Jasper Tales ch.4

A Day Away

*As always, Stephenie Meyer is the master of all things Twilight.

Edward POV, 1950 – a few months after Alice and Jasper arrived

My fingers were plowing through the largo movement of a Mozart's sonata with increasing rapidity. A moment ago, I was playing at a steady allegro pace, but now my hands flew along the keys at a rate that would have a human pianist keeling over with exhaustion. My stomach lurched, jumping practically up to my throat, and I fumbled the keys with my left hand, producing an atonal racket. I sighed and stopped playing. It was pointless as long as Jasper was in the room.

I turned toward the front of the room where Jasper was standing frozen at the window. He'd positioned himself to have an unobstructed view of the entire driveway and the adjacent road. Alice had only been gone for twenty minutes, and he was already approaching full panic mode. In the few months that Alice and Jasper had lived with us, Jasper had never been more than a few rooms away from Alice. If she went hunting, he went with her. If she went shopping with Esme and Rosalie, so did he. Actually, just separating into different rooms had been a recent development. For the first few weeks, Jasper refused to be more than five feet away from Alice if any of us were nearby.

Last night, Alice announced that she, Esme, and Rosalie were going to be driving into the city to go shopping. A girl's day out. She and Jasper lay together in the grass in the front yard all night. She previewed her entire day, minute by minute, to assure Jasper that there was no chance that she would be in any danger. She begged Jasper to enjoy the day and get to know Emmett and me better, even though she saw a seventy five percent chance that Jasper would wile away the day in a mixture of anxiety and guilt.

Thus far, Jasper was fulfilling Alice's prophecy. He was so nervous that he was subconsciously pushing out waves of anxiety throughout the entire room. And guilt only added to his anxiety. He felt horrible about not trusting Alice's assurances of her safety and simultaneously about being foolish enough to leave her unprotected with two vampires he barely knew.

Jasper turned around briefly when I stopped playing the piano and glared at me. He assumed that I'd stopped to eavesdrop on his thoughts, forgetting that I could hear him just as well when I was playing as when I was not. His annoyance made me react more brusquely that I normally would have done. "Haven't you everbeen separated from her, in the two years you've known each other?" I asked, in a vaguely sarcastic tone.

"No," he snapped. He turned back to stare out the window. Or at least not alone with people I don't...He stopped, aware that I was hearing everything he was thinking.

"Trust," I finished. He growled in response, thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood on his toes to see further down the road.

How do they stand this? he wondered. Pretty much how they stand you knowing and influencing all their emotions. I was tempted to say this out loud, but thought it would not contribute to our goal of friendship, or at least peaceful co-existence.

Jasper wanted to get away from me and my interfering mind-reading. He considered following the girls into town, but decided it was too risky and might upset Alice. He then thought of running up to the lake a few miles behind our home, but was afraid to be too far from the telephone if Alice needed him.

"If it makes you feel any better," I said, running my hand silently over the piano keys, keeping my voice light and casual. "On the non-existent chance that Esme or Rosalie decided to hurt Alice, I think that given Alice's abilities, she could easily defeat them both."

Jasper stared at me, more puzzled than mollified. After standing silently for a moment, he turned into teacher mode. "Why are you telling me this? You are exposing a weakness of your coven to a potential enemy."

I bristled at his assumption that I was naive and careless in the protection of my family. "If it wasn't glaringly obvious, I wouldn't tell you. But unfortunately, it is, as you yourself have thought on more than one occasion." I put my elbows on the music stand of the piano and buried my face in my hands, breathing deeply, trying to push off the lingering jumpiness from Jasper's anxiety. What would Carlisle say if he was here? I walked over to the sofa nearest Jasper and leaned against the arm. "Look, Jasper, you've only been here a month. I know it's going to take you some time, a long time probably, before you trust us. All I can really say is that none of us would ever dream of attacking Alice or you. We aren't like the Southerners."

"I know that," he grumbled. You don't need to placate me like I'm a child.

"I'm not trying to be patronizing, just reassuring. Besides, Alice wanted you to enjoy yourself today too. If you'd like, we could get out the chess board or play backgammon. We bought a new cribbage set last month that we haven't used much. Or we could get out a deck of cards. I'm not really the most fun person to play with given the mind-reading thing, but Emmett's quite good at all the games. I'm sure he'd jump at the chance to play." I really did sound like Carlisle. He tried anything and everything to get me out of my gloom during my first few months as an immortal. He bought every game known to man, brought home loads of books, reams of music. He would throw out suggestion after suggestion of things we could do, hoping that something would strike my fancy. Eventually, I would give in, choosing some random game just to make him shut up. Or, if I was feeling particularly resentful that day, I would throw the nearest piece of furniture at his head. Jasper, fortunately, was more even-tempered and mature than that.

"Maybe later," he mumbled, peering out the window once again. He replayed Alice's admonition that he not spend the day wallowing and his reluctant promise to not do so and then walked out of the room. His feet moved slower than normal, almost as if he was not walking of his own volition.

I returned to playing the piano, managing to keep to the proper tempo without Jasper in the room. Out of curiosity, or more accurately, out of nosiness, I mentally watched Jasper as he wandered aimlessly upstairs. He quickly walked around the perimeter of Carlisle's office, the walls of which were covered floor to ceiling with books. There were several books that caught his eye, but he was nervous about lingering in the office of the leader of our family, or coven in Jasper's terminology. Carlisle had stated on numerous occasions that Jasper and Alice were welcome to use his office and any of the books within it whenever they wished, but Jasper still had difficulty believing Carlisle was as kind and generous as he appeared. His emotions seemed genuine, but coven leaders just didn't act that way. It wasn't natural. I rolled my eyes. Carlisle would be thrilled that Jasper trusted him enough to walk into his office at all. I had no doubt that he would figure out which books carried the strongest trace of Jasper's scent and give them to him specially.

Jasper lingered outside the door of the room he and Alice now shared. He thought of walking into Alice's closet and burying himself in her scent for the remainder of the day. It was the next best thing to having her with him. But Alice would be upset if she found him there, incapacitated without her, so he took his hand off the doorknob and walked further down the hallway.

Esme's study was at the end of the hall on the second floor. She referred to it as her drawing room, but Emmett called it Esme's potty room. It was a tiny bathroom that Esme used for drafting house plans and painting watercolors. Prior to Alice and Jasper's arrival, she had used the attic as an artistic studio, but it had been redesignated as my bedroom. The bathroom was the only space available in a very crowded house.

Jasper drank in Esme's scent as he walked into the room. Esme exuded contentment and peacefulness so much that Jasper could almost feel her calming presence through scent alone. Esme was the only person in our family who Jasper truly trusted, or at least almost trusted. Similarly, despite her initial fear, Esme was the first person in the family to look past Jasper's scars and jumpiness and accept him into our lives.

Jasper looked closely at the various tools and instruments on the shelves above the toilet. He picked up a metal contraption. It was painted black and shaped like a V, with a flat bottom. He pulled it open slightly, and jumped when the top sprang back and now lay straight with the bottom piece. He gasped and stared at it in horror. He must have broken it. He hoped that Esme was not particularly attached to this metal thing. If he could find out what it was, he could buy her a new one and give it to her with fervent apologies.

I stifled a laugh and ran upstairs. I was trying to keep the corners of my mouth from twitching as I walked into Esme's room. It was pointless to hide though, since Jasper was perfectly aware that I was amused at his expense. His taught, worried face slid into in an irritated glare as he turned around with the contraption in his hand. I felt my amusement slip away as Jasper replaced the emotion with a vague sense of lethargy. Better that than terror, I suppose.

"Don't worry, Jasper, you didn't break it."

His body deflated like a balloon. He was so relieved that he wasn't even angry with me. Looking at me with the hint of a sheepish, embarrassed smile, he asked, "What is it?"

"It's a stapler." The contraption's name evoked no recognition. "It's a bit like a gun. When you press the two sides together, it shoots out a small piece of metal that holds paper together. Let me show you." I held my hand out, and Jasper gave me the stapler. I grabbed two crumpled sheets of paper out of the wastebasket, smoothed them, and then placed them next to one another. "You put two pieces of paper against the bottom of the stapler. You press down the heavier part of the stapler against the papers, and - " the stapler clicked as the staple fastened itself into the paper sheets "now the papers are attached."

Jasper lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgement and thanks for the demonstration. He held the stapler gingerly, turning it upside down to look at the row of staples. He picked out one of the staples and bent the light metal piece inward. He pushed a little too hard and the metal snapped in two. He frowned and place the stapler back on the shelf where he'd found it.

"Thank you," he said as he exited the room. He thought he should leave before he accidentally did break one of Esme's modern tools. Feeling rather awkward as we walked together down the hallway, he thought he should offer to do something with me. To continue to ignore me after I'd helped him would be inexcusably rude. But the idea of playing a game with a mind-reader was less than appealing, and he wasn't in the mood to practice fighting.

Finally, something acceptable occurred to him. "Do you play poker? My ability to call people's bluffs gives me a considerable advantage usually. With your abilities, we may be evenly matched."

"Evenly matched?" I grinned. "I don't know about that. But I'm happy to help you improve your ability to be a good loser. I'll get the cards."

*The first modern stapler was patented in 1866, according to Wikipedia.

*What do you think? Please R&R!