A/N: This story is actually a bit old but I've never posted it here. It was originally written as an exclusive for A Different Forest but since they've done away with their VIP author program I figured it wouldn't hurt to post it here too. Hopefully I am not wrong. It's a bit of a departure for me. Student/teacher vampfic. It's not really angsty or anything. Hopefully you'll find it a bit humorous and cute and romantic and eventually sexy. This chapter was not beta'd but hopefully it's okay.
All characters are the property of Stephenie Meyer. Reviews are love and we all need love. Thank you for reading!
The first day of school is always nerve-wracking but it's even more so if you're a vampire. When you're immortal you have to concern yourself with whether or not anyone will catch on to how different you really are. Sure we can go out in daylight but so little else for us is what humans would deem normal. We're pale in an almost incandescent way. Our eyes, when we've fed well, are golden almost to the point of yellow. Our skin, if anyone ever managed to accidentally touch us, is cold as ice. We don't need to breathe. And we never, ever age.
We live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States which just happens to have the most accumulated rainfall in the entire country. Sunny days are a rare occurrence which helps keep people from seeing why we really can't go out in sunlight. Don't ask. It's quite embarrassing really. Our pale complexions can often be explained away by the aforementioned lack of sunlight. And our eyes are easily hidden by color contacts. Physical contact with humans is a major no-no and we avoid it like the proverbial plague. And breathing is something we can do, we just don't need to.
As for the aging? Well that's another story and the reason I am sitting in my car outside of a public high school. I would much rather it be a private school but this is all the small town of Forks has to offer. You see, I was turned when I was a mere 17 years of age and I quite look it. Well aside from my manners and poise. Those are a product of my human days and often raise an eyebrow or two but old habits die hard if you'll pardon the pun.
Most of my kind live as animals, hunting humans and living in the wild, often solo. But not me. After a bit of 'teenage' rebellion in my early years as a vampire I returned to my maker and chose to live with him. He's a bit unconventional when it comes to the ways of our kind. He has what he calls a coven of vampires. Some he's made, like me, and others came to live with us over time. We share a home just like any traditional American family and even hold jobs and go to school. Which is why I'm here on this cold, wet, and cloudy day.
Despite living like a family I value my alone time and my siblings have mostly learned to respect that. Therefore I have driven myself to school nearly on the dot as I prefer to hold off on the experience of a mass of hormonal teenagers for as long as possible. I have it all worked out. Arrive just in the nick of time for classes, spend my lunch hour in the library, and leave the moment the bell rings at the end of day. There'll be no extracurricular activities for me. I know my grades will be impeccable or at least they could be but in an effort to not draw attention to myself I'll make sure to do less than stellar on some.
One minute until the bell rings. I've already gotten my class schedule from Ms. Cope so all I need to do is get to class. At this point the only students left outside are the requisite hooligans who prefer to defy authority every chance they get. It is easy to get around them without much notice while they laugh and roughhouse with each other.
My first class is American Government and it's one of the ones I'll allow myself to excel in considering I have an eidetic memory and have lived through at least a portion of it. The teacher is as bald as Mr. Clean and is even built like him and from what I understand he's actually won awards so this class holds the promise of some critical thinking.
It's an extremely small school. Not more than 500 students which is a tiny fraction of most public high schools. But really it hardly matters. They are the same everywhere. Hormone driven, thrill seeking, bored, playful, easily excitable. They often have terrible taste in music and read only when forced to. Except the brains of course who are often picked on. At least here in this sleepy town we don't have to pass through metal detectors and security guards. Things have changed so much over the years and I honestly wonder why more people don't choose to home school but I guess that's because in this day and age both parents need to work to keep a roof over their head and a modicum of comfort for they and their offspring. My family need not worry about such things. Besides years of accumulation of what are now priceless antiques there's my maker's choice of profession, and my seer of a sister. We want for nothing.
Another apparent benefit of our state of un-life is that some of us seem to have been reborn with certain 'gifts'. My sister can see the future, my brother can manipulate emotions, and I can read minds. I'm not entirely sure I'd call that particular gift a blessing though. At least not here in the halls of pubescent chaos. I know more about celebrities and fashion than I'd ever want to. The sports info dumps aren't so bad. I like a good game of strategy. The infatuations are probably the worst. Is he going to call me? Why hasn't he called? Maybe I should call him? Then there's the outright stalking. Walking and driving by the houses of the objects of their affection. Showing up at places they know their potential beloved will be. What ever happened to good old fashioned dating? Not that I personally have much experience but still. I think there's something to be said for courting.
I take it back. The worst is when they've lost their virginity. It's ALL they can think about and talk about for days on end. OH MY GOD did it hurt? What was it like? Where were you? Who was it? How many times did you do it? And all of that includes rather graphic images of what took place, which let me tell you is not pretty. Teenagers have got nothing on 100 year old vampires.
The morning round of classes passes fairly quickly. Since it's the first day there's mostly a bunch of introductions and descriptions of what we can expect throughout the year. I was pleased upon registering at this school to find that they actually do have some AP classes. That makes things at least marginally more interesting. My French class is conducted in French and as I had hoped my American Government teacher has already assigned us homework.
For our lunch break I head to the room that claims to be a library. Describing it as small is rather kind and I wonder if I can talk Esme, my mother for all intents and purposes, into donating some books or maybe even an anonymous monetary donation to expand the room itself. Still, it will serve its purpose. It's quiet and there's no one here. This provides two benefits. One, it minimizes the constant internal chatter I've been bombarded with all day, and two it makes it easier avoid the charade of eating. It's a waste of food and occasionally to make the charade believable we do actually have to ingest some of it which is rather quite disgusting. And for our kind what goes in must come back out the way it came in.
I wander the stacks and am surprised to see authors such as Bradbury and books like A Clockwork Orange. They seem a bit too intellectual and the latter too controversial for this small town but it gives me a tinge of hope that there is intelligent life here after all. Of course what the library contains doesn't matter to me on a personal level. We have a pretty sizeable collection at home containing many first editions of all the classics.
I sit down at one of the small round tables and pull out a sketch pad from my satchel. I'd rather be playing the piano or listening to music but a piano won't fit in there and we're not allowed to use electronic devices while school is in session. There are large bay windows looking out to the lush green forest that surrounds the school. I begin to sketch the moss covered trees and try to ignore the almost Pavlovian instinct I have to run to those woods and hunt. As part of our rather unconventional lifestyle choices we choose not to hunt humans but rather animals. To partake of humans more quickly reduces us to our animal states and honestly none of us wants to live like that. Most of my family valued their human lives when they were turned and want to maintain some bit of our humanity. We were God fearing good people with families we loved and we wanted to carry those aspects over with us. All except for Alice, and Rosalie to a degree. Alice remembers very little of her human life though the slices she does remember seem to indicate time spent in an asylum which is very contradictory to her current demeanor which is spritely and effervescent. And Rosalie, well Rosalie bears a chip on her shoulder rightly so for she was gang raped and left for dead which is how she came to be one of us. My father, Carlisle, took pity on her and changed her. Unfortunately at the time it did not occur to him that she might not want such a life.
The bell was about to ring which meant it was time to head to my next class, study hall, which really wasn't a class at all. I'd been in them in other schools and often wondered if they stuck us in there so they could have a break from the monotony. Being right after lunch a fair number of the students were simply struggling to keep their eyes open which again served as a benefit for me. Sleepy minds don't ramble. They might occasionally have some very strange visions as they slip into a sort of waking dream state but those sometimes proved more amusing than annoying.
Others took the time to read magazines by stuffing them in their text books or they snuck out their phones and did some actual texting. I took the time to pull out my course schedule once more. My next and last class was AP English, another one I looked forward to. Literature had always been a favorite pastime for me as was writing. My writing mostly consisted of journal type entries. A sort of cataloguing of everything I'd seen and witnessed and more importantly felt over the years. I kept them in a lock box in the house on the off chance anyone ever managed to break in while we were away or out hunting. The last thing we needed was for a human to enter our home and figure out that something wasn't quite right. So we kept all the trappings of humanity. A stocked fridge and cupboard, linens and towels and bath products, working heat and a/c, beds even though we do not require sleep. The beds serve other more carnal purposes for those of us that are mated which in my house is everyone but me. According to vampire lore we all have a mate, someone we are destined to be with. I have yet to meet mine. A fact that has frustrated me, occasionally left me feeling despondent and wondering if I'm some sort of freak beyond the obvious, and finally after all these years has led to a sort of melancholy resignation that it may simply not be in the cards for me. Instead of dwelling on this I went back to looking at my schedule:
1:00pm AP English Building 3 B. Swan