Chapter 2

The water was very cold, but it was refreshing because it was spring and warm out. There were cliffs on one side of the lake which Emmett, Jasper and I jumped off of in to the water below. Bella swam in the water while Alice lay on her floating bed. Rosalie had brought along a folding chair to sit in and pretended to tan, though she knew her skin would never get any darker than it already was.

"Hey Edward!" Emmett called to me from on top of the cliff. "You wanna race? I'll give you a head start."

What an idiot. He made comments like this all the time. "I'll race you to the car." "Down low . . . too slow." And the ever popular sneak up behind me, poke me in the shoulder, then see how far he could run before I turned around. Even on my fastest tries, he was already out the door and in the yard.

"No thanks Emmett!" I yelled back. "I am content with just floating here, thank you." But he wasn't listening because he had jumped off the cliff half way through my sentence and landed in the water with a loud splash, giving me a mouth full of water.

"Sorry." He said, surfacing, unfortunately, and giving me a lopsided, fake smile. "What did you say?"

"Never mind." I sighed. "Just go back to what you were doing." He shrugged his shoulders and swam toward Jasper to see if he wanted to race. He did and they took off at full speed toward land.

Jasper got there first and ran into the woods. They would run through the woods, find and catch a squirrel, then bring it back, give it to their girl, then the first one to touch the rocks would be the winner. Emmett was very good at the whole fast to and from the woods thing, but not so good at the catch the squirrel thing. And Jasper was pretty good at it all, so my money was on him.

And sure enough, ten minutes later, Jasper emerged, carrying a petrified squirrel by its tail. He handed it to Alice, who let the poor creature go, then ran to the water and began to swim.

Usually, Emmett would have come out a no more than a minute later than Jasper, but by this time he still hadn't come surfaced.

"He must be having some real trouble with that thing." I said, coming out of the water to sit on the beach next to Rosalie, Alice, and Bella.

Alice and Bella nodded, but Rosalie didn't.

"Are you okay, Rosalie?" Asked Bella.

"I think something might be wrong." She said, making an attempt to get out of her chair but Alice stopped her.

"Let Jasper go and see." She said and called him over.

"What's up?" He asked.

"Emmett still hasn't come out of the woods." Alice said. "And we're beginning to worry. Would go and find him please?"

"Of course." He said smoothly, and bent down and gave her a little kiss on the cheek, then strode off to the woods.

But Rosalie still wasn't satisfied.

"He will be fine." Bella comforted her.

"I know." She sighed, "I guess I'm just still so uptight because of William. Him being out there just freaks me out."

"I found him." Jasper said, coming out of the woods with Emmett slung over his back, his arms dangled limply in the air.

"What happened to him?" Rosalie shrieked, jumping out of her chair before Alice could stop her and running to Jasper's side. Jasper slung Emmett back over his shoulder and laid him on the ground.

"I don't know, but you guys had better come and take a look at this." The rest of us got up and went over to Jasper as fast as we could. Rosalie gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

When Bella and I got there, I looked at him. He had many little cracks in his skin, as if he were a piece of cracked rock. He looked withered. Dead.

"Such a shame." Came a voice from behind us, sarcasm strong in the vile voice.

"What did you do to him?" Rosalie shouted.

"Me." Said the voice. "I have done nothing to him. My friend Cleo however, well she had a fun time with him." I turned around, though I didn't have to. I knew quite well who was behind us.

William stood, bare feet imbedded in the sand, behind us, a girl probably in her early twenties, who I took as Cleo. Where he had picked her up, I couldn't say.

"What do you want with us?" Alice asked.

"What I wanted before." He said. "Fun, revenge, Bella." He paused before he said her name, then turned to me and smiled.

"Edward." He spoke my name as if it were a new type of candy bar; with a yearning to devour it mercilessly. Hands came from behind me, and pulled me close to them. Two people had me in their grasps.

Bella tried to run over to me, but Alice grabbed her firmly by the arm.

"Don't worry, pretty." William cooed to her. "I won't hurt your precious human boy." He said the word with an emphasis, to remind her and everyone else, just how vulnerable I was now. "You may have him back as soon as I'm done with him." He turned to the people that were holding me. "Let's go."

He started to walk away and the girl that was with him said something to Jasper before she followed him. Alice whispered something to Bella, something that must have kept her in her place because even though she wept, tears endlessly rolling down her cheeks, she did not try to follow us.

They dragged me into the forest and out of sight of the rest of my family before they hit me on the back of the neck.