Aubade: A Song at Dawn
Anna Rose
Honors Senior Project, Spring 2019 Mentor: Dr. Erin Abraham
“…my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, ‘You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.’”
—Carmilla, J.S. Le Fanu, Chapter 4
1
Author’s Note
It’s very strange to be here saying that this story, which is a part of something I would usually consider a hobby, is an academic work. But, when my senior project began to take shape, I found that the best way to consider the themes I wanted (beauty, jealousy, and death) was through that hobby. An essay, which I initially considered, would have functioned well to explore those themes, but would have done so at the expense of empathy for the characters. An essay is an objective observation of a narrative, not an empathetic experience of one.
This is why I chose to write a story. By writing my own narrative, I was still able to explore how beauty, jealousy, and death are entangled, while also bringing a sense of empathy to the protagonists and their situation. By writing a fanfiction, I was able to do these things within an established universe, exploring what was left unexplored by Stephanie Meyer in her novel Twilight.
In the original narrative, the female perspective on beauty is largely left untouched. Protagonist Bella Swan focuses on the beauty of the male characters, and on her fears of losing her youthful beauty, but rarely thinks of beauty in other ways. When a new female protagonist, Rosalie Hale, is inserted in place of Edward Cullen, beauty entwines itself not only with death, but with jealousy. This is a theme not present in Twilight, and was therefore one I chose to explore here.
Vampires offer the opportunity to be seduced by the forbidden: in this case, the forbidden nature of a relationship based on more than surface beauty. In a world where women’s surface looks often comprise the whole of their value, to desire something deeper is close to if not wholly a taboo. Beauty, the jealousy surrounding another’s beauty or their mortality, and death are the themes that give rise to this basic narrative.
I’m pretty sure that’s enough rambling from me, with one final note. The photos here are my own. I took them and edited them to enhance and illustrate—albeit in a roundabout manner—the narrative. I hope that’s worked out as planned.
Thank you to Dr. Erin Abraham for her mentorship through the process of writing this. Without her, I would never have finished this project. It’s been an honor to work with her.
The most beautiful sight in the world is Bella Swan’s sleeping face.
I’m sitting in the tree outside her window, gazing in at Bella. I haven’t gotten the courage, yet, to open up the window. The lock would be easy to force and then I could just climb inside, with no one the wiser. Bella would never know—would never have to know.
But every time I reach for the sill, something stays my hand.
I’ve been sitting here in this damp, ice-cold tree for hours. An uncomfortable feeling crawls up my spine every time I wonder if this is right. If it’s okay to watch Bella outside the window, the same way that any other predator might watch its prey. I won’t pretend I’m somehow keeping Bella safe. No, Bella is never in more danger than when she’s within arm’s reach of me.
So far, only a century of self-control keeps me from, quite literally, ripping Bella’s throat out. She’s so vulnerable, right there. Asleep. Unaware. Unprotected. There wouldn’t be anything Bella could do anyway, but…the idea of this is appealing in an almost sickening way.
This hunger is something that I haven’t felt in years. Nothing has ever changed in this dreary, drippy town of Forks, Washington; that’s part of the reason I like it. It’s routine, the same things day after day and year after year. The rain falls every day. There are no surprises. Bella’s arrival has changed that, and I’m not sure it’s for the better.
I remember the day we met with perfect clarity. The memory of Bella walking into my AP Calculus class is etched into my mind like stone. It was just another day, another average day of wondering why I’m repeating high school again when I know calculus as well as if not better than professional
mathematicians, when Bella Swan arrived and everything changed.
There was a round of welcoming applause, but Rosalie barely registered it over the flood of need sweeping over her. She gripped the edge of the desk so hard it nearly cracked, staring at the new girl. She wasn’t very remarkable in looks, and the frumpy clothes didn’t help. The girl was thin and colorless, brown hair in a staid cut: in other words, completely unappealing. But her smell—
Divine. Lilacs. Freesia. Strawberry? No, that was just shampoo. But there was something else, something that made Rosalie hungry.
Her nails dug into the edge of the desk, marring the hard plastic, as the teacher pointed at the empty desk beside Rosalie. There was nothing Rosalie could do, nowhere to move—pinned between the new girl and the window, trapped at her desk by the social convention of assigned seating. Rosalie never had been good at breaking social convention, no matter what it cost her. So she sat and stared, hoping she looked more like a frightened rabbit than a starving wildcat, as Bella sat down beside her.
“Hi,” Bella offered, and was answered only by panicked silence. She gave Rosalie a once-over, lips thinning in apparent disapproval at whatever she saw, and turned to pull notebook and pencil out of her bag. No more passed between them. Bella didn’t even seem to think about the interaction again.
Still, Rosalie couldn’t focus on a word the teacher said. Her pen nearly snapped between her fingers and not from irritation that the teacher was spouting incorrect information about derivatives again. When class let out, she bolted for the door faster than she’d ever run after anything else in her life.
Bella’s scent followed her out.
Wasn’t that just a fascinating start? The lukewarm greeting, the commonplace looks…by all rights, I should never have noticed Bella. Yet her scent haunted me for hours afterward. I even answered a question incorrectly in AP Physics, which hasn’t happened in years. Even that small blow to my pride, about which Jasper and Emmett teased me mercilessly, barely registered.
In her bed Bella stirs. I draw back, into the deeper shadows of the trees, just in case. Didn’t need to worry, though: Bella merely turns over with a sigh, murmuring something inaudible even to vampiric senses. Now, instead of just the lump of covers and pillows, I can see the curve of Bella’s pale shoulder, sharply defined against the dark bedcovers.
These are feelings I’ve never had before. I thought I’d have had them for Emmett, long ago, but my feelings for him never developed further than sisterly or perhaps a little maternal. I was the one to turn him into a vampire; there’s a reason that the vampire who turns another is the sire. I made Emmett the way that a parent makes a child. Romance was never an option for us. Though other vampires have relationships in that way, the thought is slightly—very—nauseating to me.
None of this makes any sense. For years I’ve been just…so tired of physical attraction. Beauty is nothing to me. I’m frozen, a marble Madonna; Edward once wrote me a wry poem on the subject. Though, considering the circumstances of my transformation, it would be better to consider myself the woman in the statue of the Rape of the Sabine Women. I saw the statue once, and the helpless terror on the woman’s face drove me right out of the museum in panic.
My position is, and always has been, more in line with the screaming, nameless Sabine woman, frozen forever in her suffering.
Rosalie thought it a cruel joke that she, the vampire, was the one suffering while her prey went about without knowing what she did to Rosalie. She knew that she liked to watch others suffer, but experiencing it herself was intolerable. After the first day walking through school with Bella’s scent drifting through the halls, Rosalie couldn’t take it anymore. She fled, with her father Carlisle’s worried blessing, running northward.
A week in Alaska did wonders to clear her head. Rosalie returned to Forks, confident in her self-control and sure of her ability to ignore Bella Swan, until she walked through the doors of the school. The second she laid eyes on Bella, Rosalie took a step forward—
—and had her arm seized by Emmett. “No,” he said.
“I’m fine,” Rosalie snapped, wrenching herself away from him.
“You’re not fine,” Jasper said, stepping in front of her and blocking her line of sight to her victim. “She’s looking this way,” Alice said. “Can somebody—?”
Edward sighed. “I’ll handle it, I have biology with her first period,” he said wearily. He shrugged at Rosalie and walked away in Bella’s general direction. Rosalie couldn’t see the whole interaction: Emmett and Jasper were herding her out the door again, away from Bella entirely.
“We’re all going to be late for class and I just missed a week of school,” Rosalie pointed out, glaring at the others. “So make this quick.”
“Since when did you care about missing class?” Emmett said.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time one of them ditched school because they were hungry. Jasper alone accounted for roughly half the “sick days” this family had accrued. But still—“I can handle it!” Rosalie snapped.
Alice put a hand on Emmett’s arm. “She’ll be fine, she just needs to collect herself,” she said. Of course, that shut both the boys up. Alice was never wrong. If she said Rosalie would be fine, then she would be.
It’s been a little more than two weeks since that day. January faded into February. I avoided Bella at all costs. Gritted my teeth through Calculus. Did my best to focus on not breaking a pencil while taking an exam. Managed that, but wasn’t so successful at avoiding why exactly Bella, a junior with no desire to raise her hand or excel, somehow qualifies for this class.
Even ignoring her, I can’t get Bella out of my head.
And now here I am, up in a tree at two in the morning, outside Bella’s window, watching my light-of-love sleep.
It’s ridiculous. But—
“It’s real,” I murmur. I reach out to press my hand flat against the glass. Such a thin barrier keeping Bella safe, keeping the hostile world at bay. It would only take a push, the gentlest press, and I’d be inside.
Bella turns over again, stirring and pushing off the covers. Now her whole torso is bare. She wears only a dark tank top, leaving her long thin pale arms on display, bony shoulders and sharp collarbones
showing in stark relief against the bed, neck long and…well, swanlike. Bella is beautiful in sleep, her usual grumpy frown smoothed away from her brow, her lips parted as if for a kiss.
I’m aware, distantly, that both my hands are now pressed against the window. The glass is cool and smooth under my hand, a little slick from dew, colder than Bella certainly would be. If I could breathe I’d be breathing faster, heart pounding harder in anticipation, stomach upside down with nerves and want. As it is—
My reflection is right in front of me.
I recoil. It nearly tips me backwards—overbalanced—I almost fall from the tree, barely catching myself. I stare at myself, a pale reflection over Bella’s dark silhouette, and shudder. I’m no Madonna. I’m a Medusa. A Gorgon, a monster, a being that turns her victims to stone.
I can’t break my reflection’s gaze as I retreat. I climb down the tree, slowly, and stop at the bottom, looking up at the window again. It’s nearly three in the morning. Time to go home. They’ll all be worried and I don’t like to worry my family.
On the soft, damp forest floor, my feet make no sound. Supernatural help—the gift of vampirism. It’s quiet that I like—quiet that gives me time to think. I guess I’m Medusa in another way. The Gorgon once was the most beautiful woman in the world, and her beauty so captivated Poseidon that he raped her in the goddess Athena’s temple. In a rage, Athena cursed Medusa with her terrifying visage and serpentine hair, that no man might ever touch her again. In what is possibly a too-personal interpretation of the myth, I’ve always seen the transformation as less of a curse and more of a blessing.
After all, I’ve never wanted a man since I was raped.
Of course, she always knew she was a little bit different. Her adoration for her friend Vera, for one thing, went a little bit beyond the norm. Her attention to boys always seemed a price she had to pay for the lavish life and attention she so craved; after all, boys complimented her looks and gave her presents. If she wanted to support the lifestyle of wealth and luxury, Rosalie would have to marry well.
The least she could do would be to pick one who would look well on her arm.
And so when she met Royce King, who was handsome and charming and sent her roses, Rosalie saw her chance. She met him when she was wearing white, on a sunny summer day. He sent her roses and violets, the latter for the color of her eyes, with poetry. Such a romance, a romance with a wealthy man smitten with their daughter, was what her parents dreamed of for her. It was what Rosalie always knew she should dream about.
They were children of wealth, a boy and girl who knew no want, no fear, no suffering. They were loved in the way their parents knew how to love them and they spoke of love in the only language they knew: money. It was
a courtship of gift after gift, extravagance after extravagance. Rosalie bought dresses and Royce bought dinners, both for the benefit of their intended; these gestures were enough. Feelings—or their lack—were never discussed.
Still, it was so much attention, a whirlwind courtship. Before two months were out they were engaged and a date for the wedding was set. There were other things Rosalie might have wanted, had she lived in another time, but her world was one where thinking of such things was impossible—so taboo that she didn’t even have the language to describe what she wanted. If her dreams of her best friend Vera were sometimes a little more than platonic, well, they were only dreams.
Rosalie put aside her misgivings. She put aside the whispered rumors about her fiancé’s temper, the way that Royce sometimes looked at her like she wasn’t really there, the way that Rosalie resisted being out of the public eye when she was with Royce. She set them aside because this, this was how things were supposed to be. This was the end of the fairy tale.
One night, Rosalie was coming home from Vera’s house when she stumbled upon her fiancé and his friends, all drunk, lying in wait for her. They joked about her beauty, they laughed at her fear when they pulled at her clothes, and when she cried with pain they told her that this was for her own good. That this was to show her what it was like to enjoy a man, to be a real woman.
They left her in the street. That was where the vampire Carlisle found her, bleeding out. When he spoke to her she saw only a doctor, another man whose hands she couldn’t bear—Rosalie begged him to kill her. He refused, telling her that he could save her, give her back her future.
His teeth were very sharp.
I go straight to my room when I get home and sit at the window, staring out into the dim early-morning forest. In another room, Edward is playing piano. Chopin, maybe? It’s very soothing, no matter what it is. Downstairs in the living room Emmett and Alice are laughing about something. There’s a distinct shout of victory; I’m betting on them playing Uno again. I can’t hear Carlisle and Jasper, they must be out tonight. And Esme—
There’s a knock at the door. Ah, there she is. “Come in.”
Esme’s head pokes into the room. “It’s good to see you at home,” she says, smiling. Despite my mood, I can’t help but smile in return. “It’s good to be home. Did I miss much?” “Only the usual,” Esme says. She comes into the room, sits down at my desk. I wince as her elbow nearly knocks a precarious pile of physics homework off the desk. She raises her brows, mock stern. “And where were you, young lady?”
“Out,” I say, feeling absurdly like the teenager I pretend to be.
This is how it works, though. Whenever the charade begins again, we fall into our assigned roles with ease, even in the privacy of the house. Esme and Carlisle, the kindly mother and father. Rosalie and Jasper, the aloof twins. Emmet, the rambunctious oldest brother. Alice, the adopted little sister. Edward, the petulant youngest brother. A perfect, if odd, family.
The reality…well, the reality is much, much stranger.
Carlisle was the very first of the family—he was a vampire back in the 1600s, or so he claimed. Rosalie always looked at the claim a little sideways, but knowing vampiric immortality well herself, she wouldn’t be shocked to find it was so. Of Carslisle’s family, Edward was the first; when he was dying of influenza, Carlisle chose to “save” him. Edward tended to say he was grateful, but his perpetual melancholy said that he felt a little
differently.
Then it was Esme, saved from a suicide, and Rosalie could never begrudge that change, if only because Esme was genuinely happier as a vampire. Well—no, she was genuinely happier with Carlisle. It was bizarre to Rosalie, that Carlisle changed Esme and they were still a couple, but she accepted it because what else was she supposed to do? Not all vampires came into their undeath with the same hang-ups that Rosalie had.
Rosalie was the fourth, intended to be Edward’s match as Esme was Carlisle’s. But Rosalie couldn’t bear the touch of a man’s hand, and in those first years she was half feral anyway. She liked her instincts. She liked the power they gave her. Edward did not.
Emmett was the next. Rosalie saved him from a bear attack because he reminded her of Vera’s son, and something about his eyes looked like Vera. He was familiar, and when he changed their relationship was almost
instantly fraternal. Any hopes that this change would produce a romance were dashed by Rosalie’s sisterly feelings, which left no room for romance.
And then there were Alice and Jasper, who came together. Alice had been a patient in a sanitarium, put there for foresight no one believed. She was sensible, more even than Esme and Carlisle, and her gift of foresight was a boon to the whole family. Jasper was older than all of them but Carlisle, having been turned before the Civil War; if they thought Rosalie feral, then Jasper was even more so. But, as Rosalie had done, he tamed himself. He reined in his instincts, mostly because of Alice.
Rosalie didn’t have a partner. She did not have a love of music or poetry, as Edward did, for she had never been a deep thinker in life and that seemed unlikely to change now. She did not have Emmett’s calm temperament, nor his good humor, which kept him sane through the long, long years.
No, Rosalie had built her whole self around beauty in life, and so it was in undeath. She wore whatever was in fashion, no matter what that might be. Her supernatural beauty she augmented with makeup, no matter how wild the trend. She surrounded herself with lovely objects, things that died or faded away, and felt no remorse on leaving them behind.
Alice asked her once why she often kept flowers when they were long since wilted or dead. “They’re not pretty anymore, and you…like pretty things,” she said, picking up a dried daisy where it lay discarded and grey with dust on Rosalie’s dresser.
“Beauty should be allowed to die,” Rosalie said, lying on her bed with a book in front of her face. “You sound like Edward.”
Rosalie gave Alice a sly look over the top of the book. “Like I’ll start talking about Proust at any moment?” They shared a laugh before Alice sobered again. “You have an obsession with death,” she said. “I don’t foresee this ending well, Rosalie.”
“What did you see?” Rosalie demanded, dropping the book and sitting upright.
“Nothing definite,” Alice said. Her brow was furrowed, eyes distant, as if she was having a vision at that very moment. “Only…that you’re going to have to make a choice someday, between life and death. Not your life and death, either.”
“Then whose?”
“You’ve been so odd lately, Rosalie,” Esme says, knocking me back to the present. “Out all the time, coming home with twigs in your hair…”
Self-consciously, I run my fingers through my (perfect) hair. No twigs at all. “There’s nothing around here that can cause me any problems.”
“Even if you can eat a mountain lion for breakfast, that doesn’t mean that’s the only kind of problem to be had,” Esme says. Her tone is so gentle it’s infuriating. “You can talk to me, Rosalie.”
“Edward’s already told you everything,” I surmise. Esme has the grace to look embarrassed.
“That little f—” “Language.”
“—ugh.” I glare at the floor. Having a brother who can read minds is bad enough. Having him be the kind of brother who runs straight to the parents whenever anything happens is even worse. “So you know the whole story.”
When she looks up, I expect disapproval. Instead, Esme’s smiling. “I’m just glad you seem to have found someone who makes you happy.”
I mull that over for a moment. “She frustrates me.”
Esme folds her arms on the back of the chair, leaning on it as she watches me closely. “Edward says her name is Bella?”
In lieu of answering, I snap, “What kind of a name is Bella Swan?” “A name for someone beautiful.”
At that, I scoff. “She’s not that lovely. Not like me.”
“No one’s as lovely as you, Rosie,” Esme says. It would sound trite, except that Esme is nothing if not sincere. It warms my cold, dead heart. “Were you with her tonight?”
I pause. In a sense… “I was,” I say, and think as loudly as I can that Edward had better keep his mouth shut. In the distance, Edward hits a sour note in his song and I smile with satisfaction. It will all come out eventually, but I’m not ready to tell the whole truth.
Somehow, I get the sense that no one will particularly approve of the decision to sit outside Bella’s window all night, watching her sleep.
For what little it’s worth, I don’t even approve of my own decision. This doesn’t stop me from going back the next night.
And the night after that. And the night after that.
It became something near a ritual. Do her best to ignore Bella all day in school. Listen to her quiet conversations with other students. Ask Edward, the only one of the family who’s even remotely friendly with Bella, about her. Sit outside Bella’s window at night.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Of course, the fateful day came when the calc teacher decided that Rosalie and Bella should be partners for a project. It was just a report, nothing very significant, but Rosalie somehow felt like she’d broken out in a cold sweat even though she really couldn’t sweat at all.
She managed to introduce herself, though. “We didn’t start on the right foot, did we?” she asked Bella, smiling a sweet smile that disguised the scream of panic in her head. “I’m Rosalie.”
“Bella.”
Again, unfriendly, but a little more speculative than judgmental. Rosalie looked Bella up and down, observed the layers of sweaters and scarf wrapped around her neck. “Are you cold?”
Bella hunched her shoulders, looking down at the desk. Caving in on herself. That was the wrong thing to say. “Aren’t you?”
“Always,” Rosalie said. She laughed, feeling self-conscious for the first time since who knew when. “But then again, it’s always cold in Forks.”
“Cold and wet and gross,” Bella muttered. She looked at Rosalie sideways through a curtain of hair, gauging her reaction.
Every time she moved, it was all Rosalie could do not to jump her right in the seat, teeth bared. She kept it together, though. “Must be hard to live here.”
“Yeah,” Bella said. She bit her lip. Without another word, she turned to pull a book out of her bag, dismissing Rosalie.
No, no, this conversation wouldn’t end here. “Tell me why you came,” Rosalie said. She leaned a little closer to Bella.
“You don’t want to hear it.”
Daringly, Rosalie put her hand over Bella’s where it rested on the desk. Bella froze, eyes snapping up to meet Rosalie’s, color high in her cheeks, breathing fast. Rosalie pretended not to see the reaction. “Of course I do.”
Bella told her everything. Instead of talking about the project she spilled every word of her past, her flighty mother and distant father, her unwilling move to Forks, her unhappy childhood as a smart girl who
struggled to make friends and was called aloof as a result. Her troubles with self-esteem, her fears of being ugly, of losing her looks before she found a partner.
To Rosalie it all sounded so immature. But Bella’s words didn’t matter, not beside what her body was saying with every move. Every time Rosalie’s fingertips brushed her arm or hand, Bella’s cheeks would flush and her eyes would darken.
Interesting.
And oh, so very intoxicating.
They went to the library, sitting by the fireplace because Bella couldn’t stand the cold. She practically waxed poetic about the weather, bundled to the ears in scarves and a hat, rambling about how cold Forks was and how she missed the sun and heat of her native Arizona. Rosalie made sympathetic noises which started as a usual courteous response. By the time they left the library Rosalie found, to her dismay, that she really was becoming sympathetic to Bella’s troubles.
On the way out the door Bella slipped on a patch of ice. Rosalie caught her and, in the close moment, Bella’s hair brushed over Rosalie’s cheek. The whole way home, Rosalie could smell Bella on her skin.
I like cars.
It’s a whole thing, you know? Speed, sound, a thrill you just don’t get when you’re a vampire and invulnerable to most things. I mean, if the car crashed, I wouldn’t be hurt. The thrill is still the same.
But it goes deeper than that, for me. I like to fix cars, to work on them and repair them and improve them. According to Edward, I work the hardest when I’m having problems in parts of my life unrelated to cars. He says it’s psychological, a “coping mechanism.”
Which is why I spend all of Saturday and Sunday under the hood of my car, pointlessly tinkering with things that don’t need fixing.
It’s easier to smell nothing but oil and grease and rust than it is to look at my calc notes and smell Bella all over them where she scribbled her number. It’s easier to hear nothing but the clang of metal on metal than it is to hear the chime of my phone telling me Bella texted. It’s easier to just not talk to anyone than it is to try to avoid having any conversations about feelings with anyone in this ridiculous family.
I don’t want to talk about my feelings.
They’re useless feelings, because I’m not going to do anything about them.
I can’t decide if I’m jealous of her or in love with her, and I hate it, and absolutely no one here is going to help. Carlisle, bless his soul, really doesn’t get why I hate the idea of vampires shacking up with the people they turn, so he’ll advise that if I’ve fallen that hard that I just turn Bella. Edward will advise me to leave and never look back, but that’s because he’s got some obsession with purity I certainly don’t share and he’s listening to my thoughts now and he knows my intentions are anything but pure. Everyone else will fall somewhere in between.
Which is useless to me, because I’m not turning Bella.
She’s beautiful. It’s a pale shadow of vampiric beauty but that makes it all the better, to me. She’ll fade, she’ll change, and what looks she has will vanish. Jealousy feels like it’s burning me alive every time I think of it, and yet—
—when I think about her face, all I can imagine is what it would feel like to kiss her.
I twist the wrench with a little more force than necessary and half the car’s fender goes flying across the garage.
It would be untrue to say that Rosalie never had an inkling that relations between women could be like those between men and women. She was an educated girl. She read the Greek poets, including Sappho; she read Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando and heard all the stories about the writer. Still, Rosalie never had words for women
in these positions except “eccentric” or, if the speaker was angry, “unnatural.” It was prudent simply not to speak of her more-than-sisterly feelings for her friend Vera.
Rosalie always wanted to be a mother. Her fantasies when she was engaged to Royce mostly had children in them, beautiful children with her golden hair and Royce’s dark eyes, playing happily on the lawn of a big house or tugging at Rosalie’s skirts. She thought she would be a good mother.
Except—
In her youth the dark eyes hadn’t been Royce’s. They’d been Vera’s.
Not that Rosalie had ever admitted it out loud. She could barely even manage to admit it to herself, except as the admission that perhaps she and Vera would do well in a Boston marriage. When they were very young Rosalie came up with the idea that the two of them ought to keep house together and be spinsters, and Vera had agreed. But then she met her husband and they married, and Rosalie stood up at Vera’s wedding and smiled, and couldn’t find the words to say why she cried into her pillow for hours that night.
She turned Emmett into a vampire because his eyes were just like Vera’s. He was the ghost of the child she was never going to have. It was a selfish change, but it was one she would never regret.
After all, now she would never forget how Vera’s eyes looked.
Emmett would never grow old. His eyes would always be the same, even as he grew in confidence, even as he changed. No matter how a vampire’s mind grew, how much they learned or changed, their body would always be the same, frozen in time. Emmett would always be a frozen reminder of the first woman Rosalie had ever loved.
March brings a change in my nightly routine.
I don’t break into Bella’s house, not exactly. No, I just take the key from under the eaves of the house and walk right in the front door. It’s not breaking in when the door is intact, right?
At this point, I can’t even try to resist. After working with Bella on that project, spending so much time with her, getting to know her…I feel differently than I used to. There’s something about Bella that draws me closer and closer, something deeper than mere surface beauty.
Going up the stairs to Bella’s room, my feet are perfectly, utterly silent. There’s nothing to disrupt my thoughts—and right now I sound as melancholy as Edward, walking here thinking of loneliness. Bella and I have a shared lack of belonging. I’ve lost everything but my beauty; Bella has never had anything but her mind. Bella is lonely, struggling to fit in with the world. I’m lonely, completely divorced from the world. We flee the touch of men the same way, though for very different reasons.
Or maybe not. After all, I’m not blind. Bella might be attracted to boys, but she’s attracted to girls too. Like me. And she’s a smart one, Bella, choosing to focus on girls instead of leaning into the danger that men present to beautiful creatures like her.
As I open the door and steps through into Bella’s room, I smile bitterly. I can’t shake this particular set of thoughts, these thoughts of mixed jealousy and lust. The difference between us, of course, is that someday Bella will age. Someday her beauty will fade. Someday, she’ll die.
I envy Bella more than I can say.
This is the first time I’ve been in Bella’s bedroom. It doesn’t look like Bella at all: mostly it’s bare, rather empty and not extremely pleasant. There’s a corkboard over the desk, full of childish drawings and elementary-school projects. Very few personal effects are scattered about, though I note the cactus on the windowsill with a smile. A little piece of home. On the floor of the open closet sits a suitcase—open, but still partly packed, as if the owner is leaving tomorrow.
It’s a view I note in passing as I circle the bed. I take up my post silently in the corner, near the very window where I’ve been watching for so long, and gaze at Bella’s sleeping figure.
Something pricks at me—the echoes of a withered conscience—whispering that this is wrong, that I’m acting the same way that Royce did, once. I’m acting as if Bella belongs to me, as if I can claim ownership of the girl in the bed. But I shake it off. After all, considering the near-fatal car accident, Bella definitely owes me something.
It was such a disaster of a day. Rosalie was just back from Alaska, confident in herself. The first day had been difficult, but she was convinced she could control herself.
And then there was the car accident.
Stupid Bella Swan, having some kind of emotional overload over snow chains on her tires. Stupid Tyler, unable to focus long enough to drive that battleship of a van properly. Stupid Edward, not moving fast enough to get to Bella in time.
Most of all, stupid Rosalie, putting herself between Bella and Tyler’s van.
Everything happened so fast. Rosalie was standing by her car, ignoring Jasper and Alice in favor of watching Bella carefully climb out of her truck to look at the wheels. She was tearing up, for some bizarre reason, and Rosalie watched in morbid fascination.
Rosalie heard the screech first. She turned fast and saw Tyler’s van, skidding across the ice, fishtailing wildly, his panicked waving at Bella. She saw Edward, closer, but frozen as if in panic. And she saw Bella, frozen in place, watching the car—
It seemed as if Rosalie blinked and was in between Bella and Tyler’s van. She covered Bella and threw out her hand in the path of the van.
The van hit Rosalie’s hand with enough force that it felt like it was going to shatter her shoulder. Metal shattered, the van crumpling like a tin can as Rosalie braced against the impact. Tyler’s van stopped, and then Rosalie could hear the screaming. People were watching. She ignored it all, though, in favor of looking down at Bella.
“Where did you even come from?” Bella asked, eyes wide and frightened.
“I was. Right there,” Rosalie said. She stood up, pulling Bella with her. “You must not have seen me.” “That van should have crushed us both,” Bella said. She pulled away from Rosalie, folding her arms. Rosalie smiled, sharp. She’d show teeth if she could, if she had those classical vampire fangs. “But it didn’t, did it? We were very lucky.”
And then they were surrounded by other people, Edward dragging Rosalie away, Tyler falling over himself to apologize to Bella, concerned school administrators running out to assess damage. In the furor, no one but Bella thought to ask the obvious questions about just how Rosalie stopped the car. No one even bothered to ask how Rosalie had gotten to Bella so quickly.
I sit down on the edge of Bella’s desk and think about the sudden avoidance. The day after the near-accident, Bella started ignoring me. No more conversation, no more speaking to each other, nothing…and it’s nearly killed me. I was settling into a routine, but now…Bella is pulling away. As, perhaps, she should, but still I can’t bear it.
Which is why I’m in Bella’s room now.
Well, that and a certain rage that I can barely acknowledge without wanting to scream.
This morning, some of the boys invited Bella to prom. As a group, of course, as friends, and they’d all laughed about it and Bella smiled that uncertain shy smile that made my cold heart turn right over and want to beat. Mike patted Bella on the shoulder and, over her head, Eric and Tyler smiled. It was innocent, people relieved that their overture of friendship had gone over well.
Echoes of cruel laughter ring in my head every time I think of the image.
It’s all I can do now, sitting on Bella’s desk, not to get up and go out and find those three boys and end them before they can hurt Bella. I can do that now. I can protect Bella.
Suddenly Bella turns over, a few half-formed words tumbling from her lips. She faces me now, eyes still closed, arms akimbo on the covers. I watch, intent, straining to understand.
“…cold…”
And then, in a near whisper, “Rosalie…”
In undeath, she clung to the last shreds of her life. She refused to hide in the shadows, taking part in the procession of shame2 that Carlisle would have her call a life. Rosalie would not give up the small scraps of
humanity left to her. So she wore beautiful clothes when her new family dressed down; she carried her head held high where they hid; she chose not to fear the sun and wore hats and gloves and long sleeves to cover her skin. No one really questioned it, not in a woman as beautiful as Rosalie.
Her beauty was permanent, forever a part of her; it was the only thing that connected her to her past life. It was the only thing people ever saw when they looked at Rosalie Hale. It would always be the only thing they saw.
Rosalie’s other qualities—her love of the Greek classics, her studies of mathematics and physics, her fascination with cars and engines—all came to naught. The “gift” of immortality, the permanent beauty, the adoration people gave her everywhere she went, was no gift at all. It truly was a curse.
And nowhere was it more visible than in Rosalie’s eyes when she became hungry.
The eyes of a vampire were golden, seductive and beautiful. When they were hungry, they dulled further and further, showing how starved they were. When they drank the blood of a human, though, their eyes turned red. Carlisle’s eyes were never red, and had not been for a century and a half. Esme and Edward followed his lead and drank only the blood of animals, though Edward had some missteps. Alice and Emmett never struggled, eyes a permanent gold. Jasper did struggle, but Alice always managed to stop him in time.
As the decades dragged on, Rosalie’s eyes were never red. But that didn't mean there wasn't a trail of bodies lying behind her.
2 What We Do in the Shadows. Directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. New Zealand: Madman Entertainment, 2014.
I speed through Port Angeles in my too-slow car. Alice saw Bella, surrounded by men, hostile men, and of course she’d warned me, but I can only save Bella if I find her. And all the while I can’t help
wondering if I’m too late, if this is the decision that Alice foresaw.
Warehouses, that’s what Alice said, and there they are, dark hulks looming up over the
streetlights. Yes—there’s a blind corner, a man jogging down it, a rough-looking type, and I spin my wheel hard. The tires screech and the car roars down the alley. There, there’s Bella and there are the men and one of them is too close—
The car nearly hits him.
He staggers back with a yell as I slam on the brakes. I should really just get Bella in the car but I can’t, I’m seeing red and I wants to see more. They were going to do unspeakable things to Bella, to my Bella, and that will not happen while I’m here.
I get out of the car, slamming the door behind me.
“Rosalie?” Bella looks alarmed and relieved at once, practically running to my side. She’s unharmed, but that doesn’t really matter. “What are you doing—”
“Get in the car,” I snarl, taking a step toward the men. That thick-set one, with the dark hair and too-pale fish eyes, that’s the leader. I can smell the confidence on him.
“Look at that,” one of the others drawls. “Looking to join the fun?”
The car door slams again as Bella scrambles inside. She has the sense to lock the doors—I hear a click. If all else fails, the key is in the ignition. Bella will be all right.
But these men won’t.
I don’t waste time on words and threats. I just leap.
The man goes down hard under my weight, smashing into the asphalt. Bone snaps and I laugh as I dislocate the man’s shoulder with a disdainful flick of my wrist. The blood drains from his face and he screams, earsplitting. He won’t be getting up for a while.
He’s a living man. He’s a man made of flesh and blood, not marble and diamond. A breakable, pitiful creature. Humans don’t fear mice. Vampires don’t fear humans.
Two of the men try to drag me off the leader—I hit one of them in the sternum and he collapses to the pavement with a moan, coughing—the other one tries to punch me and I catch his wrist and throw him into the wall, letting him land with a wet thud—and now the others are running and there’s blood on my teeth somehow and I can taste it, I want to chase—
The window of the car rolls down. “Oh my god,” Bella says. “Oh my god. Rosalie?” I turn, some of the bloodlust fading. “Bella.”
Bella is staring at her in naked fear and…something else. “What are you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I can’t help a nervous, hysterical laugh. I kick the man in the side one more time, for good measure, and stalk to the car. I get in the driver’s seat, hands shaking, and stare out the windshield. “I’m a vampire.”
She told Bella everything.
Driving back to Forks, Rosalie spilled everything. Every secret. That the Cullens were vampires, every one of them. That they didn’t drink human blood. That Edward could see minds, that Alice could read the future, that Carlisle the doctor drank the blood of animals to live. That they were immortal.
That Rosalie was a monster.
And Bella waited, listened, watched. Not afraid. Not even wary, now. Just there, her quiet self.
When Rosalie ran out of things to say, the car ran on in silence. She stared at the road, waiting for what Bella would say. At last, Bella said, “You know, I figured something was wrong when you kept staring at me in class when you thought I wasn’t looking.”
“You saw…?”
“I didn’t think it was because you were a vampire,” Bella said with a faint laugh. “I thought it was because you had a crush on me.”
“No. I wanted you to look at me like that.”
I’m walking on sunshine.
It’s been a week since the disaster in Port Angeles and here I am hand in hand with Bella, strolling through the woods just outside of Forks. There are plenty of trails, plenty of places to go that no one will see. The forecast says some sun today, and I want to show off a little. Bella doesn’t know about the surprise yet, though.
“Have you done something like that before?” Bella asks.
We’ve been talking about what happened in Port Angeles for half an hour. I shrug. “Many times, I suppose,” I say. “First with my fiancé, after I became a vampire. He decided it was a good idea to do to me what those men were going to do to you.”
Bella shudders. “What did you do to him?” “I killed him.”
There’s so much I leave out of the story. The white wedding dress I wore. My refusal to spill a drop of blood, lest I drink my killers dry and embrace the monster I am. The hours of torture Royce endured before I finally snapped his neck.
Death is a mercy I’ll never receive.
“Yes.” I stare off at the trees, wondering just how much to say, how much to leave out. “I asked him—no, begged him—to kill me. He refused. I wouldn’t have done this if I had the chance. If there had been someone to say no for me.”
Like a perfectly-cut diamond, like the ripples on a lake, like freshly-fallen snow—that was how the skin of a vampire glittered. Rosalie read Carmilla long ago. She knew what a vampire should be and saw some of that in the mirror. Supernaturally attractive, drawing the eye—deadly beauty a seduction for prey. But nowhere in the text did it say that vampires were to sparkle.
It distracts. It seduces. In the wrong—or perhaps right—circumstances, it’s ridiculous. It’s a disarming skin to wear, a gilt edge to a deadly weapon. People fixated on the glitter of Rosalie’s beauty miss her blood-red eyes, the way her teeth are bared, the deadly grace with which she moves. They see what they want to see.
They never see their deaths coming.
The meadow is wide and beautiful, the mid-March warm snap bringing a bit of life to the winter-drowsy woods. New grass springs up, spring flowers have made their appearance, and the trees are budding with the promise of summer to come. Above, the clouds are thinning, the sun a silver disc behind them, clear to be seen.
“I want to show you something,” I say, dropping Bella’s hand and walking out into the meadow, away from the shadows of the trees.
“What?” Bella asks, folding her arms over her chest.
I glance up at the thinning clouds and pull off my jacket. “There’s a lot you don’t know about vampires,” I say, undoing the buttons on my shirt. “Lots that didn’t make it into the books and stories.”
“I could have guessed,” Bella says. I can smell her nervousness, her anticipation. Incredible. The clouds slip away and the sun bursts into view. I shrug off my shirt, left in jeans and a bra, and watch Bella’s face. My skin sparkles, every inch of it ivory-white, glittering as if I’m set with prisms. Bella is transfixed. Her wide eyes travel over me, taking me in slowly.
“I wouldn’t have guessed that,” she says at last. She takes a few cautious steps forward, looking again at my face. “Why do you sparkle…? Do all of you?”
I smile. “We all do,” I say. I make no move to pick up my shirt or jacket where they lie on the ground. “Carlisle preaches about this being a temptation for curious people. I think it’s…mmm, aposematic coloration.”
“What?”
Slowly, I take a step forward. “A warning,” I say softly, “to stay away. A reminder that what you’re looking at isn’t human.”
Bella looks into my eyes. “I don’t care,” she says. And she doesn’t: I don’t smell fear. “You’re like…like Helen of Troy, people would go to war for you if you asked.”
“I’d rather be Circe,” I say. “Men don’t interest me at all. But you do.”
Bella cuts me off from saying anything more by closing the gap between us. Careful warm fingertips brush over the cold skin of my arm. Bella’s gaze traces the curve of my shoulder, my neck. I feel as if I’d shiver, if I could. But instead I stand frozen, a marble statue, waiting for Bella to finish her
examination.
“Whenever I look at you even briefly I can no longer say a single thing,” Bella murmurs, “but my tongue is frozen in silence; instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin…”
I can’t help a laugh of disbelief. “Sappho?”
“I’ve read the classics,” Bella says, half defensive. “It fits.”
“Better than Wuthering Heights or something,” I say. I watch Bella carefully, trying not to simply fix on the point of the pulse beating in Bella’s throat.
There’s a long pause, and then Bella says, “I want you to…” Her sentence trails off. I don’t wait for anything else to be said. I just, finally, kiss Bella.
The kiss is everything I dreamed it would be.
Bella is so warm. Her lips are soft. The smell of her is all around me and my arms are around her, her fragile warm hands gripping my shoulders.
There’s a heartbeat roaring in my ears, but it isn’t mine. It’s Bella’s, loud, passionate, so violently and brilliantly alive, right here in front of me. She’s breathing hard already, just from this kiss, dark eyes wide and wild. Bella Swan is beautiful and she’s mine—
—she will be mine—
