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Their first single came out when Edward was twelve. The Cullens, looking adorable in their white outfits, singing about family. Rosalie singing lead; Edward backing her up on the piano; Emmett with the drums; Alice managing to keep up on the guitar for all she was nine years old; and poor Jasper on bass. People said it was cute. They got talk show appearances where Rosalie did all the talking, smooth-voiced and sweet-smiling at fourteen, blonde hair pulled back in an Alice band. People liked them then. My Family. They still play it at concerts sometimes. It has never felt more false.
After that first success, Carlisle had his plan all laid out. Lessons, rehearsals, Esme’s songs to sing, the whole thing. Their first album came out a year later. Edward remembers the photoshoot for the cover. Blue jeans, white shirt, meadow somewhere. Wholesome. All-American. Sweet. The album sold well. There were letters from fans. Carlisle read them all first and only handed some of them over. Edward used to wonder what was in the rest. Now he knows.
They grew crooked, twisted, stunted. Homeschooled by Esme, managed by Carlisle. They grew too close together, like apples crammed on one stem that bleed and swell into one another. Mutant children, limbs of a foreign body.
Concerts. Recording sessions. Training. Touring. Training. Talk show appearances. Training. That cameo in a Disney movie. Training. All those interviews where they gave careful rehearsed responses. All those photoshoots. A childhood constructed like a doll, edited to fit.
Do you remember your parents, Edward?
Do you think they would be proud of you?
Aren’t you lucky that Carlisle adopted you?
What would you say your fans, Edward?
His mother is a smear in the back of his mind, red-gold. He can only see her clearly in the photographs. In his memories, where she’s real and alive, she is too smudged to make out. It has all faded now.
How would he know if she would be proud? It was so long ago.
At the front of the tour bus, Rosalie is curled with her feet under her, head resting on Emmett’s shoulder. There is silence at last. Carlisle is travelling in another car. They have only a couple of handlers to disturb them, and the driver. There is something between them here that feels almost warm. The Cullen siblings, whose real names still lie secret in their hearts.
Edward scrolls through articles on his phone about their latest album. He can’t fault the critics. It does feel tired. It does feel like something they should have outgrown. Emmett is twenty-four now and Carlisle still wants him to act like the big brother he used to be, still wants him sheltered and safe. Pure. Everyone acting like they don’t know Emmett’s track record with women. Everyone acting like they haven’t seen how many beers he puts away. Everyone acting like Edward didn’t find him that one time, lying on the floor of the hotel room, with every bottle from the minibar scattered empty around him.
Rosalie keeps him safe, for the most part. She has always been good at that. On the bad days, Edward hates her. On the good days, he wants her to take charge the way she always does, steer the paparazzi away, flash and glitter so brightly that she leaves shadows in her wake for him to hide in. She’s the only one who can keep Emmett sane locked up in his cage.
Edward finds Rosalie hardest to understand. She smiles so much, diamond bright. She glows. She walks red carpets that the rest of them dodge. She hogs every camera. She takes every magazine photoshoot and interview that Carlisle will allow. But here, in the tour bus, her head is on Emmett’s shoulder and she is curled so close into him it’s as if she wants to disappear. She never resents sharing on stage, either. Her light turns outwards then, shines on all of them.
New album. New tour. Same old concept. The Cullen family, working together. Emmett on the drums. Edward on the keys. Jasper on the bass. Rosalie and Alice, swapping out guitars, swapping out lead vocals. Edward singing the male lead. Love duets with his sisters. What did Carlisle expect from any of them? What right does he have to shudder in that sickened, tortured way when he sees Alice on Jasper’s lap, head nuzzled into his neck, seeking out what reassurance she can find?
Rosalie and Emmett, shining too brightly, keeping each other alive. Alice and Jasper, pressed too close, clinging on, fighting the world. And Edward alone. Edward always alone. Edward with Carlisle’s voice in his head too loud to ever kiss his fans, to ever follow a blatant invitation from a journalist, to ever give in to temptation. Cold somewhere down deep inside.
The press cannot know. That is the rule. Carlisle pretends not to know about them all. Esme pretends not to mind. But they must not let rumours spread, and that means no roadies, no handlers, no producers, nobody bringing them a coffee, can ever get a hint of what lies between them. It would destroy them. Perfect wholesome family shattered in an instant.
Sometimes Edward thinks Rosalie is about to do it. He sees her radiant as the sun and thinks that she will grab Emmett and kiss him right there on the red carpet. Burn Carlisle alive with the shame of it. Break the mirror. End it all. But she never does.
This has to end someday. The enchantment has to break. It cannot go on forever. It cannot.
--
Jasper looks like a corpse. Every time Edward walks in on him like this, he wonders if it is going to be the last time. One day it will. One day he’ll enter the hotel room and Jasper will be lying dead, on the floor or the bed, and Edward will never know whether or not it was suicide. It could go either way, with Jasper. A careless overdose or a death wish. He wouldn’t leave Alice—not yet, at least—but everyone reaches their limit at some point.
Edward folds him into the recovery position. He doesn’t know what else to do. Jasper’s not completely out of it. He’ll come round by morning.
Jasper always took it harder than the rest of them. He never talks about his past. Most interviewers have learned not to bother asking. Somebody always intervenes, deflects. Jasper’s anger still shows on his face each time. Carlisle has never managed to train that out of him. Edward hopes he never will.
Jasper on the bass, eleven years old, his brows furrowed and his blonde hair cut ruthlessly short by Carlisle’s exacting hand. Every year since, trying to grow it long again and failing. Carlisle always steps in and orders it cut off again. They have a certain image to maintain. It is bad enough that Jasper has scars.
One day, Jasper disappeared. Came back with his eyes red-lined, his face hollowed out, and a tattoo raw on his ribcage. Carlisle was icily disappointed in him. Edward remembers the thrill of it, staring at those swollen black markings like they were the bitemark in the apple in Eden.
“How did you dare?” he asked.
Jasper had only shrugged. “I’m not afraid of him.”
But he is. Edward knows that he is. If he wasn’t afraid, he would be long gone by now.
Jasper has anger to protect him. Rosalie does too, somewhere hidden inside. Emmett is too vulnerable, too raw, for any of this. Alice is too hard to understand. Sometimes it seems like Edward is the only one who feels nothing. There used to be feelings there—fear, anger, exhilaration, misery—but they were burned out long ago. Now he thinks, round and round, the same old thoughts and does what he has always done.
--
Alice shows him pinterest boards in rehearsal, sitting on the floor of the hired studio whilst Carlisle drills Rosalie in her routine. Edward scrolls past picture after picture of old-school rock stars, goth girls, and trendy whimsical tattoos.
“This is what you want to be?” he asks.
Alice shrugs. Her black hair is pulled into a bun. There’s no make-up on her face today. She looks young, vulnerable. She’s only nineteen.
Edward stops on what seems to be someone’s long-forgotten myspace photograph. It’s potato quality but there’s something haunting about the way the light has hit those smudged-black eyes. The girl looks nothing like Alice but he can imagine it being Alice. A ghost, dancing forever, twirling round and round and round.
“It would suit you,” he says.
Alice’s smile as embarrassingly bright before she wraps her arm around him. “Thanks.”
--
The girls make it all the way up to their floor of the hotel. Edward sits on the edge of the bed, knuckles white, heart rabbiting, as they knock on the door. He can hear them whispering, giggling.
“Are they in? They have to be in!”
Security takes them away. It isn’t the first time this has happened. Years ago, a woman made it into the room he was sharing with his brothers pretending to be a hotel employee. That was when Carlisle started locking the doors. It was safer for everyone that way. Nobody in, nobody out. Everyone where they belonged.
Emmett glances over at him. He’s lying flat on the bed, shoes on the cover, one bottle from the minibar down. Security will be extra vigilant tonight. There goes Emmett’s opportunity to sneak next door and spend some time with Rosalie.
“You good, bro?” His brow furrows.
“Yeah. Yes.” Edward takes a deep, steadying breath. “I’m great.”
“Get some sleep.” There are dark circles under Emmett’s eyes. “We’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
--
The roar of the crowd is a physical thing. The lights are blinding but it is the noise that leaves Edward disorientated every time. He blinks through it, pulls out the megawatt smile he was taught, moves exactly as they rehearsed. They’re a machine by this stage in the tour, every part of their set mapped out. He cannot hear the music but he can feel the keys under his fingers and that is enough.
Rosalie stands at the front of the stage, feet planted, golden hair glowing, blue dress glittering. She’s an angel. She’s a beautiful dream. She cannot possibly be real. Edward knows what song she’s singing but over the screaming, and the thunder of the drums, he can barely make out her voice. Don’t Let Me Go. Esme wrote it about Carlisle, about those early days when they first met when he was the doctor, so noble and good, and she was just a girl with nothing to her name. Rosalie doesn’t sing it about that. Edward isn’t sure what Rosalie is singing about. There’s something feral in her throat when she does, something screaming to escape. Too raw for The Cullens. Too human.
The performance runs together. The noise never abates. It wipes Edward’s brain clean, leaves him with nothing but the ringing in his ears and the music that he can’t hear filling him from edge to edge. It is best this way. He lives only in these moments when the audience won’t let him die. Wild Birds. Running Home. Missing You. Alice and Rosalie sing Always There For You together. Their harmonies are crisply drilled, never wavering. You would think, looking at them, that Rosalie could never have ripped a chunk out of Alice’s hair or Alice scratched Rosalie so badly a photoshoot had to be rescheduled. They are the perfect sisters, united in everything.
They cross to him when it is time for him to take the lead. His voice pours from his mouth, dragging his soul behind it. He puts everything into it, everything he can never normally say, never normally even feel. Not As Sorry. Singing out his stepmother’s pain, her anger, her outrage at the husband they are forbidden from ever mentioning, whom they were never even supposed to know about. She never expresses any of it but it is there, in the songs. Edward wonders sometimes who she would have been if she had never met Carlisle, never become so much mother, so much wife, that there is no room for anything else.
You’re not as sorry as you said you were…
Her anger moves through him and takes his heart with it. For a moment, he feels like he is bleeding out onto the keys. It passes, like it always passes. The noise keeps him there. The scream, the roar, the love. They love him. They love him enough to sustain him.
--
Alice falls asleep in the make-up chair. Her mouth hangs slightly open. She looks grey with exhaustion. Edward watches her through the mirror as a kindly woman fusses over him. He feels a sudden mad urge to lean into her hands, to beg her to stroke his head and ground him in reality. He slept for only two hours last night. He wants to be held. He wants to feel real.
They make Alice into a pop star while she rests. All the powders and concealers needed to give her a healthy complexion, all the product in her hair, that stuff that makes her skin glow with an angelic radiance. When Emmett nudges her awake just before they’re due to go on, she blinks at her own reflection as if she has never seen it before. Her smile, when she meets Edward’s eyes through the mirror, is brittle and false. Jasper holds her hand for just a moment, a dangerous squeeze so close to prying eyes. It could be the act of a brother, so long as you don’t see the look on his face.
It is not one of their better interviews. The journalist is overeager, young, peppy. Her questions are mundane. They are all so tired. Edward wants to sink into the floor. He wants to lie down and never wake again. He wants to dissolve into seafoam. Instead he smiles and tries to marshal his thoughts into line, tries to figure out exactly what answers she wants from him. He can’t even remember who this is for. There are cameras on them but he can’t see any identifying logos.
“It must have brought you so close as a family!” the journalist enthused. “Playing together, touring together. Do you ever get into fights?”
Rosalie handles that one with her best big-sister smile. “We sometimes bicker. All siblings do, don’t they? We’re not perfect. But we forgive each other. We’re there for each other, always.”
“Do you think it makes a difference, being adopted?”
Edward Masen. His real name is Edward Masen. He remembers his mother as just a smudge, his father not at all, but they were the ones who set his fingers to the piano, not Carlisle. They were the ones who first saw something magical in him. They loved him. He was Edward Masen, once, and he was loved. He had value.
“I think it makes us appreciate one another more,” Alice says with those dimples that people make such a fuss about. “There are no ties of blood holding us together, only love and respect. We’re from such different backgrounds—without Carlisle, we would never have met.”
Alice Brandon, a runaway too young to have made any sort of plan, plucked out of the system by Carlisle when he heard her singing to herself. Rosalie Hale, victim of an abuse they will never speak of to any journalist. Emmett McCarty, with flesh-and-blood siblings somewhere out there that he was separated from forever. Jasper Whitlock, risen straight out of hell. The Cullens, before they were cleaned up and taught to honour God, family, and their fans.
“Do you ever think about tracking down your birth families?” the journalist asks.
“My family are dead.”
It’s out before he can stop it and there’s no hiding the note of anger. This is what comes of swinging back and forth from performance to interview without rest in between. This is what comes of being so tired he is half-convinced the floor is swaying. The journalist is momentarily taken aback, her eyes wide, her mouth struggling to frame a suitable response.
Rosalie rests a hand gently on his forearm. “For some of us, the memories of our biological families are still painful. You can be happy with your life, happy with your new family, but still grieve what you lost.”
It’s a good answer. It’s smooth, it’s clean, it’s easily digestible for the audience. It sounds like emotional honesty but it gives nothing away. There are times when Edward doesn’t hate Rosalie at all. He lets her keep her hand there, steadying him in the here and now.
It was just the two of them, at first. Edward all alone in that sterile-white house, with Esme’s smothering affection and Carlisle’s stilted conversation. He was so young then and the grief was bigger than his whole body. He could barely move, barely speak, without it spilling over. He used to practice standing still and keeping it all inside.
When Rosalie arrived, he hated her. He hated her for being older than him, for being bossy, for teasing him, for being so happy all the time. She laughed and hugged and reflected back on Esme all the love that she was drowning them with. She was the perfect daughter, everything a young couple could hope to take into their home. It made Edward feel worse for being withdrawn, quiet, unable to give despite how much he was given.
But there had been that night when he woke from a nightmare, scream choking in his throat, and Rosalie found him. Rosalie, who was wandering the house on silent slippered feet, unable to sleep. Rosalie, who did not smile and whose eyes did not dance and who hugged him so tightly it was as though she was trying to crush the fear out of him. Rosalie who brought him a glass of water, tucked him up in bed, stayed without having to be asked. Rosalie who said that she had been told that telling someone about your nightmare means you will never have it again. Rosalie who stayed under the covers with him, sleeping back to back, guarding one another, until morning.
Edward hates Rosalie, until he doesn’t. Rosalie is everything he cannot stand, until he needs her. She knows it too.
Backstage after the interview, Carlisle waits with a shadowy worried look on his face. Edward sinks into a chair. The world is smeared and unstable.
“I know,” he says, before Carlisle can begin. “I’m sorry.”
Carlisle’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “I know you are, son.”
--
Edward has lost track of what city they are in. It seems to be raining. That’s all he knows. There is no concert tonight. It’s a relief, their first chance to rest since they set out on the road, but he feels empty without it. Locked in the hotel room as the evening closes in, he isn’t sleeping. He just lies flat, staring at nothing.
Alice and Jasper disturb him round about the time his thoughts stray towards the sea somewhere out there and how maybe, just maybe, if you sank into it you might achieve the kind of quiet that doesn’t make you feel like a rotten tree, powdery and hollow at the core.
“Edward, Edward, Eddy!” Alice manages to whisper at volume, crawling onto the bed beside him. “Sssh! We have a secret plan!”
Edward blinks at her. “A secret plan?”
She looks different. It takes him a moment to realise that she has a blonde wig on.
“We’re sneaking out!” She looks extremely pleased with herself. “We’re going to go out without telling anyone. Come with us!”
Edward pushes himself up onto one elbow, dislodging her from the bed. He stares at her in her cheap blonde wig, and then across to Jasper who is fiddling with a pair of glasses. His hair is inky black.
“Is that permanent?” he demands.
“It’s spray.” Jasper smiles awkwardly. “It should wash right out.”
“I have some for you too!” Alice brandishes a carrier bag. “I’ve been planning this for weeks. I couldn’t tell you, of course.”
It is plainly a bad idea. There is a reason they are locked in. Wandering around an unfamiliar city, risking being recognised, putting their reputations on the line… Carlisle will kill them if he finds out. Besides, they need to sleep.
Only Edward isn’t sleeping, is he? He is lying miserably on an uncomfortable hotel bed and here are his best friends in the world, letting him in on a secret plan.
“What colour?” he asks reluctantly.
Alice claps a hand over her own mouth so that she can squeal without rousing the whole building’s attention.
“Purple. You’ll look great—come on!”
Once his hair is suitably purple and he’s safely dressed in a hoodie and second-hand jeans, Edward can see how people might fail to recognise him. The coloured hair is only there to seal the deal. Without make-up, some of his biggest fans probably wouldn’t know him. If they had seen him the night before, sparkling, they won’t understand how he can suddenly look so ill. His eyes look hollow. There is a greyish tinge to his pale face.
“The purple does suit you,” Alice says triumphantly. “I know it would.”
Her disguise, terrible blonde wig aside, consists of a floppy-brimmed hat and a shirt so big on her that it effectively obscures her figure. She could be any shape under there. She does not look good, or even normal, but she also does not look like Alice Cullen, pretty little sister and internationally-famous singer. Jasper, for his part, suits the dark hair and glasses that Alice chose for him. The scars are the only thing that could identify him and a turtleneck keeps most of them hidden.
“So long as we make it out of the hotel,” Jasper announces, “we will make it all the way. Nobody is going to know who we are.”
They scurry. They creep. At one point, they hide behind a door. But somehow the three of them make it to the street and step out into unfamiliar freedom. Edward cannot remember the last time he walked down a road without handlers around him or security clearing a path. There is nobody trying to grab him. No groping hands, no snatching for pieces of his shirt or hair. There are no screams. He feels like a ghost.
Alice is the one with the plan. She leads them through the early evening crowds to a coffee shop advertising live music. It is crowded inside. The press of bodies makes Edward’s heart race but they aren’t looking at him. Their hands don’t reach for him. Their eyes slide right past him. Jasper must feel some of it too, however, because he does not shove Edward off when Edward clutches at his wrist. Only Alice seems unconcerned, bobbing and weaving around people until she finds a corner of the coffee shop with an acceptable view of the stage area.
A young man is up there, hair flopping all over his face, singing the sort of song that has no relationship to the guitar chords accompanying it. His voice is good but Edward can hear Carlisle in the back of his mind critiquing his breath control. The song wavers, falters into a chorus, retreats hesitantly into a bridge portion that builds to nothing. Edward grits his teeth but the rest of the crowd seems unbothered by the flat notes and bad lyrics. They talk, smile, applaud politely. A few whoop in apparent enthusiasm. It is possible that Edward is a snob.
He doesn’t see the girl before she trips. He turns to catch her automatically, stopping her fall when her head is an inch away from the corner of the table. She is light in his arms, almost frail. He sets her on her feet hurriedly, clearing his throat.
“I’m so sorry, I—”
“Thanks,” she cuts him off. “Good catch. And I managed to spare the guitar.”
She has skin like an old-fashioned china doll and hair glossy brown as dark chocolate. Her face, smiling ruefully up at him, is pretty as if by accident. Nobody at any point in the process had set out to make her so. It had simply happened when no one was looking. Edward is looking now.
“Bella.” She holds out her hand to him awkwardly. “Bella Swan. I haven’t seen you here before.”
“I’m, um…”
He only realises once he has started to shake her hand that he has no idea what to say. He watches her brow crease as the silence goes on, nose wrinkling up in confusion.
“Hi!” Alice swoops in to rescue him. “I’m Susie! This idiot here is my brother – we’re only in town on a trip but we heard this place was good. It’s so nice to meet you!”
Edward manages to smile. He releases the poor girl’s hand. “Anthony,” he manages. “My name is Anthony.”
“And this is my boyfriend, Tristan,” Alice adds, dragging Jasper forward. “We’re on a road trip and we just had to stop off here.”
“Oh!” Bella relaxes visibly. “Well, I hope you like it. The weather’s not good but the people are alright.”
“Do you live here?” Alice is, as always, a little too much. “Are you at college here? Are you going to play tonight?”
“I, um…” Bella takes a deep breath. “Yes, I’m going to play. And sing. I….I sing.”
“Are you any good?”
It isn’t the question Edward means to ask and as soon as it is out there in the world, he regrets it. Bella fixes him with a steely glare, warm eyes flashing fire.
“Yes,” she says sharply. “I am.”
He can’t help himself. He grins. “I believe you.”
She looks somewhat mollified. “Will you be singing for us?”
“We’re just here to listen,” Jasper says firmly. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Thanks, but someone is already—oh, thanks, Jake!”
The look that softens her face nearly takes Edward’s breath away. All the china doll stiffness is gone. She glows as she turns to accept a soda from someone. Edward has to take a moment before he can drag his eyes to the person who had inspired that transformation. He finds a broad-shouldered young man watching him, mouth quirked knowingly, eyebrows frowning.
“This is Jacob,” Bella says. “Jake, these are Susie, Anthony, and Tristan. They’re on a road trip.”
“Nice!” Jacob’s demeanour instantly changes. “What kind of car are you in?”
Luckily, Alice is equipped to handle that sort of question and the two of them devolve into an intense conversation about engines that, at any other time, Edward might have been interested in. Right now, though, he only has eyes for Bella Swan.
Please don’t, he begs himself. Don’t lose your head just because some pretty girl acts like it’s a bit of a chore to be nice to you. She’s awkward and you’re in disguise. She has a boyfriend. Don’t be stupid now.
But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for stupidity. Even if they ever get a chance to sneak out again, it is unlikely to be here. What are the odds he sees her again? He might as well admire as much as he can in the time available.
“So, when are you on?” he asks.
Bella grimaces. “After this one.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Not really.” Her mouth scrunches. “Well, I mean, a bit. I don’t usually perform my own music.”
A songwriter too. Edward tries to tell himself that she will be bad at it. She is going to go up on that stage and sing the world’s most boring love song with a little half-hearted strumming and at least one slant rhyme that would make Esme wince. This crush, if that is what it is, will fade away the moment she opens her mouth and the voice of someone who has not had any training since she sang the part of Dorothy in a sixth grade production of The Wizard Of Oz comes out.
“Bells!” Jacob breaks off from his conversation with Alice to throw an arm around her. “Break a leg.”
“All too easily.” Bella grimaces.
Jacob laughs and hugs her. She hugs him tightly back, smiles a little distractedly at Edward, and says it was nice to meet them. Edward is not sure she means it. He wishes she did. He wishes she was going through the surreal emotions that he is enduring. He wishes he wasn’t the only one in this coffee shop having a moment better expressed in some sort of dream ballet. Everybody else is sipping trendy coffees and cocktails, talking about their days. Edward feels one moment away from his heart bursting out of his chest in a beam of golden light.
It's stupid. He’s stupid. But he cannot remember the last time someone looked at him the way Bella did, the last time someone interested him like she did, the last time he wanted to do anything other than run away from a person he had been introduced to. There is no real reason for it. It’s like being struck by lightning.
Jacob is still standing beside him, soda in hand, watching Bella make her way up onto the stage. When Edward risks a glance his way, he sees something so fond on his face that it makes him acutely uncomfortable.
“Now, you all know Bella Swan,” someone announces, and Jacob whoops encouragingly. “She’s back tonight for us with a new song. Bella?”
Bella settles herself on the barstool and hefts her guitar into her lap. She looks young, fragile, washed out by the lights. Edward sees the way her fingers tap lightly at the wood of the guitar, a nervous tic. She looks out at the small crowd as if she would rather none of them were there.
“I’m not from Seattle,” she announces. “I wrote this waiting for the sun to come out.”
There’s a few laughs, a few good-natured cheers from people who would cheer anything. The mood is up. Bella looks spiky and vulnerable—like a hedgehog. She looks beautiful. She traces the strings of her guitar with her fingertips as if double-checking they are where she left them.
She begins to play. She opens her mouth and sings about the hot sun down south where she grew up, about the dry heat and the open sky. Her voice is unpolished but true, smokier than Edward would ever have guessed, a rough-edged alto that enters his lungs when he breathes. Her defensive posture relaxes as she plays. Her fingers dance over the strings.
Edward forgets the crush of people, the purple spray in his hair, the exhaustion still tugging at the edges of his brain. He forgets Carlisle and the trouble they might find themselves in later. He forgets the muscular young man next to him whom Bella clearly loves. As long as she is singing, he cannot bring himself to look away.