-| Glitch continues |-
I hadn't applied to Dartmouth, but to Dartmouth I go. A small college located in the small town of Hanover in the small state of New Hampshire. New Hampshire is more than three thousand miles from Forks.
It's perfect.
I will finally be free. Free from Forks, from fantasies, from phantom freaks.
A mere three days before an airplane will transport me three thousand miles from the town in which I've spent my life, I finally find a group of three upperclasswomen who are willing to rent an empty room to a freshman. Middle of the school year at Dartmouth, it's a bit difficult to find housing, especially as a freshman. Especially as an underage freshman. The understanding is that the freshman in question is willing to cook and clean more than her fair share. More precisely, everyone's fair share.
This freshman is more than willing.
I can cook and clean in my sleep.
I didn't tell Renee that I was having trouble finding housing in Hanover. I didn't tell her that the dorms are full and that the student housing near campus is booked a year in advance. I certainly didn't tell her that I found this particular rent house on Craig's List.
Renee keeps dropping hints about coming and helping me get settled. But I assure her that I will be fine, that my room is already furnished, that she should take this opportunity to get out of Forks (again) and get on with her life. She finally agrees not to tag along to Hanover if I will just promise her one thing.
I promise.
I promise to find the city's best doctor within three days of touching down on New Hampshire soil. I promise to give her the name, office phone, cell phone, and home address of said person within the week. I promise her all this and don't even comment that her one thing is multiplying like bunnies.
On our drive to the airport, Renee goes over the things I've promised, again and again. As we drive, my head is turned toward her and my eyes are on her face, but I'm not listening to the words coming out of her mouth. I'm too busy wondering what is going to happen in the next few hours.
And I don't mean that I'm wondering how smooth my flight will be or what I will think of my roommates when I meet them. I'm not wondering how I'll feel being off on my own.
No, I'm wondering about Edward.
More specifically, I wonder what Edward is going to do now that I'm leaving Forks. I wonder what Edward thinks about all of this, if he cares that I'm leaving him forever. I wonder if Edward will stay in Forks.
And I wonder what I will do if he does.
Charlie keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror, as though there's something he would like to say if he could.
Renee chatters on.
As Charlie pulls into an unloading spot at the airport terminal, I step out of the car and receive my first clue as to what Edward might do. For, as I raise my face to the rain, I can't feel him. He's not watching me as I struggle to get the smaller of my two suitcases out of the back of the car. He's not watching Charlie hold our hug a little too long, a little too tight. Or as I print my boarding pass and stand in my socks waiting to go through security. Or as I look back, one last time, to wave my parents goodbye.
He doesn't see the single tear that slips through my defenses before I square my shoulders and march to my gate.
Edward is also not on the plane. I should be relieved. I'm one step closer to freedom, one step closer to escaping the nightmare of my adolescence. Instead, I'm strangely uneasy. In all past situations in my life in which I've been at risk of potential mortal danger, I've always drawn comfort from the fact that Edward will be there to save me.
I spend the flight thinking about what would happen if one or both of the pilots has a heart attack. If an engine fails. If the plane is struck by lightning. If an albatross flies into the propellers. If the landing gear does not deploy properly. If air traffic control gets their wires crossed.
I've heard Superman say that airplanes are statistically the safest way to fly. But without Edward, I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe until the plane is safely docked at its gate and I have safely traversed a rickety, smelly tunnel and stepped onto the solid concrete of the Lebanon Municipal Airport. I don't feel safe until the taxi deposits me safely in front of a cute white bungalow with green shutters.
It's hard not to feel safe in front of a cute white bungalow with green shutters.
A pretty girl with shiny brown hair and side-swept bangs answers the door.
"You must be Bella," she says, and I nod. She doesn't look like the type of person to have lured me to her house for the express purpose of killing me slowly.
Her name's Kate, and she waves me in to begin the grand tour. Of my three roommates—Kate, Jen, and Rosalie—the latter was the last one I would have guessed I would ever be friends with. From the scathing look that Rosalie gives me when we are introduced, I think she agrees. Then again, the look could have been because Kate barged into her room without knocking.
Kate shows me to my room, apologizing that it's so small and doesn't have its own bathroom. I take in the patchwork quilt tucked neatly over the queen-sized bed, window seat shaded by a birch tree in the back yard, a gold-gilded, floor-length mirror.
It's perfect.
They don't have houses like this in Forks.
"The mirror's a bit much, I know," Kate says, "but the previous owner left it here, and it was too heavy for us to move."
When she leaves me to get settled in, I throw a white sheet over the mirror. Kate was right; it's disconcerting, causing unexpected light and movement.
As I begin unpacking my meager belongings, I know I've made the right decision. In leaving Forks. In coming here. Each bit of Bella that I pull out and set up anchors me more firmly to this place, my new home.
When someone knocks on my door later that evening, I know it probably isn't Kate. But I certainly don't expect to see Rosalie. She sticks in her beautiful blonde head and focuses her beautiful winter eyes on me. And oh look, she even has a beautiful little beauty mark above her lip.
"Can I come in?" she says.
"Sure."
I'm stretched out, fully clothed, on my fully made bed, listening to instrumental music on my iPod while I write in the little blue notebook I purchased for a new life in Hanover. Blue is the complete opposite of red. As Rosalie enters, I tuck the notebook under my pillow and dislodge my ear buds. She steps into the room like she owns the place (maybe she does) and inspects my knick-knacks.
She smiles when she sees what I've done with the mirror.
When her gaze at last settles on me, I see approval. For a second, I think she's going to sit on the corner of my bed, but she instead opts to lean against the dresser.
We do the whole who, what, where thing. I learn that she's from Oregon, she's a junior, and that—surprisingly enough—she's an English major like me. Talking to her is easier than I would have imagined given her tough-as-titanium exterior. Had she not initiated this conversation, I'm sure that it would have taken me months to approach her.
We're talking about the best places to get food around campus when Rosalie asks, "So who was he?"
I'm lost. "What?"
"The guy who hurt you," she says.
When I continue to stare at her in disbelief, she exhales a laugh and looks out the window.
"Sorry, I'm kinda an expert on the subject. Your face, your voice, even the way you dress all scream 'rejection' to me."
Should I take that as a compliment?
In Forks, this is the point at which I would have lied, the point at which I would have denied that there's a him. Like I had denied him to Jacob. To Alice.
"Ed…Edward," I stumble. "His name was Edward." I'm proud of myself for saying his name. I'm proud of myself for using the past tense. It feels cathartic, like I'm rinsing him away.
Rosalie focuses her steel gaze back on me.
"Mine was Emmett." She picks up one of my grizzly bear figurines from the dresser, the largest in a set of three sold at Forks Antiques. "We were high school sweethearts. He was larger than life, caring, protective, and loyal to a fault." She puts down the grizzly bear and tips it on its side with one finger. "Turns out, though, he was more loyal to football than to me. We were supposed to go off to college together, but he got a full ride to a PAC 10 school."
We are quiet for a moment.
Then she asks, "What about your Edward?"
Again, I want to lie. I want to tell her that he cheated on me with another girl. I want to make him sound inconsequential.
But I say, "We grew up together. He was my puppy dog crush. But he never wanted me."
"Hm," she says, frowning slightly. "That's not what I would have guessed."
My interest is piqued. "What would you have guessed?"
She looks at me for a second like she's trying to figure me out. "I would have guessed a whirlwind Romeo and Juliet love story. Lies and love lost."
How I wish.
In my case, it would have been better to have loved and lost than to have loved at all. It would be nice to know for certain that I had someone to lose.
Rosalie pushes away from the dresser, her slippers flapping against the hardwood floor. As she grabs the door handle, she looks over at me and says, "A piece of advice, Swan." I look back up at her face, wondering if she has something to say about Edward. "Avoid Dr. Jones for Freshman English. He's killer hard and is stingy with the A's."
As she steps through the door, she looks at me a final time. "And if you need anything, just let me know."
Just like that, I know that I have made my first friend here. The moment she leaves, I pull out my laptop and register for Dr. Jones' Freshman English class.
Later, when Rosalie discovers my English professor, she barks a laugh.
"You were a nerd in high school, weren't you?" she asks.
"You were prom queen in high school, weren't you?" I counter.
We smile at each other.
The unanticipated confidence of having the likes of Rosalie Hale for a friend allows me to fulfill the rest of my promises to Renee more quickly than expected. I interview for a student job on campus and am accepted on the spot. I'll start Monday, the first day of school. I find a respectable doctor and send his 411 to Renee.
I have all my ducks in a row, so to speak. Rubber ducks of the school, house, friends, and job variety. My new life is coming together. This Swan is finally spreading her wings to fly.
Renee has said that to me a thousand times.
This is the first time I feel it's true.
College is anti-climactic. I assimilate into the new lifestyle effortlessly. From Renee's experience, I know exactly what not to do. I also keep my promise to Charlie. I don't smoke or drink or snort anything. Ever. Instead, I spend my time doing exactly what you're expected to do in college—learn.
I minor in Psychology (go figure) and learn all kinds of things. Fancy terms like disassociation and insiders and pathology. I read meticulously documented case studies of adults and teenagers with experiences similar to mine. Some of them were also diagnosed with schizophrenia. Some with dissociative identity disorder. Some, however, were regarded as normal, their imaginary friends something that they would grow out of as they became adults.
And they did.
After much reading, much essay writing, much introspection, I at last come to the only logical conclusion.
I've read about a man who could not sleep without a blanket his grandmother had made him. Thirty-two years old, and he still slept with a security blanket over his face.
I think back to when I was six and couldn't sleep without Mr. Bear tucked under my arm. When he'd fall onto to the floor during the night, I'd awake clutching and screaming. Yet now, so many years later, I look back on little Bella and can't remember what it was like to feel that way. Mr. Bear hadn't even come to college with me.
Neither had Edward. Like Mr. Bear, I'd left him in Forks. He is merely a phase of my childhood that I carried a little too far into my adolescence, a minor glitch in the timeline of my life. Years from now, I'll look back and laugh about the idea that I ever thought some invisible angel was watching me.
I no longer have to try to not think of Edward. I just don't. Days bleed effortlessly into weeks, then months. Forks becomes nothing more than a half-remembered bad dream.
And I'm happy.
I think.
I think this up until I take Art Appreciation, an "easy" elective.
I know enough about psychology now to understand that, subconsciously, I chose that class because of Alice. Because Alice would have approved. Maybe it would give us something to talk about if we ever…
Yeah.
Would that I had not listened to my subconscious.
Art Appreciation is a misnomer.
I can tell from the first session that this class that I thought was going to be easy is going to be anything but. The instructor is a high-energy guy with a ponytail and active hands that paint the air for emphasis as he talks.
I freeze when he starts dragging out canvases and easels. Maybe I'm in the wrong class.
He tells us that, "You can't truly appreciate art until you've tried your hand at it."
Apparently, only after you grasp how difficult it is to daub paint on a blank canvas can you understand why the guy who managed to pull more than ten colors together to form a starry sky was a genius.
As expected, I'm about as good at appreciating art as I am at yoga.
I suffer through weeks of drawing human faces and landscapes and still life bowls of apples. Only after we try (and fail) to create our own masterpieces does the instructor finally allow us to appreciate art. We watch slide shows of famous paintings. We look at glossy textbooks full of more. The instructor even brings in some of his own work for us to critique. (At which point, I understand why he makes a living teaching art.)
Then, he sends us out into the world to appreciate art on our own. The assignment: find a painting at a local museum and "commune with it" for at least one hour. More, if the spirit so moves us.
Longest hour of my life.
In the school's museum of art, I approach a large painting with enough visual interest to keep me occupied during the terms of the assignment. Somehow, it reminds me of Forks. It looks modern, abstract, and ridiculously expensive.
Strange, then, that it should remind me of Forks.
I sit on a bench artfully positioned in front of the painting.
And sit and sit and sit.
As I sit, I look at that painting. I try to unravel the insanity of movement, try to trace tendrils of paint as though extricating myself from a maze. But no matter what I do, I never see anything but splatter.
Until, of course, I see something else.
After fifty-three minutes of staring at the same square, my eyes are starting to cross, my vision is getting hazy. Blink, and my focus goes soft, blurring at the edges.
In that moment, this abstract painting, the same one that I have been diligently staring at for nearly fifty-four excruciating minutes—the painting is suddenly, diametrically, impossibly…something else.
The painting is not of a rat's nest of dark lines and insanity.
The painting is of a woman's face. There, the eyes. There, the hair. Nose, chin. There, a woman's face hidden in the chaos.
My own face is like: !.?.!.?
Did I fall asleep?
Is this real life?
Blink, and the painting is nothing but a painting. Blink again, and it's a woman.
I stand from the bench like an arrow shot from a bow.
Back in my room, Google informs me that the artist goes by D. Nali. Not to be confused with Salvador Dali, although the names almost rhyme. D. Nali is from India, from what I understand, one of the few creative talents from that hemisphere to make it big in the States. He includes an Easter egg in each of his paintings. It's his claim to fame, his trademark, his genius.
A fact that my Art Appreciation professor may have failed to mention.
I suppose details like this are best discovered on one's own.
Seven more minutes, and I would have wandered away and written a well-formulated essay about the unusual contrast and flow and balance of D. Nali's work.
Seven more minutes, and I would have failed the assignment.
Sometimes, the hidden image is nothing more than a flower, an animal, a tree. But most often, it's a human face. I look at page after page of Google images of D. Nali's work. Shift my focus just right, and I see women, men, children, families.
Then I realize why his work seems so familiar, why it reminds me of home. I've seen this type of painting before. Before Dartmouth, before this class, before the museum. Carlisle and Esme Cullen have a D. Nali painting hanging from their mantel.
At first, it doesn't click.
The Cullens are rich, after all; they may have discovered D. Nali several years ago, before he was too famous to be above painting family portraits.
Then it clicks.
The epiphany makes my blood run cold, makes the flesh on my arms rise, makes my heart flop like a suffocating fish. My thoughts flow as follows:
1) The Cullens have a D. Nali painting in their house.
2) The painting is a family portrait.
3) And their portrait—it has three faces.