note: sorry for the wait. unbeta'd. i am sorry. :( i'm at my parent's so it's kinda hard to write with them breathing down my neck. anyway. thanks for the kind words! hugs to you all. happyfacehappyfacehappyface
disclaimer: i don't own twilight.
I'm at least a head taller than her and the look she's giving me, I am eight years old again.
She's saying, "You."
She's rolling her shoulders and crossing her arms over her chest.
"I remember you," she continues, bathed in faint light and swimming in shadows. A light sheen of sweat covers her small face and I want to smell her skin. "From last week. You're the guy. You could have killed him. My friend… he could have died."
Her eyes are on my eyes.
"Did he." There is no lilt to my voice. My hands dance a little jig in my pockets.
She's frowning and lost and staring at me with funny eyes. "Did he what?"
"Did he die."
The frown sets more definitely into her face and she purses her lips. She looks like a fish with frizzy hair and clothes and breathing air.
"Look." Through annoyed lips. "He's really hurt."
I look over to him, this Jacob with droopy eyes and bruised left side and fucked up back, and yeah, sure. He's hurt. I did it. He practically kissed my hand for doing it.
"Okay."
She's wearing exasperated eyes now.
"He shouldn't be here. This is illegal."
I look to the center of the room and see a shrimp versus a bear. This guy with massive hands, he's wailing on the pipsqueak he's up against. The small guy's got a nosebleed and he's trying to duck out of the way but he's too slow. Blood runs down his forehead and from his nose. Red lines racing into his eyes and storming his mouth. He takes several punches to the face, wobbles on his stick-thin legs for a few seconds but remains standing.
"Okay." My remarkable conversational skills.
Pipsqueak, quick and jerky, manages to dart behind him. He's climbing up his back and throwing punches at his neck.
Out of my peripheral vision, I can see she's looking at them, too. She opens her mouth, "Buh," and then closes it.
Next thing you know, both guys are on the ground and the little guy is smashing the other guy's face in. Sweat and dust mingle in the air, catching the small amount of light as they disappear into the dark. A roar of laughter erupts throughout the crowd.
"I just…" Searching for words she can't find. "He's just a kid… he won't listen to me."
Frizzy hair and long neck, she's watching me like she's expecting me to do something about it. She's placing hope on my shoulders and I don't know what to do with it at all.
A round of applause breaks out around the room and I think that Pipsqueak has won—and yeah, he's won. One of the older guys is holding his limp, bloody arm up in the air.
I turn back to her and raise my eyebrows. "You… do this often, then."
"Do what often?"
"Chat up your friend's would-be killer."
And I can't help it but a corner of my lip hooks up a tiny bit. And this hook is for her.
Confusion oozes out of her pores.
"You offered me a ride last time." I remind her. "And now you want my help. Like you said, I could have killed him."
This girl's got a thing with opening and closing her mouth. I half expect her jaw to come unhinged.
Another fight begins.
"I wouldn't be asking," she finally gets out, "if it weren't for the fact that you're the only one I kno—"
"I don't know you." And it's true because I don't.
She's clenching one of her fists against her chest and all I want is for her to punch me with it. For her to slap me because I can feel frustration and desperation settling into her bones.
She bites her lip, almost like she's trying to hold something back. An insult? I don't know.
Her mouth is a small cave and then it is not and then it is.
Air whooshes out past her lips, a fluttering of her eyelids, and then, "Bella."
She says, "My name is Bella.
"Look, I knew he was up to something shady, I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. He'd disappear for hours… and then I find him doing this, this," she's gesturing to the crowd and the noise and the chaos with a stiff hand and she sighs, "whatever it is you guys do here. He's a kid. He could die."
It's hard for me to look away from her. Her with her story I don't want to hear but not wanting to shut her up. Her ponytail swings at the back of her head in a lazy manner and I am hypnotized by the movement and her ramblings.
"By all means," Bella goes on, "feel free to continue with your pissing contest. Go ahead and beat the living crap out of each other, you guys really seem to enjoy it. But Jacob is sixteen and if he gets any more hurt, I'll be making a special phone call."
Her threat, her silly threat, those words spill from harmless lips, hang in the stale air. Foolish words and coming from her, I want to laugh.
But she's got feeling, she's got passion behind those words, in her stance. Me, I haven't had too much interaction with people and this, whatever she's saying, it's… clear.
Clear and ringing in my ears and something inside me splinters and cracks.
I don't know what makes me do it but I find myself saying, "Okay."
I'm saying, "Okay," and, "Alright."
I'm walking up to Jacob, Jacob with baby skin and baby mind. I'm telling him, "C'mere, kid," and heading for the exit.
Outside the warehouse, the sound of water lapping at the edge where the ocean kisses land. A cargo ship trudging along far off in the distance. Crickets chirp and I want to find every last one of them and stomp them into bits and pieces. I kick at the dirt and rocks with my hands in my pockets. My left hand throbs and my eyelids are heavy.
Staring up at the night sky, staring up at big, staring up at stars millions of miles away, I am little, I am insignificant, I am young compared to old everything.
"You need something?" I hear from behind me.
My head bobs up and down, slow, eyes transfixed by the sky, and I say, "Don't fight tonight."
More crickets chirping and I don't know why I'm doing this. The unknown is clawing at my insides.
"Why?" I can see the frown in his voice.
"Your friend."
He's kicking at the ground.
"She followed me here," he grumbles. Sixteen shows in his voice.
"You're just a kid. What are you doing here?"
He scoffs and it's petulant. His feet shuffle against small pebbles and he says, "I'm fighting tonight."
"You do that," I say. "She's threatening to call the cops."
"She's stupid." But his voice trembles with uncertainty. "She wouldn't."
"She sounded pretty serious to me."
"She says stuff she doesn't mean. I'm fighting tonight."
I'm shrugging my shoulders, enraptured by the stark horizon. Where the sky ends and the ocean begins. Where the ocean ends and the sky begins. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Why not?" Sixteen in his tone and words. I try not to get angry because I had Sixteen voice, too and sometimes, even now, it's hard to keep away.
I turn to look at him like he's stupid because he is. "She could get into some serious trouble."
And if he didn't know like he should've known, he knows now.
"Jacob," I'm saying, "just come back next week. Without the girl."
"Bella," he says.
"Bella," I parrot.
He's cursing underneath his breath, harsh and frustrated, but he gets it.
We stand in silence for what feels like centuries and the quiet, the night, the air, all this everything that leads to me standing there with something burrowing its way into my mind. I don't know what it is but I am drained and tired and tonight, at this moment, I don't want to hurt or be hurt.
I want to sleep this away. I want to sleep until the ants crawling and biting underneath the skin of my bruised hands and bruised face all die out.
Bella finally exits the warehouse. The door clicks into place and her feet scuff at the ground. She's carrying a large jacket and bag and she looks tiny.
She shifts her eyes to Jacob and then to me and then to Jacob and then to me and then to some far-off place.
Back to me and she's asking, "Ride?"
And me still confused and saying, "Yeah."
"Get your stuff. I'll bring the car around."
The heater rumbles throughout the enclosed space of this ancient car. Warmth hits me in the face, a steady stream of air, and I want to swallow this feeling.
Jacob's body occupies the entire backseat. His nose serves as a whistle as he breathes in and out with the peace of sleep. It's only children that can fall asleep so easily.
Whistling. Tires maneuvering through the port. Girl sighing.
She's got pale hands on dark steering wheel. Small body in big seat. Eyes on dark road.
"He lives with me," she mumbles, quiet and relaxed. "I mean, he's staying with me while he's on vacation… Not that Port Angeles is really anywhere to vacation to."
Shifty eyes to me and back to the road. A clearing of her throat.
"He was supposed to be staying with me for six weeks." The sigh she lets out is long. "This is his third and I don't think I'm comfortable with him staying if this keeps up, but I don't want to send him back to his dad looking like this and have him get in trouble. He's a good kid, but he easily loses his way. You know? He once shaved all his hair off because 'all the other kids were doing it.'"
Am I expected to say anything? Because I have nothing. I am lacking in speech and my hands curl in my lap.
"I'm a rambler," she rambles on. The lights of the dashboard play across her face, more night and shadows, more artificial light. "Sorry. Is that annoying? I don't know you, you don't know me, so I'm sorry. And I didn't really mean that whole you-could-have-killed-him thing. I just got really worried and scared for him. You're not the type. To kill, I mean."
But she doesn't know me and I don't like it that she keeps acting like she does.
"Not the type?" I ask.
Her hands come off the wheel to grasp at words escaping her. "You just don't have that look about you."
I'm feeling off, weak, ready to lie down in the middle of the road. I don't want to argue.
"So, uh, where to?"
"Just drop me off at Lincoln Park." And speaking makes my limbs grow heavier.
"You sure? I can take you where you need to go."
"Lincoln Park."
Stillness and then, "Alright."
"Thanks." Because I am not all rude and I am where I need to be.
I'm opening the car door, standing outside, the smell of wet and grass and dirt and trees assaulting my nose. I'm ready to slam it shut.
"Wait," she calls out.
Tonight, I am strange. I hunch over so that we are level.
She looks easy and good and sweet and petite as she rests her head on top of her hands still holding onto the steering wheel. Big, tired brown eyes, all knowing and not knowing.
"Thanks for tonight…?" Her voice goes up at the end.
Tonight, I am strange. It's my mind churning and aching to grab at something real and now and here. It's my insides swimming in a murkiness that's always there, infinite and deep and bitter. But I still don't know.
Strange, not knowing me, I'm saying, "Edward."
I'm saying, "My name is Edward," through a frown.
I shut the door.
Tonight, it's her again, her with the cookie dough skin, but it's different.
She's here at the Single Adult Shelter with me, sitting by my bed on the floor with her legs crossed. She's small so it's a surprise I'm able to see all of her from this level, but then again, this is a dream and it doesn't have to make sense. What little light passes through the large windows dances across her face.
"Criss-cross applesauce," she repeats over and over again. Her hair is messed up, sticking up in different directions. "Spoons in the bowl, spoons in the bowl."
She's only ever in my dreams now and I wish she wasn't.
I'm a kid or something because my legs that almost reach the end of the bed, they're short and thin and barely-there. The socks I know I was wearing, they're gone.
My hands are small and they clutch at the sheets, bringing them up to my chin. My body is cold and I can feel trepidation in my throat and hands and legs and stomach.
She pats my cheek. She is bleary.
"It's alright, it's alright," she says, the always present blood spilling from her lips. Her teeth are red and pointy and my eyes are trained on them.
"Too much," she mutters, patting at my forehead. "It was bound to happen."
She laughs, the sound of bells and wind chimes and sunshine, and her blue eyes sparkle.
But soon, her snorts and giggles turn into snot and wailing. And there are tears running down her cheeks and onto the floor and the way her face is screwed up, it's scary.
In this dark, she is ugliness and beauty all wrapped in one.
And in that moment, like every other moment, I hate her.