Now You See Me [Jasper Hale story]

XI. Mary Alice Brandon

"A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough.

[Alexander's tombstone epitaph]" ― Alexander the Great

***

Three important things happened in the following few days. At first, my aunt and I finally moved into the we bought. Thinking about it now, the dialogue between Hayden and the realstate agent was one of the funniest episodes of the week. Hayden called the blessed, enterprising man, he tried to persuade her to spend some more time at Emily's, therefore, she threatened him with making him repare the floors himself. Suddenly, the house became perfectly ready for our moving in.

Showing us into the house, the agent said its previous owner left it as it was - with all the furniture - and hurried away from Forks, most probably to Seattle. A tooth of curiosity, as to why would anyone leave a fully-furnished house and run away like that, had been biting me, of course; the moment I stepped into the on the first floor (which was supposed to be mine), the annoying curiosity faded away.

The second thing was my going shopping with Alice. The particular three hours were, without exaggeration, the most effectively spent time of my life. Remember when I mentioned I hated sports? Well, if running after Alice through the most expensive boutiques in Seattle can be considered to be a sport, then I had been hell of working out the whole afternoon. Miss Cullen moreover insisted on buying an unearthly expensive I once called beautiful to me, which was why I started to feel as a real sponger.
In the end, a memory of my having wanted to ask Alice for borrowing me her notices from lessons had come across my mind; so there, I had breathlessly asked her for her exercise books from Biology, English and Maths, as long as the subjects were those I had missed because of the elm accident.

The third thing was professor Brighton's "punishment" for my talking to Jasper Hale in the History lesson three days ago. Obviously, Hale had disappeared shortly after the bell rang, leaving me to face Brighton utterly alone (and harmless). I had tried to sneak out in the middle of a large group of my classmates, however, the old chap spotted me. That was how I and Jasper Hale happened to become assigned an extracurricular History project about slavery together. Considering that I wasn't able to spend an hour in the man's presence, without staring at him, blushing, biting my lips, tongue and other subconscious activities, Brighton had put me in a huge trouble.

It was Friday, the day of Bella's birthday party, four in the afternoon, which meant my having two more hours, until Bella would pick me up. I had no idea if she was going with Edward, as I couldn't care less. Edward might have been an ass, his Volvo was great enough to outweight his arrogancy though.
I was sitting at the writing desk, copying Alice's notes into my own exercise books, when my phone rang...

"Huh?" I exhaled after pulling it out of the mess inside my school bag.

"Gwyneth Callaghan, what does the huh mean?" Angela's voice pierced through my eardrums. "What if I were a hot guy, calling to ask you out?"

"Why, hello there too, Ang," I replied ironically, settling back down, to copy the rest of Alice's notices. "Lucky me, that you're not a hot guy then."

"Hush, you little devil. We both know that even if I was a guy, you'd not pay attention to me anyways... for Hale," Angela stated cynically.

I frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, don't pretend not to know what I'm talking about! You're totally into him! But don't worry, he's head over heels from you too. I'm just wondering what will happen to Ali-"

"Stop it! I'm not into him, he has a girlfriend, who is my friend, for goodness sake!" I exclaimed crossly.

"So? Having a girlfriend is not a disease," I could imagine her shrugging. "Nowadays, there are ways how both you and Alice could sleep with him without remorse."