Chapter Six Notes: And here we go.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing Twilight. No intent to commit copyright infringement, blah, blah.
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CHAPTER SIX: Terminal
Crap. My bruised and beaten body fell apart at the seams. My blood raced to my face, my heart rattled my ribcage, and my mind went completely blank. Look down, idiot! Look busy! I rooted through my nearly empty backpack for something, anything. I found a piece of gum in a deteriorating wrapper. I frantically unwrapped it and popped it into my mouth, ignoring the lint that instantly stuck to my tongue. That took half a second. I needed more time, more distractions. I was honestly considering taking out a blank piece of paper and making origami swans for the next hour when it happened.
"So what does the other guy look like?" I'd never heard the voice before, yet I felt as if I had been longing for it, missing it. It was poetic, masculine, hinting at amusement. Surely, I had lost my mind.
You hate him. Don't respond. Whatever you do, DO NOT look up at him. My resolve crumbled immediately. His eyes were the color of honey. I couldn't look away. "Whahuh?"
"Your ankle." He gestured as he took his seat next to mine, where I sat looking like a stroke victim on a rollercoaster. Stop shaking, Bella, please stop shaking.
He was perfectly amiable; he was even smiling. And, oh lord, it was devastating. "I was just making a joke, suggesting you'd injured yourself in some sort of brawl." He examined my face, likely concluding I was mentally challenged. In the confines of the moment, he was correct in his assumption.
Yanking me out of my inner monologue, he continued, "My name is Edward Cullen."
"I know." Apparently my brain on was autopilot, so my mouth defaulted to the stupidest statement possible. Barely recovering, I muttered, "Bella Swan." It was better than grunting "me Bella, you Edward," but not by much.
As the class period began, the substitute scrawled her name in chalk, informing us of what Mike had already surmised: Mr. Berty had the copies of Romeo & Juliet with him at home and thus we were free to talk amongst ourselves "using inside voices" for the rest of the period. "As long as you remain in your assigned seats," she lectured. "I need to take attendance. No running around." As it was, I couldn't move without the aid of a forklift, and it had nothing to do with my bum ankle.
He kept his distance, but turned slightly toward me, the rest of the room buzzing with the chatter of our classmates. "So may I ask what happened?"
I was painfully aware of the crimson pallor of my cheeks. I prayed he'd just think it was sunburn; he hadn't lived in Forks long enough to know that was impossible. "A tree and I had a bit of a disagreement." I congratulated myself on forming a coherent sentence.
"Oh, I see." His lips curled up, amused. Immediately, he composed himself, his eyes shifting as if he instantly regretted finding anything I said entertaining. Perhaps this was part of some sort of master plan to destroy me.
After a brief pause, he observed, "You look like you're in pain."
Actually, I always wore this expression while at school, but he didn't need to know that. "It's not that bad." He gazed at me skeptically, as if I was hiding something.
"Seriously, it really doesn't hurt all that much." I felt as if I were under a microscope.
One side of his mouth crept up into a smirk. "Whatever you say."
I made a show of ignoring him by returning to rummaging through my bag. I found more aged bubblegum, removed from its wrapper, sticking to the inside pocket. I began to scrape at it with my fingernails. "You know, I heard that if you put ice on it, it's easier to get out." His melodic voice was smug.
"Thanks, Martha Stewart, I'll keep that in mind."
I snuck a glance in his direction. He appeared thoroughly entertained. "I apologize for wearing on your nerves. I was just trying to pass the time…" He purposefully turned his attention to the front of the room. Despite his casual tone, I noticed he was still gripping the side of his desk as if his life depended on it.
I feared the inevitable awkward silence that was approaching. Grasping at straws, not knowing why I kept talking to him, I asked, "So do you often attend school for one day and then disappear for a week, or is Forks just that terrible?" I dared to glance at him out of the corner of my eye.
Ever so briefly, he raised his eyebrows, slightly cocking his head to the side. "I wasn't feeling well." He watched me attentively. "Why do you ask?"
He obviously wanted to know why I obsessively tracked his absences. "Uh, what do you mean?"
"It sounds to me that you think Forks is 'that terrible.'"
I rolled my eyes. "Well, yeah."
When I didn't continue, he shook his head, his eyes fixated on my face. "Elaborate, please." I'd write him a novel, if that's what he wanted; against my will, I was instantly hypnotized.
"There's not much to do, the sun only shines twice, three times a year max, and ever since I got here, I've spent more time in the emergency room than a stethoscope."
He continued to stare. "You didn't grow up here."
"Um, no. I mostly grew up near Phoenix, California for awhile before that."
"And you're accident prone." Statements, not questions. Edward Cullen seemed uncertain of nothing.
"Terminally."
Again, he seemed engrossed in matters beyond my comprehension. "Hence the ankle." He smiled.
"And the two broken wrists, the walking cast, the third-degree burn, more bruises than I can count, the dislocated shoulder, the coma—" I stopped. Even in my hypnotic state, there was some information I didn't wish to divulge.
"Sounds excruciating." His voice was more than just conversational… something else lingered beneath the surface.
I shrugged. "More so for my parents than for me."
He shifted in his seat. "What do you mean?" He seemed genuinely perplexed; at last uncertainty had fallen upon him.
"It's hard for them…"
He nodded, as if almost desperate for me to go on.
And then, for the first time since it happened, I let myself talk about it. Without looking back, without looking at him, I continued, "Especially the coma." I shuddered at the word. "They thought I was going to die; I think my mom went without eating for a week. She's kind of fragile like that. I wasn't there to watch over her…" My voice trailed off. I was afraid to look at him; I'd gone over the line, been too personal. Yet when I forced my eyes to his, I found him unabashedly fascinated.
"And you worry about them? You were comatose, yet you feel responsible for their pain?" He seemed incredulous.
"I didn't feel anything at the time. Just when I woke up, and still, it was like it was more painful to see the look in their eyes than to actually feel how broken my own body was." I paused, suddenly aware of what I was saying aloud. Backtracking, I murmured, "It's stupid, I know." I flushed. I knew I'd been talking far, far too much.
His voice was quiet, almost as if he were praying. "It's not stupid at all."
I barely heard him; surely he'd said something else. My eyes turned to the front of the classroom, where Mike and Connor bickered like an old married couple as they adjusted their fantasy football rosters. "You call that a fair trade? Look at what I'm willing to give up, and you offer me that. Are you insane?" Elsewhere, ordinary conversations continued, others did homework, some appeared to sleep, heads down, earphones dangling down their necks. I felt as if I'd been on a parallel plane, alone with Edward Cullen.
When I turned back to his tantalizing face, he was studying mine. "Could you tell me how it happened? If you don't mind…"
In truth, I did. Yet, given what I had already let slip, I figured I'd go for broke; after all, he hadn't asked if I'd seen a white light or looked down at my body from above, the questions everyone else had thrown at me when I'd finally returned to school. "It was January, icy. I drove to school, and as I got out of my truck, this van was coming at me, out of control, spinning on the ice. It struck me head on."
His expression was pained. "I can't imagine what that must have felt like."
"I can't either. I don't have any memory of it happening." The way he was looking at me gave me a physical reaction. I kept talking to stop myself from thinking about him and what he was doing to me. "The EMTs told my dad that if I hadn't been moving when I was hit, if I had even hesitated for a second, it would have hit me differently; instead of propelling me to the left, I would have been thrown back and crushed between the van and my truck." You'd be dead, they said. Instantaneously dead. My last memory of that day was glancing over my shoulder as I walked towards the school, smiling at the familiar snow chains Charlie had put on my car that morning, just as he had done the winter before. Two weeks passed before I woke up.
For what seemed like the thousandth time in the past forty-five minutes, I trembled.
Nothing escaped his notice. "It wasn't my intention to upset you." He looked out the window behind me, beyond us. "I'm sorry."
"No, I'm not upset." I was pouring out my soul to a total stranger, making a complete idiot of myself. But I wasn't upset. At least not yet. Perhaps once I regained coherence, things would be different.
"You survived, though. That's what matters." He seemed to be directing his words inward.
"I guess." The next words slipped out unintentionally; I never even dared to let them cross my thoughts, let alone say them aloud. "But you never really get past that... The feeling that you got a second chance. It's almost as if—"
"As if what?" He was captivated. I wasn't sure if I was hopelessly flattered or excruciatingly uncomfortable.
"Nothing. Forget it." I glanced at the clock. Two minutes. I only had to keep it together for two minutes. Then, I could go collapse into my seat in History and wallow in my humiliation over monopolizing an entire conversation with a total stranger who may or may not abhor me.
He pursed his lips and ran his hand through his thick bronze hair. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't move. And then he spoke suddenly, softly. "Almost as if you'd been given a gift, the gift of time, and now you feel like you have to fill it with something special."
My breath left me. I was too entranced to pray for its return. "Yeah," I choked out. "Something extraordinary."
He stared at his hands, musing wryly, "Impossible expectations."
I sat in stunned silence, utterly mystified over the turn in our conversation. The bell rang then, startling me even though I knew it was coming. Edward rose and quickly, almost supernaturally, strode out the door without a glance in my direction.
I was still frozen as Mike approached my desk and handed me my crutches. "You okay? Bella?"
Shaken, I awoke from my trance. "Yeah, sorry."
As we slowly made our way down the hall, Mike seemed unaware of my frenzied state. "Maybe Berty has the stomach flu. He could be out all week!" He could barely contain his excitement. "Or something life-threatening; he could be out all month. Maybe even longer!"
My stomach turned over at the prospect, for Mr. Berty's terminal illness would certainly be the death of me.