Jacob called a couple hours later.
"What did you do?" I demanded as soon as I answered, not even bothering with a greeting.
"Huh?" He sounded worried. "What do you mean? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong!" I exclaimed. "That's exactly it! Bella is in the best mood she's been in in a long time!"
"Oh." He seemed surprised. "Um, I don't know. We just hung out in my garage while I worked."
"Well, keep inviting her over. It's working like a miracle."
"She's coming over today again, actually."
"Perfect!"
"Hey," he said, suddenly thoughtful, "did Bella invite you to come?"
I scrunched my brow together. "What do you mean?"
"I told her to invite you over to come with her today. Has she not done it yet? Ask her about it."
I hesitated. "Listen, she might not want me to go with her. Which is totally fine, by the way. And I don't want to ruin her mood by asking."
"Well. . . okay. But if she invites you, then come, okay?"
"Okay."
"Oh, and by the way. . . if you do come. . . what you see needs to be kept a secret."
Immediately I turned serious. "What?"
"Okay, good talk!"
The line went dead.
"Y/n?"
I whirled around to see Bella in the doorway of the kitchen. I wondered how much she'd heard.
"Who were you talking to?"
"Oh. Uh, Jacob called."
"Oh!" Her expression was pleased. "I'm going over there right now, actually. He told me I should bring you, do you wanna come?"
I stood in silent shock for a moment before regaining my composure. "Uh, sure!"
Outside, the rain came down like water slopped from a bucket, but eventually we made it through the muddy lanes to Jacob's house. Before Bella killed the engine, the front door opened and Jacob came running out with a huge black umbrella. Another one was in his other hand, closed. He held it over Bella's door while she opened it, then came around to my door to hand me the closed umbrella.
Bella was smiling. "Hi, Jacob."
"Good call on inviting Billy up." He held up his hand for a high five. Bella had to reach so high to slap his hand that he laughed.
"Inviting Billy up?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah. Billy is heading to Charlie's for the game tonight." He raised his eyebrows with a grin. "Less witnesses."
I narrowed my eyes. "Less witnesses for what?"
"You'll see," Bella said, lips still pulled upward.
Harry showed up to get Billy just a few minutes later. The moment the door closed behind them, Jacob turned towards me. "Alright, so. We have this plan—"
"Really, it's Jacob's plan—" Bella interrupted.
"You're the one who suggested it!"
"Yeah, cuz it's my area of expertise!"
"Guys!" I shouted.
They both went quiet.
"What plan?"
Bella inhaled. "I. . . may have bought. . . a couple of motorcycles."
I blinked at her. ". . . Motorcycles?"
"Motorcycles," Bella confirmed.
"You bought motorcycles."
"Yes, motorcycles!" Jacob exclaimed, exasperated.
I stared at her. "Why?"
"Why not?" Bella said, shrugging. "I saw the 'for sale' sign and decided it would be fun. But they need to be fixed up, and that's what Jacob is helping me with."
I hesitated, then sighed. "Okay."
"Okay?" Bella said, surprised. "You're not going to tell Dad?"
"No." Not when this is what is actually making you happy, for once. "But only if I am included in this plan."
"That's why you're here," Jacob said, the 'duh' left unspoken.
"So where to, Mr. Goodwrench?" Bella asked.
Jacob pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and smoothed it out. "We'll start at the dump first, see if we can get lucky. This could get a little expensive," he warned. "Those bikes are going to need a lot of help before they'll run again. I'm talking about maybe more than a hundred dollars here."
Bella pulled her checkbook out, fanned herself with it, and rolled her eyes at his worries. "We're covered."
I raised my eyebrows. "Well look at you, hotshot."
It was a very strange kind of day. I enjoyed myself, like I always did when I was with Jacob, but. . . Bella was enjoying herself too. I could tell. Even at the dump, in the slopping rain and ankle-deep mud.
I was beginning to think it was mostly Jacob. It wasn't just that he was always so happy to see her, or that he didn't watch her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her to do something that would mark me as crazy or depressed. It was nothing that related to her at all. It was Jacob himself. Jacob was simply a perpetually happy person, and he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. It was natural, a part of who he was.
But. . . okay, maybe it had a little to do with Bella being there. Anyone with a brain could see his crush on her a mile away. I knew that Bella wouldn't feel the same so soon after Edward, but there was hope for the future.
According to Jacob, we did get lucky at the dump. He was very excited about several grease-blackened pieces of twisted metal that he found. From there we went to the Checker Auto Parts down in Hoquiam. In the truck, it was more than a two hour drive south on the winding freeway, but the time passed easily with Jacob. He chattered about his friends and his school, and Bella was asking questions, not even pretending, truly curious to hear what he had to say.
"I'm doing all the talking," he complained after a long story about Quil and the trouble he'd stirred up by asking out a senior's steady girlfriend. "Why don't you take a turn? What's going on in Forks? It has to be more exciting than La Push."
"Wrong," Bella sighed. "There's really nothing. Your friends are a lot more interesting than mine. I like your friends. Quil's funny."
He frowned. "I think Quil likes you, too."
Bella laughed. "He's a little young for me."
Jacob's frown deepened. "He's not that much younger than you. It's just a year and a few months."
I had a feeling they weren't talking about Quil anymore.
Bella's voice was light, teasing. "Sure, but, considering the difference in maturity between guys and girls, don't you have to count that in dog years? What does that make me, about twelve years older?"
He laughed, rolling his eyes. "Okay, but if you're going to get picky like that, you have to average in size, too. You're so small, I'll have to knock ten years off your total."
"Five foot four is perfectly average," Bella sniffed. "It's not my fault you're a freak."
They bantered like that till Hoquiam, still arguing over the correct formula to determine age until we were in Checker, and Jacob had to concentrate again.
I stayed quiet in the backseat, smiling to myself.
We found everything left on his list, and Jacob felt confident that he could make a lot of progress with our haul.
Billy wasn't back yet by the time we got back to La Push, so we didn't have to be sneaky about unloading our day's spoils. As soon as we had everything laid out on the plastic floor next to Jacob's toolbox, he went right to work, still talking and laughing while his fingers combed expertly through the metal pieces in front of him.
The day passed too quickly. It got dark outside the mouth of the garage before I was expecting it, and then we heard Billy calling for us. I jumped up to help Jacob put things away and Bella did the same, but she hesitated for a second.
"Just leave it," he told us. "I'll work on it later tonight."
"Don't forget your schoolwork or anything," Bella said, and I could see she was feeling a little guilty.
"Bella? Y/n?"
Our heads snapped up as Dad's familiar voice wafted through the trees, sounding closer than the house.
"Shoot," Bella muttered.
"Coming!" I yelled toward the house.
"Let's go." Jacob smiled, enjoying the cloak-and-dagger. He snapped the light off, and for a moment I was blind, but I followed Jacob and Bella out of the garage and through the trees. It was easy for me to find the familiar path, given the number of times I'd been here, but I could hear Bella and Jacob tripping slightly in the darkness. Soon they were both laughing when the house came into view.
Dad was standing under the little back porch, and Billy was sitting in the doorway behind them.
"Hey, Dad," Bella and Jacob both said at the same time, and that started them laughing again.
Dad stared at Bella with wide eyes, and my expression mimicked his when I realized that Jacob and Bella's hands were linked. Then I looked back up at Dad, smiling widely.
"Billy invited us for dinner," Dad said in an absentminded tone.
"My super secret recipe for spaghetti. Handed down for generations," Billy said gravely.
Jacob snorted. "I don't think Ragu's actually been around that long."
The house was crowded. Harry Clearwater was there, too, with his family—his wife, Sue, whom I knew vaguely from my childhood summers in Forks, and his two children. Leah was a senior like me, but a year older. She was beautiful in an exotic way—perfect copper skin, glistening black hair, eyelashes like feather dusters—and preoccupied. She was on Billy's phone when we got in, and she never let it go. Seth was fourteen; he hung on Jacob's every word with idolizing eyes.
There were too many of us for the kitchen table, so Dad and Harry brought chairs out to the yard, and we ate spaghetti off plates on our laps in the dim light from Billy's open door. The men talked about the game, and Harry and Charlie made fishing plans. Sue teased her husband about his cholesterol and tried, unsuccessfully, to shame him into eating something green and leafy.
Jacob talked mostly to me, Bella, and Seth, who interrupted eagerly whenever Jacob seemed in danger of forgetting him. Dad watched Bella, trying to be inconspicuous about it, with pleased but cautious eyes.
It was loud and sometimes confusing as everyone talked over everyone else, and the laughter from one joke interrupted the telling of another. I didn't have to speak often, but I smiled a lot, mostly because Bella seemed happy.
I didn't want to leave.
This was Washington, though, and the inevitable rain eventually broke up the party; Billy's living room was much too small to provide an option for continuing the get-together. Harry had driven Dad down, so we all rode together in the truck on the way back home.
He asked about our day, and we told mostly the truth—that we'd gone with Jacob to look at parts and then watched him work in his garage.
"You think you'll visit again anytime soon?" he wondered, trying to be casual about it.
"Tomorrow after school," Bella admitted. "I'll take Y/n. And homework too, don't worry."
"You be sure to do that," he ordered, trying to disguise his satisfaction.
The next morning, I watched Bella at breakfast, sure that the night before had all been a dream. But she seemed fine as ever, so eventually I stopped staring. It would be a while before I could stop waiting for her to turn back into a zombie, but. . . for now, she seemed happy.
During school Bella seemed alert for once, which put me at ease. She even sat with us at lunch again.
Maybe things were getting better.
Mike was there, Jessica and Angela, Conner, Tyler, Eric and Lauren. Katie Marshall, the redheaded junior who lived around the corner from me, was sitting with Eric, and Austin Marks was there, too.
"Where's Ben today?" Lauren was asking Angela.
"Ben's got the stomach flu," Angela said in her quiet, calm voice. "Hopefully it's just some twenty-four hour thing. He was really sick last night."
"What did you two do this weekend?" Jessica asked
"We were going to have a picnic Saturday, actually, but...we changed our minds," Angela said. There was an edge to her voice that caught my interest. Jess, not so much.
"That's too bad," she said, about to launch into her story. But I wasn't the only one who was paying attention.
"What happened?" Lauren asked curiously.
"Well," Angela said, seeming more hesitant than usual, though she was always reserved, "we drove up north, almost to the hot springs—there's a good spot just about a mile up the trail. But, when we were halfway there...we saw something."
"Saw something? What?" Lauren's pale eyebrows pulled together. Even Jess seemed to be listening now.
Surely she couldn't be talking about. . .
"I don't know," Angela said. "We think it was a bear. It was black, anyway, but it seemed...too big."
Oh, okay. Nothing vampire related.
Lauren snorted. "Oh, not you, too! Tyler tried to sell me that one last week."
"You're not going to see any bears that close to the resort," Jessica said, siding with Lauren.
"Really," Angela protested in a low voice, looking down at the table. "We did see it."
Lauren snickered. Mike was still talking to Conner, not paying attention to the girls.
"No, she's right," Bella threw in impatiently. "We had a hiker in just Saturday who saw the bear, too, Angela. He said it was huge and black and just outside of town, didn't he, Mike?"
There was a moment of silence. Every pair of eyes at the table turned to stare at her in shock. Nobody moved. This was the first time Bella had spoken at lunch in a long time.
"Mike?" she muttered, mortified. "Remember the guy with the bear story?"
"S-sure," Mike stuttered, and recovered after a second. "Yeah, there was a guy who said he saw a huge black bear right at the trailhead—bigger than a grizzly," he confirmed.
"Hmph." Lauren turned to Jessica, her shoulders stiff, and changed the subject. "Did you hear back from USC?" she asked.
Everyone else looked away, too, except for Mike and Angela.
Angela smiled at Bella.
"So, what did you do this weekend, Bella?" Mike asked, curious, but oddly wary.
Everyone but Lauren looked back, waiting for her response.
"Friday night, Jessica and I went to a movie in Port Angeles. And then I spent Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday down at La Push with Y/n."
"What movie did you see?" Mike asked, starting to smile.
"Dead End—the one with the zombies." Bella grinned in encouragement.
"I heard that was scary. Did you think so?" Mike was eager to continue the conversation.
"Bella had to leave at the end, she was so freaked," Jessica inserted with a sly smile.
Bella nodded, embarrassed. "It was pretty scary."
Mike didn't stop asking her questions till lunch was over. Bella and I got up together to throw away our lunch trays, and that was when I struck.
"Are you okay?" I asked gently, and I knew she knew what I meant.
"Not. . .completely," she admitted. "But I'm a little bit better."
"I'm glad," I said. "I've missed you." Again, I knew she knew what I meant.
"What's today's date?" Bella wondered suddenly.
"It's January nineteenth."
"Hmm."
"What is it?" I asked.
"It was a year ago yesterday that we had our first day here," she mused.
Jessica and Lauren walked by, gossipping in hushed whispers. "Not much has changed," I commented.
"I was just thinking the same thing."