Each Moment Lost to the Past
Chapter 6
Bella's POV
I meet the other two Cullens a week later. I'm wandering the shelves in the surprisingly stocked library when they appear as silent as their siblings had. My hand stretches as far as I can go, standing on the tips of my toes with one hand pressing down on a shelf to boost myself just that much farther. Even with all the effort, my fingertips only barely brush the spine of the book that I want.
I jerk back reflexively when a pale hand reaches out, gracefully removing the novel I had been working so hard for. When I turn to thank my helper, I only end up blinking, stunned at another eerily familiar face and all too familiar golden eyes.
"Thanks," I mumble shyly, taking the offered paperback.
"Dracula?" he asks raising a perfect sculpted eyebrow.
"It's one of my favorites," I admit. I had left Before Bella's copy back in Phoenix, and I have the unprecedented urge to read it again. There's just something about it…
"I should recommend you different books," the Cullen boy says with a disarming smile and perfect teeth. His hair is a bronze color as unique as his eyes, and I wonder if it could be dyed. How are these people real? The sound of a clearing throat draws my awareness that there is a second Cullen just behind the first.
"Please pardon my brother's rudeness, Miss. I'm Jasper, and this is Edward." The slight southern twinge to his words take me completely by surprise. None of his other siblings have it, and it's probably a good idea that Alice doesn't because otherwise I'd be even more of a mess around her.
"Bella," I say, offering my hand to Edward who stands closest to me. It draws his intense gaze away from my face, which is what I had been going for, and to my hand. He hesitates a moment before taking it, and once he does, his touch lingers. His eyes furrow slightly, and I have to tug my hand away to get him to release it.
His apologetic smile does nothing to ease my discomfort. Edward Cullen is weird. Jessica would be thrilled if I were to tell her.
There is an awkward moment in which no one moves or says anything- like we are stuck in a play where no one can remember their lines with all the awkwardness and embarrassment that comes with it.
Then my anxiety suddenly eases, and I lift my book a bit to draw the attention there. "Anyway," I say, "I'm going to go check this out. Thanks for your help."
Jasper offers a small dip of his head, "It was no problem at all." Edward finally steps away more, giving me plenty of room to move back along the shelves.
Just before I turn the corner, I glance back and catch sight of the boys whispering lowly to each other. I can't gather anything from their expressions, but I get the feeling that our meeting was intentional, and I didn't give them what they were wanting. For a moment, I regret not trying to start a conversation. Well, if they want to have a wordier exchange with me, they can approach me like a regular person and start one.
….
I'm yanked from my dream harshly, and the jolt to reality is an unpleasant and confusing experience. One minute, I was standing at the door to the classroom watching a heated argument between a student and teacher, and the next, I'm in the desk the girl had been shoved into.
I blink dazedly at Angela, who is hovering over me while the rest of the class slowly trickles out of the room. That's not right. I was just across the room- I was so sure of it. I was screaming for help because the teacher had a gun. He was going to kill her. I knew he was.
Angela says my name again, this time I recognize it as my name, and I'm finally able to focus in. "Are you okay?" she asks, nervously cradling her books. It had felt so real. My head throbs a piercing pain.
"Yeah, just…" I trail off, the man's anger still ringing in my ears, and the girl's fear across my retinas. They had been having an affair and she wanted out. He wasn't going to let her. "I was dreaming. It felt real."
Angela seems to relax at my answer, and I feel bad for worrying the girl. I quickly gather my things to not make her wait any longer. Out of all the native Forkians I've met, she is by far my favorite.
"What was it about?" she asks, casually plucking my pencil out of the air as it makes an escape off the edge of my desk.
"Um," I debate lying, before deciding that it wasn't too odd. If it were anyone other than Angela (except maybe Alice), I might not risk it. "Some teacher and student were having an affair. The student tried to break it off, but the teacher got mad and ended up shooting her."
Angela shoots me an amused look. "Looks like someone's been digging through the library archives while she's been avoiding Jessica at lunch." She hands me my pencil as my heart skips a beat.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"30 years ago?" At my blank looks, she pauses at the doorway. "It's not hard to find; it's in a bunch of papers. 30 years ago there was a murder suicide here at school. The police thought that one of the teachers here was having an affair with a student and, when she tried to break it off, he killed her, then himself. It sounded like your dream, so I just figured you had been reading about it."
"I must have just forgotten," I shrug, clenching my notebook tighter with the unease that washes over me. I hesitate at my locker door. "Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow."
"Where are you headed?" She asks curiously.
"Just to the library to work on something." I back up in that direction as Angela smirks.
"You're going to look at those old papers aren't you?"
"Yes," I admit. "Yes, I am." The girl laughs as I finally turn to watch where I'm going. It's been long enough that people's eyes no longer follow me, curiously, in the halls (except maybe when I'm with Alice) and I revel in my anonymity.
Alice appears in front of me before I can make it to the library doors. A smile is fixed across her lips, revealing her perfectly white teeth, and blink at her effortless enthusiasm.
"Hey, Bella. Ready to work on this project?" As I stare at her for a moment, she shifts slightly and adjusts her bag- like it's an afterthought. "You forgot, didn't you?"
My sluggish brain finally recognizes the words she was saying, and I jolt slightly. "The project! Right. The one I told you we can work on after school at my house."
"That's the one," Alice giggles, unoffended by my forgetfulness.
"Right, um," I glance at the library entrance one more time before turning back in the direction of the front doors. "Charlie should be here soon. He could give you a ride too, but you might have to have someone pick you up. He has to go back to work and stays late Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"I'm sure I'll manage to get home somehow," she says lightly as we reach the parking lot. Charlie is, as always, already waiting for me by the time we climb down the steps, and Alice manages to catch me as I stumble on the last one. When she's sure of my stability and lets go, the absence of her heat chases after her.
I open the passenger door to the police cruiser and peek in sheepishly. "Charlie, this is Alice. Can you give her a ride to the house? We have a history project we need to work on."
The police chief glances over my shoulder, where Alice waves and smiles brightly at him, before glancing back to me. He nods his head in the direction of the back seat.
"You better sit in the back then and let Alice sit up front."
"I know," I roll my eyes, but step out of the way for Alice to be able to climb in. She immediately greets him with all the energy her little body can somehow possess.
"Good afternoon, Chief Swan!"
I climb into the back seat, wincing as the doors automatically lock behind me. Charlie's eyes meet mine through the mirror and cage mesh, and his mustache twitches.
"Good afternoon, Alice," he greets my friend amicably. "How'd your dad doing?"
"Carlisle is doing just fine, Sir. We've really settled well."
"That's good," my suddenly chatty father nods and finally pulls out of the lot. "So what's your guys' project on?"
I stare holes in the back of the man's head, hoping that he can feel it. He's never this chatty. Sure he tries, but this is a bit over the top for him. He winks at me in the mirror, and I huff. He's teasing me. I swear that he and Jacob conspire.
"The American Civil War. We need to choose one of the battles that took place and do a deep dive research paper on it."
"That's a really big assignment to have just a few weeks into school," he says.
"It's supposed to be a semester long thing not due until winter break," Alice is the one to once again respond. If Charlie wants to get all chatty now just to tease me, he can go ahead. He can get cold dinner for a few nights.
"Well, good on you girls for getting a head start."
The drive to the house is mercifully short, and I am soon having to wait for someone to let me out of the back. Charlie does so with a broad smile that he doesn't even try to hide any more than I try to hide my glare.
"You're dad is really cool," Alice tells me once he pulls away again. At her comment, my slight annoyance softens.
"Yeah, he's really nice." Maybe he won't get cold food for the next couple of days.
My friend turns to me expectantly. "So…you ready to start."
"Right," I say, blushing as I scramble for my key to let us into the house. I nervously lead the way up to my room. "So, my computer's not that great; most of the time we will probably be waiting for the screen to load, but it's connected to a printer and we can just print off some physical copies instead," I babble nervously.
When I enter my room first, I hurriedly kick a bra and some shirts under the bed. Alice politely pretends to not notice as she looks around the room.
"That's fine for today. Maybe next time we can work at my house."
"Sure, sure," I say reflexively, kicking some socks under the bed as well as Alice drifts over to one of my walls.
"Who's this?" she asks, pale hand reaching out to linger along the edges of a sketch. She's careful not to smudge the graphite.
"My, um, my best friend." I critically examine the picture I had drawn of Jacob a few days ago, his broad grin and mischievous eyes captured almost exactly.
Alice glances over her shoulder at me before her fingers tail over the few other drawings that I had liked enough to make it on my wall. Charlie is on one, but the others are scenes that I dreamed about. Even if some are a little gruesome, the images had just gotten stuck in my head. The picture I drew my second day in art class made it up there. A car crash. A river.
"Have you known him long?" Alice asks, drawing my attention away from the images.
And isn't that a complicated question. "We grew up together," I decide to say, rather than even begining to try unloading the technicalities of that answer. I turn on the computer, waiting for it to come fully to life as Alice continues her inspection of my room.
I shift nervously before deciding to sit down at the desk chair. It's with relief when I'm finally able to open a browser.
"So, is there any battle you are particularly in love with?" I ask, and Alice finally wanders over, dropping her bag to the ground as she casually perches herself on the edge of the bed.
"Not really. One of my brothers is actually a bit of a Civil War buff, so I'm pretty well versed in them by extension. It could be fun to do one of the lesser-known battles."
"Okay; any off the top of your head?" I ask readying the search engine. The curser blinks sluggishly.
"How about the Battle of the Wilderness? It was the first major Union offense; it lasted two days, and over 18,000 people died."
I immediately type in the name of the battle, have to wait for the computer to catch up with my typing, and then press enter. It takes another minute for the next page to load, and I wait impatiently.
"Wow, you weren't kidding," Alice laughs, and I jump as she shifts slightly on my bed until she is lounging sideways. "So why did you move here, Bella?" Alice asks, propping her cheek against her fist.
I swivel slightly in her direction, keeping one eye on the screen for when it finally loads.
"I didn't get along very well with my mother," I decide to respond honestly only after I'm already halfway through it. After all, Alice isn't likely to gossip with the other Forkians. "We didn't agree on some things, so I asked Charlie to move in with him. He said yes."
"That's cool of him. Has the transition been easy so far? I know when Carlisle first adopted me, there were some clashes with the others."
"You were adopted?" I ask, surprised, right as the page finally loads. I click on the first link that looks promising.
"Yeah, you didn't know? I figured Jessica would have talked your ear off about it by now."
"I'm kind of doing my best to avoid Jessica at the moment," I admit sheepishly. I mean, sure all of the Cullen children look very different, but they are also just as many similarities. For one, the shocking eye color. That can't be a coincidence that Dr. Cullen adopted all children with the same gold eyes. Unless he collects them.
Alice laughs, bringing me back out of my wandering thoughts. "Why are you avoiding Jessica?"
"Have you met her?" I snort.
"Point taken," Alice grins, and I find myself easily returning it. I have to look away again when the page loads and I quickly print the entire thing.
"Anyway, living with Charlie is great. I have a bunch more freedom than I had in Arizona. He's not the greatest conversationalist, but he tries."
"Well, I'm very glad you decided to move here."
"Me too," I smile at her as I pluck the thick packet up from the printer. "Here, you can start reading through this while I find some more sources."
"Sounds good," Alice agrees.
…
I smooth out the paper along the wall and carefully adhere the corners flat. Inevitably, my eyes are once again drawn to the black and white pictures just under the heading. I recognize them. I've dreamed of them. They died thirty years ago, almost fifteen years before I was even born.
My eyes trace over the article again (a copy of the one I found at the school library), and my head throbs from lack of sleep. I'd woken up several times throughout the night from dreams of the Battle of Wilderness.
Several aspects of the article pop out at me, which I've already taken to highlighting in yellow. Their names, the story, the room number of where it happened. It was the same room that I had the dream in, in which I watched from the doorway- it feeling so real as I screamed for help when the gunshot went off.
I take a step away from the wall, scrubbing a hand harshly over my heavy eyes with anxiety wreaking havoc in my chest.
Something really, really weird is going on. I had been reluctant to look through the journals I found because there was a strange feeling that I was snooping through someone else's things rather than my own, but maybe I should read through it after all.
It's at the thought of the journal that my eyes are once again drawn to the wall, taking in the new addition, and my heart almost stops. With the drawings and newly taped up newspaper clipping, it looks like the start of Before Bella's wall.
Feeling suddenly dizzy, and with another throb in my head, I shakily sink to the floor. I rest heavily against the edge of my bed, unable to draw my eyes way from the parallels. Exhaustion pulls at me so, when the dizziness doesn't go away, I crawl into bed in hopes of getting some more sleep. This time, hopefully without bloody dreams that may or may not be real.
A/N: Guuuuys, I think I'm stick. I have hit a metaphorical brick wall and I need inspiration again. Please help me to keep writing. Suggestions are welcome, reviews are loved.
Please let me know what you think!
~Silver~