Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,34

it.”

She was asking me to trust her. Just as I wanted her to trust me. But this was a line I could not cross.

My voice stayed callous. “Can’t you just thank me and get it over with?”

“Thank you,” she said, and then she fumed in silence, waiting.

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“No.”

“In that case…” I couldn’t tell her the truth if I wanted to… and I didn’t want to. I’d rather she made up her own story than know what I was, because nothing could be worse than the truth—I was an undead nightmare, straight from the pages of a horror novel. “I hope you enjoy disappointment.”

We scowled at each other.

She flushed pink and ground her teeth again. “Why did you even bother?”

Her question wasn’t one that I was expecting or prepared to answer. I lost my hold on the role I was playing. I felt the mask slip from my face, and I told her—this one time—the truth.

“I don’t know.”

I memorized her face one last time—it was still set in lines of anger, the blood not yet faded from her cheeks—and then I turned and walked away from her.

4. VISIONS

I WENT BACK TO SCHOOL. THIS WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, THE MOST inconspicuous way to behave.

By the end of the day, almost all the other students had returned to class, too. Just Tyler and Bella and a few others—who were probably using the accident as a chance to ditch—remained absent.

It shouldn’t have been so hard for me to do the right thing. But all afternoon, I was gritting my teeth against the urge that had me yearning to ditch, too—in order to go find the girl again.

Like a stalker. An obsessed stalker. An obsessed vampire stalker.

School today was—somehow, impossibly—even more boring than it had seemed just a week ago. Coma-like. It was as if the color had drained from the bricks, the trees, the sky, the faces around me.… I stared at the cracks in the walls.

There was another right thing I should be doing… that I was not. Of course, it was also a wrong thing. It all depended on one’s perspective.

From the perspective of a Cullen—not just a vampire, but a Cullen, someone who belonged to a family, such a rare state in our world—the right thing would have gone something like this:

“I’m surprised to see you in class, Edward. I heard you were involved in that awful accident this morning.”

“Yes, I was, Mr. Banner, but I was the lucky one.” A friendly smile. “I didn’t get hurt at all. I wish I could say the same for Tyler and Bella.”

“How are they?”

“I think Tyler is fine… just some superficial scrapes from the windshield glass. I’m not sure about Bella, though.” A worried frown. “She might have a concussion. I heard she was pretty incoherent for a while—seeing things, even. I know the doctors were worried.…”

That’s how it should have gone. That’s what I owed my family.

“I’m surprised to see you in class, Edward. I heard you were involved in that awful accident this morning.”

No smile. “I wasn’t hurt.”

Mr. Banner shifted his weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable.

“Do you have any idea how Tyler Crowley and Bella Swan are? I heard there were some injuries.…”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

Mr. Banner cleared his throat. “Er, right…,” he said, my cold stare making his voice sound a bit strained.

He walked quickly back to the front of the classroom and began his lecture.

It was the wrong thing to do. Unless you looked at it from a more obscure point of view.

It just seemed so… so unchivalrous to slander the girl behind her back, especially when she was proving more trustworthy than I could have dreamed. She hadn’t said anything to betray me, despite having good reason to do so. Would I betray her when she had done nothing but keep my secret?

I had a nearly identical conversation with Mrs. Goff—just in Spanish rather than in English—and Emmett gave me a long look.

I hope you have a good explanation for what happened today. Rose is on the warpath.

I rolled my eyes without looking at him.

I actually had come up with a perfectly sound explanation. Just suppose I hadn’t done anything to stop the van from crushing the girl. I recoiled from that thought. But if she had been hit, if she’d been mangled and bleeding, the red fluid spilling, wasting on the blacktop, the scent of the fresh blood pulsing through the air…

I shuddered again, but not