Chapter 25
So how did you get here under my skin?
I swore that I'd never let you back in
Should've known better than trying to let you go
'Cause here we go go go again —Here We Go Again, Demi Lovato
Bella
It sounded like a stampede drove the door down, and Jasper's yelling set my blood racing. "Bella! Bella? You up there?" Darting down the stairs, panicked, I slid from the corridor into the living room, prepared for something awful.
The sound of Seth's laughter startled me. I didn't expect the Chemawa kids to get home so soon. I had been successfully—well, maybe not successfully, but semi-successfully—ignoring any thoughts of the coming summer vacation. Assuming and imagining and over-thinking everything in my life exhausted me. I was just done.
"Look what we found at the Dairy Queen!" Jasper said.
"Seth." I met him in the center of the living room and gave him a hug. He looked good, handsome. "When did you get back?"
"This afternoon."
I was about to ask for Leah when I heard Emmett in the kitchen chatting fast and loud. I turned my attention to his words. "Not much, except for almost getting jumped," he said.
Nobody needed to tell me, but I asked, "Who's he talking to?"
I didn't wait for an answer from Seth or Jasper. I followed Emmett's adrenaline-filled voice into the kitchen. He was facing away from me, leaning on the kitchen counter with the phone pressed to his ear. I noticed his ragged and grimy shirt, and his short brown hair was mussed. When I approached, worried, he turned to me and scrunched his brow, prompting me to shush while he talked about a fight.
Blood laced the inner rim of his mouth and a red gouge on the side of his nose jolted me with alarm. I spun toward Jasper and Seth. "What's he talking about? What happened to him?"
"James and that bunch of losers he hangs out with tried to jump him," Jasper said, and spilled the details. "Seth and I were standing by the tables outside the Dairy Queen, toward the back of the building. We didn't even realize James and his boys were on the other side. Emmett was in the truck by himself, talking to some girl. As soon as he hopped out, James was there—I didn't even see him walk by—pointing his finger and saying, 'It's you and me.'
"It was crazy. Emmett told him he didn't want to fight, and he tried to step around him. Suddenly, Emmett had James pinned down on one of the tables, pounding him good. So many people collapsed around them. We needed to force our way through the bunched crowd just to break them up."
Seth joined in. "By that time, his boys were grabbing Emmett by the face and the hair. They were punching him in the back and trying to pry him loose to help James. But Emmett was going berserk, like a bear, too strong and too focused to notice. He never stopped swinging until he recognized it was Jazz and me that had a hold of him."
Jasper nodded, retaking the conversation. "Then we passed through a bunch of hands. Everyone pulling and pushing us backward until there were people standing between us and James and his crew, telling us to get out of there because someone called the police."
"Frick, Emmett was fast!" Seth laughed. "One second he was shaking his head, saying, 'I'm not fighting you,' and the next second, he had stepped forward, spun his upper body, and slammed James down by the throat as he blasted him in the face. A wicked-looking black eye already showed on James before we got 'em separated, which was only moments later. That's how fast it happened."
The story horrified me, but Seth and Jasper acted as if they got a big rush out of it. By the sounds of it, so did Emmett.
Turning back to see him, I found the conversation had switched to a party. "It'll be at the pit... Because we had to move it when the police started watching the road out by the cliffs... Yeah, it's that big crater-shaped dip in the woods south of Newton's cabin. You remember?"
"He's going to a party. Are you going? I want to go," I said. I hadn't gone to a party since Leah got drunk last summer.
"I don't care if you come, but it's not up to me," Jasper said. He gestured toward Emmett. "Gotta clear it with him first."
Emmett clicked the phone off, so I went over to check his wounds better. "Let me see." I reached, adjusting his head to get a closer look at his eyes and his mouth.
He pulled down his lower lip and showed me a deep cut inside where, he explained, one of his teeth sank in. I cringed. "Ouch, Emmett. That looks terrible. Are you sure it doesn't need any stitches?"
He shook his head. "Nope. I've seen worse on some guys after a match. It'll be fine once the swelling goes down."
Apprehensive about his diagnosis, I followed him into the living room and said, "You better have Mom look at it, anyway."
"Don't need to. In fact, we're out of here. I already told her we're staying at Jake's tonight, and we better get going before she catches us home."
He leap-strode up the stairs. "Wait a minute, Emmett!" When he stopped, I used a casual tone with just enough pleading in my voice. "I want to go to the party with you."
Keeping his back toward me, he slouched and grumbled as he turned to face me. "What else is new?"
My forehead wrinkled as I wondered what he was grumbling about. I had never asked to go with him to a party before.
"Look, Bella, Mom's on her way home. I don't have time to argue with you. So, I'll tell you exactly what I told those two when they asked," he said, glancing over at Jasper and Seth while they took turns bouncing quarters off the coffee table and into a glass, acting as if they weren't listening to us. "Number one, I'm getting drunk. Number two, you're not. And number three, Mom and Dad better never hear about it!"
Excited, I grinned. "Okay. I swear I won't tell, but Leah gets to come with me."
He made a growling noise in his throat but didn't object. As he reached the top of the steps, I shouted, "Wait, what should I tell Mom?"
He laughed. "That's your problem." The door to the bathroom banged closed.
Thwarted by his answer, I sat down on the sofa between Jasper and Seth, frowning. "What am I supposed to do now? She'll never let me go to a party unless I tell her I'm going with you guys. But she'll probably have twenty questions for Emmett, and if she sees him like that, she won't let him go. And how are we supposed to get home if you're all staying at Jake's and Emmett gets drunk?"
"No problem," Jasper said. "Just tell her you're spending the night at Leah's, and Leah will tell Sue she's spending the night here with you."
Seth agreed with a nod.
"And we'll just... figure out the rest later." Jasper decided with a shrug.
"That won't work. Besides, I'm pretty sure we're a little too old for sleepovers."
Jasper focused on the quarter in his fingertips for a second, then bounced it high off the table, watching it plop into the water glass. Pleased with himself, he smiled. "You and Leah haven't seen each other in months." He picked up the phone and handed it to me. "Mark my words. They will expect a sleepover."
Upon hearing Mom's trusting 'yes', I gave the thumbs-up sign to him and Seth, along with a thankful sigh, when my stomach clenched into an anxious-feeling knot. After months of loving Jacob, missing Jacob, and then hating Jacob... I was about to see him again.
