EX FVMO // DEMETRI VOLTURI

ite inflammate omnia

Bella stared at the flashing line of the insertion point on the blank document and blinked right back at it. The computer screen switched to the bouncing screensaver for the tenth time since she sat down and she quickly moved the mouse to switch it back to the empty page. Her email was open on another window, filled with messages from nearly everyone she left in America. What could she possibly tell them? She had decided to answer her father first, but the well-constructed lie she conjured as she failed to fall asleep last night refused to flow through her fingers. She should answer Jake as well, but the way his message lacked any sort of punctuation or capital letters, and even line breaks... It scared her. She imagined him yelling all of the words to her face and shuddered.

What an enormous mess she made of everyone's lives.

And of hers as well, of course. The initial feeling of hazy displacement had just started to subside but she still felt so wrong - like she was following an invisible line into the future with no real agency, an unmedicated Donnie Darko among immortals. She wondered if she would have a panic attack or a manic episode once she found herself out of that stupor.

It was comforting, at least, to fall into a routine. To have a set schedule to follow; she felt grounded. It didn't make things any easier, but it did make her feel much better about how difficult they were, if that made any sense.

Gianna was as good of a teacher as any unwilling person would be, but Bella cared little for her curtness and even eventual rudeness. There was an insistent throb of inadequacy pestering her each day, constant like a headache, and trying to cater to Gianna wouldn't help it in the slightest. She had more important things to focus on.

The other human had to endure her either way. The fact that she was using her computer in the lobby was just a small proof of that.

She sighed heavily and forced her fingers to hit the keyboard, doing her best to pour onto the digital page the white lies she created while lying on her bed. She tried not to be too specific about things; better to let them ask for details than to try and guess which ones would call for their attention. For now, it should be good enough to let Charlie know that she decided to get a high school diploma in Italy, and that she was accepted into a university that had granted her a scholarship so he and Renée wouldn't worry about her expenses. She threw in an apology for never warning them about the trip and justified this decision by the suspicion that he wouldn't let her come on such short notice if he knew about it beforehand.

That's so lame, who would believe it?

How does someone just finish high school in Italy so suddenly anyway?

She didn't even speak any Italian.

Even taking into account that her parents were not quite the regular type, it was a leap of faith. She would have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

Jake was a much more complicated affair. She went back to Edward's message, and then to Alice's, trying to piece them together for a fuller picture of what was happening in Forks. All that she could be sure of was that the treaty was still valid and would remain so for as long as the Cullens kept their promise not to bite anyone in town.

That particular piece of information engulfed her in overwhelming relief.

Her eyes glanced over Edward's observation at the end of his email:

"It gives me peace to know, at least, that you are safe from Victoria. The only thing that could give me more peace of mind would be the certainty that you are completely safe from the inhabitants of the castle as well."

She couldn't disagree with that.

At the same time, she could never be at ease staying all the way across the world from them knowing that Victoria was hunting her back home. Alice's soothing words were, in fact, anything but.