Chapter 5 - Bella
"Dad, Dad, the tree!" But Charlie doesn't answer me. He is unmoving and his eyes – oh God - his eyes are closed, and there is a grimace on his face. The car has slowed down a little, but it's going straight, despite a bend on the road, and the tree is coming nearer and nearer… We are going to crash.
I scream, knowing there is no way I can reach the brakes. I brace myself, but the impact I am expecting doesn't come. A wisp of a girl suddenly appears between the car and the tree and she stops the cruiser with her hands! I recognize the girl who has just done the impossible. She too is attending Forks High, even though we don't share the same classes and I don't know her. Alice Cullen. But now this isn't important. It's Charlie who matters. The fact that he's slumped on the side is a bad sign. Very bad.
"Carlisle!" Alice calls, and Doctor Cullen - her adoptive father - emerges from the woods. I know him, since I have, on multiple occasions, visited Forks' Hospital ER.
Now I'm afraid to pass out, and they help me out of the car, but I have problems standing. I sit on the ground while the doctor is half inside the car's cabin. When he emerges, he looks at Alice and shakes his head. I start crying, I can't help myself….
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I woke from the dream, and my cheeks were wet. The almost accident and the moment I realized Charlie was dead were etched in my brain, and I relived them in each painful detail. Awake or asleep, I couldn't get rid of those memories.
Doctor Cullen had pulled out a cell phone. The first call was to my Dad's office and his words were considerate, but precise. "…I suspect an aneurysm … fortunately the Chief was able to stop the car before collapsing, so his daughter is unharmed..."
He was lying: Charlie did not stop the car. I tried to croak something, but I found myself unable to speak.
Alice put her tiny hands on my shoulders and murmured: "Shh, Bella, I'll explain everything, but not now."
"Are you sure of what you're doing, Alice?" Her father seemed worried.
She answered, so fast I couldn't catch it. Then the doctor made another call, also speaking fast and low.
For a while we just waited. The first to arrive was a black Mercedes, driven by Esme, the doctor's wife. I couldn't understand why, but then I realized that Alice and her father had come out of the woods, they didn't have a car. What were they doing in the woods, midway between La Push and Forks? Then my father's colleagues arrived too, and an useless ambulance followed.
"Please, Bella, go with what we say," Alice pleaded.
I was sort of numbed, but I nodded. She had saved my life, after all.
Therefore there were more lies to listen to, how the Cullens were driving by, saw the car going out of control, stopped, and so on. My dad's body was taken away. Esme offered to take me home with them. She said that I shouldn't stay alone in my house; there would be time tomorrow to address all that needed to be addressed.
I spent the night in one of the Cullen's guest rooms, passing from tears to moments of fretful sleep, and then crying again. Alice didn't leave me alone, but she didn't touch me while she lay beside me on the bed. In the morning I had no more tears, and finally I had questions to ask.
After two hours I had my answers, and my life changed completely, much more than Charlie's death alone would have changed it.
Firmly shutting the lid on my memories, I prepared myself for today's work. Mary Dale, assistant librarian, quiet, reserved, no friends, but just a few acquaintances to have coffee with - provided they didn't pry too much. The secrets I had to keep were too many, starting with my real name.
According to Alice, I was in danger. She was too, with only the constant presence at her side of one of the wolves preventing Demetri, the Volturi's tracker, to locate her. The same presence, however, interfered with her visions, so she couldn't be sure of what was happening, couldn't plan and, worst of all, couldn't See where her husband Jasper was.
Jasper, who had tried to kill me and had run away in despair. This, however, might have saved his life. Had he been at home when they came…
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"Yes, thank you, ma'am. Let me stamp your card." Today I was required to stand at the counter and interact with the public, which was not my normal task. I'd landed this job by chance. When I arrived in New York I'd been very bored, after I'd done all the classic tourist visits. My apartment was small and stifling, but it was located in the Village, and being outside was much better than staying in, where time seemed to never pass. The lending library I happened upon on a rainy day was pleasant, and I started to linger there, reading. Then I had helped a librarian when a pile of books she was carrying fell down, then the staff began nodding to me when I arrived… I felt safe because, when we chatted a little, it was about books, not about my private life. I just said I had moved to New York after a sad loss and was taking some time to recover, before deciding about college.
After a couple of months one of the assistant librarians got pregnant. She had a difficult pregnancy and was told to be careful, so she remained at home and the library was understaffed. To offer a temporary position was among the manager's powers, and I was offered it, on the understanding that it was just for some months. It was part time only, and it was perfect for me. Then another employee left suddenly, having found a better paying job, and my contract was renewed.
I was not penniless, because my dad's good life insurance saw to it and the Cullens had invested it for me. In the frantic hours after the tragic visit of the Volturi, Alice had worked her magic on my money. Untraceable, now it rested in a different account to my new name, and the same applied to my college fund, so carefully put together by my parents. Indeed it'd been easy to disappear; I was all alone in the world.
However, I was unable to plan my life anew. Alice had promised that as soon as she Saw that the danger was past, she would come for me. Presently, she was able to have glimpses of the future only if she went underwater, and if the Quileute who was guarding her distanced himself. But her best visions were spontaneous, with all the variables flowing, so there wasn't much she managed to See.
Furthermore, she moved around a lot, just in case, and our way of communicating was complicated. I knew she was also searching for Jasper. Her rare visions showed him living in the wilderness somewhere, but she had no way to reach him and tell him what had happened to the family. He'd crushed his cell phone when he had run away.
Such a stupid accident! A tiny paper cut while I was opening one of my graduation's presents. But a little blood was spilled. Jasper had not hunted enough, so he lost his head and tried to bite me. Carlisle and Emmett subdued him easily, and I wasn't even too scared. But for Jasper it was a tragedy. He felt he had betrayed Alice and the family who had welcomed him so warmly despite his dark past. He couldn't face them and so he ran.
.
"So, did you find your perfect college, Mary?"
I smiled to Deb over my cup of coffee.
"I don't know, there are so many…" So far, it had been more of a pastime than a serious research, but I did collect some information. Weeks ago I even went off town, to visit Dyson College - a branch of Pace Uni located in Pleasantville - just because the name appealed to me.
"But, have you decided if you want to stay in New York or move again, at least?"
"I can't even decide on that, sorry." Dyson had a good English Lit BA program, but the same applied to the Manhattan's branch.
Deb, a nice, middle aged woman, sometimes looked at me with concern, when she thought I wasn't paying attention.
"Oh well, you aren't ready yet, I can see it. I suppose there's still time to send applications in."
Yes, the applications. I had a forged high school diploma too, but I wasn't so keen to use it.
Coffee break over, I went back to put some returned books on the shelves, but I was nervous. My co-workers thought I was from Oregon – a State at least I knew something about, being near to my native Washington – and that I had come to NY after losing both my parents in a car accident. I needed a complete change of scenery – I'd explained - and nothing kept me there. I didn't have other relatives and - now that we had all graduated - my few friends were scattering. All lies, of course. My best friends, the Quileutes, were still in Washington, protecting Alice and, indirectly, me.
But, if people started to probe deeper, it could be dangerous. I didn't want to be found and, more than death, I feared to be captured and used against my friends. So maybe I had to leave my job. If people searched for me in the internet, for instance, that would leave traces others could find.
A couple hours later I left the library and started walking home, feeling I was moving under a dark cloud. I didn't want to be completely alone again, with nothing to do, nobody to speak to. Maybe I had to erase my diary too - my only comfort, but an imprudence, despite its concealment. I felt tears of self-pity gathering in my eyes.
Suddenly somebody behind me whispered "Bella", and I froze, thinking that everything ended here, that I had been discovered.
But the woman who had called me was not an enemy. Tall and beautiful, her skin a rich tan color, her hair jet black, she was out of place on New York's pavement. She belonged to the forests of the Olympic Peninsula.
"Leah!" I cried, running into her arms.
"Shh, Bella, not here. Let's go where we can speak," she cautioned me. On the other side of the road a motorcycle had slowed down, and the rider was looking at us, his helmet slightly turned in our direction. Then he speed away at full throttle.
Leah too had been looking at him, a frown on her face, but eventually she shook her head and said: "Let's go!"
Finally in my apartment, I went to put the kettle on to boil, while she sat on the couch. I came back with two tea mugs, almost bursting from the questions I had.
"Why are you here? And, by the way, you almost gave me a heart attack. Don't do it again! Where is Alice? Did you leave her alone? Are we safe now?"
She raised her hand to stop the deluge.
"No, we aren't safe, no. Nobody is safe yet. Now that we have moved to the East Coast for a while, Alice asked me to come and see you. Seth is with her now, until I go back."
I noticed that she didn't tell me where they were staying, and I was okay with it. If the Volturi discovered I existed - a human knowing about vampires - I would be sentenced to death, but they wanted Alice. Their leader, Aro, desperately wanted to have her under his control. Alice's greatest fear was that they would capture Jasper and then use him to make her surrender herself. While Leah spoke, I noticed distractedly how well she was dressed: pants, pullover and coat perfectly color matched, a far cry from how she dressed when she lived in the Rez. Alice's effect, for sure.
I then asked my friend what Alice had Seen recently, if anything.
It appeared that the Volturi had not yet decided to strike and mount a punitive expedition against the wolves. They weren't sure about their number, and wiping out an entire tribe wouldn't remain unnoticed. They intended to do it, eventually, but not immediately. Time flowed in a different way, for vampires, and to find Alice was their immediate priority.
Alice, who had managed to run, when her surrogate parents and her siblings fell in front of her. She had Seen that the mysterious flight of the Volturi's Inquisitor would give her a chance to slip away while his comrades were distracted, and she took it.
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Notes
The Public Library branch Bella works for is fictional, but it's modeled on the one my Aunt Camilla (the original Camilla) went to get books from. And Edward's apartment in Manhattan is the one where my aunt lived. I write better if I can imagine my characters in places I know. Incredibly, much before Twilight was conceived by Stephenie, my husband and I visited the Olympic Peninsula while travelling in the US.
As said in the prologue, I have decided that being underwater interferes with Demetri's tracking.
Thank you so much for reading and for the reviews. There is one I want to share, by . 2muchtrouble:"You have taken canon Edward and shown what he could have been like without Carlisle. Very insightful." Well, I hope I did. It was not completely conscious.
Next update at the beginning of 2014. Happy new year!