Twilight

Chapter Eight

I was surprised to wake up the next morning to sunlight blazing right into my face. I rushed to the window; the sky was azure with not a single cloud to be seen anywhere. The temperature was between seventy and eighty degrees Fahrenheit and I had to laugh at this miracle; I was washed and dressed in less than half an hour and then out of the door to go to school.

When I got to school, two things were out of the ordinary. One; Rigan's motorbike was not in its usual spot. Two; none of the Cullens were present. None of them. 

Through out the whole day, I kept an eye out for the Cullens and for Rigan. During lunch, though, Jess decided to break it to me.

"Whenever the weather's nice, the Cullens disappear, so Edward's not here," she said, obviously knowing who I was really looking for.

"What? Do they just ditch?" I asked.

"No, Dr. and Mrs Cullen yank them out for hiking and camping and stuff like that," Jessica answered, closing her eyes, soaking up some more Vitamin D. "I tried to persuade my parents to do that and they almost flipped!"

"Have you seen Rigan?" I then asked.

Jess shook her head. "No. But Rigan did tend to disappear a lot too," she said. "One day or two, she would just vanish and then reappear again. I once overheard her snap at Marco that it was to do with her health or something. Apparently, Rigan has some kind of rare inherited condition. You wouldn't know about that, would you?"

I was silent and shook my head. "No."

Angela rushed up to us at this point. "Guys!" she said excitedly. "I'm going to the prom with Eric! I just asked him, I took control!"

I couldn't help but smile broadly. "I told you it would happen," I said, returning Angela's warm embrace.

"Are you sure you have to go out of town with Rigan?" Angela asked, looking disappointed.

"Yeah," I said. "A family thing."

"We should go shopping in Port Angeles after school before all the good dresses get cleaned out," Jess said as the bell rang for fourth period.

"Port Angeles?" I repeated. "Can I come? I haven't got anything planned or anything."

"Er . . . you coming has become mandatory; I need your opinion!" Angela said, smiling.

The rest of the day had passed in a blur and soon I was with Angela and Jessica in Port Angeles, looking in several different stores that had recent supply of prom dresses. Jessica soon took a liking to a pink one but wasn't sure about the one-shoulder thing.

Angela took a particular shine to a lavender dress that was held up by an a difficult-looking collar. Jess soon also had a magenta dress on that apparently made her boobs look good, as she put it, which was when a group of idiotic teenage boys passed, tapped on the window, mouthed nice and went away laughing and wolf-whistling.

"Disgusting," I muttered.

"Bella!" Jessica said, taking me out of my daydream. "What do you think of these?"

"They're really pretty," I said truthfully.

"You said that about the last five dresses," she pointed out.

I laughed nervously. "I thought they were all pretty good," I admitted.

"You're not really into this, are you?" Angela guessed.

"Not really," I agreed. "I'll think I'll go and look around the rest of the town, see what's about. I'll meet you girls at the restaurant."

"You sure?" Jessica asked.