Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,134

the same. I feel like… kind of a bad daughter. Because I’m a little relieved, you know?” She made an apologetic face, turning her palms up. “She doesn’t have to stay in place for me anymore. That’s a weight off. And then Charlie… I never thought about him needing me, but he really does. That house is too empty for him.”

I nodded thoughtfully, sifting through this mine of information. I wished I could meet this woman who had shaped so much of Bella’s character. Part of me would have preferred that Bella had an easier, more traditional childhood—that she could have gotten to be the child. But she wouldn’t have been the same person, and truly, she didn’t seem resentful in any way. She liked to be the caretaker, liked to be needed.

Perhaps this was the real secret as to why she was drawn to me. Had anyone ever needed her more?

I left her at her classroom door, and the morning passed much as the day before. Alice and I sleepwalked our way through Gym. I watched Bella’s face through Jessica Stanley’s eyes again, noting, as the human girl did, how very little of Bella seemed to be in the classroom at all.

I wonder why Bella doesn’t want to talk about it? Jessica wondered. Keeping him to herself, I guess. Unless she was telling the truth before, and there’s nothing actually happening. Her mind ran over Bella’s denials on Wednesday morning—It’s not like that, when Jessica had asked about kissing—and her inference that Bella had looked disappointed.

That would be like torture, Jessica thought now. Look but don’t touch.

The word startled me.

Like torture? Obviously an exaggeration, but… would such a thing actually cause Bella pain—no matter how minor? Surely not, knowing as she did the realities of the situation. I frowned and caught Alice’s questioning glance. I shook my head at her.

She looks happy enough, Jessica was thinking, watching Bella as she stared through the clerestory windows with unfocused eyes. She must have been lying to me. Or there have been new developments.

Oh! Alice’s sudden stillness alerted me at the same time as her mental exclamation. The picture in her mind was of the cafeteria at some near future date and…

Well, it’s about time! she thought, breaking into a huge grin.

The pictures developed—Alice standing behind my shoulder in the cafeteria today, across the table from Bella. The very brief introduction. How it began was not yet fixed. It wavered, dependent on some other factor. But it would be soon, if not today.

I sighed, absently swatting the birdie back across the net. It flew better than it would have had my attention been focused; I scored a point as the coach blew his whistle to end class. Alice was already moving toward the door.

Don’t be such a baby. It’s not much. And I can already see that you won’t stop me.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “No, it won’t be very much,” I agreed quietly as we walked together.

“I can be patient. Baby steps.”

I rolled my eyes.

It was always a relief when I could leave the secondary vantage points behind and just see Bella for myself, but I was still thinking about Jessica’s assumptions when Bella came through the classroom door. She smiled a wide, warm smile, and it looked to me, too, like she was very happy. I shouldn’t worry about impossibilities when they weren’t bothering her.

There was one line of questions that I had been reluctant to open thus far. But with Jessica’s thoughts still in my head, I was suddenly more curious than I was averse.

We sat at what was now our usual table, and she picked at the food I’d gotten for her—I’d been quicker than her today.

“Tell me about your first date,” I said.

Her eyes got bigger, and her cheeks flushed. She hesitated.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“I’m just not sure… what actually counts.”

“Put the qualifications at their lowest setting,” I suggested.

She stared toward the ceiling, thinking with her lips pursed. “Well, then I guess that would be Mike—a different Mike,” she said quickly when my expression changed. “He was my square-dancing partner in the sixth grade. I was invited to his birthday party—it was a movie.” She smiled. “The second Mighty Ducks. I was the only one who showed up. Later, people said it was a date. I don’t know who started that rumor.”

I’d seen the school pictures in her father’s house, so I had a mental reference for eleven-year-old Bella. It sounded like