All of them raised an eyebrow at this news.
"Maybe you're not as scary as you think you are," Emmett said, chuckling. "I bet I could have frightened her better than that."
I rolled my eyes at him.
"Wonder why...?" He puzzled again over my revelation about the girl's unique silence.
"We've been over that. I don't know."
"She's coming in," Alice murmured then. I felt my body go rigid. "Try to look human."
"Human, you say?" Emmett asked.
He held up his right fist, twisting his fingers to reveal the snowball he'd saved in his palm. Of course it had not melted there. He'd squeezed it into a lumpy block of ice. He had his eyes on Jasper, but I saw the direction of his thoughts. So did Alice, of course. When he abruptly hurled the ice chunk at her, she flicked it away with a casual flutter of her fingers. The ice ricocheted across the length of the cafeteria, too fast to be visible to human eyes, and shattered with a sharp crack against the brick wall. The brick cracked, too.
The heads in that corner of the room all turned to stare at the pile of broken ice on the floor, and then swiveled to find the culprit. They didn't look further than a few tables away. No one looked at us.
"Very human, Emmett," Rosalie said scathingly. "Why don't you punch through the wall while you're at it?"
"It would look more impressive if you did it, baby."
I tried to pay attention to them, keeping a grin fixed on my face like I was part of their banter. I did not allow myself to look toward the line where I knew she was standing. But that was all that I was listening to.
I could hear Jessica's impatience with the new girl, who seemed to be distracted, too, standing motionless in the moving line. I saw, in Jessica's thoughts, that Bella Swan's cheeks were once more colored bright pink with blood.
I pulled in short, shallow breaths, ready to quit breathing if any hint of her scent touched the air near me.
Mike Newton was with the two girls. I heard both his voices, mental and verbal, when he asked Jessica what was wrong with the Swan girl. I didn't like the way his thoughts wrapped around her, the flicker of already established fantasies that clouded his mind while he watched her start and look up from her reverie like she'd forgotten he was there.
"Nothing," I heard Bella say in that quiet, clear voice. It seemed to ring like a bell over the babble in the cafeteria, but I knew that was just because I was listening for it so intently.
"I'll just get a soda today," she continued as she moved to catch up with the line. I couldn't help flickering one glance in her direction. She was staring at the floor, the blood slowly fading from her face. I looked away quickly, to Emmett, who laughed at the now pained-looking smile on my face.
You look sick, bro.
I rearranged my features so the expression would seem casual and effortless. Jessica was wondering aloud about the girl's lack of appetite. "Aren't you hungry?"
"Actually, I feel a little sick." Her voice was lower, but still very clear. Why did it bother me, the protective concern that suddenly emanated from Mike Newton's thoughts? What did it matter that there was a possessive edge to them? It wasn't my business if Mike Newton felt unnecessarily anxious for her. Perhaps this was the way everyone responded to her. Hadn't I wanted, instinctively, to protect her, too? Before I'd wanted to kill her, that is...
But was the girl ill?
It was hard to judge - she looked so delicate with her translucent skin... Then I realized that I was worrying, too, just like that dimwitted boy, and I forced myself not to think about her health.
Regardless, I didn't like monitoring her through Mike's thoughts. I switched to Jessica's, watching carefully as the three of them chose which table to sit at. Fortunately, they sat with Jessica's usual companions, at one of the first tables in the room. Not downwind, just as Alice had promised.
Alice elbowed me. She's going to look soon, act human.
I clenched my teeth behind my grin.
"Ease up, Edward," Emmett said. "Honestly. So you kill one human. That's hardly the end of the world."
"You would know," I murmured.
Emmett laughed. "You've got to learn to get over things. Like I do. Eternity is a long time to wallow in guilt."
Just then, Alice tossed a smaller handful of ice that she'd been hiding into Emmett's unsuspecting face.
He blinked, surprised, and then grinned in anticipation.
"You asked for it," he said as he leaned across the table and shook his iceencrusted hair in her direction. The snow, melting in the warm room, flew out from his hair in a thick shower of half-liquid, half-ice.
"Ew!" Rose complained, as she and Alice recoiled from the deluge.