My window opened soundlessly. I stopped, stepped back, and let it fall closed. It made the usual sound a window makes when it’s closing: loud, obtrusive, and startling enough to get my dad yelling from downstairs.
“Yeah,” I called back. I opened my window again. No creaking, still. This was new. This was not good. I frowned at the window. Something would have to be done about this.
That weird Cullen kid was back in school today. He watched me all day like I was some sort of freak. I didn’t have anything caught between my teeth. I had checked during a break between classes in case there was some unsightly lettuce poking its way between my front teeth.
The staring thing was not cool. Everything about him was not cool. I never thought I would actually see a real life embodiment of the lessons in The Gift of Fear that dad had got me for my fifteenth birthday, but here he was, sitting next to me in biology class. Ugh.
Supper was the usual affair: frozen leftover lasagna with textured vegetable protein. Dad like to complain that lasagna was supposed to have meat in it. I told him, again, that if he wanted meat in his lasagna, he was more than welcome to make his own and freeze it. We ended in a stalemate, both eating in silence.
That night, I got down the shotgun from the shelf in the closet, loaded it up, and slipped under my covers, eyes wide open.
I heard the window open. Not because of the now absent squeaking, but because I had set up an old Christmas ornament on the sill. It broke on the ground. I didn’t move and whoever it was what had come in through my window froze, waiting.
I could hear his footsteps moving across the room as he came closer.
All right, Bella, I told myself, let’s do this.
I swung the shotgun up from beside me, fitted the stock against my shoulder, aimed, and fired.
Edward Cullen fell to the floor of my room. I stood up, shotgun still trained on him.
“What the hell kind of idiot decides to sneak into the house of the police chief?” I demanded. He sort of gurgled.
“Bells?” Dad’s voice again, this time much more agitated.
“Yeah?” I crossed to the window and slammed it closed so that the only way Cullen could escape was through the door that my dad now stood in, looking wide awake and carrying his own service pistol.
“What the hell is going on.”
“I’d like to file a breaking and entering report, Dad,” I said.
