Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,297

wondering why Bella had never revealed their close connection, but he was too thankful for Alice, as well as charmed by her, to aggressively pursue answers. He was just happy with this, the best possible version of having a grievously injured daughter to care for. Alice was at the Swan house nearly as often as I was, though much more visible to Charlie during her time there.

Bella had been conflicted about school.

“On the one hand,” she’d told me, “I just want things back to normal. And I don’t want to get more behind.” It was very early the second morning after our return—she’d been sleeping so much in the day that her schedule was reversed. “On the other, the thought of everyone looking at me while I’m in that thing…” She glared menacingly toward the innocent wheelchair folded beside the bed.

“If I could carry you at school, I would, but…”

She sighed. “That probably wouldn’t help with the staring.”

“Probably not. However, while you have never appreciated the fact that I am actually frightening, I promise you I can do something about any staring.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Now I’m curious. So back to school ASAP.”

“Whatever you want.”

I flinched internally as soon as the words were out. I’d been careful not to say anything that would bring up our conversation in the hospital for rehashing, but she let my comment pass this time.

In fact, she seemed just as unwilling as I was to talk about the future. I thought this was probably why having things “back to normal” seemed appealing to her. Perhaps she hoped we could forget this episode as though it had merely been one bad chapter, rather than the foreshadowing to the only possible conclusion.

It was easy to make good on that unimportant promise. On her first day back, as I wheeled her from class to class, all I had to do was make eye contact with anyone who seemed too interested. A slight narrowing of my eyes, a tiny curl of my upper lip, and any gawkers were quickly persuaded to focus elsewhere.

Bella was unconvinced. “I’m not sure you’re doing anything really. I’m just not very exciting. I shouldn’t have worried.”

As quickly as Carlisle would allow, she traded in her plaster cast for a walking cast and a pair of crutches. I preferred the chair. It was hard to watch her struggle with the crutches, to be unable to help, but she seemed relieved to be moving under her own power again. After a few days, she grew less awkward.

The story circulating through the school was wrong on all counts. Bella’s disastrous fall through the hotel window was common knowledge, first spread by Charlie’s deputies around the community. But Charlie had been more taciturn about why Bella was in Phoenix. So Jessica Stanley had filled in the gaps—Bella and I had gone to Phoenix together for me to meet her mother. Jessica insinuated this was because our relationship was becoming very serious. Everyone accepted her version; most had already forgotten where the tale had originated.

Jessica was left to her own invention for this gossip, as Bella rarely spent much time with her out of class. It was no different than when I’d stopped the van in the very beginning—Bella knew how to be tight-lipped when she wanted to be. And now she sat at our table, with Alice, Jasper, and me. Even with Emmett and Rosalie absent—they pretended to eat outside now, hiding in the car if sunlight threatened—none of the humans braved our presence to join Bella. I didn’t like that she was becoming alienated from her former friends, especially Angela, but I assumed that eventually things would go back to how they’d been before I’d intruded on her life.

After we were gone.

Though the time never really slowed, the routine started to feel normal, and I had to keep my guard up. Sometimes I would slip; she would smile up at me and I would be inundated by that sense of rightness, the feeling that the two of us were designed to be together. It was hard to remember that this feeling, so pure and strong, was a lie. Hard to remember, until she twisted her torso too sharply and winced at her healing ribs, or put her foot down too hard and gasped, or moved her wrist just so and the pale, shiny new scar across the heel of her hand caught the light.

Bella healed and time passed. I clung to each second.

Alice had a new scheme that would