Writings

Edward is the most dangerous of all of us. Because he’s young, Carlisle told me once. When he thinks something, he just acts on it. The way the brain works when you’re a seventeen-year-old boy means that certain things just happen.

He chuckled and added, “I’d like to figure out what the vampire equivalent of adrenaline is.”

Adrenaline or whatever you’d like to call it, it’s what happens to Edward. Why one second I was sitting next to him at the piano, and the next, my bottom was on the floor, with the bench exploding into pieces as it slammed into the wall.

Usually, Edward’s M.O. was just to get up, close the piano, and leave. He liked me listening to him, I thought, at least until I thought the wrong thing; until I started imagining him with his mother as a boy. But this time, he lost it.

The next sweep of his arm took with it all the music—it hadn’t been nocturnes today, it was some concerto that he was trying to teach himself and so for the first time in a long time, he’d been using music. Calm, serene, playing something new.

At least, calm and serene until I sat down next to him and started imagining his mother again.

Edward threw me with enough force that it hurt, and I sat there, stunned, staring at him as he panted.

Esme started crying.

Jasper punched Edward so hard that his face literally began to shatter. Which of course got Carlisle upset, and then he was in the middle of it, too, pushing on Jasper’s chest and Edward’s so that they separated, snarling.

I sat on the floor, wondering what I’d done.

“Don’t think about that!” Edward answered, and he spat. “Just stop, Freak.”

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Just…stop!” Then he stalked off to his room again.

The door didn’t slam.

Jasper knelt down and pulled me into his arms, running his hands through my hair, such as it is. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” When I shook my head, he turned to Carlisle. “You need to learn to control him.”

Carlisle took a deep breath and exhaled, like humans do. He has habits like that.

“It isn’t my intention to control him, Jasper,” he said.

Jasper frowned, but Carlisle simply crossed the distance between us and patted me on the shoulder.

“You’re all right?” he asked.

I nodded.

He turned toward the stairs, sighing. “I should go figure out what happened.”

“Leave me alone,” Edward called, and Carlisle looked despondent, but turned away.

I never did figure out what it was exactly that set Edward off so badly in my vision.

But when I saw him get out the sheet music that day, I did decide not to bother sitting down.

Forward

Maria showed up innocently enough, on a Saturday afternoon when the wind was blowing through town. Emmett said that means there will be a change in the weather. As a human, he was the son of a tobacco farmer. He knows those sorts of things.

When Jasper told me about Maria, I had pictured a statuesque woman, with long, dark hair. Maybe as tall as Jasper, and certainly every bit as strong.

Instead, she was a woman of my height, and almost my build; slight, wiry. Bossy.

It made me self-conscious at once.

Jasper said he was surprised to see her so far north.

Carlisle welcomed her in, but then left for work. He looked a little concerned, but when Esme whispered to him asking if it was a good idea that she visit, he reminded her that his friend Garrett, who doesn’t share our ways, visits all the time. And why shouldn’t Jasper have friends?

“It might do him good,” he said.

Carlisle is so rarely wrong about people; it caught all of us by surprise.

Forward

It was about two weeks after I saw the vision of him throwing the piano bench that I knocked on Edward’s door. Motown, today. Carlisle and he had gone to some sort of concert in Detroit some time earlier.

Jasper thought it was kind of odd. He’s a southerner; integration confused him. But there was no denying that Edward was happier listening to the records he brought back.

Edward’s room was at the top of the stairs, and when he played a record, the sound drifted down through the whole house. Sometimes the floors would pulsate. Esme pretended to be annoyed, but really, I think she liked knowing he was up there, listening to music.

We could pretend he was being happy.

I listened to the Temptations crooning through Edward’s door, and was steeling myself to knock when the door swung open and I almost fell into the room.

Edward looked slightly amused.

“Hi,” I said.

“Can I help you?”

“I was just figuring that out,” I told him, and he actually laughed.

“I know.” He tapped the side of his head. “You think loud.”

I walked into his room and sat down. Edward doesn’t pretend he has any need for a bed; never has. He’s big on nice couches, though, and this one was the best I’d seen so far. I plunked down on it, letting myself fall back into the cushions. The Temptations blasted so loudly I could feel my eardrums vibrating.

Edward crossed the room and turned them down.

“Thanks.”

He shrugged, and sat on a stool, with his legs splayed wide to either side.

Neither of us said anything for a long time. In my mind, I was busy replaying the vision. The bench shattering against the wall; the look on his face as Jasper shattered his cheekbone. Esme crying. Carlisle holding Edward and Jasper apart.

Edward blinked.

“What was that in answer to?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I was coming to ask.”

He put his hands between his legs, pressing down on the stool with the heels of his palms and pushing himself forward so that the whole stool rocked back and forth. It creaked a little, and made little thunking noises as first the front legs, then the back came free of the floor and then plopped back down.

I thought it would be nice to be able to read Edward’s mind. This got a titter of laughter from him. But then he went all solemn again and kept thinking.

Finally, he shook his head.

“I don’t know what it would have been,” he said. “I’m glad you stopped it, whatever it was.”

He blanched.

“Are you enjoying the Temptations?” I asked, and he smiled. Edward has this shy way of smiling, when he’s smiling for real. Where he looks up from under his eyelashes, and you know that he’s actually being genuine.

“We’re going to make small talk, now?”

I shrugged. “We don’t have to.”

He stood up. The stool made one last thunk onto the floor and sat silent.

“Great,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later, Fr—Alice.”

I got up.

He plugged a set of headphones into the LP player, clamping them over his ears. The big silver discs dwarfed his head, making him look disproportionate to his body. Then he flopped down on the couch and closed his eyes. His foot moved in time with the music.

Alice.

It was an improvement.

Forward

Sky Harbor Airport

I always thought it was unbelievable, the way characters on TV behave when they find out someone has died. That they scream and howl and start running, and you have to fight to hold them still. Exaggerated for effect.

But when Edward stepped into the baggage claim at the Phoenix airport, he screamed. When he saw that we’d lost her. When he understood at once where she’d gone.

Right there, with all the passengers darting back and forth, and the loud speaker crackling on and off, and the baggage claims beeping and chugging, Edward came to stop, and then tipped sideways, and then fell to his knees so hard he rocked a little bit. Carlisle threw his arms around him, pulling him into an embrace, and Edward’s hands made a hollow thumping noise as he pounded against Carlisle’s chest.

“Let me go!” he screamed. “I have to save her! Carlisle, let me go!”

And he did save her.

I don’t know why I was surprised.

Forward

The way this story ends is that Edward is my best friend.

I know that’s not how you’re supposed to tell a story; it’s the kind of thing that annoys the snot out of Jasper, or would, if he had any to be annoyed out. But it’s the way I tell a story. Because I always know the end.

The Cullens—my family—are big readers. I think it’s because of Carlisle, who did nothing but read for two centuries. And the rest of them all follow suit, even Jasper and Emmett, who you think wouldn’t read much. But there’re a lot more books than there are TV shows and even vampires get bored with bad TV.

Reading doesn’t work very well for me, though. I see the final page turn, and I see the end of the book, and I see my reactions to the parts in the middle, and by the time I’ve picked something up I’ve decided to read, I already know the end. So if I read, I read differently—I read to appreciate the way the writer used her words, or the way he kept tension moving from scene to scene. I read to laugh at a funny line of dialogue.

I don’t read to know the end. I always know that from the beginning.

So the end of this story is that Edward is my best friend.

But that’s not how it begins.

Forward