Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,58

now and then.”

To be precise, it was healthier for the humans if the vampires ditched on days when human blood would be spilled. Mr. Banner was blood typing today. Alice had already ditched her morning class.

“Well, I’m going,” she said. This didn’t surprise me. She was responsible—she always did the right thing.

She was my opposite.

“I’ll see you later, then,” I said, trying for casual again, staring down at the whirling lid. Please save yourself. Please never leave me.

She hesitated, and I hoped for a moment that she would stay with me after all. But the bell rang and she hurried away.

I waited until she was gone, and then I put the lid in my pocket—a souvenir of this most consequential conversation—and walked through the rain to my car.

I put on my favorite calming CD—the same one I’d listened to that first day—but I wasn’t hearing Debussy’s notes for long. Other notes were running through my head, a fragment of a tune that pleased and intrigued me. I turned down the stereo and listened to the music in my head, playing with the fragment until it evolved into a fuller harmony. Automatically, my fingers moved in the air over imaginary piano keys.

The new composition was really coming along when my attention was caught by a wave of mental anguish.

Is she going to pass out? What do I do? Mike panicked.

A hundred yards away, Mike Newton was lowering Bella’s limp body to the sidewalk. She slumped unresponsively against the wet concrete, her eyes closed, her skin chalky as a corpse.

I nearly took the door off the car.

“Bella?” I shouted.

There was no change in her lifeless face when I yelled her name.

My whole body went colder than ice. This was like a confirmation of every ludicrous scenario I’d imagined. The very moment she was out of my sight…

I was aware of Mike’s aggravated surprise as I sifted furiously through his thoughts. He was only thinking of his anger toward me, so I didn’t know what was wrong with Bella. If he’d done something to harm her, I would annihilate him. Not even the tiniest fragment of his body would ever be recovered.

“What’s wrong—is she hurt?” I demanded, trying to focus his thoughts. It was maddening to have to walk at a human pace. I should not have called attention to my approach.

Then I could hear her heart beating and her even breath. As I watched, she squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. That eased some of my panic.

I saw a flicker of memories in Mike’s head, a splash of images from the Biology room. Bella’s head on our table, her fair skin turning green. Drops of red against the white cards.

Blood typing.

I stopped where I was, holding my breath. Her scent was one thing, her flowing blood was another altogether.

“I think she’s fainted,” Mike said, anxious and resentful at the same time. “I don’t know what happened. She didn’t even stick her finger.”

Relief washed through me, and I breathed again, tasting the air. Ah, I could smell the tiny bleed of Mike Newton’s puncture wound. Once, that might have appealed to me.

I knelt beside her while Mike hovered next to me, furious at my intervention.

“Bella. Can you hear me?”

“No,” she moaned. “Go away.”

The relief was so exquisite that I laughed. She wasn’t in danger.

“I was taking her to the nurse,” Mike said. “But she wouldn’t go any farther.”

“I’ll take her. You can go back to class,” I said dismissively.

Mike’s teeth clenched together. “No. I’m supposed to do it.”

I wasn’t going to stand around arguing with the moron.

Thrilled and terrified, half-grateful to and half-aggrieved by the predicament that made touching her a necessity, I gently lifted Bella from the sidewalk and held her in my arms, touching only her rain jacket and jeans, keeping as much distance between our bodies as possible. I was striding forward in the same movement, in a hurry to have her safe—farther away from me, in other words.

Her eyes popped open, astonished.

“Put me down,” she ordered in a weak voice—embarrassed again, I guessed from her expression. She didn’t like to show weakness. But her body was so limp I doubted she would be able to stand on her own, let alone walk.

I ignored Mike’s shouted protest behind us.

“You look awful,” I told her, unable to stop grinning, because there was nothing wrong with her but a light head and a weak stomach.

“Put me back on the sidewalk,” she said. Her lips were white.

“So you faint at the sight of