Eclipse (Twilight #3)(23)

"Hey, do you guys know what it was about?" Austin wondered. "That might affect the odds."

"I can guess," Mike said, and then he shot a glance at me at the same time that Ben and Tyler did.

From their expressions, none of them had realized I was in easy hearing distance. They all looked away quickly, shuffling the papers on their desks.

"I still say Jacob," Mike muttered under his breath.

Chapter 4. NATURE

I WAS HAVING A BAD WEEK.

I knew that essentially nothing had changed. Okay, so Victoria had not given up, but had I ever dreamed for one moment that she had? Her reappearance had only confirmed what I'd already known. No reason for fresh panic.

In theory. Not panicking was easier said than done.

Graduation was only a few weeks away, but I wondered if it wasn't a little foolish to sit around, weak and tasty, waiting for the next disaster. It seemed too dangerous to be human - just begging for trouble. Someone like me shouldn't be human. Someone with my luck ought to be a little less helpless.

But no one would listen to me.

Carlisle had said, "There are seven of us, Bella. And with Alice on our side, I don't think Victoria's going to catch us off guard. I think it's important, for Charlie's sake, that we stick with the original plan."

Esme had said, "We'd never allow anything to happen to you, sweetheart. You know that. Please don't be anxious." And then she'd kissed my forehead.

Emmett had said, "I'm really glad Edward didn't kill you. Everything's so much more fun with you around."

Rosalie had glared at him.

Alice had rolled her eyes and said, "I'm offended. You're not honestly worried about this, are you?"

"If it's no big deal, then why did Edward drag me to Florida?" I'd demanded.

"Haven't you noticed yet, Bella, that Edward is just the teeniest bit prone to overreaction?"

Jasper had silently erased all the panic and tension in my body with his curious talent of controlling emotional atmospheres. I'd felt reassured, and let them talk me out of my desperate pleading.

Of course, that calm had worn off as soon as Edward and I had walked out of the room.

So the consensus was that I was just supposed to forget that a deranged vampire was stalking me, intent on my death. Go about my business.

I did try. And surprisingly, there were other things almost as stressful to dwell on besides my status on the endangered species list. . . .

Because Edward's response had been the most frustrating of them all.

"That's between you and Carlisle," he'd said. "Of course, you know that I'm willing to make it between you and me at any time that you wish. You know my condition." And he had smiled angelically.

Ugh. I did know his condition. Edward had promised that he would change me himself whenever I wanted . . . just as long as I was married to him first.

Sometimes I wondered if he was only pretending that he couldn't read my mind. How else had he struck upon the one condition that I would have trouble accepting? The one condition that would slow me down.

All in all, a very bad week. And today was the worst day in it.

It was always a bad day when Edward was away. Alice had foreseen nothing out of the ordinary this weekend, and so I'd insisted that he take the opportunity to go hunting with his brothers. I knew how it bored him to hunt the easy, nearby prey.

"Go have fun," I'd told him. "Bag a few mountain lions for me."

I would never admit to him how hard it was for me when he was gone - how it brought back the abandonment nightmares. If he knew that, it would make him feel horrible and he would be afraid to ever leave me, even for the most necessary reasons. It had been like that in the beginning, when he'd first returned from Italy. His golden eyes had turned black and he'd suffered from his thirst more than it was already necessary that he suffer. So I put on a brave face and all but kicked him out the door whenever Emmett and Jasper wanted to go.

I think he saw through me, though. A little. This morning there had been a note left on my pillow:

I'll be back so soon you won't have time to miss me. Look after my heart - I've left it with you.

So now I had a big empty Saturday with nothing but my morning shift at Newton's Olympic Outfitters to distract me. And, of course, the oh-so-comforting promise from Alice.

"I'm staying close to home to hunt. I'll only be fifteen minutes away if you need me. I'll keep an eye out for trouble."

Translation: don't try anything funny just because Edward is gone.

Alice was certainly just as capable of crippling my truck as Edward was.

I tried to look on the bright side. After work, I had plans to help Angela with her announcements, so that would be a distraction. And Charlie was in an excellent mood due to Edward's absence, so I might as well enjoy that while it lasted. Alice would spend the night with me if I was pathetic enough to ask her to. And then tomorrow, Edward would be home. I would survive.

Not wanting to be ridiculously early for work, I ate my breakfast slowly, one Cheerio at a time. Then, when I'd washed the dishes, I arranged the magnets on the fridge into a perfect line. Maybe I was developing obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The last two magnets - round black utilitarian pieces that were my favorites because they could hold ten sheets of paper to the fridge without breaking a sweat - did not want to cooperate with my fixation. Their polarities were reversed; every time I tried to line the last one up, the other jumped out of place.