I stiffened.
"No," Jasper said quietly. "I can agree to that. If Alice sees only two ways - "
"No!" My voice was not a shout or a growl or a cry of despair, but some combination of the three. "No!"
I had to leave, to be away from the noise of their thoughts - Rosalie's selfrighteous disgust, Emmett's humor, Carlisle's never ending patience...
Worse: Alice's confidence. Jasper's confidence in that confidence.
Worst of all: Esme's...joy.
I stalked out of the room. Esme touched my arm as I passed, but I didn't acknowledge the gesture.
I was running before I was out of the house. I cleared the river in one bound, and raced into the forest. The rain was back again, falling so heavily that I was drenched in a few moments. I liked the thick sheet of water - it made a wall between me and the rest of the world. It closed me in, let me be alone.
I ran due east, over and through the mountains without breaking my straight course, until I could see the lights of Seattle on the other side of the sound. I stopped before I touched the borders of human civilization.
Shut in by the rain, all alone, I finally made myself look at what I had done - at the way I had mutilated the future.
First, the vision of Alice and the girl with their arms around each other - the trust and friendship was so obvious it shouted from the image. Bella's wide chocolate eyes were not bewildered in this vision, but still full of secrets - in this moment, they seemed to be happy secrets. She did not flinch away from Alice's cold arm.
What did it mean? How much did she know? In that still-life moment from the future, what did she think of me?
Then the other image, so much the same, yet now colored by horror. Alice and Bella, their arms still wrapped around each other in trusting friendship. But now there was no difference between those arms - both were white, smooth as marble, hard as steel. Bella's wide eyes were no longer chocolate. The irises were a shocking, vivid crimson. The secrets in them were unfathomable - acceptance or desolation? It was impossible to tell. Her face was cold and immortal.
I shuddered. I could not suppress the questions, similar, but different: What did it mean - how had this come about? And what did she think of me now?
I could answer that last one. If I forced her into this empty half-life through my weakness and selfishness, surely she would hate me.
But there was one more horrifying image - worse than any image I'd ever held inside my head.
My own eyes, deep crimson with human blood, the eyes of the monster. Bella's broken body in my arms, ashy white, drained, lifeless. It was so concrete, so clear. I couldn't stand to see this. Could not bear it. I tried to banish it from my mind, tried to see something else, anything else. Tried to see again the expression on her living face that had obstructed my view for the last chapter of my existence. All to no avail. Alice's bleak vision filled my head, and I writhed internally with the agony it caused. Meanwhile, the monster in me was overflowing with glee, jubilant at the likelihood of his success. It sickened me.
This could not be allowed. There had to be a way to circumvent the future. I would not let Alice's visions direct me. I could choose a different path. There was always a choice.
There had to be.
5. Invitations
High school. Purgatory no longer, it was now purely hell. Torment and fire...yes, I had both.
I was doing everything correctly now. Every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed. No one could complain that I was shirking my responsibilities.
To please Esme and protect the others, I stayed in Forks. I returned to my old schedule. I hunted no more than the rest of them. Everyday, I attended high school and played human. Everyday, I listened carefully for anything new about the Cullens - there never was anything new. The girl did not speak one word of her suspicions. She just repeated the same story again and again - I'd been standing with her and then pulled her out of the way - till her eager listeners got bored and stopped looking for more details. There was no danger. My hasty action had hurt no one.
No one but myself.
I was determined to change the future. Not the easiest task to set for oneself, but there was no other choice that I could live with.
Alice said that I would not be strong enough to stay away from the girl. I would prove her wrong.
I'd thought the first day would be the hardest. By the end of it, I'd been sure that was the case. I'd been wrong, though.
It had rankled, knowing that I would hurt the girl. I'd comforted myself with the fact that her pain would be nothing more than a pinprick - just a tiny sting of rejection - compared to mine. Bella was human, and she knew that I was something else, something wrong, something frightening. She would probably be more relieved than wounded when I turned my face away from her and pretended that she didn't exist.
"Hello, Edward," she'd greeted me, that first day back in biology. Her voice had been pleasant, friendly, one hundred and eighty degrees from the last time I'd spoken with her.
Why? What did the change mean? Had she forgotten? Decided she had imagined the whole episode? Could she possibly have forgiven me for not following through on my promise?
The questions had burned like the thirst that attacked me every time I breathed. Just one moment to look in her eyes. Just to see if I could read the answers there...
No. I could not allow myself even that. Not if I was going to change the future. I'd moved my chin an inch in her direction without looking away from the front of the room. I'd nodded once, and then turned my face straight forward.
She did not speak to me again.
That afternoon, as soon as school was finished, my role played, I ran to Seattle as I had the day before. It seemed that I could handle the aching just slightly better when I was flying over the ground, turning everything around me into a green blur.