Twilight

8. Port Angeles

Brooke's pov

Jess drove much faster than the mister Charlie, so we made it to this strange place really quickly. I don't even know why I am here or where here is. They listened to whiny rock songs while Jess jabbered on about the boys they hung out with. Jessica's dinner with Mike had gone very well, and she as hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. Whatever that means.

They were shopping for a dance that was billed as 'semiformal', and I wasn't exactly sure what that meant. Both Jessica and Angela seemed surprised and almost disbelieving when Bella told them she'd never been to a dance in Phoenix.

"Didn't you ever go with a boyfriend or something?" Jess asked dubiously as we walked through the front doors of the store.

"Really," Bella tried to convince her, "I've never had a boyfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."

"Why not?" Jessica demanded.

"No one asked me," she answered.

She looked skeptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded her, "and you tell them no." We were in the juniors' section now, scanning the racks for dress-up clothes.

"Well, except for Tyler," Angela amended quietly.

"Excuse me?" She gasped. "What did you say?"

"Tyler told everyone he's taking you to prom," Jessica informed her with suspicious eyes.

"He said what?" She sounded like she was choking.

"I told you it wasn't true," Angela murmured to Jessica.

"That's why Lauren doesn't like you," Jessica giggled while we pawed through the clothes.

She grounded her teeth. "Do you think that if I ran him over with my truck he would stop feeling guilty about the accident? That he might give up on making amends and call it even?"

"Maybe," Jess snickered. '"If that's why he's doing this."

The dress selection wasn't large, but both of them found a few things to try on. Bella and I sat on a low chair just inside the dressing room, by the three-way mirror.

Jess was torn between two — one a long, strapless, basic black number, the other a knee-length blue with thin straps. Bella encouraged her to go with the blue.

Angela chose a pale pink dress that draped around her tall frame nicely and brought out honey tints in her light brown hair. Bella complimented them both generously and helped by returning the rejects to their racks. The whole process was much shorter and easier than I thought it would be.

We headed over to shoes and accessories. While they tried things on I merely watched. 

"Angela?" Bella began, hesitant, while she was trying on a pair of pink strappy heels — she was overjoyed to have a date tall enough that she could wear high heels at all.

Jessica had drifted to the jewelry counter.

"Yes?" She held her leg out, twisting her ankle to get a better view of the shoe.

She chickened out. "I like those."

"I think I'll get them — though they'll never match anything but the one dress," she mused.

"Oh, go ahead — they're on sale," She encouraged. She smiled, putting the lid back on a box that contained more practical-looking off-white shoes.

She tried again. "Um, Angela..." She looked up curiously.

"Is it normal for the... Cullens" — I kept my eyes on the shoes — "to be out of school a lot?" She failed miserably in her attempt to sound nonchalant.

"Yes, when the weather is good they go backpacking all the time — even the doctor. They're all real outdoorsy," she told me quietly, examining her shoes, too.

"Oh." She let the subject drop as Jessica returned to show us the rhinestone jewelry she'd found to match her silver shoes.

They planned to go to dinner at a little Italian restaurant on the boardwalk, but the dress shopping hadn't taken as long as they'd expected. Jess and Angela were going to take their clothes back to the car and then walk down to the bay. Bella told them we would meet them at the restaurant in an hour — she wanted to look for a bookstore. They were both willing to come with us, but she encouraged them to go have fun. They walked off to the car chattering happily, and we headed in the direction Jess pointed out.

We had no trouble finding the bookstore. The windows were full of crystals, dream-catchers, and books about spiritual healing. We didn't even go inside. Through the glass I could see a fifty-year-old woman with long, gray hair worn straight down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling welcomingly from behind the counter.

We meandered through the streets, which were filling up with end-of-the-workday traffic. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should to where I was going, I was trusting Bella.

She stomped along in a southerly direction, toward some glass-fronted shops. But when we got to them, they were just a repair shop and a vacant space. Bella ran her fingers through her hair a couple of times and took some deep breaths before we continued around the corner.

A group of four men turned around the corner we were heading for, dressed casually but grimy. They were joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other's arms. We scooted as far to the inside of the sidewalk as we could to give them room, walking swiftly, looking past them to the corner.

"Hey, there!" one of them called as they passed, and he had to be talking to us since no one else was around. I glanced up automatically. Two of them had paused, the other two were slowing. The closest, a heavyset, dark-haired man in his early twenties, seemed to be the one who had spoken. He was wearing a flannel shirt open over a dirty t-shirt, cut-off jeans, and sandals. He took half a step toward me.

"Hello," Bella mumbled. Then she quickly looked away and walked faster toward the
corner. I could hear them laughing at full volume behind us.

"Hey, wait!" one of them called after us again, but we kept our head down and rounded the corner with a sigh of relief. I could still hear them chortling behind me.

We found ourselves on a sidewalk leading past the backs of several somber-colored warehouses, each with large bay doors for unloading trucks, padlocked for the night. The south side of the street had no sidewalk, only a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire protecting some kind of engine parts storage yard. It was getting dark, I realized, the clouds finally returning, piling up on the western horizon, creating an early sunset.

The eastern sky was still clear, but graying, shot through with streaks of pink and orange. I'd left my jacket in the car, and a sudden shiver made me cross my arms tightly across my chest. A single van passed us, and then the road was empty.

The sky suddenly darkened further, and, as I looked over my shoulder to glare at the offending cloud, I realized with a shock that two men were walking quietly twenty feet behind us.

They were from the same group we'd passed at the corner, though neither was the dark one who'd spoken to us. I turned my head forward at once, quickening my pace. A chill that had nothing to do with the weather made me shiver again.

I listened intently to their quiet footsteps, which were much too quiet when compared to the boisterous noise they'd been making earlier, and it didn't sound like they were speeding up, or getting any closer to us. Breathe, I had to remind myself.