Remember Me
Chapter Three
Awake
. . . . .
"Miss Swan. MISS Swan."
Someone keeps poking at me. Talking. Interrupting, black onyx giving way to bright gray. I snort and wake, and my face is hot and wet from where it was smooshed against my arm.
"The bell has rung," Mr. Dennis says. He looks down at me with a cool expression while I wipe at my chin because I've apparently drooled all over myself. As he towers over my desk in his tweed blazer with the elbow patches, I feel like the worst kind of failure. I've never–not ever–fallen asleep in the middle of class before, and I'm immediately mortified. I glance jerkily around me and see that everyone is gone. Not even Emmett hung around to point a finger at me and laugh.
"Oh, go easy on her," Edward says behind me, his voice low with anger. "She's been working at a diner until ten at night all week."
Mr. Dennis' already thin-lipped mouth gets thinner as he almost glares at me, and it takes me aback because I've always been a favorite of his–I'm one of his best students. Or was. "That's not my problem. If you fall asleep again, I'll have to ask you to leave my classroom," he says.
"I'm so sorry," I say and try to gather all my things but I'm sloppy and moving slowly, heavy, hurting, feeling like I'm trying to push through tar.
"Your paper on the Reconstruction Amendments is almost a week past due," he says, ignoring me. "I'm afraid I'll have to give you an incomplete."
I gasp from the depths of my soul. What Reconstruction Amendments paper?
"Stop it, Bella," Edward says.
In a full-blown panic, I swivel to face him and slide right out of my chair onto my bedroom floor. And . . . wake up again? I sit there and stare at my socked feet, one in blue, one in black, and it takes a long time for me to process what's going on. What's real. Even then, I'm not entirely sure.
But I see my hands are red, chapped, and I feel that the skin is stretched tight; physical punishment. I'm the busser and dishwasher at Emilio's Diner from six-to-ten-o'clock on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Saturday, I work from eight-to-four-o'clock. It's taken a toll on my skin, because wearing their rubber gloves made me break out in hives.
"You really suck at doing the dishes," Emilio's 14-year-old daughter, Carla, told me. From the first, she was my disdainful supervisor. "You've got no speed or stamina, you don't know how to hold the brush, and you're short."
And I know I'm awake.
. . . . .
The first time he kissed me–the first time Edward kissed me–was just after we'd stumbled across Mary Alice Mulligan throwing up in the bushes behind the cafeteria trash bins. Well, she was called Alice then. And what a heartbroken, pitiable sight she was, bent over on all fours on the ground in her stylish red-and-pink check marked bib dress, and red ankle boots.
I'd let go of his hand and rushed over to her. "Alice, are you sick? Can I help?"
She laughed and hiccupped through tears, spitting out the mess in her mouth. "No. No, you can't help. Nobody can."
Ignoring the smell, I crouch down beside her. "What do you mean?"
Her face is wet and pale with twin red splotches high on her cheeks, dark brown eyes swimming with tears. "You'd never understand. You're not alone, it's obvious he loves you." She aimed a glance over my head.
My face flushes in embarrassment, and I give her a Kleenex from my purse. "Try me."
She blows her nose loudly, angrily. "He doesn't even know I'm alive."
My heart sinks, aches for her. I know very well who she's talking about. The whole school knows about Alice's longtime crush on Jasper Hale, but I ask the question anyway. "Who?"
"Jaz Hale! I've loved him since Kindergarten, and he's never–not ever–" She starts sobbing again and the rest of what she says is unintelligible, although I catch the words Maria and big boobs.
"I'm sorry," I tell her. I don't know what else to say, so I just rub her back soothingly.
"Maria's a Junior," my boy says. Alice slowly stops crying and raises her head to look up at him.
"So?"
He hunkers down beside me. "So, Jasper's a Freshman. He's being noticed by a Junior. She could be a dog, and it'd still be a big deal."
She sniffs, and both she and I look hopefully at his beautiful face. He's a Junior, too, so maybe he might have some wisdom to share.
"If you want him to notice you like you notice him, maybe don't make it so obvious that you like him. Guys are always interested in what they think they can't have."
I don't understand the brief look of anguish he gives me.
"But how? I don't know how to act like I don't like him," she cries. "It's like this disease."
"Find something else to focus on. Or someone else. Hide how much you like him," he shrugs. "Once he notices that you've stopped noticing him, I bet he'll wonder why."
Her face collapses. "That's just it, though. He doesn't notice me."
His mouth twitches as he tries not to smile. "Alice, everybody knows you like Jasper, including Jasper."
She doesn't like hearing that and bursts into tears again. "It's impossible, isn't it?"
His gaze is on me again. "Nothing's impossible."
"I guess I could try," she says mournfully.
"First step," he tells her, "Is to get off the ground."
My heart is turning over in my chest at how sweet and caring he's being to her, and I suddenly want to kiss him so badly. As he pulls her to her feet, his gaze slides to me and I lose my breath at the heat in his eyes; they're wild, tender, fearful. It's as if he shares what I'm thinking.
After Alice disappears behind the cafeteria door, he pulls me over to the side of the building and pushes me gently against the brick. We're lost in each other's eyes, and I'm suddenly unable to control my breathing. His eyes dip to my mouth, then raise again, but he looks sleepy now.
"Yes, Bella?" he asks shakily.
"Yes," I say, my fingers pulling at his shirt. He comes to me slowly, never once breaking his gaze and I'm dying and being reborn by the second. Finally, finally, he's near enough that I feel his breath and heat, and I make a sound because he's just hovering his mouth over mine. The palm of his hand comes to rest on my neck, fingers curling into my hair, tilting my head back, readying me for his kiss.
"You're mine," he says against my mouth and I gasp and open for him, and he presses his lips soft, so soft and hot, against mine. Oh! My first kiss, and I'm lost in the intensity of it, clinging to him as my knees go weak, and he catches me up against him. Fingers digging into my neck and lower back, his mouth insistent on mine, his breathing growing more and more ragged. It's like he can't get enough of me, and I suddenly, inconveniently, remember that it isn't real. That he isn't real, and I feel as if I'm dying.
"I'm dreaming," I sob against his lips, and he flinches away from me.
"You're not," he growls, his face flushed and desperately unhappy.
He'd turned away from me, hands on top of his head, tugging at his hair. When I took a step toward him, I fell out of my dream hard. Out of my bed face-first, my limbs crippled and numb.
It's the same feeling I have now, colored worse by the depth of my feelings for him, and a lack of concern for my own.
. . . . .
"Here," Mom says. I reach for the box and see that it's a pair of Wahoo dishwashing gloves long enough to go up to my elbows. Purple, with a cotton flocked liner. "I can't believe that place doesn't have a pair of hypoallergenic gloves for you."
Nonplussed, I stare down at the box.
"You're welcome. That's ten dollars for the gloves, and eight for the Cortizone-10 lotion," she says and hands me a red tube. "If you've let the condition of your hands go on this long to make your dad and I feel guilty, it's not working. Regardless, we do expect you to take care of yourself."
"Yes, I'm sorry." I seem to be saying that a lot lately, and she just looks at me. Unhappy eyes, upside down smile.
"Where is your head, Bella?"
Not here, but I'm not sure, not sure, not sure where . . . "I'll go get the money."
She catches me up in her arms. "I don't want the money, I want my daughter."
Any other time if I'd heard such raw pain in my mom's voice, I would have broken down into tears and given her whatever she wanted, but I'm cold from the inside out.
Because this is what being awake feels like.