I froze, imagining an armed man in a black ski mask climbing through that window. He would take the modest amount of jewelry that Bella had before diving out onto the roof. Maybe he had taken her stereo, as well? That would not be a loss, however, for I had always regretted not taking that stereo myself. The day that I had left my life behind, I had forgotten that Debussy was playing in her room. It had been a mistake, but the image of her walking into her bedroom only to hear our song playing quietly had haunted me for months. It still did, to this day.
"Has there been a burglary?" I demanded shortly, narrowing my eyes at the distressing scene. Jacob grimaced, confused by my words. Humans. Sometimes they were so ignorant... Yet sometimes they were so magical. My eyes once again landed on the window, struck by the fluorescent yellow tape.
Jacob followed my gaze, comprehension filling his flat black eyes as he realized what I was looking at. He turned back to his old car and began scratching at the lousy paint job.
"Oh," he muttered, grimacing. "That." I blinked, frustrated with his lack of information. The agonizing part was that I could read his mind, but for somebody as temperamental as Jacob Black, he was doing a damn good job of blocking me out.
"Yes, 'that'," I repeated patronizingly. "Would you like to tell me what that is?" Jacob considered this, brushing off the obvious sarcasm.
"Not really," he decided, displaying a clear effort at nonchalance. I closed my eyes, trying in vain not to lose my temper.
"I could always make you," I reminded him, flexing my triceps so that the tendons stuck out menacingly. But I had to admit- this did not have the effect that I thought it would; the werewolf had grown some muscles of his own.
I seem to have struck a nerve. Jacob spun around on his heels, trembling violently.
"That's what you always do, isn't it?" he snapped, "Resort to your inhumanity? Show off your muscles? It's sickening and cruel. You left just when she got slightly boring, didn't you? Not enough adventure there?" His words were like knives, yet I kept a cool front.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Mutt," I snapped, throwing in a snarl for effect. Bella? Boring? That was a long shot. "Now tell me where she is." Jake hesitated, clearly thinking over various ways to answer my question.
"She's at the funeral," he replied shortly. "That's where I'm headed." I pinched the bridge of my nose, confused.
"Harry
Clearwater, right?" I persisted. The poor family. Seth, despite his
status as 'werewolf', had a very innocent, pure mind. I could see
the answer in Jacob's head at once. No.
Not
Harry Clearwater. Then
who?
"Jacob,
where
is
Bella?" I hissed, overcome with mounting terror. Leaning in, I
inhaled the scent of the rusty red pick-up truck. Floral, yet faded.
The scent hit me cold. "I'm giving you one chance, mongrel," I
snapped, overwhelmed with horror. "Tell
me where she is." Though
clearly grief-stricken, Jacob seemed to be enjoying my ignorance. He
was blocking out the information that I strived through by focusing
on his hatred of me.
"You left her, leech," he reminded me, and he might as well have ripped out my throat. "You left her and you left all of us here to deal with her." So he was playing the self-pity card? He didn't know how lucky he was to have been left here with her...
"It was the right thing at the time," I muttered, though I only said it to console myself. It had been the right thing at the time, hadn't it?
"If you saw her after that, you would believe me when I say that there was nothing 'right' about that," he countered, and my vast mind was suddenly flooded with images of her- my Bella- lying on the ground in the woods. Her face was filled with such pain, such unadulterated melancholy, that I wanted to tear out the entire forest to completely destroy any place that had bared witness to her grief.
I had killed people. I had drunk their blood. Then, I had thought that I was a monster. But that was nothing compared to this.
"Stop it!" I growled, though I did not deserve the relief of a clear mind. To my utter shock, Jacob obeyed. It was not willingly, however. He had a mind that did not function on command. As soon as he thought of something, it overtook every thought that he had.
"It was the right thing," Jacob scoffed, clearly tormenting me. I nodded, suddenly agreeing with him.
"You would never understand," I replied bitterly, closing my eyes. I had come back to beg for Bella's forgiveness- not to argue with a hormonal werewolf.
"I would understand," Jacob retorted coldly. "Because believe it or not, you're not the only person who's loved and lost somebody. But I bet that never even crossed your mind, did it? Of course not. It's all about you, isn't it?"I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"You don't know what you're saying," I pointed out quietly, though it was dawning on me every second. Suddenly, the air was turning to water, suffocating the heartless immortal. It was a nightmare beyond anything that I had ever experienced, like I was hurled off of a skyscraper and stopped two centimeters above the concrete...
Some people say that life goes on. But it really doesn't. I have seen life stop, just come to an end, completely. And it is not pretty. It is not blissful. It is not heaven.
Places in my soul that had only recently been filled were now empty again, hollow and transparent like an infant. The thin ribbon that had held me to this universe had been torn in two, because I suddenly knew whose funeral it was. I had known all along.
"It's your fault," Jacob whispered, though it sounded like his voice was miles away. I was watching the scene play out as if I was a bystander, and I could see my horrible, pale body shrinking away into nothingness. The world was collapsing inwards on me, pounding down on my endless misery like a hatchet coming down into my spine over and over again.
"It is my fault," I repeated slowly, saying each syllable as if it weighed a ton. "It is my fault. It is my fault." It is my fault.
"Glad to see we're on the same page," Jacob muttered, his voice filled with bitterness and loathing. "You should come to the funeral. Pay your respects. Let Charlie beat the living crap out of you. You could at least pretend to be dead when he shoots you; I think that would make him feel as if he avenged his daughter, don't you? If I drove somebody to throw themselves out of their bedroom window, I know that I would at least play dead when their only family tried to kill me." His words dug deep into my skin, because that's all that there was to dig into. I had no soul. No heart. No mind. Just a thin layer of skin no longer attached to a life. He no longer bothered to hide his thoughts. They were all in front of me... Bella's home was no longer the place where she stood in the rain or laughed on a picnic blanket; it was the place where she took that final step into the air and plummeted to the ground, her white eyelet blouse swirling around her limp body. Her home was the place where the first coronary report was delivered. Yes, Dr. Gerandy had announced, A suicide.
They say that death is the moment that your heart stops beating, but it's really not. It's the moment that the person that means the most to you is gone. That's when you truly have nothing.