Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 20: Where the Hell Have You Been (Loca)?

Jessica didn't speak to me on the drive back home. She stared straight ahead at the road the whole ride and I didn't dare to ask her if she was alright. It was my fault again. I wanted so badly dive in headfirst, to take this pull into my own hands.

Danger brought me back to Edward. I just thought if I pushed myself a little further, if I dangled myself a little closer to the fire, it would feel like the moments we'd been together. I knew it wouldn't bring him back. Nothing ever would, but if I could just feel close to death again, it would be as if I were alive.

I knew that made me sound like a stupid, weak girl, but I was desperate. I didn't know when I'd become so desperate to be hurt. After everything, that was all Edward had left me with. Pain and danger were my only options anymore. The things I used to love, the soft light of the forest and the feeling of being outside, with nature, they'd left with Edward too.

When we returned to Forks, I dropped Jessica off at her house and said nothing as she stepped out of the truck. She turned around when she reached her front porch and watched me. Moths and mosquitoes flitted about the light of her porch as she watched me go. I could just make out her expression, cold and distant like she wanted to say something, but had waited too long to say it.

I drove off in silence, keeping slow as the headlights illuminated the road in a sick yellow before me. I found my way past the main streets, past Carver's and Hannah's mechanics, where two beat up looking motorbikes had been sitting for the past three months. They were trash, better off as scrap, but the owner was still trying to sell them. Charlie said she had hope for the old things, but they were a lost cause.

Even as I parked in the driveway and headed up to the house where Charlie still had a light on, I was thinking about lost causes. Maybe I was a lost cause, looking for the same buzz Edward had given me, the search for danger. Every touch had been a danger, I realized as I unlocked the front door and pushed myself in. From the moment we met and the moment he told me what he was I'd been in danger.

He hadn't lied. He said exactly what he wanted, to drink my blood. It was something about that other part, the loving me part that had struck me. I got caught on that moment sometimes. Even when we were together, I would think about it. Why did him loving me make me so determined to be near him?

Sometimes, I rose enough through the fog that I thought our whole relationship had been crazy, but I was hooked on it. I was a lost cause, like a normal night at the movies, or school work a month past due, or two bikes sitting in the gravel lot of the mechanic's.

"How was the movie?" Charlie asked as I closed the door behind me. He was seated in the living room, a book in his hands, some old biography.

"Alright," I said. I made my way up the stairs for bed. Being out of the house for that long all of the sudden had taken a lot out of me. I'd been tired for two months, but it seemed like a curse upon me now.

"Have you given any more thought to what I said?" Charlie asked. I kept walking up the stairs and to my room. Charlie watched me the whole way and when I disappeared from his view, he called up to me, "Good talk."

I fell asleep peacefully and soundly, but it didn't last long. It never lasted long. I woke with my blankets tangled around my feet and the sound of my own screaming piercing the air. I'd been screaming for a while because Charlie was next to me again, soothing my arm and trying to get me to stop.

The sound broke its cacophony as I heaved a deep breath, trying to force the terror out of me. It always came like this, tearing its way through me like a serrated knife. I clutched for my hands and my neck, searching for wounds from I didn't know what. In the dark, I could just barely see Charlie's face in front of me, shushing my cries.