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"Come on!" Emmett begs, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "It'll be fun!"
"Absolutely not," Phoebe states firmly, not moving from her spot on the steps of the front porch. "I'm not messing with murderous bees."
"They can't even hurt us," he argues, pointing the bat in his hand towards a tree off in the distance as if to prove his point. "Besides, this will be educational!"
"I've already told you that you can't get honey from a hornet's nest!"
"What science is there to support that?"
She's quiet for several moments, looking everywhere but at him as she searches for something to prove her point. Giving a defeated sigh, she pushes herself to her feet and Emmett whoops happily.
"Let's do it," she caves. "But if I somehow get hurt, you're living in the Tent of Shame for a week."
"Deal."
The duo starts to journey towards the side of the house, where the yard meets the blossoming trees of a small forest, when an unfamiliar car pulls into the driveway. Phoebe pauses - though Emmett doesn't notice or slow down, too excited about their adventure - and watches as two vampires with red eyes step out of the vehicle. Recalling Alice's vision from earlier in the week, she hurries to greet them.
"You must be Jasper's friends!" She exclaims, holding her hand out for the man and woman to shake. "He's been excited for your arrival ever since Alice saw it."
"I'm Peter, and this is my wife, Charlotte," Peter introduces. "And you must be the amazing Phoebe he goes on about."
"He talks about me?" Phoebe asks, though she's not entirely sure as to why she's surprised by this information.
"Are you kidding?" Charlotte laughs. "He compares everyone to you."
"Honestly, it's a miracle Maria didn't kill him for it," Peter adds.
"Who's Maria?"
Peter freezes as the question leaves her lips and his eyes dart to Charlotte's warily. The easygoing atmosphere disappears in the blink of an eye and no one moves for a dreadfully long moment.
"Oh, come on. I can handle hearing about his exes," she promises, misunderstanding their discomfort. When neither of them speak, she pleads again. "I won't be jealous or mad! Jasper knows I dated while we were apart, and it'd be unfair of me not to expect the same from him."
"Maria is a complicated story," Charlotte eventually explains with a kind smile. "I doubt Jasper would be too happy with us if we told it for him."
"Told what?" Jasper questions as he comes bounding out of the front door with a smile to greet his friends.
"About the horse that kicked your ass in '46," Peter easily lies, plastering on his own smile as the two embrace. "It nearly took your head off."
"Only because you thought it would be funny to startle it while I climbed on!"
⧖⧗⧖⧗
"All I'm saying is that in a house full of vampires that have been around for damn near every major event in history, isn't it a little weird that none of us personally witnessed the moon landing?"
Carlisle nods along thoughtfully, genuinely interested in Phoebe's theory as Eleazar tunes them both out, having had this debate with her several times before.
With Jasper out with his friends, Phoebe is with the two oldest vampires in the kitchen learning how to bake a pie from scratch. Not wanting to poison Renesmee with her potentially terrible cooking skills, they've invited Paul and Jacob to come over later to taste test.
"Have you considered the possibility that the spaceship did leave the atmosphere and land somewhere not on Earth, it just wasn't the location disclosed to the-"
"Wait," Rosalie cuts Carlisle off, entering the kitchen. "You guys believe in the moon?"
"We are not having that debate again!" Edward shrieks from his bedroom, coming flying down the stairs before Phoebe can run with the new twist. "Please argue over anything else."
"Fine," Phoebe huffs, dejected until she recalls another conspiracy. "Emmett-"
"I take it back," Edward groans. "Don't you dare say it."
"I'm not saying that Emmett is Big Foot," she begins again, technically complying with his request. "But have you ever seen Emmett and Big Foot in the same room?"
"I'll agree with Edward this time," Eleazar admits, laughing at Phoebe's gasp of betrayal. "It's ridiculous!"
"Oh, come on! Garrett agrees with me," she argues. "Don't you?"
Garrett finally glances up from the magazine he's been reading at the table, caught completely off guard. "I wasn't listening, but I strongly disagree."
"Why?"
"Because I haven't listened to your conspiracies since 1897."
"What happened in 1897?" Rosalie asks.
"She was incredibly mean to me!" He claims, snapping the Vogue magazine shut as if to prove his point. "When I visited her in Cancún, she convinced me eggs weren't real!"
"They're not," Phoebe says with a straight face as all traces of playfulness disappear, keeping her tone as serious as possible.
"Haha, very funny."
"I'm serious. Haven't you heard?"
"No, what happened?"
Phoebe can't keep the charade up any longer and bursts into laughter and Garrett groans in disbelief.
"Why would you fall for that again?" Carlisle questions, unable to hide his own amusement. "There's a carton of eggs right next to you."
"I officially hate you all."
"That's a dollar in the bullying jar!" Edward calls him out, more than happily retrieving the jar from above the fireplace and holding it out towards Garrett.
"Fuck me," he grumbles under his breath as he digs a dollar out of his back pocket, careful not to say 'you' so he can't be charged another dollar.
"I've actually been trying to fuck Jasper, but if it'll shut you up." Phoebe shrugs her shoulders through her laughter, laughing even harder when she spots Jasper's horrified expression through the sliding glass back door.
Charlotte doesn't know whether to laugh or be worried by what they just overheard, but Peter is laughing just as hard as Phoebe.
