Chapter II: The Wish Finder

"Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth."

—Francesca Lia Block

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Set when Renesmee is physically around fifteen.

Renesmee Cullen's fifth birthday was a quiet affair. Her family friends had a small party at the Cullen house, and really – it was quite perfect.

They sat in the dining room, which got a considerable amount of use seeing as no one who lived there actively ate, and bequeathed presents and ate delicious food late into the night.

Looking back on the night now, Renesmee could remember only one thing with absolute clarity: The birthday wish she got, and how it came to be in her possession.

Alice had brought out a large cake with a single red candle in the middle. "I'm never sure of how many candles to use – you're hardly five – so one is good." She stared at Nessie, who didn't move. "Well, come on. Make a wish!"

"I – umn – okay." She thought about it, really thought about it, and came to the conclusion that there was only one thing in the world she truly wanted. But it involved a certain werewolf and she was acutely aware of her mindreading father.

So eventually she just blew out the candles wishless, and hugged her aunt, and thanked her. She caught Jacob looking at her then, really, really looking, in a way that ignited her insides.

She loved that birthday, and it was the simpleness of it all that made it so amazing. But, thinking back, she realised it wasn't the birthday itself that made the day such a warm memory. It was the part that followed.

When it was reaching about midnight, Jacob came up to her, just as she was finished talking with her uncle, and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to him, and his smile was so warm.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" he asked her.

She was kind of in the middle of being festive and doing birthday things, but going for a walk sounded wonderful.

"Now?" It was pitch black outside.

"Sure."

She cast a glance at her mother, who seemed to have no objections.

"Okay," she said to Jacob. He offered her his hand and she took it gladly.

As they slipped out the back door, Renesmee could feel every pair of eyes trained on her back, but she didn't dare turn around. The chilly September air nipped at her instantly, and she inhaled a cool breath.

"You cold?" Jacob asked her.

"Kind of," she said, so Jacob wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and she could feel his heat like a furnace. He led them towards the forest, and the moonlight was sparse when it could no longer shine through the trees. It was dark and cold and, to anyone else, unbelievably scary, but Renesmee felt perfectly at ease in the company of a werewolf.

"So, where are we going?" she asked when they'd travelled about a mile from the house. They were holding hands now.

"I don't really know," he said, and he looked a little sheepish. "I just couldn't talk to you for a minute in there. I wanted to say Happy Birthday. So . . . Happy Birthday."

Renesmee smiled. "Thank you."

Jacob looked up at the sky, and his preoccupied expression told her that he also had an ulterior motive for bringing her outside, but she didn't ask.

"I don't believe you're five already," Jacob said abruptly, but without surprise, like it had been on his mind for awhile.

"I know," she said. "It's . . . very strange." That didn't even begin to sum it up, but how do you explain such confusion in words?

Jacob looked down at her and his expression was odd. "Strange how?" he asked.

He was going to make her explain anyway. For no one but Jacob, she thought, for no one but Jacob.

"Well, I know I'm five, and I know what a human five year old looks like. And I do not look like I'm five."

"Tell me about it," he said, but under his breath. Renesmee heard it anyway.

"You've noticed?" she asked, unsure why this seemed to matter so much.

"Noticed what? That you're growing? It's hard not to, Nessie. You've jumped, like, three years since summer."

That wasn't exactly the answer she'd been hoping for. Jacob looked back up at the sky again.

A sudden burst of curiosity made her pause. Her hand was still tied to Jacob's so he was forced to stop, too.

"How old do you think I look?" she asked, uncertain of where this feeling of confidence had come from.

"What?" He looked at her like she'd asked for the cure to cancer.

"Come on," she said. "How old?"

"I don't know, Ness. Let's keep walking."

"Jake," she said. "Please. Just humour me."

"I don't have a clue about" – he gestured to her in general – "that kind of stuff. Ask one of your aunts, or something."

"But I don't want to know what they think. I want to know what you think."

Jacob dropped her hand. It felt like ice when it reached her side.

"It doesn't matter what I think—" he started to say, but Nessie cut him off sharply.

"Of course it matters what you think. You're my best friend, Jacob. Of course it matters." Something in her tone caught him.

Jacob signed as though this was going to require the most obscene amount of pain. He didn't even look at her when he asked: "Twelve?"

"What?" she scoffed. "I look way older than twelve."

"I don't know then. Twenty?"

Renesmee rolled her eyes. "Twenty? You think I look twenty? Will you take this seriously, Jacob, please?"

"I am."

"You're not even looking."

He looked. His expression grew serious. "I don't know, Ness. You're getting really old now." He squinted at her. "Is that a gray hair?"

She stormed past him, down the worn path in the forest, infuriated. But she barely got five steps before he caught her arm. "Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll do it properly." He was still smiling when she turned around.

He looked at her, and she looked at him, and his eyebrows tightened in concentration, and his smile teetered off his face. It took a hundred years for him to say: "Fifteen."

Renesmee wanted to say something smart, something witty, something romantic even, but she couldn't think of anything and then the quiet began to envelope her. Words would be wasted in silence that perfect.

After a while, Jacob took her hand again and they continued down the forest trail. They didn't say anything, and Jacob seemed to be always looking for something, but it was in the most comfortable of stillnesses.

They'd been waking for twenty minutes, when Jacob stopped suddenly in a small clearing. He let go of Renesmee, and she was just about to protest when he laid down on the grass.

"What are you doing?" she asked incredulously. It felt like the first time she'd spoken in decades.

"I'm looking for something," he told her simply and put his hands behind his head to relax. His long black hair sprawled on the grass. She liked it that way.

"On the ground?"

He pointed upward. "No. In the stars."

What could she say to something like that? So she lay down next to him in the almost-dry grass and watched him as he watched the stars.

The moonlight played tricks with his brown skin, and Nessie was so enrapt by it, she took a moment to realise he was speaking. "I'm sorry, what?"

Jacob tilted his head to the side to look at her. His nose was two inches from hers and Nessie was so sure she was about to implode from the proximity. She could feel his breath on her cheeks and her head swam in everything that was Jacob. She wrapped her hands around her arms to hold herself together, for she was surly about to crumble into pieces.

He didn't even seem to notice. How was he so unfazed by her, when she was so intoxicated by him?

"I said, I haven't given you your present yet."

"Oh." Nessie blinked and shook her head clean. "You don't need to give me—"

He cut her off before she could really start. "Yeah, yeah. You say that every year. I'm just telling you in case you're wondering." Jacob looked back up to the sky then, and she released a long breath.

"Okay. I won't wonder."

His eyes were searching the heavens when he said: "You'll have to wait for it. It kind of comes with a whole thing, and that's not 'till next month."

"What kind of thing?" she asked, and sat up. She stretched her arms around her. She didn't really know what they were doing on the ground anyway.

"It would ruin the surprise if I told you."

"O-kay." She waited for him to say something. He didn't. "One little hint?"

He grinned at her. "So impatient. Sorry, Ness. You're just gonna' have to wait."

She huffed out a breath of midnight air, and could see it in the moonlight. There was going to be a thing? Jacob was doing a thing for her birthday? What could—

"Nessie!" he said suddenly, and she turned to him instantly. "Look!"

"What? What is it?" She searched around her.

"Come here!" he said, and when she didn't move, he yanked her arm and pulled her into his warm side and hissed: "Quick! Look, look."

"What's wrong, Jacob?"

He just pointed above them, and Nessie stared through the parting in the trees. And then she saw it, just before it disappeared – a shooting star.

"Quick!" he said again. "Make your wish."

"What?"

"You didn't make a wish with your birthday candles. Make one now."

How had he known that? "I – umn – I don't know what to wish for."

"It doesn't matter," he told her. "Just close your eyes and think of something."

Renesmee closed her eyes, relaxed into his shoulder, and thought desperately hard about what she could wish for, but all she could really concentrate on was Jacob. Sometimes it still surprised her just how much attention he paid to her. He had noticed she didn't make a wish. He somehow knew she wanted one. So he laid in the grass and found one for her.

That was exactly why she was falling in love with this boy: he found her wishes.

She opened her eyes after a while, and he was smiling at her. She didn't need a wish. She had all she could ever want right in front of her. "Here," she said and held out her hand. "Take it."

Jacob's eyes were curious when he opened his palm. "Take what?"

"My wish. I couldn't think of anything good." He made a face at her, but she just said: "Hurry! Before it runs out! These things have expiry dates, you know."

He smiled his greatest, happiest, Jacoby smile as she placed her invisible wish in his hand. His fingers closed around it immediately. His voice was quiet: "Nessie, I don't need it. I have nothing to wish for."

She considered him seriously. "Neither do I." The cool air rushed past her shoulders and she suppressed a shiver. "What a waste."

Jacob looked from her to his closed hand and, with a voice equally serious, he said: "No, you take it. It's your birthday."

"Jacob, I—"

He reached across and opened the locket on her neck that her mother had given her as a baby and he opened it. With big theatricalities, he made a show of locking in her wish. "Save it. For when you do need one."

"You're ridiculous," she told him.

He shrugged. "Maybe." And he looked back up to the sky.

Renesmee rolled her eyes, but at the same time wrapped her fingers around the locket that now meant more to her than he could ever imagine.

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COMING UP . . .

In her mind, Jacob appeared, telling her to calm down and close her eyes and take a deep breath, like he always did.

So she did. And she started to relax.

Until Emmett was roaring himself hoarse.

"The brakes! Hit the goddamned brakes!"

But it was too late. The car crashed into a tree just as Renesmee slammed the brakes. She tensed for the pain, waited to wallop into the steering wheel, but Emmett yanked her out of the car before any damage was done.

She watched as the Volvo's hood bended itself around the trunk. Billows of smoke seeped from the engine. The car alarm blared.