Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,44

sense to me.”

She snorted delicately.

I tried to shut her out, too impatient for conversation. I wasn’t in a very good mood—tenser than I let any of them see. Only Jasper was aware of how tightly wound I was, feeling the stress emanate out of me with his unique ability to both sense and influence the moods of others. He didn’t understand the reasons behind the moods, though, and—since I was constantly in a foul temper these days—he disregarded it.

Today would be a hard one. Harder than the day before, as was the pattern.

Mike Newton was going to ask Bella on a date.

A girls’ choice dance was on the near horizon, and he’d been hoping very much that Bella would ask him. That she had not done so had rattled his confidence. Now he was in an uncomfortable bind—I enjoyed his discomfort more than I should have—because Jessica Stanley had just invited him. He didn’t want to say yes, still hopeful that Bella would choose him (and prove him the victor over her other would-be suitors), but he didn’t want to say no and end up missing the dance altogether. Jessica, hurt by his hesitation and guessing the reason behind it, was thinking daggers at Bella. Again, I had the instinct to place myself between her and Jessica’s angry thoughts. I understood the instinct better now, but that only made it more frustrating when I could not act on it.

To think it had come to this! I was utterly fixated on the petty high school dramas that I’d once held so in contempt.

Mike was working up his nerve as he walked Bella to Biology. I listened to his struggles as I waited for them to arrive. The boy was weak. He had waited for this dance purposely, afraid to let his infatuation be known before she had shown a marked preference for him. He didn’t want to make himself vulnerable to rejection, preferring that she take that leap first.

Coward.

He sat down on our table again, comfortable through long familiarity, and I imagined the sound it would make if his body hit the opposite wall with enough force to break most of his bones.

“So,” he said to the girl, his eyes on the floor. “Jessica asked me to the spring dance.”

“That’s great,” Bella answered immediately and with enthusiasm. It was hard not to smile as Mike processed her tone. He’d been hoping for dismay. “You’ll have a lot of fun with Jessica.”

He scrambled for the right response. “Well…” He hesitated and almost turned tail. Then he rallied. “I told her I had to think about it.”

“Why would you do that?” she demanded. Her tone was disapproving, but there was the faintest hint of relief there as well.

What did that mean? An unexpected, intense fury made my hands clench into fists.

Mike did not hear the relief. His face flushed red—fierce as I suddenly felt, this seemed like an open invitation—and he looked at the floor again as he spoke.

“I was wondering if… well, if you might be planning to ask me.”

Bella hesitated.

In that moment, I saw the future more clearly than Alice ever had.

The girl might say yes to Mike’s unspoken question now, or she might not, but either way, someday soon, she would say yes to someone. She was lovely and intriguing, and human males were not oblivious to this fact. Whether she would settle for someone in this lackluster crowd, or wait until she was free from Forks, the day would come that she would say yes.

I saw her life as I had before—college, career… love, marriage. I saw her on her father’s arm again, dressed in gauzy white, her face flushed with happiness as she moved to the sound of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.”

The pain I felt while I imagined this future reminded me of the agony of transformation. It consumed me.

And not just pain, but outright rage.

The fury ached for some kind of physical outlet. Though this insignificant, undeserving boy might not be the one Bella would say yes to, I yearned to pulverize his skull with my fist, to let him stand as a proxy for whoever it would be.

I didn’t understand this emotion—it was such a tangle of pain and fury and desire and despair. I had never felt it before; I couldn’t put a name to it.

“Mike, I think you should tell her yes,” Bella said in a gentle voice.

Mike’s hopes plummeted. I would have enjoyed that under other circumstances, but I was lost in the aftershock