Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,15

it,” he said as he leaned across the table and shook his ice-encrusted hair in her direction. The snow, melting in the warm room, flew out from his hair in a thick shower of half liquid, half ice.

“Ew!” Rose complained as she and Alice recoiled from the deluge.

Alice laughed, and we all joined in. I could see in Alice’s head how she’d orchestrated this perfect moment, and I knew that the girl—I should stop thinking of her that way, as if she were the only girl in the world—that Bella would be watching us laugh and play, looking as happy and human and unrealistically ideal as a Norman Rockwell painting.

Alice kept laughing and held her tray up as a shield. The girl—Bella—must still be staring at us.

… staring at the Cullens again, someone thought, catching my attention.

I looked automatically toward the unintentional call, easily recognizing the voice as my eyes found their destination—I’d been listening to it so much today.

But my eyes slid right past Jessica and focused on the girl’s penetrating gaze.

She looked down quickly, hiding behind her thick hair again.

What was she thinking? The frustration seemed to be getting more acute as time went on, rather than dulling. I tried—uncertain, for I’d never done this before—to probe with my mind at the silence around her. My extra hearing had always come to me naturally, without asking; I’d never had to work at it. But I concentrated now, trying to break through whatever armor surrounded her.

Nothing but silence.

What is it about her? Jessica thought, echoing my own irritation.

“Edward Cullen is staring at you,” she whispered in the Swan girl’s ear, adding a giggle. There was no hint of her jealous annoyance in her tone. Jessica seemed to be skilled at feigning friendship.

I listened, too engrossed, to the girl’s response.

“He doesn’t look angry, does he?” she whispered back.

So she had noticed my wild reaction last week. Of course she had.

The question confused Jessica. I saw my own face in her thoughts as she checked my expression, but I did not meet her glance. I was still concentrating on the girl, trying to hear something. Intent focus didn’t seem to help at all.

“No,” Jess told her, and I knew that she wished she could say yes—how it rankled her, my staring—though there was no trace of that in her voice. “Should he be?”

“I don’t think he likes me,” the girl whispered back, laying her head down on her arm as if she were suddenly tired. I tried to understand the motion, but I could only make guesses. Maybe she was tired.

“The Cullens don’t like anybody,” Jess reassured her. “Well, they don’t notice anybody enough to like them.” They never used to. Her thought was a grumble of complaint. “But he’s still staring at you.”

“Stop looking at him,” the girl said anxiously, lifting her head from her arm to make sure Jessica obeyed the order.

Jessica giggled, but did as she was asked.

The girl did not look away from her table for the rest of the hour. I thought—though, of course, I could not be sure—that this was deliberate. It seemed as though she wanted to look at me. Her body would shift slightly in my direction, her chin would begin to turn, and then she would catch herself, take a deep breath, and stare fixedly at whoever was speaking.

I ignored the other thoughts around the girl for the most part, as they were not, momentarily, about her. Mike Newton was planning a snowball fight in the parking lot after school, not seeming to realize that the snow had already shifted to rain. The flutter of soft flakes against the roof had become the more common patter of raindrops. Could he really not hear the change? It seemed loud to me.

When the lunch period ended, I stayed in my seat. The humans filed out, and I caught myself trying to distinguish the sound of her footsteps from the rest, as if there were something important or unusual about them. How stupid.

My family made no move to leave, either. They waited to see what I would do.

Would I go to class, sit beside the girl, where I could smell the absurdly potent scent of her blood and feel the warmth of her pulse in the air on my skin? Was I strong enough for that? Or had I had enough for one day?

As a family, we’d already discussed this moment from every possible angle. Carlisle disapproved of the risk, but he wouldn’t impose his