Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,43

another; thanking a teacher for their lesson if that teacher seemed down; giving up her locker for a more inconvenient location so two best friends could be neighbors; smiling a certain smile that never surfaced for her contented friends, only revealing itself to someone who was hurting. Little things that none of her acquaintances or admirers ever seemed to see.

Through all these little things, I was able to add the most important quality to my list, the most revealing of them all, as simple as it was rare. Bella was good. All the other things added up to that whole: Kind and self-effacing and unselfish and brave—she was good through and through. And no one seemed aware of that besides me. Though Mike was certainly observing her nearly as often.

And right there was the most surprising of my torments: Mike Newton. Who would have ever dreamed that such a generic, boring mortal could be so infuriating? To be fair, I should have felt some gratitude to him; more than the others, he kept the girl talking. I learned so much about her through these conversations, but Mike’s assistance with this project only aggravated me. I didn’t want him to be the one who unlocked her secrets.

It helped that he never noticed her small revelations, her little slips. He knew nothing about her. He’d created a Bella in his head who didn’t exist—a girl just as generic as he was. He hadn’t observed the unselfishness and bravery that set her apart from other humans, didn’t hear the abnormal maturity of her spoken thoughts. He didn’t perceive that when she spoke of her mother, she sounded like a parent speaking of a child rather than the other way around—loving, indulgent, slightly amused, and fiercely protective. He didn’t hear the patience in her voice when she feigned interest in his rambling stories, and didn’t guess at the compassion behind that patience.

These helpful discoveries did not warm me to the boy, however. The possessive way he viewed Bella—as if she were an acquisition to be made—provoked me almost as much as his crude fantasies about her. He was becoming more confident of her, too, as time passed, for she seemed to prefer him over those he considered his rivals—Tyler Crowley, Eric Yorkie, and even, sporadically, myself. He would routinely sit on her side of our table before Biology began, chattering at her, encouraged by her smiles. Just polite smiles, I told myself. All the same, I frequently amused myself by imagining backhanding him across the room and into the far wall. It probably wouldn’t injure him fatally.…

Mike didn’t often think of me as a rival. After the accident, he’d worried that Bella and I would bond from the shared experience, but obviously the opposite had resulted. Back then, he had still been bothered that I’d singled Bella out over her peers for attention. But now I ignored her just as thoroughly as the others, and he grew complacent.

What was she thinking now? Did she welcome his attention?

And finally, the last of my torments, the most painful: Bella’s indifference. As I ignored her, she ignored me. She never tried to speak to me again. For all I knew, she never thought about me at all.

This might have driven me mad—or worse, broken my resolution—except that she sometimes stared at me as she had before. I didn’t see it for myself, as I could not allow myself to look at her, but Alice always warned us; the others were still wary of the girl’s problematic knowledge.

It eased some of the pain that she gazed at me from a distance every now and then. Of course, she was probably just wondering exactly what kind of an aberration I was.

“Bella’s going to stare at Edward in a minute. Look normal,” Alice said one Tuesday in March, and the others were careful to fidget and shift their weight.

I paid attention to how often she looked in my direction. It pleased me, though it should not have, that the frequency did not decline as time passed. I didn’t know what it meant, but it made me feel better.

Alice sighed. I wish…

“Stay out of it, Alice,” I said under my breath. “It’s not going to happen.”

She pouted. Alice was anxious to form her envisioned friendship with Bella. In a strange way, she missed the girl she didn’t know.

I’ll admit, you’re better than I thought. You’ve got the future all snarled up and senseless again. I hope you’re happy.

“It makes plenty of