Forks, Washington.

It was not like he expected to be. He remembered it vaguely from the years he lived in Forks as a kid-twiggy and small and perpetually scowling. And the summers after the divorce had always been muggy and hot and way too sticky. Now it was just cold, the water like ice on his skin. But it was still bright green. The lawns, the trees, the moss, the plants and the fat leaves, they were all bright green.

His dad was driving the car, an old police cruiser that had seen its glory days back in the 80s. The seats were still soft though, and Beau smiled, nostalgic. When he was a kid, Forks had always seemed so much bigger. Like, it had been his entire world. Now, it was just like revisiting a memory long gone.

He slipped out of the car when they pulled up in front of the house, shouldering his bag and blinking as the rain misted his glasses. His dad—a well aged man in his forties with thinning curls—knuckled his shoulder awkwardly.

Charlie was a cool dad, even if he was a bit distant. That wasn't his fault—if anything, Beau should've tried harder to stay in touch, but he'd only been eleven when Charlie and his mother had divorced. In typical pre-teenage fashion, he'd latched onto resentment like it was going out of style and refused to talk to either of his parents for a good two months. By that time, it was decided he would go live with his mom, a thousand miles away in Phoenix, Arizona.

It'd seemed like Charlie hadn't fought as hard as he could've to keep him, and in his eleven year old mind and as a kid, he'd been pretty pissed off about that. Before he knew it, he'd pushed his father away, and hadn't known how to fix it. He let things lay like that for God knows how long. It might've continued, if his mother hadn't remarried a cool dude who played for a minor league baseball team a couple months after he turned sixteen.

He'd been such a brat when he was a kid. Beau had admitted that to himself a lot and he did want to repair his relationship with his dad. This was a good first step.

Presently, Beau glanced at the bulky orange-red Chevy parked in the drive way of the old house and looked at his father quizzically.

"You like it?" Charlie Swan asked, tentative. "Had Billy Black's boy fix it up just for you. I know it's a little bulky—"

Beau's eyes went huge. "Wait—seriously? It's mine?" He ran over and crushed his dad into a bear hug-or what would've been a bear hug if he had any muscle mass (he'd tried. Nothing worked). "Dad, that's amazing! I love it, it's perfect!"

Charlie swallowed and returned the hug, which was the first in a long time, Beau remembered. "Glad you like it so much. I just wanted to make you feel a bit more at home."

"It's great," Beau said firmly, pulling back and readjusting his glasses with his pinky finger. "Can't wait to drive it to school." He walked over to the machine and traced a slim finger across the hood. The paint was new, even if the model wasn't. He'd never been any good with cars, anyway. He knew how to drive one, that was the point. He'd always been more of a video game fanatic than a car enthusiast, to be honest.

Walking through the house was like walking through a museum someone had stubbornly kept the same for half a decade. The pictures were all the same on the mantle in the living room, if a bit dusty. The furniture was faded and the same yellow paint adorned the cabinets that his mother had loved. A well of guilt stemmed in his stomach as Beau looked around and realized that Charlie had done everything in his power to keep it as it had been five years ago—as if it was a shrine to the life he had shared with his wife and his son.

"What do you want for dinner?" he blurted before he could say something stupidly sentimental like "Missed you so much" or "I wish I could've visited more often". That would've sounded too much like pity for his father to swallow and Beau did not want to start off on the wrong foot.

Charlie startled. "You can cook?"

Beau shrugged. "Mom sure as hell can't, so it was either learn or starve to death. I had to wait two years until she would let me near the stove." He smirked. "By then, I was almost anorexic."

"You poor thing," Charlie said dryly. "I don't know how you survived on pizza and frozen fish sticks all that time."

Beau sighed, mock-suffering, bringing a limp wrist to his forehead. "Oh, you have no idea how many Chinese takeout cartons I had to wallow through. Mom was never meant to be a housewife. Her lasagna was more like rocks coated in ketchup." He shuddered.

"Gross," Charlie humored. "Well, there's not much to make here. I didn't have time to stock the kitchen. How about we order takeout tonight and I let you sleep off the jet-lag?"

Beau smiled. "Thanks, Dad." He turned to climb the stairs to his old bedroom, but before he reached the landing, he twisted around and held up a finger imperiously. "But tomorrow, I'm totally making tortellini with veggies and cheese." He winked and disappeared into his room, yelling behind him "And no complaints!"

He closed the door on his father's hearty laughter.

...

His room looked almost exactly the way he had left it. There was a dinosaur of a computer on a baby blue desk that inexplicably matched the walls and the coverlet of a full sized bed that he remembered dwarfing his eleven year old self. He had shot up in recent years, though, so now the bed was the perfect size for a 5'5", skinny little Beau.

That was somewhat depressing, if he thought about it too hard.

Beau didn't have a problem with his height, but sometimes it irritated him, having to crane his neck to look up at most of the guys in his grade.

Beau was a stick of a guy, with slim limbs, pale skin and dark eyes, obscured by his rather large, albeit somewhat stylish glasses. His hair was messy, brown and needed a haircut. His cheeks were a bit hollow. Everyone was constantly telling him he needed to eat more. What they didn't know was that his stomach was a bottomless pit that devoured anything degradable within reach.

Presently, he pushed his glasses up with his pinky (old habit) and lay down to regain the hours he had lost on the plane.

He closed his eyes. Unpacking could wait.

...

It was the first day of school.

He could do this, he thought to himself as he rearranged his bedroom for what felt like the thousandth time in the same morning.

He was going to die, he thought to himself as he shoved pencils and ballpoints into his backpack.

As promised, Beau had done most of the cooking the past two days as he'd gotten settled in and even though Charlie had showered him with praise for the meals (which he appreciated), he mostly did it because of a combination of anxiety and a lack of anything else productive to do. He had emailed and chatted with one of his closer friends from Arizona as well as checked in with his harebrained mother who was traveling the country with newly acquired husband, Phil. He was an alright dude, if a little awkward around Beau. It was alright. Beau knew he could be a little intimidating to his mother's suitors. (Haha. Not. He was 134 pounds wet, he couldn't intimidate a bunny).

Or maybe, it was because he was a teenager and all adult men had an instinctual fear of the thing that would eventually replace them.

He swallowed, wolfed down breakfast and stressed over what to wear for an hour before deciding on the plain t-shirt and skinny jeans he had pulled out in the beginning. He smacked a kiss to Charlie's grizzled cheek, said "Pray for me, please," and bolted out the door to his awesome new truck. As he drove down the streets of Forks, he decided to name her Jean Grey after the X-Men member, as a reference to both the truck's coloring and the name of his hometown: Phoenix.

He liked to think he was cool like that.

The school was a small campus on a stretch of land consisting of wet, dull grass and tiny brick structures that made up the institute. There were a bunch of what looked like little houses scattered around, numbered and each containing a classroom. The main building was 101, where most of the lockers and offices were located, so he headed there first to get his schedule.

He shifted in on himself as he felt eyes gawking at him as he parked, and when he slid out of the car, there was a ripple of whispers following him as he entered the school. He winced. Great. He hated gossip.

He felt like a bug under a microscope, girls and boys of all ages staring at him curiously, eagerly, interested like he was some rare type of plant. Well, he thought, he was never one to be psyched out by a little staring. He held his head high and walked purposefully towards the main building, his messenger bag bouncing against his hip.

The woman at the front desk was friendly as she went over his schedule with him, and handed him a map of the campus. He thanked her and headed off to his first class-Trigonometry, Building 107-and ducked his head as he walked outside again, feeling eyes on him as he opened up the map and squinted through his wet lenses.

"Yo, new boy!"

Beau internally groaned. This was it. The summary of his existence at Forks High in one sentence. The new boy. It was about to begin—his torturous assimilation into the social hierarchy of a new school, of a new world. Basically.

The boy addressing him was a slim Asian-American boy with floppy hair and high cheekbones. Beau had to admit, his glasses were cool.

"Need any help?" The boy's smile was cheeky.

"Uh," said Beau eloquently. "No? I don't think so—"

"Trust me," the boy said, which inexplicably made Beau suspicious of his trustworthiness. "I know it looks easy, but this place is a maze." He stuck out his hand, which was large and bulky compared to his skinny wrist. That meant he was gonna grow, Beau grumbled to himself enviously as he shook it. "I'm Eric. And you're Charlie Swan's kid, right? Beauregard?"

Beau hummed an affirmative. "Charlie's kid, yes. Beauregard, hell no. I'm Beau."

Eric blinked, confused. "As in... 'boo'? Like, a ghost?"

"No," Beau said dryly. "Beau as in, 'hey beau!' Like, sweetie or honey. My mom's weird, don't give me that look."

"Sorry," Eric snickered. "You're name is basically 'baby'. Or, like, sweetiepie. Or sugarnups."

"Ohmygod," said Beau. "I don't know you. Get away from me." But he was laughing, so Eric only slung an arm around his shoulder and frog-marched him across campus.

"You and me, we're gonna go far, kid," Eric said.

"I can hear the '80s montage music," Beau muttered to himself, wondering how traumatized he could get on the first day.

...

Eric, despite all appearances otherwise, actually proved to be useful in certain fields. Like, finding the cafeteria for example or introducing him to his group of friends, which included two girls—Angela and Jessica—and two other guys, Mike and Tyler. Angela, a mousy, bookish girl with horn-rimmed glasses, Jessica, a sharp-tongued blonde, Mike, a jock with biceps and a horrible fashion sense and Tyler, a black boy with a deep-seated interest for art. They all tried to call him Beauregard as soon as they met him, but he straightened them out as soon as he could. No way was he being known as Beauregard for his entire high school career. No way.

They were all pretty chill people, except for Jessica, who seemed a little high-strung, with no explanation other than the fact that junior prom was coming up in the Spring and everyone was freaking out.

"So," said Jessica furtively as Beau sat down with a completely health conscientious lunch consisting of pizza, garlic-and-salt-covered broccoli and low fat (read: high sugar) chocolate milk. "You're probably wondering about the Cullens."

Beau blinked at her. "Who?" he asked, nervous all of a sudden.

"Oh, God," said Mike. "Not them again."

"What," Beau exhaled, confused.

"The Cullens," Jessica emphasized. Beau could hear her italicizing every syllable. It was weird. "They're, like, the coolest people in school."

Eric choked on his milk.

"What are we, in a John Hughes movie?" Mike griped. "They're just Dr. Cullen's kids—adopted, anyways, but no one cares about that."

Angela rolled her eyes. "Jessica just likes gossiping. And they're not the coolest kids in school. Justthemostbeautiful," she muttered quickly into her salad.

"What," said Beau.

"Behind you," Jessica whispered.

"Why the hell are you whispering, they're freaking halfway across the cafeteria," Tyler said.

"Shut up, Tyler," Jessica growled, but Beau wasn't paying attention as he was already twisting around to glance at the table Eric was not-so-subtly-gesturing to with his straw.

Sitting in variously artful poses one would find in Vogue magazine, were some of the most freakishly beautiful people Beau had ever seen in his pitiful lifetime. He could feel the flush climbing up his cheekbones and shook his head. Was... was it normal for someone to be that dazzling?

They were all pale, pale with perfectly arched eyebrows that looked plucked but weren't, gleaming hair that varied from pitch black to amazingly beach blond, their features chiseled like some sort of statue Michelangelo would've wept for. Forget Michelangelo, Beau dismissed as soon as he thought it as his eyes settled on the bronze-haired man-candy brooding in the corner. Freaking angels, man. Fucking Adonis.

"What," echoed Beau, again.

"What," mimicked Jessica. "Is that all you can say?"

"No," Beau frowned. "I'm just... kind of starstruck, actually, and I don't even... know who they are? Should I be swooning or something?"

Angela giggled.

Beau whistled lowly. "Can I say man-candy?"

Everybody at the table froze. It was like in an X-Men movie, when Charles Xavier froze time and space and everything stopped moving in one moment.

Maybe I am in an X-Men movie, Beau mused. And the Cullens in the corner are mutants with the power of super beauty. And I'm a mutant with the power of embarrassing myself.

For some reason, the pixie beauty in the corner fell onto the floor, laughing. The bronze boy in the corner looked scandalized, while the tall boy with probably steroid-induced muscles preened and flexed his arms. The blondes stared at each other like some sort of weird ritual, stone faced.

Beau dismissed it.

For some reason, Jessica bull-dozed over his accidental outing of himself and said "YES BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT."

Angela blinked.

Eric turned to Beau, eyes wide, and said "Wait, are you ga—"

"They're all together," Jessica said viciously, voice loud enough to run over Eric's vital question.

"Um," said Beau, not sure whether or not he was supposed to respond to Eric. "I kinda guessed that, seeing as they're all sitting together...?"

"Ohmygawd, you're so oblivious," Jessica exhaled in one breath. "They're all dating. Each other. Rosalie, the blond girl, is with Emmett, the muscly one, and Alice, the tiny girl, is with Jasper, the one who looks like he's in pain. Edward, the pretty one with the brown hair, well, he's not dating anyone. I guess no one here's good enough for him." Her voice was dark and she stabbed a carrot with her fork.

"Someone sounds bitter," Tyler said slyly and got hit in the head with a garlic roll.

At this point, Jessica decided it would be more strategic to turn the conversation back to the elephant in the room. "SO YOU'RE GAY THEN?"

Beau blinked. "Are... we not talking about the Cullens anymore?"

Somewhere, behind them, Emmett toppled over, mouth open and clapping like a seal.

"What the fuck is wrong with the Cullens today?" Tyler asked slowly.

Alice beat the ground with her fist.

...

"So."

"I am a homosexual, leavemealone," said Beau desperately as he shuffled his way around the senior boy approaching him. The guy raised an eyebrow. He was the thirtieth person to come up to him that day, asking whether or not he was gay.

"Bad day?" he asked.

"No fucking idea," Beau said flatly and entered his science class.

The fan blasted him in the face. What the hell. It was freaking winter. What sadomasochistic bastard put on a fan in Forks, during March? His hair flew up around him and he spat a strand out that was on his tongue. Gross. He looked around. Mike was in the second row, grinning, Angela was in the back, freaking Edward Cullen looked like he was about to puke...

Someone get Cullen a bucket, he thought. The teacher directed him into the empty seat next to said Cullen and Beau shrugged, half-reluctantly. He wasn't quite in the mood for being puked on, but he still appreciated more time to ogle that jaw line.

Heh heh. He was a bad person.

He opened his book to the designated page, glanced at Cullen... and started, because the guy was glaring at him like he had just stabbed his mother and father and Jesus Christ. What.

"What?" he mouthed. "Is there something on my face?" He swiped at his right cheek, wondering if he had any leftover pizza sauce crusting on his skin.

Cullen shook his head. It didn't look like he was breathing. He had a hand clamped over both his nose and mouth and his chest was unnaturally still.

"Dude," said Beau, really alarmed now. "Breathe."

Edward shook his head violently, again.

"Do I need to do the Heimlich?" he asked, turning his body towards him, nervously. "Should I get the nurse?" Then, he reached out a hand, not exactly sure what he was going to do with it, but he was not having his science partner die on his freaking first day.

Edward either heard the call of the wild, or God telling him to run, because he rushed out of there like a bat out of hell just as the late bell began to ring.

"And so Darwin-uh, Cullen?" said the teacher, but Edward didn't listen, nearly banging into the door on the way out.

"Whoa," said Beau, blinking, before shaking his head sympathetically. "Must've been something he ate."

...

"So," said Charlie, washing dishes at the kitchen sink. "How was school?"

Beau proceeded to make a dark noise in his throat and stomp up the stairs, giving into his teenage urges for once.

"I guess we're not having any guests," Charlie said to himself. He hummed to himself quietly as he scrubbed at a plate.

...