Book Two. Zander leaned back from the round table with his back to the wall, thermos parked by his elbow and a blood-and-carne burrito still warm in the foil in front of him. Unfortunately for his luch plans, his attention wasn’t really on the food, not while he worked the same problem he had since Thursday. The hell was in book two?The cafeteria around him wasn’t helping his attempt at quiet thinking, the place seemingly louder and looser than ever with a whole table of chairs left empty. Three hundred and something heartbeats pounded loud, a chorus of hormonal teenagers flooding his senses with a big wet chorus he’d long learned to tune down to background music. I swear I read a synopsis or something. He wouldn’t swear his life on it, though. As much as he wanted to hope so, Zander wasn’t that sure about it.
Something with a beach. Maybe; there was a beach at some point, he was like sixty percent sure about that. Bikes? Somebody had a motorcycle in one of these. Did Edward ride motorcycles? That didn’t sound right.Especially when the guy could probably kiss the sound barrier.If not Edward, then… wait, was it Ja— "And I'm telling you, coach is different this year!" Zander snapped back to attention as Mike Newton’s elbows slammed all over the table, sleeves on his varsity jacket rolled up as his tater tots bounced up from the sudden motion. Each one landed back on his tray as the blond boy whipped his head around the table. "Like he actually smiled Tuesday. It's a whole new program, man. Zan, back me up, you saw the smile—"
"Didn't see the smile, dawg." His attention dropped to the tots, the greasy potato snack almost an everyday thing in the Forks High cafeteria. Somebody in this kitchen has a deal with the tater tot, man. I swear.
"You had to have seen the smile."
"Mikey, I got fourth period on the other side of the buildin'.” Zander raised an eyebrow over his glasses. “Exactly where am I seeing a smile at?"
"You're missing out is all I'm sayin'." Hands laced behind his head, Mike Newton leaned back with a smile on his face and shoulder stretched out. Zander had only been back to school just one Friday before the weekend but something about the way Newton held himself was totally different. Probably just what happened when there wasn’t a hundred-year-old jawline carved out of marble two tables over making every second girl stupid…
Bikes. Beach. Zander narrowed his eyes at that empty table again. Something about jumping too?
"It's weird, right?" Jessica sat with her sandwich fully unwrapped and half-eaten in front of her and right next to him, the smell of her — citrus, sugar and sweetness — overpowering Mrs. Stanley’s chicken salad. "Rich families don't just disappear overnight."
"Rich families do whatever they want." He tipped his thermos at her knowingly, as if he knew a single thing about rich families. “Options come with money.”"See, he would know." Tyler Crowley jabbed one finger across the table right at Zander. "Man's got a butler."“...what about him?”The only other black kid in the group made a face. "Maaaan, you got a whole British man that irons your socks. Even my mom doesn’t do that."
"I mean, I hear Dr Cullen got a better job offer?" Ben came in soft from down the table, hand up to adjust his glasses like they were the ones talking for him. "Or, like… they just wanted to live somewhere more exciting. I mean, that's what my mom heard, I guess."
"All at once, though?" Angela didn't push the words out or even raise her voice much at all, the girl blinking past her own glasses around the table. "In the middle of a school year?"
"Angela. Zander already said it." Mike leaned in with a half-laugh loaded, the athlete among them waving a tot around like a laser pointer. "Rich people don't follow normal rules. They prolly decided they wanted to, like, winter in Switzerland or somethin'."
"You don't winter in September," Eric fired off with a laugh of his own, voice almost cracking on the word winter. "You can't winter in fall, that's just moving.”A birthday. Zander had already tuned out the conversation again, thoughts on the actual important part of all this. A party. Something happened at her birthday party. The shape of it kept swimming up into focus and then diving again…”-ander.”“Hm.” He turned his head as Jessica’s hand flapped toward the far corner, eyes already following the path of said flap. "Babe, I said, what about Bella?"
Swan sat alone at the far table, enough space for eight occupied only by one. Her tray wasn’t touched, the girl’s attention firmly facing the window as she looked out at the parking lot with the stillness of the dead. He could almost believe there was nothing up there for a second, the body left running while the rest of her was somewhere else.
He could almost believe it, if her head hadn’t turned and those hollow looking eyes hadn’t landed right on him across sixty feet of loud teenagers.
One eyebrow raised, Zander tipped two fingers off his brow at her and Bella Swan turned back to her window like nothing had happened. Alright, then.
"I’m thinkin’ they broke up before he left." Tyler leaned back, his chair finding a shaky balance on only two legs. "Y’know, they say long-distance never works anyway.”"It's more than that." Jessica's sandwich sat fully forgotten as her expression fell a little. "More than just that, at least. She looks… I dunno, broken?”"Okay, but did anybody actually ask her?" Eric came in again, pitch spiking as he leaned forward on one side of Angela. “Because she looked at me like a ghost when I brought up Friday’s physics homework, just saying.”"Well, somebody's gotta water that plant and I know I’m not." Lauren said her piece, tone slow as syrup. It only took a second of staring Bella’s way for the blonde girl to decide enough was enough of that as she turned her attention onto Zander. He didn’t even blink as her gaze did a lap down from his hair to his chain and then back up. "Sooo, Zander. You've been gone, like, a week. Business trips again?" Mouth full of blood-salsa, Zander nodded around his burrito. “...yarp.”"Mexico, right?” Lauren nodded, asking the question like she didn’t already know. “Must be sooo nice, having somewhere better to be."
He chewed slow, finally swallowing down the taste of A-positive and cilantro. "Somewhere warmer, anyway."
"You should take people sometime." The blonde tilted her head, hand rising on instinct to curl her fingers through hair that simply wasn’t there anymore. "Some of us are dying up here."
"Speaking of dying." Jessica didn't even look at the blonde girl as two fingers reached over onto Zander’s plate to steal one of his tater tots, as if her tray wasn’t full of them. "I need to know where you got your hair cut, Lauren. It’s really growing on me. Soooo brave going that short, by the way. Like, really short. It's basically a boy cut and you're just... owning it."
Lauren's jaw did a small thing. "It's French."
"It's sooo French."
And the crowd goes wild. Zander made sure to hide his face as he dug deeper with another bite into his burrito, no desire to get sucked into whatever was going on between them.“Hey, Zander.”The vampire in question snapped his attention across the table. “Yo.”Mike aimed a finger his way. “Dude, I’ve known you like eight months and I just realized I don’t know your birthday.”“...you didn’t ask?”“Oh, yeah…” Mike nodded slow, as if the idea was revolutionary. “So, uhhh… when’s your birthday, man?"“Oh, shut up, Mike.” Jessica huffed, arms crossed. “You’re soooo obvious.”Huh. It only took a raised eyebrow toward his girl for her to roll hers back toward Zander and point a hand at Mike. “Captain Obvious over here just wants a reason to show up to your house.”“That’s not tr-” Jessica’s stare choked the lie in Mike’s throat. “Okay, well, it’s not completely true. Mostly just wanted to get an early invite to a birthday party, bro.”Fair. Zander nodded slow. “Next month, by the way. October Seventh.”
“Oh my god, that’s soon soon!” Laure’s purr forced Jessica’s attention off Mike and firmly onto her, both girls eyes doing a solid five seconds of silent knife work.
"So what you doin' for it, man?" Tyler let his chair drop back onto four legs, grin still easy and wide as he uncrossed his arms. "Seventeen — nah, wait, eighteen? Whatever it is, man, rich-kid birthday, you gotta do it big. I know you got it like that."Zander blinked as Tyler went off on something about his cousin’s party, Eric riding his bumper with a story about a bounce house, Milke talking over both of them as Angela sat there listening patiently and Lauren asked him another question he couldn’t really hear over the sounds of something in the back of his mind.
"I don't know. I..."
His last party was speakers and strobes in an empty lot, most of it with people he never even paid attention to in school. Sprite had gone flat in a red cup, Julius yelling over the bass with a paper plate bending under too much food while Rico was laughing with his whole chest, saying something — what did he even say?Zander couldn’t remember. All he knew was the three weeks after that, the same faces staring back at him bloodied and broken on a warehouse floor under bass you couldn’t hear over the screaming, two faces urned up at the ceiling with the light gone out of them as blood crawled across the concrete toward Zander like it knew him. “Zander?”His finger twitched against the foil of his burrito as Jessica called his name."...I didn't really have plans."
The bell went off over his head and murdered the whole conversation, the table breaking apart into backpack zippers and scraping trays. Zander dumped his empty tray one-handed as he joined three hundred other bodies in remembering that fifth period existed.Jessica fell in against his side, arm threading through his and that citrus-sugar warmth stronger than ever. They were halfway down the hall by the time she finally spoke up again, another question ready and aimed. "Do you think they'll come back?"
"Hm?” He blinked down at her, fighting past thoughts of his brothers to remember the present in front of him. Julius woulda been twenty this year. “Oh — you mean the Cullens."
"No, I mean the tater tots. Yes, the Cullens."
That was the thing.The whole question right there and waiting.He knew they did, because of course they did. He knew it the way you knew how to hum a song you didn’t know the lyrics to; third book, fourth book, wedding. The girl got bit eventually because all of it hinged on the simple fact that a hundred-year-old boy was never gonna stay away from the palest girl Arizona had ever seen. When, though?How, was the other part of it he couldn’t put an answer too.What dumb trigger could possibly drag them back?All of that lived in pages he’d skimmed a lifetime ago in middle school to impress a girl whose name he couldn’t even remember."Probably." He rolled the word out slow with a shrug, and held the classroom door for her with two fingers. "Who knows what they could be up to?""...that is such a non-answer."
"Woman, what do you want from me?"