Run, Bella, run.

125

Run, Bella, run.  I couldn't make myself say the words out loud.
She jumped to her feet.  "We're going to be late," she said, just as I'd started to
worry that she'd somehow heard my silent warning.
"I'm not going to class."
"Why not?"
Because I don't want to kill you.  "It's healthy to ditch class now and then."
To be precise, it was healthier for the humans if the vampires ditched on days
when human blood would be spilt.  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.  And, by the way, I adore you?in frightening, dangerous ways.
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.
Instinctively, 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.
I looked toward the distress.
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 almost took the door off the car.
? 2008 Stephenie Meyer