Note, the story photo is the actor that played Edward when he was really seventeen because honestly, Edward in the movie looked like he should be arrested for skulking around a high school. He was a wonderful actor, very good looking but he didn't even remotely look seventeen. Of course, because well he was a human actor by the last movie he looked in his mid-thirties. It made it a little difficult for me to understand his behavior until I read the books and realized. Oooh, he's supposed to be stuck way younger. At this point you may recognise my evil grin for what it is, inspiration.
Alternate title: Revenge is a dish that really wasn't meant to turn into romance.
Yeah, I'm not always great with the titles.
Edward had met Bella, otherwise known as the girl so delicious she drove him to Alaska. It turned out however that polar bears weren't delicious. In fact polar bears were kind of gamey and slightly fishy and his northern cousins were all horrible teases who just couldn't understand that no he was not a horny 17 year old teeny vamp with too much unsatisfied libido. (Damn succubuses) Bella just smelled good. (NO! Not that way! Stupid succubi)
Determined not to be bested by his baser drives, Edward had resignedly, reluctantly returned to Forks, Washington in an attempt to prove himself better than a mindless appetite machine.
Day one went okay. He even managed civil conversation with the filet mignon. She wasn't completely horrible to talk to. He was doing okay. He was doing alright until about two-three weeks in. He could admit that maybe he'd even gotten a bit complacent about having Gramma's home baked cookies as his bio-chem partner.
Bella was late for class and Mr. Molina had that god awful fan running again. The room needed an air conditioner not a fan. Moving the humid rain heavy Forks air around really did nothing to ease the stench of sweaty damp teenagers all packed in close quarters.
Edward was hungry. He was going hunting tomorrow. Everything would be fine. He probably should have eaten but he'd force fed himself for a week straight after coming home from Alaska trying to help himself resist temptation. The problem was that no matter how full you are, there's always room for ice cream. It seemed Bella appealed to his dessert stomach so what had been the point in over-eating? He was a bit overdue for a meal really.
Bella opened the door, the fan turned and… oh sweet delicious delirium! Curse you Aunt Flow! The revenge of the blood moon cometh!
Edward tripped backward out of his chair with such force the chair leg collapsed and he fell. He fell into the girl walking behind him who'd been gingerly navigating the edges of the room carrying a full container of acid to doll out portions for the latest lab set up. When Edward crashed onto the floor and into the poor girl, she accidentally upended the entire bottle onto him.
Not much can hurt a vampire but it turns out that acid to the face really stung. His mouth had been open which was particularly unfortunate because he'd gasped instinctively preparing to hold his breath against the extreme fumes and had inhaled acid.
So, now Edward was clawing at his burning eyes, writhing in pain… actually other than screaming bloody murder for who knows how long, coughing and wheezing really a lot and lashing out blindly at anyone and anything that got too close that was about it for Edward's clear recall of the next little while.
Alice in an entirely different hall and two floors down bolted from her seat calling for Jasper. "Bio-chem lab! Edward!" She shouted at Jasper before running to the English lit class to grab Emmett. "Emmett now. Bio-chem lab, it's Edward."
"What happened?" asked Emmett. "Did he cave and eat the snackie-snacks?"
"No you great goof go help him!" shrieked Alice in exasperation.
Rosalie came with worried eyes to see what the panic was about. Alice stared at her in an unfocused trance for a few minutes. "Go, warn Carlisle that we're coming. Edward's hurt. It's bad. The ambulance will be here soon. Edward will need to feed or we'll never be able to control him and frankly he'll need the edge human food will give him or he, he won't be okay. Tell Carlisle to get him human food, as much as you can stuff into a skinny 17 year old. Go!"
Rosalie had no idea what was going on but when Alice got bossy lives were usually on the line so she ran.
"Get him human food," an eavesdropper mocked teasingly. He offered Alice a granola bar. "What's up? Diabetic emergency?"
"Something like that," Alice replied with a weak frown. She couldn't stop herself from bouncing impatiently eager to move and help fix this disaster. There was a very strong connection between the pre-cog and the telepath. She loved her oddball brother with all her heart. She politely turned down the offered granola bar. Alice looked towards the exit nearest where the fire truck would pull up, it would save time if she found something to wedge it open. She could get Edward help faster. "It's just a stupid code for a kind of medicine Edward needs sometimes."
"Oh?" The mocking fell away to sympathy. "Hope he feels better soon."
"There's been an accident," Alice offered, hating this delay but knowing she had to protect her whole families' secret. "I've got to go."
Rosalie got to her car. Okay, Alice said we're coming? Where were they coming or going too? Rose heard a fire engine's siren in the distance. That's right, Alice said ambulance. They'll take him to the hospital. She had no idea how a hospital was supposed to help a hurt vampire or how a vampire could be hurt but Carlisle at least could probably help and as Emmett alway said: trust Alice, ask questions later. Rosalie was thankful that she had a very fast car. Fast cars were almost as good as sex.
Jasper pushed through the throng of bystanders only to stare for a moment in dismay and confusion. Edward was screaming and coughing, his eyes were squeezed shut and he was writhing in pain. Vampires didn't, couldn't, mostly pain was rarely a part of this second half life.
Although… foreign venom hurt, fire too. Jasper took one uneasy step forward leaving the miasma of a huddled mass of teenagers feeling teenagery things. Oh sweet heavens the pain and panic hit him like a wall, "Edward..." he whimpered.
Emmett pushed past him rushing to help. "Eddie, bro it's okay."
Mr. Molina, the bio-chem teacher, was cradling a broken arm. Mr. Chartwell from the next class over was sporting a broken eye. They looked up at Emmett who was built like a tank and urgently enlisted his aid.
"He threw me across the room," panted Mr. Molina. "We're trying to help him. We've got to get him into the chemical wash down but we can't get near him. He lashes out, and with all that adrenaline, he's unstoppable."
"I got it," Emmett pushed up his sleeves and grabbed Edward in his best grappling hold, manhandling his tiniest brother into the chemical wash down. Holding the panicking vampire was like trying to hold seventeen writhing greased down sharks and the chemical smell was overwhelming, burning Emmett's eyes and throat. "Jasperilla, a little calming goat action would be helpful here! Ed, Ed chill dude I got you, we got you. I'm trying to help you squirt. CHILL! Stop trying to bite me, idiot! The snarling and growling is just bad manners, kid. Calm down. Bro! Calm down!"
Jasper wasn't actually doing nothing though it no doubt looked like he was just standing there in shock. If he wanted to project calm powerful enough to tamp down this kind of panic and pain he had to find the calm, the zen in himself. He walked slowly and calmly towards his brothers kneeling beside him, "Edward just concentrate on my voice. We are here. Let the water wash away the pain. Breathe slow and calm."
Involuntarily inhaling in a torrent of water was apparently not calming no matter how slowly you did it.
Jasper glared with determination and turned it up a notch figuratively screaming golden sunshine meadows, warm hugs and butterflies!
Edward calmed a lot but his eyes stayed squeezed tightly shut and he couldn't stop the frantic coughing, gagging and growling. At least he no longer seemed to be trying to kill his mystery attacker Emmett who was honestly acting in Edward's best interests.
Mr. Chartwell had thrown down some kind of spill absorbent and was currently opening every window in the room.
"Emmett, tilt his head up into the water spray. We've got to get his eyes washed out," instructed Mr. Molina, squatting near but keeping his distance.
Again, face directly into a lungful of water was not exactly calming.
Dammit Edward! FLUFFY CLUMSY KITTENS, MOONLIT DANCING FIREFLIES, HAPPY LITTLE CLOUDS, ….SMOOTH JAZZ!
Mr. Chartwell went to chase the hallways' lingering teen audience out of the way, "Evacuate to library. Clear out so there's a path for first responders!" He barked.
Jasper needed the big guns, he used his photographic vampire memory to start a playback of the guided meditation routine Alice had been fond of in the sixties. He did his best to tune out the memory of Yoko Ono howling in the background and completely ruining his groove.
Alice came dragging a firefighter who she'd briefed on the nature of the emergency.
"Son, I've got to cut your clothes off. They're covered in acid. We've got to get them off you." The firefighter warned gingerly approaching the panicked teen. He pulled out a seatbelt safety cutter as scissors might accidentally cut the poor kid.
Edward had been blinded. The acid had burned out his sense of smell, everything hurt, someone was pinning him and kept trying to drown him but a tasty throbbing heartbeat that might or might not be dangerous? Yeah, approaching a badly injured apex predator was a tricky business.
On his butt, now halfway across the room and sporting four broken ribs, the determined firefighter got back to his feet and went back for more. That kid needed help dammit.
Alice, seeing Jasper was having a seriously difficult time calming things down, gave him a soft fond smile, pulled her cowboy down, nuzzled his nose in an affectionate little eskimo kiss then looped him into a loose hug.
Jasper closed his eyes, the tension left his body and he smiled. Ah, … there it was. Zen.
Edward collapsed bonelessly to the floor, eyes loosely closed, all the fight left his body and he completely relaxed, not even breathing. Why bother? The pain evaporated into a balm, a fuzzy bliss of senselessness.
Emmett laid him down in relief and backed up. Ouch. The little twerp had managed to bite him twice, just little nips but it freaking stung! Emmett was completely drenched from the emergency wash down shower. He shook himself like a wet dog. Crisis averted?
The firefighter started quickly and efficiently cutting off the kids clothes before noticing, Oh crap! The kid wasn't breathing! He couldn't find a pulse!
Luckily just then the rest of the firefighters caught up with the one Alice had snagged and moved into help because anyone who took a ten tonne kick to the ribs and got up to keep helping deserved a medal, not a punctured lung, which is probably what would have happened if he'd tried to perform CPR with four broken ribs.
Emmett rolled his eyes and vamp-whispered to Jaz and Alice. "Over do it much? Now they think he's dead and needs to be revived."
Alice gave a little shrug confident that this was the best path and vamp-whispered back, "They can't hurt him and there is no other way to get him into the ambulance without more people getting injured."
The rescuers turned off the chemical wash down shower, shoved an airway down his throat, one firefighter had a Bag-valve-mask trying to force oxygen into the patient. Another was performing CPR. Edward had been dead for over a hundred years. His heart was unlikely to start now.
In another minute the paramedics were there and someone was pasting an the school's AED on him. It wasn't like it would shock him. There was no irregular heart rhythm to correct. There was no heart rhythm at all. The AED would be stuck on the testing heart rhythm now and recommence CPR cycle. When the paramedic grabbed a vial of adrenaline. Alice's eyes widened in alarm. (Stone like skin, Vampire secret, Needle!)
EDWARD YOU IDIOT BREATHE NOW! She mentally shouted. "Jasper you have to dial it back a little!" she hissed in a whisper.
With all three of his siblings mentally shouting "BREATHE!" Edward breathed, whimpered a little in pain and started coughing weakly. His eyes scrunched. The paramedics rolled him onto his side to help him clear his airway. In no time at all they were sliding him onto the stretcher and rolling him off to the ambulance.
No matter what the AED said, if the patient was breathing he obviously had a pulse.
Despite the closed doors of a school wide hold and secure* order, every doorway had worried faces watching the procession.
Emmett practically dragged Jasper along trying to prevent breaking the guy's focus while making sure he ended up loaded into the back of the ambulance with Edward.
As the ambulance peeled away Emmett turned to Alice with worried eyes. "My kid brother's going to be okay right? I mean I didn't hurt him or hold him too hard and squish him. I was helping right?" Edward's distress had been really upsetting.
"You know he's older than you right?" she whispered. Alice pulled Emmett into a quick reassuring hug. Technically Emmett was the youngest of them all.
"Kinda but kinda not," Emmett protested. Edward was stuck at seventeen. Emmett was turned at twenty. Emmett didn't fail to notice that Alice had offered no comforting certainty of a positive outcome.
"Come on. They'll need us at the hospital," answered Alice. "Dammit! Rosalie took the car!"
"I'll drive you," offered Bella with a look of concern. She, like a few others who had actually listened to the teacher's first instructions, had been waiting on the field, evacuated from the fumes of the chemical spill. The majority of the class hadn't listened until later when they'd been forcibly redirected to the library. Two kids were in the nurse's office: one complaining of mild nausea and the other riding out an asthma attack brought on by the fumes.
"Thanks," accepted Alice tugging Emmett along to Bella's beast of a truck. No one remembered to sign out of class. Emmett rolled down the window of the truck and stuck his head out the window. Edward's snackie-snack smelled like blood.
'Hold and Secure' is a response to a threat and/or incident in the general vicinity of a school. School life continues as normal inside the school; however, as a precautionary measure, students are to clear the halls and the outer doors of the school are generally locked.
Feeling horrifically embarrassed I let my daughter read a little of this. She chuckled once or twice reading it and then turned to me and said, "I feel like this is you just making fun of Twilight."
Well daughter dear yes, yes it is; but just because I'm making fun of something doesn't mean I don't appreciate it. I found the books and movies entertaining. I think the author of the books has probably received enough buckets of money and had enough time to think about it to realize that at the end of the day it's counterproductive to worry too much about why people are enjoying your works. Hopefully she's just thankful they're appreciated.