New Moon

street.

I shook my head, trying to understand. I knew he wasn't there, and yet, he felt improbably close, close for the first time since… since the end. The anger in his voice was concern, the same anger that was once very familiar—something I hadn't heard in what felt like a lifetime.

'Keep your promise.' The voice was slipping away, as if the volume was being turned down on a radio.

I began to suspect that I was having some kind of hallucination. Triggered, no doubt, by the memory—the deja vu, the strange familiarity of the situation.

I ran through the possibilities quickly in my head.

Option one: I was crazy. That was the layman's term for people who heard voices in their heads.

Possible.

Option two: My subconscious mind was giving me what it thought I wanted. This was wish fulfillment—a momentary relief from pain by embracing the incorrect idea that he cared whether I lived or died. Projecting what he would have said if A) he were here, and B) he would be in any way bothered by something bad happening to me.

Probable.

I could see no option three, so I hoped it was the second option and this was just my subconscious running amuck, rather than something I would need to be hospitalized for.

My reaction was hardly sane, though—I was grateful. The sound of his voice was something that I'd feared I was losing, and so, more than anything else, I felt overwhelming gratitude that my unconscious mind had held onto that sound better than my conscious one had.

I was not allowed to think of him. That was something I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was getting better, and so the pain was something I could avoid for days at a time now. The tradeoff was the never-ending numbness. Between pain and nothing, I'd chosen nothing.

I waited for the pain now. I was not numb—my senses felt unusually intense after so many months of the haze—but the normal pain held off. The only ache was the disappointment that his voice was fading.

There was a second of choice.

The wise thing would be to run away from this potentially destructive—and certainly mentally unstable— development. It would be stupid to encourage hallucinations.

But his voice was fading.

I took another step forward, testing.

'Bella, turn around,' he growled.

I sighed in relief. The anger was what I wanted to hear—false, fabricated evidence that he cared, a dubious gift from my subconscious.

Very few seconds had passed while I sorted this all out. My little audience watched, curious. It probably looked like I was just dithering over whether or not I was going to approach them. How could they guess that I was standing there enjoying an unexpected moment of insanity?

'Hi,' one of the men called, his tone both confident and a bit sarcastic. He was fair-skinned and fair-haired, and he stood with the assurance of someone who thought of himself as quite good-looking. I couldn't tell whether he was or not. I was prejudiced.

The voice in my head answered with an exquisite snarl. I smiled, and the confident man seemed to take that as encouragement.

'Can I help you with something? You look lost.' He grinned and winked.

I stepped carefully over the gutter, running with water that was black in the darkness.

'No. I'm not lost.'

Now that I was closer—and my eyes felt oddly in focus—I analyzed the short, dark man's face. It was not familiar in any way. I suffered a curious sensation of disappointment that this was not the terrible man who had tried to hurt me almost a year ago.

The voice in my head was quiet now.

The short man noticed my stare. 'Can I buy you a drink?' he offered, nervous, seeming flattered that I'd singled him out to stare at.

'I'm too young,' I answered automatically.

He was baffled—wondering why I had approached them. I felt compelled to explain.

'From across the street, you looked like someone I knew. Sorry, my mistake.'

The threat that had pulled me across the street had evaporated. These were not the dangerous men I remembered. They were probably nice guys. Safe. I lost interest.

'That's okay,' the confident blonde said. 'Stay and hang out with us.'

'Thanks, but I can't.' Jessica was hesitating in the middle of the street, her eyes wide with outrage and betrayal.

'Oh, just a few minutes.'

I shook my head, and turned to rejoin Jessica.

'Let's go eat,' I suggested, barely glancing at her. Though I appeared to be, for the moment, freed of the zombie abstraction, I was just as distant. My mind was preoccupied. The safe, numb deadness did not come back, and I got more anxious with every minute that passed without its return.

'What were you thinking?' Jessica snapped. 'You don't know them—they could have been psychopaths!'

I shrugged, wishing she would let it go. 'I just thought I knew the one guy.'

'You are so odd, Bella Swan. I feel like I don't know who you are.'

'Sorry.' I didn't know what else to say to that.

We walked to McDonald's in silence. I'd bet that she was wishing we'd taken her car instead of walking the short distance from the theater, so that she could use the drive-through. She was just as anxious now for this evening to be over as I had been from the beginning.

I tried to start a conversation a few times while we ate, but Jessica was not cooperative. I must have really offended her.

When we go back in the car, she tuned the stereo back to her favorite station and turned the volume too loud to allow easy conversation.

I didn't have to struggle as hard as usual to ignore the music. Even though my mind, for once, was not carefully numb and empty, I had too much to think about to hear the lyrics.

I waited for the numbness to return, or the pain. Because the pain must be coming. I'd broken my personal rules. Instead of shying away from the memories, I'd walked forward and greeted them. I'd heard his voice, so clearly, in my head. That was going to cost me, I was sure of it. Especially if I couldn't reclaim the haze to protect myself. I felt too alert, and that frightened me.

But relief was still the strongest emotion in my body—relief that came from the very core of my being.

As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worried— late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses—that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them.

Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live—I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed.

That's why I was more trapped in Forks than I ever had been before, why I'd fought with Charlie when he suggested a change. Honestly, it shouldn't matter; no one was ever coming back here.

But if I were to go to Jacksonville, or anywhere else bright and unfamiliar, how could I be sure he was real? In a place where I could never imagine him, the conviction might fade… and that I could not live through.

Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.

I was surprised when Jessica stopped the car in front of my house. The ride had not taken long, but, short as it seemed, I wouldn't have thought that Jessica could go that long without speaking.

'Thanks for going out with me, Jess,' I said as I opened my door. 'That was…fun.' I hoped that fun was the appropriate word.

'Sure,' she muttered.

'I'm sorry about… after the movie.'