Chapter 4: Set Notation
I check and double-check the piles laid out across my bed on Friday morning. My schedule for the next few days is like a game of Tetris, and everything needs to be organized in just the right sequence. I've looked up the weather forecast for Tacoma and stalked snapshots on flickr to glean the dress code at the Crocodile. I'll go from school to Alice's, and then to our night out, which might go late—so there won't be time for packing before the Volta League bus picks me up Saturday morning. I've arranged to drop Miss Violet at the vet for an overnight observation on my way out of town to pick up Bree. It's a lot to prepare for.
Edward pestering me every five minutes over the SatCom isn't helping matters.
"What did you want to talk about?"
Great. I shouldn't have texted him last night about something I'm not ready to mention over a monitored channel. Now I need to lead him—and anyone who might be listening in at Sundial—to think it's about his kissing skills or something.
"Um. What do you think?"
"Ahhm. Well. I think it's related to the way we said goodbye."
"Sort of."
He hums. The SatCom isn't like a phone speaker, so it comes across as a sort of ticklish vibration, but after about a year with him on my channel I find it comforting.
"Right. We need to talk. Can I pick you up early? How soon can you be ready?"
"Give me ten minutes."
I turn back to packing and pick up my pace. My stuff for tonight goes in my school bag. Cargo pants and Gore-Tex layers for Saturday and a plain skirt and cardigan for Sunday's math meet go into a duffle. So many uniforms. I throw in pajamas, various pairs of shoes, and a hodgepodge of toiletries. I'm zipping it up when I hear Charlie's footsteps creaking the floorboards behind me.
"Sure you don't want me to come down and cheer you on?"
I turn around and smile at him. "Nah. Save your days off for the statewide meet."
He snorts at my bravado, but I can see an amused gleam in his eye. "You sure sound confident. Confident enough to use your last prep day for a camping trip."
I roll my eyes for effect. "For the millionth time, it's a Volta League Mentor Retreat. But, yes, I think we'll do fine."
"Well, you've worked hard for this. All you kids have. I'm just saying you owe it to yourselves—"
"Dad." I think it's sweet he's so concerned about my Math Team's chances. Of course, that's all he knows to be concerned about. "Anything can happen, I know. But it isn't a tough field this year. And we never cram right before a big meet. It's bad for recall."
"Mm-hmm. And Edward's got you covered in terms of camping equipment?"
I nod. "In all the years you've known me, do I tend to underprepare for things?"
He just chuckles.
"Anyways, the League provides everything."
"Okay, kiddo. I won't be here in the morning to see you off, so…you know. Keep your phone charged. Be safe."
He pats my shoulder and walks off to finish getting ready for work.
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As I sit on the steps waiting for Edward, it's harder to fend off flashbacks to the dream that jolted me awake two hours ago. I was wearing Edward's hoodie and standing on one of the skate benches near school, resting my hands on his shoulders. It was raining, like on the day of our pretend first meeting, only this time instead of covering me up, he stripped the hoodie off of me. My shirt underneath was soaked through and transparent, and I wasn't wearing a bra. Edward stared. He didn't even pretend not to stare. And I liked it—for a minute, I liked it a lot.
You, he kept saying. You. And then Vous and Tu. His jaw hung open, and his hands splayed across my ribcage, straining upward. His eyebrows furrowed.
When he turned his face up toward me, the pupils of his eyes were replaced by translucent plastic circles. That was what woke me up. I shudder just remembering it.
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Edward pulls up to the curb, and I hop in. I ask him to take off the sunglasses he's wearing, and I relax only when I see his eyes. He's grinning from ear to ear, which makes me smile, which makes him lean over and kiss my temple.
"Was that what you had to tell me?"
I shake my head no and then nod yes, thinking: it wasn't, but now it is. "I mean, um. But. There's something else. Important."
His face falls, and I know I've confused him. My fingers itch to pull my textbook out of my bag and show Edward what I found, but I can't do it in the car. I hope he knows I wouldn't brush him off for no reason. For the duration of the ten-minute drive to school, I settle for just resting a hand on him. Somewhere. I choose his shoulder.
Edward parks on the residential street behind the school, and I bolt out of the car and halfway up the block, seeking the anonymity of the outdoors. He follows close behind. He looks quizzically at my French textbook as I yank it out of my bag and then blanches when he sees what I'm using as a bookmark.
"Oh, shit. That's…" His eyes go wide. He actually laughs in surprise and stops in his tracks.
"Yeah." I close the book again.
He groans. "Walk with me." He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket so that it looks like we're up to no good in an entirely expected way.
"It fell out of that nursing home book."
"On accident, or on purpose? That's the first question, I guess."
I nod my head and grab his hand to slow his pace. He grimaces at the cigarette in his other hand before throwing it down. He takes a long, even breath.
"I've seen toy lens decoders a few times, but that's intelligence quality. Vietnam War era?" he asks.
"I think so. The language—"
"Cambodian."
I look back toward his car and the school in the distance.
"Are we cutting first period?" I ask.
"What do you have—English?" I answer him with a nod, and we both turn to start climbing up the hill toward Beats Café on Fifteenth.
It takes us twenty minutes to decide we'll wait until after the weekend to acknowledge finding the thing. Most likely, this is some scheme of Aro's, but Edward is inclined to do some more recon before taking the bait. He wants to look at the Hemingway book again, for one thing, but he's left the book at home. I tell him I agree, and I mean it.
I recount what little I know and have observed about Mrs. Cope. It isn't much, and none of it is remarkable.
There are only so many scenarios that could be at play, and I matrix them out on a napkin: Mrs. Cope is a resource of Aro's, engaged either to test us or slip information to us; she's working alone or with a rogue agency; or she's oblivious, and the book itself is our focus. If her judgment is impaired by dementia, only the last option is viable.
I ask Edward if he knows who sold Esme and Carlisle their house. "Of course. They used a local real estate agent—everything out in the open. Rufus Crowley."
"Tyler's dad?" I shake my head. "Mrs. Cope claimed it was her sister. But I think her sister died years ago."
"If you ask me…a box of books from some Vietnam vet's basement got dropped off at the thrift store. It's a coincidence."
I dunk the scribbled-on napkin into my cold coffee dregs. I feel my shoulders loosen as I let down my guard for the first time today. Edward holds eye contact with me for an extra beat, and I know that above anything else, he's my rock. Nothing will ever interfere with that. I won't let it.
When we head back into school, a monitor patrolling the halls gives us both truancy slips. I stow my French textbook in my locker, the lens decoder tucked safely within.
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Alice's enthusiasm for The Southern Wars takes my mind off all things espionage-related. We're at her house getting ready for the show. She hasn't stopped playing their album all week.
"They used to be called Army of Maria before the lead singer and the bassist broke up. She took the name with her when she spun off to start her own band, but The Southern Wars were the ones who got a recording contract."
Alice's arms wave around above her head as she struggles into a tight turtleneck dress. I help her by tugging the fabric down.
"Thanks." Her face is pink and flushed when she emerges. "Anyhow, they're going on a mini-tour of the West Coast starting tonight, so I need to get Jasper's number so we can at least text while he's away. You'll help me, right? Jasper's the bass player. The blond."
She holds up a pair of earrings, which Rose vetoes. "Too much." She goes back to proofreading Alice's write-up for next month's Seattle Beat.
I nod in agreement. Not dressing up is a more convincing way to pass for twenty-one, ironically. A faded band shirt and tight jeans with high-end shoes is my fail-safe combination. Alice is still looking at me expectantly.
"Um. Blond bass player. Yeah, he's cute. What do you want me to do?"
"Fake car trouble so I can play damsel in distress."
Rose nixes this idea immediately.
"Okay. How about asking me to autograph the Beat in front of him?"
This makes me giggle. Alice is proud of the writing she does for the local music monthly, but not to the point where she crows about it. "Al, he's seen us together. Would I ask my friend for an autograph?"
"That's what makes it work. Be super blatant about it, and if it makes him laugh, I'm in. If not, he has no sense of humor and he's not worth my time."
I love my friends, so I tell them so.
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When Edward rings the doorbell a while later, he scans my outfit with wide eyes. His eyebrows take a ride up his forehead and down again.
"This is suitable for the Crocodile, right?" When I yanked these jeans on earlier, I silently thanked whoever invented mixed martial arts for making strong thighs a reality.
"Sure. I like this." His gaze lingers at my feet. He hasn't seen these high-heeled ankle boots before. "Can you walk in those?"
"I can run in these. Kick, fight, dance. Do long division."
"Liar. Since when can you dance?"
"Since…since a long time ago! Since before you met me." I have to bite my tongue to keep from calling him out on his blunder. The girls appear to be marveling at our chemistry, thankfully.
"Right. So, at least a week." He throws an arm over my shoulder. "Taxi's waiting. Should we go?"
Edward devotes about ten percent of his attention to scanning the room all night. He keeps me close, circling his arms around my waist from behind in a gesture that is mostly display, the rest true unease stemming from our strange discovery.
The band is good. For a while, wrapped in Edward's protective embrace, I play at pretending I'm a regular teenager. A regular teenager posing as a twenty-something adult. I lay my head back on his shoulder and let the music wash over me. I feel his lips grazing along the side of my neck and wonder who he thinks is watching. And then, since I'm already in the world of make believe, I let myself think about the possibility that this could be real. It sometimes works that way. Sam and Emily have what seems to be a legit relationship.
It scares me, though. Even if I could handle the inevitable ups and downs, I would hate the uncertainty surrounding zero year. I don't know what Sam and Emily are going to do about that period of separation and deprogramming. They don't do anything crazy with your memory, supposedly, but something must happen during that transition; three out of five outgoing Sundial agents rejoin Volturi.
Edward's whispered voice in my ear jolts me from my train of thought. It's not the SatCom—it's his real voice, his real breath.
"What if I…" I feel his lips wrap around my earlobe, and his teeth tease my skin. It tickles. The instant his teeth begin to bear down—so gently—I realize what he's doing and suck in a breath, which I know he hears on his SatCom. It makes him gasp and release me.
He laughs a chest-rumbling low laugh. "Oh, God. That was weird."
I twist around to face him, grinning in spite of myself. "That's not the intended purpose of this highly sophisticated technology, mister."
"Can you blame me? It was calling to me." He frames my face with his hands. As the house lights go up, indicating the end of the show, he leans in to kiss the corner of my mouth. "And anyhow, it's in your body. I say use it however you want."
I shake my head. He has a subversive streak, this one. And I just might like it.
"What's gotten into you?"
"I don't know." He hugs me tight and lifts me off my feet. "I was thinking about how it might be, you know. In a few years. Not that long at all, really."
He never talks like this. It's like saying it out loud makes it into something he might lose. Tonight, though, he seems to be lightening up.
I look around for my friends as we get ready to go. Alice doesn't need our help getting the attention of her bass player, after all. She sends him off with her number before climbing into a cab with Rose, and Edward and I start to look for one of our own.
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It never fails to amaze me when my conditioning kicks in. It's true what they say in training: In that moment, you won't think. Your body just reacts.
One minute, I'm climbing into a cab and narrowing my eyes at the driver's knuckles clenching the steering wheel. Prison tattoos. One sideways look at Edward tells me he sees what I see. The next minute, a lane change toward the left, when we need to be turning right, sets us both in motion. I have the driver's seat belt up around his neck, and Edward's cracked a jagged wedge off of the credit card reader and is holding it to his ribs.
I stab my boot heel at the compartment in Edward's bag where his GoDoze gas packs should be stowed. I have to twist my neck a bit to get the treated fabric of my shirt into my mouth, but I manage. Edward does the same with his own shirt. This filters most of the toxin out.
"This is simple," Edward says, his words muffled but understandable. "Pull over slowly. You have ten seconds before you're asleep at the wheel. Don't make me steer this car from the back seat."
The driver complies, not looking all that surprised. Edward and I tumble out of our respective doors and breathe fresh air while the driver slumps. I'm on the SatCom immediately.
"You son of a bitch, Aro."
"Well done!" His amused exclamation irritates me. "Quickest of the bunch. Oh, I just knew a felon taxi driver would be too obvious."
"Was that really necessary?" Edward glowers, barking over the SatCom to Aro. He spits on the ground. GoDoze tastes like burned rubber.
"One of your colleagues apparently needed to learn the hard way that there's a reason we launder all of our clothes with AntiDoze."
I cringe. "Finch?" Edward, listening in beside me, rolls his eyes. Jacob is a good kid, but he needs to get his act together sometimes.
"He'll be fine," Aro says. "He's brushing up on his orienteering as we speak. He should make it to Tacoma by morning. Oh, and the drill has already begun, if you hadn't guessed. That's your ride now."
A shiny black town car pulls up to the curb.
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Aro is apparently bored with our standard routine, because on top of starting our clinic a day early, he's making it come-as-you-are.
"You won't always be wearing technical gear when we mobilize you," he explains. He tents his fingers and pinches his lips together when Sam and Emily walk in, glaring at him. They're both barefoot and wearing pajamas. Leah was apparently at the gym, judging from her outfit.
Aro assures me he'll have my bag picked up so as not to arouse Charlie's suspicion and tells me Miss Violet is already safely bedded down at the vet's office. And he promises me I won't be sent to my math meet wearing what will at that point be an extremely dirty pair of skinny jeans and probably ruined ankle boots. I wasn't lying when I said I could run in these—I just would have preferred not to.
It's late, so Aro releases us to our bunks.
I catch Edward looking at my shoes wistfully. He says out loud what I'm thinking. "Goodbye, special tall shoes."
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By breakfast, our group is complete—and then some. Edward scowls into his oatmeal bowl when Bree fills a plate with scrambled eggs and sits down at the end of our long bench. I kick him under the table. He wipes his face with a napkin and says good morning to her. I know it's the situation that bothers him, not her personally. But she doesn't know that.
I try calling the vet about Miss Violet, but it goes into voicemail. Edward offers to keep trying for me, but I'd rather handle it myself. It's the least I can do for her.
In the town car on the way to Bree's appointment, she keeps touching her ears.
"Do you want to feel mine? It's okay." I pull my hair out of the way.
She touches my earlobe tentatively. The SatCom switch is a small, cushiony disc under the surface.
"It's not too different from getting your ears pierced. It hurts less, actually." I move her fingers to the area behind my ear.
"The transmitter is here, just under the skin. The pick-up—that's sort of like a microphone—goes in a cap on your incisor. Also painless." I smile wide so she can see that my teeth look normal. "And the earlobe is the switch. Go on, try it."
She bites her lip and presses her small fingertips together at the center of my earlobe. "Phoenix to Big Bird, hello. Hummingbird is here. She's just getting a feel for how this works. Say hi, Hum." I wait while she says hello. "He says hi back. And he says to tell you it's no sweat."
She nods. Her eyes are wide. "They can only hear? Not, like, see me?"
"They can't see you. Absolutely not. And…it helps if you just think of it as Aro. Just one person, not a vague they." She smiles, relaxing a bit. "He'll only hear you when you want him to—only when you open the channel up because you need something. I remember one year I outgrew four pairs of tennis shoes and kept asking for new ones. That sort of thing."
She chuckles, looking at her own feet.
"And the other thing that will happen is Aro will page you if he needs to alert you about something." I know she's heard all this before, but I think it might help her to hear me confirm it.
"What about my second channel?"
"Oh. Well, you'll get the hardware today, but they won't activate that until you start doing partner work, which isn't for another few years."
"Cool." She spends the rest of the ride looking out the window, absent-mindedly fiddling with her ponytail.
The procedure only takes about two hours. Bree emerges wearing a new, ruffled clip to keep her hair pulled back. Before we leave the clinic, Jenks pulls me aside to give me my monthly immunizations shot.
"Thought you'd want to know that your little dog is on the mend."
"What? Jay…how do you even know about that?"
He shrugs and widens his eyes in a don't-kill-the-messenger gesture. "I just work here. She has Lyme disease, which is treatable. She'll be good as new."
I feel a curious mix of relief at this good news and annoyance to be hearing it this way. I should be the one talking to my vet about this.
Bree sits up, alert. "Lyme disease comes from ticks. What kind of dog is she? Did you take her camping recently?"
"She's a mutt—mostly terrier. And you're right. But no, no camping." I shake my head. "Do mice carry ticks?"
As we make our way back to the car, she starts listing off all the various animals that could be responsible. I do some calculations in my head that make me wonder just how long mice have been getting into my basement—and why.
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My irritation with Aro is easily funneled into competitive drive when our weapons drill begins. Edward and I are teamed with Emily and Bree against Sam, Leah, and Jake. We have to assemble our weapons from parts hidden around the complex, so there is strategy involved on top of technical shooting skills. Bree turns out to have a brilliant instinct for subterfuge.
At one point, she starts to make a brazen move—wandering into a clearing to divert attention from the rest of us. It's obvious she's banking on her naïveté. Sympathy-baiting. Edward mutters under his breath and leaps forward to pull her back behind cover. She's naïve like a fox, this one. And Edward has always hated that tactic.
We dominate the team round easily. We break for food, disband the teams, and resume shooting at robotic targets until the sun goes down. My shoes keep sinking into the spongy ground, but the tradeoff is they make it easier to climb trees. When Aro gathers us around the fireplace for downloading, I begrudgingly admit the exercise was useful.
We sit through a PowerPoint about the latest biohazards and review Interpol's most wanted list before Aro sends us off to get some sleep.
"One moment, Bella. Edward, this concerns you, too." Aro waits until the room empties before going on. "You'll be glad to know I had Jenks add Depo to Bella's immunizations, going back to March now. So you're in the clear."
"You did what?" I shake my head. I must have misheard.
"Depo. Provera. It prevents ovulation and inhibits sperm penetration. You may know it as medroxypro—"
I hear myself gasp and see a look of shock on Edward's face.
"I know what it is, Aro. You didn't think to inform me beforehand? What if I was already on the pill?"
Edward frowns. "Were you?"
"No. That's not the point. If I wanted to be, I would be." I'm seething so much I see white. I press my fingers to my temples. "I can take care of myself."
Aro raises his eyebrows and nods knowingly. What he says next is, I think, designed to enrage me completely.
"If the idea of purposely getting pregnant occurred to you, you should know it has no bearing on your eligibility as an agent. My bosses don't look kindly on me putting pregnant teens in the field, but I have had occasion to convince them. My policy is to make it a moot point."
He knows he's gone too far with this statement. I can feel my mouth opening and closing wordlessly as he turns his back on me and walks away. I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor.
Edward kneels down next to me. "He's a jackass."
I put my face into my hands and bite back a scream. "Uh. Yeah. What was your first hint? The suggestion that I can't be trusted to handle something so important as my own birth control? The idea that I would purposely get knocked up as a way to get dismissed? Jesus Christ! What sort of monster…"
Edward cringes. "Keep your voice down."
"He just assumes we're sleeping together. Like we would just fall into bed because it's convenient and…like—whatever, we might as well or something." My hands are flying all over the place. "Does that sound right to you? Or does that sound cheap?"
He seems at a loss for what to say. I've never seen so many facial expressions cross his face in so short a time. I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them.
"I…I don't know how to help. He's just used to thinking about us as puppets. You can't let him get to you."
"And now I feel like if something ever does happen between us, it's like…tainted." I hide my face by burying it in my folded arms. Great. Me and my pity party. "It's not like I've never thought about it."
He's quiet for a long time. When he speaks, it sounds like a sigh.
"Bella….what do you want?"
I want so many things. I want to tell him how it felt in my heart when I heard Miss Violet would be okay, and that mice have been getting into the basement since before crews tore up the street. I want to have a simple conversation with him without worrying about who's listening and what they'll think. I want the adventure of figuring out what's behind that decoder, but I want to be able to click quit game when the fun part is over. And I want to know how things would be if I was just a girl he met in gym class one day. How he would kiss me, if that was our world. If he would.
It's too much—all of it. I tip my head back and try to breathe evenly. Edward drapes an arm around me and lets me lean my head on his shoulder.
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AN: A big thank you to happymelt, midsouthmama, and faireyfan for their tremendous help this time and always! And thank YOU, reader, for reading! I always love hearing your thoughts. Oh! If anyone has a hankering for some eerily beautiful mid-19th century New England boatwright slash (and who doesn't?), check out The Shipyard by plummy (whose Love in Idleness is also beyond amazing).