Made of Glass Chapter 23

Project Alice!

“What are you so down about? You should vociferously be celebrating our major victory today!” Eddie asked concerned.

“I don’t like team Dolly” I muttered to the floor of his car as we drove home.

“But you’re on team Dolly! That makes it the best.”

“I feel like I’m drawing a line down the middle of your family. Team Dolly vs. the evil Cullens. It can't make for a happy home life.”

“You worry too much. My home life is fine! Besides we have superior numbers now! The rest of them will be falling right in line,”

“I’m a home wrecker,” I refused to be comforted.

“You know what makes me unhappy about my home life?”

I shook my head pathetically.

“That my home life is making my girlfriend unhappy,” he continued. He was tapping his fingers along to the beat of the music in the car with a small smile playing on his lips. I didn’t know if he just liked football or he liked me being with his family but for some reason today had made him very lighthearted. “Trust me this is all going to work out. Project Dark Side was your best idea ever.”

We set to working out the details of Alice’s capture the next day. Eddie had a plan for this one as well.

“Alice and I don’t have anything in common like I did with Emmett. How am I supposed to get someone like her to like someone like me?”

“It doesn’t matter that you’re not anything alike. She’ll like you because of the kind of person you are. And actually your dissimilarities are going to work in our favor.”

“How?” I asked cautiously.

“Fashion.” He said simply.

“Fashion?” I didn’t like where this was going.

“No offense Dolly but you aren’t the most hip dresser. Not that there’s anything wrong with the way you dress it’s just like you’re in an entire different sphere than Alice.”

“So you want her to give me a makeover?” That was worse than being tackled by the hulk.

“Exactly!”

“So what are you just going to ask her?”

“No, we’re going to have to trick her into it of course.” He winked at me. “It’s easier this way.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Can't be worse than my last idea.”

I doubted the truth of that statement but I suppose I was willing to do anything at this point.

“So what I commit a horrendous fashion faux pas in front of her like wearing black shoes and a brown belt and she buys me a whole new wardrobe?”

“I really think it might be as easy as that,” Eddie walked over to the closet and took out my only black skirt that I wore for work and ripped a big hole in the back of it.

“Ahhh!” I shrieked grabbing it out of his hands. “What have you done?!”

“Relax, I have a sewing machine back at my place. I‘ll sew it up for you.”

“You know how to sew?”

“Sort of," He took the skirt back and examined the damage. “Can’t be that hard.”

I groaned.

Eddie drove me over to his house and we set straight to work on the skirt. They had a fairly nice looking sewing machine in their basement. It seemed to me they had one of everything that an American family could ever hope to own, and none of it was from the Good Will that was for sure. They probably never used this thing before. They probably threw away clothes when they got holes in them. Wouldn’t that be nice. And yet it was top of the line. So jealous.

Eddie’s first solution to the hole was to patch it up.

“This was the worst plan ever!” I snapped at him. “This is my only skirt! I can't walk around work with a giant checked patch on my a*s.”

“I think we have some other scraps somewhere around here. We don’t have to use the checkered one.” Eddie said unaffected by my anger.

“Move.” I commanded he step away from the machine. “I’m just going to sew the hole back together.”

Neither Eddie nor I had any idea how to change the bobbin so only half of the stitching was in black and the other half was in yellow. Who would be sewing using yellow thread, I had no idea but it was what I was stuck with. I set to work sending my skirt back and forth through the machine. I stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth like I did whenever I was in deep concentration mode. After a few heavily focused minutes I held up my work for inspection.

Eddie immediately let out a round of laughter.

It looked absolutely horrendous. Why was this so hard? The machine should have been doing all the work.

“Shut up!” I shouted at Eddie. “This is all your fault.”

“Give it back to me. I’m sure I can do a better job than that.”

He couldn’t. His was worse than mine. In fact he had actually managed to make the hole bigger.

“Maybe you could just wear black pants underneath it and no one will notice,” he suggested.

I punched him in the shoulder.

"Maybe you should go jump off a cliff,” I suggested cheerfully.

“Give it to me,” I jumped as a third voice joined our little party in the basement.

Alice walked toward us and took the skirt from Eddie sitting down in the seat in front of the sewing machine that Eddie readily vacated for her. Eddie winked at me behind her back.

Alice zipped the skirt through the machine sewing up the hole perfectly and then mimicked the stitching strategically throughout the skirt so that by the end of it the stitching looked like a purposeful design rather than a covered up mistake. She roughly pushed the skirt back to me.

“There.”

“Thanks so much, Alice! I would have been dead if we couldn’t fix this. It’s my only skirt.”

Alice seemed torn between wanting to hear more of this fashion disaster and leaving me to suffer my own problems.

Her curiosity won out.

“Why don’t you just get another one?”

“I can't afford another one,” I shrugged.

“This is the only skirt you own?” she asked incredulous.

“How many am I supposed to have?”

“You wear it every day?”

“Well not every day. I don’t work every day. Just most days.”

She gave Eddie a dirty look. Before staring down at my shoes for a long moment deciding again.

“You’re trying to pull me over to the dark side aren’t you?”

She was very perceptive. I looked at Eddie but he just shrugged. He wanted me to handle this on my own.

“We have cookies?” I offered.

“I don’t eat,” she said unmoved.

I needed something better than that.

“We have Jasper?” I suggested.

“You play dirty,” she narrowed her eyes at me.

“I have to do what I can.”

“No. You don’t. You could go play with your little traitors over there at your bar and leave the rest of us to rue till you ruin us all.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun for you.”

“It’s not.”

There was a short silence while she looked down at me angrily.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said.

“I know,” she said more softly. And then continued in her previous tone “Curse you and you’re lack of fashion! I can't believe I’m falling for this.”

Alice grabbed my hand and started pulling me back up the stairs out of the basement. I shot a panicked glance at Eddie but he just stood there smiling at us while we departed.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked afraid that she was kidnapping me.

“Shopping. Like you asked me too.”

“I don’t think I asked for that,” I said struggling to keep up with her as she pulled me toward the Cullen’s garage.

“Are you kidding you were practically begging me! Besides you’re part of the Cullen family now. You have standards to uphold! And you are forbidden from ever wearing that orange ever again,” she waved at my t-shirt.

“But I like orange,” I mumbled.

She sighed. “Alright. You can do dull orange, burnt orange. But no more of this neon stuff.”

“This isn’t neon . . .” I said in a small voice. If she heard me she didn’t acknowledge it.

She dragged me into the car and sped off at alarming speeds to the nearest mall.

I wondered all the while what the point was. How in the world was I supposed to look magnificent surrounded by gods and goddesses, but I went along anyway. If I didn’t have to risk being killed I would count this as a victory.

She dragged me straight through the department stores into the more expensive shops of the mall. I refrained from ever looking at the price tags and actually found myself enjoying the experience. I had never had someone pamper me like that before.

Clearly she knew what she was doing. I stood in awe as the master set to work. I tried on countless outfits and modeled them all for her. I had to admit there was improvement. I had never looked so feminine. It was easy for me to look skinny but to look skinny while still having all the appropriate curves was quite the feat. I didn’t realize how sexy I could look in well fitting clothing.

The best part was that Alice was actually pretty easy to talk to. She understood what it was like to love a Cullen boy and I felt that this gave us an automatic connection. By the end of the day we were giggling together over my horrid model walk impression and inability to do twirls without tripping over my feet. Eddie was right. We were going to be good friends.

As soon as we got over the language barrier.

“Hand me the jersey one with the empire waist,” she demanded of me through the stall.

“Which one?” I asked confused.

“The burgundy one,” she clarified.

“I dug through the giant pile of clothing in the corner of the dressing room and threw a top over the top of the door to her.

“This is red. We want bur-gun-dy” she said slowly as if I were slow.

“No you want the burgundy one. I want the one with polka dots.”

“Polka dots? Come on, D! Can you at least try?”

“Why do I have to try when I have you?”

“I can't dress you every day!”

“Alright but just so you know every day you don’t I’m reverting to jeans and a t-shirt.”

“You’re hopeless!”

Lord knows how she managed to sneak her way into my dressing room but there she magically appeared and forced the burgundy top over my head.

When it was all said and done she bought the polka dotted one too. When I raised an eyebrow at that she gave me a smile that made me think she really had forgiven me for what I was doing to her family.

The weirdest part of the shopping experience was that I frequently experienced déjà vu throughout the day. Well it wasn’t exactly like déjà vu. It wasn’t that I was doing the same thing twice it was just like I knew I was going to be doing them before I did. Right when I was going through one of these episodes where I was staring at these shoes I knew that we were going to be buying a little later Alice seized my attention.

“How come I can't see your future? Just like with Eddie and Jasper. None of us can use our powers on you.”

The pieces clicked together. I was sensing the future. Uber bizarre.

“How should I know? That usually doesn’t happen?”

“No it never happens.”

“You never accidentally give your powers to someone for a little while?”

“Why would you ask that?”

I didn’t know. I was probably going crazy. It was probably just déjà vu after all. Maybe my left temporal lobe was just firing unusually slowly today.

“Did you say Jasper’s power doesn’t work either?”

“No, why?”

“I didn’t know he had one.”

“Eddie didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head. Seems like something that should have come up before.

"His isn’t as cool as ours. He can just control people’s emotions.”

“That sounds pretty cool!”

“It’s very subtle he can be doing it to you all day making you angry or tired or excited and you’d have no idea. You’d just think you were having these completely normal emotions. But around you, try as he might he can't get you to change in the slightest.”

“So I’m like . . . anti-vampire super power. I have a super power of my own!” That made me feel pretty special.

“Whatever it is, it’s driving us crazy!” Alice fixed me with a focus gaze the same way Eddie sometimes did when he was trying to get inside my head. “I guess you’re just a freak!” she said giving up. “We are so getting those shoes!” she pointed to the ones I had been staring at a moment ago.

It was probably just a coincidence.

When we returned to the house late that night we strode in with bags upon bags of clothing on our arms and tears rolling down our faces. She had been telling me embarrassing stories of Eddie from the days before I knew him that put him in an entirely different and comical light.

The laughing cut off abruptly when we met the antagonistic stares of Rosalie and Carlisle, the only remaining members on the dark side. They were grossly outnumbered and they had to know their numbers were coming up. I couldn’t help but shoot a smug smile at them. I was going to win this fight. I was going to reunite this family.

“And then there were two,” Eddie appeared at my side. Alice and I got one look at Eddie and split into laughter all over again.

“What?” he asked bemused.

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[Summer]

“You’re trying to pull me over to the dark side aren’t you?”

She was very perceptive. I looked at Eddie but he just shrugged. He wanted me to handle this on my own.

“We have cookies?” I offered.

“I don’t eat,” she said unmoved.

I needed something better than that.

“We have Jasper?” I suggested.

“You play dirty,” she narrowed her eyes at me.

“I have to do what I can.”

I loved those lines and the end. LOL! I love you Alice. Also, I like how you didn't make it so easy for Dolly to be accepted as Stephenie made it for Bella.