"Hello?" I asked, speechless.
"Bella? It's me," Jessica said.
"Oh, hey Jess." I scrambled for a moment to come back down to reality. It felt like months rather than days since I'd spoken to Jess. Time really flies! "How was the dance?"
"It was so much fun!" Jessica gushed. Needing no more invitation than that, she launched into a minute-by-minute account of the previous night. I mmm'd and ahh'd in all the right places, pitying her mortal preoccupations. After all, how could she know how much more exciting my life was than hers? Jessica, Mike, the dance, the Forks High School—they all seemed strangely irrelevant at the moment. My eyes kept flashing to the window, trying to judge the degree of light behind the heavy clouds.
"Did you hear what I said, Bella?" Jess asked, irritated.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I said, Mike kissed me! Can you believe it?"
I sighed. "I guess," I said. It was hard to imagine that anyone could survive being kissed by someone with such large teeth.
"So what did you do yesterday?" Jessica challenged, still sounding bothered by my lack of attention. Or maybe she was upset because I hadn't asked for the kiss-details.
"Nothing, really. I just hung around outside to enjoy the sun."
I heard Charlie's car in the garage.
"Did you ever hear anything more from Edward Cullen?"
"Fredward," I corrected, nastily.
The front door slammed and I could hear Charlie banging around under the stairs, putting his cruising gear away.
"Um." I hesitated, not sure what my story even was anymore.313
313. This is the point at which Bella began to chronicle her experiences as a teenage lover, a journal which served as the raw material from which this novel was crafted.