Twilight Read Free

Paul.
    “We have an agreement,” I said, my tongue and lips forming the words with difficulty because they, like my heart, had gone ice cold with dread.
    “I promised I wouldn’t kill him,” Paul said. “I didn’t say anything about keeping him from dying in the first place.”
    I blinked up at him, uncomprehending.
    “What… what are you talking about?” I stammered.
    “You figure it out,” he said. He leaned down and kissed me lightly on my frozen lips. “Good night, Suze.”
    And then he stood up and vanished into the fog.
    It took me a minute to realize I was free. Cool air rushed in to all the places where his body had been touching mine. I finally managed to roll over, feeling as if I’d just suffered a head-on collision with a brick wall. Still, I had enough strength left to call out, “Paul! Wait!”
    That’s when someone inside the Gutierrez household flicked on the lights. The backyard lit up bright as an airport runway. I heard a window open and someone shout, “Hey, you! What are you doing there?”
    I didn’t stick around to ask whether or not they planned on calling the cops. I peeled myself up from the ground and ran for the wall I’d scaled a half hour ago. I found my mom’s car right where I’d left it. I hopped into it and started my long journey home, cursing a certain fellow mediator—and the grass stains on my new jeans—the whole way.
    I had no idea that night how bad things were going to get between Paul and me.
    But I was about to find out.

Chapter

two
     
     

    He’d done it. Finally. Just like, deep down, I guess I’d always known he would.
     
    You would think, what with everything I’d been through, I’d have seen it coming. I’m not exactly new at this. And it wasn’t as if all the warning signs hadn’t been there.
    Still, the blow, when it came, seemed to strike like a bolt out of the clear blue.
    “So where are you going for dinner before the Winter Formal?” Kelly Prescott asked me in fourth period language lab. She didn’t even wait to hear what my answer was. Because Kelly didn’t care what my answer was. That wasn’t the point of her asking me in the first place.
    “Paul’s taking me to the Cliffside Inn,” Kelly went on. “You know the Cliffside Inn, don’t you, Suze? In Big Sur?”
    “Oh, sure,” I said. “I know it.”
    That’s what I said, anyway. Isn’t it weird how your brain can slip into autopilot? Like, how you can be saying one thing and thinking something entirely different? Because when Kelly said that—about Paul taking her to the Cliffside Inn—the first thing I thought wasn’t Oh, sure, I know it. Not even close. My first thought was more along the lines of What? Kelly Prescott? Paul Slater is taking KELLY PRESCOTT to the Winter Formal?
    But that’s not what I said out loud, thank God. I mean, considering that Paul himself was sitting just a few study carrels away, futzing with the sound on his tape player. The last thing in the world I wanted was for him to think I was, you know, peeved that he’d asked someone else to the formal. It was bad enough that he noticed I was even looking in his direction, let alone talking about him. He raised his eyebrows all questioningly, as if to say, “May I be of service?”
    That’s when I saw he still had on his headphones. He hadn’t, I realized with relief, heard what Kelly had said. He’d been listening to the scintillating conversation between Dominique and Michel, our little French friends.
    “It got five stars,” Kelly went on, settling into her carrel. “The Cliffside Inn, I mean.”
    “Cool,” I said, resolutely ripping my gaze from Paul’s and pulling out the chair to my own carrel. “I’m sure you two will have a really great time.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Kelly said. She flipped her honey-blonde hair back so she could slip on her headphones. “It’ll be so romantic. So where’re you going? To eat before the dance, I mean.”
    She knew, of course. She knew perfectly