Three words on the open page caught my eye, and I bent my head to read the paragraph more closely. It was Heathcliff speaking, and I knew the passage well.
And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drank his blood! But, till then — if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me — till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!
The three words that had caught my eye were “drank his blood.”
I shuddered.
Yes, surely I must have dreamt that Edward said anything positive about Heathcliff. And this page was probably not the page he’d been reading. The book could have fallen open to any page.
12 TIME
“I HAVE FORESEEN . . . ,” ALICE BEGAN IN AN OMINOUS tone.
Edward threw an elbow toward her ribs, which she neatly dodged.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Edward is making me do this. But I did foresee that you would be more difficult if I surprised you.”
We were walking to the car after school, and I was completely clueless as to what she was talking about.
“In English?” I requested.
“Don’t be a baby about this. No tantrums.”
“Now I’m scared.”
“So you’re — I mean we’re — having a graduation party. It’s no big thing. Nothing to freak out over. But I saw that you would freak out if I tried to make it a surprise party” — she danced out of the way as Edward reached over to muss her hair — “and Edward said I had to tell you. But it’s nothing. Promise.”
I sighed heavily. “Is there any point in arguing?”
“None at all.”
“Okay, Alice. I’ll be there. And I’ll hate every minute of it. Promise.”
“That’s the spirit! By the way, I love my gift. You shouldn’t have.”
“Alice, I didn’t!”
“Oh, I know that. But you will.”
I racked my brains in panic, trying to remember what I’d ever decided to get her for graduation that she might have seen.
“Amazing,” Edward muttered. “How can someone so tiny be so annoying?”
Alice laughed. “It’s a talent.”
“Couldn’t you have waited a few weeks to tell me about this?” I asked petulantly. “Now I’ll just be stressed that much longer.”
Alice frowned at me.
“Bella,” she said slowly. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Monday?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. It is Monday . . . the fourth.” She grabbed my elbow, spun me halfway around, and pointed toward a big yellow poster taped to the gym door. There, in sharp black letters, was the date of graduation. Exactly one week from today.
“It’s the fourth? Of June? Are you sure?”
Neither one answered. Alice just shook her head sadly, feigning disappointment, and Edward’s eyebrows lifted.
“It can’t be! How did that happen?” I tried to count backwards in my head, but I couldn’t figure out where the days had gone.
I felt like someone had kicked my legs out from under me. The weeks of stress, of worry . . . somehow in the middle of all my obsessing over the time, my time had disappeared. My space for sorting through it all, for making plans, had vanished. I was out of time.
And I wasn’t ready.
I didn’t know how to do this. How to say goodbye to Charlie and Renée . . . to Jacob . . . to being human.
I knew exactly what I wanted, but I was suddenly terrified of getting it.
In theory, I was anxious, even eager to trade mortality for immortality. After all, it was the key to staying with Edward forever. And then there was the fact that I was being hunted by known and unknown parties. I’d rather not sit around, helpless and delicious, waiting for one of them to catch up with me.
In theory, that all made sense.
In practice . . . being human was all I knew. The future beyond that was a big, dark abyss that I couldn’t know until I leaped into it.
This simple knowledge, today’s date — which was so obvious that I must have been subconsciously repressing it — made the deadline I’d been impatiently counting down toward feel like a date with the firing squad.
In a vague way, I was aware of Edward holding the car door for me, of Alice chattering from the backseat, of the rain hammering against the windshield. Edward seemed to realize I was only there in body; he didn’t try to pull me out of my abstraction. Or maybe he did, and I was past noticing.
We ended up at my house, where Edward led me to the sofa and pulled me down next to him. I stared out the window, into the liquid gray haze, and tried to find where my resolve had gone. Why was I panicking now? I’d known the deadline was coming. Why should it frighten me that it was here?
I don’t know how long he let me stare out the window in silence. But the rain was disappearing into darkness when it was finally too much for him.
He put his cold hands on either side of my face and fixed his golden eyes on mine.
“Would you please tell me what you are thinking? Before I go mad?”
What could I say to him? That I was a coward? I searched for words.
“Your lips are white. Talk, Bella.”
I exhaled in a big gust. How long had I been holding my breath?
“The date took me off guard,” I whispered. “That’s all.”
He waited, his face full of worry and skepticism.
I tried to explain. “I’m not sure what to do . . . what to tell Charlie . . . what to say . . . how to . . .” My voice trailed off.
“This isn’t about the party?”
I frowned. “No. But thanks for reminding me.”
The rain was louder as he read my face.
“You’re not ready,” he whispered.
“I am,” I lied immediately, a reflex reaction. I could tell he saw through it, so I took a deep breath, and told the truth. “I have to be.”
“You don’t have to be anything.”
I could feel the panic surfacing in my eyes as I mouthed the reasons. “Victoria, Jane, Caius, whoever was in my room . . . !”
“All the more reason to wait.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Edward!”
He pressed his hands more tightly to my face and spoke with slow deliberation.
“Bella. Not one of us had a choice. You’ve seen what it’s done . . . to Rosalie especially. We’ve all struggled, trying to reconcile ourselves with something we had no control over. I won’t let it be that way for you. You will have a choice.”
