: X :
There were three things of which I was sure.
First, Edward Cullen was a monster.
Second, there was a part of him - however dominant - that
wanted to crack me open and drink me like a cold beer.
Third... to be honest I thought that was kinda hot.
CHAPTER ONE: First Impressions
Not so bad.
That's what I told myself, hunched in the recess of the Greyhound's sleep-seating. Not so bad, old boy. Itchy, a bit stuffy, and everything past the bullet-proof double plexiglass slowly washed out to the dull monochrome that was North-Western 'MURICA. I didn't actually know if the window WAS bullet-proof, or what any gunman would be trying to accomplish opening fire on a bus full of chubby second-class travelers (lipstick case potato chip shrapnel, the scream of iPod earbuds ripped free on impact).
They're bullet-proof back in Phoenix, the city buses that run the early a.m. hours. Or that's what they tell you.
But this was Washington State, muthafuckaaa, and everyone here was pasty and lumpy and silent like so much dead oatmeal and didn't answer when important questions regarding bullet deflection were raised. But it wasn't so bad, Charlie Brown (my nickname, because I am round in the face and prone to misfortune). Leaving Renee's house probably could have been some huge hand-wringing dramafest, but what Renee didn't know was that I'd be actually kinda happy to see my father.
I guess I didn't know it right away, either, but my mantra was earning weight: it really wouldn't be so bad. A fresh start. Let Renee take it back down from critical and we could both eventually start to miss each other, like anytime after her new husband got sick of her shit and left. More than not-so-bad: fucking perfect. Rain, cold and fat infrequent drops of it, baptised my new life-standard as I left the bus; the water slipped down my scalp and under my collar as I stepped wobbly-kneed from the station platform to collect my luggage. The air was cool and I felt light in my clothes, safety pins keeping place in each set of face-holes as if they were the only thing weighing my head to my neck.
I was off that stuffy Greyhound and I was going to live a manly bachelor life with my Dad and they had gotten all my luggage through undamaged and - and I was going to finish school and not fuck up and Renee was going to fill my inbox with worry-mail and apology-mail and; and I was getting a car, a privilege denied in Arizona on account of the cheap and bullet-free public transportation system, and I was going to meet new people and - did I mention not fucking up? Kinda big deal, being on the straight and narrow now.
Not much trouble to get into in Forks of all places. No cows to tip, no joints to smoke, the town being in that weird limbo between country and suburbia. Probably no friends to be made, either. Not that I hate people.
I love people.
Correction: I love city people. City people are all half-fat fucks and half-short art fags and hypochondrial intelligent shut-ins, suspicious of good deeds and willing to look the other way when presented with subway assault. They also have fantastic fashion sense. If you can't tell by now, I myself am a city-people. I am also shorter than my average age group and round in the face, but maybe not because I am a city-people - in fact I have my father, Charlie Senior, to thank for those genetics.
(Small aside: people call me Charlie because my mother named me fucking BERNARDO. Charlie Swan the First is also known as Cheif Swan, The Sheriff, Dad, Pops, et cetera. Stop me if you're ever confused on this.)
But hey, it's not like I think the backwater and toothless are entirely judgmental about looks. If you could play yourself a decent game of foozbawl or comparable varsity sport, then you'd totally be in the club! (Guess who couldn't play a sport to save his chain-smoking ass? Maybe a competition folding mattress sheets, I could win. Fuck if this town didn't actually have a sheet-folding contest, too... it's funny because it's about racism. Try to keep up.)
Don't get me wrong, I'm neither useless nor hideous. It's just, yeah, okay, harder to make friends when you've been in one place for so long. And I'm a social creature. I need to be popular. It's just... it wasn't my fault I looked like Sheriff Charlie Swan, nor that Sheriff Charlie Swan happens to be a fucking sad-looking guy. Like Billy Crystal with facial hair. He's a great dad, a great person (the whole cop thing, Eagle Scout, football and shit), but it's been sixteen years since his last relationship for a reason.
So, me, right? Let's get this crazytrain back on me. To cure the effect of my inherently mopey features, I have up to this point caked myself in eyeliner and pierced the majority of my face. Yeah-huh, you say, good luck getting away with that at Forks High. But there was an upside to the school change and lo, Vanity was its name - that the cooler temps of the northland would allow me to finally go for that suave art-student look and grow my curly hair out without worry of accidental fro (because summers are fucking death on rollerskates to scene kids in Phoenix). Besides, I wanted to get as much mileage out of my hair before it started RECEDING and I shaved it all off out of shame. I had, what, maybe ten years give or take a smoking habit. Yes you care about my HAIR, BECAUSE IT IS AN IMPORTANT PLOT DEVICE LATER ON, SHUTUP.
If you haven't noticed by now this story is about ME. Gawd.
Charlie has yet to go all Captain Picard on his own and - yep, I've spotted him. Striding through the crowd with the authority of a seasoned officer and the timidity of an overweight middle-aged hick. Maybe that was unfair of me, but seeing my father only reminded me of the man I was going to be at that age (genetic science, WHAT HAVE YOU WROUGHT). We eye each other up - manly wariness, you see, that precedes an awkward half-hug. You can see it in his watery blue eyes: he doesn't recognize me from the spastic nine-year-old who used to cling to his khaki leg-pant. And maybe I'm even a little taller than him, which is not so bad at all.
"He's in a wheelchair now."
My attention snapped back to Charlie's droning one-sided conversation on the ride back to Casa Del CheetoStains. C-captain Picard is Professor Xavier? Dad will you really shave all your thinning curly hair off? "What?" I try to stifle the octave of panic and look less morbidly interested than I felt.
"Billy Black, remember? Down at La Push."
Oh. Old guy, friend of the family, lived on the Native reservation down on the coast. Father to Jacob Black, some twiggy kid who used to complain whenever we left him behind. Scabby brown knees and gape-tooth smiles of my childhood summer friends, all good-naturedly better than me at everything from fishing to fighting. The first and last jurisdiction that my name was awful and I should be called by my middle title; my father always wanted me to be Charlie Jr. anyway. 'Charles' to future CEOs or Ivy League colleagues or what shit.
"Well. You're all getting old."
"Hmp." Sheriff's half-laugh told me he appreciated my masculine cruelty, but that I should cut the crap. "So he's not driving anymore and didn't want it to go to waste. It's not bad, for a starter."
I pretended not to be as intensely interested as I felt. "How much? No more than eight, right?"
"Eight dollars? Eight... maids a milking? Eight chucks a woodchuck chucked if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" And people wondered where I got my sense of humor.
I easily blocked the hand trying to ruffle my hair, because c'mon way too old for that shit. "Eight hundred. I only got that much budgeted for this year, if I cut out new clothes and weekends." I have surprised the old man, but you can only tell by the speedometer.
"It's a late sixties Chevy. You'll be spending that much in gas and maybe repairs if you drive anything like you talk." Zing. But then there is a heavy silence when I forget to laugh.
"Dad. How much?"
The cruiser practically slowed to a crawl, and we were almost home. Charlie was reluctant to say anything, just smiled his easy I'm-the-dad smile, and I really was almost home. "Don't worry about it, Chuck."
It was sitting in the front yard, a faded red metal bulk of a truck. It was such a beast I could have wept. At least none of my peers would feel compelled to question the size of my dick!
Ahhh, the prodigal bachelor pad. A sad old couch in a living room that should have been a funeral parlor, facing a large and ancient television balanced spiritedly on painted cinderblocks. The metal folding table and matching folding chairs in the kitchenette. One tiny filthy bathroom upstairs, wedged between Charlie's bedroom and my own. I could feel my skin crawling just stepping on the pinecones scattered before the screened porch, and by the time Charlie and I were huffing our way up the stairs with the luggage I was fully disillusioned. First chance, I'd don the proverbial apron and go to fucking town with the Lysol. Which would also have to be proverbial, and probably only vinegar at that.
Fuck me, there were cobwebs in the linen closet. Actual honest-to-filthy-bachelor-Jesus cobwebs. If there were cobwebs in the fridge I would risk a motel, at least until the fumigation was over. The paint job was the same it had been in the early eighties or even, fuck, late sixties - everything a mix of bright yellow and burnt orange framed by dark stained wood. And white, if rumor was to be believed that those linoleum tiles used to be white. (We pretty much have Renee to blame for this my most overwhelming concern with hygiene and household orderliness. Thanks for making your son an absolute housewife, you anal-retentive harridan.)
But enough about me. This issn't a story about a ho-hum redemption in goodhearted MURICA. Nor really about a broken family and the reunification of a gay son with his law-n-order father (he knew and didn't care and we got along great, thanks). No, my friends. This.
This is a horror story.
I don't get to be the teenager who is making out, you know with like another teenager, in the cabin in the woods when the monster attacks. But I don't know that yet. I don't even know that my home-away-from-hometown has changed all that much. I've never spent more than a summer here, never gone to school with the kids that lived in the eensy suburban sprawl of scrubbed brick houses and supermarts and hiking outlets. I would learn that my old La Push friends didn't even attend the school I was bound for, that I would actually be completely alone, proverbial deserted cabin-in-the-woods scene.
And I did not know, that I would want to make out with the monster.
I woke up looking as if I'd never touched dry Arizona soil, nevermind lived under its blinding sun most my life. Nor could anyone guess that I came from local tribal stock, eleventy times removed on the Swan side of the family. This would do nothing to buddy me up with the townies, just fill me with a vague sense of guilt for having been away for so long.
Bags unpacked to find I'd been sent across state lines with only half my personal effects, and no maternal figure from whom to borrow makeup. OH MY GOD JUST KIDDING I AM NOT THAT GAY (it would melt in the rain anyway, u betches). Not on my first day of school, at least. I even took out the safety pins, at the behest of the good Sheriff. I still looked like a kid from a city. Maybe not Phoenix. Maybe New York. I just needed those hipster glasses and tight jeans - excellent holiday giftlist fodder just in case I had any further trouble Not Fitting In. It was actually kind of exciting. I pondered future fist-fights over my bowl of Oates-Aplenty (I did not make that up, it seriously says that right on the box, fffffff). What injuries would I receive, which teachers would look the other way during locker-room rape?
Incidentally, those were probably the same thoughts country teens had when transferring to a big scary city school. Although their nightmares might sooner have involved knives and drugs; mine just had wedgies and a teenaged infinity of dateless Saturday nights - stretching far into the future wherein I am a couch-blob pretending to care about basketball in front of the television's ethereal blue glow. Basketball, do you hear me? You would wake up in a cold sweat, too.
Teeth brushed, stiff new jacket wrapped tight against the cold fog, I followed Charlie out the door. "They're going to call attendance," I whined at his back. "And they're going to say Bernardo. And I'll never survive." You'd think I was telling him they'd ritually sacrifice the science lab gerbils, and maybe they would! I felt like any moment could be Children of the Corn, but it was probably just the inclement weather crawling across my nerves.
"Get there early and introduce yourself to the teachers, then." Charlie Sr. winked at me before ducking into his cruiser. He honked his horn and waved good-luck-kiddo. Probably one of those rare moments he got to be the smug parent who knew tough situations were actually good for a growing young person's development. Or some shit. I would short-sheet his bed later.
It was just me and the penis-compensation-mobile for a good forty-five minutes, creeping down the sort of paved roads in the shit visibility. My stomach actually sank when I saw the school building, panicked I'd taken a wrong turn.
Imagine this: 700 kids in my graduating class back at Phoenix, near on 3,400 in the whole school. And Forks, Washington? 600 at most in the entire school ever. The foremost worry, before being the stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb new kid, before even being the gayest thing to hit this small town since sliced bread, was the mare-than-possible absence of advanced art courses from such a TINY-ASS, SHITTY UNDERFUNDED SCHOOL. I mean, one's social life is bullshit compared to scholarly achievement. This was my LIFE my parents were fucking with. My FUTURE. My CAREER.
I am Jack's raging bile duct.
I climbed out of the truck smelling like gasoline and tobacco, which was probably the equivalent of coating oneself in deer piss to go hunting, but wearing the bright orange sock on your head anyway. And in this scenario the deer weren't colorblind. For what, you ask, was the bright-orange headsock a metaphor? Why, my subtle-as-a-hooker-in-church, roaring, beastly truck of course! The radio worked but who would want to compete with that lovely guttural engine? The Hood at my old block would have been sooo jelusss. (I know how to spell jealous, get the fuck away from me.)
I seriously was developing a crush on my truck, tho. IT WAS JUST SO MANLY AND OBNOXIOUS.
(I know how to spell 'though', too, so COULD WE NOT, SQUIGGLY RED LINES?)
Something else that made me long for extended artistic education: this whole town was saaaaturated in color. Everything was all put on moody indie filter and washed in mist, and by memory it would be all settled in that cold cloud-filtered daylight. After the rain, every leaf and twig and black scrap of bark stood out like High-Def TV. This was called atmosphere. Pay attention my babies. And the school - the school itself was so small and quaint in adorable dark red brick (like in England or something!) that I was zig-zagging from utter despair to manic artistic delight.
Like, this place would be awesome to live in - when I was older. I was so excited - for my future self. Who I'd be, who I hoped to grow up to be, that classy-as-fuck dapper gent would be fucking charmed to death by this place. Move my husband here to raise our chinese daughter 'n shit. My current self, however, was a pitiable fellow. My current self wondered if they still burned heretics and weirdos. My current self saw a bonfire pit near the football field and had a mini-stroke. My current self was glad I removed the safety pins.
The front office was awash in that awful yellow lighting that had been popular before eco-friendly halogen had been invented. The carpet, appropriately gag-worthy commercial grade with flecks of orange and yellow. Papers and posters, loud agonizing clock tick-tickety in the silence before the bustle of an early school morning. Stiff stain-resistant seating for the squat and weirdly modern chairs, in case someone was carried bleeding to the nurse's office and there was a waitlist or some shit.
I vaguely wondered at where they hid the metal detectors, and how many kids had guns, and how easy it'd be to actually buy pot and actually smoke it in the boy's room - like straught out an 80's music video, yo. I would have been super excited to discover that the principal looked just like all principals do on daytime television. My old principal had been a black ex-cop, but maybe the head-honcho here would be a real pudgy Pinkerton or Feeny.
There was a large red-haired woman watering the many potted plants lining the office, who set the neon plastic watering can aside to greet me. I half expected her to welcome me to Dina's Diner and ask if I wanted to try the special; her glasses were that bad. "Hey hon, can I help you?" I will admit this: being the underdog had its perks with authority figures. I mean, 'hon', it was like she had gaydar pinging on red alert.
"I'm Ch - er, Bernardo Charles Swan." Wincing, because that name was sour in my mouth. "You can call me Charlie." Not that you're my friend, but you look like a gossip and maybe it'll catch on. My adorable helplessness landed me not only my entire class schedule, but a carefully explained and pre-routed map of the school.
Not-Dina-from-Dina's-Diner seemed to expect something out of me other than a thank-you, so I stood there smiling and asked when first bell was, please. In an hour, and damn my jetlag anyway. It had not occurred to me at that point that I was interesting not only as a new kid, but as the Police Chief's only son. And that would never stop creeping me out, how well everyone knew everyone else in small towns, even if they didn't particularly like each other. Or maybe especially if they didn't like each other, as that was the way the gossip mill grinds.
I went back to my truck (MY TRUCK, HEEHEE - I mean, uh, MANLY BWARHAR) to take a nap and was relieved when the other students arrived in cars equally inglorious. Except for that shiny Volvo, but that was probably some confused TA's car that would get dented but good before the day was out. Stuffing the map in the glovebox (because I am man and man are for hunting grounds grrhrr also it's a tiny-ass school whatevs), I bravely clambered out of my dry-yet-fragrant vehicle into the rainy morning.
The trip to the locker was uneventful. There was no combination lock; this place operated on trust and maybe a utopian-anarchy system of reward and punishment, fuck if I know. My paranoid inner-city streak had me stuffing my jacket into my truck and locking the heavy, gummy metal locks behind me. And running my ass back inside. I did NOT have my winter fat yet, and that early morning chill was bananas. I could probably have gotten away with never using the locker, since carrying books was good exercise and it didn't look like the school had a drug-bust operation on everyone's backpacks.
Or coats. Or hoodies. Or loose pants, which could conceal all manner of sharp or explosive weaponry.
I'm not a bad person, but I felt like a wolf among sheep, fantasizing about all the stuff I could get away with. Probably make an interesting sociological study: small town school safety and how it's enforced without the aid of S.W.A.T. ... I was starry-eyed over the idea of a reality show called Highschool S.W.A.T. when I nearly ran into the door to my first class. Classic Literature! Fucking ace.
As per cool-kid quota (and because I'm a damn coward) I sat in the very back and watched the class file in. Perhaps the black hoodie had been a poor choice of thermal wear - I felt like a dark smudge in Forks High's repertoire of rain-battling pastels. Even some of the boys were wearing 'coral' shirts, fuck me running. I almost smacked myself for not even thinking - what do people wear in the city that sees the most rain in the entire U.S. continent? SUNNY COLORS.
FFFFFF. And then the teacher called out for me, specifically, out loud, because he was to personally hand me the reading list for the semester. Fuck My Life. "Bernardo Swan?"
For the fifth fucking time, "Yes, right here pal." I got a Look that told me one didn't call a teacher 'pal' with such insolence. There was laughing, but thank god not at me. 'Mr. Mason' - a terrifyingly sadistic name if ever there was for a teacher. I didn't have the nerve to tell him I'd already read everything on that list (because required reading overlaps, calm down; I am NOT THAT INTERESTED in Jane Eyre). Maybe later I'd bring it up at the office and they'd get me switched out. Or I could just slack off and ace all the tests without even trying. Decisions, decisions.
"You're Bernardo Swan?" asked a kid who looked like a teenaged Luigi. At least he pronounced my name in the proper, exotic Italian way.
"It's Charlie," I asserted, meeting his gaze. Gotta make that eye contact, yup. Every kid in a three-seat radius turned to stare while Mr. Mason outlined the reading course, scribbling furiously at the whiteboard, squeaky squeaky.
"You need any help getting around, you ask me. It's Eric." He extended a hand, which I shook because whynot. I admired his Danny-Joey-Vito attitude. He probably thought I was a tough-ass exiled here because the big bad city schools ran out of correctional programs. (Not half untrue, but hey this was Freshstartsville, wunnit?)
Mr. Mason had the good will to drag everyone's attention away from me for the remainder of the class. Eric walked me to Government class, pelting me with questions that I doubt he really cared to have answered, casting surreptitious glances to the band of girls following. (Hahaha, what, ugh.) "You from Phoenix?"
"Why, you from the Bronx?" Betting myself ten dollars he'd have to GoogleMaps that shit.
"...? No. Ain't it, like, sunny in Phoenix?" As if using poor grammar would make him sound cooler.
"Sunnier than God's asshole, my friend."
"Why aren't you tanner, then?" You had to admire his dead-pan. Some of the girls tittered, but profanity among the coarser gender was first-hand, old-hat, commonplace wot wot.
"Miracle of science." Really? They wanted to know why I didn't tan as well as the perma-baked soccer moms that cable television associated with Arizona? The ones who creamed themselves over pottery stain and draped they skinny asses all up in enough turquoise to buy a Lahota village?
Mr. Varner, in trig, actually made me stand up and introduce myself. I mean, I could have just flipped him off and jumped out the window, so he didn't make me do anything really. "My name is Charlie. I'm bad at math."
The class clapped like I'd just confessed at an AA meeting.
In both hours of Trig and Spanish, I think I made a friend. She was tiny and angry-looking, like one of those chubby chula dolls with the huge eyes and the trendy clothing. Her hair was something straight out of Seinfeld, and she was aggressively interested in my personal life. Her name. (Prepare yourselves now.) Was Jennifer. 'Hennifer Lopez' I kept muttering beneath a grin. Eric was a friend of hers, and they sat me down with some people at lunch who never got around to introducing themselves (names I would have to learn through grapevine or eavesdropping). And biting into my Dorito-turkey sandwich, I glanced across the lunchroom to get my first real eyeful of the people I actually wanted to be seen with:
They had the unruffled, pale, sleep-deprived look of the city dweller; all dressed as if they had skipped from the pages of Vogue, especially the metrosexual in the beige turtleneck. It seemed like the girls in the group wore anemia like a badge of honor, one tall and blonde and a visibly salty betch, the other short and sprightly who had probably made her debut in tragic French films with her spiky black hair and porcelain frame. Then there was the obvious sports star, built like a fridge with a chiseled Grecian profile, next to whom sat a sulky blonde kid and on the far end - the metrosexual - with tousled copper-brown hair and pale eyes and good god those eyelashes hallelujah I'm home! These people were cultured. These people were artistic. You could feel the intelligence rolling from their table, like they were in their own little bubble of beta-teen superiority.
Jennifer caught me staring, sandwich halfway to my mouth. "The one who is leaving is Alice Cullen. There's Rosaline and Jasper Hale, the blondies. Emmett and Edward Cullen. Emmett's the big guy."
"They're related?"
Jennifer lowered her voice. "Adopted." Her eyes narrowed. "And they're all together. And they live together."
The green-eyed monster already, Jenn? But we've only just met! "Got any info that doesn't sound like tabloid gossip?"
Eric chimed in, "Yeah like you know, newbie." He was gaining more and more respect from me. Perhaps eventually it would come to fisticuffs between he and I and we'd be fast friends after.
I glanced between the two most recent members of the Bernardo Swan fanclub. "I could find out." Because damn if I didn't love a challenge. The three of us all stared good and hard at the group across the lunch room for a long seven seconds, long enough for my beautiful Abercrombie Model to glance our way. I caught the attentions of his light (green?) set of eyes, and that shit-eating grin that develops when one steals one's first cookie bloomed full force all over my face. Angela, of our group, got up to dump her tray and obscured the connection.
"They moved here last year," whispered a nameless peer helpfully.
Jennifer scowled. "Their 'father' is Dr. Cullen, the new director of FHC. He's too young to have kids that age, but I guess The Hales are actually related to Mrs. Cullen and she can't have any kids of her own. So they foster older kids."
"Hey that's tough, man. You know the psychology behind that, a kid gets pretty fucked up if they aren't adopted before the age of six. She probably has a lot of patience and understanding, dealing with that kinda emotional development shit." What, I watched daytime TV.
"I guess." Jenn looked like maybe she could believe the Cullen/Hale alliance had mental illness working in its favor. Maybe she just agreed so I'd stop cussing. Even Eric looked like he disapproved using such language around a lady. This did seem like a low-profanity environs, as i had yet to find any dirty graffiti on the bathroom stalls (though it was early in the year yet, plenty of time for defacement).
Awesome that I wasn't the only 'newbie', though the Cullen/Hale alliance had each other and all I had so far was a humorless Luigi and a midget Chula. BUT SHIT MAN, FUCK, I GOT TO PLAY PEEK-A-BOO-EYES ACROSS THE ROOM WITH ABERCROMBIE BOYYYY.
You know, that game where you try to catch the other's eye but look away really quick I love this juvenile shit it was so exciting omg omg omg omg omg next I thought I would pelt him with spitballs and leave anonymous notes in his locker, ohoho. But by the time lunch was over Brighteyes didn't seem to think the game was cute, and when I got up to clear my tray he was studying me with a, well, a look of consternation to say the least. Houston, we have a closet case. You'll find no princess in this here castle.
Angela walked me to Biology II. She was a nice willowy girl with thin blonde hair, shy and polite and in need of many big gay hugs STAT. I did wonder when I'd stop getting escorts to my classes, but apparently the school population was so small that I had at least two classes with the same people in them at all times. Angela sat far away from me (the lab tables were assigned) and I pretended to reach for her across the room, bemoaning our separation. She laughed, but her lab partner glowered.
As did mine, 'cos it was Edward Cullen.
You know the saying 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall'? The same holds true for intense five-minute infatuations. My inner glee was not only crushed, but metaphorically set on fire and pissed upon by the following class hour. Edward Cullen did everything to avoid me, even inching his chair as far away as possible and keeping his nose in the air like I smelled bad.
Okay, little Orphan Annie? Fuck you.
~Edward Cullen~ clenched his fists atop the table and never relaxed the whole lecture, acting as if for all the world like he hadn't been playing visual patty-cake with me moments before. I didn't have time for this closet-case shit, and I didn't care how emotionally stunted the dude was just 'cos his real mom didn't wanna opt out coat-hanger style. I wasn't gonna let him waste my time. (I quailed inside, hoping his siblings weren't anything like that.)
When the bell rang, I slammed my book shut to show I got the hint already and leaned in to say my farewell. "Yeah, real nice meeting you, pal." Only it was the tone of voice that could have called him anything and actually meant 'fuckface'.
If looks could kill... Edward Cullen stood from his seat. Had he been that tall at lunch? Was I actually going to get beaten up my first day at school? It didn't help that my nervous auto-reaction was a manic monkey grin. So instead of bowing out submissively, I laughed way too loud and winked.
"They call you Charlie Swan?" WHO ARE YOU, RANDOM MUNDANE AND CAN I KISS YOUR FEET?
"Yeah, that's me." Trying not to shake as I turn from Mr. Death-in-Versace to address my knight in cotton-polyester armor.
"I'm Mike." And his name was Mike, and he marched the animals two-by-two into the ark... "I'm in Mr. Mason's English..."
"Oh." Trying not to weep in relief as we walk away.
"I'm from Cali."
Mike from Cali, you are adorable and kind and much tanner than me. "Awwww man, so is it hard getting used to this weather or what?" Laugh, laugh, agree, agree. We had Gym together, too, and I had never been so happy to be in gym as I was that day.
"So hey, uh." What? I thought it wasn't proper locker-room etiquette to talk to other guys when they were half-naked, but there was Mike Newton breakin' all social convention like some 1960s parade bullshittery. "What'd you say to Edward Cullen?"
"Oh maaan, no fucking clue!" I laughed scornfully, pulling the numbered t-shirt over my head. "He just doesn't like my face?"
"Well, yeah man, there's holes in it." (By God, I almost fell over.) "But he's usually a nicer dude." (Dude.) "His sister's in my theater class, and she's pretty easy to get on with."
"You've got theater?" I so very much did want to change the subject before I had to admit that I flirted with the guy and he responded, uh, not well.
"It's an after-school program, yeah. We actually need more dudes to join, not that any of the guys are complaining exactly." Nudge-nudge, wink-wink broseph. (And a week after that is the story of how I got to meet Alice Cullen, who is small and cheerful and tactful and... what, punctual I dunno she has small boobs but she's still really popular omgSHOCK.)
BUT WAIT we are getting ahead of ourselves, chickadees. There was an encounter before I left for home. Seeking to get my English class ditched for anything else (maybe fill the morning slot with biology and be anywhere else but next to ol' Eddie Cull in the afternoon timeslot) I headed for the main office. I had to get in line, so when it was my turn in the ugly little room there was no backing out.
Madame Redhead was dealing with Edward Cullen, while a younger brunette processed the strays milling around complaining about their schedules. I waited in one of the stiff chairs, eavesdropping as Edward spoke in a low, urgent voice that would have been alluring had it not been so plaintive. He wanted to trade his biology class with another, any other.
I was almost smug, but mostly stinging that he'd beat me to the punch and that our uncoordinated folly could have landed us in the same class again, unawares. My mission rendered totally inane, I got up to leave. A girl pushed the door open and stepped past me - I had to turn to let her through and caught a blast of chilled air that rattled papers in their wire baskets (cabin pressurization, haw). And this is the fucking prize-winner:
~Edward Cullen~ turns to me like I've just goosed him, offended and angry and fuck if I know what else. The guy isn't out of shape, either, and I don't wait to find out if he gets his schedule changed or not, I fucking GTFO.
: X :
This chapter has been edited approx. 3456 tiems
so please, PLEASE tell me if it compels you to read
further, and if not - WHY. I be obsessing all over
them pageview counts, you better habeeb. (I mean
I get if it's like, 'NOT SEXY ENOUGH SOON ENOUGH'
but like. The lemons are there, you just have to stay
with me a few chapters.)
Hi. It's good to have you on this rewrite.
