Edward looked at me, alarm in his eyes.

Bella? Are you all right? His thoughts were frantic.

I couldn't answer-a suffocating feeling had enveloped my brain, making it impossible to think. I shook my head to indicate something was wrong. My head felt light. Edward grabbed me by the waist and pushed off the floor of the plane.

As we began drifting up my mind suddenly cleared. The light feeling gone, I turned away from Edward and made my way back to the plane.

He shook his head. No, Bella! he thought sternly. He had not seen, however, what was under the couch.

We can't just leave him there! I screamed in my head. I'm going back!

I broke free of his strong hold and fought through the water back to the plane. I located his still body quickly and grabbed his arm, pulling him up so he could float alongside me. When I reached the door I found Edward waiting for me. He motioned for me to give him the unconscious boy but I refused.

I can do this, I thought shortly.

No, you can't, Edward replied, taking the body from me. You've just inhaled a lungful of salt water. I don't think you have oxygen enough to carry him that far. Was he under the couch the whole time? I nodded.

Please hurry. I don't like the color of him.

Edward obeyed, pushing through the water as quickly as one could when having not breathed in a while. I followed, trying to keep pace but rapidly falling behind. Every few minutes Edward would have to stop and wait for me to catch up. I waved him on impatiently, growing more and more panicked over the still form he managed to hold in his arms, not caring at all for my life.

The dreadful feeling of airlessness affected me slowly as we made our way to the surface. Several times I thought I would pass out, which is not the easiest thing for someone of my kind. Finally I stopped altogether, watching as Edward swam further and further away.

Take him up, I thought. He needs to breathe.

After a few long moments of floating, I closed my eyes. The salt water was burning them. I wanted to sleep desperately but I knew that was impossible. I felt a large movement in the water in front of me and opened my eyes to find Alice staring at me.

Edward came up a few moments ago and said you were still here. He sounded panicked, like you weren't doing so well, so I swam down a few fathoms and found you.
Are you OK? Her tiny mouth moved quickly, but I understood what she was saying.

Not really. I inhaled a lot of salt water in the plane, I mouthed back.

Edward said that, she nodded. Come on, Carlisle's worried about you and-She stopped suddenly.

What? I asked.

Nothing, she said, pulling my arm over her small shoulders to help me back up to the surface. Come on, Carlisle wants to see what kind of shape you're in.
I let her pull me back up to the surface of the water. My muscles had no strength left to swim. When I felt the cool (now night) air hit my face, I started coughing. Salt water came bubbling out of my lungs into my mouth, where it was promptly spit out. It took a few moments before I could breathe without having to cough up the air I'd just taken in, laced with water.

"Is he all right?" I gasped as soon as I was able to talk.

"Not exactly what you'd call 'all right'," Alice admitted, taking my hand. She pointed to where Carlisle and Edward were speaking in hushed tones, examining the still form in front of them. I dog-paddled to where they floated. Edward grabbed my hand and whispered, "Bella, he might not survive this."

My eyes widened in shock. I glanced up into his topaz eyes and felt my own fill with water that shouldn't have been there.

"Am I crying?" I asked, surprised. Edward nodded.

"When you inhaled that water, some of it retained in areas where it is supposed to be retained, such as your tear ducts," he explained. "Your emotion over him," he gestured to the body, "must have caused the ducts to release water."

I nodded. The unnatural tears came faster. I took the unconscious boy's hand. It was cold. Too cold. Panic seized my nonexistent heart and my pale fingers scurried further down to his wrist, where they squeezed in a death grip.

There was no throbbing.

"No," I whispered, icy despair settling in my chest.

"NO!" I screamed, louder. My hands flew to his face.

"JACOB!" I screamed, my body racked with sobs. "LISTEN TO ME!"

His peaceful, unmoving face offered no remorse.

"NOOOOOOO!" I screamed again. I tilted my head back to stare into the boiling gray sky. Drops landed on my face, but I didn't care.

"WHY?" I asked of the sky, the sea, the core of existence. "Why would you do this to him? Why would you do this to me?"

I barely felt Edward's comforting grip around my shoulders.

"JACOB!" I sobbed. "Don't do this to me! JACOB!"

His hand fell from mine.

I gazed once into his face. It looked like he was sleeping.

Then I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed one long, high, agonized scream.

The salt water would not stop pouring after that.

Edward held me bridal-style in the water as I cried my still, cold heart out. Alice came over to hold the hand that wasn't clutching Jacob's lifeless one. He was freezing, and that brought me back to reality every time I had convinced myself he wasn't...dead. He's just sleeping, I would delude myself. Or I'm sleeping, and this is all just a horrible nightmare. And when I wake up, Edward will be lying next to me, anxious, until I convince him it was just a nightmare.

Just a real-life nightmare.

When the tears stopped coming Edward would not let me go. Anybody who was not Alice he snarled softly at if they came too close to me. But when the hysteria replaced the sobbing, he allowed Jasper to calm me down.

Pale light was breaking over the horizon when I finally snapped out of my shocked depression. I glanced up at Edward, who smiled wearily at me. I sighed and leaned into his chest, staring blankly into Jacob's closed eyes. His skin was white beneath the brown. The dark hair he had always kept long until he needed to cut it was stiff where it broke the surface, the cool air drying it. The salt left streaks in it.

So this was how it ended. My own personal sun, extinguished forever. All because of me. All because of the pain I had caused him.

His other hand was clenched tight around something. I lifted it gently from the water and pried his fingers open. The cold ocean had chilled them so they were almost impossible to pull away from his palm. When I could at last see the object, time suddenly stopped.

It was the wooden wolf I had torn from my bracelet. He had found it. He had known what it stood for and why I had removed it. It no longer held the meaning of everlasting love between him and me-now it meant only agony and death.

"I'm so sorry, Jacob," I whispered. The hole in my chest ripped open then.

I gasped as the pain overtook me and whimpered as it held its course. Edward's arms tightened around my cold, hard body. He didn't know why I was in pain now.

"That wolf," I cried, scooping it into my palm to show Edward. "I took it off and threw it out the window so I wouldn't remember him...and he must have found it."

Edward nodded, his expression stony. "And he brought it back to you," he muttered. His eyes fixed on my best friend's body. "Why, Jacob?" he whispered. "Look what you've done to her." His golden eyes squeezed shut. In the instant before his pale lids shut them out I glimpsed what looked like grief in their depths.

Carlisle swam over to Edward and whispered something to him. His voice was too low-I couldn't understand what he was saying. Edward nodded once, his eyes still closed.

"He said the Channel is a short distance away," he said to me, bending low so I could hear him. "Do you think you could swim to England?"

I smiled slightly before I realized what I was doing. "Sure." My short-lived smile turned quickly into a frown.

Can we bring Jacob? I asked through my thoughts. I can't leave him here. He deserves to be remembered.

Yes, he answered. Come quickly. We've already spent enough time in the middle of the ocean.

I nodded, but protested when he tried to carry me there.

"You couldn't make it all the way to the Channel carrying me," I argued. He complied and set me into the water, where I rapidly began sinking. There wasn't enough strength in my limbs to swim. So I let Edward take me while I towed Jacob, still holding tight to his hand as though he would squeeze back.

When I felt the solid comfort of land beneath my numb feet, I stood and tried to determine my surroundings. The landscape was flat, rocky where the sea met the land, grassy and blooming with flowers elsewhere.

"Where are we?" My voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

"Cornwall, I'd expect," Carlisle replied, dusting sand off his ruined, wet clothing.

"Where's that?" Alice inquired.

"In the southwest of England. Substantially farther away from London than I'd wanted."

She groaned and turned to help Jasper get bits of seashell out of his blond hair. Feeling at my own wet strands, I walked to where someone had propped Jacob against a large boulder. Edward, I presumed.

He looked as though he had fallen asleep sitting up. As though at any moment his eyes would fly open and he would ask me if I was convinced by his little joke. Reality set in once again and I realized Jake would never wake up. I would never see the mischievous twinkle in his eyes he got every time we snuck out to his garage to work on our motorcycles.

I heard the sound of fabric ripping and turned to find Edward standing on a sandy patch some distance away, looking down at a hole he had created when he'd tried to wring the water out of it.

"Damn it," he groaned, holding it up to get a better look at it. He noticed me watching and smiled half-heartedly. The corners of my mouth tugged up slightly. He sat on the sand and motioned me over. I went to sit next to him on the warm sand, leaned my aching head against his granite shoulder, and sighed. Together we watched the tide flow in and out as Edward held my hand.

"Bella?" Alice's voice was nearby. I lifted my head to find her squatting next to me, her eyes sad.

"Yes, Alice?" I relieved Edward's shoulder and leaned on her instead.

"We're going to have to find a place to bury him," she blurted, nodding furiously toward Jake. "And soon. Carlisle said it won't be long until he starts to decompose." She wrinkled her nose as though already smelling it.

"OK," I said slowly, standing. Edward followed me up, putting his stiff torn shirt back on.

"I'll help," he volunteered. We ambled up the grassy slope that backed us.

Eventually I found the perfect spot-it had soft grass, beautiful wildflowers, and no view of the ocean. Edward and I called the others over and started digging. Within a few short minutes we had dug a deep, long hole (I refused to even think the word grave) and I gently laid Jacob down in it, taking deep breaths to calm myself and to breathe his scent for one last time. I then pulled the tiny wolf out of his hand and reattached it to my bracelet without Edward noticing. In the same instant I swept loose soil over my best friend. When we had sufficiently covered the hole I choked out a goodbye.

"Bye, Jake," I said, trying to be upbeat. I pretended he was going back to La Push after we had completed our homework together. When it hit me this was not the case, my knees buckled and I fell on the ground in front of him.

"I'm so sorry, Jake," I sobbed. "This is my fault. I've caused you so much pain and it's brought you to this. It's not fair. You were only 16. IT'S NOT FAIR!" I screamed on the last sentence.

Before I knew it Edward was beside me, holding me, rocking me back and forth to comfort me. I could not be solaced.

"It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not FAIR," I moaned quietly. "Why couldn't it have been me? I deserved it. Why?"

My family waited patiently as my second outbreak died off. When I finally stood, I broke free of Edward's grip and ran. Flying at the speed of a vampire, I was several miles away from them when I ran straight into a girl.

We both tumbled to the ground and rolled a few times. When I was sure we were not moving anymore, I heard an angry rant from beneath me.

"What the bloody hell was that for?" she raved. I pushed myself off of her. She glared at me with jade green eyes as she spewed out other profanity. She stood and brushed debris off herself before smiling apologetically at me.

"I'm sorry I got carried away," she said, pulling long strands of dark brown hair back from her pale face. That was one thing I noticed most about her-her pale skin. Pale enough to be...

She noticed my staring and laughed. "I know what you're thinking. And you're right. I am a vampire-" she said, looking down at herself. "- but I'm also a human."

I gaped. How had she known I was a vampire? Wait a moment-half HUMAN? Well, that explained her green eyes.

"Y-you're half-human?" I stammered weakly. She nodded brightly.

"I'm a freak of nature. And proud of it. By the way, my name's Nicki."

"Bella," I replied, shaking her extended hand. "How did you know I was a vampire?"

"Your eyes," she responded, pointing. "They're red?"

Oh.

"Now how in the world are you half-human?" I had to ask. Me and my big mouth.

She smiled warmly. "Now, there's a story. See, my mother-"

"ISABELLA MARIE SWAN!" a voice roared. I turned in time to see Edward barreling toward me. I quickly turned back to Nicki, looked up (she was at least five foot nine) into her startling green eyes and instructed her, "Run."

And run we did. We laughed the whole time, our hair flying behind us. Edward eventually caught up to me, as I knew he would, and tackled me.

"Don't you ever run off like that again," he murmured furiously into my ear. All I could do was laugh and struggle to get out from underneath him.

"Who is this?" Edward asked when we were back on our feet, motioning to Nicki. She was still giggling.

"Oh, right," I said quickly. Edward, this is Nicki. Nicki, this is my husband, Edward Cullen. The rest of our family will be along shortly, so you can meet them too."

Edward, this girl is half-vampire, half-human. Can you believe that? I thought.

Oh my God, was all he could reply.

"OK, I trust you," Nicki said suddenly.

We looked at her curiously. She registered the blank looks on our faces and smiled. "I can tell if you're a trustworthy person by your aura," she explained. "It's my talent." A breeze caught her hair and it fluttered around her face like a fan.

"That's interesting," Edward murmured, staring at Nicki. She gave him the same odd look we had just given her.

"He can read minds," I offered. She nodded. Then her eyes narrowed.

"Stay out of my head, you, or I'll do something nasty," she threatened. By her tone I knew she was serious. Then she was happy again. Well, not completely. A deep sadness came from her, a sadness you could recognize without being able to read minds or sense emotions. It was disguised, opaque, but I knew it was there. We females have a clever sixth sense in this objective.

"Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend?" someone asked behind us. I turned. The rest of my family was standing, waiting for an introduction.

"Nicki," I said, looking back at her, "meet the Cullens."