Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer.
Chapter 2 (JPOV)
I shake my head aggressively as I shut the door behind me, Edward's words still echoing.
You gave up decades ago. You live like a flatlining human, it's sad.
How can a someone like us live monotonously? It's a fair question. Edward is always confused
about my thoughts when I get lazy and he gets inside.
We move faster, love harder, experience more than anyone not like us can imagine.
But that's all of them. My family, others who live in pairs and small groups, they feel what they feel and necessarily think I am the same. It's only by virtue of my "talent" and my upbringing that I am not.
I hear Emmett smack Edward on the neck, "Fucking dick."
I feel the twinge of pain and sulky peevishness that immediately follows.
"He needs all of us to understand. I know you think you're doing some tough love thing, but you sound like a fucking ass," Rosalie snaps.
"Rose is right," Alice says softly, "That approach wasn't going to work, you saw it."
Their pity, love, and determination swirls together, trying to settle somewhere in my chest, chasing me further away.
They're wrong. I don't need understanding, and I don't need interventions. There's nothing to intervene with. I'm back and that should be enough. Much as they would hate to hear it (or love, depending on who), this desire is so in common with humanity, the need to categorize and place. Homogenize everything to make themselves comfortable.
I break into a run as I reach the tree line beyond the expansive, perfectly trimmed lawn. The great pines close around me and whip me with their branches. Green and brown, the moss and underbrush hiding the infinitesimal and simply small. Earthworms and chipmunks, all quiet when they sense me pass.
The forest is damp, another rainstorm passing through yet barely reaching past the thick canopy ahead. It all ends in mist down here. I hear a herd of elk in the distance and adjust my
path to meet them.
I drain two despite not being particularly thirsty. It's a precaution. Tomorrow we go back to school. Closing my eyes, I let the sounds of the forest surround me as I finish the second off.
Insects in the trees, boring down through the bark. The wisp of wind throw ferns and grass. The tunneling of rodents through the earth two miles away. A brook babbling somewhere to the southwest. I can discern the specific number of pebbles where the incline of the earth is at its height based on the number and volume of splashes.
Warmth trickles through my body with the rich blood. Only warmth. I can shut off all my senses, pretend I'm holding the corpse of a human. Pretend that the ultimate thirst is slaked. Bring up memories of the last corpse I made to satisfy in a small way the craving in my heart.
Fluttering fingers like moth's wings against my stomach and back and sides. The texture, the salt and sweet and fat. The pleasure she felt as I took everything. I gave them that much, at least.
The elks drained, I dig a quick hole and deposit the limbs after tearing the carcasses apart. I fill it in and cover the soft earth with leaves and branches until it matches the surrounding area perfectly.
The slight melancholy I felt when I left the house is buried somewhere among the worms and wet dirt. I feel slightly disgusted at my fantasies, the way I let myself slip into imagining I was killing again, but that too is easily buried. I'm soon at peace again, everything constant, feeling nothing.
I run south through the forest, no destination in mind, trying to leave almost no mark on the trees, the ground, by strategically placing my feet and weight on rocks and boulders. There are hikers here and there, I avoid them completely, not wanting anyone's scent or emotion right now, though I often enjoy the cocktail they carry of bravery, wonder, pain, and the like.
Suddenly, I'm caught off guard by one of them. I stop mid-stride, balancing on the 3-foot tall boulder, then crouch, resting my hand on the rough, emerald moss-covered stone. It washes over me in waves accompanied by a frantic thrumming heartbeat and rush of blood through vein.
There's so much happening I can barely pick out the individual strains. It's almost musical, the lilt and flow. Fear, sharp and staccato. Irritation. Cold shivers of distress. Appreciation, in little returning loops, then even smaller ones of pleasure. All moving so quickly that they could be coming from someone like us but I'm close enough that I can smell with certainty a human when I start breathing again.
Female, younger than 25, no older than 19, wearing sleeves. Shoes with rubber soles; the dirt wedged into the treads isn't local, too sandy. She's alone, not in danger from anything but her own mind. Underneath the earthy musky forest scents of sharp citrusy pine and dirt and animal stink, she's there.
Tangy cortisol and adrenaline mingling with orange blossom, oak moss, slightly salty bergamot, fresh sliced apple, ten second seared steak. Fear. Tide laundry soap and Downy dryer sheets. Loneliness. Anti-perspirant. A scratch on her knee smeared with Neosporin. A Band-Aid.
I relax slowly against the stone until I'm laying down, one arm behind my head. My eyes close lazily as I take in huge, lung-straining breaths. I'm holding myself down, keeping myself from slipping down, closer until I can surround myself in her feelings, her scent, pin down each one, name it exactly.
Thirsts rears slightly, the burning in my throat clamoring to the surface. I push it down into the box where it belongs, so much less interesting than all the rest of this.
Thirty seconds have passed since I stopped running. I shake my head slightly, pull my fingers through my hair. I feel panicked, stricken, too taken over by the fear and her scent. For a few seconds, I was another being entirely, I did not know myself.
Now the fear is my solely my own, no longer a projection of some hapless, quivering human girl.
Anger, running white hot from my temples to my hands, suddenly clenched in fists. Irrationally, I think maybe I should kill her. How dare she try and take me over.
As suddenly as the thought comes, it's gone. I'm vacillating back and forth so quickly, I feel like a newborn, ruled by feelings that seem to possess their own will.
I've gone completely stiff, curled into an attack pose, lip curled over my dripping, venom coated teeth.
"…this is an effing rain forest. Nothing is going to hurt me. I'm okay. I feel nervous, and scared, and hopeful, and afraid because I'm in a new place, I'm going to a new school. I'm lonely but it's okay, it's okay, it's okay."
My phone rings. I answer it mechanically, moving as little as possible.
"Jasper? Are you okay? I'm not sure what I just saw… or didn't see. And I know I'm not supposed to look or call when I… but…"
Easy. Normal.
"Yeah, I figured you might've seen something. Had a hiker sneak up on me, wasn't paying attention."
Forcing myself to regulate was harder than it should have been but I managed to sound just about how I should. I think.
"Sneak up on…?"
Or not.
"Shh."
"I'm gonna run a little bit more but I'll be back for school tomorrow. Don't want to be late on my first day," I say, forcing my tone to sound like I'm smiling.
"You want to meet us out by the mountain? We were all going to top off tonight."
"Something's not right. We need to call Esme."
Two loud thunks and squeak.
"Shut the fuck up, Edward."
"Nah, had two elk," I drawl, "I'm stuffed. Everything's fine, shortie. And y'all eavesdroppers, stop being mean to Edward. Thanks for calling."
"Okay… are you going to ride with us?"
"Might be. But don't wait for me if I'm not there when you leave."
After ending the call, I make my muscles relax and lay back down in the boulder, looking up through the jade green toward the chinks of gray sky, the birds hundreds of yards through the mist.
The girl had almost made it back inside her house but I could still feel the panic she was struggling to control; had been completely attuned to the unique character of her steps through the brush, then grass (slightly more pressure to the toes and balls of her right foot, right handed?) while talking to Alice.
I could still smell her blood, the way it twisted and meshed with the delicate chemical balance of her organs and perfume; oaky moss and orange blossom, sweat and meat. She was all fucking wrapped up inside and around me.
Her voice echoing in my head, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."
I felt like I could run two hundred miles right now, straight into Canada, and would feel exactly the same.
I didn't know what to do with what had happened, had no fucking clue. It was going to get put where everything else went. Fucking away.
It wasn't going to happen again, that was for damn sure.
