Alice called my name in her head and had my attention at once. If Rosalie’s mind was a stagnant pool, then Emmett’s was a lake with no shadows, glass clear.Īnd Jasper was… suffering. Perhaps I only felt guilty reading the others’ minds because I knew there were things inside that they wouldn’t want me to know. Hearing Emmett’s thoughts never felt intrusive, because he never thought one thing that he would not say aloud or put into action. It would take all his limited patience to make it to the end of the school day to orchestrate a rematch. Still fuming over the wrestling match he’d lost to Jasper during the night. Even now, he ran one enormous hand through his ebony curls, twisting the hair into his fist. She thought of others like us, none of them her equal.Įmmett’s usually carefree expression was crumpled with frustration. She didn’t compare herself to the humans here that juxtaposition would have been laughable, absurd. No one else’s hair was closer to true gold, no one else’s shape was quite so perfectly an hourglass, no one else’s face was such a flawless, symmetrical oval. She’d caught sight of her profile in the reflection off someone’s glasses, and she was mulling over her own perfection. Rosalie was thinking, as usual, about herself-her mind was a stagnant pool with few surprises. I tried not to listen if I could help it. Only four voices did I block out of courtesy rather than distaste: my family, my two brothers and two sisters, who were so used to the lack of privacy in my presence that they rarely worried about it.

Half the sheep-like males were already imagining themselves infatuated with her, just because she was something new to look at.

The excitement over her arrival was tiresomely predictable-it was the same reaction as one would get from flashing a shiny object at a group of toddlers. I’d seen the new face repeated in thought after thought from every angle. Today, all thoughts were consumed with the trivial drama of a new addition to the small student body. When it came to the human mind, I’d heard it all before and then some. Several hundred of these voices I ignored out of boredom. It was one way to tune out the voices that babbled like the gush of a river inside my head. I stared at the cracks running through the plaster in the far corner of the cafeteria, imagining patterns into them that were not there. Perhaps this could even be considered my form of sleep-if sleep was defined as the inert state between active periods.

The tedium was not something I grew used to every day seemed more impossibly monotonous than the last. Or was purgatory the right word? If there were any way to atone for my sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. T HIS WAS THE TIME OF DAY WHEN I MOST WISHED I WERE ABLE TO SLEEP.

Midnight sun by stephenie meyer