Saturday was bright and glorious; the cold rain had ceased in the night and I expected the temperature to hit fifty by afternoon. My father woke me at seven-thirty in the morning, wearing a fuzzy, bewildered expression as he handed over the cordless phone. I waited for him to stumble back to his bedroom—this was one of his rare sleep-in days—and then put the phone to my ear.

"Hey, Bell!" said Alice happily. "The family's going to go out into the woods to play baseball. You know, to let off steam. It can be very stressful graduating to adulthood for the fourteenth time in a row."

Oh dear. Perhaps I wouldn't be spending all day with Edward, as I'd hoped. My boyfriend made a point of keeping me well away from displays of athletic prowess by his family; I suppose he thought it might put me in unnecessary danger. "Okay," I said in a small voice. "Well, thanks for letting me know..."

"So, Ed and I'll pick you up in an hour, kay? Dress warm, it's getting pretty chilly out there. Bloody weather.."

"I...wait, what?" I was distracted from my surprise at being invited by her words about the weather. "You guys can get cold? But I thought…" I'd seen them in light jackets in the dead of winter.

"Yeah, we get cold. The cold just can't kill us like it kills you meat-bags. Anyway, gotta go. Make sure you eat a big breakfast, kid; you may not know this but it's the most important meal of the day!" And she was gone.

"Um…" I said, but there was no one to hear me but the ringtone.

An hour later, I sat with Charlie in the living room, him watching a sports program with glazed eyes and a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios in his lap, me as jittery as I always got when the Cullens were involved. I fiddled aimlessly with my cell phone, a gift from Charlie for my eighteenth birthday the previous September.

"They're here!" I yelped at the first sound of a car door slamming. I heard firm steps up onto the porch, and then the doorbell rang. "I got it!" But Charlie made it to the door ahead of me—I hadn't even realized he was awake.

"Hello, Chief!" chirped Alice, throwing her arms around Charlie's neck for a brief and unexpected hug. Alice was probably my dad's favorite of the Cullen "kids". Which made sense: when I wasn't at her house she was at mine, and barely a week went by without her, Jessica, Angela and I taking up the whole downstairs for what we called Estrofests, which usually involved BBC costume dramas and/or nail polish. I did love surrounding myself with all those markers of pleasant young womanhood, even if they had no significance for me personally.

As usual, Alice charmed Charlie without the slightest effort. A few well-placed jests, an ingenuous smile here and there, and he was toast.

"I can't believe you've never come to a Forks High baseball game!" she was bubbling, twenty minutes later. "It's a tradition in this town! Promise me you'll come to one in the spring? I'm going out for pitcher."

"Sure," said Charlie, his eyes twinkling. "You manage to nab that pitcher spot, and I'll be sure'n show up for a game or two."

"You don't think I can do it!" she exclaimed teasingly.

"You're gettin' Bella to a baseball game," said Charlie, walking us to the door. "I don't believe there's anything you can't do. You all have fun now. I'll want to know the score when you get back, Bells." And he chuckled disbelievingly, and shut the door behind us.

It was that easy.

"I just adore your dad, Bella," said Alice with a grin and she twirled over to the Beemer. "I wish he were mine!"

"What's wrong with Carlisle?" said Edward, indignantly.

"Oh, fie," scoffed Alice, "I can have as many dads as I want. It's not like Carlisle was the first in line."

"He does care about you a great deal, Bella," affirmed Edward. "Before, I always thought he was a few hairs short of a beard, but he seems normal once he opens his mouth. I think I know where you got your immunity to mind-reading from, anyway. Yours is stronger, though. Maybe it's a recessive gene."

"Lucky me," I said sincerely.

"Ugh," groaned Alice from the backseat. "Gross, guys!"

I blinked at them both, confused.

"Oh, sorry," said Alice, not sounding sorry at all. "He was about to kiss you and I so do not need to see my brother macking on his mate in such close quarters."

"He was?" I wailed. "You were?" Damn it, Alice! But I wasn't too upset. I liked the way she'd called me his mate. Still wasn't used to that.

When we got to the clearing, the sun was finally starting to peek through the clouds. It might even shine for real today. I walked a little behind Edward and Alice toward the Cullens, who were clustered together arguing about teams. I supposed Emmett and Rosalie were planning to spend the winter break with their family before returning to college in January. At any rate, they were here now.

"Okay, okay!" laughed Esme when she saw the three of us approaching. "Alice, Jasper and I are on one team. Carlisle, Emmett and Edward on the other. And Jasper, you're not allowed to make us all feel lethargic when it's your turn to bat. If I catch you cheating one more time, I'm going to thump you into next week!"

"Aw, shucks, mom, can you blame a guy for trying?" he drawled, slinking over to give her a kiss on the cheek. She laughed and ruffled his perfect blond hair and then shooed him away.

"Aren't you playing?" I asked Rosalie as she settled on a log next to me to watch the others take their positions in the field. "I don't want to make you sit out or anything…"

"I'll probably switch with Edward in a few innings," she said. I could hear her trying resolutely to be affable, but no matter how many times we exchanged polite small-talk, she never quite lost that strange coldness that had so struck me the first time I'd met her as Edward's Girlfriend and not simply New Girl at School. "Someone has to play umpire," she explained, "and I drew the short straw. The logistics are outrageous. Edward and Alice always have to be on opposite teams, because at least that way they sort of cancel each other out. And you should have seen when we tried to play rugby and Jasper was the umpire. Alice could do no wrong, it seemed. But put them on opposite teams and suddenly he's out for blood."

I smiled, watching Jasper hop from foot to foot in the outfield. He was grinning, his skin faintly glowing in the weak sunshine. The wind had teased his fair hair into a halo. It was by far the happiest I'd ever seen him; he usually looked so severe when I was around. Severe and, often, riddled with guilt.

I wasn't generally keen on sports, but watching the Cullens play baseball was not unlike watching a cheetah take down a gazelle while simultaneously catching and throwing a little white ball around. They moved with such effortless grace. Rosalie kept me informed of the score, and while I appreciated that she seemed to be trying hard to make conversation, it didn't stop feeling unnatural to me, and a little forced. Still, it was better than her getting up and leaving as soon as I came near, which was what she used to do. So while there was a lull in the small talk, I braved up to say something real.

"Rosalie?" I said tentatively. "I, um, I really appreciate you doing all this for me. I know you don't exactly like me…"

"Who said I don't like you?" she said quickly.

"No one," I said. "I don't know, it just seems like you're, you know, not my biggest fan. I mean, no one said you had to be…" God, what the hell kind of crack was I smoking, that I thought this would be a good idea? I was so bad at talking to other women!

"Edward's your biggest fan," she said. "No room for anyone else."

"Well, I just wanted to say thank you," I finished meekly. "Edward told me how hard it is for you guys to be around me, and I know you all have to be careful not to like, step on me by accident. I just wanted to say I'm sorry I'm so human and breakable. I'm sorry I'm such a liability." Rosalie was looking out over the field with a peculiar expression on her beautiful face.

"Bella, your humanity isn't a liability," she said, like she was working something out. "Honestly, I would give anything to be human again. Like you. I envy you."

"You do not want to be like me," I said. "I am seriously pathetic. You should have seen my inner monologue when I first met Edward. Totally ridiculous."

Rosalie glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "You really like him, don't you?" she said.

"Is there a word that means the same thing as 'like', but times about eleven-hundred, and rhymes with 'dove'?" I said. "'Cause I rhymes-with-dove Edward."

Rosalie smiled a painful little smile. "Well, since you brought it up, I guess I should apologize too." She paused a moment and watched the field. "Would you like to know something strange?" she said.

"Please."

"Edward was the first person I ever knew to care more about how he could help me than what he could get out of me. Human or vampire. I know Carlisle would have been the same if I'd let him, but I hated him for changing me. For years I hated him, and I refused to let him in, and I didn't trust Esme because she was his mate, and besides, she just seemed so happy all the time. When I was changed Edward was the only person on earth who truly understood me. It's not only that I'm selfish enough to want to keep him all to myself, although if I'm being brutally honest that is part of it. I also don't want to see him hurt. And maybe I've been a little overprotective, overly guarded. Of him and myself."

"What does Edward need protecting from?" I asked. "I mean, just look at him." Edward was wrestling with Carlisle over the ball. It looked epic.

"Oh, nothing physical," Rosalie replied. "It's simple, really: I want him to be happy. If he's to share his life with someone, I want her to be worthy of him, and...Bella, I was afraid to give you a chance. I know it's unfair to you, but when you care about someone as much as I care for Edward, fairness does not always factor strongly. When he couldn't read your mind, I thought it must mean you had something to hide. And this was so soon after a very upsetting incident involving one of Edward's school friends. She looked a lot like you, and I've had trouble separating memory from reality."

"You're talking about Emily, right?" I said. Edward had told me of her, although he hadn't gone into detail about just what had ended their friendship.

Rosalie nodded. "I won't pretend that my behavior was justified, but making nice to Edward's girlfriend fell pretty low on the list compared to worrying that he would be hurt, or I would be hurt, or our family would be hurt. I really am sorry, Bella. I wish I'd talked to you sooner."

"Why are you talking about it now?" I asked. "What's changed?"

Rosalie smiled. "I needed some distance," she said. "It's been very helpful, having the time and space away at college to clear my head. As much as I enjoy certain aspects of teenage culture, I also feed off of teenage insecurities. I'm always happier with people who have left those years behind them. And I see it now," she said. "I see how you feel about him. And if you love my brother as much as I think you do, then I know you will never hurt him. Or any of us." She looked down at her hands, twisted in her lap. "It's hard for me to connect with people I don't know, and so even when I did start to realize you don't wish us harm, I couldn't entirely eliminate my own innate awkwardness. I never really know how to act around other girls my age. I can never tell if I'm talking too much or too little."

"That makes two of us," I said. We sat there for a moment, more comfortably than before.

"Why would you be jealous of me?" I asked, thinking about what she'd said. "What on earth do I have that you don't have better?"

"Are you kidding?" she laughed incredulously. I shook my head and shrugged. "You can change, Bella. That is a precious, precious commodity."

"You're sounding like Edward now," I said. "He said you guys never change, but that can't be true. No way was Edward always like this. He was so...tightly-wound when I first met him." I looked over at where Edward was doing exuberant backflips in the outfield, catching the fastballs that Emmett and Esme were pitching at him from opposite sides. It was hard to tell from all the way over here, but it looked like he was laughing. They seemed to have abandoned any formal conception of baseball.

"Oh, our behavior changes sometimes," said Rosalie. "Edward has loosened up, that's true. Our personalities can change, albeit slowly. But our bodies...imagine the tedium of never-ending wakefulness, Bella. No sleep to break your life up into manageable fragments, no hormonal cycles, no illnesses to recover from, no bursts of adrenaline...we are what we are. Fixed. Eternal. It's horrible."

"It doesn't sound all that horrible," I said, thinking of the alternative, which was a slow descent into decrepitude followed by an eternity of nothingness. "But how would I know?" I added, mostly to be polite.

"The worst of it is," said Rosalie sadly, "that Em and I—we'll never have children. Vampires can't procreate. Believe me, we've tried. I've studied it, extensively. In fact, vampires have been working on it for thousands of years. I can't bear children because my body can't undergo the changes necessary for such an undertaking. We've considered adopting a human child and raising it as our own, but that would carry such an enormous risk. Then I thought, perhaps if we found a surrogate...I would be happy with Emmett's child, even if I couldn't be the biological mother. But vampire genetic material isn't compatible with human, no matter how I configure it. And it breaks my heart. I've always wanted to be a mom, you know? And I'll never have that. I'll never change. I'll never have a child and watch her grow from an infant to an adult. I would give anything to have that back.

"Mind you," she went on, inspecting a fingernail, "I wouldn't go back to being the human I was before, because frankly that human's life sucked. But you know, I met Emmett two years after I was turned. Just two years! What if we'd met as humans? It could have happened. I always play this scene out in my head, where it's 1933 again and I bump into him at some backwoods country party, and we dance until we're both sweaty and out of breath, and then we walk together under the moonlight, and our hearts are pounding and we're a little ripe from dancing, and we kiss each other shyly and fall in love and god, Bella, we have a future."

"But...you have nothing but future," I said timidly.

"I know," sighed Rosalie. "It shouldn't feel like a burden. Usually it doesn't. Usually I can be happy. I love Emmett. I love all of them so much, so fiercely. The capacity for love when you're a vampire—it boggles the mind. Or maybe that's just because I've had so many years with them. But I can't help but wish things had gone differently."

None of us chose this life, Esme had said once. "I'm so sorry, Rosalie," I said softly. "I never thought of it that way..."

"Thank you," she said. "I know I'm being melodramatic. But after all, you're Edward's mate now; you might as well know all about his depressing big sister."

"That's okay," I joked, "I think Alice offsets you, anyway."

"Between us we've got 'manic-depressive' pretty well covered, don't you think?" Rosalie laughed, and it was such a beautiful, tantalising sound, a laugh like I'd never heard before, the laugh of a goddess. I'd never heard Rosalie talk so openly at all, or for so long. But it broke off much too suddenly.

I looked out at the field where Rosalie was looking, and realized everyone had gone still. I noticed the tense set of their shoulders as they all looked toward the far corner of the field. Then they sprinted back to Rosalie and me, arriving beside us in seconds.

"What is it?" I asked, looking from face to worried face. "What's wrong?"

"Strangers," said Carlisle. "Nomads."

"What, you mean...vampires?"

Edward stepped forward and put his arm around my waist. "They're almost here, Bella," he said urgently. "I have to carry you, and I have to run as fast as I can, and you have to try not to panic. Emmett, Alice, come on."

Before I had even begun to process what they were talking about, Edward slung me onto his back and took off. I couldn't breathe, the air beat at my face so thickly. I could sort of hear Emmett and Alice keeping pace with us over the rushing wind in my ears, but I didn't dare open my eyes for fear of getting a bug in one at sixty miles per hour. I couldn't even think; I'd never seen Edward so terrified, and that was what scared me more than anything. And I didn't even know who we were running from.

I don't object to James's storyline per se, but I thought it was handled unnaturally in the books, so prepare for things to be extensively streamlined here. Also, in case it slipped by you, note that this story begins just before Bella's final semester of high school. She and Edward have now been together for about a year.

Regarding the conversation between Bella and Rosalie: I feel certain that, if hybrid conception were as simple as slop vampire semen into human ladyparts and let stew for thirty seconds, Nahuel, his sisters, and Renesmee would not be such rarities as to be totally unknown and unsuspected by the Volturi. I also don't for one minute believe that Rosalie (not to mention all those other women who wanted babies, and all the males who longed for fatherhood because, I don't know, call me crazy, maybe parental instincts are not reserved for vagina-havers) would not once have considered alternate procreation methods, such as insemination of a human woman with vampire material. I'm not saying it's totally impossible, it just can't be that easy. Someone would have stumbled upon it long ago.