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CHAPTER TWO
Nightmares Don’t Wear Chanel

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BELLA

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I woke up to the scent of blood and last week’s chocolate wrappers still in the garbage can. The neighbors next door were making coffee and the gay couple two floors down were smoking up some pot. The fourteen TVs that were on in the building, six iPods including the jogger outside blaring Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ the Vida Loca,” and the pitter-patter of feet everywhere made me want to jump out the freaking window. I held onto my head and stumbled towards the bathroom door.

Normally I would praise the god that granted me a single room but that day, I was desperate for someone to hold my hair back while I vomited up all that crappy pizza. Ten minutes later, I wobbled back to bed, shut the curtains over my head to keep out the light, and tried to go back to sleep. I had no idea what time it was or what day it was or how I’d gotten there. All I knew was that no matter how tightly I shut my eyes, I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

I figured I was just tired but after counting my 1,356th consecutive sheep, I gave up trying. The sounds were dwindling but my stomach didn’t quite settle. I was so hungry but every time I tried to think of something to eat, I couldn’t conjure up the desire for food. I thought about ice cream because it had once made me feel better but the sheer thought of it made me run to the bathroom all over again. I started freaking out when I saw the vomited blood. My throat felt sore and scratchy like I’d scraped it with all the dry heaving.

There wasn’t anything left in my stomach to throw up. It was the world that was making me sick.

I stabilized a little come sunset. I was tired of just lying there in pain so I showered, dressed, and was headed out the door when I saw the post-its. One was obviously Emmett’s but the one beneath in the elegant cursive… Emmett couldn’t even loop his y’s, let alone write calligraphy.

“Be safe…”

Safe from what? Myself? I slipped the note into my back pocket and told myself to ask Emmett about it later. It occurred to me on the way downstairs that I had no idea what day it was or how many classes I’d missed while sleeping and I didn’t seem to care. I went to the cafeteria first because I knew Emmett was probably there with the others having dinner at this time of night.

Em was always a bit predictable in his unpredictability but I’ve never let him know. He liked to believe he was a reckless party boy, sans the fraternity, but he still texted me where he was, who he was with, and when he’d be home every chance he got. He and I hailed from the same no-name town so we stuck together. We hadn’t been very close during high school. He was a jock. I was a nerd, but he got a scholarship and we met up here again. Since then, we were stuck like glue.

He was always running around one football field or another and I was in the library or class or the quietest, most far-away gazebo or bench I could find on campus so we’d developed the post-it system. He left me something on my door since I never locked it. He had a roommate so I’d stick the notes on the underside of the clipboard hanging outside his door. Post-its fit into pockets much better than clipboards and since we were always on the run, it made sense to us. To everyone else, we were always the weird kids with the little orange pieces of paper sticking out the back of our pants.

“Hey you!” he called in the distance. I dragged myself over. “You done celebrating?”

I gave him a one-armed hug and sat down across from his girl of the week, a redhead with obvious emotional issues. I couldn’t even tell her expression under all those piercings. I greeted her and she seemed friendly enough for the two seconds she was there.

“What exactly am I celebrating?” I mumbled, dropping my forehead down onto the relatively clean lunch table. He chuckled and patted my head like I was a pet cat.

“You’ve been totally hung over the last three days, Bell. Since your friend told me you were celebrating, I just thought maybe you’d won the lotto or something. Or you two had locked yourselves in the room and really celebrated all weekend.”

A face found me in the darkness, a trigger memory shortly followed by tiny other glimpse. Men on the bridge. His arms around me. Shivering with death. A mansion in a dream and the loss of Brad Pitt. I snapped up off the table and looked at Emmett’s playful smirk.

“What friend?” I practically growled.

“You know. What’s his name? The one you asked to drop you off after the party.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What party, Em?”

His smirk quickly died and he leaned in to whisper, “Bell, you don’t think they gave you something, do you? Roofies? I mean, memory loss is a side-effect and you still look pretty fucked up. It’s not like you party a lot so you might not have known how to watch out for that stuff.”

I tried to conjure up a memory of a party but all I saw was a face, a kind face with sad, golden eyes and a sarcastic smirk. I tried to think of fear but all I saw was that face and I felt safe.

“No, I just think I took some tequila thinking it was rum or something. Didn’t even notice till I was throwing up all morning,” I lied. I remembered seeing what three little shots of tequila did to a mammoth like Emmett. To me, it would surely explain my symptoms, even though I knew no alcohol had touched my lips in months and I’d never been at any party.

He made a knowing murmur and took a big bite of his sandwich. “Well he seemed like a nice guy to me. He was looking at your books when I came in with this big goofy grin like an eighth-grader in love.”

My tired, drifting eyes snapped to his face again. “He was in my room?”

Emmett nodded. “Yeah. He was a looker. All fancy. Just what kind of party were you at anyway?”

I didn’t much care for his mocking tone but I let it pass because it proved that my dream wasn’t a dream. And if it was, I might as well keep dreaming now.

-

I had “slept” for three days, it seemed. I aced the paper, apparently, though I’d missed a stats quiz that I’d have to make up. Still, all that seemed irrelevant. As I walked the sidewalks from class to class, I looked for the pale features of my mystery man in the faces of others. I saw men with strong jaws like him, maybe even the same lips or almond-shaped eyes or even the way his hair stood up and back messily. But they were not him.

A strange thing started to occur. I noticed that the more I looked around, the more the men started to look back. The lustful looks I got! It only made the hunger worse, though I still couldn’t bring myself to eat or drink anything. I quickly learned not to miss food, not if it only hurt me. It would take longer to get over the loss of sleep but Edward would help with that later.

I did enjoy the time though. All I had was time now. To think, to read and reread, to do homework, to watch TV (which I hadn’t done since I started college)… I even thought about getting a job. The weariness slowly went away and then I was just a ball of energy with no circadian rhythm.

I was invited to a hell of a lot more parties, which I didn’t even know went on before that night. My classmates’ grades suddenly made more sense. I’d tire Emmett out dancing till 4:00 in the morning and gravitated towards Denny’s restaurants for the space and open doors. My dorm neighbors still screwed like rabbits so, to escape the now even louder squishy noises, I was rarely at home except to shower and pick up or drop off stuff.

I returned to my dorm to pick up my Stats book two weeks after my transformation. I caught a look at myself in the full-length mirror. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail but I could see the changes already. A part of me had even expected to see them, thanks to the tiny glimmer of my mystery man in the back of my mind. My skin looked flawless like chiseled marble and my eyes looked larger, intense. The dark color was slowly being overtaken by gold like it was seeping in from the edges and overtaking me. This was the last I really saw of my old self.

Afterwards, all I saw were remnants of myself. The shape of my face, the color of my hair, my general silhouette… those stayed mine. The change was in the details but that was all that mattered to the hungry eyes that looked me over as I walked around campus.

I went to open the door to leave and saw the new notes. Little orange squares with blue ink. I instantly froze. Some were Emmett, inviting me to yet another party. That boy was insatiable for a human. Some were reminders to call my folks. But one caught my attention, so much so that I closed the door completely and set down my bag by my feet.

“Found me yet?” it read.

I ran my index finger over the ink, smudging it. I gasped suddenly and looked around, expecting to see him standing there with a pen in hand but finding nothing. I pulled open the door and ran into the hallway, all the way to the elevator and out the front door. There was no one. I slowly made my way back to my dorm. I went to get my bag, horribly disappointed, and found yet another note.

“You know where to look.”

I growled and jumped up and down like an idiot. I checked the closet, the bathroom, under the bed... It’s not like there were any places he could hide. I could feel him smiling inside my head. I ran my hands through my hair and spun around one last time. Then, I started getting crazy. I looked up slowly, checking the roof just in case. I sighed with relief to find it clear. A breeze caught the size of my face and I turned to the half-open window. The bastard had left me a clue.

I looked out the window but there was no one hanging off the side or wearing expensive climbing equipment and no one was screaming bloody murder downstairs because someone had been creepy enough to crawl up the tree by my window.

I shook my head and whispered to myself, “You’re an idiot, Bella Swan.”

I took my bag and hurried out before more squishy noises started somewhere in the building. I’d never need porn again. I went to class, hid out at the library for a few hours, and began what can only be described as an extremely premature thesis. I was still undergrad with no declared major. I had no idea what I was doing.

I closed my laptop that morning and looked around. Another student had fallen asleep in the distance, a redheaded girl. Her laptop was left open and it seemed she’d been watching a movie because the light flickered from the screen onto her whole frame. She hid her face in her arms. I didn’t envy her. I wasn’t tired anymore. But something about that girl stuck with me. It was not me who found her interesting. It was the sarcastic smirk in my head, telling me to pay attention.

I thought back to the mysterious notes. Where exactly was I supposed to look that I hadn’t already? And that’s when it hit me. I felt him always because he was always with me. More flashes of that night came into view inside my head. His eyes pleaded me to remember. Anytime you need me, just find me. I’ll be right here.

The castle. It called to me when Edward couldn’t bring himself to do so. I looked down at my arms on the table and slowly, reluctantly, folded them before me. I closed my eyes and rested my head and in a few moments, I was back on the front steps of the grand mansion. I didn’t go inside but I did look around, harried. He was nowhere and I began to wonder if I dreamed up the place all by myself.

“You came!” he called out of nowhere. I saw him walking towards me in the distance and stood off the steps. He wore a black suit, very old fashioned but, by the emblem on the front pocket, definitely Chanel. The rational side of me wanted to be afraid but how could I be afraid of something so beautiful. His white undershirt was a little open and his trousers made him look he’d just come back from a ride through the English countryside on a thoroughbred.

“I did? I did,” I mumbled quickly, trying to compose myself.

He smiled and wrapped his arms around me, lifting me off the ground effortlessly. “I thought you’d forgotten too much and wouldn’t know how to find me.”

He set me back down and met my bewildered eyes, full of confusion. “So you left the notes? You’re E?”

He looked down and blushed. “I’m sorry. I—” he began but I put up a hand to stop him.

I took a step forward so we were nose to nose and gritted my teeth, keeping back the slowly-seeping anger. “What am I? What are we? And why does it hurt every second I’m away from you?”

I prayed my voice didn’t falter but there was no hope. I couldn’t hide my emotions in this place, certainly not from him. His sad eyes fell on my arms by my side. I faintly remembered the last time, his hands running up my arms tenderly. I felt something begin to burn inside me, a tiny spark deep within my chest. I would later confuse this spark for many things.

Lust, love, hunger, fear...

He took my hand gingerly. I felt compelled to let him though I knew it was in my power to deny him, a power no one before me had held.

He took a deep breath as he always would before telling me hard news and answered, “We’re… vampires.”

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EDWARD

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I had waited so long for her to remember. I knew her hunger would only get worse and worse as her body slowly changed but I couldn’t bring myself to reenter society, not even for this beautiful creation of mine. I could feel her looking for me in all the wrong places. So I left her notes the way her friend had done and waited in our secret place.

It’s all I could do for weeks. I thought I might be able to contact Carlisle before then but ever since Bella entered my home, Carlisle was gone. It’s not like I had a phone or email. I lived in a loft beneath the library. If my brothers and sisters wanted to know how I was doing, they’d ask Carlisle to contact me telepathically. But I’d never been alone for this long and Bella was technically the last family I had at the moment, even if she didn’t know it.

I felt obligated to tell her the truth, no matter how awful. I knew she would forget most of it when she opened her eyes again, just as she’d done before, but I knew I could at least leave her with the imprint of what she was and how to live her new death.

“We’re… vampires, Bella,” I told her bluntly. She stepped back. I wondered if she had suspected because the usual signs of grief did not show on her face at all. I nodded towards the front steps of the castle for us to sit. This would be a long explanation. “I’m sorry but that was the only way to save your life.”

“I died?” she asked after a moment of silence. She stared off at the gardens before us. I took her hand again, squeezing it reassuringly in my lap.

“You were being attacked. You fell over the railing on the blue bridge outside the library. You hit your head on the rocks. I’m sorry but if I hadn’t interjected, you surely would have.”

“But I wasn’t dead, was I? Am I dead now?”

“Your body is. You won’t want anything but blood. You won’t sleep, won’t ever tire once you give up your humanity…”

Her large, wandering eyes found mine again. “My humanity?” she screeched, finally beginning to understand the severity of the situation. “So you killed me?”

I readied myself for the inevitable explanation. I had been foolish for ever thinking this would be easy. “That’s not what I meant. See, the hunger is just going to slowly build up until you crave blood. You won’t be able to stop yourself. Once you finally drink, you will leave all human weaknesses behind. All human desires. You won’t remember the taste of food. You’ll grow cold. But the parts of you that make you you, your personality and wit and compassion and stubbornness, will remain. The most beautiful parts of you will live, Bella.”

She gulped down, obviously still confused but calmer. “You don’t know me,” she reminded. “You don’t know if I’m smart or compassionate. I could have been anyone, done anything. I could have been dangerous to you.”

I shook my head adamantly, praying she understood. “No, see, some of us come with special abilities. I have the gift to penetrate minds, get a sense of a person. This is how I believe I can project this place into our minds, why I can feel your hand even though I know we are not in the same room. As the person who… well, turned you… I feel… connected to you. I can’t seem to read your mind but I can talk to you, if you allow me the chance. I can help you when the hunger gets worse.”

That’s when the tears began and she might as well have taken my heart in her fist and squeezed. I hated seeing her in pain, much the way Carlisle hated seeing me suffer. I blamed the bond. She shook her head and fell forward, leaning into my chest. “Please. You killed me once. Kill me again. Don’t make me become a murderer. Please tell me there’s a way to get out of this.”

“No no no!” I quickly corrected. “You can feed without killing, Bella. My father, Carlisle, has taught our family to live on the blood of animals for years. You don’t need to kill. I would stop you before I let you become a monster. I promise you.”

Her shoulders fell but she didn’t lift her cheek from my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, cautiously. I wasn’t sure how to touch her. I was used to being affectionate with family (Esme was a hugger) but I had just met this girl and the last thing I wanted was to scare her away. I figured hugs were fine since they seemed to comfort her and she leaned in of her own accord.

I let her cry for a while longer, though time didn’t really exist in our heads the way it did in the real world. It could have gone on for hours, days… Anything longer and we would start to miss the real world.

When she finally pulled away from my now-soggy chest, she said, “I don’t want to go back to school like this. I shouldn’t be around people.”

I brushed her hair back from her face and answered softly, “You have to, I’m afraid. It’s a burden for us, I know, but I didn’t have time to fake your death. If you had disappeared for the time it takes to control the hunger, it would have raised too much suspicion. Your world will be more accepting of your differences if is a slow progression.”

“When will I have to feed? How long do I have before I start to die?”

“You are still new. Because you don’t yet know the feel of blood in your system, it won’t happen for at most a month after changing.”

“I haven’t seen you in two weeks. I have two weeks left then.”

I nodded. “But I told you. I will have taught you by then.”

She stood and started to pace on the lawn, kicking her heels off. I thought she’d like the red, flowing dress I’d conjured but she apparently wasn’t that type of girl, no matter how beautiful she looked. She tried to pace faster but the dress was too tight. She looked to me for permission. I nodded and she ripped up the side with her bare hands, frustration and anger driving her strength more than her condition. I smirked but quickly hid it with my hand.

I lingered on the steps, leaning forward onto my knees as I watched her think. I wished I could penetrate her mind the way I did so many others but it seemed impossible to even want to try.

“I didn’t remember you when I woke up last time. How do we know what you teach me here is going to transfer over into reality?” she asked, question after reasonable question.

I just laughed and shrugged. “I can only hope you remember more each time. Until then… well, we’ll always have post-its.”

She laughed drily and lingered on my face a second too long. It caught me off guard. She had a way of looking at me that made me think she could read my mind the read others’. I wondered if, in this new place, the doors swung both ways. Then, she said the words that would haunt me for days, “I’m sorry about your family. It must be lonely without them but you didn’t need to leave them.”

I stood right up and the inner monster bared its teeth. “How do you know about them?” I asked.

She shook her head as though snapping herself out of a trance and began to recoil back into herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, genuinely afraid. It was true that Carlisle’s sudden silence was driving me insane with all sorts of worries but I would never willingly hurt her. She had to know this. I had compelled it of her. She didn’t seem to have heard that final thought, the assurance of safety, because she was already walking backwards away from me, holding onto the sides of her dress. I hurried down the stairs after her but she was soon running out to the hedges. I watched her disappear into light and then I was alone again. It seemed I would alone for some time yet, wondering what it was she’d seen of my long past that had scared her so.

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The official playlist and all sorts of pics have been added to my profile so go check it out. The motorcycle pic is up as well as all of Edward’s suits and the castle for all you banner makers.

Reviews are better than eighth-graders in love.