They talk in straight lines. All uniform and neat. A conversation should have bends and folds, turns that make you want to wrap your arms around it. This charmless civility is clearly well practised between the two. Somehow I know that they are having another conversation underneath this one. One I cannot hear. Once he realises who I am Jacob is quick with consolation. He should have recognised me, he says, he has heard so much about me. I mirror his words back but they are not wholly true. There is no way to reconcile this boy with the one that Bella has described. Her Jacob is lanky and shy, a giddy smile on a childish face. But this Jacob is a wall of muscle, a twitching fury in a coat of skin. She loves him. I wonder which of the two she fell in love with. The boy gives me a tentative smile and a wave goodnight before starting off towards the cottage.

Jasper is perfectly still and quiet as the grave. My body shakes with unspent adrenaline, blood rushes in my ears. I have a dozen questions but not a single one can fight its way past my teeth while I am still looking at him. A lingering embarrassment.

"So, which classic movie monster is he?"

He smiles, amused. "Guess."

I consider it carefully. It is obvious that he is something else—something more than human—but I do not yet know what. His skin had appeared warm and dark, his face was round and youthful, he had emerged shirtless from the trees. "Woodland nymph?" It is such a peculiar thing I find myself doing - mockingly guessing at what creatures I surround myself with.

His responding laugh is deep and brilliant. "No, no. But I'll be sure to tell him you thought so."

A minute stretches out between us and it becomes obvious that he will not tell me. Either they have some sort of agreement or Jasper suffers from supernatural scruples. Would I? I wonder if I drank blood and lived forever, would I bother to burden myself with congeniality? I hardly bother now. The minute stretches in to another, and then two more, and then I am no longer counting.

"It's my family," I say. He looks bemused so I answer his stare, "You must have asked me a dozen times. I'm going to Seattle to see my family."

I tell him about my parents who love without affection, about moving from England to America as a little girl. I tell him about Luc—my fraternal twin—born only six minutes before me but every inch a protective big brother; about how on the night of our high school graduation, he and his boyfriend boarded a plane for Seattle and never looked back. He's so brave, I say, so much more than I could ever be, and my lips feel heavy from the admission. I have lived nothing but a mixture of cowardice and conformity. The stupidity, I think, is new. I let a dead girl carry me to the top of a tree, I kissed a monster on the mouth. But what a beautiful monster he is.

A few hours sleep are all I need. The air is warm, the rain is light, and I am looking forward to the drive. I say goodbye to Bella and whisper a promise to return in her ear. Her answering smile is too magnificent for words. She is comely and cadaverous.

I follow the 101. It is all mountains and trees, golden sunshine and delicate rain. The windows are rolled down and the tinny echo of the stereo fights against the roar of the wind. I close my eyes for a heartbeat. My face feels warm. Only now, truly detached from their syrupy scent and their exquisite features can I see how great a danger they pose. The Cullens are a death that you walk to willingly. They do not want to eat us. We want to be eaten. The sad reality is that their impeccable manners and respect for human life are the only things keeping breath in our lungs, blood in our veins. They are dangerous. Somehow that is alluring in itself.

More than half of my journey is complete when an odd anxiety creeps across my shoulders. My hands sweat. My fingers are chilled. By the time the drive is finally over I am clammy and pale, shaking at the thought of seeing them again. It will be the first time that we have all been in the same room together since my brother left home. I need armour. I need to summon up protection against the barbed tongue and heated steel of my mother's savage inquiry. She sharpens her knives for family. This time will be no exception. She cuts through flesh and strikes at bone until we are no longer her children, no longer human, no more than twisting smoke. There is no cruelty quite like that of a mother, but her words can only hurt me if I let them. God knows I always do.

My wounds have healed but my skin grows no thicker.

That one grim thought lodges itself in my mind. It burrows deeper as I enter the city, a little deeper as I park the car, deeper still as I check in to the hotel. By the time I collapse against the stiff mattress in the foreign room I can imagine my skin to be no more than tissue paper, imagine that all too easily I will be torn apart.

I awake from a sleep I do not recall entering. Outside, the city has darkened, the buildings lit up, the day has slipped away. The incessant hum and chirp of my phone begs for attention.

"Hello?" My voice is thick with remnants of sleep. Inside my head it sounds like glass, feels like breaking bones. I shield my eyes and probe at my temples with fingers painted grey from the twilight. "Hello?" There is not a single sound to be heard from the other end of the call. Not even breath. "Bella?"

"Why are you really here? What's going on?" She speaks with a sort of wispy stutter. It is a pale imitation of her old human defect.

Her questions are easy to answer, difficult to explain. "It's a family thing." How do you justly convey the the desire—the need—to see someone as I did her? The throbbing in my head calms. I open my eyes to find every speck of dust illuminated. "I just needed to see you. You used to be family too, you know? Before you disappeared." Before you met the beast. Before you fell in love.

"You can tell me," she says, "you can tell me anything." I can keep a secret, she says without speaking. "I mean, you must have been pretty desperate coming to me for guidance. I've never really... had my shit together."

I laugh so loudly my vision blurs. "Tomorrow."

"You said that yesterday."

"Tomorrow."


It's almost like a mirror. The face that stares back is mine, but not mine, more beautiful than mine could ever be. It has wider eyes that crinkle at the edges, a softer jaw to frame its unblemished skin, and fuller lips that lie closed in the promise of a smile. But Luc is not smiling. Not this time.

My father acknowledges my entrance with a nod of his head. My mother does not even turn to look at me - her profile a severe carving in cold stone. I stand beside her and we let the silence spill out between us. It comes up to our knees, pulls at my thighs, and I can feel it threatening to drag me beneath its waves, bury me at the bottom of its depths. I panic. Wish as I might to be struck dumb, I am instead filled with voice.

"You're a grim looking lot."

No other word is spoken until the room begins to fill with people, and I reach out to take Luc's hand. We are both so cold. The voices chatter in whispers as they take their seats and turn their eyes to me - now alone at the end of the room, a corpse's fingers laced with mine.

I have no memory of the words spoken. I cannot recall the series of events that lead me here. All I have is the memory of his hand in mine, and this persistent clenching in my chest, the burning in my throat. Before anyone had ever lain eyes on me, Luc had breathed in six minutes worth of air, had drum out six minutes worth of heartbeats, he had shared six minutes of his fragile life with the world. But now he is gone.

I have no memory of the words spoken at his service. I cannot recall the series of events that lead me here, to the edge of his grave. All I have is the memory of his cold, dead hand in mine. And this persistent clenching in my chest: a heart learning to beat without him. The burning in my throat: lungs struggling to draw breath.

Slowly, my pulse steadies and my eyes dry, but my chest remains hollow. My brother's grave is full of dirt and devoid of life. Hours pass while I stare at it in the vain hope that it is all a delusion, that I am the victim of a cruel, elaborate hoax. I am not. I drive my hand into the sun-warmed earth of his grave. If I close my eyes tight enough I can hear him breathing, hear his heart beating. One more sob. One more dry, tearless heave. When I open my eyes his breath has stopped, his heart has stilled once more. Silence. It wasn't until I pulled my arm from the soil—saw the dirt clinging to it—that I realised both hands felt unclean.

Clumsy fingers manage to seal themselves around my phone, search out the numbers Bella has stored in there. A single ring. A silent greeting.

"How dead is too dead?"

When I fear that my question will require explanation, he speaks. "That dead is too dead." Of course he understands. He has seen my mind. "I'm sorry, Lena. We don't bring the dead back to life, only infect the living before death can truly take them." He is saved from awkwardly denying my request. Edward cannot save my brother, would not if he could.

"I know."

"But you needed to ask."

"I needed to ask."


I pause with my fist in the air outside their apartment door. His apartment door. He lives alone now. Skin pulls tight across my knuckles, the taste of gravel clings to my mouth. I knock lamely and hate myself for how weak it sounds, hate myself for existing. When he opens the door, Jorge looks much like he did at the funeral. His olive skin is sickly pale, and his eyes are sunken and dull. The door swings wide open but he does not move, does not breathe. I'm sorry, I want to tell him, sorry that I wear his face. But the moment passes and he leads me inside.

We stare a while longer—unspeaking—the pair of us inconsolable, our bodies possessed by sadness. He takes my hand. He rubs a long thumb over my knuckles, squeezes my palm. He is thinking about my lips, my eyes, trying not to let me obscure his vision of Luc. I ache. I yearn. I feel lost under the weight of his gaze. My dead brother's lover looks at me in a way no other man has. It's sick and it's sad, but I'll take it because I am desperate for this sliver of affection. Even if it is a lie.

"Lo siento," he says, and he takes his hand from mine. "I put together some boxes, gave one to your folks. It had some photos in it, some of Luc's school papers, his graduation cap..."

"You didn't need to do all this. It could have waited."

"It's okay. I needed to keep busy. And besides, he would have hated me moping about, too precious to part with his shit." He laughs but the sound is dry, empty. "Did a box up for you, too. Some of his records, his sweatshirts, that ridiculous fucking photo of the two of you from forth of July, remember that?"

Of course I do. We spent the whole night covered head to toe in paint, drunk as skunks on stolen wine. We danced like we were drowning, we sang like sailors at sea. I nod. I do not have the courage to smile or speak. He continues talking but I cannot make out many of the words. He tells me that their lawyer will handle everything else. We are too young to have lawyers. We are too young to need wills. We are too young to die.

I drive back to the hotel while the sky is still bright. Scenery cuts past the windows in a blur. I take the box up to my room and spill its contents over the comforter, imagining the perfect melancholy tune to accompany me. This is the montage. This is the part of the film where they cobble together all the footage of my grief. See, that's me getting the phone call, that's me at the funeral, that's me crying over a box of my brother's junk. What you don't see are the hours I spend lying in the bathtub, screaming underwater, desperate to be ripped in two.

Smash cut to me standing on a roof ledge. The Slug Line reads:

EXT. LENA'S HOTEL - ROOF - NIGHT

But the metaphor can no longer shield me. There is no script, there is no film. There is nothing but the numbness in my heart and the concrete at my feet. The feeling is familiar now—it has lingered since Luc died—smothering my chest and attempting to conceal the grief, the shock, the rage. Dams such as this are built to break. And it will. It always does. Soon I will see with unflinching clarity. Soon I will have to accept that my brother is dead, and that horrors I once thought merely imagined are as real and definite as the city below me. I can smell exhaust, I can see stars, I can fling myself from this world to the next. Before I can step closer to the ledge, further from the act of living, my pocket chirps.

"Hello?" The phone is in my hand, pressed against my ear before I even think to look at the display.

"So," she says, "it's tomorrow. Again. Are you ready to answer my questions?" Bella possesses a mothers voice. It is a sobering revelation.

I tell her everything. It starts with the phone call from my mother, how she told me in her clipped tone that Luc was dead. I do not remember the words. I barely remember the day of the week. What I do remember is that I was peeling an apple with a buck-knife, cutting slices and chewing them slowly even after I had hung up the phone. I remember the paint swatches on my desk: Hot Pop Yellow and Riverland Blue. I tell Bella about the funeral, about calling her husband, about visiting with Jorge. The story ends with me standing on the edge of a hotel roof, phone-in-hand, truly realising for the first time that she is an impossibility. And there it is. The dam has broken.

I fall to my knees in my best black dress - the kind you only wear to a funeral. Bella's voice buzzes in my ears, the sound oddly consoling for a creature who drinks blood. A creature. Not human. Not living, not alive, not anything that should exist in this world. She was right all along. I should have been afraid.

"I kissed Jasper," I say, "I kissed him and he didn't move, he wouldn't pull away. What sort of demons are you? Why would you let me leave that place alive?"

Bella laughs. The sound is watery and sad. She realises that I was not brave, I was not accepting of her situation. I was numb. She won't hold that against me, and that knowledge fills me with shame. I tell her that I have to go, that I have things to do. Pack up the box, tidy the room, throw myself off the building.

"You won't really." She wants to sound confident, but every syllable stings with doubt. "Just come home."

"I can't just go running back to you, Bella. I can't spend another day in the top of a tree, pretending my brother is still alive. And you... you can't spend another day with a bag of blood wandering around your house." And that is what I am: a walking temptation, an exercise in restraint. The line is silent for the longest time. "I'm sorry that I imposed on your family. It's just that I missed you and... I think... without Luc, I just needed something-"

"Familiar?"

I nod even knowing that she cannot see it. And I cry because it does not matter what she is now, she is still familiar, is still Bella.

My soul feels as though it has been rubbed raw, left exposed and throbbing in the dark night. This anguish cannot last. Choking down the feeling of anxiety is easier than I expect it to be. Somehow I am certain that everything will be easier with her as my anchor. It is selfish to name her as my salvation. I will do it just the same. I will cling to any strength she has to offer me until I can stand on my own, until the crushing weight of my despair has lifted. Weak, sad, and wretched as I am, I will let her carry my burden. Only for a while. Just a little while.

"Bella-"

"Lena. Come home."