CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: Sparks

My mother had always been a creature of whimsy. She bought those miniature horoscope guides in the supermarket checkout line, signed up for swing dancing after hearing a Brian Setzer song on the radio, and chopped off her hair using kitchen scissors and no mirror the summer our AC conked out. Her utmost act of impulse, though, was packing up and dragging me out of Forks, away from my father and her only source of income, when I was still in diapers because she had grown tired of endless rain and playing housewife to the local rookie cop. She had loved him once, she'd told me, but marrying that young had sucked the life out of her and she knew she'd never forgive herself if she didn't make her escape.

Despite her irresponsible attitude and lack of foresight, I loved Renee with my whole heart. We'd weathered so many storms together that I had no hesitation in trusting her completely. When she married Phil my freshman year of high school, I told the part of my brain that nagged he was too young for her to stuff it because I saw how happy she was. I'd envied her because she threw caution to the wind and gave herself to someone, even after failing so miserably with my own father over a decade earlier and a phonebook's worth of perpetual losers in the interim. Like a cat, Renee landed on her feet. She'd made mistakes but in the end, she finally found happiness.

I, on the other hand, couldn't buy socks without calculating the pros and cons of white cotton versus gray synthetics. Every decision I ever made was a painstaking process of looking at each possible choice from a hundred different angles. Yet, I was the one who now never slept at night or ate more than a few bites at a time; despite my prudence and unwavering cautiousness, it was me and not my mother who was a hormonal basket case.

I spent the better part of three weeks avoiding the two sources of my pain by avoiding the cafeteria and keeping the phone off of the hook. It made perfect sense that when I'd finally reached my breaking point, she'd be there for me. After years of watching over my mom, I was finally the child.

I had been going through the motions for weeks, telling Jake I was stressed out with school and college applications so I wouldn't spend more than an hour or two with him at a time. He seemed to buy it, and my guilt worsened with each passing day. Over and over, I chastised myself that I should love Jacob more, that if I just tried harder everything would work out as it should…but it kept getting worse.

I'd told Edward the same lies I'd fed Jake, going as far as spending several lunch hours studying in the school library. The few times I pretended to eat in the cafeteria seated across from him, I'd buried my head in college admissions essays and scholarship applications, not even allowing Alice to break my contrived concentration. Edward had tried to corner me to ask what was wrong, but I'd just plastered an unconvincing smile on my face and told him I was just getting a case of senioritis, worried about my GPA and life after graduation.

Eventually, my sleepless nights caught up with my body and I suffered with a week-long flu. The emotional pain had torn me apart for so much longer that I nearly welcomed the physical agony as a change of pace.

At 1AM on November 19th, a stormy Saturday morning, the dam holding in the remaining drops of my sanity finally broke. After Jacob dropped off a care package filled with bottles of Ny-Quil and Kleenex and made a hasty exit, I'd starting crying alone in my room and couldn't stop. For seven hours.

On top of my stuffed up nose, aching stomach, and slight fever, the crying was too much. I was so dehydrated that the tears could no longer come and dry heaving took their place. I buried my face in my pillow to muffle the sound of my own gagging, practically suffocating if it meant hiding my pain from Charlie. The thought that finally hit me was the first inkling of relief I'd felt in days: I needed my mother.

It was 4AM in Florida, but this was an emergency. I didn't want to worry her, but I couldn't handle this on my own anymore. Creeping down to the kitchen, I grabbed the cordless phone from its cradle, crawled into the tiny coat closet in the hall, and closed the door. She answered after four rings.

"Mom?"

"Honey?" She was breathless and groggy, but panic still altered the speed of her words. "What's wro—"

"I'm in love with this boy. He's not Jake, and he doesn't want me. But he's all I can think about." I spoke so quickly, I wasn't sure anything I said had even been coherent, but Renee was fluent in crazy, so she didn't need me to slow down. "I'm sorry about the time, but I can't sleep and I—I need you to tell me it will go away, that I can get my life back." Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I pleaded, "Pl—please, Mom."

Though it travelled three thousand miles to reach me, her sympathetic sigh warmed the nervous shivers out of my body for the first time in days. "Oh, sweetheart. I worried this would never happen for you." Her voice lifted, and I could have sworn she was almost laughing on her end of the line.

Shocked, I asked, "Do you find this funny? This is ruining my life." I bit my fist to keep the tearless sobbing from starting up again.

"Isabella…you sound like a teenager." She sounded thrilled and maybe a bit awed. "Like you're in love, the fairytale love you always used to tell me was total crap."

I wished she'd been sitting in front of me so she could see the rage color my cheeks. "Mom! How can you—"

"Relax, honey, I'm not mocking you, it's just…Has this boy, the one who has you calling me in tears in the middle of the night, has he told you he's not interested in you?"

Of course, she hadn't seen Edward, so the answer wasn't screaming back at her. "Trust me, he's not. At all. We're strictly in the friend zone."

"But there are sparks, aren't there?"

"Ugh. See? That right there? That's the fairytale garbage I cannot stand." This had been Renee's problem for years, believing every man who walked into her life was a potential Prince Charming. "And, for there to be these so-called 'sparks,' I think it has to be mutual. You can't have sparks with yourself, Mother."

"So you haven't told him how you feel, have you?"

I started laughing hysterically, the kind of laugh only weeks of living in emotional hell coupled with two consecutive sleepless nights and four tablespoons of night-time cold medicine can bring. "No way," I gasped between guffaws, "he would crucify me."

Renee said nothing and let my laughter die out. Once it did, I continued soberly, "He'd stop talking to me…and I don't want—I can't lose him."

"So you're sure he's not on the same page as you, then?"

"He's not even reading the same book, Mom."

I heard shuffling on the other end and knew she was pacing back and forth, a maneuver she often did when deep in thought. "And Jacob? Where does he stand in all of this?"

Ah, the million dollar question. "He has no idea, but he knows something's wrong." I gnawed on my bottom lip, knowing it would be painfully chapped within the hour. "I can't hurt him, either. He's—he's all I have, and he loves me so much. And trusts me. And promises me anything I ask. I just can't…"

She was silent for awhile, but I had no doubt Renee was still awake. All her relationship mistakes made her a bit of a boyfriend guru, but I'd never needed her expertise before. Finally, she spoke with sage-like intensity. "Do you love Jacob?"

"Yes, of course. I told you, he's my everything." I couldn't believe she needed me to explain this part. I thought the entire world knew Jake and I were two halves of a whole.

"Hmm" was all she said for several minutes. Then, she started speaking in a way that told me she'd wanted to say the same words to me for quite awhile. "Bella, I loved your dad. Very much. I trusted him and knew there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me. He was safe and warm and sometimes he'd bring me flowers for no reason on a Wednesday." I heard her smile. "I liked that a lot. But when he was off at work, I was lonely. The thing was, I didn't necessarily miss him…I missed the way he made me feel, how he kept me from feeling empty. I didn't miss our conversations or the jokes he'd tell. I mean, he never liked any of the things I liked, and I always felt like there were parts of me he'd never understand or even know at all. He loved me, but I don't think we were always in love with each other. Maybe at first, but I kept thinking that maybe there was something more, something that I was missing…sparks, Bella."

"Well, Jake's jokes are hilarious, and he knows all there is to know about me," I blurted out unthinkingly. Renee was opening her heart to me, but I was on the defensive and couldn't let her words truly reach me.

"Okay," she murmured for lack of a better response. After a beat, she asked, "Do you remember the first time you called me to tell me Jake kissed you?"

"You called me. You kept asking questions because you thought I was hiding something, and I finally had to fess up."

"Exactly."

I was too dazed for her clever tricks. "Huh?"

"You didn't call me. I had to drag it out of you, and when you confessed, it was like you were admitting you'd broken one of my pottery pieces."

"I was embarrassed." Renee and I had a pretty open relationship, but talking about my first kiss and having a boyfriend made me uneasy. Surely, she had to understand that was the reason for my lack of enthusiasm.

"Maybe. But you just called me at four in the morning over this boy, this non-Jacob boy who you're telling me you're in love with."

I groaned a bit too loudly. I waited to hear any sounds from Charlie's room above, but I was only met with silence. "That's because he's driving me insane. I can't get him out of my head. Were you like this after you left Dad? When does it go away?"

"Oh, Bella." Renee used the same tone when she hugged me after I'd skinned a knee or failed a math test, and I remembered all over again just how much I missed her. "I regret hurting him, but I don't regret leaving. I know what you're talking about, the longing and obsessing…but I feel that when I'm away from Phil. Because I love him, the kind of love I just didn't have with Charlie."

"Mom, I can't. I belong with Jake. He'd be crushed—"

"There's no law betrothing you to your high school boyfriend, sweetie." Her words, as gentle as they were, stung. "You have options, even though they aren't necessarily easy choices."

She was only hearing the parts she wanted to. "No, I don't! Jacob trusts me and Edward doesn't want—"

"Do you remember that little ice cream shop you loved when we were in Phoenix, the one all the way in Scottsdale? With the banana milkshakes you were so crazy about?"

"What?" I briefly wondered if I'd passed out at some point and she'd just kept talking for hours without realizing my absence, taking the conversation in a completely new direction.

"You refused to let me take you to Steak 'n Shake. Instead, we had to drive forty-five minutes to get you one of those milkshakes because you insisted they were so much better."

Stupidly, I fell right into her trap. "Well, yeah. Steak 'n Shake used banana flavoring, so those milkshakes taste like candy and are bright yellow, like lemons instead of bananas; that's just wrong…and gross. Plus, the Sugar Bowl used real whipped cream and those frosted mugs…"

"The drive was worth it, right?"

Renee couldn't see it, but she knew me well enough to know I was rolling my eyes. "Jake isn't banana flavoring, Mom. He's the real thing. And the other ice cream parlor in this little scenario isn't even open, so, you know, no need to waste gas." My concentrating on continuing the metaphor wasn't helping the nausea brought on by my need for liquids and rest.

"Just think about it. Please. Don't shy away from what you want just because you have to work a little for it."

A more alert version of myself would have let her have it, but I was no match for the double dose of Sudafed I'd forced down an hour earlier. "I think I can sleep now."

"You sound terrible. Do you have a cold?" She sounded so much like a mother; I wasn't really used to our roles being reversed for an entire conversation.

"Uh huh."

"Get some sleep. I love you, baby."

"Sorry I woke you up."

Renee chuckled. "Oh, believe me, I would not have wanted to miss this."

I had a feeling she'd call me the next day to probe me for further details, but for now, I was happy to finally tell the truth to someone; lying was exhausting. "Night, Mom. Love you."

"Good night, Bella. Be strong."

I was the opposite of strong as I tossed the phone onto the kitchen table and crawled up the stairs and into bed. The medicine lulled me into a dreamless sleep, and I didn't wake up for fourteen hours.

X X X

I'd already missed two days of school the week before on account of my battle with the flu, so I decided to stop hiding and headed to class on Monday despite my runny nose and peakish complexion.

Aside from my illness, I was also sick over being stuck in a hellish limbo as to what to do about Jake, whether to tell him my love was divided between him and someone else or to spare his feelings and stand by him the best I could. As for Edward, I figured he never left my thoughts regardless of whether I was in his physical presence or alone in my bedroom, so there was no real harm in allowing him back into my life during school hours. I missed him like crazy, and he'd never allow my fantasies become reality, so I was only in danger from thinking my own selfish thoughts.

Absorbed in sorting through my feelings, I was absentmindedly stocking my locker with Kleenex and daytime cough syrup before class when I felt a hand gingerly cup around my right shoulder.

I knew it was Edward without turning around, though him voluntarily touching me was certainly new. For a second, I closed my eyes and took in his feathery grasp. His hand was cold, and I wanted it to clutch my feverish body and drive out the clammy feeling that had plagued me for days.

When I eventually turned to face him, his body's proximity to mine overwhelmed me. He hovered over me, at the same time looking both lost and found. I smiled weakly when I realized that meant he'd missed me.

"Hey," I murmured.

"I had no idea you were so sick," he responded, letting his hand slide a little down my arm before resting it at his side. He kept his eyes on his own movements as if conducting some sort of secret science experiment. Then he raised his stare to me, and I imagined that he swallowed nervously.

I wouldn't let the spell he cast over me ruin the opportunity for sarcastic teasing. "You're not going to throw me over your shoulder again and drag me off to the hospital, are you?"

He rolled those beautiful golden eyes of his. "That depends. How's your head?"

"Stuffed up and concussion-free, but I'll keep you posted."

"Then I suppose I don't need to kidnap you just yet." He grinned at me, but he still looked a little worried. "So, despite your illness, does this mean you're talking to me again?"

"I never stopped," I hedged. "But I am officially taking a break from pretending to be a Type A personality. I never want to see another 'Why Dartmouth?' essay ever again." Crap.

His eyes widened with excitement. "Dartmouth? Dartmouth! So you're applying after all?"

"Shh," I hissed, darting my eyes around the hallway. I didn't want word getting out that I had an Ivy League pipe dream. "Yeah, I thought I'd give it a shot. I can always frame the rejection letter and hang it over my desk; I bet Dartmouth has nice stationary."

He ignored my pessimism and smiled wide, his impossibly white teeth gleaming. "That's so—" he broke off into another grin "—so wonderful."

Embarrassed, I concentrated on wringing my hands. "It's stupid, really. There's no way—"

"Oh, quiet. Have some faith, you're a smart girl."

Not lately, I wanted to add.

I also wanted him to stop smiling at me, as it was the most tempting thing I'd ever seen. With my focus now on his mouth, I leaned in slightly to see if I could smell his breath, but I couldn't pick up a thing, as if he wasn't even breathing at all. Frustrated, I sighed up at him.

"I can help you with your essay at lunch, if you want. I'm fairly decent at that sort of thing." He was "fairly decent" at everything, but I didn't want to give his ego any more of a boost than the unapologetic glow on my face may have already given him.

"I don't want to bore you to death, Edward. Don't worry about it."

The hallway was practically deserted, telling me I needed to get to class. Edward walked backward in the opposite direction, still dazzling me with his jubilant expression. "Bring it to lunch," he suggested confidently, "and Dartmouth will be begging you to head their way next fall."

Four hours later, I complied, mostly because it would give us something safe to talk about.

Edward poured over my three-page paper with a fine-toothed comb, adding commas and omitting entire paragraphs before turning to me with a confused look. "This essay isn't you, Bella. It's cold and empty and not once does it show who you truly are."

I loved to write, but bragging about my own accomplishments, or filling holes where I had nothing to brag about, was not my specialty. "And who am I, Edward? I can't just make up lies about spending a summer volunteering in Haiti or building a homeless shelter with my bare hands. I'm just not what they're looking for." I snatched the papers back from him and muttered, "I don't have anything to offer them."

He reached toward me and jerked the papers back into his side of the table. I'd never seen him look so angry. "Don't say that."

"Why not? It's true. I'm not a blip on anyone's radar, let alone one of the best colleges in the country. My life…sucks, okay? I'm only a slightly above-average student, I can't articulate a single rational thought out loud, I live in Forks, for Christ's sake, and I certainly can't convince some blowhards in the ivory tower that I belong with them. And I don't even know if I want to. Let's just burn this stupid thing," I reached across and flicked my finger against the sheets in his hand, "and pretend you never gave me this terrible idea in the first place."

I coughed, blew my nose forcefully on a napkin, and met his eyes without hesitation, not bothering to feel embarrassed that I looked like I was on the losing end of a bet with the Grim Reaper.

Edward stared back, but his hostile expression softened into something…new. His eyes pleaded with me, but I had no idea what he was asking for.

Somewhere between his critique of my grammar and the sudden heavy silence that had just fallen over us, Alice disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Edward leaned across the table, apparently undeterred by my unabating flu. Finally, I could smell his breath, a scent so sweet and inviting that it caused pain to swell in my chest because I couldn't take it in whenever I wanted.

"Bella, you're…you're just…" I'd never seen him at a loss for words before. "You're incredibly special, you're selfless to the point of making yourself miserable for the sake of those you care about, and you are by far the most genuine person I've ever met. You're heads and shoulders above anyone else in this school, in this town when it comes to intelligence. And, on top of all of that you have no idea how special you are. I am so sick of you not believing that you deserve better, to get out of here and live the life you were meant to live. You don't belong in this place; you are meant for greater things. Dartmouth would be crazy not to want you. Anyone would be crazy not to want you."

Wait—what?

He seriously misread my awestruck expression and the uncontrollable tremors of my hands. Kindly smiling at me, his eyes vacant, he continued, "Look, you don't have to be afraid; he loves you, trust me. He'll follow you anywhere, but you have to get out of this place before it swallows you whole."

"That's not—I know he would." I scrunched up my eyelids to force the tears back in, but I was fighting a losing battle. I could not believe I was talking about Jacob with Edward. Candidly, no less. It was a reprehensible mistake, but I saw something shift in Edward that I may have imagined, but yet I had to know if whatever it was was real. "It's not that. I think that I, uh, may want…something that I can't have, and I don't really know what I should want, what's best for me. I mean, I know the answer, I know what the smart choice is, but there's this other thing that keeps nagging at me, and I want to not want it, but I do. I just do, and I can stop it."

He studied me, unblinking. "I'm not sure I follow."

I sighed, my exhaling broken by the silent, hidden sobs constricting my chest. "I'm not sure I do, either. Never mind."

"Don't do that. Don't brush me off." He kept leaning closer and had I not been delusional, I could have sworn he was internally warring with himself over whether or not to touch me. At least, I wanted more than anything for that to be the truth. I stopped myself from memorizing in his scent as he said, "You haven't been yourself in weeks, Bella. I know you don't really know that much about me, but if something is bothering you, you can tell me what it is. Maybe I can help—"

"You can't."

"Perhaps I—"

I stopped thinking and just interrupted him by asking a small portion of what I'd been dying to know. "Why is it that you've never had a girlfriend, Edward? The real reason, this time, not the 'I dislike most people' garbage you feed everyone." That you fed me.

The motivation behind my question was so transparent, yet he seemed taken aback. He raked his fingers back and forth across his scalp and through his hair before answering. "I'm not the sort of person that settles, I suppose. I'm not going to force something upon myself when it's not absolutely right."

"And when the hell is that supposed to happen? How do you know when it is right?" I didn't really know what I was searching for, a glimmer of hope that he might feel something for me or the key to knowing who I belonged with, as if I even had a choice at all.

With his index finger, he traced the lines on his palm. He breathed in, deep and slow, and let the emotion drain from his face. "When it happens…you just know. I can't really explain it."

Jealousy raised the transparent hairs on my arm and set my heart thumping in varying, irregular rhythms. "So you've felt it before?"

Finally, he looked up at me. His eyes were cold and demanded silence. "Just once."

"Me, too." It was meant to be a lie, but my heart thudded to my chest as I realized it was the truth. I had only felt it once, that kind of love my mother left my father to find. And it wasn't with Jake, the person to whom I belonged, the person with whom I made sense.

For a second, Edward looked damned, self-condemning and filled with an aching I couldn't fathom. His body language told me my questions were no longer welcome, and I hated the girl who let him go.

"Bella, listen to me." I jumped at the sound of his voice, so insistent and earnest but with undertones that told me I wouldn't like what he was about to say. "You have to leave this place. He's not going to stop loving you, trust me."

"You can't know—"

"Trust me." He leaned away from me and fidgeted with the corner of his lunch tray. "He'll follow you, and you can be happy. I promise."

He thought this was about Jake, that I'd been incessantly moping and avoiding everyone I knew because I thought Jake would leave me. I almost laughed at the insanity of his misguided intuition. I wondered what he would say if I told him Jacob wasn't the source of the problem at all, that it was Edward who consumed my every waking minute.

He stood then, reaching to reposition the essay in front of me. "Redraft this, and we'll talk again tomorrow."

"Easier said than done," I said automatically, failing to take in my own words.

He leaned against our table and lowered his voice so it soothed my erratic pulse. "Write about your mother. When you talk about her, you come alive. She'll help Dartmouth see who you really are." His mouth twitched into a slight, shy smile.

I felt it then.

The spark.

Edward knew me, each and every part; no matter what I did, I could never hide from him. I couldn't know if he felt it too, but he'd said anyone would want me, I hadn't imagined it, and he'd said it with such purity that even I couldn't argue that he'd been lying.

Was it possible that someone who saw me for everything I was would love me back? Not if that person is Edward, I warned myself, repeating my canned response meant to snap me back into the real world. But this time, my internal lecturing didn't ring entirely true.

I couldn't forget the look on his face, the way his lips curled around the words…

Anyone would be crazy not to want you, Bella.

For a few seconds, before I could weigh the pros and cons and analyze my newfound happiness into dust, I dared to hope Edward was right.

Chapter End Notes: So much angst, I know. By now, you should know that's what you signed up for when you kept reading this story.

(1) The ice cream shop in Scottsdale is real, but I Googled it and have never actually been there, so it could suck just as much as banana milkshakes from Steak 'n Shake, which are really made with artificial flavoring (at least here in IL) and make me want to gag.

(2) Dartmouth's admissions policies don't exactly have a "Why Dartmouth" essay, but they do in this story because I'm too lazy to sign up for a user ID on the Dartmouth site to check out their actual admission essays.

(3) The reviews, as always, are overwhelming. Most of them are so detailed and thoughtful; getting any reviews is exciting, but getting them from such intelligent readers has put me over the moon. I love you all and I hope this chapter didn't disappoint.