I spent the rest of the day at the Cullens' house. Jasper had cleared out, because even though Carlisle had now bandaged my hands properly and the scent of blood was all but contained, there was no point risking it. Emmett had followed him, and Carlisle was still at work, so Edward, Esme, Alice, Rosalie and I sat together in Esme's sitting room, a cozy little chamber attached to the master bedroom. The walls had been hand-painted in bucolic murals. I felt like I was picnicking in the French countryside. Except for the part where I couldn't, apparently, eat anything but my own blood.
Awesome.
"Bella," said Esme warmly, tucking my hair behind my ear just like a real mother would, "I want you to know that whatever happens, this family will stand behind you."
"We would have anyway," said Alice earnestly, "even if you weren't carrying Edward's bastard child. You're one of us now. Right, Rosalie?" Esme and Edward shot her annoyed looks for not striking the proper tone, but she ignored them.
Rosalie had the strangest look on her face. I was beginning to understand that what I had always assumed was coldness and dislike were really just symptoms of something deeper, some innate inability to moderate her facial expressions and play-act at being happy and normal like most people did automatically. Right now, she was looking at me like I was more or less the messiah.
"Of course you're one of us," she said, forcing a smile. "You're Edward's mate. And you're our...our friend." The word friend didn't seem to slip easily from her mouth. I wondered how many times she'd said it before.
"Thank you, Rosalie," I said, touched by her admission.
"Bella, what are you going to do?" asked Alice.
"Let's not pressure her, Alice," chided Esme. I shrugged.
"I don't know," I said. "I mean, I'm only seventeen..."
"And we have no idea how this might affect you, physically," added Edward. "Carlisle says it's far too advanced for a normal pregnancy. We shouldn't be able to hear a heartbeat yet, and already you can feel movement…"
"So the grasshopper likes to dance, what's wrong with that?" I said, trying hard not to think of the grasshopper as being an actual living miniature person that I was currently gestating. That was way too freaky, and if I decided not to keep it, I really didn't want to get attached first.
"That's not the point," said Alice. "Bella, if you can already feel movement before your second month of pregnancy, what do you think is going to happen down the road? That thing must be strong. What happens when it's twice the size it is now? Or ten times?"
"Oh, god," I said hollowly. "I didn't even think of that. I don't really know what's supposed to be normal…"
"One thing I think we can all accept is that none of this comes with an instruction pamphlet," said Esme.
"No kidding," muttered Alice. "Bella, have you considered...um, taking care of it?"
"Taking care…?" I repeated. "Oh, you mean abortion. Yeah, I've considered it. I'm not done considering it. I don't know. I don't what I'm going to do. Oh my god, if my dad finds out about this..."
"Whatever happens, we need to keep you safe," pressed Alice. "Whatever that may mean for...um, the fetus."
"Al, don't be pushy," snapped Rosalie. No points for guessing what she thought I should do. "It's her body."
"Yes," I said. "My body. Right." My body, plus a hyperactive grasshopper which was, technically, half Edward. Oh god. "I...I think I should go home," I said, standing. At once, four pairs of hands went out to steady me. "Chill out, guys, I managed to survive this long without a scaffolding," I said. Reluctantly, all hands but Edward's withdrew.
"I'll drive you home," he said. I gave Alice and Esme goodbye hugs. Then, cautiously, Rosalie tucked me into her arms for a brief moment.
"We'll help you, Bella," she whispered in my ear. Backflip, backflip.
Edward dropped me off at home and then returned to his house to wait for Carlisle, who was running blood tests with samples he'd collected this afternoon. He'd offered to stay with me, but I needed a little time to think by myself. I let myself into the house and collapsed heavily on the sofa. So far today I'd broken half the dishes in my house and then drunk my own blood like a psychopath, found the friend who had gone missing for ten days after his father was brutally murdered before his eyes—which friend just so happened to be a werewolf—and discovered my century-old immortal teenage boyfriend had somehow impregnated me despite the fact that we were supposed to be completely different species. And Charlie wasn't even home yet. I would not be handling the transition to adulthood very well, I could tell already.
I had a few hours before I had to look my father in the eyes and chicken out about telling him I'd gotten knocked up like some dumbass who thinks just the tip doesn't count. I resolved the mess I'd left in the kitchen and then started tidying up the rest of the house, which was already tidy because all I ever did these days was clean. I had to bite back a hysterical giggle as the word nesting floated to the top of my mind—the same mind I was obviously in the middle of losing.
I finished by cleaning my own room, folding and putting away the laundry I'd done the day before, sorting through the crap on my desk. My eyes fell upon a small photo album my mother had sent me for Christmas.
Happy Holidays, Lovey! she'd written on the back of the first picture in the album, which was a shot of her and Phil cuddled up on the beach with matching Santa hats on their heads. I flipped through the rest of the pictures, which went backward through time. In my present state of hormonal tenterhooks, I began noticing things that had never struck me before about these pictures:
Her and me, just before I left Phoenix, smiling in the sunlight. I'd had to figure out how to work the camera's timer, and it had taken us a few tries. You could see my growing frustration with technology while she made goofy kissy-faces at the camera. She hadn't volunteered to help, even though the camera was hers.
A shot of the two of us with our erstwhile dog, Schluppy. My mom had taken it into her head that she wanted a dog, like, now, and so we'd gone to the shelter and picked one out. I'd tried to hide my allergies while she oohed and ahhed over the sweet mutt who'd come home with us, and when she finally noticed how red my eyes were, she promised to keep the dog out of my room. But I still ended up having to feed and walk it; on days when I couldn't get home from school in time, like as not there'd been a brand new wet spot on the rug. So the dog had gone back to the shelter, and I'd felt guilty ever since.
After that, a picture of me in a swimming pool, a hint of pinkish-tan in my fifteen-year-old skin, a few freckles dotting my nose. I had a great big smile on my face; you could see my mom's shadow flickering on the turquoise pool water, giant sunhat and all. The shot was pretty off-center, because my mother had gotten distracted just before snapping the picture.
Me at my thirteenth birthday party, surrounded by friends whose names I no longer remembered. It was the only time I'd ever had a real birthday party, because usually my mom didn't get her shit together far enough in advance to send out invitations. It had been fun. My dad had sent me an antique copy of Pride and Prejudice which he'd found at a junk shop in Forks. If I looked closely at the picture, I could see that the book was still in my lap, where it had stayed from the moment I unwrapped it to the moment everyone got up to change into their bathing suits.
Twelve years old, sitting on a horse, looking terrified. I had always hated heights. "Horses are God's most noble creatures," my mother had said, trying to get me to stay on the thing's back long enough to get a good shot.
Ten, eating ice cream at the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque. I'd hated getting it all down my front as it melted in the radiant sun, but my mom just laughed and told me to embrace life's stickiness.
Nine, playing with makeup at my mother's dresser, trying to make myself look like a grown up, a mother. Seven, buried behind my copy of Matilda, annoyed at the intrusion of a photo op. Six, sitting uncomfortably on Santa's lap. Three, pushing around a toy stroller with a teddy bear strapped into it.
Two, just before my parents split up and my mom got full custody. My parents were perched on the couch which still sat in my dad's living room, too stiff to be in love anymore, and I was sprawled between them, waving my huge copy of Eloise in the air. Another one, where I was younger, yanking on my dad's moustache, which was even longer in those days. It looked like it hurt, but he was grinning and trying to keep my wriggly self from flopping out of his arms and onto the floor.
The last photo in the album, taken just a couple of days after my birth. My mom, my dad, and tomato-red little me. You could see a good portion of my mother's arm as she held the camera out to get the shot so we could all be in it. She was smiling, tired but happy, into the lens. I was sleeping. Half of my dad's head was cut out of the frame, but you could see he was looking at me like I was the hugest shock of his life. He looked terrified.
I shut the album. I went over to my bookshelf and pulled Pride and Prejudice from its place of honor amid Matilda, Mary Poppins and The Blue Castle. I opened the cover to read the faded inscription inside, in the loopy old-fashioned handwriting of the woman who had bought it first:
Sarah Beth, may this tome bring you as tender a joy as you have always brought to me. Warmly, Your Great Aunt Agnes.
Underneath that, in my dad's jerky scrawl, Bells, I couldn't have said it better myself. Love, Dad.
I shut the book carefully and put it back on the shelf, tears welling up in my eyes. I sat on my bed, staring around at the gloomy little room that had always been waiting for me when I came to Forks to fulfill my father's visiting rights. I'd never liked this room until recently, because it was smaller than my bedroom in Phoenix and the view through the one small window was of slightly creepy woods. When I was ten I'd gone to talk to a lawyer who had asked me if I liked my present living arrangement. I'd thought he was talking about houses and bedrooms and cities, and so I said yes. Even if I'd known he was asking which parent I wanted to live with, I still would have said yes, because I was used to my mom, and I loved her, and besides, she came with a pool.
But deep down, I couldn't help wondering if I'd made the right choice. My childhood hadn't been much of a childhood, I now saw. The only time I'd ever gotten to be a kid was when I was with my dad. And I couldn't imagine where he'd learned it, either: his own father had abandoned him and Nona Swan when he was a teenager. Whatever he knew about being a good father, he'd figured out on his own.
Oh god. I was getting teary and nostalgic again, and I couldn't afford to lose my shit right now. Instead of sobbing for absolutely no good reason, I figured I could at least chop onions for burrito toppings and sob over them.
Charlie came home while I was refrying the beans. I hastily wiped the last tear-tracks from my cheeks and pasted a look of bored normalcy on my face.
"Bells!" he shouted, before he'd even shut the front door. "Jake's back!" He slammed the door behind him and pounded into the kitchen. "Says he didn't even know we were looking for him, he took off to bunk with his cousin in Seattle this whole time. Can you fuckin'—'scuse me, can you believe that shit?" I smiled a wavery smile and shook my head. "By the way," he said, suddenly stern, "you pull something like that and I'm plantin' a homing device on you. Damn kid had us all worried to death for no reason…"
"I would never do that, Dad," I said, which was technically true—I had at least come up with a plausible cover story when I ran away from home. "I'm so glad he's safe. Come, on, I made all the fillings for burritos. God, he's really back?" Saying it aloud felt wonderful.
"Yeah, and I can't say I envy the tongue-lashing he's probably gettin' this minute from Sue. Hey, you didn't happen to make guac, did you?" he asked hopefully. "I feel like celebrating."
"No," I said, "sorry. I can fix some up now—"
"Nah," he replied, rising. "I got it. You cooked."
That night, when Edward tapped on my bedroom window, I threw it wide open. At least with him I didn't have to pretend everything was normal.
We were obviously both thinking about our predicament, but neither of us was ready to bring it up yet. We talked about other things, instead, things which would have received top billing if not for the grasshopper.
"So," I said casually, "when I told you to tell me everything and you left out the part about werewolves…?"
Edward had the grace to look ashamed.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I did promise them first."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Promise what? Promise whom?"
"Remember I told you my family signed a treaty with the Quileute elders in the Thirties?" he said. I nodded. "Well, the treaty may have been a little more complicated than I made it seem. Seventy years ago, there were three...um, very curious individuals living with the Quileute tribe. They were shape-shifters, and they had been living with the Quileutes for some time, as bodyguards or surrogate family members. We were never very clear on that, but my impression was that they were nomads who had been welcomed by the local population and chosen to stay for a few generations. The Quileutes trusted them, you see, because of some myths they share about human-to-wolf transformations. They helped their friends broker a deal with us, that we would never step foot on Quileute land or reveal their existence. Although we would not have wanted to tell anyone about them anyway; it is a crime for vampires to deal with shape-shifters, other than to kill them. They are our sworn enemies. If the Volturi found out about them, or that we had made a secret deal with them—well, let me just say that our lives would not be worth the dust under your fingernails. And Jake's entire tribe would almost certainly be wiped out. Aro, the head of the Volturi, takes an unimaginably dark view of anyone who associates willingly with shape-shifters."
I shivered, thinking about it. The more I heard about this Volturi bunch, the less I wanted to meet them.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Bella, but I swore I would never breathe a word about them. And without their help, we probably would have taken even longer catching James, lost even more civilians. I couldn't betray their trust the second we didn't need them anymore." He shot me a wary glance. "Are you very mad about this?" he asked nervously.
I shook my head. "Not really. I wish you'd told me, but I do understand. And you should always keep your promises—even when I don't want you to." I knew that if Jake had still been missing right now I would be beyond furious, but having him back safe seemed to have cured the angry tic I'd been developing over the last ten days. The grasshopper must have been as worried about him as I was, I thought with a smile. We both feel better now.
"Well," I said, "now that the wolf's out of the bag, are you allowed to tell me anything?"
"I guess so," he said, smiling in relief. "I don't know much, though. Only the parts they felt were important to tell us."
"Like what?" I asked, snuggling closer to him, curling my body around his limbs.
"Well, It seems that the gene which expresses itself as, er, wolfishness, is so recessive as to be practically mythological. As far as I know, Jacob Black is the only new shape-shifter to have been born in hundreds of years; I suppose one of the ones who were living with his ancestors must have, er, assimilated. Aside from being incredibly rare, this gene only surfaces in the presence of a particular pheromone which vampires emit. To someone with this wolf-gene, we would smell of rotting garbage. And once they scented that, it would be only a matter of time before the gene expressed itself. We had no idea Jacob carried the gene. If James had never gone onto the reservation, Jacob's wolf-gene would never have been activated. He would still be a normal human boy, and all those stories would still be just that—stories."
"Poor Jake," I said, shaking my head. "This must have been so terrifying for him."
"These shape-shifters have a sort of telepathic bond. As soon as Jacob turned, they knew it. They returned to Forks from...wherever it is they went. They are helping him, now."
"You mean...the original three?" I said, aghast. "They're still alive?" Nonsense. The strange man who had come for Jacob was young, still in his prime. No way was he over seventy years old.
"The very same," said Edward. "I cannot say I envy what lies before Jacob. The three shape-shifters are ancient. Older than me, certainly. Possibly older than Carlisle. While Jacob's family and friends die of old age, he will still be getting used to his new identity as a part-time wolf." So, perhaps a bit over seventy years old, after all.
Jake would need a friend, now more than ever. I resolved, no matter what happened with the grasshopper, that I would be that friend. But seriously. First a hybrid pregnancy that went against all known laws of science and then a best friend who would now be part-timing as an immortal wolf.
Who the hell needed drugs, anyway?
Smeyer's Original Werewolf Backstory has some very, very serious problems. In fact it is nothing but problems, all the way through.
1. I get that she was writing about supernatural shape-shifting, which is imaginary, so she had to make up some stuff to fit her story into the real world. That's call fantasy writing, and I don't usually see a huge problem with it. But Smeyer did it wrong, wrong, wrong. The Quileutes are actual, real people, with an actual tribal history that Smeyer totally and completely ignored, because hey, when an indigenous population has already been disenfranchised to the point of near extinction, who'll notice a little more? The only point of intersection between Smeyer's "Quileutes" and real Quileutes is some mythology about humans descending from wolves, which she very incompletely appropriated for her story. There is nothing in Quileute mythology about modern-day wolf shape-shifters, or "Cold Ones", or Taha Aki, or imprinting. Yes, yes, I know: it's fiction. However, when a privileged white woman invents a lot of fake history about a group of people who have already been shat on by centuries of her ancestors, then has her invention prominently published and never makes any attempt to fact-check with actual Quileutes, nor reaches out to them for consultation and permission, nor thanks them for lending their name to her wholecloth Frankenmyth, you have what we in the biz like to call "a lot of fucking bullshit".
2. My first thought, when I realized I was going to have to write about the shape-shifters after all but that I wasn't willing to follow Smeyer's footsteps, was that I should just retroactively make up a new, imaginary name for Jake's tribe. At least then I wouldn't be peeing on a real tribe's history or belief system. But that came with its own set of problems, because the very biggest red flag in Smeyer's tribal crap would still be present. To quote the all-around fantastic Alaislana's assessment, "Native Americans as the Noble Savages In Touch With Nature is such a common and offensive trope." Or, as we call it in the biz, "a lot of fucking racist bullshit".
3. Clearly, I needed to come up with a wolf shape-shifting concept unrelated to any concept of Noble Savages, but it still needed to have a genetic component because in my infinite lack of foresight I'd already written that part into Long Long Long. Enter the nomadic, immortal shape-shifters. They happened to be crashing with their buds the Quileutes when the Cullens breezed through the first time. They were the ones who negotiated the deal with the Cullens. Through them, the shape-shifting gene was introduced into Jake's family tree. The Quileutes in this tale are not hot-blooded rustics too uncouth to go into Polite Society without exploding out of their shorts in irrational fits of rage; nor are they dirty savages (but with Hearts of Gold!) sworn to protect Mother Earth and her children from those white, educated, hygienic, well-mannered, well-spoken, well-read interlopers. In my story, they get to be what they are in real life, which is a tribe of people with their own shit going on, and the werewolves get to keep being an integral part of the Twilight saga.
4. Speaking of, I have nixed any mention of Children of the Moon. It makes no sense to me that Aro would know the shape-shifters' mission statement to be "Kill All Vampires", but let them off of the technicality that they aren't true werewolves, so his hands are tied, sorry dear, and we really must be toddling on back to Volterra or we shall be late for our tea. True werewolves or no, the shape-shifters are still explicit and unalterable enemies of vampires, full stop. They are still allies of the Cullens, and present a golden opportunity for Aro to get a toe in the door when his first scheme has gone pear-shaped. The way it played out in the book, I got the feeling that Smeyer had written herself into a corner and her deadline was coming due, so she introduced a technicality that would never fly if any of her characters were in the habit of behaving consistently. In my story, Volturi law prohibits alliance or fraternization with shape-shifters, which are a small but racially diverse group of nomads whose family tree covers the globe and whose wolfy-gene-of-note pops up at unpredictable times and in unpredictable places. I know, I know, it's not quite Smeyer's wolf packs. I do hope you'll still be entertained.