-| Glitch continues |-

I try to sneak back into the house.

As far as sneaking goes, I'm fairly successful. I soft-step into the foyer and ease the screen door closed with only the merest of thwumps. I can hear Charlie and Renee conferring somewhere in the back of the house. Since the only room in the back of the house in which they could possibly be conferring is their old bedroom, I assume that's where they are. I manage not to get too distracted or weirded out by that fact as I stumble out of my boots.

I avoid all the usual creaky spots in the entryway leading to the staircase. I lift one socked foot to the non-squeaky side of the first step and start shifting my weight.

"Bella?" Renee calls. "Is that you?"

I race up the stairs like a stampede of elephants. Just as I'm closing my bedroom door behind me, I hear Charlie call, "Where have you been? We called Alice's mom…you weren't there."

Guess Alice hadn't exactly told her parents where she was going, either.

I don't answer him, instead grabbing the brush from my dresser and starting the process of picking miscellaneous leaves and twigs out of my hair. Thanks to my brief stint on the ground, I look like a forest-dwelling nomad. But before I've made myself presentable, Renee pushes open my bedroom door.

"What happened?" she asks, rushing into the room. "Is everything alright?"

"Everything's fine," I placate.

Charlie pokes his head in. "We got your note. You didn't take your truck?"

"No, I walked."

"You walked to Alice's and back?" Charlie asks, an edge to his voice.

I can't remember my parents being in my room at the same time before. When I was younger, I probably would have found their presence comforting.

"No. Alice and I met up in the woods near here."

"So you didn't go to Alice's?" Charlie clarifies.

"Are you lying to us now?" Renee demands.

"And why are you and Alice meeting in the woods?"Charlie asks.

Due to the fact that I'm an only child of a divorced father, I find having two parents in my room throwing flaming-dart questions into the bulls-eye of my heart just a tad overwhelming. I'm too physically tired and too emotionally drained to try to decipher which question I should answer first and how I should best answer each one.

Instead, I snap.

"I don't lie," I growl, tossing my hairbrush forcefully back onto the dresser. "My note didn't say anything about going to Alice's. Merely that I was going to see Alice. And Alice and I often meet in the woods."

Only after I look up to see Renee and Charlie staring at me do I realize that my answers plus the furious tone in which I've spoken plus my overall disheveled appearance could easily be projecting a less than positive overall image.

I say, "Would you mind giving me some space here? I walked home in the rain; I need to get cleaned up." I try to keep my tone neutral, but my voice wavers just a bit.

"Of course, honey," Renee finally says, meeting Charlie's gaze in warning. "We'll continue this conversation over dinner."

She starts ushering Charlie out of the room.

"I'm not hungry," I blurt. Bad thing to say, as the parental units freeze.

Charlie clears his throat. "Bella, we need to talk to you. Can you come down anyway?"

I clench my jaw and stare at my feet. I'm truly not hungry, but since he's asked so nicely…

"Fine."

The door closes behind them, and I'm left to prepare myself for dinner.

I couldn't have prepared for this dinner. Dr. K had apparently taken it upon himself to inform Renee that our sessions aren't going as planned. I suppose that doctor/patient confidentiality thing only gets you so far when the patient in question is 1) a minor and 2) crazy.

Over lumpy spaghetti, I hear all about Renee's conversation. Dr. K has told her that I refuse to consider the option that I am, in fact, schizophrenic. Dr. K has informed her that I am more convinced than ever that Edward is real. Ergo, concordantly, and vis à vis, Dr. K is recommending medication.

I can't take Dr. K seriously.

But Renee can. And does.

"Bella," she says earnestly while I push around over-cooked food on my plate, "people with this illness often find it hard to lead normal lives, to hold down a job, to maintain relationships."

"No pills."

"Honey, we don't want this to happen to you."

"No pills."

I repeat this mantra, remembering what Alice had said about the medication she'd been given. She'd been so out of it that she'd even forgotten about Edward.

I don't want to forget about Edward.

Renee and Charlie have a silent conversation with their eyes. Renee's eyes plead, Do something. Charlie's eyes do their best to look at his feet.

Eventually, Charlie plinks his fork and sighs. "We only want to help you, Bells."

I drop my own fork. "Help me what? Not see Edward anymore? Because I already don't see Edward. Are the pills supposed to help me lead a 'normal' life? Because I've heard they won't. I've heard they make you stupid and slow, and I'm already stupid and slow enough."

"You're neither stupid nor slow," Renee says.

"If I'm not stupid, then maybe you should listen to me. Maybe you should give me a chance."

"Give you a chance to do what, exactly?"

I want so badly to say: To prove Edward is real.

But I can't say that.

"To…try harder. If Dr. K doesn't think I'm trying hard enough, I can try harder."

There.

The way I've worded this, I've sneakily avoided acknowledging guilt while simultaneously casting reasonable doubt on Dr. K's assessment of the situation.

Charlie knows all about reasonable doubt. "She has a point, Renee. Surely there's something else that the doctor can try."

"Not if Bella isn't cooperating. Charlie, we talked about this."

Good to know they were only talking while I was falling out of trees.

I sense an opening. "I'm not being difficult. You know I'm not really one to volunteer information without being asked."

"Maybe that doctor isn't asking in the right way," Charlie says. He's looking at Renee. He's agreeing with me. He doesn't like talking to people, either.

I jump in again, promising to try harder at this whole therapy thing. I promise to take it seriously and love it and cherish it 'til death do us part.

The pills are postponed. Only postponed because my parents, they still think my life is spiraling out of control. Of course, they haven't seen anything yet. Edward would show himself to Alice but not me? I would show them out of control.

For you see, like all good plans, my plan has a phase three.

In the third and final phase, I am certain that I will accomplish my goal. In phase three, I will finally draw Edward out from the everlasting shadows in which he lurks. I will prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that he exists.

Or I will die trying.

Phase three begins when I open my eyes the next morning. I force myself to look at the world in a whole new way. I look for the right kinds of situations in which I can embroil myself. Unfortunately, Forks offers a dearth of life-threatening activities. There are only so many ways you can go dare-devil in a small town. No tall buildings to throw myself from. No buses to step in front of.

The things I can do are trivial. Oh look, I'm not wearing my seatbelt. Oh look, I've coerced my dinosaur of a car to approach the speed limit as I round this curve. Oh look, I'm climbing the school steps—without using the handrail!

At one point, I contemplate the whole drinking and driving thing, but I'm leery of substances that might bend my mind even further out of whack.

So in phase three, I still need my partner in crime.

One of the many upsides to side-stepping the meds is that I'm still allowed to drive. Consequently, I'm allowed to continue seeing Jacob. And when I'm with Jacob, I can pretend that everything's normal. Although normally, I don't sit here popcorning dare-devil(ish) ideas.

"Let's swim out to the sea stacks at La Push."

Jacob is on his back under one of the bikes, tinkering.

"Let's not," he says. "The undertow is wicked, and the water's freezing."

"How about we go paddle-boating on Lake Crescent?"

"Uh…"

"Cow-tipping?"

Jacob lifts up and looks at me blankly.

And rightly so. Like cheetahs, there are not a lot of cows in Forks.

"Am I not entertaining you enough?" he asks, tossing a tool into a nearby box. "Do I need to take you to a movie or something?" He's smiling, but the look in his eyes informs me he's only half kidding.

"No. I don't do movies." I turn my face away, looking out into the forest.

Jacob sobers, belatedly remembering Port Angeles. "Okay. No movies." He's silent for the time it takes him to screw a final bolt. "Any reason you're proposing these outlandish activities?"

"No. No reason. Just getting antsy about these bikes. Are you sure you're the mechanic you say you are?"

His glare could scathe.

Two hours later, Jacob stretches to his full height and smiles devilishly at me as he presses a little red button. The bike roars to life. This time, it doesn't die, even as the roar of the second bike joins in the fray.

He's exactly the mechanic he says he is.

I smile right back at him because his timing couldn't have been more perfect. I'm beyond eager to christen his creations in a proper ceremony that involves rubber meeting road.

At first, Jacob has fun.

He beams as we load the machines to the bed of my truck, which sags under weight he shouldn't have been able to lift.

I tell him it's because of my "help."

"Yeah right," he scoffs. "If by 'help' you mean spinning the wheels."

I "hardy har" at his pun.

We've already scouted the perfect track—a deserted farm road up north that is relatively straight, relatively flat, and perfectly remote.

On our way, I drive winding roads, and we see some of his buddies leaping from a rocky bluff to the sea. Normally, I would have looked away from kamikaze, but now I'm all eyes. Even from a distance, Quil sees my truck and waves. I watch, fascinated, as this scrawny kid launches from the earth, a mere stick against the cliff.

Then we're around the bend and Jacob, in response to my raised eyebrows, rolls his eyes. "Such a pansy. I jump from higher."

There's something in his voice, the slightest of strains I've noticed whenever Quil in particular is nearby. Selfishly, I like the sound of it.

I tease him. "You know you're going to have to prove it now."

"As if I even need to." He's matter-of-fact, looking out his window.

And it's true. I know that he can do it. Jacob can do anything. Me, I'm wondering from how high I could convince myself to jump.

Jacob's still having fun as we line up the bikes.

"Ready to be illicit?" he asks, and my body chills for a moment until I catch his reference and nod.

He shows me how to work the hand holds and, I don't know, he might be leaving his big, warm hand on mine a little too long. He leaves it there and I'm looking down and I see that, like me, he bites his nails. I see that, despite their size and their weight, they're still the hands of a boy.

The moment passes and I know as much as I'm going to know about this handle and that and we're straddling our mounts, gunning the gas, leaning forward as though we're already flying toward a finish line.

Or at least, I am.

For our maiden voyage, Jacob chivalrously gave me the fastest dirt bike in the Pacific Northwest because it handles better than Quil's "special" bike, which has a tricky clutch. I have the fastest bike, and I'm going to use it. A few moments after we kick off, the surge of my motor drowns out Jacob's startled shout. I can't even decipher what he said; I'm too far gone.

I'm focused on riding far. I'm focused on riding fast. My hair trails wild and free because who needs a helmet? In that moment, it's all need and speed and fun fun fun.

Then, of course, it's not.

We weren't supposed to ride this far, nor this fast. The road is no longer straight, and Jacob didn't show me how to turn, so when the road veers off, I don't follow. The bike falters, but my body doesn't, and I'm flying over the handlebars and oh look, there's a rock.

Forget killing two birds with one stone; I'll kill one Swan with one stone.

I'm flying through the air just like a bird, feeling the wind in my face, thinking that now would be a most excellent time to feel more effects of the wind. A most excellent time indeed. I think this right up until the point where my head connects with something solid.

Then I can't think anything at all.

For several minutes, I stare into the blue, blue sky as the ground tries to rock me to sleep. But I can't sleep right now; I have to go again.

As I struggle to sit up, Jacob's no longer having fun. He's throwing his bike to the ground and striding up to me and gritting out, "What the hell were you thinking?" The uncustomary swear word fails to hide uncustomary emotion in his voice—fear.

Of course, the time I plan for the effects of the wind is the time that the wind is nowhere to be felt.

"Your head is bleeding," he growls, crouching low, his fingers fluttering near a wound I'm just beginning to feel.

"It's nothing," I say even as blood oozes down my cheek.

The blood seems to concern Jacob, and he reaches down as if to pull off his shirt.

"Um, hello?" I say, shaking the sleeve of my button-up at him. "I'm the one with clothes to spare, not you." I shrug out of my flannel, and he helps me wrap it around my head like a turban or like a wounded soldier.

"What was that?" he asks, more calm now that I'm conscious rather than borderline comatose.

"Was what?" I play dumb like a champ because hey, I just hit my head.

"You making a beeline for a boulder."

"It was an accident."

He looks at the rock, then mumbles, "Didn't look like an accident to me."

"Right," I drawl. "Like I would purposefully launch myself into a rock."

He still doesn't look convinced.

"C'mon, you know I'm the ultimate klutz."

He smiles a small, shaky smile. "I should have known better than to entrust my baby to a paleface, much less a paleface klutz."

For the first time, I look over to see if my bike, the bike that Jacob spent months working on, is damaged. There's a little dirt on the handlebar, but nothing seems bent or broken or leaking. Unlike my head.

Good, because…

"Let's go again!" I say with false cheer, and Jacob just looks at me.

He doesn't say no, but his eyes say it for him. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing. I just have a need for speed." I laugh it off.

He doesn't laugh with me.

We don't go again.

He's quiet as he drives us home.

The cut on my head is difficult to hide from my parents, but not impossible. Not for the first time, I'm glad that those stretchy headbands are currently en vogue. I borrow a thick one from Alice, and it covers the wound nicely. For a while, I look cute and trendy.

My ploy is particularly timely because Renee has stopped renting a room at the Pacific Inn.

"Too expensive," she says. "It's only practical that I stay here."

Charlie starts sleeping on the couch. Nothing new there; he often falls asleep watching a late game. We keep a pillow and a purple Huskies throw on the couch for this reason.

I'm under a near-constant cloud of parental supervision. When I'm home, I start doing homework down on the kitchen table. It's a win-win: not only do my parents see that I'm not doing anything weird up alone in my room, but they're also more apt to continue approving time with Jacob if I do my schoolwork beforehand.

Most of the time, I actually do schoolwork. Sometimes, like now, I write in my little red journal about how disappointed I am that my head impacted with that rock. What is the difference between falling out of a tree toward the ground and falling off a bike toward a rock? Maybe Jacob's presence was a factor. Maybe I hadn't been far enough off the ground. Maybe Edward can see the future and knew the rock would cause no permanent damage.

I can't know; I need more data. I ponder the fact that I've seen a tire swing in Jacob's yard. On the back of my trig homework, I draw a rough arc and calculate the trajectory of a fall if I let go when the pendulum swing is at its peak…

The numbers are promising.

Who knew that I would actually use math in real life?

Of course, I'll have to convince Jacob to push me. Easier said than done since the bike incident.

"I'm going to the Black's," I say in the direction of whichever parent is on Bella watch, jamming my feet into shoes and reaching for my coat.

Then I stand in the foyer for a long moment, feeling like something is wrong. Something is missing. After further contemplation, I determine that what's missing are my car keys. I always leave them on the table in the entryway, the table that I'd placed purposefully right there so that I can find my keys and my wallet. And there's my wallet. But there aren't my keys.

"Looking for something?" Renee asks innocently from where she's flipping through a mag. The way she says it, I want to whirl and scream at her that I know she's taken my car keys and why, if she didn't want me going anywhere, didn't she just say so?

But I don't whirl. I don't scream. My tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, I start looking for my keys.

"Do you really need to go and see Jacob today?" Renee calls. "I was hoping that maybe we could spend some family time this weekend."

I'm not up for this, as Renee's idea of spending time with me is starting to remind me of the time we spent with Gran. It makes me uncomfortable, like my parents are watching with bated breath to see what crazy thing I'm going to do next.

"How about tomorrow?" I bargain, and Renee merely makes a disapproving noise as she flips to the next page.

I look for my keys.

And look.

And look.

Thirty minutes later, I'm grumpy and sweaty and almost to the point where screw it, I'm going to walk to the rez, when…

I find my keys.

Under the washing machine.

Guess Charlie and Renee didn't confiscate them after all. Guess they just fell out of my pants pocket when I was doing laundry yesterday. Guess I subsequently managed to kick a ring of clinky, dangly keys underneath the washer without, say, hearing them go clanking across the tile.

This is what any normal, sane person would guess.

But I guess I'm just flat-out not normal.

Because I'm very, very suspicious.

Granted, I lose stuff all the time—combs, socks, my truck in parking lots. What I don't usually do, however, is lose things so thoroughly. I usually find stuff right where I left it, even if I had forgotten where I'd left it.

This time, I can't help but wonder if perhaps I hadn't left my keys in my pants pocket. If, in fact, someone had spirited said keys from their rightful spot in the foyer to the laundry room and conveniently slid them somewhere out of the way. If, perhaps, this same someone had done so because he wasn't happy about my activities during phase three. Or the injury I sustained under Jacob Black's watch.

Granted, I know that it wasn't Jacob's fault. But this someone might not know.

I should probably feel frustrated. I should probably feel angry.

Instead, I feel momentus. I feel turbo-charged. I feel like I could jump off a cliff.

The fact that this someone bothered to hide my keys—it's a sign, I tell you. A sign I'm close. A sign that someone's getting desperate. That someone is going to crack, and soon.

But that someone is not going to be me.

I salute my keys at Renee as I leave.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Jacob says in his best Han Solo voice. He says this as he peers over the edge of a rocky cliff at deceptively calm water below.

We're picking our way up the same rocks that we'd seen Quil and pals launching themselves from earlier. I had tricked Jacob into coming here by not telling him where we were going. When I'd pulled the truck over to the side of the road near the bluff, his face had gone all pinched and disapproving. Not a look I'm used to seeing on him.

I don't think he's forgiven me for my going all Evel Knievel on his bike.

I think he's worried about me.

Now, he's trying to distract me with Star Wars. I don't let him. "I thought you said you do this all the time," I say, continuing to climb. I avoid looking down.

"Yes, but—"

"Are you wussing out on me now, Black?"

"Of course not," he sputters, as if the thought is ludicrous. "It's just that I usually jump from a little lower."

I continue to climb. "I distinctly remember something about you needing to prove your manhood."

"Bella," Jacob says, watching my feet, which are already at his eye level. "There's absolutely no way you're jumping, much less from that high."

I climb a little higher and then stop. I peel off my jacket. I kick off my shoes.

"Bella," Jacob says, and I hear the first undercurrent of panic in his tone. "This is dangerous. You don't know what you're doing."

Wrong. I know exactly what I'm doing.

"I thought you liked me dangerous."

Jacob's face tightens into a dark scowl. "I like you alive. Can you even swim?"

I look down at the whitecaps surging far, far below.

"Can you?" I challenge.

"Yes."

"Then I'll need you to jump in after me."

"Bella," Jacob scoffs, trying to laugh this all off, but the panic is still there. Good. I want Edward to hear the panic. I want Edward to feel the panic. My entire body tenses in panic as I will myself to step forward, to the very edge of the cliff.

"Bella!" Jacob says, the panic in his voice escalating to all-out terror. He starts reaching, scrambling up after me.

But he's too late.

I jump.

For one glorious second, I'm flying. I'm weightless, my body rising from the earth, the wind caressing my hair. Only for one glorious second, and then I'm falling. Falling to either a sure death or a sure reveal—at this point, I will take either.

I'm falling.

And falling.

And falling.

And then I'm hitting water like it's a brick wall.

I've never taken swim lessons. I've never jumped off the side of a pool, much less off a diving board. I don't know that you're supposed to point your toes. I don't know the metaphor of making your body as tight and straight as a pencil to minimize the impact on your bones.

Because I don't know these things, I'm nearly knocked senseless by my initial plunge. From above, the water had looked welcoming, calm, beautiful. The instant my head sinks beneath the waves, the water transforms into a maelstrom of raging, spinning currents that toss me about as easily as if I had been the limp form of Mr. Bear.

I breach and breathe, but ensuing surges of slapping tide suck me under, prevent me from getting enough air, threaten to crush me into the nearby rocks.

Jacob was right to panic.

Edward, I'm scared.

Edward, it's now or never.

Edward, your discovery or my death.

I sink beneath the sea. I sink down deep, farther than Jacob would ever be able to reach. It's calm down here, peaceful. Above, I can see the harsh tendrils of water beating against the air and the rocks, raging against this world.

But nothing can touch me down here.

..

..

..

Until, of course, something does.