Note: Well, I meant to post this over the weekend, but my husband and I started seriously looking for a house...and then immediately found the one we wanted. Unfortunately it's a house that was foreclosed on during the recession and is now owned by the government, so they are really serious about the deadlines they give for everything. That means that, on top of school, I'm also going to sometimes be really busy with house things. Still, I'll do my best to update at least once a week.

XXXVII.

Thanks to my unplanned nap, I ended up sleeping badly all night and woke up late the next morning. In one sense, it was probably good: I knew I was doing everything a lot more slowly than usual and with a lot more sighing - well, except when a little burst of irritation hit and I found myself slamming a door or setting something down harder than necessary. If I had been awake at my usual time, Charlie would have been home and undoubtedly would have asked about my obvious bad mood. In spite of that piece of luck, that same bad mood made me disinclined to see good in anything - I was distinctively less like a sodium ion today than usual. It made me wonder, when sodium and chloride went their separate ways, if sodium ever took a couple of extra electrons from the chloride.

That was kind of how I felt.

My chemistry metaphor was breaking down, though, because I had absolutely no reason to think that our - thing - yesterday had somehow left Edward more positive. If I didn't want to change metaphors, I probably needed to find another explanation. Like Edward's confession had been water all over my incredibly reactive sodium, and now I was sodium hydroxide - more commonly known as lye.

That actually sounded about right, too - "caustic" probably described me pretty well at the moment.

I rubbed my eyes, which still felt gritty and sore from lack of sleep, crying, or both - probably both - and tried to decide just how badly I didn't want to go to school today.

Not badly enough, I decided. I was blaming that lack of desire on Charlie being a police officer (he would be really upset if he found out I was skipping school) and not at all on the fact that, in spite of everything, I was maybe a little concerned about how Edward was taking things and wanted to catch a little glimpse of him.

Because I didn't. That would be stupid, right?

I managed to leave the house in good time - thank God for having my first two periods free - and drove to school carefully, trying not to let myself think about anything upsetting. Such as: now that I didn't want him to, I half expected Edward to be waiting for me. He seemed perverse like that.

He wasn't waiting, though. Instead, it was Alice.

She met me as I got down from Simone's cab and immediately shoved a piece of notebook paper at me.

"What's this?" I asked, wondering if she might be carrying messages for Edward.

"Notes for trig today," she said. For a moment I didn't understand, until I remembered that she was a psychic and could presumably get those kinds of things before they happened. "I looked ahead to the lecture and took them during biology," she confirmed. "We're going to skip so that we can talk."

"Are we?" I asked, a little put off by the fact that she wasn't actually soliciting my opinion on the matter. Then I bit my lip, realizing that maybe she needed to talk to me. "Are you angry at me?"

"Are you angry at me?" she returned, but continued before I had a chance to answer. "Look, it's damp and cold, so let's get in your truck and then we can talk about who is or isn't angry and why."

That sounded like a sensible plan, so we put it into action and a moment later were seated side by side on Simone's bench seat.

"I have to apologize," Alice began immediately. "Some of the times Edward followed you, it was encouraged or instigated by me. It didn't occur to me to wonder if it might bother you. I'm used to thinking like a vampire, not like a human. All I saw was that separating a vampire from his or her mate is painful, and I didn't like seeing Edward in pain."

There were so many things I could say in response to her apology, but her foundational assumption seemed like the place to start. We could tackle everything that grew out of it afterward. "Alice," I sighed, suddenly wishing even more that I had gotten a full night of sleep, "I don't believe in this whole 'mate' thing. Love and relationships are a choice, they don't just fall on you and trap you out of the blue. You don't get romantic bliss by accident."

"No, you don't get bliss - or even happiness - by accident," Alice agreed. "You get it through doing the work of balancing your own desires and needs with someone else's. That's as true for us as it is for you."

It seemed like every time I ended up debating this mate thing with a vampire, I got the same kind of annoying it's-the-same-but-different answer. If everything except the love-at-first-sight thing worked the same way, then I was calling bullshit on the entire claim. "Then what's the point of having a mate?" I demanded. "Why do you keep insisting that it's true?"

"The point?" she repeated. "I don't know. What's the point of existing?"

"That's not what I mean," I told her impatiently. "I'm not trying to have a debate about metaphysics. I'm just saying: if having a mate isn't any different from a regular relationship, why define it differently?"

"It is different," she insisted. "Human romantic relationships can be about happiness if you want them to be. Vampire relationships are about fundamental needs first and foremost. A lot of vampire couples don't like each other, you know, because being mated means never being able to walk away, no matter how cruel you are to each other."

I felt my brows draw together. "Okay, for the sake of argument: if you can't walk away, and you love each other, why would you be cruel to each other?"

She shrugged. "You have to have known people who just couldn't seem to help themselves because they were self-centered or immature or just didn't know any other way to express their feelings. It's not like becoming a vampire clears any of that up. If anything, it might make it worse. How do you deal with, say, a life-changing childhood trauma that you can't actually remember anymore? Especially when all practicing psychologists are human and food? You've already surmised that becoming a vampire makes individuals care less about humans - typically, at least. So it generally doesn't make us more empathetic."

I spent a long moment chewing on my lip, thinking over what she had said.

"It doesn't matter whether a relationship was fated to be or not," she went on when the silence began to stretch out. "There's still plenty of work, compromise and sometimes some self-sacrifice involved. If both people involved are eager and willing to pursue those things, it will be a happy relationship. If they aren't, it won't be. That's as true for us as it is for humans - we just don't get the option of divorce."

"You're not really selling me on this," I told her.

She shrugged again and looked away. "I hope you care enough about Edward to take his situation into account."

Well - maybe I did, even if I wasn't sure that I wanted to. I sighed. "What, exactly, are you apologizing for?" I asked, changing the subject. Later, I would turn over what she had just told me and decide if I found it credible or not. For now, I couldn't come up with any immediate objections, so we might as well move on to the next thing.

"Um, well…" She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, suddenly looking unexpectedly young and vulnerable. "When Edward first started spending nights at your house, I sort of...thought he should be in your room. With you. Instead of, you know, keeping a figurative eye on you from a distance."

"I'm glad he didn't do that," I said.

"Yeah…" Alice sighed. "I was wrong, and he had things a lot more right than I did."

I bit my lip, but couldn't stop the next question from spilling out. "Did you tell him to follow me on my date?" I asked.

"No," she answered quickly. "But it didn't occur to me to stop him. I checked to make sure he wasn't going to kill Tyler, because that was what I was most worried about. Thankfully that was super unlikely. While I was checking, though, I did see that Edward's concern was massively unwarranted - Tyler, while selfish and immature, is way too much of a coward to ever stand up to you - and I didn't bother to tell him."

She paused and took a deep breath while I tried to decide what I thought about her actions - and lack of action. "I talked Edward into following you to Port Angeles on Saturday."

I blinked. "Oh," I said. "You know…" I began, and then cut myself off, shaking my head. "This is going to sound really stupid, but I never really realized that you going to Port Angeles and saving me like that constituted following."

"Well," Alice said, "maybe 'following' is too strong a term. We weren't watching your every movement - things wouldn't have been so close if we had been. Both of us were just checking in every so often, maybe about once an hour."

"I see," I mumbled, scrubbing my face with my hands. "Still...I…" Was I being a hypocrite? I still didn't feel nearly as outraged over the Port Angeles thing as I had over Edward following me on my date. Was it because it had been a date? Because, in Port Angeles, I really had been in danger? Because Edward had had reason to think I was in danger based on Alice's visions? Or was it more fundamentally unfair than that?

Was I more angry over one...because it had been Edward rather than Edward and Alice?

And if I was that unfair, what did I intend to do about it?

I couldn't answer that last question fully just yet, but maybe I could make a start by trying to be more fair. I had known even while I was saying some of the things I'd said the afternoon before that I would probably want to take them back. Maybe that was the right place to start.

But...I wasn't ready to actually talk to Edward yet. Maybe I could make a shitty compromise? But what would Alice think of it? And did she already know I hadn't heeded her warning as thoroughly as I might have? It seemed like she knew a lot about what had happened, but did she know my intentions? Oh well, I needed her input, so I would have to deal with the awkwardness of talking to her about this. "Um," I began, my face immediately heating, "do you think - I mean, I, uh, I said some things yesterday...I mean, I tried to follow your advice, but I still said a couple of things I didn't really mean. Do you think...do you think Edward would mind if I apologized over text?" I hurried on before Alice could actually answer. "I know it's a really cowardly way to do it and I do want to apologize for real. I just...I'm not ready to talk yet - I still have so much to think about - and - but - I don't want to, you know, leave it. That doesn't seem fair, either."

Alice looked like she was trying really hard not to laugh at me when I finally managed to meet her gaze again. "I think he'd really appreciate a texted apology, especially if he knew a real one was coming later." A little smile broke out on her face. "I guess if there's a later, though, that means you're going to forgive him."

I ducked my head, feeling my blush deepen. "Pretty sure you already knew that," I muttered.

"I didn't know that you knew it," she replied.

"Well…" I thought back to the day before. "I think I sort of did even when I was absolutely furious with him - "

"What are you now?" Alice interrupted.

I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to decide. "Hurt, mostly," I told her slowly. Yes, sometimes I was still a little angry - but that was probably just a cover for more hurt. "I'm not quite sure why anymore, though. I mean - there's more than one reason. There's the obvious - what he shared with me - but there's also…" I took a deep breath, "Alice, you should have seen him. He didn't even try to defend himself or calm me down. Didn't promise he wouldn't do it anymore. Didn't ask if I could ever forgive him." My eyes filled with tears again. "He just gave up."

"Yeah…" she sighed. "I did try to warn you that he's like that."

"You didn't warn me well enough," I told her, my voice breaking a little on the last word. Wiping my eyes hurriedly took care of the tears, and a couple of deep breaths calmed me down a little. "Sorry," I told her. "It's not your fault. I don't even know why it's so upsetting. That's...one of the things I'd like to figure out. One of the things I know I'd like to figure out - most of the rest I can't even articulate yet."

"Through all of this, I've mostly been thinking like Edward's sister," Alice told me, "but right now, when I say this, I'm speaking as your friend: you've absorbed a lot over the last few days. It's completely reasonable to need a little time to take it all in and decide what you think."

I shivered and wrapped my arms more tightly around my body. Alice made it sound - I wasn't sure. Whatever it was, it made me feel vaguely ashamed of myself, even though I couldn't seem to pin it down further than that.

I shook my head - might as well add it to the pile of things I had yet to pin down. Maybe it would work itself out as I got my feelings organized everywhere else.

"Thanks," I told her out loud, trying not to make it sound clipped or curt. I appreciated the sentiment - probably - even if the actual words were doing weird things to me.

We fell silent as, in spite of my resolution to come back to it later, I tried to work out what I didn't like about what she'd said. I didn't get very far, though, and was glad enough for the distraction when Alice said, "You're really concerned about your privacy. Why is that?"

"Am I?" I asked, feeling my eyes widen a little. Didn't everyone worry about their privacy?

"Isobel, you had a panic attack. What Edward did was wrong from a human perspective, but a little yelling would have been a lot more reasonable than a panic attack. You were really adamant from the first time you learned what we are that he wasn't going to hurt you, so I don't really understand your reaction. I mean, are you afraid of Edward?"

I found myself shaking my head before my mind had even fully processed the question. But was it the truth? "Not...physically," I qualified.

"Emotionally?" she asked.

I found myself digging my fingers into my ribs until both ached. "I...maybe? I...keep feeling like he's getting ready to abandon...I mean, to...leave. Me. And maybe town."

"Fair," Alice murmured. "But, look, the reason stalking is a problem is because it's meant to intimidate the person being stalked. Do you think Edward was trying to intimidate you? To corner you? To force you to behave...the...way..."

She trailed off as I felt myself go cold, my chest tightening at the same time.

"Whoa, you just went about three shades paler," she told me. "Are you okay?"

I swallowed a couple of times, not quite trusting my voice, and, at the same time, not quite sure how to answer.

"Here," Alice said before I could decide, sitting up and putting her feet on Simone's floor, "put your head here." She patted her leg. "You look a little sick."

I nodded and stretched out, my stomach slowly settling as my chest relaxed.

"Okay," Alice breathed, biting her lip as she looked down at me, "what was that?"

I sighed, trying to make it into a laugh and failing completely. "Why don't you look into the future to find out what I tell you so that you can tell me in the present?" I suggested.

She snorted. "That's not the way it works. If you don't do the work of analyzing yourself, you'll never be able to tell me what you figure out."

Well...okay. It had been a long shot anyway. I spent a moment chewing on my lip and trying to sort out what I was feeling. "I guess," I decided at last, "that it keeps coming back to this: I trusted him, and now I'm not sure that I was right to. I'm also not sure I wasn't right to," I hastened to add, "but the doubt is...difficult."

"But trusted him with what?" Alice asked. "We've already established that you aren't overly concerned about your physical safety around him, and whether he followed you or not has nothing to do with how committed he is or isn't to sticking around."

That was...a good question. "I don't know," I admitted. What had I given Edward that required trust? I had kissed him, yes, but I had also kissed Tyler. Kisses didn't necessarily mean anything. Except - kissing Edward had meant something, and it hadn't meant anything with Tyler. What was the difference?

The difference was that I trusted - had trusted - still maybe trusted? - Edward, and hadn't ever really trusted Tyler.

But that was circular, so it didn't make any sense.

Somehow I was attacking this from the wrong angle. What was the most fundamental difference between my experiences with Edward and with Tyler? Well...I supposed I felt differently about them. I really liked Edward - I knew I really liked him - while Tyler had mostly been an interesting experiment.

So...I had trusted Edward with...liking?

No, I realized, not quite - I was only halfway there. I suddenly remembered the moment in the nurse's office when he had turned his charm on Mrs. Cope, and I had understood that he had power over me - or had the potential to have power over me - and that it scared me. That was what I had trusted Edward with - my liking made me vulnerable to him, to his influence.

But wasn't I influenced by everyone I cared about? I spent another moment chewing on my lip and reflecting on my friendships and relationships with my parents. My reluctant conclusion was that I really wasn't. I was influenced by my own feelings for them, but their feelings didn't change anything I had already decided on.

Ugh, that made me sound completely unreasonable, and that wasn't it - at least I didn't think it was. I usually responded pretty well to reason. That was the problem. I always demanded evidence. The idea of letting someone influence me emotionally made me feel -

Well...sick.

It was worse because no one else I knew was as charmingly persuasive as Edward. Worse than merely influencing how I felt, I feared he could overwrite my feelings practically on a whim.

I realized my arms were wrapped around my torso again, my fingers digging into my sides. "Alice," I asked, my voice low and a little breathless, "what's the difference between influence and manipulation?"

She tilted her head, examining me speculatively, and I wished that I didn't have my head in her lap, because there was no good way to hide my face. "I guess it depends on how broadly you're defining 'manipulation,'" she answered. "At its broadest, all interactions between people might be called manipulation. But - if you're using it strictly in the pejorative sense, I suppose it has to do with the motives driving the person doing the influencing."

I nodded slowly. "How...do you know that someone's motives are good?"

She combed her fingers through my hair gently in a gesture that was obviously meant to be soothing. "Observation can help," she told me quietly, "but I suppose, in the end, it comes down to trust."

I nodded again and squeezed my eyes closed, willing myself not to start crying.

"Isobel," Alice said, "I know this isn't easy, but it is good. You need to work this stuff out. Keep an eye on Edward and remember that he didn't have to tell you about what he did. In fact, if he had wanted to manipulate you, he wouldn't have. He really believed that you would never forgive him, and he owned up to it anyway. Keep it in mind."

"That's true," I allowed. It seemed a little silly to be angry at him both because he might be too attached to me - attached enough to stalk me - and because I thought he might just give up and take off. Although - maybe the two things weren't so different. Both shared a disregard for my feelings on the matter.

Still, he was no longer disregarding my feelings about the stalking thing. Alice had a point there.

I covered my eyes with my forearm. "This is such a headache," I groaned. Literally - I was getting an actual headache. "Was it this hard for you and Jasper?"

"No," Alice answered. "I started seeing him in my visions months before we actually met, so, in a sense, I already knew him. And he's an empath, so he never doubted me or my feelings."

I uncovered my eyes so that I could look at her. "He's an empath? Can he tell what I'm feeling? Or is it the same for him as it is for Edward with his mind-reading thing?"

"I don't know," she answered. "He probably can tell, but he hasn't specifically tried. He can also influence - in a limited way - the way people feel. And," she added quickly, rolling her eyes, before I could say anything, "I already know what you probably think about that. Don't worry - it's temporary and it only really works one direction. He can calm people down, but not just make them feel whatever he wants."

"Huh," I said, glad that I didn't need to tell her how disturbed I would be to find someone controlling my emotions. "Do you know why it's unidirectional?"

"Well, Jasper is generally a fairly calm person. Even when he feels something is absolutely necessary, he isn't really passionate about it - just incredibly resolved." She shrugged. "I think that has something to do with it."

I found a smile pulling at my mouth for what might have been the first time all morning. "That probably makes him a good match for you."

"It really does," Alice agreed, flashing me an adorably gleeful grin.

We heard the bell for the end of third period buzz through the school, and my smile faded. Next up was gym.

"Don't ask if you can sit out," Alice told me abruptly, cutting off the thought that was just barely beginning to form in my mind. She gave me an apologetic smile. "Edward will worry. Besides," she added, "exercise helps humans think, so you should do your aerobics and think."

I didn't really want to take her advice, but I did anyway - especially since she was nice enough to continue acting as a buffer between me and Jessica's curiosity, the same as she had yesterday. When lunch came, I knew I would have to face up to the Jessica Inquisition - it would be pretty obvious that Edward wasn't sitting with us - but by then maybe I could have some kind of (untrue) answer ready.

Figuring out whether Alice was right about humans, exercise, and thinking would have required research I didn't have time to do, but I decided I might as well test it out. Even if I ended up on the receiving end of a placebo effect, that implied I was thinking better than I would otherwise, and I was all for anything that might help - even things that shouldn't. There were two mental tasks I needed to accomplish during the course of the period: first, I needed a plausible lie for Jessica and everyone else about the sudden coolness between Edward and me. Second, I needed to see how closely Edward was following my demands from the day before - not because I was going to be angry if I caught him looking at me, but rather because I wanted to know if I needed to apologize for that particular demand. If he realized it was ridiculous and disregarded it, I would put off my apology. If not, I needed to set him straight and also apologize for making it in the first place.

It was ridiculous.

I was already set up with my mat by the time Edward came into the gym. Though I hadn't specifically been watching for him - or had been trying not to - I still spotted him as soon as he walked through the door, my heart contracting painfully in response to his presence, however distant.

His face and body language weren't as miserable as they had been the afternoon before. Instead his expression was solemn and a little thoughtful.

He didn't look my direction, though. At all. Even a little bit.

That was probably question two answered, I thought with a sigh. Trust Edward to be a perfectionist completely regardless of any and all circumstances. It was a really good thing that Alice had warned me not to say anything I didn't mean. Knowing I couldn't fully express my feelings might have contributed to the panic attack, but a panic attack was a small price to pay for Edward not ending up irrevocably convinced that I hated him forever.

I could see now that he would have, too. If we were going to make this work, I was going to have to find ways to express myself more calmly - preferably ways that didn't increase my anxiety - and he was going to have to learn when to take me seriously and when my feelings were just an initial reaction to something that would calm given a little time. It was the kind of thing we were probably going to need to meet in the middle on, because I was naturally expressive.

Blame that one on my mother.

With question two taken care of, I was free to spend the rest of the period considering question one. While I didn't feel like I owed the Jessica Inquisition any explanations, I wasn't opposed to taking the path of least resistance via strategic lies, and an explanation would make my life and friendship with Jess easier. Besides that, I wanted to be able to talk to Angela about...well, anything I felt the need to talk about. That meant that my lie needed to be both plausible and reflect a certain degree of reality, so that my feelings would make sense to Angela when I told her about them.

I could just tell them Edward had been stalking me - leaving out all the supernatural parts - but stalking was truly scary without the mitigating vampire factors that both Edward and Alice had presented to me. Lacking those, the truth amounted to a larger misrepresentation than coming up with some other crime, even one that wasn't as close to factually accurate.

After a considerable amount of thought, I decided to move the stalking to the realm of the internet. Cyberstalking, while still a little bit gross, wasn't the kind of immediate bodily threat that conventional stalking tended to come off as. For the one big violation of privacy, when Edward had followed me on my date, I would substitute him finding and reading things I had posted online under supposedly anonymous usernames. I thought that represented the severity of the situation fairly well and explained my anger without making him look irredeemably obsessed. (Though, if he and Alice were right, he kind of was - but that was between the two of us and I wasn't exactly angry about it. More like really concerned - and that concern extended both to him and to myself.)

That answered my first two questions. Combined with some of the revelations I'd had during my conversation with Alice, it felt like a start. There was still so much more to consider. Like - it was obvious now that I was really, really scared of being manipulated, but why? It wasn't like I'd ever been in an abusive relationship. My relationships with both my parents were pretty good and, even if my mom hadn't had a great track record before she met Phil, she had always been careful to protect me from her relationship problems. Charlie, meanwhile, hadn't had anything to either model for me or protect me from.

So...yeah. I wasn't quite sure where that had come from, and not knowing might be a problem. Sometimes getting to the bottom of an issue was the only way to fix it - sort of like needing the ends of a cord before you could untie a knot - and I desperately wanted this one fixed.

Ahhh, where was the sword of Alexander when I needed it?