2

Open Door

After only three days of school, our sexually repressed English teacher had already assigned us reading from an actual published work of fiction. The nerve. I wouldn't mind so much if Lauren wasn't trying to snatch my position as captain of the volleyball team, but I did not have time to read about Heath Cliff's strong desire to remain dirty. I threw the book, but I never heard it hit the ground. I'm going to be honest; Heath Cliff and I had something in common: a vested interest in remaining filthy. My closet had this habit of vomiting its contents onto the floor of my bedroom and it was a clean-up I just wasn't interested in. Angela called it laziness; I liked to think of it as maximizing the space. So I wasn't really surprised when the sound of my copy of Wuthering Heights hitting the ground was consumed by what I assumed was tomorrow's outfit. I was, however, startled to the point of losing control of my bladder when red filled my vision.

At first, I thought my eyes were bleeding. A scream caught in my throat. Helen Keller would be such a bad look on me. A guide dog? No thanks. As far as I was concerned, if it didn't fit in a teacup, it wasn't a dog; it was a monstrosity. I reached out in front of me and my hands met cold, hard…marble? A vice of frigid stone suddenly wrapped around my throat from behind and the red receded. I found myself looking into the cold eyes of man…or more of a living statue. Now that blindness had been ruled out, I was faced with insanity. I couldn't say I was excited about either prospect. A voice sounded in my ear, airless, lifeless, and female.

Holy dump. There were two of them.

"Don't touch unless asked," she said.

At this point, I'm sad to admit that I was openly weeping and probably in the fetal position.

"Oh Jane, lighten up," the red-eyed statue in my line of sight said. "I think we caught her off guard."

He clapped his hands as if he were delighted. As if he had thrown me a surprise party and only invited hot guys. As if all my gifts were in little blue boxes from Tiffany's. He did not look as if he had appeared out of nowhere. He looked…corporeal despite the deep crimson eyes.

"Off guard?" I choked out. "Catching someone off guard is running into someone you haven't seen in years at the grocery store and you're wearing the shortest shorts you own and you haven't even shaved your legs! This? I don't know what the hell this is."

"Oh dear. Jane, I think she's right. We've been rude. We haven't even introduced ourselves!"

I looked at him, horrified. The last thing I wanted was an introduction. I wanted him out of my house…or my mind or whatever. I just wanted to go back to sulking about my average life. Weird was also a bad look on me.

"Jane, stop lurking in that dark corner and get over here. I don't want Jessica to think we're savages," the man said.

I wasn't too concerned about them knowing my name. After all, I was MySpace famous.

A beautiful girl who I assumed was Jane joined the man standing at the foot of my sleigh bed. Her eyes were an even brighter shade of red.

Cool.

They waited expectantly. Were they expecting me to stand and curtsy or was there going to be a synchronized dance? I hoped neither.

"I am Aro," the man said finally, pointing to himself. "And this," he said with a sweeping gesture in the girl's direction. "is Jane."

"Kay," I said slowly. "What do you want? How'd you get in here? Why did Jane try to strangle me? I need answers."

Jane looked like she was ready to gently stroke my face with a high speed power saw. Aro's restraining hand was my only salvation.

"Jane's violence has no bounds. It's one of the things I like best about her. As for how we got inside? Through the front door."

I blinked. "What?"

"You so kindly left it unlocked for us! Don't feel bad, dear. We would have gotten in either way."

I still couldn't tell if I was having a vivid hallucination or not. Was this like… an early April fool's joke? Because it wasn't funny.

"Now let me see your hand," Aro said.

I shook my head vehemently. "Nope. Not happening. I'm going to call 911 and Chief Swan is totally going to junk punch you and I'm just going to hide under my bed now, so if you'll excuse me."

I slid from the top of my bed and promptly crawled under it. The cordless phone had to be under there somewhere. I felt the smooth plastic right as Aro stuck his head under the bed, his black hair falling into his eyes. There was no trace of the previous delighted grin on his face.

"Jessica, I don't want to hurt you, but you are being very uncooperative and Jane is …hungry."

"There's a very nice diner right down the street; excellent service, great burgers."

Aro chuckled. "You and I both know that's not what I meant, dear."

I blinked and I was sitting on top of my bed again, dizzy and completely disoriented. Did Aro do that? I looked to Aro and was met with a cold hard stare that dared me to cross him. When I wished for an exciting year on my birthday, this is so not what I meant.

"Now," Aro said, smiling once again. "Let me see your hand."

I decided I could spend quality time under my bed later and maybe holding hands with a statue would be better than…whatever it was Jane had planned for me if I didn't comply.

His hand was cold and hard and as his fingers closed around my hand, I felt trapped. He regarded me with a blank stare.

"What's he doing?" I asked Jane against my better judgment.

She ignored me completely, watching Aro intently.

He suddenly laughed and I couldn't help but wonder if this was how they inducted people into their weird red contact lens cult. I was totally praying they were wearing contact lenses, but I kind of knew they weren't. And from the way Jane eyed me (the way Eric eyes spicy tuna rolls), I had a feeling that she wasn't exactly what you'd call "human." That was the only logical explanation, right? My English teacher freshman year had declared my rhetoric akin "to the triumphant efforts of a somewhat literate squirrel on ecstasy." So what did I know?

After a moment more of Aro's blank staring, he suddenly released my hand, bending down to my level. I squirmed a bit.

"Are you a bit slow, dear?" he asked, tilting his head to the side.

I saw Jane roll her eyes out of the corner of my eye. "She's a human, Aro. You really can't expect much."

That was totally uncalled for. I was about to tell her what exactly she could expect from this particular human, but Aro's next words chased the sentiment back down my throat.

"We're here to kill you, darling," Aro said.

"What?" I stuttered, scooting farther away from him.

Aro chuckled that infuriating little chuckle. "That probably sounded a bit psychotic. What I mean is we're going to kill you…if you don't do us a little favor."

"What's the favor?" I asked.

"It's quite simple, really. Get closer to Bella Swan."

And suddenly, my teenage angst was justified.

"Is that all?" I drawled. As if the first request wasn't enough.

Aro's expression changed. "We'll be in touch."

Somehow, those words scared me more than the previous death threat.