I could barely hear his answer. "I don't think I have the same thing you did."

"Don't you have the stomach flu?" I asked, confused.

"No. This is something else."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Everything," he whispered. "Every part of me hurts."

The pain in his voice was nearly tangible.

"What can I do, Jake? What can I bring you?"

"Nothing. You can't come here." He was abrupt. It reminded me of Billy the other night.

"I've already been exposed to whatever you have," I pointed out.

He ignored me. "I'll call you when I can. I'll let you know when you can come down again."

"Jacob—"

"I've got to go," he said with sudden urgency.

"Call me when you feel better."

"Right," he agreed, and his voice had a strange, bitter edge.

He was silent for a moment. I was waiting for him to say goodbye, but he waited too.

"I'll see you soon," I finally said. "Wait for me to call," he said again. "Okay… Bye, Jacob."

"Bella," he whispered my name, and then hung up the phone.

10. The meadow

JACOB DIDN'T CALL.

The first time I called, Billy answered and told me that Jacob was still in bed. I got nosy, checking to make sure that Billy had taken him to a doctor. Billy said he had, but, for some reason I couldn't nail down, I didn't really believe him. I called again, several times a day, for the next two days, but no one was ever there.

Saturday, I decided to go see him, invitation be damned. But the little red house was empty. This frightened me—was Jacob so sick that he'd needed to go to the hospital? I stopped by the hospital on the way back home, but the nurse at the front desk told me neither Jacob or Billy had been in.

I made Charlie call Harry Clearwater as soon as he got home from work. I waited, anxious, while Charlie chatted with his old friend; the conversation seemed to go on forever without Jacob even being mentioned. It seemed that Harry had been in the hospital . . some kind of tests for his heart. Charlie's forehead got all pinched together, but Harry joked with him, blowing it off, until Charlie was laughing again. Only then did Charlie ask about Jacob, and now his side of the conversation didn't give me much to work with, just a lot of hmms and yeahs. I drummed my fingers against the counter beside him until he put a hand over mine to stop me.

Finally, Charlie hung up the phone and turned to me.

"Harry says there's been some trouble with the phone lines, and that's why you haven't been able to get through. Billy took Jake to the doc down there, and it looks like he has mono. He's real tired, and Billy said no visitors," he reported.

"No visitors?" I demanded in disbelief.

Charlie raised one eyebrow. "Now don't you go making a pest of yourself, Bells. Billy knows what's best for Jake. He'll be up and around soon enough. Be patient."

I didn't push it. Charlie was too worried about Harry. That was clearly the more important issue—it wouldn't be right to bug him with my lesser concerns. Instead, I went straight upstairs and turned on my computer. I found a medical site online and typed "mononucleosis" into the search box.

All I knew about mono was that you were supposed to get it from kissing, which was clearly not the case with Jake. I read through the symptoms quickly—the fever he definitely had, but what about the rest of it? No horrible sore throat, no exhaustion, no headaches, at least not before he'd gone home from the movie; he'd said he felt "fit as a fiddle." Did it really come on so fast? The article made it sound like the sore stuff showed up first.

I glared at the computer screen and wondered why, exactly, I was doing this. Why did I feel so… so suspicious, like I didn't believe Billy's story? Why would Billy lie to Harry?

I was being silly, probably. I was just worried, and, to be honest, I was afraid of not being allowed to see Jacob—that made me nervous.

I skimmed through the rest of the article, looking for more information. I stopped when I got to the part about how mono could last more than a month.

A month? My mouth fell open.

But Billy couldn't enforce the no-visitors thing that long. Of course not. Jake would go crazy stuck in bed that long without anyone to talk to.

What was Billy afraid of, anyway? The article said that a person with mono needed to avoid physical activity, but there was nothing about visitors. The disease wasn't very infectious.

I'd give Billy a week, I decided, before I got pushy. A week was generous.

A week was long. By Wednesday, I was sure I wasn't going to live till Saturday.

When I'd decided to leave Billy and Jacob alone for a week, I hadn't really believed that Jacob would go along with Billy's rule. Every day when I got home from school, I ran to the phone to check for messages. There never were any.

I cheated three times by trying to call him, but the phone lines still weren't working.

I was in the house much too much, and much too alone. Without Jacob, and my adrenaline and my distractions, everything I'd been repressing started creeping up on me. The dreams got hard again. I could no longer see the end coming. Just the horrible nothingness—half the time in the forest, half the time in the empty fern sea where the white house no longer existed. Sometimes Sam Uley was there in the forest, watching me again. I paid him no attention—there was no comfort in his presence; it made me feel no less alone. It didn't stop me from screaming myself awake, night after night.

The hole in my chest was worse than ever. I'd thought that I'd been getting it under control, but I found myself hunched over, day after day, clutching my sides together and gasping for air.

I wasn't handling alone well.

I was relieved beyond measure the morning I woke up—screaming, of course—and remembered that it was Saturday. Today I could call Jacob. And if the phone lines still weren't working, then I was going to La Push. One way or another, today would be better than the last lonely week.

I dialed, and then waited without high expectations.

It caught me off guard when Billy answered on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Oh, hey, the phone is working again! Hi, Billy. It's Bella. I was just calling to see how Jacob is doing. Is he up for visitors yet? I was thinking about dropping by—"

"I'm sorry, Bella," Billy interrupted, and I wondered if he were watching TV; he sounded distracted. "He's not in."

"Oh." It took me a second. "So he's feeling better then?"

"Yeah," Billy hesitated for an instant too long. "Turns out it wasn't mono after all. Just some other virus."

"Oh. So… where is he?"

"He's giving some friends a ride up to Port Angeles—I think they were going to catch a double feature or something. He's gone for the whole day."

"Well, that's a relief. I've been so worried. I'm glad he felt good enough to get out." My voice sounded horribly phony as I babbled on.

Jacob was better, but not well enough to call me. He was out with friends. I was sitting home, missing him more every hour. I was lonely, worried, bored… perforated—and now also desolate as I realized that the week apart had not had the same effect on him.

"Is there anything in particular you wanted?" Billy asked politely.

"No, not really."

"Well, I'll tell him that you called," Billy promised. "Bye, Bella."

"Bye," I replied, but he'd already hung up.