nothing-ness.

"It's just…" Jacob began to play with words, "well….something….happened."

Bella was getting frustrated and she held her arms out in a questionable manner to index how she was feeling. Her face must have gave off the "Well, what the fuck is it" look because Jacob began to speak again.

"Something happened one night but I can't remember what…" Jacob spoke slowly, trying to recall the fragmented memories he had of that one particular night, "all I know is I woke up and my clothes were all torn up and…" Jacob stopped to pull the collar of his shirt away from his neck, exposing two circular wounds on his shoulder.

"What the fuck?" Bella gasped out the reaction instinctively. She had never seen wound marks like that before and came closer to him to examine it. She reached out her hand as if to feel but Jacob pulled away before she could.

"Don't touch it, it really hurts…." Jacob said, pulling his shirt back over the wound to conceal it.

"How did you get that?" Bella asked, completely astonished at how gross it looked and also scared at what could possibly do that to a person. Was it an animal? A bug? What the fuck?

"I don't know…" Jacob answered and shrugged.

"You don't know?" Bella repeated, as if clarifying his statement.

"Yeah, I don't know…." Jacob confirmed.

"Well, what did the doctor say?" Bella asked. She was wholesomely curious about what the doctors would say about such a wound.

"I haven't gone to one yet…" Jacob confessed and Bella glared at him with such intense eyes that he averted them to the ground. He knew that she was going to scold him for not attending to his obvious medical needs.

"What do you mean you haven't gone?" Bella began, "Jacob! This looks serious! You could get an infection! And look at how large those wounds are! They could be infected already or you could be having an allergic reaction…"

Jacob cut her off with a hand before stating: "I have an appointment for tomorrow…"

Bella smirked at him and Jacob beamed: "See, I'm on top of it…mom…."

Bella playfully nudged him when he called her mom. She was really worried about him these past three days and thought something serious had happened to him. And something serious DID happen to him. Which reminded her, "Next time something crazy like this happens to you, you need to tell me right away and not wait until like a week later…"

Jacob looked apologetically up at her, "I'm really sorry, Bells, but I just got really preoccupied with trying to figure out what happened and I had to explain to my dad why I hadn't come home that night you dropped me off and when I couldn't…well, I was grounded."

"Wait…" Bella froze where she stood, "what do you mean you didn't come home? I dropped you off right in front of your house…"

Jacob shrugged, "that's the thing. I don't remember what happened. All I remember is waking up and my clothes were all messed up and my neck hurt like crazy."

Bella was beginning to question if Jacob was doing drugs. She tried to remember what health class had taught her on drugs that led to complete loss of short-term memory while under the effects of the drug: date rape drugs, crystal meth….

"Jacob…" Bella began, looking him up and down. He didn't look skinnier, nor did he seem to be in any way impaired as she looked at him.

Suddenly, a noise was heard behind her and they both turned around quickly. A figure stood at the entrance of the woods, about thirty feet from where they sat and Bella had to allow her eyes several seconds to adjust before she recognized her lab partner: Edward Cullen.

"Who is he?" Jacob asked Bella and Bella replied, rather confused with what he was doing to the entrance of the woods, so close to the backyard of her house, "that's my lab partner from Biology…"

"What's he doing here?" Jacob asked, rather defensively. Bella wanted to know the answer herself, "I'm not sure. He's never been to my house…"

Both Bella and Jacob watched as Edward slowly approached them and when he was ten feet away, he called up at them, "Good afternoon."

Utterly confused as to what her lab partner was doing interrupting her intimate conversation with Jacob, whom she hadn't seen in three days, and even more confused at the fact that he had entered the woods through her backyard, she couldn't help but rudely ask: "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see what I missed in Biology class today…" Edward stated, slowly circling to the nearest tall tree, farthest from Jacob.

Bella glared at him in utter confusion and was starting to seriously debate whether he was stalking her. How did he know where she lived? Why would he come over to her house to ask about Biology lab work? He had never done it before in his absence, why start now? And how did he know to check the woods, if she weren't inside the house. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that Edward Cullen was deliberately stalking her and he seemed very good at it because there he was, amidst her and Jacob in the middle of the woods in the backyard of her home.

"How…" it was all Bella could formulate when she began to hear grunts from Jacob behind her.

She turned around to see his body convulsing, his eyes rapidly fluttering to the back of his head, and he was making the most bizarre noises she had ever heard a human make.
It was as if his body was possessed by some evil spirits, like out of a horror film.

"Jacob…" Bella whispered, it was all she could do to keep herself from screaming.

Bella felt a hard hand on her shoulder pulling her back and realized it was Edward. His grip was firm and she couldn't shrug it off, despite her efforts. "Get back," Edward said, pulling her to the far tree where had had been standing and he positioned his body in front of her.

"What are you doing? He needs HELP!!" Bella was screaming. He was obviously having some sort of reaction to his wounds and she needed to call 911. Fuck, her phone was in her house. She needed to get back to her house.

Suddenly, several crunch noise distracted Bella's thoughts about the hospital and ambulances. She turned to Jacob and watched as his feet, legs, arms, hands, and the large of his back began to expand. He was hunched over, his face away from sight, and his skin color began to rapidly change from tan to very dark brown. The sounds of bones crunching continued to be heard as Bella watched in horror as her dear friend began to morph in to something that was as unhuman as can possibly be. His figure was slowly morphing and Bella began to scream. Edward pushed her back with such strength that it knocked the wind out of her when she hit the tree. The last thing she saw before she fell in to unconsciousness was deep blue eyes in a transfiguring Jacob's face that looked down at her in complete horror.