Okay, this is a left field little one-shot. I don't know how this idea popped into my head, but in one of my little creative random moments it did. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to write about Edward's fixation with virtue and I tried to make it funny, but at the same time I wanted to keep it real. So it's slightly humors and I did a butt-load of googling to understand the school system in the 1900s. I hope it's not too dull with dry wit and I hope you like it.


Edward's Virtue

1907, Chicago – First Grade

The small cluttered classroom was alight with chatter as the first grade students settled in for their morning lessons. Already through the paper thin walls, other classes could be heard starting their own lessons. It was a large school by twentieth century standards of education. But it had to be since it was an urban school smack dab in the middle of Chicago. Only a few years before the school had been made up of only one room, where all students from five to twenty were taught together. Fortunately, that had changed as the liberals and advocates petitioned and now the school had almost twenty classrooms and a new high school. Unfortunately, the school had yet to update it's first grade teacher. Mrs. Wasly.

She stood in her pompous fashion, glaring down her hawk-like nose at all the youths who squabbled and squirmed. She wore a faded brown skirt, with an equally dull pink blouse and it all was topped off with a scraggly fabric flower pinned to her chest. Her hair was grayed with age and thinned to the scalp, designed in last years fashion.

It was a usual Monday morning for Edward Masen, who was all of six years old.

"Children!" her child-like voice screeched as she whacked the much abused old wooden teachers desk with a ruler that looked ready to split in two. All fell silent. Edward cringed from his seat in the back. He hated the ruler, it had dealt out punishment on his backside more times than he could count. "Now that I have your ungrateful attention, let's begin. Today we will start with writing. Pencils out!"

The lessons continued on throughout the morning, and after lunch, Edward and the other children all wondered back to the school, dragging their heels. Edward, with a bellyfull of his mother's pot roast, sat in his seat in the back again. For the last few weeks Edward had been trying to be the model student; quiet. He knew if he got in trouble once more, his Papa would take away his box cart. And he just couldn't lose that, it was the fastest one on the street. How else was he supposed to beat Thom Wiley.

Edward scuffed the floor with his toe and listened to Mrs. Wasly drone on about proper etiquette and speech. It was all rubbish anyway, he already knew how to be a good-boy. He washed behind his ears, cleared his plate, cleaned his toys up and read the newspaper every Saturday morning with his Papa. He was an angel, as his mother would say, her good-boy. And he would do anything to please his mother. Even if it meant being called a milksop by the other boy.

Well what did they know anyway, he could still whip their butts with his box cart and at baseball.

Mrs. Wasly's voice grabbed him back from his thinking. "Now, cretins, you all want to be good boys and girls, don't you?" Edward perked, maybe he would actually learn something today. All the children nodded at the aged teacher. "Well, than understand me ungrateful heathens, your virtue is everything," she snapped, with fire spitting in her eyes. "Without your virtue, girls can not be proper ladies, nor men gentlemen. It's a fact of life, you foolish biggits."

Mrs. Wasly stood in front of the small impressionable children and pointed the ruler at them, stating in a deadly voice filled with doom, "God will damn you to hell, if you so much as think of losing your virtue. It's the only thing you little idiots have in this world. Don't forget that."

Edward scrubbed a hand through his disheveled hair, more than a little confused. So he had to never lose his virtue, and that would make him a good-boy? It would make his mother happy if he was a good-boy, and he didn't want to be damned. He was afraid of hell. Did that mean no excitement, too? But he heard older boys talk about the excitement, where they laid with girls or something. Edward had sat next to a girl before. It hadn't been exciting, she had actually smelled bad. He tentatively raised his hand.

Mrs. Wasly zoned in on him like a hawk on a rabbit. "Masen?" She bit out.

Edward hesitated, "Uh...well..."

"Spit it out, boy!"

"What about the excitement?" He asked timidly, "Does that take your virtue?"

Edward had never seen a face turn red before, but Mrs. Wasly looked like a tomato.

"Edward Masen, the excitement is the worst possible thing you could ever do to lose your virtue. It's despicable, incorrigible, and disgusting." Mrs. Wasly was spitting out her words through her teeth. "God should spit on you for just thinking about such a thing. Your mother should box your ears and wash your mouth out with soap. And after all the times she told me you were a good-boy."

Edward straightened in panic, "I am a good-boy! I am!"

Mrs. Wasly shook her head, "How can you be a good-boy if you think about the excitement? Good-boys don't do that."

Edward was near tears. He was a good-boy. He was! His mother had said so. He had to be a good-boy for her. "But-t marriage?"

The ruler slapped on the desk again, making him jump, "Marriage is sacred and should never be demeaned by such things as the excitement. If you really love your wife, you would never do that to her, never." Mrs. Wasly practically shrieked. All the children flinched. She sniffed and turned away, "And you would never leave her for some twenty year old biggit with blonde hair and long legs," sniff, "and who goes by the name bunny. I mean really? I bet she has a tail, the little—" the last part was mumbled and Mrs. Wasly kept grumbling to herself. Edward being in the back couldn't catch any of it, but some of the children up front's mouths dropped like stones.

But Edward didn't care, he now knew how to be a good-boy. No excitement ever.

Little Edward kept this philosophy all the way through his human life and into his vampire existence. It was never tested until Bella Swan arrived.

2005, Forks – Bella's Bedroom

"Edward just look at them, for Christ's sake!" Bella cried, frustrated. She stood in the doorway to her bedroom topless gesturing at her breasts, that where exposed and easily visible in the gray light of the Forks' afternoon.

Edward clung tighter to the bed pillow and clenched his eyes shut as he laid huddled on Bella's bed facing the opposite wall. In a strangled voice he wailed, "My virtue."


Review and you get to cuddle with Edward's virtue.