Investing in other friends meant agreeing to go with Jess to Port Angeles to dress shop for the Sadie Hawkins dance on Saturday.

Since I was decidedly Not Going but liked looking at pretty dresses, I figured 'what the hell' and invited Angela too. Jess must not be one of those people who liked flexibility; she seemed annoyed when I told her, even though she agreed earlier that it'd be fun. But c'mon, we had a potential Three Musketeers situation going on. I'd seen the dynamic on TV loads of times, but never had enough friends to experience it. Why couldn't I have that with Jess and Angela? New town, new me, right?

Dress shopping was exciting in itself. Rene and I never bought new dresses—or any new clothes—but we did go shopping for them a lot. I loved it. Dressing fancy. Rene would come out of the dressing room, strike a pose, and say, "Okay, this is the dress I'm wearing on a date with Michael Jordan," and then I would laugh and strike my own pose and say, "This is the dress I'm wearing at my first gallery opening."

Of course, we always walked out with nothing and made a bee-line for the nearest Goodwill.

On the way up, Jess, Angela, and I blasted cheesy pop and sang in falsettos, voices cracking and giggly. Jess gabbed with one hand on the wheel about her dinner with Eric. Apparently it'd gone well.

"Like, really well," she said.

Even after she'd sufficiently gave us the minute-by-minute details of her steamy-but-not-steamy night with Eric, she found little ways to bring him back up in the conversation. Which led to her turning to me, placing her hands on her hips, and saying, "Y'know, Isabella, Eric told me you missed Cullen fighting with Mr. Banner in Bio."

It came out of nowhere. Angela had just come out of the dressing room, waiting for Jess to leave the mirrors so she could check out her outfit. Meanwhile, I was sprawled out on the dingy couch, cracking the spine of Lady Chatterley's Lover in paperback.

"Huh?"

"After we were done we had, like, thirty minutes left of the movie..." Oh good, more context. "...told me that Edward got sent to the principal's office on Friday. When he told me he was wearing this really cute—"

I snorted. "Edward? Going to the principal's office?" That goody two-shoes minded his p's and q's for sure.

"Oh, you didn't know?" Jess' eyes lit up, glittered. She waddled out of the changing room in a mermaid dress stretched too tight around her hips. "Okay. So keep in mind, the source we're talking about is Eric. Super cute, but in one ear, out the other, you know? But. I guess Edward and Mr. Banner got into this, like, weird fight? From what I heard it sounded like Edward was, like, making snide comments that made so sense, but it made Mr. Banner super mad. So Banner like screams at Edward like 'blah bah blah get the hell out of my class.' And Edward was like— You guys know how Edward is. He has that like weird James Dean badboy persona going on." Angela and I both laughed. " I guess he made some smart comment and just left. Eric was so into it. You'd think he had a crush on him or something."

"Oh," I said. So that's why I had seen him when I talked to Alice. He had gotten sent to the principal. "The plot thickens."

"I just hope Eric doesn't make us write another 'gossip column' about the Cullens," Angela groaned, eyes glued to her reflection in the mirror. She turned to see how her butt looked in her dress. "The lobster-in-Jell-O thing was bad enough."

"Lobster in Jell-O?"

"Wait, that was real?" I giggled.

Angela laughed, catching our eyes in the mirror. "Jess, Emmett put a live lobster in Jell-O in Food Science and got an in school suspension. Allegedly." Now we were all in hysterics. "Okay, but that's not even the crazy part, though. Eric made me go interview him, so I asked for a statement from him, like, 'Why did you do this? What's your motivation.' And he was like, 'I thought everybody was still putting their meals in gelatin.'"

"Ew, what?"

"Wow, that's hilarious."

"Guys, he was like, mad that he didn't get an actual suspension. I asked him for the statement and—I have it memorized— 'It is a moral outrage when an educational establishment of this caliber responds to tomfoolery with nonsense.' Like, 'Hasn't anyone considered the lobster?'"

"What?" Jess and I said at the same time, and we broke into another pack of giggles.

"And at the end of it all he calls on the superintendent to review his in-school suspension. In favor of a harsher punishment. He's asking for three-days' out of school suspension."

"For lobster in Jell-O?"

Angela lowered her voice. "So like, Eric and I have kinda joked about this before, but I've got a theory that Emmett was the guy who put those cows in the cafeteria last semester."

What? "Whoa, hold up, hang on. You guys had cows in the cafeteria?"

To Jessica, of course, this gossip had already seen its day in the sun. "So, do you and Eric, like, work together a lot outside of school, or…?"

Emmett puts lobster in Jell-O, Edward picks a fight with Banner, and Alice… "Y'know, it's funny: Alice just got suspended too," I snickered, and Angela's mouth dropped. Jess pursed her lips at having her investigation curtailed, so she turned to throw her street clothes back on.

"No way."

"Yeah way. She pulled the fire alarm."

"Maybe that's what I should write an article on," Angela smirked. "Why all the Cullen kids insist on getting suspended."

We planned to go to dinner at a little Italian restaurant on the boardwalk, but the dress shopping hadn't taken as long as we'd expected. Jess and Angela were going to take their clothes back to the car and then walk down to the bay. I told them I would meet them at the restaurant in an hour.

What the hell happened at La Push beach, I didn't know. But here it was again, that creeping terror, the heavy claw scraping up the inside of my throat and squeezing tight. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't bring myself to say yes. I couldn't.

If they noted my distress, they didn't say anything. All the better. I wouldn't want to be a bother.

I turned a few corners until the water was out of eyeshot. My hands relaxed. My chest stopped trembling.

Yeah. So. This...isn't the first time I've been afraid of water.

Georgi, the former best friend, loved going to the beach. She brought me once, but I had a panic attack in the car. So we drove home. She was angry with me, but she did drive me home, albeit in silence.

I think I hate large bodies of water. I don't know. Not that I didn't know how to swim or anything— I could have sworn I took lessons at the YMCA. Didn't I have a memory of the water's light stretching across my mother's praising smile? Didn't I remember dappled green light and a lake with cold water?

Georgi hated that I couldn't go to the beach. Rene had no trouble with it—"after all, you're so pale"—but Georgi was less forgiving. So she started going without me. It became her spot to "get away from things."

For me, my getaway was at the library, where I could read all the books I'd seen window-shopping at the mall.

I'll admit, that's why the idea of this trip to La Push had been tempting. Now that I had disposable income, and a more permanent residence, I could buy books. Like, buy them and actually keep them. So even though I came to Port Angeles to support my friends' last Sadie Hawkins dance, I selfishly came here for the bookstores. I dropped hints to Jess, but I don't think she got them.

So I tried my luck at the Three Cats bookstore, a tiny corner store a few streets back. Except, when I got there, crystals, books about chakras, and alternative medicine booklets filled the store window. Through the glass I could see a fifty-year-old woman with long, gray hair worn straight down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling from behind the counter.

Alternative medicine and spirituality and all that wasn't really my scene. Georgi's mom was into it, though. Crystal healing, specifically. She kept crystals around the house. Jade under her TV stand. Amethysts next to the codeine on her nightstand. Topaz in the bathroom. Why? No clue. I'd asked Georgi about it several times, but she always rolled her eyes and told me she didn't believe in that shit.

Embarrassment never affected her. She was calm, cool and collected—not like me at all.

But if she was embarrassed about anything, it was her mom.

"Need any help?" asked the woman behind the counter. I smiled weakly.

"No, I'm okay, thank you."

Georgi used to take her mom's books on crystal healing and draw in them. Once, she covered an entire Crystal Healing for Dummies with a character she often drew, Tasha, a superhero who wore fingerless gloves and kept a throwing knife in her afro. In another life, Georgi could have been a comic book artist. In this life, just tried to catch her mom's attention.

My fingers trailed over the spines. I wondered if the woman behind the counter believed in any of this. Palm reading, shapeshifters, witches. Even a book on vampires. I pulled that one out. The dust jacket drew me; a watercolor reprint of some sharp-faced girl, chin raised. Her eyes were black, like Edward's during the first day of school.

I smiled. Georgi would love this. We weren't on speaking terms right now — maybe we never would be — but if we were by the time her birthday came around, she'd definitely love this.

I brought the book to the cashier and prayed she wouldn't talk to me about it.

I meandered through streets choked with end-of-the-workday traffic. My only objective was avoiding the water. Niche stores turned to repair shops turned to vacant spaces. Only after I crossed the road did I realize that I was going the wrong direction. What little foot traffic I had seen was going north, and it looked like the buildings here were mostly warehouses. I decided to turn east at the next corner, and then loop around after a few blocks and try my luck on a different street on my way back towards the boardwalk.

I found myself on a sidewalk leading past the backs of several somber-colored warehouses, each with large bay doors for unloading trucks. The south side of the street had no sidewalk, only a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire protecting some kind of engine parts storage yard. A single van passed me, and then the road was empty.

Sure, I was lost, but my nostalgia and the emptiness of the city made me hungry. I turned down a cramped alley to head north. Between me, a steel building and a building with red brick, like the one I'd painted back home.

Whaddya know—the bricks were blank. So blank. So empty. So tempting.

Maybe I could draw something small, snap a pic, and send it to Georgi. Sort've like a primer for when I send her the book. Like, 'hey I still exist, and I still like you.'

I found myself reaching for the charcoal in my bag. I pulled my phone out as well and texted Jess and Ang, telling them I got lost and that I'd be late. No big deal. What's ten more minutes?

Spray paint was one thing, but honestly — on top of being more permanent, it wasn't my favorite medium to work with. Charcoal, on the other hand, though it lacked the color, had the capacity for depth. Plus, after a couple of rainstorms, no one would even recognize my drawing. It wasn't vandalism. Not to me, anyway.

I traced the outsides of an ivy. Back when my mom and I were poorer, we lived in the southeast. Green ivy grew two blocks down from our apartment. I wrote a science essay on it once. Ivy has the ability to erode whatever it crawled on. Like a parasite, but more independent and beautiful. I sighed, buffing out a black line with my finger.

Maybe the permanence of spray paint wasn't so bad. Ivy deserved that courtesy.

I kept squatting and sketching on the building, until my butt started vibrating. Fuck. I wasn't ready for the boardwalk meal. I was hungry, but the boardwalk made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to admit that it made me uncomfortable, but there was the truth. I couldn't deny it. Big bodies of water freaked me out. They always freaked me out. Why?

Missed call. Whatever. Maybe they'd get food without me, and I wouldn't have to go there at all. I could show up late and just say that I'd gotten lost, that something had happened.

A shadow flashed over me, I could see their silhouette from the traffic lights. I glanced. Gone. Whatever. No one would really see me here anyway. I was crouched somewhere between two dumpsters.

Another call. I rolled my eyes and pulled out the phone. An unknown number, the same area code as Charlie. Maybe a telemarketer?

I let it go to voicemail. Refinancing my mortgages weren't interesting to me, especially when I had no mortgages to refinance.

My knees cracked as I reached up to draw a vein of plant. If only I had a few hours. I could stretch this drawing out to the top of the building. I smiled, thinking of my old friends and how we'd pull this project off. Someone would have to get on the roof of this building —

Another vibration. I rolled my eyes and pulled my phone out with charcoal stained hands.

A voicemail from the unknown number. AKA aggressive telemarketers.

Still, I called my voicemail.

Another silhouette passed the alley. It stopped at the entrance.

I entered my passcode, heart throbbing.

My hands chilled.

"Bells, listen. You are in danger. You need to get out of that alley. You've got fifteen seconds. I can't explain. You need to go."

Blood froze. Body froze.

Edward Cullen sent me a voicemail. How did he have my number?

Now the silhouette moved towards me, floating like an untethered shadow. I rose. The silhouette sped up. I dropped the charcoal; it snapped. I snatched an empty glass bottle, gripped the head with my fist. Time to employ what I learned back in New Mexi—

Headlights flashed past the alley, and the car skidded with a screeching halt in front of the space. The passenger door flew open, followed by the driver's.

"Get in!"

Out stepped Edward Cullen—who else?—angrier than I had ever seen him. And that was saying something. The way the shadows sliced his face and pooled like blood into the furrows of his brow, the snarl of his mouth, the crinkled crows feet at his eyes. He only had eyes for the man at the end of the alley. As I scrambled into the car, Edward took a sharp step towards him, fists clenched. By the time I had shuffled into my seat and craned my neck to see around him—it was over.

Over, as in, the silhouette had disappeared.

As if he had never been there at all.

As fast as Edward Cullen, one might say.

My heart fell, stuttered, stopped.

The driver door slammed, cloaking us in darkness. I reached for the door. Not in time. Tires squealed and an engine roared, and Edward and I tore away from the alley.

A/N:

HEY! Hope you're enjoying the story so far. This is just a small note to let you know this story is cross-posted on ao3 and is already completed. Just in case you didn't want to wait for the rest of this to come out 😊 cheers!