New Moon

Last night I had not been alone in the woods. Sam Uley—the man who had pulled me from the forest floor that night I couldn't bear to think of consciously—was there. It was an odd, unexpected alteration. The man's dark eyes had been surprisingly unfriendly, filled with some secret he didn't seem inclined to share. I'd stared at him as often as my frantic searching had allowed; it made me uncomfortable, under all the usual panic, to have him there. Maybe that was because, when I didn't look directly at him, his shape seemed to shiver and change in my peripheral vision. Yet he did nothing but stand and watch. Unlike the time when we had met in reality, he did not offer me his help.

Charlie stared at me during breakfast, and I tried to ignore him. I supposed I deserved it. I couldn't expect him not to worry. It would probably be weeks before he stopped watching for the return of the zombie, and I would just have to try to not let it bother me. After all, I would be watching for the return of the zombie, too. Two days was hardly long enough to call me cured.

School was the opposite. Now that I was paying attention, it was clear that no one was watching here.

I remembered the first day I'd come to Forks High School—how desperately I'd wished that I could turn gray, fade into the wet concrete of the sidewalk like an oversized chameleon. It seemed I was getting that wish answered, a year late.

It was like I wasn't there. Even my teachers' eyes slid past my seat as if it were empty.

I listened all through the morning, hearing once again the voices of the people around me. I tried to catch up on what was going on, but the conversations were so disjointed that I gave up.

Jessica didn't look up when I sat down next to her in Calculus.

'Hey, Jess,' I said with put-on nonchalance. 'How was the rest of your weekend?'

She looked at me with suspicious eyes. Could she still be angry? Or was she just too impatient to deal with a crazy person?

'Super,' she said, turning back to her book.

'That's good,' I mumbled.

The figure of speech cold shoulder seemed to have some literal truth to it. I could feel the warm air blowing from the floor vents, but I was still too cold. I took the jacket off the back of my chair and put it on again.

My fourth hour class got out late, and the lunch table I always sat at was full by the time I arrived. Mike was there, Jessica and Angela, Conner, Tyler, Eric and Lauren. Katie Marshall, the redheaded junior who lived around the corner from me, was sitting with Eric, and Austin Marks—older brother to the boy with the motorcycles—was next to her. I wondered how long they'd been sitting here, unable to remember if this was the first day or something that was a regular habit.

I was beginning to get annoyed with myself. I might as well have been packed in Styrofoam peanuts through the last semester.

No one looked up when I sat down next to Mike, even though the chair squealed stridently against the linoleum as I dragged it back.

I tried to catch up with the conversation.

Mike and Conner were talking sports, so I gave up on that one at once.

'Where's Ben today?' Lauren was asking Angela. I perked up, interested. I wondered if that meant Angela and Ben were still together.

I barely recognized Lauren. She'd cut off all her blond, corn-silk hair—now she had a pixie cut so short that the back was shaved like a boy. What an odd thing for her to do. I wished I knew the reason behind it. Did she get gum stuck in it? Did she sell it? Had all the people she was habitually nasty to caught her behind the gym and scalped her? I decided it wasn't fair for me to judge her now by my former opinion. For all I knew, she'd turned into a nice person.

'Ben's got the stomach flu,' Angela said in her quiet, calm voice. 'Hopefully it's just some twenty-four hour thing. He was really sick last night.'

Angela had changed her hair, too. She'd grown out her layers.

'What did you two do this weekend?' Jessica asked, not sounding as if she cared about the answer. I'd bet that this was just an opener so she could tell her own stories. I wondered if she would talk about Port Angeles with me sitting two seats away? Was I that invisible, that no one would feel uncomfortable discussing me while I was here?

'We were going to have a picnic Saturday, actually, but… we changed our minds,' Angela said. There was an edge to her voice that caught my interest.

Jess, not so much. 'That's too bad,' she said, about to launch into her story. But I wasn't the only one who was paying attention.

'What happened?' Lauren asked curiously.

'Well,' Angela said, seeming more hesitant than usual, though she was always reserved, 'we drove up north, almost to the hot springs—there's a good spot just about a mile up the trail. But, when we were halfway there… we saw something.'

'Saw something? What?' Lauren's pale eyebrows pulled together. Even Jess seemed to be listening now.

'I don't know,' Angela said. 'We think it was a bear. It was black, anyway, but it seemed… too big.'

Lauren snorted. 'Oh, not you, too!' Her eyes turned mocking, and I decided I didn't need to give her the benefit of the doubt. Obviously her personality had not changed as much as her hair. 'Tyler tried to sell me that one last week.'

'You're not going to see any bears that close to the resort,' Jessica said, siding with Lauren.

'Really,' Angela protested in a low voice, looking down at the table. 'We did see it.'

Lauren snickered. Mike was still talking to Conner, not paying attention to the girls.

'No, she's right,' I threw in impatiently. 'We had a hiker in just Saturday who saw the bear, too, Angela. He said it was huge and black and just outside of town, didn't he, Mike?'

There was a moment of silence. Every pair of eyes at the table turned to stare at me in shock. The new girl, Katie, had her mouth hanging open like she'd just witnessed an explosion. Nobody moved.

'Mike?' I muttered, mortified. 'Remember the guy with the bear story?'

'S-sure,' Mike stuttered after a second. I didn't know why he was looking at me so strangely. I talked to him at work, didn't I? Did I? I thought so…

Mike recovered. 'Yeah, there was a guy who said he saw a huge black bear right at the trailhead—bigger than a grizzly,' he confirmed.

'Hmph.' Lauren turned to Jessica, her shoulders stiff, and changed the subject.

'Did you hear back from USC?' she asked.

Everyone else looked away, too, except for Mike and Angela. Angela smiled at me tentatively, and I hurried to return the smile.

'So, what did you do this weekend, Bella?' Mike asked, curious, but oddly wary.

Everyone but Lauren looked back, waiting for my response.

'Friday night, Jessica and I went to a movie in Port Angeles. And then I spent Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday down at La Push.'

The eyes flickered to Jessica and back to me. Jess looked irritated. I wondered if she didn't want anyone to know she'd gone out with me, or whether she just wanted to be the one to tell the story.

'What movie did you see?' Mike asked, starting to smile.

'Dead End—the one with the zombies.' I grinned in encouragement. Maybe some of the damage I'd done in these past zombie months was reparable.

'I heard that was scary. Did you think so?' Mike was eager to continue the conversation.

'Bella had to leave at the end, she was so freaked,' Jessica inserted with a sly smile.

I nodded, trying to look embarrassed. 'It was pretty scary.'

Mike didn't stop asking me questions till lunch was over. Gradually, the others were able to start up their own conversations again, though they still looked at me a lot. Angela talked mostly to Mike and me, and, when I got up to dump my tray, she followed.

'Thanks,' she said in a low voice when we were away from the table.

'For what?'