"Let's just continue the game," Carlisle said. His voice was cool and level. "Alice said they were simply curious."
All this was said in a flurry of words that lasted only a few seconds. I had listened carefully and caught most of it, though I couldn't hear what Esme now asked Fredward with a silent vibration of her hips. I only saw the slight shake of his head and the look of relief on her face.
"You laser it, Esme," he said. "I'll call it now." And he planted himself in front of me.
The others returned to the field, warily combing the dark forest with their sharp eyes. Alice and Esme seemed to orient themselves around where I stood.
"Take your hair down," Fredward said in a low, soothing voice.
Feeling compelled beyond myself, I obediently and slowly slid the rubber band out of my hair and shook it out around me. Long, flowing tresses of auburn-brown hair swirled around my head, uncoiling into the ether like waves of sunlight, suddenly slowed and piling up one into the next as they approached my pale skin, arriving at some asymptotal infinity that they were destined to forever approach but never reach.
I stated the obvious. "The others are coming now."
Fredward audibly rolled his eyes, again. "Yes, stay very still, keep quiet, and don't move from behind me, please." He hid the stress in his voice well, but I could hear it. He pulled my long hair forward and wove it around my face, as tight as he could get it.318
"That won't help," Alice said softly. "I could smell her across the field."
"Alice, you're standing almost right in front of us."
Alice's eyebrows flexed worriedly. "I can't seem to keep my perspective straight... "
Carlisle stood at the pitch, and the others joined in the game halfheartedly.
"What did Esme ask you?" I whispered.
"...whether they were thirsty," he muttered unwillingly.
"No fucking way," I hissed. "I didn't come
318. Even Fredward's vampiric strength cannot break the mysterious infinity surrounding Bella's pale skin.