From Eden

idealism sits in prison

"Hello?" I hate the way cell phones sound, everything crackling and transmitting next to my ear that's already too powerful.

"Greta? It's Bella." Her voice sounds hopeful, but repressed.

"Hey, Bella. What's up?" I busy myself with inane human things, like dusting my cottage. It's small, with no bedroom, and yet at a human pace it takes nearly three hours to clean to my likeness.

"Do you want to come over tonight? Girls night? Charlie's on my back about not going out and to appease him I said I would have a friend over. I really don't want to invite Angela, Lauren, or Jessica. Hey- don't make fun of me." She chastises me when I snicker into the receiver.

"Lauren- I can understand that. I can, but what's wrong with Angela or Jessica?" I hold the phone between my shoulder and ear, adjusting one of my side tables. "They're not bad, they're nice girls."

"I want to ask you questions about our project, you know?" I hear the click as her father picks up another line. "It's due next Friday and we haven't even started."

She laughs awkwardly. I can almost picture her biting her lip and twisting hair between her fingers. Bella, for as little as I've known her and observed her, is wildly predictable. "Okay," I agree, huffing like I have anything better to do all night, "Yeah, I'll be over around six? Let me finish eating dinner, and then my Mom can drop me off."

"Sounds great!" Bella manages to keep the surprise out of her voice. "You should bring your math homework too."

"Hm?"

"I know you've been having trouble with it, so I can help you. Bring a change of clothing, too, you know, if you want."

"Gotcha, Bella." I give finger-guns to nobody in particular when the line goes dead. All of my clothes are in teh small upstairs, the loft that would hold a bedroom if I needed one. I like to walk at a human pace, taking the stairs slowly instead of launching myself up them. It gives me time to think - not that I need the extra time to think - and it's relaxing. I'm three hundred years old and I still need extra time to think.

Some things never change.

—–

Bella answers the door looking flushed and smelling like strawberries and cream. "Greta! Hey, come in!" I wink, stepping dramatically over the threshold. "Dad, Greta's here!" She clasps her hand around my wrist and drags me through the house. I let her, stumbling for effect, and laughed when she slams the door before Charlie can say anything. She grins up at me and claps her hands when we're standing in her room. It's a pleasant shade of purple, something that I thought didn't fit the last time I was there but makes more sense now. "Okay, so I want to ask you some questions. I have a lot of questions and Ed- Cullen didn't exactly answer them before he left. I didn't really feel comfortable enough to ask the family, anyway. Can you answer some questions?" Her hands fly in front of her, frenzied. "But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"What's the point of being three hundred years old if I don't answer some questions when a human invites you over?" I toss my backpack down on the bed, settling myself on her desk. Bella putzes around for a few minutes, gathering a notebook and scraps of paper from around her room.

"Between you and Jake I haven't felt this good in a long time, but he's not even talking to me anymore. I'm even thinking about going out with Jessica and Angelea soon, but I'm not sure. Anyway, if Jake were talking to me, I would say that you should meet him at some point. I think you guys would get along, that's something that the other Cullens never went for. But he's, you know, avoiding me." Bella settles down on her bed, looking excited and ready for action after a brief moment of pain and an arm wrapped around her chest. She pushes some of her hair behind her ear, ducking her head, again. It's her most endearing habit, something I'm begging to think is cute.

"Anyway, the questions! I- I have a lot of questions. I've been writing them down since I met E- them." She flips through the notebook, scanning pages and mumbling under her breath. Bella's a mess of papers and flushed face before she settles back into the pillow with a pen and her myriad of papers. "What does it feel like?"

"You're being too general, Bella. What does what feel like?"

"Being changed."

If I needed air it would be punched out of me. Why would Bella be asking about that? I had never been around a human who knew before Bella. Of course she'd want to be turned, of course she'd be turned on by the thought of immortal life and irreversible beauty. Who wouldn't? "What does it feel like, huh? It's a lot like being around blood. It's a river of fire in your veins, pain from your toes to the back of your eyes. You think you're dying, you hope that you're dying. All you can hope for is that you're going to die before it gets worse, and then it gets worse. You can hear everything. Your heartbeat is louder than ever before and you can hear it as it speeds toward what you hope is death. Then your heart stops and for a second everything is the most pain you can imagine and then multiply it by four or five." I pause to take a deep breath, my eyebrows furrowed as I look away from Bella's horrified face. "Then, well, it's hard to explain. Everything is so clear, and you can't really remember who you were before. It's all muddy, like you were looking through dirty glasses and listening through earplugs. If you work hard enough, after you've just been changed, you can remember everything from before. You can keep it forever, then."

"I never... I never thought that it would hurt." Bella chews her lip, scribbling down notes in the margins of her notebook. "I guess that makes sense. It's venom, right? Of course it would hurt."

"Mhm." I nodded, the pain still as visible and excruciating as the day I was turned. "It is. It's three days but it feels like it's forever. Even now, and it's been... Well, forever." Bella laughs at my lame joke and it lights up her face. I take it in, the soft lines of her face and the hard angles as she laughs. Bella's changed so much since the day in the woods with Laurant - visibly she's filled out more, tanned from her depressed pallor, and her hair has been kept up with more regularly. She even smells better. Emotionally, many people have told me that she's opened up again since she started following me around like a tiny puppy dog. (Or am I following her around, swallowing venom and bloodlust like some horrible killer?)

"This is something I've wanted to ask... The others," She dances around the name, "But how did you... I don't know how to word this."

"Get bitten? Take the hit? I can't keep up with what slang you kids use these days." I grin at her and, even from across the room, I can hear her lose her breath. "Juke joint, smooch, hi-fi, hiptser, dig it, boogie, bodacious, gnarly, trippy, yuppie, phat, my bad, newbie, barney bag, peeps, 'rents. It's all so crazy. I love watching language develop. We never used slang when I was human. We barely used contractions. They were of the devil, or something."

"Right, when you were a kid." Bella laughs and looks down at her lap, scribbling some doodle, "But how did it happen?"

"That's a long story, Bella. It's not a good one, either."

"I've heard worse. I'm sure I have. And, well, we are having a sleepover, right? That's what girls do?" The way she tries to be nonchalant is... Cute and pathetic. I sigh and hop down from her desk, toeing off my shoes. (I hate wearing them, but school is school and humans are humans.) I pull on one of my Forks High hoodies and change into flannel pants before Bella can blink, taking my place under her covers at the same speed. She loses her breath when I look at her, eyes flickering between where I was and were I am.

"It's like, a really long story. Remember how Laurant called me Thomasin? I only recently took the name Greta. It was almost eighty years ago, when I stopped feeding on humans. Before that I was Thomasin. I was born in a Plymouth colony in the New World, where my parents sailed to give themselves and their children a new life."