CHAPTER SEVEN
last snowfall

There's a silence to snowfall that hums in my chest like a memory. Not just absence of sound, but an old, clean hush- the kind that falls over a battlefield after the dying is done. As if the world, breathless, forgets for a moment that it ever made noise.

I walked through the woods in the blue hour before dawn, where light and dark were in negotiation and nothing felt real. Snow hushed the undergrowth. The trees rose like mourners, veiled in white, skeletal and unbending. With each step, my boots crushed something invisible. Frozen moss, some forgotten stem, brittle, bowed things. I watched my fingers trail across bark, and imagined frost growing in my wake instead of melting. Imagined I belonged to this deathless stillness.

There was no reason to walk to school, not when I could have flickered there in half the time. But I was starving, not for blood, not yet, but for proximity. For whatever it was that drew me to them.

The Cullens.

Even the name stirred something strange beneath my ribs.

I told myself I wasn't like Bella, watching, longing, but I knew that was a lie.

By the time I reached the school, the first bell was still an hour away. The lot was empty, the buildings dark. I walked slowly past the forest's edge, letting the scent of pine and ozone root into me. I didn't need to breathe, but I did. Out of habit. Out of hope that something in the air might fill me.

They arrived not long after.

The Cullens' car pulled in with no tire crunch, no sign of disturbance to the world. They emerged one by one, effortless. As if they weren't shaped by the same gravity as the rest of us.

I watched her first, Alice. Her head tilted, eyes already seeking. I hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound. And yet, she turned, caught me in that luminous gaze and smiled, not kindly, not cruelly. Simply as if she saw me.

I looked away before I could think better of it. Before something in me rose and reached out.

At lunch, Bella was already seated, her tray untouched, her eyes locked across the cafeteria. Her heartbeat told the story: fluttering, erratic. A song only I could hear.

I slid into the seat beside her.

"He's here," I murmured. "You noticed."

Bella blinked, startled. "Yeah. He is." Then, more quietly, "I thought he'd disappeared."

I followed her gaze. Edward sat at the Cullens' table, laughing softly at something Emmett said. His eyes were no longer black- they had shifted to gold, mellow and startling. He'd fed. Somewhere far from here, I imagined.

Bella continued, barely blinking. "Charlie said they go hiking a lot. That Carlisle's a doctor at the hospital."

My stillness broke.

"A doctor," I echoed, the word like glass in my mouth. "He treats the sick?"

Bella nodded, puzzled by my tone. "Apparently. He's really respected."

It should have revolted me. And yet... there was a strange grace in it. A vampire touching the dying. Staying his thirst to save them. It was grotesque. Noble. Impossible.

And still, I envied it. It made something low in my gut twist. Like awe. Or disdain.

Bella stared at their table again. "It's weird. No one else seems to think they're... strange."

"Strange," I echoed softly.

"I don't know. Maybe I'm just bored."

"You're not wrong," I said. "Forks doesn't offer much in the way of mystery."

Her attention drifted. I followed her gaze.

Alice.

She was watching me again.

Not watching like humans do, not curious or polite. It was deeper. Like she had seen me in another life. As if we shared something, and I had simply forgotten.

Her head tilted, raven hair falling in perfect cascade. Her lips curved, not quite a smile, not quite a question.

I turned away, heartless and hollow. The snow outside had thickened. The window blurred with frost.

"How do you like the snow?" I asked Bella, needing to ground myself.

She grimaced. "Oh, I don't."

"I thought as much."

"I could barely drive this morning."

"I love the snow," I said, eyes tracing a single flake sliding down the glass.

"I can't imagine why."

"It's peaceful. Everything's quiet." My fingers toyed with the hem of my sleeve. "Everything dies, and no one notices."

She snorted. "Well, that's a little grim."

"It's honest."

Biology was a confusion of scents and half-held stares. Bella walked beside me, bundled in her coat, breath clouding the air. I offered her a grin. "His glare can't get worse than last time."

It didn't.

It vanished entirely. Edward spoke to Bella as if they were old friends, his smile soft, his posture open. Nothing like the coiled silence of the other day, when he'd looked at her like a man on the verge of losing control.

Bella, to her credit, kept pace. Her voice lilted nervously, but she didn't look away. She was trembling with hope and he fed it. Carefully. Methodically.

It was almost cruel.

I watched from my desk, a ghost at the edge of a mirror.

A girl who didn't cast a reflection in their world.

"Hey, you feeling good?"

I turned to find Mike's concerned expression. That furrowed brow of his, always squinting, always confused. As if the world refused to arrange itself around him.

"You look pale."

I nearly laughed.

"I forgot a coat," I said instead. "I'm cold."

After class, Bella and I lingered near the lockers. Her cheeks were pink from the heated classroom, her pupils still wide. She clutched her books to her chest like a shield.

"So?" I said quietly. "You spoke."

She exhaled like she'd been holding her breath the whole hour. "He was... nice."

"You sound surprised."

"I am. I mean, last week he looked at me like-" She shook her head. "And now... it's like he's different."

I tilted my head. "And that doesn't scare you?"

Bella looked up at me then, her eyes searching. "It should."

I smiled faintly. "Yes."

Across the hall, I saw Alice standing by the exit, speaking to Rosalie. But her gaze drifted to me. Always to me. As if she'd been waiting. As if some thread between us was beginning to tremble.

Bella nudged me gently. "Snowball fight after gym?"

I blinked. "Is that... a thing?"

She laughed. "Mike's already organizing teams. Want to come?"

I thought of the cold, of the laughter, of the wetness seeping into clothes. But more than that, I thought of the illusion, of pretending to be part of something as human as joy.

"All right," I said.

Outside, the world was buried. The snow had thickened into soft drifts, still falling, fine as ash. Students spilt from the gym doors, shouting and laughing, their boots slipping in the slush.

Bella had wisely escaped early. I saw her dart to her truck and slam the door, safe from the war that was about to begin.

I stepped into the melee, and the cold hit me like a homecoming.

Mike spotted me immediately, grinning. "You made it!"

I raised a brow. "Didn't think I would?"

He flushed. "No! I just- never mind. You're on my team."

I nodded, crouching beside him in the snow. I let the chill soak into me, though it couldn't bite. Let the wind rattle through my hair. Around us, chaos reigned, shouts, shrieks, the soft thud of snowballs hitting jackets and hoods.

It was absurd.

It was everything I shouldn't have wanted.

And still, I let it happen.

Mike was pelted in the back, yelping. "Tyler!" he called, offended. "Traitor!"

I smiled and formed a perfect sphere of snow in my palm, sculpted slow, delicate, like marble. Then I flung it slowly, a blur through the air, and struck Tyler square in the chest.

Mike whistled low. "Damn. Remind me not to get on your bad side."

Too late, I thought, though a laugh formed in my chest.