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March 9, 2009: The Last Straw

 

So... Anna's been going a little crazy. I finally got Elizabeth to tell me what they'd been arguing about, and it was simply that Anna does not trust The Littlest Edward. At all. Ever. Period.

 

"It doesn’t matter what I say—nothing gets through to her. I mean, yeah, he creeps me out a little with his hunching and lurking and—smelling, but he’s not doing anything wrong, and he’s even going out of his way to stay away from people."

 

(It’s true—ever since Eowyn tried to touch his hair, he’s been making himself scarce. And sorting my jewelry has kept him pretty busy.)

 
 

 

 

(He says my cameo necklaces remind him of his human mother. I... I had to go wipe some... dust... out of my eyes after that. Fortunately, I had just finished wrangling an obscene number of dust bunnies, so it was a fairly good cover story.)

 

"She’s just really… paranoid now. It’s like… you can talk to her but she doesn’t hear any of it. She just hears vampire vampire vampire," she concluded sadly.

 

And you know, Anna’s been here for—three or four years now, I guess? And as interested as I am in—vampire media of all stripes, let's say—she hasn’t had to see or hear any of it. I thought maybe she’d let go of all that—in the beginning, her only complaint was that Edward wouldn’t come with weapons! But the longer we went on talking about various Edward figures—and now that he’s here, right in front of her, in her territory, every day—well, I guess old habits die hard? I even caught her trying to sneak cloves of fresh garlic upstairs the other day.

 

"Look—number one, garlic doesn’t even do anything to sparklepires, and number two, we need that for the spaghetti sauce."

 

Her mouth shriveled into a furious little pucker.

 

"I SAID TAKE IT BACK, ANNA."

 

And then I caught her sneaking around with a fistful of toothpicks. You know, the really good ones, back from my mother’s do-it-yourself wedding reception a few years back. The formal toothpicks, if you will. Normally Edward just ignores her, but it was so obvious that she was trying to improvise traditional vampire-hunting weapons that he was finally moved to speak:

 

"It really doesn’t matter, you know," he shouted across the room. "I have super speed and super strength! Even if you could catch me, you couldn’t hurt me! All your precious stakes would just splinter."

 

Anna threw him a superlative stink-eye and stormed off.

 

"Look, what’s the deal?" I asked her later. "We’ve been talking about getting Edwards for months, and yeah, you got kind of… disenchanted with the idea, let’s say, but where’s all the hate coming from? He’s been a perfect gentleman from the day he got here."

 

"His presence is an insult to my family," she declared, whittling on a popsicle stick with her dagger. It was ominously stained with artificial cherry, as was my mouth. "The Valerii are descended from a PROUD RACE of VAMPIRE KILLERS. I am a PRINCESS. As the LEADER OF MY PEOPLE, I have RESPONSIBILITIES. And here in my village, there are CHILDREN and POLAR BEARS who must be PROTECTED."

 

"Oh, come on! You haven’t talked with that wackadoo Fauxmanian accent in YEARS!"

 

"You will see! IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE HE GIVES IN TO HIS TRUE NATURE."

 

"Oh, what, you’re too good for contractions now?"

 

"THIS IS MY HERITAGE!" she shouted, the popsicle stick snapping under her grip.

 

"I spent good money on The Littlest Edward! Good money in a bad economy!"

 

"IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME!"

 

And then, her final break from reality came yesterday. Here I am, trying to write, and the next thing I know, a full-blown argument’s broken out:

 

"Anna, I already have a hat!"

 

"It is not good enough! HE CAN HEAR YOU THROUGH IT."

 

"This is RIDICULOUS. And so is your accent."

 

"Just put this on under the hat, or over the hat, but you have to put it on—"

 

"I DON’T WANT TO PUT IT ON!"

 

I look over, and here comes Anna marching over with Iorek’s leftover skyfoil on her head.

 

 

 

 

"MAKE HER PUT IT ON!"

 

"I DON'T WANT TO PUT IT ON!"

 

"I ain't makin' nobody put on nothin'," I said, holding up my hands.

 

Anna turned back to plead with Elizabeth: "If I talk to you, and you think about me talking to you, HE WILL BE ABLE TO HEAR THE THOUGHTS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH!"

 

"Which would be all of them."

 

Oh, BURN! What was THAT!

 

"You wanna fix this? Here’s an easy way: DON'T TALK TO ME."

 

"Lizzie!"

 

Awww, you guys!

 

 


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