Twenty-Eight

It was Saturday—Bella had forgotten that it was Saturday.

For hours, she had been perched at the kitchen table, trying to catch up on her missing assignments from grad school. Her professors had been both understanding, and apologetic that she had had to deal with such a frightening ordeal. To the rest of the world, Bella was both a young college student, as well as a young surrogate mother with a small child. Renesmee's physical age changed every day, and it was difficult to remember anything other than the fact that her daughter was born four years ago. For the elementary school, Bella and Edward were listed as legal guardians; adoptive parents for all intents and purposes, but Bella hated the charade. They had toyed with the idea of Renesmee being Bella's younger sister—a second child of Renee, but there were too many holes in that farse, and it had been hard enough to commit to staying in Forks this long without creating unnecessary risks and overcomplicated backstories. To the world, both Renesmee's and Bella's, Renesmee had been adopted from the foster care system. The Fork's community was already familiar with Doctor Cullen's history of adopting wayward youths, and no one questioned that Edward, the somewhat prodigal son, had followed suite.

She had been typing on her laptop, mid-thought on an essay about Jane Austen when her cell phone rang. Charlie's name was flashing on the screen, but she was shocked by the hour. It wasn't even eight o'clock in the morning.

"Dad?" She questioned, her voice revealing the alarm that she was clearly feeling. Her first thought was that something bad had happened. An accent? Were he and Sue alright?

"Bells, I haven't heard from you in days."

Bella sighed, immediately both relieved and still on edge. "Dad, I'm sorry, so many things have happened."

"Things?" Charlie's voice bled between cool demeanor and awkwardly hurt. "Things more important than your dear old dad?"

Bella bit the inside of her cheek. "Dad, there is nothing old about you."

She felt him sigh over the phone. "I called three times, sent you, I don't know, half a dozen texts… You know texting does not come easy to me…"

Bella fingered through her messages, trying to recap what she missed. "Oh my gosh," she exclaimed, finding the exact one that she now knew he was calling about. "It's Saturday."

"That's right, Bells. A holy day."

She heard Sue echo yell from the background. "A holy day!"

"That's right," Bella wasn't sure if Charlie were speaking to her or Sue somewhere else in the Swan house. "A holy day for college football."

Bella was abashed. "A high holy day, I can't believe I forgot. Dad, I'm so sorry. I feel so much shame, right now."

"It's alright," he reassured her. "I don't want you to beat yourself up about it, but the Huskies are playing the Oregon Ducks today, and Seth is in the game. It's confirmed."

Sue yelled from the background, "It's confirmed!"

Bella wondered if they had broken out the Rainier Beer a little early today.

"That's amazing, dad. I'm so proud of him."

"Look, Bells," he went on. "It's been weeks since we've seen you, or Renesmee, or," he cleared his throat, "Alice..." Begrudgingly, he added, "…Or Edward. Leah's coming over. The rest of the family will be here."

"Dad, it's just…" Bella scrambled, how could she tell him that Renesmee, his granddaughter, had nearly died a few days ago, or that now, she was nearly a week behind on her college course work.

"It's early, I know. Kiddo," his pet name for Nessie, "Is probably not up yet, that's okay, the game doesn't start for another hour or so. Everything's ready for you."

Everything was ready for her, Bella could since it. She smiled, just thinking about it. Quickly she hit save on her essay, as much as she hated to admit it, the damn thing was already late. "You're right, dad. We'll be there in a bit."

Bella heard Sue hoot in joy in the background. "That's my girl. I'll see you in a bit."

Edward was in their bedroom.

"You heard?" she asked, lazily walking into the adjoining closet, smelling the intoxicating array of fabrics displayed therein.

Edward lightly closed the spine of the book he was reading, something old, by the look of it. Bella was mildly curious, but she didn't ask. "I did."

"You in the mood for a wild afternoon of college football?"

Edward chuckled, the sound was deep and it reverberated toward it, making her shiver. "Charlie has never forgiven me for picking the Duck's over the Huskies."

Bella smirked, "I still haven't forgiven you for that."

Edward shrugged, "I went to college there in the nineties, I got my Accounting degree there."

Bella rolled her eyes. The image of Edward hunched over excel equations all day made her laugh. "Leah is going to be there," she added, rummaging through a pile of blue jeans, the texture and scent of them were astonishing. She hadn't had the change to properly thank Leah for coming to the compound earlier and helping Sam's pack retreat back to the reservation.

"Leah?" Edward questioned. Bella noticed his smirk.

"What?" She picked a pair of dark blue skinny jeans from the closet. They were soft as leather against her skin as she pulled them up her naked legs.

Edward's mouth opened slightly while he watched her dress.

She giggled, snapping him out of his revere. "It's just," he began. "I was going to tell you, early." He chucked to himself, remembering the image of Mike Newton's neck, thrown back in re-lived pleasure, that he had seen though Leah's mind.

Bella exhaled, both intrigued and a little irritated. "Okay, now you have to tell me. I can't remember the last time I heard you laugh like that."

"It was Leah," he began, haltingly. "When she was over here talking to Jacob—" he pondered, "—Please don't say anything."

Bella extended her arms, her posture insisting him to spit it out.

"Okay, okay," he continued, but it took him too long to form the words. He was slightly baffled by the emotions that he had read from Leah, both happiness and contentment, coupled with the image of Mike Newton standing naked and erect in front of her, as seen through his interpretation of his mind.

Renesmee slide into the room, she had taken the corner at a bit of a run and her long ringlets bounced across her shoulders and down her back.

Edward let out a breath, relieved to not have to explain what he had seen in Leah's mind to his bewildered wife. "Why aren't you in bed?" Edward asked, "You were sleeping a few minutes ago?"

"I heard mom talking on the phone to Papa."

Bella raised her eyebrow. "Are you feeling up to going? You still look a little pale, baby?"

Renesmee shook her head, flatting her palm in the air. "I'm fine. I want to go. I've been stuck at home for days."

Edward argued, "You almost died."

Renesmee glared at him, obviously annoyed. "Still alive," she said sassily.

Bella chided her, "There's no need to take that tone. The last few days have been really scary for the whole family."

Renesmee lowered her head, placated. "I know. I'm sorry. I just want to get out of the house."

"To watch football?" Bella asked.

Renesmee sighed, a movement that involved her whole body. "I miss Papa, and Sue, and I want to see."

"Jacob?" Bella asked lightly.

Edward tensed.

Bella went on, "I don't know if he's going to be there, baby."

Renesmee bit her lip. "I still want to go, regardless."

Bella looked to Edward, who in turn, searched her eyes back. In theory, neither parent had a problem with Renesmee going, but the fear of her near death was still very much real for both of them.

Edward said, "We have to check in with Carlisle, first. Before you leave."

Renesmee squealed.

"And if he says no, that's a no from us," Bella warned.

By that point, Renesmee had stopped listening and had fled back into the hall, closing the distance to her bedroom in a few hurried leaps. Her bare feet slapping against the polished wood of the floor.

Once inside her bedroom she clicked the door shut and retreated back to her bed, where her cell phone sat on the nightstand. She opened her text messages and found Jacob's name at the very top. There was an unread text from him, that made her smile, it said:

Hey, Pretty Girl, how are you feeling?

She wrote:

Going to Swan house to watch football. Seth will be in the game today. Can you come?

After she hit send, she waited. Jacob always texted her back, and his responses were always quick. She knew that he had assigned a special sound on his phone to distinguish her texts from anyone else's. After about a minute she got his response.

Don't think I can. Just talked to my boss and he needs me to work late to make up the time I missed earlier in the week. I can try to swing by the cottage later, though.

Renesmee deflated. She understood, of course his job was important to him, he was always talking about how much his rent was, but she found herself mourning the anticipated fun that she had hoped to have that day.

She got dressed quickly. Laying her phone face up on the bedspread, keeping one eye on the screen in case Jacob might text back. She pulled on jeans, and a lacy t-shirt, noticing with a frown that her jeans were too tight and her shirt was way too short. Quickly she changed again. Settling for a pair of dark blue leggings and the oversized University of Washington sweatshirt that had once belonged to Emmett. It was from the early nineties and had a drunken looking huskie dog wearing a crown. Her stomach ached and she rubbed at it, trying to sooth the pain.

Bella called to her from the hall, "You almost ready, baby?"

Renesmee checked her phone again. No new messages from Jacob. She fingered her way into her text messages and began typing:

About to leave. I miss you.

She waited, alone in her bedroom. Longer than she should have, knowing that her mother was likely impatiently waiting for her in the living room or the kitchen. She held the phone tightly; the phone case was warm from her palm. Finally, the phone buzzed and she sighed in relief. Jacob's text read:

:-) See you later tonight.

Renesmee felt her stomach cave in from nervous excitement.

Her phone buzzed again and she quickly unlocked the screen. Jacob's next text read:

Keep me updated on the score.

She typed her response hastily:

K I will.

After she hit send, she immediately regretted it. There was so much more that she wanted to say. So much more that she wanted him to know.

She didn't have pockets. Instead, she slid her phone in between her skin and her bra strap to keep it secure. After leaving her bedroom, she was surprised to only see her mother standing by the front door. "Is dad not coming?" She asked.

Edward appeared behind her. "I need to talk to Carlisle."

Renesmee was taken aback, "About me?"

Edward smiled at her fondly. "You," he began. "Always you. But other things to." He wrapped his arm around his daughter's shoulder and kissed her gently on the side of her head.

Her mother eyed her father suspiciously. Renesmee had often thought that there was a secret language shared between her parents. Whole sentences could be spoken with the raise of her mother's eyebrow or the smirk of her father's mouth. She had been trying, unsuccessfully, to learn it her whole life.

"Okay," Bella said determinedly. "Let's go check in with Carlisle."

When they got to the big house, Renesmee hung back in the yard, while her parents went to check in with Carlisle about her latest lab tests.

Her uncles, Emmett and Jasper, were out on the lawn, training with Alec.

Alec greeted her first. "There she is."

This was the first time Renesmee had really seen Alec, up close. She remembered the brush of his hand against hers when she was still delirious. She had seen the images of another hybrid like her, a lovely girl named, Desislava. She had also seen the broken face of her vampire father Aleksandru while he mourned the loss of his human wife. Renesmee wondered, fleetingly, if Aleksandru's twisted face would be what her fathers would have been had Bella not survived her own birth.

"Hello," she greeted Alec. He still felt like a stranger even though his touch days ago had felt to intimate. He had saved her after all.

"Where are you off too?" Alec asked.

Renesmee gestured to the house, where her parents were no doubt bickering with Carlisle about whether she could leave the Cullen compound or not. "My grandpa—my other grandpa—he's a big football fan and one of our friends is playing in the college game today. It's going to be on TV." She felt like she was stuttering, and making no sense. She was using her hands a lot while she spoke.

"American football?" Alec asked. "Can't say I'm familiar with the sport."

Renesmee didn't know what to say. She bit her lips.

Emmett came to her rescue. "I like the shirt, Ness." He pointed to her sweatshirt.

Renesmee smiled, sliding her palm against the softness of the well-worn material. "It's the one you gave me."

Emmett grinned. "I know. Went to a lot of college parties in that sweatshirt. Rose always liked to—"

Jasper cut him off with the slap of his palm against his brothers back. Sensing the inappropriate tone that the conversation was heading toward.

Renesmee looked around, trying to find her Aunt Rose.

"We're going over the way the Volturi fight," Alec offered.

She could tell that Alec was trying to be impressive, and she smiled to oblige him. "So, you're going to be staying with us for a while?"

"I hope so," Alec told her.

There had never been a new edition to the family in Renesmee's entire life. It had always just been the family, as it was.

Renesmee heard her name, Bella was calling her inside, and felling the awkwardness of the silent conversation, she retreated back into the big house.

"Carlisle wants to talk to you," Bella told her.

"Okay," she said, fretfully.

Her father put his hand on Renesmee's back to guide her toward the back part of the house.

Carlisle was waiting for her in his laboratory. She smiled, shyly when she caught sight of him.

"How are you feeling?" He asked.

She shrugged. "Better," dramatically so. All she remembered of the last few days was a wild feverish dream, split open like a cracked egg, one frightening image after another, her parents and so many of Jacob. Her head had pounded and her bones had ached. The pain was separated only by quick conversations with Jacob over the phone when she was lucid. There had been a moment, sometime that first night, when she was so afraid and consumed for Jacob that she had forced herself to sit upright in the bed, to reassure him, and let him know that he was seeing her. "Much better than yesterday." She was glad in that moment, with Carlisle's curious gaze on her, that she had worn Emmett's oversize sweater. She felt safe inside the billow confines of its sleeves.

"I'm glad," Carlisle told her. "I was wondering if you've experienced any dizzy spells, or maybe mood swings?"

Renesmee shook her head. Truthfully, she had not.

"Any cravings?"

She had woken up hungry. Starving, if she were honest, and her father had brought her pancakes while her mother read from her in the corner. It was a nice memory, Renesmee looked back on it with a little smile. "I was really hungry earlier, before breakfast, but maybe not cravings, exactly."

"Well, your lab results from last night are looking much better."

Renesmee couldn't remember getting her blood drawn again, not since she had taken the supplement of blood. "You must have taken another blood sample while I was sleeping?" She felt a little unsettled by that. Often times she had felt sheltered and stifled by her parents and the rest of the families concern for her.

Carlisle smiled, apologetically. She watched him lower the print out of the lab work from his hand onto the table.

"I understand." She wished it had happened differently, but she did understand.

"Forgive me," he begged, retrospectively. "Rose mentioned that you might not like it."

Renesmee smiled. Her aunt Rosalie understood in more ways than the others did.

"I'd like to try something," Carlisle continued.

She watched him walk to one of the hanging paintings in his office. Carefully he pulled the corner of the framed picture—a landscape, that looked suspiciously like a real Monet—out from the wall, swinging it like a door on a hinge, revealing a slate-colored safe built into the wall. Renesmee couldn't contain her small gasp.

"Please," Carlisle began, "Don't tell the others that this is here."

When Carlisle punched in the combination to unlock it, Renesmee understood why Carlisle wanted to keep this secret. The scent of blood immediately assaulted her. She could not remember a time in her life when she ever recalled smelling blood, but having tasted it, as her parents always drank it, she could now identify it by scent alone. The safe, was actually a small refrigerator unit with bags of blood carefully laid out inside. If any of the others, Jasper, Emmett, her mother, any of the ones who still struggled with their blood-thirst knew this was here, they would destroy the house just to obtain access to it.

"I understand," Renesmee confirmed. She was afraid to admit it, but her mouth began to salivate at the scent of the powerful ambrosia that was this blood. The sensation wasn't overpowering, as she knew it could be for other vampires. She could resist it, but the scent was luxurious and intoxicating all the same. Like smelling cheeseburgers and fries after a day of fasting.

"Can you smell it?" Carlisle asked, reading her wary expression.

She nodded, closing her mouth, swallowing the mouth full of saliva, guiltily.

Carlisle continued, "Don't be ashamed. Tell me, what does it smell like?"

"Good," she said, a bit shakily. She was more startled by the surprise of this change, then the need to consume the blood. "It smells like food."

"And you just ate?" He reaffirmed.

Renesmee licked her lips. "After smelling that, I could eat again."

Carlisle's forehead furrowed. "Interesting. Is the scent, or the sensation, overpowering?"

"No," she obliged, shaking her head. "It just smells good." She felt her stomach rumble in protest.

"I'd like you to drink this again. When I took that last blood sample there so much positive change. I want to see what ingesting more blood will do. Only if you agree, of course. You don't have to."

"I don't want to get sick again," she noted. She never wanted to feel that way again. "If I don't drink that, could I get sick again?"

Carlisle looked away, then back at her, contemplating. "I can't promise that you will or won't. I can confirm that you were nearly dead when you took the first sample of blood, and less than 24 hours later, here you are."

"Will I have to drink blood for the rest of my life?"

"We always knew that you had the capability of nourishing yourself through human blood as well as human food. Nahuel, the other hybrid that we came across mentioned that he could live on either, whatever was available, or whatever they chose."

Renesmee looked down. "That other hybrid—the one that Alec, once knew—did she live on human blood or human food?"

"I don't know. I suppose we could ask him. There is very little data or research done to beings such as yourself."

Beings. The word stung in a way that she knew Carlisle had not intended. She had always known that she wasn't vampire, just as much as she had always known that she was not human, but somehow, hearing it said brought a gravity to the notion that she had never felt before. She wondered, fleetingly, how Jacob saw her. In his eyes was she a human, or a vampire, or simply just Renesmee?

Renesmee lifted up her sweatshirt, pulling one forearm free. "Do you want to take a new sample now and one after I drink it."

Carlisle smiled, appreciatively. "I do."

She watched him pluck up the needle, tapping the vessel lightly before sinking it into her upper arm. She barely felt the prick, but someone she could sense that the blood was leaving her body.

After he finished, he handed her the cold bag of blood. The smell was somehow more intoxicating close up, and her mouth began to water again. "Can I drink the whole thing?"

Carlisle was ambivalent, "If you'd like to."

She did. Uncorking the plastic, she brought it to her lips and began to drink. The liquid was cold, a sensation which initially startled her, but once it met her tongue and slide down her throat it felt like fire. Warm and fresh. She could taste the strength in each hurried gulp. The texture as heavy and succulent as hot chocolate, rich and smooth.

She was gasping when the bag was finally drained. Her breath as labored as if she had run a marathon.

"Good?" Carlisle asked.

There was moisture on her lips, she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, then remembering that she lived in a house full of vampires, she licked the back of her hand clean.

"Please, use the sink over here." He gestured, and Renesmee followed him to the inner corner of the laboratory. Using warm water and soap to clean both her hands, and wiping her mouth clean.

"It's best if they can't smell this one me."

"You're correct," he agreed. "They wouldn't understand. Well," he backtracked, "They would understand but their thirst…"

Renesmee finished for him, "Would overpower them, I know."

Carlisle smiled. "Yes, you do know. I can't imagine that it's been easy growing up in a house full of vampires."

"You want to take another sample?"

Carlisle already had another needle in his hand. "I'm sorry," he begged.

Renesmee shrugged. "I always wanted to know what a pincushion felt like."

A grin slit Carlisle's face. "You're a brave girl, Renesmee."

When the needle left her arm, she sighed. She could see the red vile briefly, before Carlisle put it away in his drawer, no doubt eager to examine the differences between the two samples.

"So," she said with a small shrug. "Can I go watch the football game?"

"Of course," he told her.

She turned to go.

"Just one more thing," he began. She turned back to him. "You're growing up very fast, Renesmee."

"I know, like a cat, one human year is like three human years to me, blah blah blah."

Carlisle chuckled. "Yes, that is how we explained it to you when you were younger."

Renesmee shrugged, half-heartedly. "I always did want a cat."

"You are," Carlisle went on, "becoming less of a child and more of an adult. I'm sure you've noticed the changes."

She had, she'd stopped wearing the training bra that her mother had boughten her last year and started wearing the real bras her aunt Rose had bought for her in a fancy store in Olympia. Her clothes never seemed to fit her right any more, and there was hair sprouting for parts of her body that had never been hairy before.

"It will be difficult for your parents to notice, especially your mother…"

"She still sees me as a little girl." Renesmee had been shaving her legs for months with Rose's help and she was too afraid to tell Bella that she was doing it.

"Some of your scans showed that you've entered puberty, and you should be aware of certain changes going forward. You'll start menstruating, and if you become sexually active, you could, in theory, get pregnant, or contract as STD."

She had never thought of any of this, but when Carlisle had said the word sexually active, Jacob's face had come to mind.

"I just want you to be careful," Carlisle went on. "Physically you're becoming and adult, but you're for your peers, they have had many more years to grow and live than you have. I fear that you've never really had a childhood."

There was a truth to what her grandfather was saying, and Renesmee understood it, but at the same time she was eager to live the life she had left. She had almost died a few days ago. And whether it was the blood rushing through her system or the changes going on inside her body, she wanted to be free to live her own life.