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The one o'clock bell rang from the campus clock tower. Both Bella's and my afternoon classes were over. She and her two closest friends, Jody and Mary Ann, waved to me and the guys on either side of me.
"Hey!" cried dark hair Mary Ann. She handed each of us guys a neon orange piece of paper.
All Dressed Up for All Hallows Eve!
"Do you think you can come to the costume party?" she asked. Jody's and her boyfriend Josh's mind perked up.
"Yes!" the both shouted. Topher, the other guy in our group, rolled his eyes. Of course he'd be at his girlfriend's party. Mary Ann was mainly asking Bella and me.
"Sounds like fun. Do we have any plans on Halloween?" Bella asked me.
"No. I guess we'll be there then." Mary Ann, usually a quiet girl like Bella, was now beaming. Bella's eyes twinkled, and she began to laugh; everyone looked at her.
"You should go as a vampire," she challenged me. I snorted and rolled my eyes.
"And what would you go as?" She thought for a moment.
"I'm pretty sure the stupid lamb would be wither her vampire." She winked at me and reached for my left hand and stroked the wedding band.
"A vampire?" I asked her. The others were confused about how we understood the lamb and vampire connection. I pushed away their mental questions.
"Practice, you know." My smile faded. She was wanting to make it more permanent afterwards. Her "few months" were up.
"We'll see about that. Right now I should be leaving." It was time for another hunting trip before the wind picked up more. The human scents were too tempting for their own good.
Bella understood my pain and kissed me good bye. The other girls' minds wondered why I had to leave again, but everyone had long given up on finding answers.
"I'll be back tomorrow night," I promised.
The long drive to my hunting grounds didn't seem as long as it normally did. In no time at all I was out in the wild with nothing by my killer instincts. I crouched low on the ground to bring out the inner vampire I struggled so hard to hide. I closed my eyes and concentrated on finding my prey. Perhaps a mile or two away was a moose. I listened closely to its heart, and before too long I'd picked up its exact location. I ran after the beast as fast as I could, always listening to its steady heart.
The beast was in sight; its scents was locked in my brain. My fangs shot out just before landing on the defenseless creature. I crunched down on its shoulder with all of my jaw's strength and held it down while it withered in pain. It moaned in agonizing pain, but the sounds were forgotten as the blood rushed in my mouth. I attacked it again and again until I was satisfied with the blood flow. All traces of Edward Cullen were forgotten.
I continued to hunt in the same way until sunset. There was no fun in hunting sleeping animals. I walked back to the bridge and walked past the spot where I'd taken Bella for her birthday. I stopped at the waterfall and laid against a tree for the rest of the night.
Tomorrow, I thought, I'll catch some of those salmon hungry bears.
The next morning I let go of my human-like self to feed on more animal blood until afternoon when I could resist it. I pulled off my bloody shirt and soaked it in the cold creek far back in my range. Once again only most of the blood washed out, but there was still those few drops. Nothing Shout It Out couldn't fix.
Eager to see Bella again I ran back to the car, changed shirts, and started the car. It was after seven when I got back home-plenty of time to talk to her before she went to bed. I hoped I could postpone her change even more. The odds were against me, but trying wouldn't hurt…too much.
When I opened the front door I found Bella lying on the couch covered with a blanket and watching an old movie on TV.
"Have fun?" she asked. I hung up my jacket and threw my pack in the floor. I walked over to her and kissed her forehead.
"Lots. What have you been doing?" She raised up to let me sit where her head had been. I sat down, and she rested on my legs.
"Jody and I have been helping Mary Ann get started for the party next week." She seemed weak when she spoke. I stroked her hair and felt her skin; it wasn't any warmer or cooler than normal. Maybe she was worried about something.
"Is something wrong?" I expected her to get up and look at me, but she sighed instead.
"I haven't been feeling well."
"What's wrong?" She hesitated.
"It's just my stomach. That's why there's a bottle of 7Up in the fridge."
"Are you sick? Do you need to go to the doctor?"
"Maybe…Could you take me after school Monday?" I was speechless! If she admitted needing help something bad had happened.
"Of course. Do you need to go to the hospital now?"
"No, no, it's not that bad." She fell asleep there on my lap.
Monday after school Bella explained the weekend's events in more detail. She'd mentioned that she was sick to her stomach to Jody and Mary Ann and that she felt tired. The first thing Jody thought was baby. She even made Bella buy the test because even if she wasn't pregnant "one day you'll need it!" But that didn't explain why it was open. Bella laughed off the baby idea, and explained that it was "girl problems." All men, vampire or human, are smart enough to drop the subject then.
I told Bella at the doctors' office that I wouldn't go in with her and that I wouldn't listen. She seemed relieved, and when "Isabella Cullen" was called she walked to the back alone. A few minutes later my cell phone rang- Charlie? I walked outside to answer it.
"Hello?"
"Edward, I called your house, but you weren't home. Jake's home. That stupid boy ran as far as Oregon before coming home!" Charlie continued his story in detail, but I could tell that Billy had lied to fill in the gaps.
"Bella will want to talk to him tonight," I told Charlie, but Jake was grounded from all forms of communication.
"What about me?" There she was standing next to me. I told Charlie good bye and walked her back to the car.
This was not the Bella I'd fallen in love with. She was too quiet, timed, and seemed shy around me. Her eyes looked at everything but me, and she refused to tell me what the doctor had said.
"When we get home," she promised.
At home I picked her up out of the car and carried her to the couch.
"Tell me," I begged. For the first time since school let out she really looked at me, full of shock and excitement.
"Edward…I'm pregnant."