CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Survival
At 15, I made the decision to put my mother's happiness above my own. My move to Forks from Phoenix was solely so she could follow her new, twenty-something husband around the minor-league baseball circuit, watching him strike out in his few trips at bat and keeping him company in cross-country Greyhound buses and roadside motel rooms. It made her happy, being with Phil, so I couldn't stand in her way; over her insistence that she'd stay behind with me in Phoenix, I chose to pack up and head for Charlie's, a place I hadn't visited since I was a kid. Yet, despite my fear and homesickness, I knew I was doing the right thing, for Renee's sake, and anytime doubt crossed my mind, I told myself that I was strong and capable of surviving on my own.
What I didn't understand was that there was more to life than just survival. When I found Jake, I couldn't believe how much better I felt having a real friend, someone who liked me for who I was and never judged me. I thought I was complete...and then I discovered something legions beyond Jacob's friendship, some sort of emotional voodoo that lifted the weight from my shoulders and made me eager to share every piece of myself with another person. And then that something, rather that someone,ripped the euphoria from under me and sent me back to my struggle for basic survival. Only now that struggle was much worse, for I knew just how good life could feel and exactly what I was missing. It was like living in a warm, cozy cottage with heat and electricity and suddenly being transported back to the Dark Ages with nothing for warmth but a small fire inside a cave where I could keep myself alive but not really live.
My own personal Dark Age started the morning following Alice's visit. After another near-sleepless night, I forced myself to sharpen my survival skills. I dragged myself out of bed. I dressed in a ratty sweatshirt and fraying jeans. I pretended to eat cereal as Charlie studied me from across the kitchen, likely looking for the warning signs of crazy. I looked like hell, but at least I was functioning. Sort of.
I still couldn't cry, so I zombied my way to school and through the parking lot, staring at nothing but the pavement three feet in front of me.
The first hurdle of the day was Spanish—Spanish with Alice. I had five minutes before the bell, and I contemplated hiding in my bathroom-stall safe house until the absolute last second before I had to be in my seat. However, where there should have been panic, I found only dullness, so I stoically shoved open the door and collapsed into my chair with a slight thud. I never knew whether Alice was in class that morning because all I did was stare blankly at the faux wood-grain pattern on my desktop for fifty minutes straight until it was time to head to second period.
The rest of the morning passed like a depressing, slow-motion game of musical chairs, with me slumping into my assigned seat in each class, not moving or interacting with my surroundings until the next bell rang. When lunchtime came, Angela may have tried to say something to me in the hallway, but I just stalked past her to the library, where I hid in the deserted periodicals section, using a newspaper to shield myself from view.
Eventually, the lunch hour ended, meaning only one thing: English.
This time, I did wait until the final possible moment before lurching off down the hallway, out the double doors, and into the modular building across the courtyard that housed Mr. Berty's classroom. Without looking at anyone, I approached his desk.
"Mr. Berty, I'm having problems seeing from the back of the room. Would you mind if...?" It was the first time I'd spoken all day, and my tone was so flat I wasn't sure if the words really came out as a question.
He sighed and motioned to someone behind me. "Newton, switch seats with Miss Swan."
I took Mike's seat without thanking him. I was situated toward the front of the room now, with most of the students behind me, meaning I couldn't droop down and make myself invisible like I had in my morning classes.
I knew he wasn't there yet, even though class would begin in less than fifteen seconds. Had he been in his seat, I would have felt him.
When the door creaked open an instant later, goosebumps raised the thin hairs on my arms as my heart stopped. I cowered behind my long, matted hair, obstructing my view of him, but it didn't really matter; each nerve in my body was tuned into his every move and he knew it.
Rather than walk down the aisle that would take him directly to his desk and past mine, he opted to take the route farthest from me. I heard his chair scrape slightly against the linoleum as he took his seat, but after that, he didn't make a sound.
I should have sat up straight in my chair with my shoulders back to show him he hadn't broken me, but it was all I could do to keep my body still, to ward off the trembling. My effort paid off; throughout the class period, I was rigid, much like he'd been on that infamous first day of school. My heartbeats were irregular in my chest, but I didn't feel the urge to sob. My anesthetized emotional state should have been a relief, but the numbness inside was just as disturbing; even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't feel anything other than the ache of my overly tensed muscles.
When the hour ended, I knew he'd disappear within seconds, and my sixth sense that involuntarily tracked his every movement told me I was right. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Mike making his way over to me, so I gathered up my books and, despite my sluggish speed, managed to outmaneuver him to the door.
The final hour of the day and the subsequent drive home were much of the same—complete nothingness.
I made Charlie dinner that night but didn't eat any myself. Instead, I did my Calculus homework and digested six chapters of the Aldous Huxley novel we were reading in English. School work was fantastically tedious, confusing at times but never unpredictable. I welcomed the monotony and the way it made time tick away in even, vacant increments. For three months, it served as the key to my continued survival.
X X X
Time passed before me like a movie, never including me in the action except for short spurts where some random event would drag me into making a cameo appearance in my own life. Those moments were few and far between, but when they stirred me from my waking death, try as I might, I couldn't forget them.
X X X
On Christmas day, I made Charlie a ham. He told me between mouthfuls that he was grateful that I stuck with him in Forks rather than heading to Jacksonville and Renee for the holiday.
Uncharacteristically, he put his calloused hand on mine and told me he loved me.
And then he ruined it by adding, "That kid was crazy to let you go."
Of course, he'd meant Jake. He'd also meant to comfort me, but his words had the opposite effect. I told him I was full though I hadn't eaten a single bite and spent the rest of the day in my room, staring blankly out the window, feeling nothing but a weak desire for snow instead of sleeting rain.
X X X
On December 30th, I received a large, thick envelope in the mail. Dartmouth apparently had an outreach program for underqualified zombies, explaining why it accepted my early-decision application and offered to take $36,000 I didn't have off my hands for a single year of tuition.
Renee screamed joyfully into the phone at the news, while Charlie took me out to dinner at the Lodge, sparing my eardrums but weighing heavily on my guilty conscious as he told me he'd mortgage his house to put me through freshman year.
"You don't have to do that, Dad. In fact, please don't."
He squinted at me and asked, "Is it what you want?"
In truth, no. I wanted something that wasn't even real, that had nothing to do with academia or responsible choices. I wanted the feeling back from all those weeks ago that had snuck into my heart, stolen my sanity, and made me grin like the village idiot on psychotropic drugs. But that wasn't possible, not anymore, and I couldn't really express any of it to Charlie, so I just told him in weak protest, "I just want…not to be here, Dad. But—"
He silenced me by shoving a plate of undercooked spaghetti in front of me and saying, "Eat something, Bells. You look like a bag of bones."
One week later, he dropped a postal receipt in front of me and ruffled my greasy hair on his way out the door. Right before he slammed it shut, he cheerfully called over his shoulder, "Check's in the mail, kid. I hope you can use all those raincoats of yours in New Hampshire."
X X X
On January 2nd, I worked an all-day shift at Newton Outfitters, spending the entire time in Mike's company while we did post-Christmas inventory.
I'd pretty much allowed my comatose state to do the talking for me where Mike and my other school acquaintances were concerned, but I never realized just how much I'd alienated myself until Mike asked, "So did you and that boyfriend of yours have a good New Years' Eve? We missed you guys at Jessica's party."
I dropped a sizable box of life jackets on my foot before I grumbled, "We broke up."
Mike noisily sucked in the air in front of him to cover the awkward silence that followed. Eventually, he remarked, "Sorry. Not the best time to break up with somebody...New Year's Eve...ouch."
He didn't sound as disappointed as he should have, but I barely noticed. "We split up in November."
I practically heard the wheels turning in his head, connecting the break-up with my bizarrely stoic, evasive behavior. "Oh, so that's why..."
"Yeah."
Mike snuck a peek at my face out of the corner of his eye. "Hey, if you ever want to talk about it—"
"I'm fine."
When school resumed following Christmas break, half the student population thought I'd been tragically dumped and subjected me to looks of pity in the hallway. The attention was unwelcome, but I figured I couldn't really complain, even if I had the energy; it was better than the looks I'd get if they knew the truth.
X X X
On January 11th, I heard him speak for the first time since that apocalyptic night in the forest. It was English class, where we were reading Animal Farm. In light of a rather contagious case of senioritis among many of his students, Mr. Berty had taken to implementing the Socratic Method to scare us into completing our reading assignments, selecting his victims randomly and skewering them for several minutes before returning to his lecture.
"Mr. Cheney, why don't you tell us what you think Orwell was trying to tell us through the character of Napoleon?"
I was barely conscious, not bothering to pay attention, since my pathetic, despondent attitude seemed to somehow earn me Mr. Berty's pity, sparing me from his inquisitions. Without looking up, I heard Ben's chair rattle and knew he'd jumped a little as his classmates' attention zeroed in on his answer. "Uh, I don't really—"
Berty's temper was shorter than usual. Cutting Ben off, he asked sarcastically, "No, you really don't, do you, Mr. Cheney?" I didn't need to look up from my desk to know he was now searching the room for a new casualty. Ironically, he selected the one student who could never serve as prey. "Mr. Cullen? Your thoughts?"
In a clear but emotionless voice, he answered, "Napoleon is the villain. He serves as the central example of everything Orwell hates about communism; really, he represents Joseph Stalin. Both Stalin and Napoleon set up dictatorships which fared far worse than the government each replaced. When Napoleon and the other pigs take on human-like behavior at the end of the novel, Orwell is illustrating the pigs have become exactly what they sought to eradicate."
Halfway through Mr. Berty's response to the answer, I finally realized my eyes had been closed. When I opened them, the usually familiar surroundings seemed somehow foreign, confirming that I was a stranger in my own skin.
X X X
On Valentine's Day, in my own lethargic way of protesting all things love and romance, I took the things I owned that were explicitly tied to Jacob, placed them in a box, and sealed them up inside with duct tape. I missed him, but I knew we could never go back to the friendship fate had intended us to share. Instead, I packed away the physical evidence of our time together so I wouldn't have to think about the catalyst that tore us apart.
After about an hour, I ripped the box open again and dug to the bottom until I found the necklace Jake gave me for my birthday. The emerald dangling from the delicate silver chain wasn't real, but it still looked like it wasn't cheap and I knew I'd never wear it again. Placing it in an envelope, I debated whether to include a note but decided nothing I could say would ever remedy what I'd done.
I wrote Jake's name across the front and gave it to Charlie, who promised to drop it by the next time he and Billy went fishing.
X X X
On February 20th, I slipped in the parking lot after school and drove myself one-handed to the ER, already knowing that I'd sprained my left wrist when I used it to catch the rest of me as I slammed against the concrete.
Dr. Cullen was my attending physician.
My eyes were fixated on the laces of my shoes as soon as he walked in the room. When he spoke, I only heard his words in incremental phrases.
"...should heal within four to six weeks..."
"...prescription for the pain, though it will be relatively minor after a day or two..."
"...malnourished..."
"...concerned about you..."
"Bella? Are you listening to what I'm telling you?" He touched my arm then, and I jumped as if his hand was a fully charged defibrillator paddle.
Within seconds, I'd eased back into my familiar lifelessness. In an eerily even voice, I responded, "I'm fine. I'll keep it elevated."
He knelt at the end of the table so my downturned face could register the concern in his eyes. "You weigh thirteen pounds less than you did the last time you were in here three months ago. You need to take better care of yourself, Isabella." He took in a breath, and I knew he likely didn't need it. Hesitantly, he added, "People are worried about you."
"Tell Alice I'm fine." Alice's near-obsession with my welfare had always stumped me, as we were never exceptionally close. For a second, the look in her eyes when I'd cut off our budding friendship flashed in my head; it made no sense for her to mourn the casual relationship we'd once shared, yet she looked as if she'd just lost her best friend.
Dr. Cullen's stare was overtly searching my face. I didn't have the energy to guess what he was looking for.
"You need nourish—"
I was desperate for a distraction from my own well-being or lack thereof, so I cut him off without considering the propriety of my words. "How can you work here, with all the blood?"
I stared blandly at him, expecting to see surprise or maybe fear. He didn't cringe at all at my matter-of-factness and instead smiled gently. "Years of practice. It doesn't even affect me anymore."
I sighed, knowing I was being presumptuous and rude but not really caring. Still, for good measure, I mumbled, "I won't say anything, just so you know."
"Oh yes, I know that already."
Alice. How convenient having a psychic in the family must be.
Dr. Cullen went back to scribbling on my chart. As he was leaving, he turned back to me once more. The easy smile still lingered on his face, but his tone was stern. "Eat something, Bella. Take care of yourself."
I made no promises and returned to studying the woven fibers on my shoes until a nurse came i n and told me I could go home.
X X X
On February 28th, I finally woke up.
I'd like to say that it was some epic event or realization that dragged me from my walking coma, but it wasn't. Instead, it was just a combination of little twists of fate that stirred me into feeling again.
It started when the ninth grade civics class was assigned a research paper for the spring semester. The more overzealous students felt compelled to get a jump start on the assignment, which meant my once-deserted periodicals section in the corner of the library was now frequented by vertically challenged fourteen-year-olds looking for non-Wikipedia sources on modern-day democracy. My newspaper shield was no longer enough to keep me hidden, so I opted for Plan B: the girls' bathroom.
The lunch hour had begun ten minutes earlier, so the halls were fairly deserted. Still, I walked at a breakneck speed because I wasn't used to roaming around freely in the middle of the hour and had no idea who might be lurking around in the corridors.
Turns out it was Angela.
"Bella!" She greeted me like she hadn't seen me in ages, which, I suppose, in some ways, she hadn't.
"Hey," I muttered as I kept walking.
She must have taken my rare acknowledgment of her presence as a sign, because her hand shot out and found my arm. "Are you going to lunch today?"
I stopped short. "Uh, no." I couldn't help but staring at the spot on my forearm where she'd reached out and touched me. Outside of Charlie's awkward are-you-okay-Bells pats on the back or hand, I hadn't made physical contact with anyone in months.
"You should," she said sincerely, a softness in her tone that would have silenced a crying, colicky infant.
"I—No. I don't go in there." I nodded toward the cafeteria doors at the end of the hall.
"You can sit with Ben and me. We need a buffer—Jessica and Mike broke up last week and it's like a war zone at their end of the table because both of them refuse to sit somewhere else." Angela smiled sheepishly, but she did a piss-poor job of hiding the concern in her eyes.
"I'm not hungry, Angela." Each word was too sharp, but she brushed off my mild hostility and continued to smile carefully at me.
Hesitating slightly before she spoke, Angela responded, "You look hungry."
I followed her gaze to the glass trophy case behind me, where our reflections stood in sharp contrast. Angela had always been tall and model-thin, but next to me, she looked like a line-backer, and that was no affront to her. It was me who was the problem. When she'd grabbed m y arm moments earlier, subconscious warning bells had started to go off. Her thin, lithe fingers had encircled my entire forearm, with space to spare. Far too much space.
I slowly and not too subtly trailed my right hand up my left arm and felt the protruding bones of my wrist and elbow. The skin not resting atop the bones in my forearm sagged slightly, as if I was literally, as Charlie constantly stressed in his frequent dinnertime lectures, a bag of bones.
What are you doing? a voice inside me asked. It was the first time I'd engaged in inner monologue about my own welfare in months. Why can't you cry? Why can't you eat? Who are you?
I couldn't answer my own questions; all I could do was listen. My stomach growled. My breaths were shaky. My fingertips were tapping a nervous, involuntary symphony against my thigh. I may have been numb, but for months, my body had been unsuccessfully trying to tell me I was falling apart.
Angela still watched me, likely debating to herself whether she should leave me alone or force-feed me whatever was inside her brown paper lunch bag. "So?" She nodded awkwardly toward the cafeteria.
It was senseless for me to go in there; the cafeteria represented everything I was running from. But then I realized that I'd already received the hurt, the rejection, the loss; while I couldn't feel it, it still had happened; the nothingness couldn't erase the past. Being constantly numb was surprisingly exhausting, and I understood suddenly that I wanted to let go, to feel something, even if what I felt was pain.
So I nodded back at Angela. "Okay."
She led the way, with me following like an anxious, injured puppy. When we walked through the doorway, I couldn't look anywhere but at my feet; there were too many faces I refused to see. I was careful, though, because I knew that if I tripped, the world would be watching and I no longer had anyone to catch me.
Angela and I went through the lunch line; I knew she didn't need extra food since she'd brought her lunch, meaning she'd gone to the charade to ensure I ate something. I bought an apple and a bottled lemonade. I was trying, but I still couldn't miraculously down an entire serving of anything in one sitting.
We arrived at the usual table, or at least what had been my usual lunch table before... I swallowed at the thought before dropping my fruit and plastic bottle onto the hard Formica. The apple was probably bruised, but I found that somehow oddly comforting.
All of them—Ben, Tyler, Mike, Conner, Jessica, Lauren—stopped talking suddenly as if someone had pressed the mute button on the remote.
I sat, not lifting my eyes from the surface in front of me. Angela, usually the shy, nonspeaking one, started making forced small talk, and Mike willingly joined in. I didn't hear nor care what they said; I was focused only on surviving the rest of the hour. I didn't have to do it well, I told myself. I didn't have to convince everyone I was in high spirits or found their commentary on American Idol's panel of judges enthralling; I just had to sit there and take it until one o'clock hit.
I looked at the scratched face of my watch: thirty-seven minutes. I could handle thirty-seven minutes.
And I did handle it, up until the last fourteen minutes when Lauren opened her big, overly glossed mouth. "So, Bella, how are you holding up?" The innocence forced into her voice mocked me.
I twisted the stem off my apple core and asked flatly, "Excuse me?"
"The break-up? Are you okay?" Her feigned concern made me want to retch. I eyed the new Coach bag she'd flagrantly perched next to her tray.
Out came my standard reply. "I'm fine."
Mike cleared his throat. "So, anyone planning on going to that Nickelback concert in Seattle next weekend?"
No one answered him.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Jessica asked dumbly, as if she were doing me a favor. I knew not much went down in Forks, but my months-old break-up with Jake surely wasn't worth such interest. Yet, perhaps it truly would be yesterday's news if I'd refrained from acting like an extra from Dawn of the Dead for months on end; really, I could only blame myself for fueling the gossip.
In response to Jessica's moronic question, I shook my head no.
I stared past Jessica at the painted concrete wall behind her, but, out of the very corner of my eye, I still saw it happen. Lauren eyed Jessica, pointedly moved her gaze across the cafeteria to somewhere over my shoulder, and then looked back at Jess knowingly. I knew the direction she'd focused on. I knew who sat there. And I knew what she was implying.
Lauren caught me staring at her but didn't drop the condescendingly suggestive expression from her face. Something inside me snapped. I felt whatever it was break and reveled in the sensation, the first sensation I'd felt other than exhaustion in a very long time.
"You are so wrong, Lauren." My voice cracked as I spoke, but the point was that I said it.
"What are you talking about?" She took a si p from her Diet Coke and stared at the ceiling.
I gripped my hands together under the table to curb my rapidly building anxiety. "It has nothing to do...with...him."
Lauren creased her eyebrows in mock confusion. "With who?"
The rest of the table was quiet in their mutual bewilderment.
My fingers wrung tighter against each other. I could just drop it and go back to my silent cocoon where I would feel none of the pain, but my zombie charade was grueling and I was sick of fearing fear.
I released my hands and curled my palms around the sides of my chair. For the first time in eighty-nine days, I thought his name. Then, I spoke it. "Edward Cullen."
Lauren's lips curled up for a second in a sneer before she hid them again behind her can of soda.
I wouldn't let her do this to me. Lauren was horrible, and I knew it was because she was bored and insecure and desperately lost. Still, she couldn't be the one to unravel me. Not now. Not on her terms.
"I broke up with Jake because he and I weren't right for each other. Edward Cullen is an arrogant, selfish jerk who can't see past his own reflection to ever really like anybody. We were just friends, if that. So no, it wasn't about him."
I'd sounded so mean, which was odd considering how I was on the verge of crumbling.
Angela, Mike, and a few others shot Lauren dirty looks, so she tried to cover her tracks by continuing with her contrived oblivion. "What? I didn't say anything."
In an incredibly misguided attempt to comfort me, Jessica whispered, "It's cool, Bella. He's pretty nice to look at. I totally wouldn't blame you."
My teeth grinded together, and my breaths were too slow to be effective. "Nothing. Happened."
Jessica, taken aback, responded, "Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just saying, you know, I'd get it if...well, if—nevermind."
I watched her swallow and move her eyes down to her lap. Was she afraid of me?
Angela said something about the paper due in English next week, but everyone blocked her out to focus on me. In Forks, drama was better than Christmas.
Lauren, not meeting my stare, watched him from over my shoulder. "I get what you're saying, Bella. He's out of a lot of people's reach." She moved her blue eyes back to my face during that last phrase. "Anyone thinking they stand a chance with someone like him would have to be an idiot." Nodding in his direction, she smiled knowingly. She could have been talking about herself, but I knew better; she was referring to me. It was sickening.
I knew what Lauren's motivation was as I recalled her fawning over him in her drunken haze at Mike's birthday party, right before he unapologetically ditched her to come sit with me on the dock. It should have made me smile like it did then, but instead, my insides churned as I realized she and I belonged in the same category: girls he didn't want.
I looked Lauren straight in the eye. An idiot, she'd said. I scoffed, but my disheartened tone betrayed me. "Yeah, you'd have to be."
Talking about it, about him, for the first time since the night it all went down put me on the brink of something real. Of feeling. I needed it, even though I was well aware the pain would be the equivalent of an unanaesthetized lobotomy.
I pushed my chair back away from the edge of the table and looked at them. All of them. Faces I hadn't seen in months, Angela's sympathetic, Mike's worried, Tyler's perplexed, Conner's distracted by a stain on his shirt, Jessica's insecure, Lauren's deceptively cruel. I took them all in before turning my back and racing out of the cafeteria, toward the bathroom. I knew their faces followed me on my way out, but I was more aware of someone else's attention. Someone I hadn't looked at in months. I chose not to look at him now either, though I directly passed his table on my way out. Regardless of where I averted my gaze, I could feel him examining my fleeting form with his eyes.
I moved faster and shoved open the heavy wooden door to the girls' restroom with too much force. It banged against the wall and would have slammed back against me had I not already rushed myself inside. I stood at the sink, gripping the porcelain with both hands. In the mirror, I examined every crevice of my face. My cheekbones protruded from the rest of my features, looking sickeningly sharp, as if able to slice right through my sallow skin. My hair was slick with the oil of three showerless days. I wore no makeup, and the circles under my eyes made me look decades older than eighteen. My lips were chapped; I'd been biting them relentlessly in my sleep. I was at the crux of my Dark Age, and I looked like I belonged there, grimy and malnourished, surviving on the most bare and basic level. I was disgusting, and I knew my physical appearance was paying the price of my internal denial.
"What are you doing?" I asked myself aloud, repeating the question that I'd been unable to answer less than an hour before. I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face, letting it drip down my chin as I stared blankly at my own reflection. "Why can't you just be happy?"
Even before I'd moved to Forks, I'd felt like something was missing from my life, though I hadn't a clue what that was. I wouldn't have categorized myself as miserable, but I was never happy. With Jake, I was better, content even...but still lacking something that kept me from feeling excitement over the coming day when I woke up in the morning or sated when I fell asleep at night. Honestly, I thought all of that hype about being in love was mythical or, at the very least, overrated…until it happened to me.
A hundred years ago, or so it seemed, Edward had made me happy. I missed the person I thought he was, the person with the smug, lopsided smile who always had some annoyingly perfect comeback to everything I ever told him. Now, on top of mourning him, I also kind of hated him, and though I could try to talk myself out of it, I couldn't help but think he deserved every bit of hatred that was starting to boil inside of me.
Because of him, I'd become the corpse in the classroom and the daughter incapable of radiating warmth. I could blame Edward for everything I'd become since that night he humiliated my affections in the forest. I could push it all onto him and continue to tell people at school how arrogant and selfish he was.
Or I could just accept the simple truth that he and I were never meant to be. It had felt so right, so perfect when we spent time together, but clearly, I'd been delusional. For that delusion, I could only blame one person: myself.
I was weak not because of what Edward had said, but because I'd allowed myself to fall apart and refuse to deal with life. Growing up with Renee, watching over her like a mother hen, I thought I was self-reliant and strong. Now I saw that I'd been lying to myself. I was passive, a coward, a doormat. Worse still was that I'd let my fascination with Edward turn me into a silly little girl who'd finally let herself believe that happily ever afters and true love weren't relegated to pipe dreams and fairy tales.
I wanted to be strong and impenetrable.
I wanted to say I was fine and mean it.
I wanted to be hungry again.
I wanted to cry so I could face the pain head on rather than allow it to eat away at me from the inside.
I just wanted to feel.
So I did. I grabbed the narrow ledge above the sink once used for bar soap before the school installed dispensers and leaned my weight onto it. The ledge cracked, the broken part sharp and cold against my palm. Feeling the discomfort of the jagged piece of plastic in my hand pleased me. The slight, dulling pain was a feeling, but this wasn't about hurting myself; I'd already done enough of that.
I wanted more sensations, and more were coming; in the mirror, I saw the tears begin to form over the pinkness of my lower eyelids. They flowed and then gushed. I stepped backwards into the third of the three bathroom stalls and sunk into the corner, on the floor, bringing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around myself.
I let myself think—really think—for the first time since he'd left me wrecked and sobbing in the woods. I thought of Jake, how I hadn't seen him in months and didn't really want the distance between us to lapse because he was a reminder of everything I gave up for something I could never have. I thought of Renee's nearly hysterical voice at the end of our last phone call, telling me I needed to move to Florida so she could force me into the sun and make me feel loved. I thought of Charlie and how he hovered over me nervously, waiting for the tears he thought were inevitable but that I for so long knew were impossible. Finally, I thought of Edward, the Edward I used to know, and mourned the loss of him, telling myself I could walk through life without him, feeling fine again and knowing the amazing time we'd shared together was a fleeting gift that I should have never expected to last.
It felt terrible and cathartic at all once.
My sobs were mostly silent, with only a few desperate whimpers betraying me. For two hours, I never left that corner of the girls' bathroom. I skipped English, then History. When the bell rang signaling the end of the school day, the tears tapered off and I knew I had to get the hell out of the building before anyone saw me; my tearful release was for me alone, not for an audience.
I literally ran out of the bathroom and down the hall to my locker. No students had reached that corner of the building yet, as I was lucky enough to have a locker near the administrative offices rather than any classrooms. I grabbed my coat and my keys and squinted through my tears, planning to head to the parking lot.
I was still crying a little when I heard a noise behind me. Mike had found me, somehow, and was studying me with wide, concerned eyes.
"Lauren's an asshole. I'm sorry, Bella."
He was the first person I truly saw after I woke up that afternoon. Mike stood in front of me with his arms out a little, hesitating as if I might rip him apart limb by limb.
Instead, I stepped forward and let him hug me. Granted, he was Mike and I'd probably be paying for this later, but I didn't care. It could have been the abominable snowman offering to embrace me and my reaction would have been exactly the same. My willingness to let him hug me stemmed from both the longing for physical contact I'd realized when Angela had touched my arm earlier and the desire to shock myself again like I had with the soap dish in the bathroom.
I put my arms awkwardly around Mike's shoulders, being cautious not to get too close to him, as I knew I was already on dangerous ground when it came to him misinterpreting things. I let myself cry again, the tears streaming down my face.
The hallway was still empty, except for my hushed sobs, or else I wouldn't have heard Mike say, "Edward Cullen is such a douche. Seriously. He's not worth it."
Clearly, my little tirade at lunch had done nothing to dissuade what I'm sure the rumor mill had been spinning for months about the true cause of my break-up with Jake.
"...such a jerk," Mike was mumbling.
A jerk or not, I wouldn't let myself discuss Edward anymore. I reigned the focus back to where it belonged. "No," I sniffled. "I'm the jerk. Trust me."
Mike just hugged me a little tighter, in a miraculously friendly way. Over his shoulder, I saw movement, and my breath hitched.
Like always, I sensed him without looking.
Edward.
He was standing at the other end of the vacant hallway. I let myself examine the shadow his body cast on the tile. He wasn't moving. He was watching me. He had to be.
I knew his face like I knew my own, but I hadn't seen it in the flesh since that rainy nightmare of an evening in November. If I was to snatch my survival out of the Dark Ages, if I was to ever be truly functional again, I needed to say goodbye.
He'd said his farewell months ago, but I never had my turn.
Slowly, barely able to see over Mike's shoulder, I moved my eyes to Edward's face. One look at him, I told myself, and then you have to let him go.
When I finally was able to take in his expression, I expected to see hatred or disgust or maybe, in the most optimistic of pretenses, guilt or pity. Instead, I couldn't make out what was going on behind his deceptively beautiful mask.
His eyes were focused intensely on mine. I'd needed them to be pitch black and narrowed into slits for this to be easier, so that I couldn't confuse the cold, unfeeling bastard he really was with the witty, compassionate boy I loved. My heart squeezed a little as I saw tawny gold instead of ebony, widened eyelids suggesting shock over the meeting of our gazes rather than disdainful squinting.
I wanted to slap him across the jaw for making me confuse fantasy with reality. He didn't look any different than he had all those days we'd sat within arm's length in the cafeteria, our thighs so close they could have touched. I felt the tears get thicker against my cheek.
I could have looked away, but I didn't. I knew I looked godawful, so I let him see me, how much he'd hurt me and how hard I was trying to let him go. Each sob was meant for him just as much as it was for me, to show him that I was trying as hard as I could to walk away.
He kept watching me, as if he was being sucked into a whirlpool but wasn't making any effort to keep himself from drowning.
I stopped crying and clenched my jaw. I wasn't sure what game he was playing, but he had absolutely no right to look at me like I didn't bore him to death.
Edward backed up, toward the door, and his eyes flickered to where my hands gripped slightly at Mike's shoulders.
My nostrils flared a little, but my eyes were still wet. I had no idea what message I was trying to send him. Anger? Hurt? Then I remembered that this wasn't about communication, it was about closure. So I stole one last glance at him, my face open and likely pained and then closed my eyes.
I heard a door slam and knew he'd left. I backed away from Mike's embrace, muttering an apology. A few other students had wondered into the corridor, and I realized that though it had felt like an eternity in purgatory, Edward an d I had only locked eyes for about a minute.
"I'm fine," I told Mike's apprehensive face, knowing I was lying.
My stomach growled, and I reconsidered my answer as I realized I was a little hungry. Modifying my words, I tried for the truth, for my benefit, not for Mike's. "Or at least I will be."