The appearance of Edward somehow made Carmen boomerang back into her senses. The praying had stopped and her sobs were more like a whine that came and went when she spoke like a sufferer of laryngitis.

'Edward my boy, come, sit.' She sniffed.

He stepped inside and took a seat reluctantly.

'You too Bella, please sit.' Carmen smiled, pushing a chair to reside opposite him.

Oh no. What was she up to now?

Tanya clapped from the corner of the room where she was slumped like a beaten up pillow. Edward's fingers were sinking into the chairs armrests.

My feet somehow made their way to the chair that felt ten times bigger than usual, sucking me into the gaps that formed hungry lips around my butt.

Carmen sat behind her desk, rummaging through her open drawer. I tried not to look at Edward as I began to hyperventilate discreetly as I could, feeling him watch me, peel me like rind, uncovering parts of me I didn't want him to see and judge like I judged myself.

When I turned to look at Carmen, she had unclipped a stack of papers that were stapled together all the way down one side. A few were torn and attached to clipboards, which she placed down beside us with a pen. 'Now please do not cause a fuss when I ask you to fulfil this one simple task that I ask. Take what I have given you.'

Neither of us moved.

'Take it,' she ordered.

Neither of us budged. She threw them onto our laps. 'The longer you resist the harder this will become for all of us. Edward do you understand?'

His hands balled into fists.

'Do – you - understand?'

His turned his head and glared at Carmen

'Good,' she replied, as if he'd agreed silently. 'I will ask you both a serious of question and I would like you to express your answers by way of drawing. Unless you feel capable of saying what you are blatantly hiding with actual words'

When nothing was said or thrown in protest she continued. 'I will begin with you Bella'

Why me? My arms twitched.

'Please draw or describe the Cullens.'

I opted to draw. There were too many ways I could describe most of them, and in a way that wasn't sugar coated or kind. I was glad not to have to speak, that way they didn't have to hear me stammer with the nerves unsettling my stomach.

I drew a small circle and wrote my name, then a larger circle around it with their name in bold capitals. Nothing too articulate or ingenious, but hopefully sending out my message.

I held it up for cross examination, keeping my gaze on a subject of mundane interest: Tanya's furry slipper.

Carmen inhaled deeply, then did a half cluck of her tongue. 'You feel trapped, within a large distant circle.' She thought over that lack of a revelation, then sighed.

'Edward please draw or describe Bella'

Well this couldn't get any worse. She may as well have told him to describe driftwood. I had half the mind to take his sheet and draw myself for him: splintered and brittle, stale white with a depressed infusion of guilt. But then they would know the real me, and what I truly had to hide.

It was quiet from where he was sitting. I wondered if he had somehow disintegrated or fallen asleep.

'Disturbed.' His sudden response made me flinch.

'Infected,' he added, leaning forward. 'Damaged goods.'

I reacted, slapping him hard across the face. My hand became a red imprint of lines upon his pallid cheek. His shades had fallen onto the floor.

His right eye had an incision that ran down from his brow bone to the bottom of one blood-burst eye.

My hand reached out voluntarily, but he blanched, recoiling from my briefest touch. His eyes then turned the deepest black I had ever seen them, matt and unresolved.

'I'm sorry,' I stuttered. 'I didn't mean…' I wheezed, unable to resist the urge of letting go to collapse.

He rose from his chair and turned to Carmen. 'Happy now?'