My momma said they used to be white pyramids
They float above the sand they're slowly sinking in
Are our foundations destined to keep crumbling
Just 'cause we started this with zero innocence
Helium - Glass Animals
April 9, 2005
The sun was shining when Edward woke up, but he didn't even notice. He had barely slept, and spent most of his night in Carlisle's study. His legs were stiff from sitting for so long, and he had a splitting headache that he couldn't seem to shake. It felt like a pressure from his temples across his forehead, and it made the light feel exponentially brighter. He closed his blinds and tried to curl back up in bed, where the sheets were cool and the pounding seemed to dull.
Bella spent her night hunting. Unnecessarily, one might say, but it didn't seem possible to overdo it. Better to err on the side of caution and deplete the local deer population slightly more than was environmentally conscious than put Edward at risk. She had no idea what he had planned, only that he was picking her up around noon. He hadn't even told her what to wear so she could be prepared, but as Bella sat up on a rock formation just west of Rainier, she knew what the day would bring. The sun peeked out over the mountainside, sending light glistening over the snow caps and casting a pale glisten over her skin. She pulled her sleeves down and curled into herself. It didn't matter that there was no one there to witness, no threat to exposure. The sun was just another reminder of everything. She was different from everyone around her, and would never experience the promise of moving forward. She was preserved, like a diamond, resistant to the grind of life and the passage of time.
But most importantly, it was a reminder of home. Rather, what she once thought of as home. The sun was an omnipresent power, a guiding friend. It made her think of laying out on the patio with her mom, sipping too-sour lemonade. The sun was driving for hours to see Area 51 and watch her mom really believe in aliens but on the way home stop to see the world's largest pistachio and get matching "Nuttiest Place in New Mexico" T-shirts. The sun was strawberry ice cream and her mom's smile as she dared to run on the pool deck while the lifeguard yelled after her.
And it was blurry memories and fading thoughts. It was trying to picture exactly what her mom's voice sounded like and failing, it was having an idea of what the summer sand smelled like but not really knowing. The sun was loss and sadness, and everything left behind.
Bella rinsed her hands in the cool mountain stream, letting the dried crust of blood run off and fade into the water. It was time to go home, where Charlie was still sleeping but likely stirring. As Bella slipped through her second-story window, his snoring stopped abruptly, and he swung his legs out of bed. She heard him groan as his back cracked when he stretched, the light pad of his footsteps as he tried to make his way to the bathroom without disturbing her. She slid under the covers and fanned her hair across her face just as he cracked her door open, looking in on her before he left. He always felt a little guilty, leaving her every weekend. He justified it to himself that any teenager would kill to have a house to themselves for an entire day, but it didn't totally assuage the feeling. He waffled between his choices, debating calling up Billy and Harry and telling them he wouldn't make it, but the rare sight of the sun was too promising. Besides, Bella probably wouldn't leave her room for the entire day, given what she told him about her sensitivity to light.
He left after a breakfast of coffee and a stale granola bar, and Bella was free again, but also bound by the weather. She swept the floors and dusted the counters and the ceiling fan. She changed the sheets and turned over the laundry, mopped the kitchen floor, mended the curtains and stitched a few buttons back on Charlie's pants, and wiped down the shelves in the refrigerator. She surveyed the work, then disappointingly made note of the time. It was only eight o'clock.
This was another constraint of this supernatural eternity- she was bound to mundanity in a way the human mind couldn't comprehend. There was never boredom, not really. There was too much to listen to, too much to see and explore. Every mote of dust had the potential to be a small miracle to be studied and enjoyed.
But even busy hands lent their way to an idle mind, and she had no way to still it. There was no escape of sleep or possibility of distraction in an entertaining television programme. And it didn't help that she didn't have any books on hand that she hadn't read a hundred times over, with every word and mark of punctuation committed to an infallible memory.
Bella was left with watching the seconds tick away, counting down her wait. She wondered what Edward had planned, then worried over having to change them to accommodate her inability to be in public on a sunny day. There was simply too much to worry over.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She tried to picture her mom, the way she remembered. Short, chestnut brown hair, tan skin and permanent smile lines etched around her brown eyes. "It's gonna be fine, Bella," she'd say with a laugh. "You were always too serious. Born middle aged and getting older every year, that's my girl. You need to learn to just have some fun. Be young, fall in love." She'd smile wistfully and tuck an errant strand of hair behind Bella's ear, then lose track of the conversation altogether and grab them popsicles to enjoy over a new US Weekly she picked up at the grocery store instead of actually buying any food.
The idea of it left Bella smiling. It was made-up, but it meant she would never forget. And she knew it was exactly what Renee would say. She was never one to take her mother's advice- she was always too flighty, too prone to changing her mind after making a commitment. Renee encouraged her to go out in Phoenix, to make more friends and to find a boy and then find another. Renee was the one who told her to do ballet even though she was just about the clumsiest first grader in the world, and inevitably led to a broken arm. She was the one who encouraged Bella to watch more TV and wanted her to party until dawn when she was in high school.
But maybe once, just once, she could take her mom's advice. It would certainly make her proud. She dashed up the stairs and pulled a brush through her hair until it obeyed her. Her wardrobe was mostly monochrome sweaters she picked up at the Goodwill in Port Angeles with some money Charlie gave her, but there were a few items she managed to steal during her nomadic, almost Biblical wandering through the Arizona desert. She threw on a blue blouse that she couldn't bear to part with, though at the time she had no idea what she would ever wear it for. She loped on a pair of jeans and threw on a shapeless hoodie, careful that it was one that could shade her face and cover every bare patch of skin. Even if no one saw the shirt underneath, she knew it was on. It was like the cape of a superhero, and the rest was her disguise. There was power, even if no one else knew it.
She even bothered to brush mascara through her already thick lashes and dab some colour onto her eyelids. Almost two years, and she still wasn't used to the face staring back at her in the mirror. She had grown accustomed to being pretty average, or averagely pretty. And she was happy with it. This was ethereal beauty, unnatural. She barely recognised herself but for a few distinct features- her top lip slightly larger than the bottom, the curve in her nose that was pure Renee. She could hear her lessons on makeup application, like a master teaching a martial art- "A girl is only as fierce as her reddest lipstick. Use it like a weapon, and any man will fall to his knees."
Bella didn't think she was bold enough for that. She didn't even have anything of such a shade, but there was a small tin of blush that could work comparably. She swiped some across her lips and evened the colour out so they were only a shade or two darker than the plush pink colour they naturally were now.
She felt impossibly pretty. Not in that dangerous, uncomfortable way, where she drew stares no matter how hard she tried to hide from them. But in a way that she simply decided she didn't mind being looked at, as long as it was one person she wanted to stare at her. She skipped down the stairs and perched on the kitchen table in wait, waiting expectantly to hear the purr of the Volvo's engine in any minute. Twelve o'clock had just ticked by. Any minute now.