Disclaimer: The Twilight saga and all characters therein are the creation of Stephenie Meyer. No profit is being made from this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended.


Chapter Five

Perfection

It was Saturday, the day of Abby Ullman's party, and Bella was teasing Edward about his role of wolf chaperone.

"They don't know I'm a centenarian," said Edward, tweaking his tousled hair into something vaguely cool. "Far as they know, Jake and I are both seventeen, and good pals."

"Pals," I scoffed. "You sound like an old man, old man!"

"And he's invited to a party with all these young people," Bella said, trying and failing to make her lilting voice sound old and crackling, like a crone's.

I started to laugh, but then remembered how I was not invited. My heart beat faster with hatred toward the other, human girls… that they dared to look at my Jacob… my warm, hard-bodied, tall, dark, handsome friend… I touched Edward's arm and Bella's hand. I wish I was going. Those girls are really icky, Dad.

"If they're icky, why do you want to go to their party?"

I'm afraid they're going to corrupt Jake.

Edward laughed out loud. "They won't. They can't."

You keep saying that! Why can't they?

He and Bella shared a look.

Are you keeping secrets from me?

"No," Bella said, a little too fast.

Edward and I both rolled our eyes at how terrible a liar she was.

She amended, "Just don't worry. Jacob's one of us, Ness. He knows better than to endanger humans."

Did Dad know better?

"That was different," Bella said.

What if he falls in love with Abigail stupid Ullman?

Edward laughed again. This time there was an odd note of resignation in it. "Ness, I promise I'll keep an eye on him. Both eyes."

I would have to be satisfied with that. I let go of my parents and ambled off into the family room at the back of the house, where Jasper and Emmett - back from hunting with Rosalie - were watching some old movie on the plasma.

"What's this?" I asked, dropping onto the sofa.

"The Boys from Brazil," said Jasper. "Classic."

It was about some Nazis who'd escaped to Brazil after the war, where they were trying to clone Hitler. The film ended with some creepy kid developing photos of a dog attack. Emmett got up and switched the disc out for my birthday gift, Fallout: Doomsday.

"Let's play, kiddo," said Emmett, his pale gold eyes flashing as he tossed me a third controller.

"Okay," I said, despondent.

I felt a wave of upbeat energy from Jasper.

"Thanks," I said.

"Now prepare to be destroyed," Jasper said, widening his eyes and digging in to the video controller.

"A hundred bucks says you can't beat the level in four minutes," said Emmett.

I noted the soft purr of my dad's Aston Martin on the drive and then out on the road, heading towards town, towards Jacob.

Since the Second Depression we'd been able to drive the best cars more often. The disparity of wealth in society was extreme now, and for every ten poor people, there was a very rich person, and the rich flaunted it. The result was that it was less unusual to see an expensive car; people just said, "Oh, there goes another leech," thinking of the small minority of the super-wealthy for whom price was no object.

In our case, they had no idea how right they were. Carlisle actually encouraged us to drive the rare sports cars. He said it helped humans write us off as annoying rich people, instead of noticing us as oddly humble rich people.

Not that my apparent social position was enough to garner an invite from the most popular girls in school.

Growling, I wiped out Emmett's avatar in a fierce display of onscreen shooting.

He swore under his breath.

I was wondering how it was going at the party when Alice wandered in around ten-thirty. "So, Nessie. I'm going to teach you something tonight."

"What's that?" I asked, teeth gritted as I passed through a gauntlet of napalm-wielding mutants.

"How to crash a high school party."

I dropped the controller. "I'm in my pajamas."

"That will soon change."

Jasper chuckled. "Alice, I should have known you had some scheme up your sleeve."

"We can't have our Nessie being excluded. All the humans will be… shall we say… off their faces. And how many films have we watched? These parties always get out of hand once people are drunk, calling other people to come, and soon the house is filled with God-knows-who."

"Vampires," said Emmett dramatically.

"Come on. Rosalie's upstairs waiting to do your hair." Alice nudged my shoulder.

This made me nervous. What if Abby saw me and ordered me away from her house? What if we were caught? It would be humiliating. But then again, this was exactly what human girls would do. I'd heard those uninvited ones discussing their plans in the bathroom at school. And also… I had the oddest desire for Jacob to see me dressed up, laughing, the center of attention and beautiful.

An odd desire, because he'd seen me in all kinds of clothes and situations, since I was a baby. Why did I think it mattered what he thought of my looks? Yet, it did.

On the second floor we passed my parents' open door. I could see Bella standing by the window, reading a book; she turned toward us and I saw that it was North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell. I was unsurprised; Victorian social dramas suited my mother.

"Bella!" Alice sang. "You sure you don't want to come?"

"Urgh!" Bella said, horror on her face.

Alice laughed. "That's what I thought. I'll just have to stop the girls from flirting with your husband myself."

"I'm sure you will," said Bella, not taking the bait. She winked at me and turned back to her book.

Upstairs in my closet, Alice's tiny hands seized a white garment bag. "How about this one?"

I shook my head and touched her elbow. Too much.

"This?"

No. I don't even want to go.

"Too bad. Now, hurry up and choose, I foresee us arriving at three minutes past eleven."

Sighing and feeling sorry for myself, I picked out a pair of jeans, heels, and a lace Dolce and Gabbana top. Alice said, "That works!" and looped a long strand of pearls around my neck. "And don't forget this." She passed me a wool-cashmere peacoat.

Alice wore black silk gaucho pants that made her seem taller, and a black shirt and pale blue belt cinching in her tiny waist. Her hair was done in spikes as usual.

Rosalie waited in the bathroom with an iron, and soon my hair was jagged-edged glorious. "There, now. Have fun. I used to love… I mean, it's good to be the belle of the ball." She gave me a tight smile. I remembered that she used to attend Rochester's high school parties as a human, and would have worn pearls like I did.

I touched her to say thank you.

Alice's eyes glazed over, foreseeing the absence of any traffic cops, and with the all-clear she pushed her yellow Porsche to top speed. We didn't need directions, either, since Alice foresaw turning onto the correct street where the Ullmans lived.

It was a long row of mansions in the same style as our house. There were figures in the road up ahead, and parked cars, and I could hear pounding music and could smell cheap beer and expensive cologne. I could smell Edward and Jacob, too, and Alice swung the Porsche to a stop next to the Aston Martin, a few houses down from the party.

We followed our noses into the house. Edward's comforting honey-like scent was a high note amidst the sour stench of beer. I could smell woodsy werewolf, too, and it put me on a strange sort of edge.

Abby Ullman's house boasted a marble-edged brick walk to the double front doors behind a sprawling Victorian porch. The lights from inside cast bright squares onto the soft manicured lawn. The porch was crowded with people: a pair of girls sitting on a bench, gossiping, clutching red plastic cups. A couple of guys trying to talk to them. One of the bushes below the porch rustled; it was a couple making out rather sloppily.

I grabbed Alice's hand. I feel like I'm in a movie.

She grinned. "I think this is life imitating art. And the smell is awful." She wrinkled her sensitive nose.

Except for human.

"I ate well on Thursday. Besides, their bloodstreams are more alcohol than anything else by now," said Alice, talking too low and fast for anyone to hear her. We entered the crowded house. "Oh, hi, Edward!"

"Hi, Edward!" I echoed. I had to laugh: my dad looked so out of place in the crowd. Too beautiful, too gentlemanly, too… old and married… even though he looked eighteen, there was something indefinable about him that showed his true age.

"This is ridiculous," he said, frowning. "Their thoughts are incoherent. It's giving me a headache. Oh, no, you don't!" he said, as I grabbed a cup of beer off a television tray being paraded past us by some random guy.

"Prop," I explained, pretending to sip. My system reacted about as well to alcohol as Edward's and Alice's would have: no effect and a bad aftertaste. "Ew. It smells gross."

"Where's Jake?" Alice said, asking my question for me.

"Talking to the football team," said Edward, jerking his head toward the back of the house.

I slipped past Edward and Alice. The pop music from the big stereo in the living room was too loud, screeching, and it grated on my hypersensitive ears. Beneath the music I could hear the slight waver of aging electronic connections, a subwoofer that needed replacing, the dancing vibration of the wood fibers in the floorboards every time the drums smashed the air.

People swayed into me. Boys looked me up and down in ways that made me wish Edward wasn't there to read their thoughts. How embarrassing, my dad there to see me getting leered at. You can't even do anything about it, I thought to him.

Actually, he could play the overprotective twin brother like he did in school. Don't, I warned him.

"Heeeey," said a boy from my math class, leaning in with an eager gaze. "You're that girl. The hot one."

"Yep, that's me," I said. "Hot!" On impulse I clasped his hand. To him, my skin would be searing, and to go with it I sent an image and feeling of a bonfire.

He reeled back, his eyes glazed over. "Wow… you're so hot… wanna make out?"

"Nessie." I picked out Edward's under-breath warning from down the hall.

Sorry.

Over all the racket, my favorite sound called me like a beacon: Jacob's strong animalistic heartbeat. I followed it like a bird who knew its way home.

I stopped behind the threshold of a door. Jacob might be able to smell me, but he couldn't see me from where I stood in the dark hallway.

He was in the kitchen, sitting on the counter between two girls: Abby, and another one with long dark hair and a low-cut halter top. They were laughing appreciatively at everything Jacob said. Several football players surrounded them, including the quarterback, who was blond and handsome (for a human). "So you run?" one of the players said. "But how do you build up muscle?"

"Special protein drink," said Jacob.

I could distinguish Edward's low laugh through the crowded air. Whatever Jacob was thinking must have been funny to him.

"Is there any chance you'd play? I mean, I know it's midseason, but coach'd put you in no question."

"They always send scouts first and last game," another of the players added.

"How fast do you run? Can you catch a ball?"

"I play fetch… I mean, catch, pretty good," said Jacob.

This time, both Alice and Edward laughed from the next room.

"I hope you join the team," said Abby, leaning against Jake. "I'm head cheerleader. I'd cheer extra hard for you."

I bet you would, I thought, the first beginnings of a red rage curling up from my abdomen.

"Wow, Jacob. You're so… warm!" said the other girl, her hand sliding along Jacob's jeans to rest on his knee. I bit my lip furiously; I wished I could bite that girl. She had no right, putting her paws on my… my… friend. "Aren't you burning up?" she asked him.

"Fast metabolism."

As I watched the way they orbited around him, I felt left out. I was a freak, not a human and not a vampire, neither this nor that. I had no friends here aside from my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. And Jacob was rightfully the center of adoring attention from these humans, who felt the heat radiating off his superhuman strength as though he was sunshine embodied. The boys were admiring and grudgingly jealous. The girls slunk into the space around him in the classic posture of seductive defenselessness.

Jacob didn't need to protect me anymore. I was no longer the tiny child he'd once looked after. Since I was a baby he'd been there, like a… big brother, I guess, or a best friend. Okay, so I knew about the imprinting thing. It had been explained to me, even though it needed no explanation because the bond was obvious, as natural as breathing. Sometimes the relationship was romantic. Other times, it was a guardianship. Other times, as with Quil and Claire, it was very brother-sister. That was like Jacob and me.

He's not my brother, my mind insisted, pleading with itself on behalf of the growing feelings I couldn't ignore.

I watched Abby look at Jacob from under her lashes, shrinking her shoulders, crossing her legs toward him.

Mating behavior, thought the part of my brain that hunted the local wildlife.

Jacob responded. Of course he did, he was a male. His arms were flung behind him on the countertop, arching just slightly around the waists of the girls. His face was tilted toward Abby in a position of condescension, but that only made him look more powerful, more attractive.

And boy, did she know it.

In a glittering moment of understanding, I saw everything that was wrong about me. I was not weak, not defenseless, not fragile. There was nothing about me to draw the attention of a man, at least not one who would stick around. Guys liked to defend helpless creatures. That was how my mom and dad had started out. And Carlisle had changed Esme, the wounded beautiful bird, saving her life. Jasper could protect tiny Alice. Emmett was Rosalie's strength.

Me? I'd been born just a little too perfect. The girl who has everything. What man would see a needful thing in me?

Someday, I knew, Jacob would use his powers of protection for a pretty, human girl. And I would be left on the threshold of this door, clutching the frame, watching it all from the shadows.

A cold, worried hand touched my shoulder. Leave me alone, I snarled my thoughts at Edward.

He jerked back, surprised. His motion was too fast, too vampire-like. He needed to be more careful.

I whirled around and pushed past him, nudging my way through the crowd, trying not to break anyone's ribs in my rush to get out. I hated humans. I hated this façade where I could never fit in. I hated their normality and insecurity and innocence. I was the Loch Ness Monster who didn't need a living soul, much as I wanted to need him.

"Nessie! Ness, wait!" Alice wanted to run, I could tell, but she held her pace at just slightly supernormal.

I kept walking toward the Porsche. And where was Edward all this time? He was supposed to keep those drippy girls away from my Jacob. I hated him, too.

Another girl was walking away from the party, thick tears dropping from her eyes. I could almost sympathize, except that whoever she was crying over, he was mundane like her. Not a crazy handsome werewolf tribe leader who had a smile that could melt an icecap.

"Ness."

I turned my face away from Alice. I didn't feel like talking.

"Sheesh. You really take after your dad, you know it?" She unlocked the doors. "And we thought Edward was an overreactor."

"I want to go home," I said.

Sighing, Alice said, "And with your hair looking so nice. He didn't even get to see you."

"I don't know who you're talking about." Oh, but who was I fooling? The entire family would know everything, as usual. No secrets in the Cullen family. Despite the crisp night air, I felt stifled and claustrophobic at the prospect of sympathy from Bella and Esme, of teasing from Emmett, of bafflement from Rosalie, of understanding from Carlisle. I just wanted to be alone.

Alice was quiet as we drove home. "You know he doesn't –"

"Alice, I mean it, please."

At home I went straight to my room and locked the door behind me. That wouldn't do a thing to keep any of us monsters contained, but it was more psychological. I scowled into my full-length mirror. My hair did look good. Too bad. I yanked off my top, kicked off the heels, and pulled on a tight dark brown sweater over my lace bra. I chose tan-colored knee boots and shoved the hems of my jeans into the soft leather. Then I opened the window, felt the cold breeze on my face, and climbed onto the ledge.

I perched there for a moment like a gargoyle. I could see through the tops of the trees and the clouds were breaking up to reveal thick clusters of stars. All the world seemed so open to me. I sensed the weight of my family's worry at my back, and I felt pushed forward by it.

Also, I didn't want to be in the house with my dad once he got home. I knew he tried to ignore our thoughts as best he could, giving us privacy, but I didn't feel like guarding my mind right now. I needed to be able to think, and think hard.

I stepped off the ledge and into space. My feet landed softly on the ground and within a few seconds I was pulling out of the garage in my Jaguar, then ripping down the driveway and toward Esme's haunted house.


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