A/N: Thanks to SunflowerFran for her amazingly fast turnaround as beta. Any mistakes are mine since I can never resist tweaking before posting.
Bella
I cut class.
Hey, when you hang out with drug dealers and murderers, you start doing some bad things.
Besides, I really couldn't concentrate on Taylor polynomials today. I ran straight home, slammed my apartment door, and sank to the floor, face buried in my knees.
The whole time, the scene in the basement room was replaying in my head. I kept on hearing Edward's calm, quiet, and beautiful voice saying over and over again, "Alice, you're no longer of any use to me. Kill her, Emmett."
No.
It couldn't be true.
I remembered Jessica's gossip at lunch that day so long ago. "They say the Captain's been running the gang since he was twelve. They say that even though he's only a high school student, he's already lost count of the number of people he's ordered killed."
No.
Edward didn't kill people. He couldn't. He wasn't that sort of person.
"Kill her, Emmett."
No.
"Kill her."
There was a black roaring somewhere inside my head, pain like a block of ice lodged in my chest. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
I didn't want to think. Because if I started to, I would have to come to some conclusions.
And there were no good conclusions. No possible choices.
I needed to do something. I got up, sat at the dining table and sorted through the pile of junk mail.
One envelope stuck out—a large, thick white one with a return address of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A fat envelope—a good sign. I thought my heart was frozen, but still, it leaped up in my chest and pounded furiously as I tore open the flap.
"Congratulations!" it read. "You have been offered admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." The professor I'd been hoping to work with wanted to meet me during an upcoming visit. A slow, distant excitement bubbled up within me. I clutched the paper, desperately, like a drowning person might clutch a life ring. Could I finally be getting some good news?
Maybe I could put all this behind me and start the rest of my life. Maybe I could just run away from Forks, forget everyone I knew here. Forget everything that had happened.
Then I turned to the next page.
My financial aid package. I read it through once, twice, and then three times, hoping in vain to find something I had missed.
They were basing my Expected Family Contribution on my father's salary—the salary of a man I hadn't seen in ten years, someone who had repeatedly refused to pay child support or contribute to our family's financial upkeep. The college was claiming I could afford to pay nearly twenty thousand dollars a year.
I had no money. I couldn't even afford to pay two thousand a year. My parents wouldn't give me a dime. I couldn't go to the local state university, much less a private school. Even if I worked full-time at minimum wage in addition to going to school, my full salary before taxes wouldn't hit twenty thousand. Even if I worked overtime at the bakery this year, and saved every penny that didn't go to taxes and rent, it wouldn't be nearly enough. They wouldn't even give me loans for it, thanks to the tyranny of the EFC. And that wasn't even considering the question of whether it was a wise decision to go into debt so early in my life. I ground my teeth. I was trapped.
I would work minimum-wage jobs for the rest of my life.
"I could have been something!" my mother shouted. I cowered behind the dining table. She had already thrown the casserole dish at me. It missed my head and lay splattered in a broken sticky mess behind me on the floor. "If I hadn't had to take care of you! Always crying, always dirty, always whining! It's all your fault. You're the reason I had to drop out of school. You're the reason why there's no money."
Tears ran down my cheeks. There would never be any money.
There was no way I would ever become a biochemist, no way I would ever do the work I had always longed to do.
Unbidden, my mind returned to my conversation with Edward, and the bitterness in his words that I remembered but hadn't really grasped at the time. "The only way out of poverty in this country is education, Bella, and they took that away from me too. They always claim there's plenty of help for the poor in this country, but it's a lot rarer than people think."
It was ironic that I had asked him to give up his illegal sources of income just before I appreciated for the first time what it truly meant.
I finally understood, in the core of my belly, why Edward might have made the choices he made.
If I wanted the one thing I had always dreamed of, my one chance to escape my terrible family life, to get away from the beaten track of my existence that stretched ahead of me like a narrow, dark tunnel — all I would have to do was smash my ethical compass to bits.
Oh, I could justify it. I knew I could do great things for the world if I just had enough money to go to college.
I put my head in my hands. I could go to Edward and explain the situation. Twenty thousand dollars was probably nothing for him, merely small change for the Captain of Volterra. I shivered. He would help me.
Of course.
It would be easy.
It would make him happy. It would make my life so much simpler. So much more successful.
And we could be together.
For a moment, that cold hard knot in my chest dissolved just a little bit, and the darkness in my mind lifted just a tiny fraction at the thought that I might see him again. That I might hold him in my arms.
My body yearned to feel his warmth pressed against me, to stand within his magic circle of protection, to hear his voice against my ear, quiver at his lips across my throat. To burn with him like a flame against the darkness.
Every single inch of my skin vibrated with longing.
But what would be the price?
I firmed my lips and sat up straight. No. I would never accept the money he had made from others' suffering and death. Better to give up everything.
I picked up the folder from the table and marched over to the plastic bin that held recycling. I took a deep breath, dropped the folder into the bin, and then went to the kitchen to chop tomatoes for dinner.
It was over.
It was all over.
The water ran in the sink and my tears ran down my cheeks.
I couldn't help imagining my next conversation with him.
"Edward, Jacob told me the police traced Rapture to Volterra. That your gang is the only supplier." My hands were shaking as I took a wooden spoon out of the drawer.
Shrugging, he leaned against the counter. "Do you always believe whatever Jacob says?"
My lips tightened. "You know what I'm asking. Are you or are you not selling Rapture?"
"I personally have never sold it, no."
I banged the kitchen table hard with the spoon. "That's not what I mean and you know it! Is your gang responsible for all the Rapture addicts?"
He straightened and spun to face me. "Responsible? Absolutely not! Drug use is something individuals choose themselves. It offends me that you're blaming me for the stupidity of others."
"But you're making huge profits on that 'stupidity.' People are dying."
"It's not my fault if others are idiots. It's not my job to protect people from themselves." His voice quieted. "Come now, be reasonable. What good would that do? Does it even make sense?"
There was a soft tap at the door and the images faded.
It must be Edward.
Did I want to talk to him right now? No. I wasn't even going to open the door.
I had already made my decision. I couldn't have a murderer be part of my life.
