Preface

I knew from the moment he stepped through the doorway on that crisp autumn morning that he was special. There was something about him, and I wasn't even quite sure what. He was strong, intelligent, witty. Human.

Chapter One – First Impressions

I sat at my seat in the old classroom at Gatlinburg High School, Tennessee. The date was September 6th 1953. I was wearing my favourite outfit, my preferred back-to-school attire. It was comprised of a gorgeous full swinging skirt in a rich dusk pink fabric, a white blouse, a soft plum sweater and white Mary-Jane's. All so suitable for the breezy, fresh fall morning, but fashionable. I had always been, and would always be, the fashionable one.

It was reaching my favourite time of the year, the wintertime. Winter was the one time for us to have an excuse to wrap up warm, and safe in our clothes, less of our skin exposed to the awful sun. Not as many people stared at the pale skin of ours, no-one had anything to stare at. Also, it was cold. No-one would notice that our skin was rock hard and frozen.

I was sitting idly, inspecting my burgundy red nails, perfectly manicured and polished to perfection, nothing less. I tapped my feet in an odd rhythm on the worn wooden floor, almost impatiently waiting for our new teacher to arrive. As always we were the new kids - the mysterious Cullen's, who nobody had heard of. The beautiful people. The 3 beautiful, tragically adopted youths.

Of course, I was getting most attention from the males, as a beauty like mine, not intending to be vain, is hard to ignore. It was terrible being what I was. I would never have chosen it. I would have given the world and its entire population to just have died that night. Died, and remained peaceful in a cool underground grave, where no-one could hurt me or feel my pain.

I hated myself. I was a monster; a freak of nature. Supernatural, some call it, but most just refer to the kind of beings we are as unnatural, or scary and intimidating. I was beautiful and I knew it. The most beautiful in my coven so far and I knew it. But saying it to myself, it sounded so weak. I wanted someone else to believe I was the gorgeous one. I wanted to be loved, and properly. By someone who wanted what I wanted.

But it was a bit late for that now. I should have picked my suitors better first time around. As I daydreamed away my searing insanity, a high pitched call interrupted my disjointed thoughts.

"Rozz-a-lee? Row-za-lee? Row-za-ly? Rosalie Hale? Are you here?" questioned a sickeningly high-pitched female voice. The home room teacher - great. Another woman, poised to ask too many questions. She would wonder why I was so pale, why I didn't seem to be making new friends, as all the other females I had had for homeroom teachers had done exactly the same. I responded tonelessly.

"Yes, Miss... and, by the way, not meaning to sound rude, but the way you pronounce my name is not too important." I added the last part on with a sugary sweet topping, as not to appear extroverted. Everyone would always think I was a superficial stuck up brat, pretty, and with all the latest gadgets. Spoilt, in a nutshell.

They don't know anything. If I was anywhere near getting even loosely what I always wanted, believe me, I would not be here now. I would be in a comfortable little house in Rochester, and have a lovely, loving husband. I would not be eternally 18, because, although most women could only dream of being forever young, it did have drawbacks. I would never grow old happily.

I should now be 38 and quite possibly with a New York city-job, but preferably a stay-home mother, a housewife, who would have gorgeous children. Delicate, darling children. Maybe they would have blonde hair, with sapphire blue eyes that shone a radiance of happiness and childhood.

But I would never have children. My body was frozen. Frozen in time, and my fertility was non-existent. How I craved to one day have a child. A simple request? Wasn't it? My maternal instincts nudged me, heartlessly reminding me that that was, in fact, not a simple request at all.

The homeroom teacher finished the register. The bell was going to go in 10 minutes. She had 10 whole minutes to bore us with her life story. It's not like I hadn't heard all of it before. Of course I had heard it all before. She would introduce herself, explain who she was, why she was here, how she would help us this year. Yes, it was all too predictable. I waited for my answer to be confirmed.

"Hello, class. My name is Ms. Primakov." she started, much to my expectations. What I had not noticed before was that she had a faint Russian accent. She had trained herself well to hide it, but my acute ears could not be fooled easily.

I knew that only very astute humans would be able to hear anything unordinary at all. This would have taken years of practise; I mused, and flicked my head toward her as she continued to speak. "I am your homeroom teacher this year, and for your sophomore year I want everything to run smoothly for you all. You've come back, and you're not the youngest anymore, so I expect high things from you all. You seem like a positively charming class, and I can't wait to get to know you all better."

Then I saw it. Her gaze flickered at mine, and Edward's, and Alice's - just us, in particular. There was something odd about this woman. I shrugged it off. After all, we were quite a thing to look at. We probably intrigued her. She continued with a look of thought in her eyes. Her shockingly blue eyes.

"I will be helping you through everything there is to go through this year, and if you want to come and see me about anything," she stressed the word anything very heavily, "anything at all, my classroom is open at break times and lunches, Wednesdays after school, and if not, the teacher's lounge is the next best place to find me."

The bell rang it's shrill, harsh tone. I stood up in perfect unison with my siblings, bent down to reach for my bag, and then moved in a way I thought as understated towards the door. I could hear Alice's light - but dance-like - footsteps rhythmically falling to the floor. I hinted a laugh under my breath. She was the worst at keeping the secrets of our movement a secret.

We allowed, as courteous vampires do, the rest of the class to file out of the door before us. I chanced one last glance at the teacher before tapping my way out of the room. She stared at me, gave me an observant look and a half-hearted smile and looked back down at her desk; pretending to shuffle some papers - very fast. Either she was a very skilled lady, or she had something she wasn't telling us, and nervousness had caught her out...

She also looked very young. Yes, she could try and hide it with a hairdo like that and with the frumpy outfit, but, come on. Under the cakes of old makeup, she was young. Early twenties even, maybe. I carried on out of the door. As soon as lunch came around, the Cullen's were going to have a little discussion about Ms. Primakov, I decided.

I didn't glance back at her, but what was the need? With an intense memory, and amazing vision, a moment's eye contact was all I needed.

Class was boring that morning. Just the same sophomore lessons I had learned 3 years ago. Being a sophomore, junior, senior – then you move, start over and repeat. You can see why this might get a little old. My 7th re-run was in progress. Yawn. Yet, lunch came around quite quickly.

We glided into the cafeteria, all eyes on us, as always. The good looking ones - the new kids. I wondered quietly what gossip and rumours were already being created about us. Edward withheld a laugh. Stupid, obnoxious he was sometimes. Thinking he could just wander in and out of everyone's minds as he pleased, just because he can.

At least I didn't have to make a scene and confront him. I didn't know if I could restrain myself. Even after 20 years of having him effortlessly browsing through my collection of thoughts, I still could not get used to this unsettling fact. But back to business. We had a rogue teacher to talk about.

"There is definitely something about that woman. She's different. And she looks at us like, well, like we're special or something." I started, babbling on in my sweet as honey voice. "Not that we're not special, in more ways than being incredibly beautiful, but she doesn't-"

"Don't you mean shouldn't?" Edward butted in – desperate to be right. Show off.

"Yes, she shouldn't know that. Happy now Mister Perfection, sir?" I corrected, and smirked.

"Wonderful." He sung.

"Edward, Rose. Stop being so childishly competitive, we have serious issues. I mean, more serious issues than your utterly pointless bickering." Trust Alice to be the peace maker. She would say anything to shut us up, but this time she had a point. We did have a problem on our hands.

"Right, Alice, Edward. We need to start adding up. The faint Russian accent, you heard that, right?" They nodded in agreement, and Alice followed my lead.

"That accent, to train that strong accent to sound almost perfectly American must have taken years. To a normal human it would sound perfectly American, wouldn't it?" Edward shifted his posture slightly, reminding me to do the same.

A whole summer long of not having to act human had put me out of practise. I inhaled deeply as Edward spoke in his tinkling, sweet voice. Just a shame he didn't find me as lovely as everyone else.

"And did you see her eyes? Too blue, if I might be correct. Far too shockingly blue. I think, she's either faking it – or she's a certain species we haven't come across yet..." He looked uncertain, but also a little excited.

The prospect of an investigation appealed to him to no end. Could he find no better way to use his free time? I questioned him, wondering if he had made an assumption too fast.

"Edward, don't you think you're biting the bullet just a little? Maybe, she moved here at a young age, picked up the Tennessee accent quickly, and wears contact lenses for her health. It's possible. I think we should find out a bit more about her first." Alice's face lit up. She loved a good interrogation, if that was the right word.

"Here's the plan guys. She said we'd be free to talk to her, and that she'd love to get to know us better, right?" Alice rushed, waiting for an inclination to carry on. Me and Edward gave a slow, small nod of the head. "We go in, all together, and introduce ourselves." I made a face, and so did Edward. Was she out of her mind? We couldn't just walk straight on in there and say, 'Hello, Ms. Primakov, we are the Cullen's. I'm sure you've heard of our father, Carlisle. A very famous vampire if there was one.'

If she was a human, she would have to die by the laws of the Volturi, and we would be severely punished for revealing ourselves, but if she was a vampire... well, who knows what her history was with our family. I'm sure she just thought we were odd looking. And anyway, some of it made sense... the loads of makeup, the fact she looked so young, how she flicked through the papers so fast, the contacts... but other bits did not.

How did she restrain herself from all these kids every day? Even when I was thirsty, my throat burned, and some of the teenage blood smelt simply gorgeous. Why hadn't Carlisle spotted her, why was her scent no different to all the human people in the room? I hadn't realised that Alice was waiting to continue.

"No! We don't introduce ourselves as ourselves; we introduce ourselves as people she would not recognise. I know she's already done the register and all of that, but say we are Cullen-Hale's. We have no idea who Carlisle is if she asks us. We play dumb, unless we're sure of what she is. We have no association with anyone vampire related, ok? We've still got half an hour of lunch break to go, and I think that we could make quite quick work of this." She plotted, and after pretending to take a swig of orange juice, we strutted out of the cafeteria, feeling the eyes of curious students upon us.

We walked as slowly as was humanely normal through the building, looking as charming as possible without too much effort. We greeted teachers in the corridor; all the better for when we needed to get out of Biology class later. A charmed teacher was an easily swayed teacher, was our private little joke. We instinctively followed each other's scents back to Ms. Primakov's classroom. We knocked, and she looked up from her papers, which she had been marking like a tornado was whipping through them, shuffling them and then scratching the nib on to the paper, allowing the black ink to blemish it.

Through the glass paned door she made a motion for us to come in, and then spoke in her odd dialect.

"Come in, Edward, Alice, Rosalie." She sounded different from this morning; she allowed a slight unnatural tinkle to enter her voice. Odd. We pushed open the door and let ourselves in. It was almost like she'd been expecting us. She looked at us, assessing us. I was wondering what she was thinking. For once Edward's gift may come in useful. Surely, if not her body or actions, her thoughts would give her away? Alice spoke first, in her sometimes irritatingly bubbly and outgoing manner.

"Hello, Ms. Primakov. We know you said you'd like to get to know us better, and we thought we'd follow your lead. I am Alice Cullen-Hale; this is my brother, Edward Cullen-Hale, and my sister, Rosalie Cullen-Hale. We are very pleased to be meeting you." She smiled angelically and brushed a tuft of spiky hair out of her face. Ms. Primakov responded in a soft, sparkly toned voice.

"Oh. Well, on the register, it says Alice and Edward Cullen," she looked at them next to each other, and squinted slightly, then continued. "And then Rosalie Hale." She glanced over at me, and I saw something behind the blue stare she was showing off. A flash of something? I didn't know. Interesting. This just got stranger by the minute. She continued, putting on a look of puzzlement.

"Are you three... related?" we nodded in unison as a response. Edward picked up flawlessly, like he had been rehearsing this in his (big) head.

"Yes. You see, me and Alice are brother and sister, and Rosalie here," he gestured towards me, with a quick wink in his that lasted 1/16th of a second telling me to play along. Like I would contradict him. "And her mother recently married our father. Mine and Alice's mother died in a horse riding accident 5 years ago. And Rosalie's mother and father recently got divorced." I feigned a look of pain, wincing slightly. "We prefer to keep our names double-barrelled, as we have quite a strong connection to each other." Ms. Primakov responded kindly.

"Well, I'm awfully sorry. If you need to talk to anyone, any of you, you know where I am. Anyway; a little bit about me, perhaps?" We sat down at three empty desks on the front row, feeling as though we were in a lesson. I wondered what was coming. "Well, I was born in Russia a while ago, never ask a woman's age," she laughed in a high pitched ring. "And I moved to this country at a very young age. I have travelled a lot, and travel mostly with my sisters. I only ever knew my mother, and now my sisters and I travel alone.

"At the moment we are living here, and have made a home for ourselves. We are quite happy. I'm new to this school as well, so I hope we can learn the ropes together." I asked her the simplest question of all, which maybe she had perhaps forgotten.

"Ms. Primakov, do you mind me asking, what is your name?" I asked, thinking it sounded slightly odd when it came out of my mouth. She responded with a slight hesitation.

"Tanya. Tanya Primakov."