II

Page 82. A rushed drawing of a dead crow, wings spread and head turned. Anatomically incorrect, as if drawn from memory. "Left in the alley behind Westbrook's, thought to have been caught and killed by the shop cat. In life, crows are often considered harbingers of death. The death of a bird may symbolise the end of freedom. In the case of a dead crow, one must ask what it is that is capable of slaying death."

Chapter Five

Harder Problems

-o-

Without warning, Jasper Hale turned up on Melissa's doorstep one afternoon. She answered the door even though her father would think she was much too underdressed to be doing such a task; Anna was in the middle of a livestream and her dad was out, so nobody else was going to do it. So there she stood in her cosy socks, camisole, and cotton pyjama shorts with the door swung wide open, gaping at him.

"Were you sleeping?" he asked.

Like a fish, she opened and closed her mouth again and again. She tried to think of something to say but the words would not come, and all she could do was stare at him stupidly.

He wore a plain shirt and a pair of sweatpants, which distracted Melissa far too much. She thought the Cullens were much too proper to wear sweatpants to someone's house. She was surprised Jasper even owned any. His honey blond hair looked oddly flat, not quite as shiny as usual. Behind him, the sky was overcast, a whole week of sunny days finally interrupted with a typical Forks sky. The grey of the clouded sky, like the grey of a bluff, brought out odd and moody tones from Jasper's skin. He was pale. Perhaps even paler than Melissa.

"Melissa?"

"Hi," she said dumbly. She leaned to look past him. His motorbike was parked outside of her house. "Why are you here?"

He frowned, and raised his left hand, which held a textbook. "I said I'd help you with maths," he said. "Have I chosen a bad time for you?"

"I, um…" She glanced back inside of the house. Her sister was yelling upstairs. Her father wouldn't be home for some time. She nodded to herself. This could work. "We'll have to be quiet. Anna's working."

"My father said she makes videos."

"Something like that," Melissa said. She stepped aside, opened the door wider, and looked at him. "Are you coming in or what?"

He stepped over the threshold, black boots squeaking over the tiles by the door.

"Take off your shoes," she said. "My dad will freak if he sees you walking around the house with those."

"Will he?" Jasper's eyes stayed on her for a moment. Then, slowly, he leant down to unlace his shoes and slip them from his feet. He lined them up neatly with the other pairs by the door - only two, Melissa's and Anna's. Then he straightened up and looked at her expectantly.

Rita had discussed with her what she ought to do when they finally had their tutoring session, which Melissa had expected would happen at school during lunch or the local library. Certainly not someone's house. Certainly not her house. Her father would kill her if he knew she was having boys over. Rita made her practice putting on makeup, and she had some odd idea in her head that their study session would end with them making out against a bookshelf. With a devilish grin, she even offered to teach her how to kiss. Melissa's face burnt cherry-red and Rita forced her to down an entire glass of iced water to calm herself.

"Is there somewhere we could sit?"

She blinked at him. "What?"

"Studying is usually easier seated," he said.

She nodded quickly. Her neck clicked. "Yes. Yes, you're right. This way."

She moved from the front door to the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and sat down, then promptly rushed to her feet again.

"Did you want a drink?" she asked.

He smiled and sat opposite her chosen seat. He put his backpack on the tiled floor by his feet. "No, thank you."

"Snacks?"

"I'm quite alright, Melissa."

Slowly, she sat back down. "Thank you for helping me with this," she said. "I really do appreciate it."

"It's alright, but you might need your things," he said. "A pen and paper, maybe."

She nodded and darted off to collect said items, then hurried back to the table.

Jasper cracked open the textbook to about the middle, where the class was currently up to. "What are you struggling with?"

"All of it."

He nodded, and flipped back to the first chapter.

"Let's start with the fundamentals," he said, "just to see where we are at."

He turned the book around to face her and told her which questions to attempt. Melissa nodded and went ahead, trying her best to focus, but upstairs Anna was screaming again - not words this time but just a guttural scream of excited terror - and the scratch of her own pen across the page seemed too loud downstairs. Melissa tensed, bouncing her leg, feeling restless and claustrophobic. It felt like the house was swallowing everything around her, leaving just her behind. This was probably why she was failing maths; she never studied at home. She longed to be outside.

"Do you like the book?" she asked after a moment.

Jasper looked up from her writing, the rounded numbers limping pathetically over the page. "The textbook?"

The corners of her mouth tipped up. "The one from Westbrook's."

"Oh, your book," he said. "Yes, I've been enjoying it."

"It's not-"

"It is your book, and I fully intend on returning it when I am finished."

How her heart sank then.

Melissa sighed and looked down glumly at her maths problems. He wanted a refund. He was lying about enjoying it.

She wasn't sure when hope had crept in, at what particular moment she had thought she might have just maybe been able to make a friend. And a friend who would not only please her father, but a friend who she could talk about plants and animals and nature with, a friend who would listen when she talked about the local wildlife and conservation efforts with more than polite interest. But she felt it fizzling in her gut now, her flicker of hope disappearing.

"You seem to understand the basics." Jasper looked over her answers to the questions. "Let's try a harder problem."

She nodded, but she really didn't want to. She wanted easy problems. She wanted the glee of solving something far too simple. Not something like how to make her father like her, or how to accept that Jasper Hale did not want to be her friend, or how to integrate mathematical functions.

Time passed. Jasper was a decent tutor. He was strict and asked for a lot from her, but he also gave clear explanations which was more than Melissa could say for Mr. Halstead. By the time the sun was setting, painting the sky the greyish-pink of undercooked fish, her head was spinning with numbers and symbols.

Wait.

Her head whipped around. She looked out the window.

The sun was setting.

She rushed to her feet. "You need to go."

He looked up at her from the textbook, pen still pointing at the line he was explaining to her. "Is something the matter?"

"My dad will be home soon."

He was quiet for a beat. His eyes swept over her. "Is that a problem?"

"I'm, uh…" The tips of her ears heated. "I'm not supposed to have boys over."

"Well," he said, "I'm sure it will be clear to your father that we're not doing anything inappropriate when he comes in. Unless he thinks maths is inappropriate."

"No, but-"

He rose from his seat, collecting his belongings. "Not that I would be opposed."

She spluttered. "What?"

He looked up. "To that opinion. Calculus is rather unsuited to the average person. Only scientists really use it." His head tilted and his lips shifted into a lazy smirk. "Why, what did you think I meant, Melissa?"

Without any further comment, he swept out of the kitchen and through the front door. As he passed her, she could have sworn the corners of his mouth were tipped up in a teasing smile. She watched from the kitchen window as he fiddled with his helmet and started his motorbike before disappearing down the road.

Not even two minutes later, her father's car pulled up by the curb. Melissa bit her cheek and threw herself into the kitchen chair. She plucked up her pen, and frowned performatively at the sheet of maths questions she spent the last few hours attempting.

The door clicked open. She winced. Within seconds, her father came into the room.

"You'll never believe it," he said. "I just saw one of Dr. Cullen's kids on the way here."

"Oh?"

"I wonder who he was visiting on this side of town." He walked past her, towards the fridge. He retrieved a bottle of beer from its depths. Melissa's joints locked.

Unsure if she had been caught, if this was a trap, she shrugged. Carefully, with her head still lowered so he might not read the deceit on her face, she said, "I'm not sure."

He hummed, and turned to leave the room. But then he stopped, and came to stand next to her. His hand moved to rest on her shoulder.

"Working hard?" he asked. "Your shoulder's tense."

"Calculus is stressful," she said quickly. She looked up at him, but he didn't so much as glance at her. His eyes were sweeping over the blue ink covering the page, as if he understood any of it.

"But you're good at it, aren't you?"

She nodded, remembering the eighty-two percent test result he thought she earned. "Yeah, but some questions are still tricky."

"You're a good daughter." He patted her shoulder and moved away.

Melissa smiled. No, she beamed. She was good. He was proud of her and she was good.

Humming, he peeled off his stinky business socks. And then, without another word, he stalked past her and into the living room. Soon after, the sound of an action film roared through the first floor.

Still smiling, she turned back to look at her paper. Her shoulders dropped from where they hovered by her ears as she sighed, relieved to be rid of his presence. Her heart quickly followed, falling right into her stomach.

There, in the corner of the page, Jasper had written his phone number in his elegant, timeless hand.

Shit.

-o-

Once, Jinx ate something rancid he found in the dumpster behind the store. He tended to prowl, as most cats did, behind the row of shops and restaurants on Main Street. Whatever it was he deemed to be a dinner fit for a king such as he, Melissa never knew; what he retched up on the back step of Westbrook's was unrecognisable, but it appeared oddly similar in colour to the clinic's walls.

Sunflowers bore down on her. She sat, surrounded by all the sickly shades of yellow she could ever possibly imagine. She didn't like yellow. It reminded her of the bruises kissing her knuckles, healing, now that awful yellowish brown of leather, and the little yellow bathroom she patched herself up in at home. She tugged the sleeve of her light jacket further down her arm to cover her discoloured knuckles, the stitches crawling over her forearm, and the clusters of freckles dancing over her skin.

The wallpaper was meant to make her feel happy. The entire room was constructed to maintain this false narrative, that she was happy. As if she could ever be happy while her father hated her, while he knew she was bad because she was lying. But the room didn't seem to care about how she felt. It insisted on her happiness, from the fresh flowers set on the front counter to the happy commercials for antidepressants running on a large screen hanging from the wall. Seaside paintings dotted the room. Melissa stared at them for so long she could hear the ocean rushing in her ears.

No. That was her pulse, actually.

She huffed and threw one leg over the other. A braided sandal dangled from her toes. She picked up a pamphlet from the end table without looking and leafed through it. Paused. Flipped back to the cover page. Sexual Desire Disorders and You. She set it back down next to another pamphlet entitled Anger and the Emotional Iceberg.

Click.

She lifted her head and glanced across the room. The doctor strode across the floor and to the receptionist, and the two spoke in quiet tones. Then, her name was called with a warm smile.

Melissa followed the doctor obediently.

The office was cosy but spacious, as if meant to give enough room to air out one's thoughts yet keep them safely contained inside of four solid walls. Plants in colourful pots lined nearly every available surface. They were mostly ferns. A rubber plant stood attentively by the door, saluting their entrance. Pale green walls were spotted with posters and diagrams and framed degrees.

"Please, sit." Dr. Cullen gestured to a plush emerald sofa opposite her own chair.

Melissa obeyed because that was what good girls did. Her only act of rebellion was to do it without the polite smile she knew she was supposed to force. Her eyes settled on the doctor and did not move. Dr. Cullen stared back, soft gaze unfaltering. And though Melissa had never really had a mother, under Esme Cullen's gentle eyes, she felt that this was what it must be like.

Suddenly self-conscious, she lifted her hand to cover her upper arm. She looked away.

"It's lovely to meet you, Melissa," she said. "I'm Dr. Cullen. You can call me Esme."

"I know," she told her. "I go to school with your children."

She nodded. "I assure you that everything we discuss will be confidential."

But that wasn't true, was it? Because Jasper knew Melissa had seen Carlisle for her arm, and Forks was so small that it just wasn't possible to see a professional who didn't know her or her father.

"You won't even say anything to my dad?" Melissa asked.

"I would only have to tell someone about our sessions if you said something that made me worried," she said. "As in, if I thought you were going to hurt yourself or someone else, or if someone was hurting you."

Then therapy was useless because all she did was hurt her father. She wanted to be good, but good girls weren't reported by their doctors for hurting people.

When she was quiet for too long, Esme asked, "Is that okay?"

"Whatever," she said, though she knew it was rude, but maybe it was a good test of trust. If her father told her off for being impolite to Esme, she would know these sessions were not as private as she claimed. "I don't really want to be here."

She nodded thoughtfully. "You know, therapy isn't like what they show in movies."

Melissa hummed.

"You don't have to make a breakthrough every session, or share your darkest secrets for me to analyse." She smiled at her. "It can just be us chatting about things. Anything."

"Really?"

"I want you to feel comfortable talking to me," she said. "And I want you to feel comfortable before you feel like you have to share anything scary with me."

Melissa stiffened. "Why would I have something scary to share with you?"

"Everyone has something scary. A memory or feeling or thought that frightens them." She was quiet for a moment. "I won't ask you to share anything with me yet. I want you to talk when you feel ready. But I'll share with you if that would help you understand and feel safe. Would that be alright?"

Melissa nodded.

"I used to be very scared of… driving on the freeway," Esme said. "I felt like it would be so easy for me to lose control of the car, and for everything to spiral out of control."

She frowned. "That's it?"

She shook her head. "I realised I wasn't scared of the road or driving. For me, the scary thought was that if I wasn't in control of everything all of the time, someone would get hurt because of me. The freeway was just one way that manifested in my life. But through therapy, I learnt that these types of thoughts weren't true or helpful to believe."

Melissa understood. Life was better without these fears, these preoccupations, but Esme seemed to think happiness was achievable for everyone, no matter the circumstance. Unlike Esme, Melissa didn't have anything like that she needed to forget, any thoughts she needed to abandon. Her being bad, disappointing her father, making mistakes - she couldn't fix these things with therapy. She needed to just be better.

-o-

With the pad of her thumb, Melissa rubbed the spot between her eyebrows and scanned over the columns of numbers a second time. She couldn't work out exactly what it was or where it was hidden, but there was an incorrect entry in Westbrook's account book. She could only hope that it was her own error and not one of the numbers scratched in her father's messy hand. If it were her own error, she could fix it quickly without him ever knowing. She still had access to all of the receipts she processed. She'd even established a filing system, seeing as her father never saw the need for it. In the back room, she'd dedicated an empty locked drawer to the files. She was sure her father would be pleased when he heard about it.

It was a shame that she hadn't found a good time to show him yet. He was in a sour mood lately. Sourer than usual. A tiny thought surfaced again and again in her mind and filled her with dread. He saw what Jasper had written on her paper. He knew Jasper had been in the house, or else that he had slipped it to her at school or work. That was why he was upset. Either she had invited a boy over, or she was befriending one of the Cullens and humiliating him by not telling him so.

A thud against the staff door. Melissa jolted in her seat and looked up.

Her father walked out from the backroom, leaning against the door to push it open. He stumbled into the front of the shop, lifted his leg, and balanced a cardboard box on his knee as he pulled the door shut behind him.

Jinx, sensing movement but too lazy to wake, twitched in his sleep. His black tail brushed over the counter and against the back of Melissa's hand.

"There's a bird outside."

"Oh." Her father must have thought she would be interested in it. "Is it a warbler?"

"I don't think so," he said.

"What does it look like?"

"It's all black."

"Does it sing?"

He smiled. "I wouldn't think so. Go take a look for yourself. I'll watch the store for a minute."

Thankful for the distraction from the mess she had made of the account book, she stood. She slipped through the staff door and into the backroom. Her father had left a maze of empty boxes and packing tape strewn over the floor. She picked her way across the room and towards the back exit. This door was heavier than the first, and she had to shove it open with her shoulder to get it to move.

The warm air of a sweet summer night floated around her as she stepped outside. It was a strange evening. The sky was dipping out of orange and into a navy blue. Fireflies floated around overhead. In the breeze, leaves shushed the sounds of the street, and the smell of frying oil swept over from restaurants further along Main Street. The alley itself was narrow and empty. There was a dumpster pressed against a wall, and a nest of some kind tucked away behind it, and in the middle of the pavement was the bird.

A crow.

A dead crow.

"Jinx," she hissed, though he was nowhere to be seen, and he certainly wouldn't have cared.

With a shaky inhale, Melissa slipped back inside. She grabbed a dustpan and a broom, and then returned to the alley. She crouched by the dead animal, biting her cheek and telling herself not to cry. She pushed the limp thing into the dustpan, and slipped him gently into the dumpster.

"I'm sorry." And she was. She would have liked to bury him properly somewhere.

Back inside, she washed her hands before returning to the shop floor.

"Did you find it?" Her father was bent over a box opposite the counter, over by the far wall. He pulled a knife from his pocket and sliced through packing tape.

"Yes," Melissa said.

"What was it?" he asked.

"A crow," she told him, turning her face from him so he wouldn't see she was upset. She returned to her chair and picked up her pen once more.

"I thought it might be a raven."

"Too small," she said quietly.

Her father hummed. From the corner of her eye, she saw him lower himself to his knees and set about emptying the box next to him.

It was obvious to Melissa what he had wanted: for her to clean it up and deal with her cat. Discipline him. That's why he had told her about the bird, why he had tricked her into going outside and looking at it. He didn't want to touch the poor thing himself, and he didn't like Jinx much at all.

Her eyes drifted to the silky black cat. She didn't know Jinx to be much of a hunter, unless tricking humans on Main Street into feeding him scraps of their Sunday morning brunch was predatory behaviour. But who else would it have been but the cat? She tapped her pen against the page. Thump. Thump. Thump. She tried to think of what to do. How was she supposed to punish a cat? She could hardly deny him supper. She could spray him with water, maybe, but he had killed that bird hours ago. He wouldn't know why she was doing it, and wouldn't respond kindly to being woken from his nap.

Her eyes drifted from his closed eyes and small face to his black paws. She paused. Put down the pen and reached out. With the tips of her thumb and forefinger, she squeezed his toe pads. His claws extended from each toe. All clean. His lip twitched, as did his tail. He was annoyed that she was touching his feet, but Melissa couldn't mutter so much as an apology. She was too busy staring at the corners of his mouth where his teeth peeked out from behind his lips. His fangs were unstained.

And that bird, that spot on the pavement… There hadn't been a speck of blood.

Slowly, Melissa lifted her head. She looked up and across the room.

Her father crouched by a shelf, his back to her, stacking books.

He was whistling.

-o-