-| Glitch continues |-
You know how this story ends.
You've seen the Wizard of Oz. You've seen The Matrix trilogy. Heck, you may have even seen Men Who Stare at Goats.
Lots of build-up, lots of anticipation, and then…
Lots of scratching of head.
If my life was a movie, this is the Big Reveal. The once-in-a-lifetime, bright-light-falling, heavy-door-creaking-open moment where something you've believed in, something you've fought for, something you've almost died for—that something is about to be revealed once and for all.
More often than not, mystery is exposed as mundane—a white-bearded Architect in a room full of monitors, a Blue Fairy statue in a crumbling amusement park, a harried man behind a green curtain, men who really and truly just sit and stare at goats.
No magic. No miracle. No dazzle.
Every sign points to me having your classic Wizard of Oz ending. Every authority figure, every textbook, every research study, every shred of common sense. I've told myself that Edward's existence is an impossibility, convinced myself of it, stuffing my previous blind faith into some forgotten crack so deep in my psyche until my brain is awash with lie. I've patted myself on the back for having gotten over my little glitch, for having grown up, matured, for stepping across the threshold of childhood at last.
And yet.
The thing about blind faith is that it persists. It doesn't need to see with its own eyes, hear with its own ears, taste with its own tongue—it can burrow deaf and dumb and mute in the darkest of dark corners and believe.
For every Wizard of Oz ending, there is The Sixth Sense. The Prestige. The Others. A whole host of movies starting with the word "The" whose endings you don't quite see coming.
Movies in which—sometimes—the magic is real.
And the thing is, I want to believe.
I want to believe in magic.
I want to believe in Edward.
I want to believe in him like you want to believe in luminous unicorns in shaded, secret meadows and wizards who can grant our heart's desire and the goodness in every living soul.
Even if believing takes me two strides past the wrong side of crazy.
This is my moment—the moment that will send all other moments crashing down, the first domino in my life's chain. Blind faith breaks free, a sliver of sun knifing through the tempest at last.
Stop.
A voice just told me to stop.
This voice isn't in my head. I'm not dreaming. It's a rough yet smooth voice from somewhere behind my right ear.
It sounds young.
It sounds male.
It sounds like the greatest sound I have ever heard in my life.
At the sound of this voice, I drop the butcher's knife. It slides from my fingers and clatters to the wood floor, cling clang. I don't turn. I stare at myself in the mirror. According to the mirror, there is no one standing behind me. No one whose lips could have produced that voice. The house is quiet, my door locked, iPod off, cell phone dark.
But I know, beyond the merest whisper of a doubt, that someone is here.
I know.
That same presence, the presence I've felt all my life, is standing just over my right shoulder, almost breathing down my neck, down my spine, all the way down to the tips of my toes. I would know that presence anywhere. My neck hairs prickle toward him like miniature water sticks toward a well.
In the mirror, blood paints new veins on the flesh of my hand to mirror the ones within.
"I stopped," I say.
"Your move," I say.
Drip, goes my blood.
For an interminable moment, all is silent. All is calm. In that moment, another drop of blood collects, coalesces, grows heavy and ripe on the tip of my pinkie…
The owner of the voice moves.
A finger darts into my line of vision.
As far as fingers go, this one is nice. No blackened, splintered nail. No blue-tinged death. No bleach-boned skeleton.
The nail is even neat, with a crescent of white.
Just a normal finger.
Except, of course, for the fact that it doesn't reflect in a mirror.
The finger rotates, belly-up, right below the drip of my blood. Succulent, blood-fruit plummets and bursts against pale skin—violence against purity.
I stare at that finger.
Stare and stare.
The finger is connected to a well-proportioned hand that somehow projects the strength of manual labor and the sensitivity of a scholar. It's strong, it's soft, it's both.
Another set of fingers appear, wrapping around my wrist, pulling my wounded arm up, above my heart. The fingers tremble, even from where they grip my wrist so hard that they'll leave whitened imprints.
I don't care if the fingers grip me so hard I bruise. In fact, I welcome it. Anything to leave a trace of their passing. To prove that I haven't imagined them after all. To prove, once and for all, that their owner is real.
The person behind me steps even closer, until his presence ignites the skin of my back, my neck, my ears. Curiously, despite his nearness, I feel no heat. The bloodied finger retreats, travelling through the air to a point somewhere behind my head.
I swivel to follow that finger, and he's twirling me slowly, like a dancer.
I don't dance, but he's making me.
Follow the finger until it disappears between a pair of lips. These lips look soft. They look warm. They look inviting. Focus on these lips for a while as the finger slides first in, then out of those lips. Watch the tip of the finger emerge, cleansed of blood. The finger falls from my view, but this time, don't follow its passage. Fixate on those lips.
I've waited years to see this face. I will not rush the process.
I recognize the individual features—their shape, proportion, contrast—but I've seen his face as only blunt pencil on paper, like a dark ruby on the floor. Now, it's held to the sun at last—scintillating, alive, dazzling.
Young, yet timeless.
Of this world, yet ethereal.
Wrong, somehow, yet so very right.
It is the face.
The physical embodiment of the sketch Alice gave me, so long ago. His eyes are even closed as if savoring some sensation, no clue as to their hue. Yet, despite her skill, Alice's sketch did not do him justice.
No sketch could ever do this justice.
Then his eyelids open, and I'm looking into his irises. Their color is a dash of water to the face.
For they are not blue.
Not gray.
Not green.
They are the color of a golden, twilit sky. Candied apples. Amber waves of grain. Any number of other honey-hued metaphors. More importantly, they are the exact shade shared by Carlisle and Esme Cullen.
His dark pupils dilate as he focuses on my face—solemnity, intensity, and something else. Fear?
We stand looking at each other.
At this point, there is only one thing I can do. I draw back my uninjured hand and slap with all my strength.
Right across a chiseled cheek.
.
.
.
Part of me expects my hand to pass through his face in a swirl of mist and vapor. Part of me expects to connect with warm, soft flesh, to watch his head snap sideways with the force of my blow.
Both parts of me are wrong.
My hand connects with stone, with steel, with cement. It connects with all of the above hard enough to shatter at least three small bones.
For a second, we blink at each other, he in surprise that I've just hit him, and me in surprise that my hand has fractured into a million pieces as a result.
His lips breathe, "Isabella."
At the same time, my lips go, "Urggghph."
"Isabella," he continues, when it becomes clear I'm not coherent enough to form any other words, "please stop hurting yourself."
Please, he says. He just said please.
I'd said that a lot. In my room. In a forest. He hadn't responded. Why should I respond to him now?
I wind my arm up in preparation for another forceful slap, broken bones notwithstanding. If nothing else, I should build a tangible case that he is here. I'm afraid he will disappear.
Before I can execute yet another resounding gesture, he catches my other wrist in his fingers. We stand, facing each other, my arms bent and extended, his fingers encircling my wrists like handcuffs.
Very appropriate.
I'm a prisoner. His prisoner.
I've been a prisoner to him my entire life.
"Isabella," he says again, and I want to tell him that it's just Bella. But I can't speak. Besides, he knows my name. He knows everything about me.
"Let's get you to a doctor," he says.
I shake my head (which means no), but he ignores me. Instead, he swings me into his arms as though I weigh nothing.
He's carrying me.
The supposed figment of my imagination is carrying me.
His arms cradle my back and my knees. My left side presses firmly against his firm torso. When I lower my head, my cheek finds smooth, cold neck. Where our bodies touch, we are hot and cold, fire and ice, burn and freeze. Whatever he is, he's not normal. That much I can tell.
In two steps, we stride past the mirror and out the door. I only catch a glimpse, but a slice of mirror shows me floating on air.
He is carrying me, and now he is putting me into a car.
A car.
He has a car.
As far as cars go, this one seems nice enough. He lowers me gently into the passenger's seat and my eyes run slip-shod over silver that slides from view. I settle gingerly into black leather, cold and stiff with disuse. I wonder if anyone has ever ridden here before.
I stare straight ahead as he draws the seatbelt carefully across my body. I stare straight ahead as the seatbelt snicks closed. I stare straight ahead as he rounds the silver nose of the car and slides into the driver's seat.
I keep on staring straight ahead as his eyes appraise me.
"You're shutting down," he says.
"Don't," I snap.
"Don't what?"
"Don't act like you know me."
"But I do know you," he says softly.
"You don't know anything."
"I know you," he repeats.
"You don't know anything about me." My voice bristles like a porcupine with venom-tipped quills. My voice dares him to contradict me.
He doesn't.
He knows that much.
We drive the rest of the way to the hospital in silence.
He knows enough about me not to try to put any music on. Although he does briefly eye the ridiculous array of CDs arranged artfully in every available space in the dashboard.
He has a car.
He listens to music.
He lives.
I'm not crazy.
But I'm starting to get crazy angry.
The smell isn't helping. The smell—that familiar, wonderful sunshine smell—of him in his car is driving me insane. If I'm not already.
He drives me to a hospital and parks next to a sleek panther of a car. This time, I don't let him unbuckle my seat belt or open my car door or close it behind me. Although he hovers, I do these things myself—despite the shooting pains in both hands—and march myself to the waiting room. He follows just behind me, out of sight, as always.
But this time, if I listen hard enough, I can hear his footfalls.
"Excuse me," I say, and a white-starched nurse looks up from paperwork.
"Yes." She's so bored, the word isn't a question.
I point to the person standing next to me. "Can you see him?"
"She means," he leans in immediately, edging me away from the counter, "that we have an appointment on the third floor. He's expecting us."
The nurse eyes a chart, picks up a phone. "Right. Go on up."
The non-figment of my imagination leads the way, and I can't help but look at him now that his back is turned. He's dressed simply in a t-shirt and jeans, dark blue trending toward black. These clothes are simple. They are nondescript. They are perfect for sneaking and stalking. I watch the careful swing of his arms, the hunched shoulders, the measured, tentative strides of someone for whom stealth is a way of life.
Everything about him screams psycho stalker.
Everything, of course, except his face.
We enter an oversized elevator and hug opposite walls, facing forward, our expressions identically neutral and sombre. Musak serenades us cheerfully.
The elevator dings, and I follow him to an office door identical to the others down the deserted hallway. I glance once at the burnished gold plaque.
Then double-take.
The office belongs to one Dr. Carlisle Cullen, M.D. The name pierces me with thorns. I feel shocked, betrayed, stupid, like everyone I know is in on this little secret but me. What is Dr. Cullen doing in New Hampshire?
Turn the handle to find out.
There, behind an expansive desk, sits Dr. Cullen.
"Carlisle," I say, emphasizing his name. Emphasizing the gesture of respect, familiarity, trust.
His golden eyes widen, although he doesn't seem surprised to see me.
"Hello, Bella," he says. His eyes dance from my face to one behind me. He finally settles on the face behind me.
"Come in, Edward," Carlisle says, "and close the door behind you."
Edward.
Yes, Virginia, there really is an Edward.
Edward exists.
Edward really has been watching me my whole life.
I collapse shakily into a visitor's chair. Edward slinks in and sits on the edge of Dr. Cullen's desk, the edge farthest away from me. We don't look at each other. We look at Dr. Cullen instead.
He asks, "How can I help you?"
"Isabella's hands need medical attention," Edward says curtly, not quite meeting Carlisle's eyes.
"What happened?" Dr. Cullen asks me neutrally, holding out his hands for mine.
"Oh, I tried to kill myself," I say. "And then I tried to kill Edward."
Dr. Cullen's face remains the perfect mix of polite and professional. He doesn't even glance at Edward. "I take it the left wrist is the kill yourself, and the right is the kill Edward."
Edward and I both nod. Edward looks vaguely out the window. I see his head's motion out of the corner of my eye. I refuse to look at him directly. Even though I desperately, desperately want to.
"Edward, can you bring some gauze, tape, and a sling?"
Blink and Edward is gone, the office door drifting shut behind him like paper settling after wind.
Dr. Cullen looks at me earnestly for a moment. "Bella," he says, and I expect him to lecture me about the dangers of attempted suicide or attempted murder. Particularly of someone with flesh as freakishly impenetrable as Edward's.
"Bella," he says again, "I just want you to know that I'm on your side. I did not agree with Edward's choice."
Before I can say anything, before I can even ask him what choice or why he's here, Edward pushes into the office, arms laden with the medical supplies Carlisle had requested, and then some. He strides forward and deposits his motley load forcefully across the gleaming cherrywood desk.
He's scowling.
At Dr. Cullen, not me.
As the doctor begins tending my injured hands, Edward adds pacing to his scowl. Carlisle ignores him, working diligently to bandage my bloody hand ("No stitches needed") and brace my fractured one ("Nothing a few weeks won't heal").
The clock on the wall informs us that time passes.
When the last bandage sticks and the last gauze tucks, Dr. Cullen begins, "Don't you think that—"
"Thank you for your assistance. We'll be going, then," Edward says, standing and striding, looking imploringly at my feet. As though he wants them to follow.
I'm suddenly resistant to leave this office, the buffer that is Carlisle. He's known, familiar, Forks.
"We'll talk soon, Bella," the good doctor assures me, his nod a prod.
I shouldn't trust him—he's lied to me by omission—but I do. I stand and let Edward herd me out the door. I step out into the unknown. Look back, and dark wood closes on Dr. Cullen's pained expression, honey eyes that drip sadness.
Then Edward and I stall awkwardly in a sterile hallway. It's his turn to look anywhere but at me. He squirms under the unblink of my gaze. Now that I've started looking at him, I can't stop.
"So," he says. "We need to talk."