Hey I'm back…again. Don't get used to such frequent reviews. I have to go away from the Internet in a few days and will be away for a while. I also wanted to clarify that Mason is not meant to be Mike-like. He's just an abnormally friendly guy (who likes other guys, not Haley). You guys are great. Don't ever change.

Last time:

I opened the door and, smiling down at me like I'd just made his day, was Seth.

I beamed. Was I always this unnaturally happy around him? It was too early to tell.

Seth gestured down at the yapping dog still in my hands and grinned, "Dog person?"

I laughed, "This is my brother's dog, I just picked him up because he always jumps on people who answer the door."

"Does he knock them over?" This really made me laugh. The little dog didn't even weigh ten pounds.

"Something funny?" Oh rats my dad was here. "Who are you?" Who was my dad kidding? He knew exactly whom Seth was, and what time he was coming. What was worse, I could tell my dad was trying to intimidate him, even though he was more than half a foot shorter.

"Dad," I glared at him. "Please."

"Fine," he grinned, he could never pretend to be tough for very long. He put his threatening face on again, "Have her back by ten."

"Yes, sir," said Seth, looking almost as weirded out as I was.

I handed the dog to my father, trying to look manly and terrifying was no easy task with a fluffy white dog in your arms.

"Nice car," I commented as we walked down the driveway. I was trying to break the awkward silence.

"Oh, thanks," he said. "It's not mine, though. I borrowed it from Jake. Does your dad not like me?" He opened the passenger door. Who said chivalry was dead?

"Nothing like that," I said as I slid onto the seat. "He's just seen too many cheesy teen movies. The technique would've worked better if he was taller."

"That would explain it. Try suggesting that he buy a shotgun. Much scarier," he laughed.

I giggled. Seth was so easy to be around. I was awkward around pretty much every other straight guy I met, which would explain why this was my first-ever date, a fact that I was certainly not going to let him know. Seth may have been easy to be around but that didn't mean that I wasn't still capable of screwing things up and making them awkward.

"Well, that would only make things more difficult for you." Oh my God that was a stupid thing to say. I just assumed that we'd be going out again. Wait, maybe that was okay to say, after all. I honestly had no idea. I had to wait until I saw his response.

"That's true. Don't tell him I said that." Thank God! I hadn't screwed up yet.

"Deal. So where exactly are we going?" I asked. The word bonfire didn't really mean much to me. I'd gone camping of course, and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs but I had a feeling this was going to be different.

"Well, it's a bit like a party and a camp-out combined. We all get together around the fire, eat ourselves sick, talk, and sometime we tell stories."

"Ghost stories?" I wondered out loud.

"They kind of sound like them but no, they're tribal legends," Seth smiled wider. "I think you'll like them, Haley."

"Who's going to be there?" I knew it was starting to seem like I was interrogating him, but I was really anxious to know what we were doing. I'd never been so excited in my life.

"Mostly a lot of kids around our age, Jake, Quil, and Embry will be there, but there will be some parents," he said.

"Will your parents be there?" I asked. I was honestly worried about that one. I thought that the meet the parents' scenario could be put off a while.

"My mom will. My dad died last year," his usually happy face became solemn.

A rush of pain swept through me. Seth was such a nice person. He shouldn't have had to go through something like that. It was awful, an example of how unfair life was.

"I'm so sorry," I said, not knowing what else to say. I'd done it. I had inadvertently ruined the date. This one would go down in the record books. I'd make Seth sad. What kind of person was I?

"It's all right," he said, smiling weakly. "He didn't want anyone to be too sad over him."

"He sounds really nice." Crisis averted. Thank God!

We talked of more inconsequential things for the rest of the short drive. It seemed to fly by. He had read almost halfway through the book I had lent him. How had he managed that? It seemed like something I would do, and judging from the amount of time it'd taken him to read the back cover, he was about half as fast as me. He must've spent all day or night reading. Either that, or I was overanalyzing like a maniac and he was just taking his time reading the back cover yesterday. I needed to stop being such a nerd.

We got out of the car and walked a short distance through the woods. I knew we were close before I could see it. There was a lot of noise, the sound of a lot of teenaged boys in a group. There was also the familiar scent of wood smoke. I walked quickly to keep up with Seth's long strides.

I realized I was right about the teenaged boys. Was everyone around here this gigantic? Apparently those experimental growth hormones were in the water. Seth saw someone in the crowd and led me over. There were two women in front of me. One was about my height and was older, maybe in her mid-forties, the other was tall, not as tall as Seth but she had to be approaching six feet. They both had very short haircuts.

"Haley, this is my mom and my sister Leah. Mom, Leah, this is my im- this is Haley." Seth cut himself off mid-word. I saw Leah's eyes widening as he did so, as if she was trying to communicate something to him.

I raised my hand up in a handshake to Mrs. Clearwater. It could never be said that I had never been taught manners. Choosing to use them was another matter entirely.

Leah eyed me fiercely as I shook her mother's hand. She was going to be one of those scary, protective older siblings like in old sitcoms. I could tell. I knew this was getting too good to be true.

I looked around to see who else was there. I spotted the group that was at the beach with Seth yesterday. There were two little girls with them. One of them looked about four and had the dark skin, hair, and eyes that almost everyone here had. She was adorable. The other appeared to be about six or seven and had long auburn curls and very pale skin. She was also the most beautiful child that I had ever seen.

Seth and Leah must've seen them too, because they started walking over to join them. I wondered why the five of them stuck together inside of the huge group and also why there were two kids with them. Were they babysitting?

Jake saw us approaching. "Hey Seth, Leah. Hi Haley. This is Nessie- uh, Renesmee- and Claire."

I smiled. Kids (not counting younger siblings) were adorable. I squatted down to their level. "Hi, guys. I'm Haley."

Claire hid her face against Quil's leg, but Nessie (the one with the very strange name that'd slipped my mind) walked right up to me and said in a voice that seemed much too old for her tiny body, "Hello, I'm Renesmee Cullen. You can call me Nessie. It's nice to have you here."

Before I could say "precocious child prodigy," I was being introduced to scores of other people, many of whom were the outrageously tall boys. A few of them had girlfriends with them, or maybe fiancées or wives or something. I frankly couldn't tell how old any of them were. The boys-men-guys all could pass for being in their mid-twenties.

I met Sam and Emily, a kind woman with three long scars marring her otherwise flawless face; Jared and Kim, a shy girl who seemed very sweet; Paul and Rachel, who I was told was Jake's sister. There were two other single boys, Collin and Brady.

I'd seen so many overgrown boys in just a few days that they all started to run together in my head. All except for Seth, something about him stood out to me. I'd never been terribly good at remembering names and now I was nervous that I would get them mixed up.

All of a sudden, a stampede seemed to run through the group. The food was ready. Figures. They must need to eat a lot of food if they were all that big. I walked over to the log where Seth was piercing a hot dog with a straightened wire hanger.

I was wrong. These boys didn't need a lot of food; they needed a ton. The literal ton, as in two thousand pounds. I watched in amazement as Seth ate nineteen hot dogs, a huge bag of chips, and a giant bottle of Coke. After that, he roasted about ten marshmallows. Some of the others ate even more, but I didn't watch them as much.

I wondered absently what would happen to me if I ate that much. I shuddered. I would most likely get sick before I finished it, and then possibly explode.

All of a sudden, the mood seemed to unexpectedly quiet down. "What's happening?" I whispered to Seth.

He turned to me with that look of his, the one that made me happy even when I asked an extremely stupid question, like now. "The legends," he said. I leaned forward eagerly. This would be fun.

The middle-aged man in the wheelchair, whom I vaguely remembered being introduced to, started talking. I was mesmerized from the very beginning. The things he talked of were unreal: spirit warriors, men who transformed into wolves, the cold ones. I would've given my undivided attention to the legends if Seth hadn't been looking at me the whole time. I was sure that I was blushing.

Even with Seth's attention so clearly on me, I couldn't help but be drawn into the tale. I shivered when the cold one were first mentioned and I felt Seth's hand, almost as hot as the fire we were sitting around, close around mine. When the Third Wife gave up her own life as the ultimate sacrifice, I gasped audibly and hoped no one heard it.

The story was easy to analyze after years of reading. There were morals, a well-developed plot, everything that made a story great. There was just one thing that bothered me. At the end, the old man narrating the story mentioned something about the sons of the tribe "sharing the burden and carrying the sacrifice" I was confused. It was a story. There was no burden or sacrifice, not a real one. Where was the happy, definite ending or the tragic, but equally definite ending?

No one said anything. I felt a bit uneasy, as if everyone was watching me. Seth's gaze I was almost used to, but these stares were different. It was as if I was outside of a circle, and they were nervous in case they said anything I wasn't supposed to know. I dismissed it. Everyone here had been more than nice to me. I was crazy.

Seth broke the silence; "I think I have to take you back now Haley, if you want to get back by ten."

I nodded, "Okay," and got up, following his lead back to the car.

"So, what did you think?" asked Seth once we were a few yards away from the bonfire.

"It was a great story," I said, trying to come up with something more original. "And all your friends are wicked nice. I'm probably going to have nightmares tonight."

"Nightmares?" Seth looked puzzled.

"I don't really tolerate monster stories, especially vampire or werewolf stories, well," I giggled. "I slept with the light on for a week once, after watching a scary movie."

Seth looked a bit apprehensive. Had I done it again? Great Haley, you just seem determined to ruin this date, huh?

He quickly recovered his grin. Yes! "Just after hearing a story?"

"Well, they were really good story-tellers. I got really into it," I tried to make a better impression. We climbed into the car. Seth opened my door for me again.

We talked of lighter matters on the way home. I suggested that instead of saying "enough food to feed the army" we could change the saying to "enough food to feed all the boys in La Push."

He actually seemed to appreciate my lame attempts at humor. People had pretended to like my jokes before, but I could always tell they were faking. Seth genuinely thought I was funny. Heck, when I was around him, the way he treated and looked at me, you would've thought that I was the funniest, prettiest, kindest, smartest girl in the world, which I knew to be far from the truth.

We pulled up into my driveway. We were right on time. About two minutes early actually. Seth twisted in his seat. "Haley…" he looked like he was about to say something, and from the look on his face, it was probably important. Maybe it wasn't though. I wasn't the most astute at reading facial expressions and when he was looking at me, all of his expressions seemed pretty similar. Not that I was complaining.

"Yes?" I asked.

He hesitated. "I'll walk you up," he said.

We got out of the car and walked up, side by side, to my front door. "Thanks so much!" I said. "I had the best time. You can't even imagine."

"I think I can understand." He leaned way down and kissed me on the cheek. "I had a really great time, too."

Dazed, I bid him goodbye and walked in the door, yelling out that I was home. I stumbled up the stairs, into my room and flopped down on my bed. A slight pressure appeared on my bed.

"So," said Sophie, "how'd it go?"

"Amazing," I answered, still a bit bemused. I rolled over and refused to answer any more questions.