It was three weeks since Alice came and went.
I walked through the cafeteria making a natural beeline for our table - mine, Angela's, Eric's, Jessica's, Mike's. I didn't even look across to the other table. I couldn't say when I stopped doing that.
I took my place and joined the spectators of Tyler and Mike's horseplay. It was inspired again by a new student only this time it wasn't me. Thank God.
Jessica was making a point of looking disinterested. "What do you guys wanna do this weekend?" she cut into the conversation as if she didn't know it was happening. She was sullen and eager all at once as she looked at each of us, demanding responses. Her eyes only briefly met mine before they moved on.
"Um… What about the movies?" Eric offered, trying to help.
"I'm sick of going to the movies. What else can we do?"
"What else is there?" Tyler laughed and he and Mike returned to their jousting.
Jessica glared at the rest of us as if it were our fault. "Well, there's gotta be something."
"There's a band playing in Port Angeles," Angela informed the group timidly. "They're pretty cool. They do a few covers and original songs."
"Well, as long as they don't play indie music," Jess conceded.
"What's wrong with indie music?"
"Every song sounds the same!"
"Oh, unlike pop songs?"
I didn't mean to tune out. Really, I didn't. It felt more like the conversation was getting further away. Until I couldn't hear it. My eyes didn't feel like eyes, they felt like windows looking into someone else's life. I could watch but I couldn't touch anything. I couldn't interact. These moments - the zombie state - still happened from time to time. But they were growing less frequent and that was good. Right?
"So…" Angela was talking to me and only me. She woke me up. "This must be tough."
I honestly didn't follow. "What must be?"
She frowned and pulled back a little, eyes darting past my head for a split second. That was enough. She didn't know what to say but she'd already told me. I still didn't believe it as I turned my head to check and yet unsurprisingly, there it is, confirmed.
The Cullens were sitting at their usual table, in their usual seating arrangement of two couples and one lone boy. That boy was staring at me. The hole in my chest burned as if the wound were being cauterized and an ugly scar would remain forever.
It was the most excruciatingly awkward biology class since that very first one, over a year ago. Edward apparently knew all there was to know about cellular mitosis and spent the entire hour staring at me. I could feel it. Everywhere his gaze fell, my skin prickled with the most peculiar sensation, as if burnt so intensely yet so quickly that the nerve endings die before the pain sets in. So that all that was left was the cold.
The lesson passed at a glacial pace. I didn't once dare to turn my face and look at him. When the bell rang, I gathered my books as quickly as I could and left.
He followed me down the hall. I reached my locker, where I needed to stop, but I couldn't. I knew he would speak to me if I stopped. I carried on, all the way to the end of the corridor where there was a set of restrooms. I went into the girls' room, dropped my books down by the sink and breathed. I had to hold myself together.
"Bella."
My face shot up and saw him in the mirror. I spun around to face Edward and almost cursed.
"This is the girls' room," I said it as if it would make him evaporate.
"I know, I just need to talk to you," his tone almost made it sound rational.
"You can't be in here." I was backed up against the sinks, hands gripping desperately to the edge. "There could be girls in here."
"There isn't," he told me. He didn't even look at the stalls. Of course, he didn't need to.
I had been right before. I hadn't adequately remembered his beauty. He was breathtaking. Where I had remembered bronze hair and perfect lips as they would look in the most acclaimed paintings, here it was in front of me in the flesh. His eyes were dark, though. Haunted.
Our last encounter had been a moody one. Romantic, in the hopeless sort of way. On the edge of a forest in a misty town. The late afternoon light had painted everything gold. Now, under the harsh fluorescents, the stench of ammonia burned my nose and every surface, greasy from disinfectant sprays, still felt unclean.
He looked precisely like everything else in here. Marble. Cold. Clinical yet stained by past discrepancies. His proximity tore the edges of the hole in my chest wider. How had I found him so beautiful before? His beauty was crushing me.
"Bella, please," Edward pleaded. And yet at the same time, he wasn't pleading. I realized that. He expected that he could speak to me, would reason with me and bring me round to his way of thinking. We had always adhered to his way of thinking.
I did not want him near me. Not now. Not yet, at least.
"Please go," I said.
"Bella -"
"Go, Edward!" That was the first time I'd said his name out loud in months. It felt foreign on my tongue and I spat it out like poison. I stood my ground (my death grip on the sink the only thing keeping me upright) and stared him down. He would see that I meant it whether he wanted to or not.
His face fell an inch. Or perhaps I was merely seeing what I wanted to see. His eyes met his shoes. He was defeated. With speed fractionally faster than what a human could ever achieve, he turned and stormed out the door.
I was alone.
Again.
Thank God.
