Author's Note: Here it is - the chapter that you've all been waiting for! No, not Edward (that'll be a doozy), but several Jasper fans have been a little too excited about this one. Thanks to VampireScooby for portions of this chapter. And, the last chapter is being post-postedly dedicated to Diddly, who relates too well to Bella's predicament. A very special thanks to everyone that reviewed – I have been inundated with emails, which is awesome. Also, thanks to epiphanyaella98 for her suggestion! In this chapter, Bella realizes that she's only human – for now
Chapter Six:
Jasper
I stared in shock. To start with, I had no taste for this type of thing – I wasn't a guy. Secondly, and thankfully, there was no more room in either Edward's or my car. I told Jasper this.
"I need to get rid of these." He moaned. Alice snickered from next to me – I wasn't allowed to be left alone with her husband, in case my clumsy streak got the better of me.
"And there's nowhere that you can donate these too – or even sell them for large sums of money?" I suggested, trying to avoid the inevitable give-Bella-stuff-syndrome that was going around.
You see, until five minutes ago, I had no idea that Jasper was a closet comic book fan. He had everything – Spiderman, Batman, and various other superheroes that had fallen into vats of toxic waste. Not only was his collection both complete and in perfect condition, it covered a vast array of languages. An entire bookcase full of comic books was more intimidating than the average vampire; I couldn't understand why Jasper would want to pass these onto me.
"Maybe Charlie would like them?" He suggested, strangely desperate to get them off his hands.
"Charlie is a bit old for comics." I replied, not doubting that my father would love them – but, at this rate, we'd need to buy a bigger house.
Defeated, Jasper moved further into his library.
"So, what's your favorite subject in school?"
"Umm," I replied, following him into the stacks, "I like English – reading and such."
"Oh! Good!" Jasper cheered, and I worried for a second.
"You know," He began, sitting in a big armchair in the center of the room and motioning for me to do the same. "Education isn't what it used to be. I mean, it's free and all now, and sure, you as a female can go to college – but they teach you all the wrong things!"
"Wrong things?" I was surprised – sure, I could see no personal logical use for trigonometry, but I thought I had received a well-rounded education.
"You haven't been so much as exposed to the great thinkers, to the Greeks and Romans – to the dramas and myths and the very makings of human development! To culture! To Freud! To Thoreau! To Voltaire! To Da Vinci and Descartes and Dvorak!"
"Oh," I said, unsure how to respond to Jasper's impassioned speech.
"You're a smart girl – I could teach you! We will start with languages, phonetics, word roots!" My mouth dropped open.
"Well, I do have forever to learn, but right now I'm struggling through Spanish…" I trailed off, unsure of how to reply politely.
Jasper moved too quickly for my eyes to follow. I looked to Alice, who shrugged – she hadn't seen this coming. He returned with a book.
"Machiavellian politics, for starters." He handed me an aged volume. I wondered, as I took it into my clumsy hands, if it would crumble on contact. Thankfully, it didn't, and I opened to the first page.
"Jasper?" I called to the quickly-moving vampire, "This is in Italian."
"Oh," he said, unfazed. He handed me a copy of Voltaire's Candide, in the original French.
"I don't speak French either." I shook my head, somewhat sadly. I had enjoyed the English translation that we had read in my literature class, but I was sure that Jasper's political and philosophical discussions would be more interesting than Mike Newton's analysis of whether Kristin Chenoweth was too pretty to be an accurate representation of Miss Cunegonde (I was pretty sure that he hadn't read the book, and instead just watched the Leonard Bernstein version – he didn't realize that there wasn't actually a chapter in the book named "Glitter and Be Gay").
He looked a little sad too, "You've read it in English anyway." He then handed me a copy of Walden. I sighed in relief – an American philosopher.
As I was looking at the book, Jasper began rummaging in a large oak desk in the corner of the room, looking for something.
"I bought everyone one of these for Christmas, but you weren't around, so you can have it now."
"Thanks," I said, skeptical. Jasper dropped something into my palm – a mood ring.
"Oh!" I cried, once again not too upset at the somewhat practical gift. "A mood ring – that's too perfect!"
"You do have a good sense of humor," he commented. "Edward didn't even smile when I gave him his. But, back then, it was perpetually black."
I didn't know how to respond to that – the thought brought back unpleasant memories. Jasper noticed and quickly moved on.
"Do you know Plato? Aristotle? Homer?" He asked, piling some books into my arms.
"Thanks," I stuttered, "This is really great and all, and you're the first person I'd come to about philosophy or psychology or any other 'ology' I could think of."
"But?" He prodded, resigning himself to the facts that fate didn't seem to want us to be close friends. Strangely, I found myself almost too happy to tell the well-intentioned vampire no.
Alice snickered from somewhere in the room. My sentence came out rushed – I wondered that even a vampire could hear it.
"I don't read Latin." I sounded too giddy. I hesitated for a second, realizing my soon-to-be-brother's trick. "Yet."
Author's Note: Next chapter, we find ourselves in our final and favorite character's closet. This chapter was a toughie – was it too hard to follow, or were some of my references a little obscure (especially the one about Candide)? Finally, Seul Lune has written some great advice for things we all wished we knew when starting out writing fanfiction - check it out!