Made of Glass Chapter 18

A Chapter by Charlie

Without a doubt the most annoying sound in the whole great big wide world is that ridiculous errrn errrn errrn your alarm clock makes to wake you in the morning. It doesn’t matter what type of alarm clock you have or the exact frequency of the beeping. Your own personal alarm clock, the device that awakens you from peaceful sleep, makes the worst noise ever.

I was finally having good dreams for the first time in like ten years and that stupid buzzing interrupted at exactly the wrong moment! I banged at the top of the torture device with my fist for several seconds attempting and failing to stop the buzzing. I gave up and turned to plan B. With a violently jerk, I pulled the offending object’s cord straight out of the wall and then chucked the whole thing across the room.

Finally in glorious silent I rolled over with a groan.

I bolted straight upright when I heard a man’s chuckle from inside my apartment.

I was too tired to puzzle out why Eddie was sitting in my kitchen.

“Sorry, did I startle you?” he said in his glorious voice.

Horror filled me. What did I look like? It can't have been pleasant. How dare he surprise me like this?

I scrambled out of bed and eyed him suspiciously while side stepping toward the bathroom.

“I’m sorry I thought you would have been up by now. I didn’t mean to break into your apartment while you were sleeping,” And yet that is exactly what he did. I looked over at my door still bolted shut. How? “Don’t you have class in like ten minutes?” Eddie continued.

“It’s in thirteen minutes. I have plenty of time. How did you get in here?”

“The window,” Eddie said simply.

I looked over at the tiny window two stories off the ground without so much as a fire escape or awning below it. It was all just one flat surface. I had never thought I would need to lock that. Nobody was supposed to be able to get up that high. Vampires. Ugh.

“I’m sorry should I go?” Eddie said looking at my confused and annoyed face.

“What are you doing here?”

“I brought you breakfast!” he said proudly holding up a Dunkin Doughnuts bag.

‘You’re forgiven!” I said leaping toward the peace offering.

I retrieved the maple iced piece of heaven and took a large bite moaning in pleasure.

“Give me four minutes,” I mumbled around the large bite. I ran into the bathroom and rushed through the morning routines. I debated brushing my teeth. The toothpaste would ruin the taste of the doughnut. I reluctantly sided with hygiene over sugar and ran the brush over my teeth. I ran a brush hastily through my hair and applied a little mascara after popping in my contacts. I tugged on a pair of jeans and shoes. I was done in record time and bounced back out to Eddie.

“That’s very impressive,” he said as I hurried to get a drink of water and swish it around in my mouth trying to dispel the minty taste.

I shoved the last bit of doughnut in my mouth and then turned back to Eddie. “Would you like to escort me to class, Mr. Cullen?” I said formally.

“I’d be delighted,” he said offering me his arm. “Would you like me to go back out the window so the neighbors don’t talk?” he chuckled.

“Nobody should be downstairs yet. We’ll be okay,” I winked at him. “So did you miss me so much you couldn’t wait until normal visiting hours?” I questioned him as I grabbed my bag and walked out the door.

He shrugged sheepishly. I giggled with pleasure.

“Actually I meant to ask you about Jasper’s little visit the other day. What did you think of him?” It was a weak excuse. He just wanted to see me.

“He’s a jackass,” I said plainly.

Eddie threw his head back and laughed.

“He liked you quite a lot,” he said after regaining his composure.

“Really?” I said stunned. “I was kind of a jackass to him too.” I thought back over the words I had said to him.

I was right that nobody was going to be in the bar that early. We made it to the safety of the street and started walking down toward my class. I had to double time it because of how late I had gotten up but of course Eddie didn’t have any problems keeping up.

“That’s probably why he likes you. He says he wanted to come back and apologize sometime.”

“No he didn’t,” I said disbelieving.

“I was shocked too. He was just as adamant as the rest of them that I should stop doing this, but you completely changed his mind. Nice work.”

“I don’t think I really did anything . . .” Maybe he was just grateful that I spared him from the sun.

“What exactly happened?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t give me the details. I was a little . . . irate when I realized what he had done.”

“You didn’t know he was coming?”

“Nope, he just stole my car and came over all on his own. He said he was curious.”

“Yeah you could say that I suppose. He sat in your booth and stared at me for like an hour. It was totally creepy.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Well first he asked me if I knew about you guys. I told him I didn’t because you hadn’t told me yet.”

“But you really did.”

“Right well I didn’t want you to know that I knew until you were ready for me to know. Then he basically told me straight out that he didn’t want you hanging out with me.”

“And you said?”

“To stuff it.”

Eddie chuckled again.

“Then it probably helps that I basically saved his life!”

“How did you do that?”

“Well I didn’t but I thought I was because I didn’t really know what the sun would do to you. He was going to have to go outside in the sunshine but I showed him the back way out. I was much more proud of the action when I did it. Now it doesn’t sound cool at all.”

“Jasper has lived his whole life at night. Well, second life or existence or whatever this is. Basically he’s not as careful about the sun as the rest of us daywalkers,” He chuckled.

“Right well he got out safely anyhow and I think that’s all of it.”

“Whatever did it, he’s on our side now. He even talked to Carlisle about it.”

“What did Carlisle say?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “He wouldn’t hear any of it.”

“I’m sorry."

“What for?”

“You’re having all these problems with your family because of me,”

“Oh they can stuff it too. It is nice to have Jasper to at least confide in but I don’t really care about the rest of them. They’re just being ridiculous.”

I smiled. It seemed he had finally made up his mind and he didn’t care about the other problems. I took this morning’s visit to mean I wouldn’t have any more problems trying to convince him that he wanted to be around me.

“So I thought of some more questions that I forgot yesterday,” I said as we neared the building my class was in.

“Oh?” he said smiling.

“How does one become a vampire?”

“Why would you want to know that?” he said cautiously.

“Oh gosh, it’s not like I want to! No, no, no. I’m just curious,”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “It’s the venom that does it. The painful kind. If you allow it to spread without drinking your victim dry they become one of us after three days,”

“So it’s pretty painful.”

“Excruciating,” his eyes clouded over like he was remembering some past painful memory. I wanted to draw him away from that place so I quickly moved onto a more cheerful topic.

“So how do you guys die?” That wasn’t exactly the chipper subject I was reaching for.

"Why would you want to know that?" he said again.

I gave him a devious grin. "Just curious."

“It takes a stake to the heart, of course,” he finally answered.

“Really? A wooden stake? And then do you like turn to dust?”

“No it’s more like if we get stabbed by anything else and it actually manages to pierce the skin then it heals almost immediately but if we get stabbed by a stake we react the same way a human would. Humans don’t generally survive that kind of thing. That’s not usually how it’s done though. In a fight between vampires it’s more likely that you just tear your opponent to pieces and then burn them.” He gave the whole speech like he was lecturing on bananas.

I hurried to my seat only slightly late with the sound of Eddie’s laugh filling up my head.

The class couldn’t get out fast enough. I didn’t catch a single word of the biology lecture. I skipped out of that class and into and out of the next two with my head in the clouds. I wondered if Eddie would show up at the bar early today. His eagerness to see me might continue throughout the day. Or throughout the week. What if he was there when I woke up every day for the rest of my life? I was going to have to start wearing make up to bed. I was humming and not paying any attention to where I was walking on my way home after my last class when I felt a presence come up behind me. I clutched my gigantic biology book ready to use it as a weapon in case I was being stalked by a serial rapist but when I turned it was Eddie. He gave me his greeting smile.

“How was your day?” he said smirking as he noticed my grip on my biology book.

“Where did you come from?”

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction I had just come from.

“I hope you don’t feel like I’m stalking you.”

“I think stalking implies the attention is unwanted,” I put his worries to rest.

“So I was thinking if you weren’t busy tomorrow. It’s going to be sunny.”

I cocked my head unable to determine how those two sentences were connected. We couldn’t hang out if it was sunny.

“When is your last class?”

“My lab starts at noon,” I said still puzzled what he had planned for us.

“Biology lab? Those things can take forever,” I liked how disappointed in that fact he was.

“I can start early and usually it only takes me about an hour.”

“I’ll wait for you back at the bar!”

“But if it’s sunny, should you be out and about?”

“I want to show you what we’re like in the sun.”

That did sound like a good idea. My curiosity about that mystery was killing me. “Maybe I should go to your house,” I said still unsure he should be outside on a sunny day.

“I’ll wait for you in my car. It’ll be fine,” he promised.

“Alright. Where will be going?”

“You’ll see.”

“You’re just doing that because you know I’m going to be dying with curiosity.”

“I want to make it interesting for you.”

Interesting it was. Even though I had Eddie to distract me all day. He didn’t leave the bar the entire time I was working. I was still practically jumping up and down at the promise of tomorrow. I couldn’t really be angry with Eddie for keeping it a secret from me because he was in such a good mood. He kept greeting me with smiles all day long whenever he caught my eye.

I did a terrible job working because I kept on getting distracting by him or remembering something I needed to ask him. Luckily the rest of the girls were very good natured about taking up all the work I was slacking on. They all noticed my mood and kept giving me meaningful looks. Towards the end of the night Monica told me she had a surprise for me. Her and the other girls pulled me aside and showed me to the board that was covered in a table cloth.

With a grand flourish Monica pulled off the table cloth exposing the board. They had moved my name to the top of the board and put what looked like an entire packet of golden star stickers next to it.

“We tried to count out one thousand stars but that is like a lot and they wouldn’t all fit! So this is what you get!” Monica laughed. “Congratulations. This means you’ve won the whole year,”

All the girls applauded me at my success. I wasn’t exactly sure that what Eddie and I were doing was dating yet, but I didn’t tell them that. The power of wishful thinking.

I played along with their little game and made over the top bows while they cheered for me.

Eddie had of course been listening to the whole event. He had thought the game was ridiculous from the very beginning but he found the fact that I was a participant very amusing. He didn’t say anything about the fact that I got all of those because he had supposedly asked me out. He neither confirmed nor denied that what we were doing was worthy of winning the whole contest. It was all very frustrating.

Eventually my fabulous day came to an end. Eddie bid me good night as I was closing up. He didn’t come upstairs that night but he did mention that he was very excited about tomorrow before gracefully leaving me alone.

I sighed and locked the door after him.

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