Stephenie Meyer: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

“Look,” he said impatiently. He crawled swiftly to the tunnel and stuck his arm in up to the shoulder. “Nothing.”

I nodded once.

“Relax! Do you want me to see how high I can go?” As he spoke, he stuck his head into the hole and started climbing.

“Don’t, Diego.” He was already out of sight. “I’m relaxed, I swear.”

He was laughing—it sounded like he was already several yards up the tunnel. I wanted to go after him, to grab his foot and yank him back, but I was frozen with stress. It would be stupid to risk my life to save some total stranger. But I hadn’t had anything close to a friend in forever. Already it would be hard to go back to having no one to talk to, after only one night.

“No estoy quemando,” he called down, his tone teasing. “Wait… is that…? Ow! ”

“Diego?”

I leaped across the cave and stuck my head into the tunnel. His face was right there, inches from mine.

“Boo!”

I flinched back from his proximity—just a reflex, old habit.

“Funny,” I said dryly, moving away as he slid back into the cave.

“You need to unwind, girl. I’ve looked into this, okay? Indirect sunlight doesn’t hurt.”

“So you’re saying that I could just stand under a nice shady tree and be fine?”

He hesitated for a minute, as if debating whether or not to tell me something, and then said quietly, “I did once.”

I stared at him, waiting for the grin. Because this was a joke.

It didn’t come.

“Riley said…,” I started, and then my voice trailed off.

“Yeah, I know what Riley said,” he agreed. “Maybe Riley doesn’t know as much as he says he does.”

“But Shelly and Steve. Doug and Adam. That kid with the bright red hair. All of them. They’re gone because they didn’t get back in time. Riley saw the ashes.”

Diego’s brows pulled together unhappily.

“Everyone knows that old-timey vampires had to stay in coffins during the day,” I went on. “To keep out of the sun. That’s common knowledge, Diego.”

“You’re right. All the stories do say that.”

“And what would Riley gain by locking us up in a lightproof basement—one big group coffin—all day, anyway? We just demolish the place, and he has to deal with all the fighting, and it’s constant turmoil. You can’t tell me he enjoys it.”

Something I’d said surprised him. He sat with his mouth open for a second, then closed it.

“What?”

“Common knowledge,” he repeated. “What do vampires do in coffins all day?”

“Er—oh yeah, they’re supposed to sleep, right? But I guess they’re probably just lying there bored, ’cause we don’t… Okay, so that part’s wrong.”

“Yeah. In the stories they’re not just asleep, though. They’re totally unconscious. They can’t wake up. A human can walk right up and stake them, no problem. And that’s another thing—stakes. You really think someone could shove a piece of wood through you?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, not a normal piece of wood, obviously. Maybe sharpened wood has some kind of… I don’t know. Magical properties or something.”

Diego snorted. “Please.”

“Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t just hold still while some human ran at me with a filed broom handle, anyway.”

Diego—still with a sort of disgusted look on his face, as if magic were really such a reach when you’re a vampire—rolled to his knees and started clawing into the limestone above his head. Tiny stone shards filled his hair, but he ignored them.

“What are you doing?”

“Experimenting.”

He dug with both hands until he could stand upright, and then kept going.

“Diego, you get to the surface, you explode. Stop it.”

“I’m not trying to—ah, here we go.”

There was a loud crack, and then another crack, but no light. He ducked back down to where I could see his face, with a piece of tree root in his hand, white, dead, and dry under the clumps of dirt. The edge where he’d broken it was a sharp, uneven point. He tossed it to me.

“Stake me.”

I tossed it back. “Whatever.”

“Seriously. You know it can’t hurt me.” He lobbed the wood to me; instead of catching it, I batted it back.

He snagged it out of the air and groaned. “You are so… superstitious !”

“I am a vampire . If that doesn’t prove that superstitious people are right , I don’t know what does.”

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

He held the branch away from himself dramatically, arm extended, like it was a sword and he was about to impale himself.

“C’mon,” I said uneasily. “This is silly.”

“That’s my point. Here goes nothing.”

He crushed the wood into his chest, right where his heart used to beat, with enough force to punch through a granite slab. I was totally frozen with panic until he laughed.

“You should see your face, Bree.”

He sifted the splinters of broken wood through his fingers; the shattered root fell to the floor in mangled pieces. Diego brushed at his shirt, though it was too trashed from all the swimming and digging for the attempt to do any good. We’d both have to steal more clothes the next time we got a chance.

“Maybe it’s different when a human does it.”

“Because you felt so magical when you were human?”

“I don’t know, Diego,” I said, exasperated. “I didn’t make up all those stories.”

He nodded, suddenly more serious. “What if the stories are exactly that? Made up.”

I sighed. “What difference does it make?”

“Not sure. But if we’re going to be smart about why we’re here—why Riley brought us to her , why she’s making more of us—then we have to understand as much as we possibly can.” He frowned, every trace of laughter totally gone from his face now.

I just stared back at him. I didn’t have any answers.

His face softened just a little. “This helps a lot, you know. Talking about it. Helps me focus.”

“Me, too,” I said. “I don’t know why I never thought about any of this before. It seems so obvious. But working on it together… I don’t know. I can stay on track better.”

“Exactly.” Diego smiled at me. “I’m really glad you came out tonight.”

“Don’t get all gooey on me now.”

“What? You don’t want to be”—he widened his eyes and his voice went up an octave—“BFFs?” He laughed at the goofy expression.

I rolled my eyes, not totally sure if he was making fun of the expression or of me.

“C’mon, Bree. Be my bestest bud forever. Please?” Still teasing, but his wide smile was natural and… hopeful. He held out his hand.

This time I went for a real high five, not realizing until he caught my hand and held it that he’d intended anything else.

It was shockingly weird to touch another person after a whole life—because the last three months were my whole life—of avoiding any kind of contact. Like touching a sparking downed power line, only to find out that it felt nice.

The smile on my face felt a little lopsided. “Count me in.”

“Excellent. Our own private club.”

“Very exclusive,” I agreed.

He still had my hand. Not shaking it, but not exactly holding it, either. “We need a secret handshake.”

“You can be in charge of that one.”

“So the super-secret best friends club is called to order, all present, secret handshake to be devised at a later date,” he said. “First order of business: Riley. Clueless? Misinformed? Or lying?”

His eyes were on mine as he spoke, wide and sincere. There was no change as he said Riley’s name. In that instant, I was sure there was nothing to the stories about Diego and Riley. Diego had just been around more than the others, nothing more. I could trust him.