YOU'RE SO VAIN

THAT NIGHT ROSALIE HALE starred in my dreams, as usual. However, the climate of my unconscious had changed. It thrilled with the same delight that had charged the afternoon in her car, and I tossed and turned restlessly, waking often. It was only in the early hours of the morning that I finally sank into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

When I woke I was unusually energized. I put in extra effort with my eyeliner, changed outfits four times, and caught myself staring in the mirror more than once wondering what the hell I was doing. Breakfast was the usual, quiet event I expected. I fried eggs for Charlie, Bella and I ate cereal. I realized I was getting dangerously close to Saturday, and my dress still wasn't fixed. I'd have to ask Jess again today, but I wasn't looking forward to the inevitable conversation about who had come to pick me up.

"About this Saturday..." Charlie began, walking across the kitchen and turning on the faucet to wash his plate. I was startled by the abrupt conversation, but grateful for it. I had just been about to think of her.

Bella cringed visibly. "Yes, Dad?"

"Are you still set on going to Seattle?" He asked.

"That was the plan." She grimaced, and I watched with amusement. Charlie didn't know Edward was involved, and Bella was hoping to keep it that way.

He squeezed some dish soap onto his plate and swirled it around with the brush. "And you're sure you can't make it back in time for the dance?"

"I'm not going to the dance, Dad." Bella glared.

"Didn't anyone ask you?" He asked, trying to hide his concern by focusing on rinsing the plate.

"Three people did, as far as I'm aware." I supply, and Bella shoots me a quick glare as I scoop the last bit of cereal in my mouth. "Mm, she said no."

Bella protested. "It's a girl's choice. They shouldn't be asking anyway."

"Oh." He frowned as he dried his plate.

I sympathized with him. It must be a hard thing to be the father of twin daughters; living in fear that one was too in-deep with boys, but also having to worry that the other wasn't. How ghastly it would be, I thought, shuddering, if Charlie had even the slightest inkling of exactly what I did like. Adam Wexler would be the least of his concerns. Charlie left then, with a goodbye wave, and I went upstairs to brush my teeth and gather my books. Bella was already gone by the time I came down, the truck still in place. I had to wait in the kitchen for a while before Adam showed up.

He was prepared this morning. A final ditch effort to change my mind about Saturday. "There's a Weezer concert in Seattle on Saturday."

"We don't have tickets to the Weezer concert in Seattle on Saturday." I snark back. It probably would've worked, had he had tickets. I did love Weezer. But I'd never been able to afford a real concert before, just local bands and free stuff. "Why do you hate the idea of going to a dance with me so much?"

"I don't." He lies, and I give him a look. The argument starts there, and lasts the whole drive to school.

"Okay, you wanna know the truth? I think it's lame. I do!" He finally blows up. "I think it's stupid and boring and cheesy, and only desperate kids seeking approval go to dumb stuff like school dances, like they've gotta prove they can get a date or something. It's a dumb high school ritual for sheep."

I stared at him, astounded. And he keeps going as he pulls into a parking space, pushing the stick shift into park. "It's so lame, and the guys have been teasing me about it for weeks saying I'm too pussy-whipped to tell you so there, I told you. Happy? I don't want to go to some fucking dance."

"Well fine, don't." My voice was soft with hurt, and I knew he could hear it because he groaned, hitting his head back against his seat. I had to get out of the car. I was too embarrassed.

"Gracie..."

I was already gone.

It felt like I'd hit a certain low point, crying in a bathroom stall during first period. Crying over a boy at all seemed so stupid, and I didn't even really know what I was crying about. Adam was right. It was just a stupid dance. But that didn't make my hollow chest hurt any less.

There were so many worse things happening right now. Vampires were real. Bella and I had put the Cullens in danger for knowing that, and maybe ourselves in danger too. The whole world was so much bigger than I thought it was, and yet here I was, crying over Adam Wexler telling me he didn't want to take me to the stupid Spring Dance. What the hell was wrong with me?

But of course, my low point could get lower. "Grace?"

I moaned morosely at the pretty, twinkling voice. "Go away Rosalie."

But she didn't, and a minute later I could see her cream patent leather heels under the door. Who wore heels in Forks? "This is really disgusting, you know."

I just kept trying to cry more quietly, wiping my cheeks and controlling my shuddering. "If we leave now, no one will see you, and you can cry in my car."

That sounded nice. "Go away."

She sighed, a little more impatiently now. "Don't make me break the door down."

She said it so delicately it didn't sound like the all-too-real and probably easy threat that it was. I took a shuddering breath, drew my shoulders up, and plucked myself off the closed toilet seat. She was right. It was gross, but I wasn't really thinking.

We didn't speak until we were safely inside the Mercedes, soft-top and windows up. Rosalie fiddled with the heating, but she said nothing about my ruined makeup as I focused on diligently fixing it in the little mirror in her sun visor. The task kept me from crying again, and eventually, I was back to breathing normally. "He doesn't deserve you."

I flinch. "I overreacted."

"No, you didn't." She frowns. "If he doesn't want to take you to the dance he's got to be the dumbest boy in the world."

That makes me smile. It was watery, but she seemed to appreciate it. "So you were listening?"

"Your arguments are very loud... and very public. The whole school is talking about it." Rosalie's lips twitch. "Half of the male population would be very glad to take you off his hands."

I laugh bitterly at that, sniffing. "Well that's nice to know."

"Why are you with him if you get mad at him so often?" She's curious.

"Because I like him." I frown. And she frowns back, as if this made no sense. I roll my eyes. "You can love people that you don't like, just like you can hate people that you love."

"But that's the direct opposite of—"

"You can't like everything about a person, that's impossible. No one's that perfect." I roll my eyes.

"So Adam Wexler for you is the best pick of what's available?" She decides, still adorably confused looking.

I scrunch up my nose. "I don't know. I just thought he was hot. He's sweet sometimes."

"That surely can't be enough." She complains.

"Well maybe guys pale in comparison to Emmett for you." I offer, turning a little in my seat to face her better.

She giggles at that, but it's short and lower than last time. "Emmett and I aren't together."

"You...what?" I blink, not very coherently. My mind flickered to all the times I'd watched them, cuddling, holding hands, his giant arm around her. How could they not be—?

"He's like a son to me." Rosalie was amused. "I saved his life...he was mauled by a bear when I found him, an inch from death. Carlisle turned him for me after I carried him over a hundred miles."

I was struggling with the mental image of Rosalie carrying Emmett. I didn't think I could even hold up his arm. Her lips twitched. "I saved him because he looked like your grandfather."

This somehow bewildered me even more. Geoffrey Swan...Emmett? "He was the cutest baby. Dark little springy curls, pale as alabaster skin, the sharpest tiny dimples... Charlie was identical too, you both have Vera's dimpled smile. Emmett had the same blue eyes as you, staring up at me so helplessly. I couldn't resist."

She was staring into my eyes now, voice sad. After a moment, she sighed. "I talk too much when I'm around you."

"I like it." I say too quickly, barely above a breath as if the confession would reveal how I really felt. As if I ever dared. "I like hearing your stories."

She smiled again, but it was a little more shy now. I decided I needed to be the one to push. "So you saved Emmett because he looked like Grandpa Swan?...and Charlie."

She giggled again at that, as if she was aware how odd that sounded. "It's terribly silly, I know. But you must understand that while I loved Vera, I also hated her in equal measure. I suppose what you said about Adam applies when it comes to friendship."

"You hated her?" I frown.

"Mm, like I hate you." That hurt more than it should, especially given she delivered her death blow with a twinkling smile. "I envied your great-grandmother for her beautiful, soft, sweet son and her loving, plain, poor husband. Because that love was real. She had nothing to gain from Henry Swan, but she didn't care because she loved him for who he was and not what he had. I never had that. I didn't ever get the chance. I wanted to have a family as perfect as hers more than anything."

The yearning in her voice made my heart race. "And you hate me for it?"

"No." She chuckled. "You're much simpler. You're human."

I was confused. "Your every heartbeat reminds me of everything that was stolen from me. Everything I will never have. I can't help the way I feel, though it's terribly unfair, I know."

I looked away. I didn't have anything I could say to that. "Though, I'm quite surprised by how fond I'm growing of you."

And I was back to blushing. "Hmm?"

"Sometimes, I let myself get away in the fantasy of it all." She smiles as if she's telling me a secret. "I think that's why I can't help but to tell you things. Yesterday, it felt like I was seventeen again. Driving nowhere with Vera, talking about nothing."

My heart twisted. "I'm not her."

"I know." Her smile was bitter again. "That's why it's a fantasy."

The bell rings, and I sigh. Rosalie notices my gloom. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want to face him again." I confess, voice low. "It's too embarrassing. Everyone knows I've been crying."

"We could ditch?" She offered with a crooked smile, but she was already clutching her stick shift. I open my mouth to protest, but she beats me to it with a sardonic taunt. "Oh, don't tell me you're opposed to a little harmless truancy, doll. I thought you were attracted to trouble."

My cheeks must have flamed, because she laughed loudly over the roar of her engine as she pulled out.

Soon we were passing over the bridge at the Calawah River, discussing vampire movies. I'd noticed Rosalie flinched and got moody the first and only time I said the word, filing it away and erasing it at once from my vocabulary. But she did like watching the movies. She confessed to it like confessing to enjoying the Spice World movie, like a guilty pleasure. She was amused by the vast collection of films I had seen with no real obsession for the cult genre. Well, at least until recently.

The road wound northward, the houses flashing past us growing farther apart, getting bigger. And then we were past the other houses altogether, driving through misty forest. I was trying to decide whether to ask where we were headed or be patient, when she turned abruptly onto an unpaved road. It was unmarked, barely visible among the ferns. The forest encroached on both sides, leaving the road ahead only discernible for a few meters as it twisted, serpentlike, around the ancient trees.

And then, after a few miles, there was some thinning of the woods, and we were suddenly in a small meadow, or was it actually a lawn? The gloom of the forest didn't relent, though, for there were six primordial cedars that shaded an entire acre with their vast sweep of branches. The trees held their protecting shadow right up to the walls of the house that rose among them, making obsolete the deep porch that wrapped around the first story.

I didn't know what I had expected, but it definitely wasn't this. The house was timeless, graceful, and probably a hundred years old. It was painted a soft, faded white, three stories tall, rectangular and well proportioned. The windows and doors were either part of the original structure or an impossibly perfect restoration, like Rosalie's car. As expected, there were no other vehicles in sight. I could hear the river close by, hidden in the obscurity of the forest.

"Wow."

"You like it?" She smiled with clear pride.

"It's beautiful." The word sounds so irritatingly underwhelming on my tongue.

"Come on, I want to show you my garage."

Two cars sat within a concrete, nondescript vast space with brilliant, industrial lighting. There was space for a ten car collection, easily, the air here seeming hollow. It was odd that we had to drive up a loose gravel lane to this place. The green that seemed to be creeping toward it was lush and thick — it was as if nature was at war with it. But my eyes lingered on the ruby red car in the middle, next to something streamlined under a silver cover, pride of place. I'd never seen anything like it.

"Do you like it?" She was watching me with a funny look on her face. I hadn't realized I was walking forward toward it until I'd stopped.

It was curvaceous, like her classic Mercedes, but the lines were sharper, like a Corvette Stingray. In fact, the more I stared, the more the references stood out — like a Frankenstein monster of all the most iconic cars I could think of. There were so many details I could pick out. The fighter jet-like split window of the '63 model Corvette, more refined somehow, the glass to metal ratio skewed just right. The wacky rocket ship tail fins of '59 Cadillacs, tinier and infinitely more subtle than the once-statement design. The hood was gloriously long and smooth, reminding me of a Jaguar E-Type. I'd never seen that grille though. I would remember if I had. The chrome glinted like diamonds in the industrial tube lighting, criss-crossing in a diamond grid, the sheer expanse of it menacing as all hell. I didn't realize my hand had twitched up until a minute too late, quickly bringing it back down, blushing. "What is it?"

"RH33." She offers with a quirk of her lips. I raise a brow at her obvious humor. "It's my latest design."

I didn't think I could look any dumber. "You made this?"

She chuckled, but I could see she was pleased from the way she twisted her hair almost hypnotically round and round a long, elegant finger, leaning back against a meticulous work bench a fair distance away from me. "So you do like it."

"It's a work of art." I say honestly. "What the hell are you wasting your time in High School for? You could make a whole empire out of this."

She smiled brighter at that, looking down at her crossed heels. "We can't live public lives, it's too risky. Though I have anonymously designed for more established companies, when I feel like sharing."

"Anything I've heard of?" I joke lamely.

"Maybe." Her eyes twinkle. "How'd you come to like cars so much?"

I shrug, turning back to her masterpiece. "I think I've always liked them. One of my mom's exes, back when I was a kid, he used to take me to shows. I'd help him fix his car and mom's ratty Beetle, you know, hand him tools and stuff and watch him. I must've got on his nerves so much, every two minutes, what's that? What's that? What's that?" I mimicked myself in an annoying childish tone, making Rosalie laugh.

I smiled sadly, thinking of Bobby Henderson. I never found out what happened to him after mom left him. "He was one of the nice one after him didn't know how to fix anything, so I learnt quick to pick up the slack. Got a part time job at an auto shop near school when I hit fifteen. I'd keep the books, and they'd teach me stuff when I wasn't busy. It was fun."

"You don't look like the kind of girl who'd get greasy." Rosalie intones.

"And you do?" I snort, and she smiles, caught.

"I just meant that you surprise me. Often." She adds on with a thoughtful hum. "Maybe I need to pay attention to humans more."

Or just pay more attention to me. God, get a grip. "What were the thirties like?"

She seemed surprised by the question. I blush. "Sorry, you don't have to answer that. I know you don't like to think about that time."

"It was...a difficult time." She surprises me by answering me, arms folding under her chest. "For everybody, of course, with the market crash. But for women especially. I was so blissfully unaware of everything wrong back then. Sometimes I catch myself yearning for that ignorance."

"I never had the luxury." I chuckle, stuffing my hands into the pouch pocket of my hoodie.

"No, I suppose you're quite progressive." Rosalie laughed airily. "I think you would've murdered a few boys I knew when I was your age."

Mmm. That wasn't a very nice reminder. "I don't think I could've murdered anyone. Apparently I can't even face a boy after I cry about him."

"Dump him." Rosalie shrugged easily, and I scoff. "What? It's not like you actually care for him, do you?"

I frown, defensive, taking a step forward. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Had Edward told her? He couldn't have. That was private. "Darling, it's obvious you're not upset with him for some silly dance. You're upset because he hurt your pride. That matters far more to you than he does."

"You don't know what you're talking about." I roll my eyes.

"Well I do know that if you loved him you wouldn't care about going to some dance. You'd want to spend the day with him how he wanted to, because love corrupts you that way. Love makes you blind."

"That's not how relationships work." I bristle "You're a team. You do things together. You take on the world, together. You don't give shit up for each other, that's not love, that's codependency."

"Is that right?" She seemed amused, eyebrow raised, tone drawling. "Well, I suppose you are the expert."

I take a deep breath, calming myself down. "Okay, um, I'm a little tired. Do you think you could drive me home?"

She frowns. "I've upset you."

"No, it's fine. I'm just tired." I push.

She watches my face for a minute, still frowning, before sighing, shaking her head lightly. She pushes off the workbench, moving to flick the lights off in the garage on her way out. I march to the Mercedes, trying very hard to fight tears again as I get to the passenger side.

We were silent the whole drive to Charlie's. I stared out the window, arms folded, watching the forest fly by. Eventually, she pulled up to the curbside, but made no move to unlock the doors as she pushed the stick shift into neutral. She turned to me, eyes wary. "I don't want you upset with me, Grace."

"What are we, friends now?" I grumble weakly.

"I'd like to be." She smiles softly. "Even if it would be much safer for you if we weren't."

"Right." I pull the tab up to unlock my door myself, grabbing my backpack. "Well, when you've figured that out..."

I didn't really have anything else to say. I really was tired. Tired, and called out, and emotional and a wreck. I didn't need Rosalie Hale seeing me. I didn't need her judgement. I didn't need her. "Thanks for the ride."

She sighed, pushing the stick shift again. "I'll see you tomorrow."

And she was peeling out again, the roar of her revving engine and the squeal of her tires lingering long after I could no longer see the car. I stood there on the lawn for a minute, mind a haze. And then I shook my head, trudging toward the house with a decidable gloom hanging over my head.