Chapter summary: What? Why are you screaming: "Don't do it, Bella!" Rosalie didn't say I couldn't read her book. Besides, who are you, anyway, to tell me what to do? I've got a vampire doing that to me already, so I don't need your help here, thank you very much.
She was doing it again.
You ever get that feeling that someone's staring at you? I have that feeling. Boy, do I have that feeling right now! But I know what'll happen when I look up from this book. I'll see exactly what I've seen the last twenty times I've looked: Rosalie's eyes, firmly fixed — determinedly fixed — in that book with the lines and the dangling squiggles for writing.
Oh, you can bet I've tried to convince myself that I'm just imagining it, and I would have believed myself, and I would have believed Rosalie's "don't mind me, I'm just reading this book and not looking at you" eyes glued in her own book.
That is, I would have believed it, if I hadn't been with her day-in and day-out for the eternity that we've been here in this cabin. I would have believed it if I had heard the pages turning in that impossibly fast way they turned when she read a book: every second, another flip of the page. But now there was silence of the pages not turning as she kept "reading" that one page.
I would have believed it if my whole focus hadn't been to pick every nuance from her every expression during that long three days of her silence and then the following torrent of feeling and words that followed.
And what did that time of studying Rosalie teach me?
It taught me this. Her completely blank expression now? Too blank. When she was engaged in her "usual" communicating with me (well, communicating in her utterly confusing manner), her face had some, well, life to it.
This face? This blank face? This blank face with eyes fixed in her book?
She was hiding something from me. And that something that she was hiding? She was hiding that she was staring at me.
I looked up from the literature book as quickly as I could. I sensed no movement from her, but I knew it. I knew she was staring at me, just now, and that she moved her eyes back to her book before I could catch her.
Damn it!
You ever have somebody stare at you, without you knowing? Creepy, right? Now have that someone be a vampire.
Yup. Like I knew what the last three pages of poetry I read said. Sure I did.
Well, this time I was going to get her.
I lowered my head back to the book, but I kept my eyes fixed on her.
Two could play at this game.
I turned a page, pretending to read, then, after a minute or so, I flipped another page, watching her the whole time. Nothing. A minute later, I flipped another page, staring, hard, right at her.
Her eyes lifted from the book, and locked onto mine.
Ha! Caught ya! I thought triumphantly, pleased with my victory for the tiniest of seconds. Her staring eyes turned embarrassed for a second, flickering away, ...
But then they locked right back on my eyes. And what was their look?
Hungry. She was staring at me hungrily, and suddenly heat of my victory turned rather cold. I felt my hackles tingling, and my game turned from the victory to the consequences.
Rosalie rose slowly from her chair, and now I was rather glad the table was between us, and I was also rather glad that I was lying in bed on the other side of the cabin from her.
We both spoke into the silence at the same time.
"Rosalie ..." I began a little bit fearfully.
But Rosalie's words stopped me: "I... I..."
Her words ... they were lost; they were embarrassed; they were confused. I don't remember her looking like this ...
... except when I first got my period ... and she smelled my blood.
I didn't have the slightest idea what was happening — what was about to happen — back then. But I had more than a slight idea now.
She was transfixed, and she couldn't seem to be able to break out of the spell that she put herself under, reading her own book. She stood there, stock still, holding on to that book like it was a lifeline, a book I now felt the utmost hatred for. I just knew that this situation was all its fault somehow.
She was staring right at me, and I saw her move, ever so slightly, toward me. I looked in shock to the sound of squealing coming from the table. She didn't even seem to notice that she was pushing the table forward as she inched toward me.
"Rosalie!" I barked out a shout, and I saw the slightest bit of awareness return to her hungry coal-black eyes. I knew I had to do something, because she seemed incapable of pulling herself out of this ... whatever ... she was under.
"Rosalie," I said a little bit more calmly, but still very firmly, "put that book down, right now, and go ..." — what did she call it? Oh, yes: "... hunting ... now."
Reason began to return to her face, and with it, embarrassment. Rosalie embarrassed. That look gave me another worry to add on the already overflowing pile. She looked away quickly, turning her whole face from me ... but I could see her: she swallowed, hard.
She turned her head back to me and put the book down. Looking so lost, she opened her mouth, but, again, the only thing that came out was an embarrassed "I..."
I cut her right off: "Rosalie: go, now."
Reluctantly, she moved to the door, not looking at me at all. Working very hard not to look at me at all, in fact. She put her hand to the latch.
"Rosalie," I said. She stopped, but didn't look back at me. "We will be talking about this when you get back."
That last warning earned me a considered look. And even a coherent question.
"How is your sanskrit?" she asked me cautiously.
"Rosalie," I sighed, "we can talk about my penmanship when you come back, okay?"
I said 'coherent' question; I didn't say 'comprehensible' one. But I also didn't have time now to play the 'what does Rosalie mean' game right at the moment.
Confusion crossed her face at my answer.
"What?" she asked.
"Ro-..." I began, but stopped at her palm raised to me. I saw what looked like relief replace the confusion on her face, and she was gone. The door closed behind her, silently. It was if she was never in the cabin, only the lingering scent of honeysuckle and rose a testament to her presence.
And only the uncontrollable shaking that now overtook my body a testament to what had just almost happened.
God! That was close ... that was almost too ...
I grasped the pillow to my chest and curled myself around it in a ball, holding onto it as the quakes passed through me. A loud bang announced that my movement had pushed the thick anthology of literature off the side of the bed. I heard gasping, and realized it was me. The firm mask of control I had so fiercely maintained in Rosalie's presence during the crisis shattered entirely in the aftermath.
...
Quiet time started so promisingly!
You know how the relaxing walk to the bathroom turned out? Well, this is how what was supposed to be quiet time became, too.
I don't know: I suppose I should always be ready for the other shoe to drop. I suppose I should know by now when something starts out so wonderfully that this is what turns out, but I mean — really! — how could I predict all this when she handed me the Austen compliation? Even her warning of "One chapter only" at my gasp of delight didn't dampen my excitement.
Of course she knew I wouldn't hear a word she said, waving that book around like that, so even before she brought out the book, she told me the rules for "quiet time."
What is it with vampires and their rules, anyway? ... well, it was just one rule ... what is it with vampires and their "one rule" for every occasion, anyway?
And even I could guess at that rule: silence. Two hours of silence. I could read. I could write. I could draw. I could sleep, but no talking.
Two hours of reading without Rosalie's cross examination. What could be more perfect than that?
I turned right to Pride and Prejudice, chapter one, and let the world disappear into Netherfield and Longbourn and the Bennett's delightful concerns.
But then I got to this phrase: "... though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.''
My little Lizzy. Hm. "Lizzy" was "Li-..." something. I had guessed before that Rosalie wouldn't call me that, but when I had asked for Pride and Prejudice, she promptly sucked out my soul, so maybe ...
I looked up from my book. Rosalie was burning through the book she was reading, the pages going flip-flip-flip in that impossibly fast way that she can do everything perfectly. I saw the gold embossing on the deep blue cover.
She was reading the Bible. She was almost finished with the whole thing. No, she turned from the end to somewhere in the middle and resumed burning through it like the cabin was on fire, or something.
"Rosalie, ..." I began.
She raised a finger to her lips: "Shhh," she scolded, "it's quiet time."
Then she resumed her reading.
But this was too important to be shushed aside.
"It doesn't mean anything," I said quickly in one breath.
Rosalie stopped turning the pages and frowned at me. She put down the book — the Good Book, in fact — on the table.
"What doesn't mean anything?" she asked. I heard a bit of annoyance in her question.
"My name," I responded calmly now that I had her attention. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just 'Bella Swan,' that's all, you can call me that, just because it's my name. It doesn't mean that I have to be beaut-..."
"Your name," she grated our her interruption through gritted teeth, "means everything!" Her hands were clenched into fists, and she had risen from the table, her angry words lancing toward me from across the cabin. I noticed the chair didn't bang onto the floor, however: even in her anger, she was graceful beyond compare.
"No," I sat up in the bed and shouted back at her, "it doesn't! It doesn't mean anything, okay? You don't have to ..."
"Your name means nothing, hm?" Rosalie shouted right back.
And here a flash of thought interrupted me: so much for 'quiet' time.
"YES!" I shouted through eyes tightly shut, "so you can just call me Bel-..."
"Girl." Rosalie's musical voice, now no longer shouting, still cut through what I was saying.
"No, Rosalie," I said, opening my eyes and explaining quickly, "that's not it, you can just call me ..."
"I can just call you 'girl' because you told me yourself: your name means nothing to you." She sat back down, and picked up the book with a self-satisfied smirk and recommenced reading. Flip-flip-flip went the pages.
"Rosalie, no, that's not what I'm saying at all ..." I began.
The pages didn't even stop this time. She didn't even bother to look up to deliver her callous retort.
"Either your name means something, or I can call you anything or nothing without it mattering. You can't have it both ways, ... girl!" The smug words floated around the Good Book to find their mark to pierce me with ease.
"Ro-..." I tried again.
"Shhh!" came the chiding hiss: "Quiet time."
"Are you even reading that book?" I demanded.
Flip-flip-flip went the pages. Rosalie ignored my question.
Hmmphf! Not sure if I liked this as much as I thought I would have. I returned to Pride and Prejudice. Where was I? Oh, yeah: "... my little Lizzy."
Jeez!
...
It didn't even feel like seconds later that I heard the silence. I looked up in time to see Rosalie throw the Bible into the book bag. She was muttering under her breath, even growling softly, and I couldn't quite hear her words, but they were something like: "I should have known ..." and something like "sawdom and gamor-" something. And she looked at me furiously, then turned away, muttering something like, "her father wouldn't do what Lot did ... what my family allowed." And I didn't understand any of it, other than something she read in the Bible made her angry.
Then she grew quiet and still, and I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. She reached slowly into the book bag, and pulled out the leather bound book with the lines and squiggles on it, and sat back down, and started reading.
Flip-flip-flip went the pages, and Rosalie's nose was buried in the book, the stormy clouds creasing her forehead smoothing with what I thought to be calm, so I thought everything was okay again.
I finished chapter one of Pride and Prejudice, returned the Austen compilation to her, and she offered a "read from one of these whatever you'd like" from the Western Civilizations book and the literature anthology. I chose the lit book and returned to bed, excited to be exploring the stories and poems that I had see before and the ones that I hadn't.
I was pleased that quiet time had settled down and was glad everything had returned to normal, feeling blissfully content and safe.
I was wrong.
...
As soon as my trembling stopped, I got right up from that bed and marched right over to the table. In my haste and fury, I nearly fell flat on my face when my own sheets tripped me up, but I kicked my legs free and forward just in time. I was just too angry to be embarrassed, however: I was on a mission.
I picked up that damned book and marched right back into bed. I covered myself completely and hid the book under the covers, just to play it safe, and opened up the leather binding to the first page ...
I spent a good deal of time fruitless looking for something, ... anything. But what I got was page after page of nothing. Just lines with dangling squiggles.
But then I felt it. The magic. Just like Rosalie. My eyelids became heavy, and as I was drifting off, helpless under the spell of the book, I realized what I had in my hands. I realized what my heavy eyelids were giving butterfly kisses to. I realized was I was drooling on as consciousness succumbed to the power of the lines and squiggles.
I had been wishing for a vampire code book so I could make sense out of the utterly confusing pronouncements Rosalie continuously made, and now I held it in my hands.
...
I'm dreaming.
I realized it. But somehow I was still here. I was still in bed, I was still in the cabin, I still had the leather bound book in my hands.
But I knew I was dreaming. I had to be. I had to be. Why? Because the words on a book cover don't quiver like that when you're awake, right? The lines and squiggles on the cover of the book resolved themselves into words that I could read as easy as day. I could read the title perfectly, and it said: "Vampire Code Book."
I knew it!
I now realized why Rosalie was confused when she left. She wasn't asking me about my writing. No, 'samscript' or whatever that word was, meant 'Vampire writing.' She was asking me if I could read her book.
Maybe humans could only read Vampire in their dreams. I turned eagerly to the page that Rosalie was stuck on. It was easy to find: her scent curled up out of the page, forming luminous trumpets of honeysuckle and showers of rose petals in the æther between me and the words of the book, and the words themselves quivered from the lines and squiggles, resolving themselves into words.
And I read the words.
And I wondered, if you die in your dreams, do you die for real?
The words on the page said this:
"Vampire Cookbook: Virgins, Recipe XLII
First, feed a young girl some steak cooked rare, marinate her with some red wine. The next day provide some berries of blue color for her to eat. Mix well by taking her on a walk, and heat the blood properly by confusing and then angering her. Drink her at your leisure during her ensuing nap brought on by exhaustion."
When I finished reading those words, I tried to close the book, but I couldn't, because I felt it.
Her presence.
Dread filled me as I looked up from the book and turned my head to look right into Rosalie's eyes.
The coal irises burned with a black fire. Her lips parted into a smile that showed perfect teeth, glinting and sharp.
"Ro-..." I breathed out in shock, but I didn't get to finish, for her cold, cold, stone cold, honeysuckle and rose scented marble hand covered my mouth and gently tilted my head back.
Her face grew large in my vision as she leaned toward me ...
...
My gasp of indrawn breath shocked me into wakefulness.
I looked down at the book. It was again in illegible lines and squiggles, but out of the corners of my eyes, I thought I saw the ones out of focus just ever so slightly quivering. I snapped that book closed firmly, but I couldn't suppress an involuntary shudder.
And then I felt it.
Her presence.
Oh, God! I hope I'm still dreaming. I turned my whole body, and I saw her.
She was sitting at the table, a pen in her hand, and she was annotating another book, as easy as you please, ignoring the fact that she was about to suck out all my blood in my dream.
No, wait a minute! She wasn't annotating just any old book, she was going through my journal!
"Ummmm ... excuse me, ..." I cleared my throat. Here Rosalie looked up at me, and I pointed to my journal, "... but that's mine."
Rosalie looked down at my notebook, turned to the next page, glanced at it cursorily and grimaced, then looked back at me. Suddenly, in her stillness, she seemed to shrink, the edges of her becoming indistinct, her mannerisms and carriage became different, somehow, and from that difference she pointed at the code book for vampires I was cradling in my arms.
"Ummmm ... excuse me, ..." and here I gasped, because my voice — my exact voice — came from her now tentative mouth, and her look and manner? I knew it now, she was imitating my hesitancy! She continued relentlessly in her imitation: "... but that's mine."
She was transforming, right before my eyes, into me.
And I had thought the dream I had just had was scary. My grandmother was right: Rosalie was doubling me, right down to the hunched shoulders.
"Rosalie," I gasped, "stop! Please, stop! Just ..."
The shimmering indistinctness resolved back to that powerful, perfect creature I knew to be her, ... thankfully she didn't resolve further into me. She looked at me from her now perfected stillness with a raised eyebrow.
"Rosalie, why did you do that?" I asked, still scared out of my mind at seeing her transforming into me.
"The correct question," she demanded imperiously, "is why do you?"
"I thought it was quiet time," I groused.
"It was," she replied sardonically. That's when I noticed the darkening sky tinting the window with violet and orange.
How come you don't feel the passage of time when you sleep?
I shrugged angrily. How come she gets to win even the conversations that I sidetrack?
So I returned to her original question. "Rosalie, that's just how I am, is all."
"No, it's not," she stated absolutely.
Trying to tell Rosalie something was like trying to convince a stone wall of something. I guess I could add 'literally' to what I just thought, couldn't I?
"Rosalie," I sighed, "tell me what I have to say, okay?"
This seemed to displease her. "That's just it, isn't it? The world tells you what to believe you are, and you listened, didn't you?"
"Um, what?" We appeared to be back in the 'not making sense' conversations.
Rosalie grimaced. "The world tells you not to be noticed. The world tells you not to offer your view, not even to have a view. The world tells you to bow your head, to submit, to give up, to give in ... and you, the good, little, obedient girl that you are, you listened, didn't you?"
"So I have to be this, like — what? — rebel, 'cause you're telling me to?"
"It's not either-or, girl," she said irritatedly, which, along with the 'girl' dig, irritated me more, too, "Don't listen to me, don't listen to the world: find you and listen to her."
"So you can read about her and add then your own little notes with your own red pen into my private journal?" I fumed, shooting daggers at her from my eyes.
"It had better be private," she fumed right back. "It had better be!"
"What do you mean by that?" How could she demand it be private when she had her fingers all over it, for crying out loud, she still had it open, not even embarrassed about going through my things.
As her answer, she flipped forward three pages and, not even glancing down at the page that fell open, she read my own "living with a vampire chaperon" rules right back to me.
"What is the meaning of this? Do you know what will happen to anybody who comes across these words?" she demanded furiously.
As if anybody ever would. As if anybody would ever believe a single word they read. The only way anybody would believe I wasn't writing fiction would be if they were me or if they saw Rosalie after her funeral.
I rolled my eyes at her ridiculousness.
"I'll guard it with my ..." foreshortened "... life, okay, Rosalie?" I replied sarcastically.
"You'd better do better than that!" My response didn't assuage her one bit. "You'd better guard it with theirs!"
"What?" I asked in disbelief.
"Anybody who sees this?" she asked, pointing down at my journal, "I'll kill them where they stand. Do you understand me?" And she enunciated each of the words that followed: "Where they stand! That is Rule Number One, not your guide for confident speaking."
I sat up in bed and shouted: "Oh, Jesus Christ!" I began, but then a sharp pressure forced my head forward.
"Hey! Ow!" I yelped in pain but mostly in surprise.
Rosalie was standing right by me, glaring.
I rubbed the back of my head, and Rosalie removed her hand.
Oh, that's what caused the 'ouch'-moment.
"What the hell was that for?" I demanded.
Rosalie got this superior quoting voice. "'At the name of Jesus'" and here her head nodded forward as she intoned, "'every knee shall bow.'"
"Where the hell does it say that?" I seethed, angrier than I ever remember being.
How come I'm always angrier than I ever remember being when it comes to being with Rosalie?
She waved over to the book bag: "Philippians."
"Philippians?" I screamed.
Now I was seeing red.
"Chapter 2, verse 10, to be precise," her voice cut right through my anger.
"Oh, Jesu-... fer crying out loud!" I changed course quickly there, because I saw Rosalie's hand come up, menacingly, and I didn't want a bruise or a bump back there. "I can't believe this! What? That has got to be a first! A ..." and I waved to her. I was tempted to say the 'V' word, but everything seemed to be spiraling out of control, and I didn't know what would set her off next. "... reading the Bible and working for God Almighty!" I snorted in disbelief. "What?" I continued on my tirade, "Did He come down from Heaven to give you His own special ..."
But then I stopped.
Rosalie was suddenly looking away.
She whispered angrily: "Don't be ridiculous!"
She whispered it angrily, but not at all convincingly.
I looked at her in silence with the stunned realization.
Oh, my God! She said she was on some kind of mission, but I didn't know she was a religious fanatic! A vampire-religious fanatic. A Doppelgänger-vampire-religious fanatic. I hadn't known how this situation could have been worse than what it was, ... and then this happens. I just know that this doesn't bode well for the future when I think how I've hit bottom, only to find myself dropping through the bottom.
What next?
Um, is it okay if I can unask that question? Somehow, questions like those always seem to be answered in the most unexpected of ways.
"Okay, Rosalie," I said firmly, after the shock of it wore off, "from now on, no more Bible-reading for you."
She starts reading the Bible and becomes a fanatic? A sure way to limit the whacks to the back of the head was to cut her off right now. Bible-reading is just no good for a person: gives them too many weird ideas.
My words washed over Rosalie, and she crossed her arms, glaring at me furiously.
"You are not to give me orders," she commanded.
"Oh, but it's okay for you to give me orders?" I countered hotly.
"No, it's not 'okay'!" She was seething.
"So why do you do it, then, if it's not okay?" I demanded.
"Because, ..." she answered angrily. "Because I must. Because I am able. Because I am the only one who can do what must be done. That's why."
"Who died and left you in charge?" I retorted furiously.
Silence.
Rosalie glared at me, arms crossed, anger written across her face.
Um, whoops.
"I died," she hissed out.
Oh, God! I instantly regretted my angry retort.
She looked at me, shaking her head, and her anger melted into regret. "I died and left me in charge."
I regretted my retort, but I was still angry.
"As always?" I asked bitterly.
"What?" Her regret changed to surprise.
"Look, I'm sorry, Rosalie, for everything that's happened to you, okay? But it still doesn't change the situation. You're in charge now. You were always in charge, weren't you?" I asked. "Everybody always did what you said, didn't they? Must be nice." I added spitefully.
Okay, okay, I know that I wasn't being nice, and I really shouldn't have said that, but, for crying out loud, she kidnaps me and bosses me around? After a while that wears a girl down. And let's not even start with the flipping behavior of hers.
"Nice?" Rosalie asked, shocked. "Nice?"
"Yeah, nice, always having your own way ..." I responded, but Rosalie cut right into my words.
"I am a Hale!" she drew herself up to full height as she proclaimed these words. "A Hale does not have her own way; she makes her own way."
"Like you're making your way through my journal?" I snapped back.
Like I said. I'm not a particularly happy camper now. Too bad she couldn't speak during my period: she really would've gotten what-for, then, if she gave me any of her superior attitude. Hm. I wonder if she became a vampire when she was having her period. That, actually, would explain a lot.
God! Stuck eternally in the worst part of the cycle? That would be bad.
"I told you ..." she snapped right back, but then she drew in a long breath, closed her eyes and blew it out slowly. She opened her impenetrable eyes and looked at me in quiet for a second and started over again, speaking slowly and softly. "I told you I would be reviewing your algebra exercises, and that's what I was doing, but I can't help but take in everything now. It is intrinsic in my nature to observe everything, and what I observed ..."
She shook her head and held up a conciliatory hand. "I apologize. Yes, you will record your thoughts and feelings. I should have known you would be doing that. I should have allowed for that. But this cannot go beyond you, okay?"
I looked at her looking so sincere. It was almost as if she were entreating me.
I nodded my assent solemnly.
She came over holding my notebook out to me. I took it. She held out her hand for her book. I looked down at the title of a line with some squiggles and put that book into her hand.
The flash of hot anger between us seemed to have been replaced by something felt like an aftertaste of sorrow.
"Don't worry about the exercises today," her retreating back said quietly as she headed toward the table, "we'll begin working on them in earnest tomorrow."
I took a quick peek into my notebook. The exercises were covered in red crosses and circles. I don't think it would be redder if I bled on it.
"Rosalie ..." I called out.
She stopped, but didn't look back. "I said don't be concerned about it now."
That's not why I spoke, however. "I know why you had to leave," I said quietly.
Her back stiffened.
"Are you going to do that to me?" I asked.
She turned around and looked at me guardedly.
I looked down, wanting to bury my head in the pillow, and glad that the blanket was hiding most of me.
"I read it in your book. It's okay, I guess, because you can't help it, ... you know?" I looked at her, trying to make her understand that I understood.
"What did you ..." Rosalie was so still as she asked. "What did you read in here?" She held up the book in question.
"The part about ..." and here I buried my face in my pillow "... virgins."
My face was in the pillow. But I'm sure she saw my blush as I felt it burning the back of my neck, just as I surely heard her gasp.
"I suppose it'd be best at night, you know?" I continued as distinctly as I could into the pillow. "When I'm here in bed? It'd be easier for you ... for me ... for us that way, right?"
It was quiet for a while. A thoughtful quiet. Then, into the quiet, her voice whispered carefully, "I thought you didn't know how to read sanskrit."
I looked up from my pillow, still very embarrassed, ... even more so.
"I didn't," I explained, "but then, ... but then I did, and I read the part, you know, that you were reading ... and thinking about ... doing."
Utter stillness from Rosalie. She looked at me from that stillness as my blush heated my pillow uncomfortably. I felt as if I were the one who was caught. I guess I was.
"It's okay, you know, Rosalie," I said quietly. "I understand. It's in your nat-..."
She came up to me, holding out the book to me.
"Read it to me," she commanded. "Read the part that you read."
Her voice was detached and remote, and her eyes resting on me were taking me in completely but also a million miles away.
I took the book.
"Rosalie, I can't anymore," I said.
"You can't? Or you won't? Why do you refuse now?" Rosalie asked, still distant.
"It's not that, Rosalie," I explained, "It's just that I can do it when I'm dreaming, but I don't understand the words now, see? It's like when the animals told me what they taste like to you."
"Animals?"
"Yes," I answered and added: "and when the v-..."
But here I stopped. I was going to tell her how I knew my blood appealed to her, that I understood why it was so hard for her, always having me around. But I knew, instinctively, that people who said they heard voices talking to them ...
Well, I knew that wasn't a good thing, and Rosalie had hinted about insanity already. I didn't think she needed me to confirm her hint.
So I changed course. "I meant to say 'and then Roy told me ...'"
"Royce," she corrected.
"Oh, sorry, Royce said ..." I swallowed. I guess this wasn't a good way to go either. Maybe try: "And the two police officers, well, one of them ..."
I looked away. Telling her that she killed a man with four children ... not a good idea, either.
She did come back to Earth for a second, but it seemed her thoughts were focused on me, and not what I was telling her about her: "Is that in your power? Clairvoyance? Does it manifest itself more strongly in your sleep?"
I looked back at her, not understanding what she was saying.
She became distant again. "Just tell me what you remember reading in the book," she said abstractly.
So I looked down at the leather bound book and opened it, flipping through the pages. They all looked exactly the same: incomprehensible. Flip-flip-flip went the pages, just like when Rosalie was reading it.
Wait a minute. Hm. I passed it. I flipped back a few pages. And then I found the page. There it was. It looked exactly like all the other pages, but, somehow, I knew this was it.
"Here it is," I said with certainty. "It talks about young girls."
Rosalie looked down at the page that was upside down from her, and she looked into my eyes.
"Yes," she said.
I broke away from her stare and looked at the page, not being able to read one squiggle, but feeling the familiarity of it.
"It says something about giving her really good food. I remember it said something like 'berries of blue color' or something like that." I continued.
"Yes, something like that," she said.
It was impossible to see what she was thinking beyond the impenetrable mask of her blank face. I couldn't tell if she was angry with me, or ... what.
"It says ..." It was getting harder to breathe. "It says to take her on, you know, walks, and then talk with her to make her ..." I gasped. "... to make me ..." Then I looked up from the book, and I shouted in exasperation and embarrassment: "you know!"
"Tell me what I know," said Rosalie from that great distance right beside me.
I shut the book, pushed it off the bed — it hit the floor with a bang — and buried my head in the pillow.
My muffled shout came from the pillow. "So you can ... do it!"
"Do what?" Rosalie asked quietly.
I shook my head in the pillow. My tears of embarrassment made the pillow a little bit wet.
"Do what?" Rosalie demanded just as quietly, but very firmly this time.
But the last time I explained my dreams, she ran from the cabin, and I nearly died trying to go to the outhouse. This was a performance I did not wish to repeat.
"Rosal-..." I began to beg.
"Do what?" Anger crept into the tone of the question. She was going to make me say it.
I sighed into the pillow, lifted my head from it and looked at her through teary eyes.
I shouted my answer at that blurry image of perfection: "Drink my blood! Drink my blood! Drink my blood! Okay? Are you happy? You made me say it! Just do it when I'm sleeping, okay?"
I didn't know what to expect for Rosalie's reaction. I didn't know if, like in my dream, she would cover my mouth with her hand and take me right here and now, or, like before, she would run, screaming, from the cabin, or ... what.
I didn't expect what she did do.
Her mouth formed the words 'drink your ...' Then it looked like realization hit her like a wrecking ball. The air left her in a sharp 'Heh!' of shocked surprise, and she almost doubled over in her physical reaction.
She sucked in a breath of air, her eyes blackening further, and she sang out a relieved sigh that I could also see was a longing one, and her face brightened into a rueful smile. She looked at me with a relief so powerful that I could feel it overwhelming me.
"You ... you ..." she began, and then she stopped to chuckle for a second and collected herself. "You are the most ..." She broke off again. She shook her head, smiling at me.
I was utterly baffled. "It doesn't say that?"
She chuckled again, still smiling, beaming with relief.
"You." She said affectionately.
"I was wrong?" I pressed. I felt my blush. I felt confused and embarrassed, and I felt myself getting angry.
"No," she said. "You were absolutely right, but you were so very, very wrong. As always." She looked at me with what looked like wonder.
"You." She said again, admiringly.
Rosalie crossed her arms and looked at me smugly. But when she did cross her arms, it looked like she was almost reaching out toward me?
I sighed. It's so nice when Rosalie 'explains' herself, isn't it?
"So, when you left" — when I made you leave — "it wasn't because of my ... blood?" I clarifed. "You didn't want to ..."
Rosalie's smug look went away and was replaced by a very serious one. She looked away as she answered very quietly.
"I don't know how to covey how desperately I desire your blood. Yes, I wanted your blood then, but I always do."
"But you don't ... you know ... because you're a Hale, right?" I finished for her.
Her look slid to me, and then immediately slid away again. "Yes," she responded.
But I got an inkling that wasn't the full and complete answer.
"So the book wasn't, like, recipes for young girls?" I asked.
I saw the corners of Rosalie's lips twitch upward. She reached down, retrieved from the floor the book in question and moved to the table in that always elegant way of walking that made her look so regal. She sat down and looked at me.
"It does contain recipes, but not in the way you interpreted it." She beamed a smile at me.
"Rosalie," I sighed. "What is the title of the book?"
This talking in circles was confusing. I needed just one straight answer from her.
"It wouldn't make any sense to you if I told you," she replied levelly.
So much for getting a straight answer easily. But I was going to get one of her today about that book even if it kill-... well, anyway.
"Just tell me, Rosalie." I demanded, waiting for her to say the 'V' word in the title.
She tilted her to one side, examining me critically from the across the cabin.
"All right," she said, reaching a decision, "It's called the ..." and she said a word that didn't make any sense to me at all. Just like she said it wouldn't. But I didn't hear the 'V' word, either. Do vampires not call themselves 'vampires' in their own language?
"Don't tell me what it is in the vampire language," I ordered. "What does it mean in plain English?"
Rosalie sighed, again. It was if she were the one who was being put upon.
"It's not written in 'vampire language,' as you say. It's written in sanskrit," she responded, speaking down to me as if I were a little child that she had to explain things very simply to. "And it doesn't have a direct translation into 'plain English.'"
She was prevaricating, or she was obfuscating. I just knew it. But let's see her try to wiggle her way out of a direct question.
"So the title doesn't say 'Vampire Code Book,' then?" There. I said it. Let's see her respond to that.
Her response was silence for a second, as she seemed to consider her reply.
"Hm. Yes ..." she answered, and I felt the thrill of getting her to admit it.
"... and no," she finished.
Boy, was she a good wiggler, or what!
I screamed in frustration. "Rosalie!" I shouted.
She smiled at me in amusement. "It's difficult to explain," she explained. "It is a code book, of sorts, and it is applicable to vampires, I suppose, but, to be clear," — Wow! That'll be a first! — "it wasn't written specifically for our kind."
"What was it specifically written for?" I asked. Her 'clarity' wasn't all that clear to me.
She shrugged, but smiled again at my exasperated sigh so she did add an explanation. "It's a book of philosophy."
"A book of philosophy?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yes," she responded, and there was no duplicity in her response.
I just couldn't believe it. "Why would a book of philosophy make you have to leave?"
"Hm," Rosalie considered. "That's really not the correct question. It didn't, but why wouldn't it? What does 'philosophy' mean to you?"
Now it was my turn to shrug.
"Just some abstract ideas from old fuddy-duddies about stuff that doesn't mean anything to anybody." I answered carelessly.
I never studied philosophy. It wasn't part of the curriculum at the Carter County school, but even if it was, it would be just another pointless topic that had no application to anything. Just like algebra.
Rosalie looked at me and shook her head. "We have so much work to do," she muttered ruefully.
I didn't get her regret. "Why?" I asked in confusion. "What does philosophy mean to you?"
"The study of philosophy is the study of things as they are," she answered, as if that explained it.
I looked at her, waiting for her explanation to make sense.
She smiled a small smile. "Not the things as we think they are, nor as we want them to be, but as they actually are. Their essence. Their being. Reality ... as it really is."
"And it's all written about young girls?" I asked. A philosophy book for girls? I couldn't believe it.
"No," she answered, "it's not all written about young girls, but to answer your implied question, philosophy applies to young girls, too."
There she goes again, reading my mind.
She continued: "I went to finishing school putting a particular philosophy for young girls into practice for years."
I felt my eyebrows crease. "But this book made you want me so badly you had to ..."
"No," she interrupted firmly. "No, that's not correct. I want you. I want you so badly. Always. I hope you will never know the extent of it. The book has nothing to do with 'making' me want you."
"Then what does?" I asked, trying to understand.
"I am a vampire," she answered simply.
"And ...?" Yes. I knew she was a vampire. But why the sudden overpowering need?
"What is the difference between you and me, your kind and mine, really?" she asked, and waved down at her book.
Oh, brother! I guess I just had enrolled in Philosophy I.
"Well, you're fast and strong and beauti-..." I began.
Rosalie held up her palm, shaking her head. "Those are merely accidents, what is the essential difference?"
I didn't understand what she meant by 'accidents.' How could she be beautiful by accident? But I guess she was looking for a deeper meaning. I thought about what was essentially different between us.
"Well, ..." I said slowly. Ah! I've got it. She's a vampire, so ... "You drink blood, right?"
Rosalie frowned. "No, that's not it. Again, that's an accident. Living blood is our" — here she pointed at herself — "sustenance, just as this dead food" — and she gave an elegant back-handed wave encompassing the stove and the food stored beneath the sink, and I tried to ignore the pang of hunger that wave caused — "is yours. You are still missing it. I suppose I must tell you. Have you ever wanted anything?"
I looked at her and thought about it.
"Your freedom, perhaps, from the evil vampire?" she prompted.
I blushed and looked away. "I suppose so," I whispered.
"Hm," came the thoughtful sound from Rosalie. "I guess not that much."
What the hell did she mean by that?
"Calling you by your true name and not just 'girl,' then?" Rosalie tried again.
I turned, sat up straight in the bed, and looked her right in the eye. "Yes, please. Right now." I said firmly.
"There," she smiled. "So you want that, yes?"
I nodded.
"No," she answered. "No, you don't."
"What?" I didn't understand. She just said I did, then she said I didn't?
"This is the difference; this is what defines a vampire. For your want will be satisfied one way or the other. Either you will get your name back, or you will die. Either way, you will cease to want. You are in time. And because of that, you do not truly want. You have a desire, and then that desire is filled, and the want leaves you. You hunger, then you eat, and you are satisfied."
"Not so for me. I want. I want blood. I drink. But does the drink satisfy the burning in my throat and the empty ache in the pit of what used to be my stomach?" She looked at me expectantly.
"It doesn't?" I asked her.
"It cannot," she replied. "For I, too, am in time, but I am also in eternity. I drink, then I thirst, and the want drives me forward. Always forward. This is what a vampire is: an eternal physical being. Being physical requires something to subsist on — a need needs to be filled — but being eternal, that subsistence can never, ever, be enough. An eternal need is a never-satisfied want ... or, more simply, a vampire is want. That is where our strength comes from, our beauty, our scent, our speed: all serve to satisfy this wanting that can never be satisfied. Those accidents outflow from our essence."
"But, ..." I said, trying to take in the words that were so foreign to my understanding. "But, I see you ... that is ... you're fighting it, right? Why? I mean, how can you if all you are is 'want'?"
"Yes," she answered. "Most vampires see themselves as only that — just want; purely physical — and they live their existence accordingly: feeding indiscriminately, living selfishly in their self-gratification. But I argue that there's more to us than just that. I argue ..."
She paused and suddenly looked away.
"... that you're good." I whispered.
That earned me a sharp look. "No, no, no," she said forcefully, but then she amended: "Well, not in the way that you think of as goodness. I argue that we have a will, and that will can ... well, not overpower the want, but can direct it. And that's what you saw earlier: the conflict between the will and the want. A vampire's will is so much stronger than that of a single human's. It has to be, to direct the want. But it is nothing to this ..." Here she swallowed "... this want that consumes me ... I mean, consumes our kind."
She looked away again.
"I must always be vigilant," she said quietly, almost to herself, as if she were reciting her own creed. "I must always control and curb this want I have. Just the slightest distraction, and ..." She looked at me sadly and shrugged.
"So, I thank you," she said. "Thank you for recalling me to my vigilance. I'm afraid you must be on your guard, for I am not 'good,' as you say. I want, and by definition, that is not good, but bad. I am want. And I always fight against it, or I hunt to satiate it temporarily. That makes me a monster, with its natural impulse to destroy you."
I looked again at the vampire speaking to me. The monster who was denying her very nature, who was fighting so hard, and I began to see how hard she actually was fighting, all the time.
"But you don't," I stated fervently.
Rosalie sighed. "Your charitable thoughts are admirable, and in your nature, but they do not help either of us. If you persist in this illusion of thinking me kind, one or both of us will drop her guard, and one moment of weakness is one moment too many, given your mortal nature."
"But you are kind!" I insisted.
Rosalie looked away and shook her head. "You would not be saying that, if you truly knew me, if you truly knew what I am."
"But that's what I'm saying: you're fighting that, you have your guard up, even if it slips, you ..."
Rosalie turned back to me. "Stop now, please. I'm feeling too much like the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale receiving the misplaced praise from his flock in the Scarlet Letter. So continuing this conversation at present will only ..." She paused then amended: "... will be fruitless."
"Okay, Rosalie." I remember reading Scarlet Letter, but I didn't know what she was talking about. I could see she was pained, however. "But I'm not going to give on this ..." — nor on you, I added the determined thought.
"I know," she said. "That, too, is in your nature." And she sighed more than just a sigh ... the sound had to be words, but I couldn't catch them.
"You betcha," I responded easily, trying to lighten the heavy tone since I woke. "And another thing I'm not going to give up on is what your book really says. You are going to read it to me and tell me what it says, you know."
"Oh, am I?" she asked in disbelief.
"You sure are," I replied confidently.
"And why is that?" she asked.
"Because you're a Hale." Now it was my turn to be smug.
"And a Hale reads sanskrit to a little confident girl ... an over-confident girl?" Rosalie was smirking.
I was so relieved she was playing along and letting go of the gloominess that had engulfed us both.
I played my trump card: "Yup, a Hale wouldn't keep knowledge all to herself, especially philosophical knowledge, that's sure to help this 'little girl' here, learning samscript and all that."
Rosalie looked at me and shook her head. "I'm not exactly sure this knowledge will help you."
"Hey," I responded feistily, "it helps you."
"I'm not exactly sure this knowledge helps me, either." Rosalie grimaced and turned solemn again.
"Let me be the judge of that. Read it to me, huh, Rosalie; tell me what it really says," I pleaded.
"No," she said seriously.
"Why not?" I demanded.
"Well, not now, anyway. After all, I'm sure you're hungry ..." She gave a small grin when my stomach answered for me.
"... and I have a surprise for you for supper," she added wistfully.
That had to be the saddest way I've ever seen that a surprise was offered. Well, with regular and predicable Pa, there were never any surprises. With Rosalie, the surprises never stopped, be they wistful or scary or amazing.
But Rosalie's sadness now, and her slip earlier ... she put this front of being strong and mean and cold and everything ... but she was more lost than anyone I've ever known. She really did need somebody.
I realized ... she really needed ... me.
A/N: Rosalie's wanderings in the Bible brought her to Genesis 19:8. It was then that she could read no more.
Rosalie's use of the second person plural pronoun ("our") is exclusive, and so she must be explicit to signify the context when she describes the difference between vampires and mortals. In other languages, such as Philipino, there are several words to describe groups (tayo: "we including you," kami: "we, but not you," and kita: "I and thou, one being"). I've wondered if this significance in their language predisposes them to a stronger spiritual or devotional way of seeing the world, so evident by the religious nature that pervades their culture.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne — "there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination" D. H. Lawrence — is freely available online at, e.g., Google books.