.

4. DREAM
(WAKING UP)

Some psychiatrist somewhere once theorized that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It sounds fairly straightforward, but that's only because people don't generally understand the process. They think it's a simple progression of steps—you begin with the first stage and then continue through the others, one by one, until you finally come to the last stage, acceptance, and move on—but that isn't really how it works. They don't happen in any particular order. You may skip a stage altogether. Sometimes you go through several stages only to backtrack and start again from the beginning. And sometimes it's a cycle, a circle that goes around and around again, and all you can do is try to hold on to the grief, to the pain, because if you let go, there's nothing else left to hold on to.

. . . . .

"So, how are things at school?" my mother asked, breaking the silence in our little kitchen for the first time that morning. Silence had become the norm in our house over the last several months.

I swallowed the cereal I'd been chewing. It tasted like cardboard—everything did these days. It felt a bit like cardboard going down, too. I glanced toward the counter where she stood, her back toward me as she poured her second cup of coffee.

My mother and I didn't really talk much anymore. Well, sometimes she talked. I mostly just listened. Months ago, she'd finally stopped asking if I'd heard from her when she realized that every time I said, "Yeah, everything's fine," or "Just a little e-mail. She says she's really busy in Florida," I was lying. We didn't talk about it anymore, which was a relief. I couldn't stand to hear her name. I couldn't even bear to think it. I'd long since learned that even the memory of it would turn the constant ache that had taken up residence in my chest into a stabbing agony that made it impossible to breathe.

My mother's question now wasn't unexpected. She'd been watching me carefully as she stood by the counter sipping her first cup of coffee. Some small part of me had noticed the faint tilt of her head, the slight narrowing of her eyes, and the determined set of her jaw as she watched me eat. The larger part of me hadn't been able to find it in myself to care. Still, the words of her question didn't matter. This was just a game we played from time to time. What she was really asking was, "Are you okay?" I could also hear a bit of "You haven't been yourself for a long time," and a hint of "I don't know what else to do," in her tone.

I pretended to chew another bite of cereal. I knew she was worried, but I didn't want her to be. I tried to decide if I could pull off a nonchalant "Same old, same old," or a believable sounding "Everything's great." I swallowed my imaginary cereal.

"It's okay," I finally said quietly, my shoulders lifting slightly and then falling back in a faint shrug. Turns out I didn't have it in me after all.

I stared down into the bowl. I didn't want any more cereal. I hadn't really wanted it to begin with, but my mother was watching me now, studying me expectantly over the rim of her "Best Nurse Ever" mug. She knew I hadn't had much of an appetite lately, so I forced myself to finish. It settled like a rock in my stomach, but I didn't want her to worry. She worried enough as it was.

"Do you have plans tonight?" she asked as I rinsed my bowl in the sink. It was a question she didn't really need to ask. For four months now I had gone to school, gone to work, come home, done my homework, and gone to bed. There were no plans in my life, only routine. One foot in front of the other. One step and then the next.

"No." I reached down to pull my backpack out of a kitchen chair.

"Good. That means you can go to the movies." I stopped, my backpack only halfway onto my shoulders, and stared at her. What was she talking about?

"The twins' birthday was the day before yesterday," she continued.

Twins? Oh. Jacob and Josie Black. I stopped to think. January. It was January. That sounded right.

"Josie won a couple of free movie passes from the radio station on their birthday. They've got the passes, but they need a ride to the theater in Port Angeles to use them." She took another sip of her coffee. "I thought maybe, if you weren't busy, it might be nice to get out of the house."

She was watching me, waiting for some objection. Something told me she had thought this through, that she already had an answer for any excuse I could come up with, and really, what excuse could I come up with? It was Friday night. I didn't have to work, and I had an entire weekend to deal with any homework I might have to do. She knew me too well to believe me if I tried to tell her I had made other plans with my friends after school. I scrambled for an excuse for several seconds, but nothing believable came to mind. I gave up.

"Okay," I conceded, my gaze falling to the floor. "I'll . . . head over to La Push after school."

She set her coffee down and reached over to pick something up from the counter beside the microwave. Walking across the room, she tucked a couple of bills into my hand. "My treat." She smiled carefully. "I'll call Billy and tell him you'll pick them up this afternoon. You remember how to get there, right?"

I thought for a moment, trying to remember the turnoffs on the way to Billy Black's house. It had been years, but I was pretty sure I could still find it. I nodded.

"Yeah, I remember."

"Thank you, Edward." She smiled again, less carefully this time. "Have fun tonight, okay?"

"Okay," I said again, defeated, as I headed out the door into another dark, dreary day.

I didn't even notice whether or not it was raining as I trudged through the parking lot toward my first class. School had become just another part of the routine, an endless sequence of lectures and chalkboard notes that I clung to as if my sanity depended upon it. Maybe it did. Gone were the days when people had stared at me as I walked by. The gossip had grown old. I was no longer the once-average teenager who'd suddenly lost it when his girlfriend moved away. I was just a part of the scenery now as I drifted from one class to another. No one really noticed me anymore.

It was ironic, perhaps, that she had told me to pretend she had died. I was the one who'd become a ghost.

Lunch was no different. I sat at the end of the same table where I'd sat before, but the gulf between myself and my old friends seemed wider than just a few chairs. Every now and then, as I stared down at the food on my tray, I could feel a set of eyes settling on me from the other end of the table, but the sensation was fleeting, and I never bothered to look up anymore.

Get up, go to school, come home—the routine was so ingrained in me that I almost forgot where I was going when I pulled out of the school parking lot that afternoon. Habit had me heading toward home, instead of La Push, and I had gone several blocks in the wrong direction by the time I realized my mistake. I drove slowly, trying to remember the way to a place I hadn't been to in years, but the road was still familiar, and I had no trouble finding the little red house. I parked my car in the grassy drive, wondering if I would have to go inside and make small talk with Billy, to pretend everything was just as it had always been, but I was saved when the twins came out through the front door, turning the lights off behind them. Billy must not be home.

I could hear them talking as they made their way toward the car. I watched as Josie laughed and shoved Jacob lightly on the shoulder in response to some joke he had made. It was a strange sight. I hadn't been around laughter or happiness in so long. It was like watching a foreign film. I felt like I needed subtitles.

"Hey, Edward," Jacob called as he opened the passenger's side door.

"Hey," I responded automatically. I watched in confusion as Jacob turned toward Josie and they shook their fists at each other for a moment. His fist didn't open, but Josie's settled with two fingers sticking out. She let out a dramatic sigh.

"Fine, fine," she conceded, "but I get it on the way home."

Roshambo, I realized dully as Josie climbed into the back seat and Jacob settled in the front. They were fighting over who got to sit in the front seat. I'd forgotten they did that.

"Thanks for the ride," Josie said as I pulled out of the barely graveled drive. "Kinda sucks, being sixteen now, and we still don't have any wheels."

"We're almost there," Jacob reminded her. "The Rabbit should be ready in a few days."

I glanced across the seat, registering for the first time that he had grown taller since the last time I'd seen him. Had it been . . . . the night of prom? I shoved the memory back. I didn't want to deal with all that it entailed. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Josie beaming up at me. She, too, had grown in the last eight months. She looked more like her mother every time I saw her. I wondered how Billy handled that.

Small talk. I needed to make small talk, to pretend that everything was perfectly normal. It was either that or turn on the radio, and music, like so many other things, had deserted me four months ago. I was still scrambling for something to say when Josie spoke.

"So, how do you feel about zombies, Edward?"

"Zombies?" I froze for a moment, trying to understand where the question had come from. What did she know about my past experiences with supposedly mythical creatures? Why was she asking me this now?

"Josie wants to see Dead End, that zombie flick that came out last week," Jacob explained.

The movie. She was talking about the movie. Aside from the nightly news my mother watched sometimes, I hadn't seen TV in quite a while. To be honest, I didn't even know what movies were playing.

"I won the tickets," Josie reasoned from the back seat. "I should be able to pick the movie, right?"

Zombies. I could deal with that, I decided. I'd been expecting some kind of action packed thriller filled with shootouts and car chases, but maybe zombies were better. Maybe I wouldn't have to worry about watching the hero get the girl at the end of a zombie movie. One of them was likely to get eaten instead.

"Sounds good to me. Zombies it is."

I didn't have to try very hard to make small talk after that. The twins were too lively, regaling me with stories about things that had happened at their school or to people we knew in La Push. By the time we got to Port Angeles, I had only needed to nod at a few key places and express surprise appropriately here and there.

We arrived at the theater in time for the twilight showing, and after some consideration, we decided to see the movie first and eat later. I took my time in the bathroom before it started, managing to miss most of the previews. I slid into the seat they'd saved for me as the opening credits began.

The first few minutes were rough. The film opened with a young couple walking along the beach hand in hand as they gazed lovingly into each other's eyes. I had to look away. I turned my attention to the other people in the theater instead, trying to make them out in the darkness as I waited for the scene to change. I focused on the gray-haired couple two rows in front of us, on the group of teenage girls on the right who were too busy fawning over the handsome actor onscreen to notice that their popcorn bucket had tipped over. I was studying a middle-aged man in a suit when the sounds coming from the speakers turned into screams. Returning my attention to the movie, I discovered the boy had vanished, and the girl was now being chased along the beach by several hungry zombies. It was a relief.

The next ninety minutes were filled with screaming humans being pursued by hordes of the living dead. Eventually only one survivor remained, the girl from the beach, who was trying to escape about a dozen zombies. One by one, she managed to outwit them, locking some in a burning building, running over others with a truck. Eventually only one remained, but it turned out to be her boyfriend from the opening scene. She decided she couldn't kill him, not even to save her own life. It didn't end well for her.

I wasn't surprised. Didn't the zombies always win? I was practically one myself now.

"Okay, that was cheesy," Josie announced as the lights came on.

"Cheesy?" Jacob asked from her other side.

"Yeah, they're dead. There shouldn't be that much blood squirting out when you decapitate one of them."

Her words were critical, but her voice sounded . . . enthusiastic. I turned toward her, confused. The smile on her face was brilliant.

"Wasn't it great?" She bounced up out of her seat toward the aisle, leaving Jacob and I to stare at each other across the space she'd just abandoned. He shrugged and rose to follow her.

"Okay," Josie said as we exited the theater. "I picked the movie, so someone else decides where we eat." They both turned to me, but I just shrugged. Food was food. I wouldn't really taste it anyway.

I didn't notice who decided or when, but we ended up at the McDonald's down the street. I realized that whether or not I ate would probably get back to my mother, so I tried to focus on my food, but somehow, Jacob and Josie drew me in. They were laughing at the movie, making fun of the goofy parts and the places where the special effects hadn't been very believable. They teased each other, and they teased me, and every now and then I'd catch one of them stealing a french fry from the other's tray. I caught Josie stealing one from my tray, too. I made a face at her, surprising myself—I hadn't had that much of a reaction to anything in months—and she laughed. It felt strange.

I was still considering that unexpected moment, lost in thought as we made our way back to my car, when it happened.

Most of the shops along this section of the street were closed. The only open business I'd noticed was a biker bar a couple of blocks back, but up ahead, across the street from the theater, there was a little coffeehouse with the lights still on. A chalkboard sign in the window announced, "Poetry Reading Tonight." A girl in a blue raincoat was walking toward the door.

Mahogany hair spilled down over her shoulders and fell partway down her back, the lighting above the entryway accenting the reddish highlights in the gentle waves. Her hand was pale as she reached up to open the door, and the blue raincoat she wore looked exactly like one I had seen so many times . . .

The breath froze in my lungs, and I stopped, staring across the street as my heart leapt into my throat.

Distantly, I heard the squeal of tires, and a horn blared beside me. I looked down numbly to see that I had stepped out into traffic, blocking the path of an oncoming car. The black sedan was stopped a few feet to my left, its driver glaring daggers at me through the windshield as he honked the horn. I jerked my head back toward the coffeehouse. The girl in the doorway had paused, too, and was looking back to see what all the fuss was about.

My stomach dropped as her eyes flitted toward me. She wasn't who I wanted her to be. She was just some girl, some stranger I had never seen before. She frowned at the scene in the middle of the street, then continued into the coffeehouse. The driver stopped honking to roll down his window. With the blaring of the horn still echoing in my ears, I could only just make out the ringing of the bell above the door as it closed behind her.

I stepped backward, out of the street and up onto the curb. The black sedan drove on, the driver yelling something out the window that didn't sound complimentary, but I barely noticed. I was still gasping for air, trying to recover from that moment when I had forgotten how to breathe. Warm hands wrapped around my wrist, tugging me gently away from the curb, toward the center of the sidewalk. I glanced down to see Josie, her eyes wary but her smile warm. Her gaze flickered toward the door of the coffeehouse, then back up to my face.

"So, what do you think?" she asked. "Zombies versus aliens. Who's scarier?"

I blinked at her, still trying to register everything that had just happened, but Josie was looking up at me. She nudged her shoulder against mine impatiently. Or perhaps it was meant to be a comfort.

"Uh, zombies," I answered without really thinking. Josie pulled me down the sidewalk to where Jacob waited. There was something like sympathy in his expression.

"That's what I say," Josie continued, sounding as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. "I mean, who knows what aliens might do? Maybe they really do come in peace? Maybe they put us on this planet to begin with, and they're just stopping by to check in on us?" She paused to wiggle her eyebrows comically. "But a zombie always wants to eat your brain, and that can seriously ruin your day."

She kept up the chatter as we made our way through the theater's parking lot, but I was certain it was only meant as a distraction. In a way, I was grateful for it. A part of me was still stuck in that moment, in that one single heartbeat when I thought I'd seen . . . what I thought I saw. On the feeling of the ground giving way when I realized I'd been wrong.

They asked me questions the whole way back to La Push—questions about my teachers, about my job, and what my mother was up to, although I was certain they already knew at least some of the answers. The sympathy in Jacob's expression, the watchfulness in Josie's—they must have known exactly what had happened. My mother talked to Billy several times a week now. I was sure I was a frequent topic of conversation.

They invited me in when I got to their house, but I resisted, certain there was a clock ticking on just how long I would be able to hold it together. I made it home by replaying the movie through my mind, trying to remember the characters' names and how far they'd made it into the story before becoming yet another victim.

My mother was curled up on the sofa reading when I came through the front door. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for her questions, hoping to make it upstairs before I gave in to the shaking that was already taking over my hands.

"Hey, how was the movie?" she asked, turning to watch me as I walked toward the stairs.

"It was . . . it was okay. Josie decided on zombies, so . . ." I shrugged, not knowing what else to say. My mother smiled faintly.

"She would, wouldn't she?" She watched me for a few seconds, her eyes narrowing as she searched me for . . . I wasn't sure what. Could she see my hands shaking? Did she know something had happened?

"There's some lasagna in the fridge, if you want it."

"No, I'm good. We got some fast food after the movie." I turned my feet toward the stairs, willing myself to move slowly so as not to make her more suspicious than she already was.

"It's been a pretty long day. I'm going to head up and get some sleep." I could feel her eyes following me as I walked away. I focused on carefully controlling my footsteps until I was safely upstairs and behind my closed door.

I collapsed into my desk chair—there was no other word for it. Elbows braced on the desktop, I rubbed my forehead with trembling fingertips, trying to force myself to breathe normally. I kept seeing the girl at the coffeehouse. Over and over again, she flashed behind my closed eyelids. Those few fleeting seconds before she'd turned around and I had realized my mistake played over and over again on repeat.

I tried to force it from my mind. I tried to think about my last calculus test. Jacob and Josie throwing french fries at each other across the table at McDonald's. Zombies chasing the terrified heroine down a deserted street.

Zombies, that was it. Maybe if I focused on the zombies, everything else would go away. Maybe I would dream about zombies tonight, instead of my usual nightmares. Honestly, it would have been a welcome change.

Empty and exhausted, I crawled beneath the covers, praying that I would get at least a few hours of rest before the nightmares started again. Even though my hands were still shaking, it didn't take long to fall asleep.

. . . . .

I was back in Port Angeles, standing in the middle of the street, staring across traffic at a girl who was walking through the door of a coffeehouse . . . only she wasn't moving. I watched her, waiting for the sound of screeching tires, for the blaring of a car horn, for her to turn and sweep her unfamiliar eyes across me before turning back toward the door, but as the seconds ticked by, she stayed frozen in place, as immobile as a statue.

That was when I realized there was no sound. I couldn't hear the cars on the street or the murmur of conversation from the people on the sidewalk. There was no laughter flowing out from the open door of the theater, no bell above the entrance to the coffeehouse. Nothing but complete silence.

Turning back to survey the scene around me, I discovered that nothing was moving. The traffic traveling in both directions had paused. To my left, the black sedan was sitting in the street, still several car lengths away from where it would come to a stop. An expression of surprise was set on the driver's face. Up ahead, people were paused on the sidewalk, their feet dangling inches above the concrete as they froze mid-step. Farther up ahead, someone was stopped halfway out the door of the theater, and the blinking lights of the marquee had frozen, the same bulbs staying illuminated indefinitely. I turned again, looking for Jacob and Josie, but they were gone, vanished. I stared back across the street at the girl as I tried to understand what this strange dream was all about. Why had my subconscious brought me back to this place?

"She doesn't really look that much like me, does she?"

The voice was perfect, so beautiful in its melody that my knees wobbled, and I nearly dropped to the pavement.

"Alice would never have allowed me to go out in public in those shoes."

I turned again, searching desperately for the source of that voice. She was standing on the sidewalk behind me, looking exactly as she had on that horrible day. Same blue sweater, same designer jeans. The golden locket her father had given her for her birthday rested just below her collarbone. Her topaz eyes were focused on my face, and there was a sad little smile on her lips. The heart that had barely beaten since she walked out of my life began to hammer in my chest.

Bella? My lips formed the word, but no sound passed between them. I didn't know what this strange dream was. She hadn't been there on that sidewalk tonight, so why was I imagining her here now? Would this dream shift, fading into the old, familiar nightmare that had haunted me for the last four months? Had I discovered some horrible new way of hurting?

Her smile faded as our eyes met, and she took a step forward.

"I've missed you so," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. It carried across the distance between us. There was no wind, no stirring of the air to pull it away.

I stepped up onto the sidewalk, wondering if she would vanish if I got too close, but she was right there. I couldn't keep myself away. I reached out toward her, shocked when my fingertips brushed against her hair, when my hand made contact with the perfect porcelain of her cheek. She leaned into my touch, reshaping my fingers to cup the side of her face and covering the back of my hand with her palm. She closed her eyes happily, a smile tracing across her lips again.

This was real, so real. Every sense was so sharp, unlike the dismal haze of my nightmares. I could see her so clearly. I could feel her.

Heart still hammering in my chest, I took another step closer. I could smell her now, that heavenly perfume that was always so perfectly her. I traced my thumb across her lips.

"Why did you have to go?" I whispered. Her eyes opened, and the sadness in their depths nearly broke me all over again.

"You know why," she said softly. "I loved you too much to stay."

As I gazed down into her eyes, I could feel the edges of the hole where my heart had once been beginning to warm, like something was trying to grow back.

"I'm closer than you think," she whispered, her breath fanning out across my face, intoxicating me all over again. "You just need to keep looking."

"Keep looking?" I echoed.

"Yes, keep looking."

"What do you mean?" I whispered back.

"You know—"

And just like that, it was over, and I was left sitting up in bed, my head in my hands and the alarm clock beeping annoyingly on my nightstand. I reached blindly for the snooze bar as I fought to regain my bearings. I still hadn't found them ten minutes later when the alarm sounded again.