Worse: Alice's confidence. Jasper's confidence in that confidence.
Worst of all: Esme's... joy.
I stalked out of the room. Esme touched my arm as I passed, but I didn't acknowledge the gesture.
I was running before I was out of the house. I cleared the river in one bound, and raced into the forest.
The rain was back again, falling so heavily that I was drenched in a few moments. I liked the thick sheet
of water-it made a wall between me and the rest of the world. It closed me in, let me be alone.
I ran due east, over and through the mountains without breaking my straight course, until I could see
the lights of Seattle on the other side of the sound. I stopped before I touched the borders of human
civilization.
Shut in by the rain, all alone, I finally made myself look at what I had done-at the way I had mutilated
the future.
First, the vision of Alice and the girl with their arms around each other-the trust and friendship was so
obvious it shouted from the image. Bella's wide chocolate eyes were not bewildered in this vision, but
still full of secrets-in this moment, they seemed to be happy secrets. She did not flinch away from Alice's
cold arm.
What did it mean? How much did she know? In that still-life moment from the future, what did she think
of me?
Then the other image, so much the same, yet now colored by horror. Alice and Bella, their arms still
wrapped around each other in trusting friendship. But now there was no difference between those
arms-both were white, smooth as marble, hard as steel.
Bella's wide eyes were no longer chocolate. The irises were a shocking, vivid crimson.
The secrets in them were unfathomable-acceptance or desolation? It was impossible to tell. Her face
was cold and immortal.
I shuddered. I could not suppress the questions, similar, but different: What did it mean-how had this
come about? And what did she think of me now?
I could answer that last one. If I forced her into this empty half-life through my weakness and
selfishness, surely she would hate me.
But there was one more horrifying image-worse than any image I'd ever held inside my head. My own
eyes, deep crimson with human blood, the eyes of the monster. Bella's broken body in my arms, ashy
white, drained, lifeless. It was so concrete, so clear.
I couldn't stand to see this. Could not bear it. I tried to banish it from my mind, tried to see something
else, anything else. Tried to see again the expression on her living face that had obstructed my view for
the last chapter of my existence. All to no avail.
Alice's bleak vision filled my head, and I writhed internally with the agony it caused. Meanwhile, the#p#分页标题#e#
monster in me was overflowing with glee, jubilant at the likelihood of his success. It sickened me.
This could not be allowed. There had to be a way to circumvent the future. I would not let Alice's visions
direct me. I could choose a different path. There was always a choice.
There had to be.
5. Invitations
High school. Purgatory no longer, it was now purely hell. Torment and fire...yes, I had both.
I was doing everything correctly now. Every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed. No one could complain that I
was shirking my responsibilities.
To please Esme and protect the others, I stayed in Forks. I returned to my old schedule. I hunted no
more than the rest of them. Everyday, I attended high school and played human. Everyday, I listened
carefully for anything new about the Cullens-there never was anything new. The girl did not speak one
word of her suspicions. She just repeated the same story again and again-I'd been standing with her and
then pulled her out of the way-till her eager listeners got bored and stopped looking for more details.
There was no danger. My hasty action had hurt no one. No one but myself.
I was determined to change the future. Not the easiest task to set for oneself, but there was no other
choice that I could live with.
Alice said that I would not be strong enough to stay away from the girl. I would prove her wrong.
I'd thought the first day would be the hardest. By the end of it, I'd been sure that was the case. I'd been
wrong, though.
It had rankled, knowing that I would hurt the girl. I'd comforted myself with the fact that her pain would
be nothing more than a pinprick-just a tiny sting of rejection-compared to mine. Bella was human, and
she knew that I was something else, something wrong, something frightening. She would probably be
more relieved than wounded when I turned my face away from her and pretended that she didn't exist.
"Hello, Edward," she'd greeted me, that first day back in biology. Her voice had been pleasant, friendly,
one hundred and eighty degrees from the last time I'd spoken with her.
Why? What did the change mean? Had she forgotten? Decided she had imagined the whole episode?
Could she possibly have forgiven me for not following through on my promise?
The questions had burned like the thirst that attacked me every time I breathed. Just one moment to