Chapter summary: Austen? Read it. Complete romantic drivel. But then the girl describes herself exactly, calling herself Lizzy, and me exactly as her older sister and faints dead away for no reason at all. Wait. 'Calls herself Lizzy'? Oh, my goodness! FINALLY!

Utter blackness.

My sense of self returned to me — my soul — with my senses. I could hear and feel myself panting heavily, still captured in the afterimage of Rosalie's eyes sucking my soul right out of me. My eyes were opened, but I couldn't see a thing in the blackness.

Is this what nowhere is like?

But then the dim light of the moon obscured by clouds filtered through the window, and I saw a little bit in the darkness. I lifted my hands to feel my cheeks.

They were there. I could feel them. I could feel everything now, and I reveled in that: being able to feel me. I don't think that I had ever been so relieved as when I felt my cheeks on my fingertips and when my cheeks felt my fingertips lightly brush and then press into my cheeks.

My soul was back. I just knew it. I knew it, because I knew what it felt like when it left me.

It felt like nothing. I felt nothingness take me as my soul left me.

But now I felt something. I felt the air rushing into and out of my lungs; I felt my hand, my cheeks, my body, the clothes on my body. I felt the pad, the panties, my tee, which was fresh, and now I was wearing PJs, a full set.

I had been dressed.

And tucked in. In fact, so tucked in that I couldn't move anything other than my arms at all. It was if I was bound to the bed by the blanket.

I had to understand what had happened, and what was going on, but I couldn't do that being so constricted.

"Rosalie?" I whispered into the darkness, but I neither heard nor felt any movement.

So I wiggled out of the blanket, using my hands to pry me out as I increased the space between it and me. Jeez! Did she think she had to secure me to the bed? What? Was I going to get myself killed in bed?

Oops.

Um, yeah.

I guess that would be a valid concern of hers.

I finally got out of the blanket and sat myself on top of it. I didn't dare to venture forth from the bed. It would just be perfect — wouldn't it? — finding myself awake and then stumbling around in the dark to break my neck because I tripped over something I couldn't see. So like me.

Okay, back on track: what happened?

Rosalie took my soul. Why? There had to be some reason for that. What would she do that for?

I had to think hard. Rosalie's smart — really smart — and I'm ... not. Obviously. I'm always saying stupid things to her that makes her so angry with me, and when she explains to me what I just said, she makes it sound like any idiot would have known what I had said was bad.

Because she was right about that. Kind for a vampire. I had thought ... well, I thought I was saying something nice to her, and I thought I was smart, showing her that I figured out that she was a vampire, but she just totally turned around what I said to make it sound like I had just said the worst thing in the world.

I sighed. Thinking about how dumb I am isn't helping me figure out what happened and why.

Rosalie took my soul ... why? Why was it important she take my soul? What did she need with it?

Unless she didn't need my soul? That is, instead of taking my soul to take my soul, she took it to do something else? Did she need to do something ...

Did she need to do something ... to me, and my soul was in the way?

I started breathing heavily again. Calm down, Bella; calm down!

Okay. I forced my breath to deepen and slow. What did Rosalie do to me while my soul was gone? I had to think like her as best I could. I had to think like a vampire.

What do vampires do? They drink blood. While she had my soul, she drank my blood. She drank my blood that tastes better than anything.

But ... but, she said she doesn't drink human blood.

Wait a minute. She always emphasized that she didn't drink human blood.

She said she doesn't drink human blood, but what is a human? That seemed to be important for me to know right now. Well, she drank animal blood. What separated humans from animals?

Oh, no!

The soul separated humans from animals! And she sucked my soul right out of my body. So ...

So, when she sucked my soul out of my body, my body wasn't human any more.

And there was my inert, compliant body, heart beating away, but all the intelligence, all the will, all the fight gone from my eyes, and all that blood just waiting to be taken.

Suddenly, my hands whipped up to my neck, and my fingers quickly traced from my chin back to under my ears as I tried, not so successfully, to control my breathing.

Wouldn't I feel pain from her ... bite? But maybe vampires had this, like, venom, like houseflies, so you don't feel their bite ... until it was too late. Like the girl in Dracula: what was her name? Mina, right? You think she would have realized that somebody bit her, but she never knew.

That's me: Bella-the-Mina.

But my hurried exam didn't reveal any unusual bumps on my neck, so I repeated the whole process more slowly and a little more calmly.

No, no bite marks on my neck.

What a relief!

But, Rosalie's smart. If she did bite me, she'd know I'd look for that on my neck, right? And it would be hard to miss a bite mark on my neck during the daytime. What if somebody just happened to come by? "Got a frisky boyfriend, there, missy?"

Nope, the name's Bella Swan, not Kristen Kuntz, so no, ain't got no fella. Thanks for rubbing it in.

So she would know this and would take my blood from somewhere not in plain sight, somewhere where noone would look.

I quickly lifted my PJ top and tee over my stomach and felt it ... nothing. My hands flew to my armpits ... nothing. Well, stinky, but no bites.

I, uh, I didn't feel my breasts, because, well ...

I was blushing really hard right about now, but I forced myself to complete the thought.

... because when I changed my tee I'd surely notice a bite mark on my breast, right?

That is, if I ever got to change my tee again. Well, that'd be something to watch, but later, not right now.

No bite marks up top. I felt half-heartedly along my back, just to be sure, but I was just too boney back there. I'm sure I would've felt a bite mark there because my skin was pulled tightly across my back, anyway.

What about my legs? Lots of blood there. I took off my PJ bottoms and dropped them on the floor beside the bed. I searched with my fingers feeling, seeing, where my eyes in this darkness couldn't: calves, no; thighs, no; inner thighs, no.

Okay, she didn't bite me.

What a relief!

... that was too short lived. The empty pad pressed against where I had just all-too-recently been bleeding copious amounts of blood ... where I had just been bleeding copious amounts of blood that drove her into a frenzy.

My heart was beating a mile a minute while I had searched my body for bite marks. But now it was beating even faster and so hard that I could feel it in my chest, pounding away, burning me with heat as the blood rushed everywhere as I thought of it: her ... her biting me inside there!

I was now aware of a place where she could bite where nobody would think to look, not even me.

Then I thought about letting it go. Just letting it go, but I couldn't: I just couldn't. I had to know!

I slipped back under the covers and moved my hands to my raised hips, very carefully took my panties off and slipped them down my legs.

Just like the time Rosalie rescued me in the snow from my trip to the outhouse, when, after I had screamed out all that pain from the snow in the cabin, Rosalie had put my panties on me, sliding them up my legs, just as I now slid them down my legs and off.

I placed my panties beside me on the bed under the covers and then removed the pad. It came off easily; it was dry. I put it on the panties.

And now I had to look. Now I had to find out.

I was breathing so hard, but no matter how hard or how fast my breaths came, I couldn't get enough air, and I was hot under the blanket, sweating.

Oh, God! I had never done this: I had never touched myself there on purpose; I had never gone inside. But I forced my left hand to rest on the hair above my nether lips, and I brought my other hand to probe ...

Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!

I felt a twitch and a flash of something, like cold or heat, so I very quickly flipped my body onto its left side, facing the wall — that is, facing away from everything — and curled into a ball, clasping my arms tightly across my stomach, panting open-mouthed into the blanket that covered me.

You know, I just now realized I don't need to know, after all. I really, really don't need to know if Rosalie's taking blood from me. As long as she didn't tell me either way, it was just fine with me. She could do whatever she wanted as long as I didn't know about it.

It took me a few moments to unwrap from the ball and regain control of my breathing. When I finally did, I twisted back around and felt for the pad, put it back on, then reached for the panties ...

... that weren't there.

Okay. This was not the time to panic. My shifting around in the bed moved them somewhere. I just needed to stay calm, to find them, and to put them on. That was all. No need to panic about this. I felt around the bed with my hands and my legs.

Nothing.

Heh. Wouldn't it be funny if Rosalie walked in right now with me squirming around the bed under the covers without my panties on?

I discovered that now was a perfectly reasonable time to panic.

I threw off the covers and picked up the PJ bottoms: no panties there. I felt under the bed: no panties.

Why did it have to be so dark now?

I felt on top of the bed again. There they were! Right where my butt was. Whew, what relief! I have to remember that for the next time I'm checking for vampire bites: wiggle your butt to find your panties.

I dove back into the bed and covered myself with the blanket. I readjusted the pad and carefully pulled the panties up. Rosalie wasn't here yet, and if I pulled them up quickly I knew with my luck they would rip. I could just imagine explaining that one the next time we were at the outhouse: Oh, the ripped panties? Well, see, it's like this ...

Um, yeah: I pulled the panties up carefully ...

... and put them on the wrong way.

Jeez! Can't a girl get a break here, please? So, I took them off again and put my legs through the other way, constantly watching toward where the door was in the darkness as I did this. Then I put on the PJ bottoms, the right way, this time (I checked), and, as I slipped them into place, I saw a door open.

I would like to say that I didn't scream.

That was too close. Too, too close! Rosalie rushed in, but when she saw I wasn't dead, I could feel her visibly relax and then I could almost see a curious look to her posture in the near blackness.

I pulled the blanket over my head and curled up into a ball, but I could still feel her staring at me, and she could probably feel the heat from my blush burn its way through the blanket.

"What?" I demanded. I had every right to scream. If a vampire marched into your house you'd scream, too. Just because I happened to know this vampire didn't change anything one bit! ... and the timing of her entry didn't help at all, either ...

"It's ..." I was going to say: nothing: just like me, but that probably wouldn't stop her staring. "I'm ... I'm fine." I guess I was fine. If she did bite me, I didn't feel faint, so she probably only took a sip or two of blood.

Why was she worried about me, anyway? She had just sucked the soul out of my body and maybe sucked out some blood, too. Then, for some reason, she put my soul back in me. Weren't these more reason to worry over me than just me getting a fright because she walked through the door? I just didn't get it.

But then I got something else. She was worrying about me. She cared about me.

Okay, whoa, there, Bella: all that happened was that I screamed, and she came over to check on me. That was it. Let's not get carried away here. I mean, let's not get carried away again.

I heard her turn away from me, but I resolved to stay right here under the covers. Maybe she'd forget about me after a while. Maybe I'd fall asleep. Maybe I'd fall asleep and wake up back home from this surreal dream and return to my plain, boring reality where beautiful vampires didn't suck my soul from my eyes and my blood from my ...

Yeah, it's a lot safer here under the blanket, I'll stay right here, I resolved. That would be an easy resolution to keep.

CLUNK!

Well, it was easy ... until I heard that large, heavy, and solid sound coming from something hitting the table. It was easy ... until I saw from under the blanket the one-room cabin become brighter and brighter until it was almost as bright as day. I smelt the distinctive, oily smell of kerosene.

That Rosalie! She didn't even give me the chance to be alone forever for a good, proper, sulk. I sighed and folded the blanket back from my head, and was greeted by an amazing sight: Rosalie was dressed as a man! She was wearing a beige trench coat, and cut quite a handsome figure in the now well-lighted room.

That Rosalie: a regular Errol Flynn! So swoontastic!

Um, what?

It wasn't as if I had a leg to stand by my critique: my fashion had been PJs or undies the last few days, and before that? Well, I never really thought much about what I wore, and now, looking at Rosalie, I never wanted to think about how I looked back then, in my previous life that ended a week or so ago. Even though I had no reason to criticize Rosalie, I couldn't help it: me, I had no reason to dress up, but Rosalie wearing a trench coat? Certainly she looked amazing — the collar up gave her almost a rakish air — but why the mannish look? Why did she need to wear a coat at all, anyway?

As Rosalie unbuttoned her trench coat — I just couldn't get over Rosalie in a men's coat — I shifted my thoughts from Rosalie's look and took in the cabin. There were now five kerosene lamps that lit the whole room in a bright light, and on the table was a capacious carpet bag, stenciled with the words "Wells Fargo & co.'s Express". My attention returned to Rosalie, she was wearing that red cable-knit sweater again — or was it a different one? — I could see a red turtleneck shirt underneath that. She also worn form-fitted blue jeans that fit her like a glove, hugging but not squeezing her legs.

It seemed she always looked beautiful, and she always wore beautiful things — or she made the common things she wore look beautiful — and she always did it so effortlessly. It was if she were designed to be beautiful, and everything came together to make that design true, all the time.

She just didn't seem real. Well, you know what I mean, I mean besides being a vampire and all ...

And to prove my point, she casually flipped the coat across the length of the table. It landed neatly draped over the chair near the carpet bag.

"That was just luck!" I exclaimed hotly, sitting up in the bed. "I bet you couldn't do that again!"

Why did she have to be so graceful, too? My every move and gesture felt clumsy and inelegant compared to her grace. It was like she had everything, and I had nothing. Even her self-imposed silence made her better than me: instead of being mute, she was mysterious ... and beautiful ... and graceful ... and everything. I knew it was mean of me, but I hoped that there was something that she didn't do perfectly.

It was mean of me, and Rosalie caught it. She tilted her head to one side, and I could feel the reproach that she didn't say. She didn't need to. I blushed in shame and dropped my eyes. "I'm sorry," I murmured, hating my outburst, hating myself.

I was sure she was going to give me the silent treatment, letting my guilt eat me from the inside out, but she surprised me. I felt her movement and looked up to see her retrieve her coat and then come over to me. I looked up a her towering over me.

"Bet," she stated simply, holding out her right hand.

I looked at her hand and looked at her impassive face.

What would a smart girl do in this case? Was I a smart girl? I think you know the answer to that one already, don't you?

A/N: In this and in the following chapters I am indebted to twilighted-dot-net member planethalia for educating me in the clothing fashions of the 1930s. Any accuracies are hers; any inaccuracies, mine.