Thank you all again for the lovely reviews! I have to admit, I was kind of hoping to fool everyone for a minute with the daydream :) I appreciate all the outtake requests, and I hope to get to them all eventually. For now, though, we're going to return to the current day with Alice and Jasper, in preparation for their "story" merging with the 1950 one. This will be the last Alice one, followed by a 1948 Jasper POV, and a 1950 Jasper POV. After that I'll return to doing random outtakes again.

Alice POV (visions in italics)

I was lying on my stomach in the dirt, my face ten inches from an anthill. It had taken me most of the day to get this close; even the stupid ants could sense that I was dangerous. So I had slowly inched closer and closer, until I was here, staring lifelessly at the tiny soldiers as they labored.

What else was there to do, anyway?

It was getting difficult to find Jasper, lately. It seemed that he was as listless as I was, letting the wind blow him where it would. The last highway sign I had seen near him had read " Downtown Detroit, 5 mi." But that had been months ago.

I couldn't peek in on Carlisle- he was probably at the hospital, and he had a nasty habit of working in the Emergency Room. That wasn't going to help my cravings for human blood. I hadn't made a mistake in eight years now, but I didn't need to give myself a sore throat for no reason.

Edward wasn't much better. He had just begun medical school, and was spending most of his days cutting up dead humans with his classmates, or staring at textbooks. Why he felt the need to do these things, I didn't understand. I was just lucky that my visions didn't come with smell. Ugh!

Esme was just plain boring, as usual- nothing but housecleaning, and repairing cabinets, and digging in the dirt.

And Rosalie and Emmett- they were more interesting, since they lived off on their own now and Emmett had a regular job. I liked watching Rosalie walk around town, shopping and seeing what there was to see. But the work day was over now, and they always spent their free time in a honeymoon free-for-all. I didn't want to see that. Judging by their cloudy futures, they had decided to return back to family… eventually. I wish they would hurry it up, though. Watching my siblings annoy each other was one of my favorite pastimes. Edward had been boring as an only child, and now he was boring again.

I had, sometimes, thought about going to find the Cullens on my own, while I waited for Jasper. But the family portrait always got fuzzier with those decisions, and sometimes Jasper and I were standing further apart in the picture. As lonely as I was, that wasn't worth it. Besides, I liked the idea of being alone with Jasper for a little while in the beginning.

So, I had nothing to do, except watch.

And wait.

I had really been spoiled, back in the early forties. My family had spent several years travelling the globe, and I had entertained myself by following them in my visions, seeing the world and meeting other vampires through them. But now their lives were dull again, and here I was, staring at an anthill while I waited. I sighed for the seven hundredth time today, letting the ants hypnotize me as they marched.

The colony were working with a frenzied energy, carrying what morsels they could find back to their larders and storing them against the approaching winter. Their march was a web of black polka-dotted lines weaving up the hillside, converging on the door to their underground world. Earlier this morning, I had chosen a particularly intelligent-looking ant and named him Jasper, making up stories in which he was the general of the Ant Army.

Ant-Jasper was a compassionate fellow. He worked hard, never hesitating to help with one of his recruits needed help carrying a heavy leaf, or crumb, or whatever. He allowed the enlisted men frequent water breaks downstairs in the mess hall. He had a little ant-wife named Alice, and they shared an apartment down on the third level…

But then a crow had swooped down, gobbling up Ant-Jasper, and now I was just watching ants again. The wind swirled around me, blowing my bangs into my eyes. Not wanting to move and alert the ants to my position, I blew a puff of air upwards, trying to dislodge the two hundred and seven blacks hairs that were annoying me. I blew thirty times, without success. I peeked ahead in my own future to see if the wind was going to come help me anytime soon. But apparently I was going to lie here with my hair in my eyes for the next seven hours unless I altered my course.

This was pathetic. Here I was, one of the most terrifying creatures in the world, using my supernatural powers to decide whether or not to scare a bunch of insects in order to fix my hair. What would Emmett say?

I gave up, raising my hand to move my hair and sending the ants scurrying away as if a tornado had hit them. I rolled over onto my back, staring up at the sky and tapping my fingers on the ground. Counting the number of birds overhead. Finding pictures in the clouds.

Still waiting…

I had finally found the diner last year. The picture had cleaned up enough that I could see the Pennsylvania license plates parked outside the diner window, and I had also caught a glimpse of a store name across the street. I had spent months combing Pennsylvania, both with my visions and with my own eyes. I had finally found it, in a little corner of Philadelphia. I ran inside, sitting in "my booth" for a while. It was strange to feel so at home in a place I had never visited before, but I knew every inch of this diner; well, at least the parts that were visible in the visions.

I had then run back out and bought a calendar, giving it as a gift to the owner and suggested that it might look nice on the wall behind my booth. If my plan worked, then the vision would change and I would be able to figure out the exact month. Unfortunately, he didn't like my calendar idea. I decided to hang it up myself, but that made the diner picture fuzzier. Maybe the owner didn't like pushy calendar-giving customers.

Oh well, I had to try. What good were visions if you couldn't cheat sometimes?

Anyway, I had stayed in Pennsylvania ever since. When the fateful day arrived in which the diner picture became a diner movie, I would know that I had a maximum of three days to get there. Of course, the vision wouldn't work if getting there wasn't possible, but sometimes these destiny-based visions could be a little tricky. And even though Jasper probably wasn't anywhere near Pennsylvania right now, I liked the idea of being near where he was going to be. And that was why I was here in the Alleghenies, bored to death while I waited. The diner picture got clearer every day, and the closer I got, the more bored I got.

I was so bored today, that I might as well check it to see if the diner's owner had suddenly developed a fondness for calendars. I closed my eyes, digging half-heartedly into the mental storehouse of my visions for the diner picture…

Same as always. I was sitting in the booth, my eyes sparkling with excitement. The raindrops were outside the window, falling like a sheet of…

I shrieked in surprise, jumping up onto my feet. The raindrops were falling, were not frozen in midair! Did this mean what I thought it meant?! I tangled my fists in my hair, plunging back into the vision with everything I had.

My feet were moving under the table, tapping the floor in an impatient staccato rhythm that matched the tapping of my fingers on a plate of coffeecake. There was a creak and the tired jingle of a bell as the door opened.

His right hand on the doorknob, and his left hand brushing the rain drops off of his overcoat. The door swung open fully, and he walked in.

HE WALKED IN!

I slipped out of the booth, containing my excitement as I danced toward him, and he froze, confusion and wariness clouding his handsome features.

"You've kept me waiting a long time," I said with a smile.

He only hesitated for a second before bowing his head slightly. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he drawled, beginning to return my smile as I drew another step closer. I held out my hand…

My eyes popped open and I screamed at the top of my lungs, flipping myself into the air for a quadruple cartwheel. It was time, it was time, it was time! I landed in a crouch, poised like a sprinter as I officially made the decision: I was going to the diner, right now. I held my breath and checked the vision again.

Still there!

For the first time in my life, it was still there.

I'm coming, Jasper! It's time!

I launched myself into the air again, and this time I hit the ground running.

.

.

.

I was in the diner the next morning as soon as it opened, stationed in my booth and tapping my feet as I watched the clouds. There was no clock anywhere in the diner- apparently this guy hated décor of every kind- so I had to predict the weather the old fashioned way. I could see storm clouds off in the distance, maybe two hours off. Was it The Storm? Or would I be sitting here for two days, tapping my feet and hiding coffeecake in the purse I had stolen last night?

I had broken into a boutique outside of Harrisburg, and stood staring at the dresses for most of the night. I had never actually shopped before. In the beginning, when I was too wild to get near any real towns, I was limited to the dresses that came off the women I killed- and they were almost always too big. Later on, when I was under control enough to get into a store, I always had the cash, off my victims. But even then, I had to keep my red eyes down; get in, grab something from the petite section, get out. And when I had started hunting animals, I had run out of money fast. And I hated to steal, so I waited as long as possible to replace my clothing. I still liked to sit in department stores occasionally, watching the mothers and daughters go about their merry business, but it was a life that wasn't for me. Not yet, anyway.

So I really had no idea how to do this. I was determined to meet Jasper in a dress that wasn't threadbare, and I knew I needed a big purse to stuff coffeecake into. So last night, I had taken my time walking through the nicely-hung clothes in the boutique, brushing my hands against the different fabrics and trying to guess what Jasper would like. In the end, I went with the most innocent, housewifely-looking one I could find. I figured that my Jasper was going to be on edge, meeting his psychic soul mate, and so I wanted to put him at ease as much as possible. And I thought I had read somewhere that pink had the power to calm people down. I spent another two hours touching the purses until I found a nice pink one to match the dress. Then, for the first time ever, I broke into the cash register and took thirty dollars, replacing it with a note that said "Sorry!"

So here I sat, in my new pink dress, with my first purse by my side, empty but for the thirty dollars. I ordered my first round of coffeecake and, while I waited for the clouds to get nasty, I checked the Meeting vision every ten minutes, tweaking my dialogue as I went. Apparently, if I started the conversation by jumping into his arms with "JasperIt'sMeAliceYourSoulMateI'veBeenWatchingYouForTwenty-EightYearsWithMyMagicVisions," things weren't going to go so well.

The clouds were coming along nicely, by ten o'clock, and my instincts were screaming that this was it. I had just ordered my third coffeecake, when I checked the Meeting again.

It was gone.

I grabbed the edge of the table in a panic, rewinding the vision back through time to see what I had done wrong. What had changed?! It had been perfectly fine ten minutes ago! I was new at this- the rewinding thing- and my panic grew as I darted around the future, stabbing at random. Had Jasper decided not to come down this street? Had he decided to hunt somewhere else?

After three and a half agonizing seconds, I finally found it.

Jasper turned the corner onto this street, his collar pulled up against the rain. He saw the diner, glanced up at the clouds, and began to approach. But when he looked up at the diner again, he froze for a second, and then turned and ran.

It was so simple. He had seen a vampire sitting at one of the windows, and he had decided it wasn't worth the risk. I quickly got up out of the booth and moved to the counter, dragging my purse and my coffeecake with me. I couldn't see out the window anymore, but it had worked: the Meeting was back.

But my confidence wasn't. What had happened? What miniscule event had made Jasper skittish enough so that I had to change seats? And how could I predict-really- how he was going to react to me? Any number of things could go wrong, any second. Did I really have any idea what I was doing? What if I said something that scared him off? Made him attack me? I had never actually met another vampire before. What if-

I took a deep breath, releasing the part of my skirt that I had scrunched up in my panic. I smoothed it down, reminding myself that I needed to trust my visions- they had never steered me wrong before. And I had already been given my opening line in what I liked to call a destiny vision- those few visions that came before I made any decisions, like those I had had when I woke up. Jasper's face. The family portrait. The diner. These things were Meant To Be. Maybe the visions had done this on purpose- given me the booth view first, so that I could see the Pennsylvania license plates outside the window, and find the diner.

Trust the visions. Keep it light. You've kept me waiting a long time.

"You want somethin' to drink, miss?"

The owner was right in front of my face, stinking of cigarettes and stale grease. I had been mad at him for eleven months now- for his stupid no-décor fetish- but I needed to keep him happy, too. Getting kicked out of the diner was not part of the plan.

"No thank you," I said sweetly. Coffee wasn't nearly as easy to hide away as coffeecake. I knew that the Cullens ate food sometimes, for show, but that was just plain disgusting.

"You waitin' for someone, then?" he asked, a knowing look in his eye.

"Yes," I said in a small voice. "He's due any minute. I think."

As if in reassurance, the first crack of thunder shook the air outside, and the owner shook his head in pity as the rain began to fall, darkening the windows with its curtain.

"Well, he ain't comin' now. Not with weather like that. Sorry."

I grinned behind my hands, waiting until his back was turned before tossing another chunk of cake into my purse. I thought the weather was perfect. The Meeting vision began to shimmer with the urgency that always preceded the immediate future; it was seconds away now. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths as I waited, waited waited waitedwaitedwaitedwaited-

The door creaked, the bell jingled, and a glorious aroma wafted into the stale air of the diner. I took one final breath, opened my eyes, and turned to face my Destiny.