The food was already being passed around, and the boys hurried to claim a share while Eric introduced us as we each entered the driftwood circle. Angela and I were the last to arrive and the last to be introduced, and, as Eric said our names, I noticed a younger Native sitting on the stones near the fire glance up at me in interest. I sat down next to Angela, keeping close, and Mike brought us sandwiches—"I made this one especially for you," he said—and an array of sodas—"If there were a Bella-flavored soda, I'd drink it all day," he moaned under his breath—while a boy who looked to be the oldest of the locals rattled off the names of the seven others with him. All I caught was that one of the girls was also named, surprisingly, Jessica, and that the boy who noticed me was named Squaw.142
It was relaxing to sit with Angela; she was a restful kind of person I needed to be around—she didn't feel the need to fill every silence with chatter, to spend hours talking about things I wouldn't care about, things like: how she isn't Fredward, what Fredward isn't doing right now, whether I really did touch Mike's penis, if I knew everyone else thought I had touched his penis, and if I was totally sure I hadn't touched it, because Mike seemed to think I had.
She left me free to think undisturbed while we ate.
And I was thinking, undisturbed, about how disjointedly time seemed to flow in Forks, passing in a blur at times, with single images standing out more clearly than others. And then, at other times, every second was significant, etched in my mind. I knew exactly what caused the crooked difference, and it disturbed me.
During lunch the clouds started to advance, slinking like slugs across the blue sky, crawling in front of the sun momentarily, casting long shadows across the beach, and blackening the waves. As they finished eating, people started to drift away in twos and threes, pairing up for a very different kind of feast. Some walked down to the edge of the waves, others were gathering a second expedition to the tide pools. Mike—with Jessica clinging to his arm—headed up to that one shop in the village with the... things.143 Some of the local kids went with them; others went along on the hike. By the time
142. Presumably named after the dark, multi-grain bread.
143. Presumably fireworks.