Hi, all. This is my first time publishing on , and I played with canon a little in this story. It's very important that you know that Alice and Jasper are not vampires. They are human, and they are Bella's age. I really appreciate your reviews and your time - I hope you enjoy!

One

This is not a story to pass on.

We rely on secrecy. We have existed in the shadows for so long, yet no one knows about us. Those few people – the members of the world's general population, the blessed, safe, blind multitude – who do find out… well, they are dealt with. But even with these few minor slips, we are still one of the best-kept secrets the world has ever seen. Or hasn't seen.

I haven't met all of the others, the ones who are in essence my lifeline. It doesn't work like that – it's safer for us this way. But there are a few whom I have been with long enough and often enough that I can commit my life to their protection even without the double necessity of who we are and what we do. I guess you could call us a family, though we are not related in any biological sense. In fact, if the world were as it should be, we never would have even met. We do not interact outside of our own world. When we are in that other world, the real world, we avert our eyes for our own safety and for the safety of the others who are like us. But, as it is, we know each other in ways that we don't know our other friends. And those other friends – they don't know us. Not at all.

However, that is the way the world is, and this story did happen, although so many people would much rather it hadn't. God knows, my own life would have been easier if it hadn't. But the thing about being part of one of the world's oldest conspiracies – it makes you very aware of the secrets of others. Those other secrets draw you in, whisper to you, and you have to know more about those who carry them.

I had to know more.

I have nearly been killed more times than I can count. I have watched people I love die more times than I care to remember. And I have killed people. I comfort myself with the thought that none of them were innocents. I killed them because they threatened my way of life, the way of life of my people. I killed them because I was ordered to do so. I can't afford to trouble myself with thoughts of whether or not their deaths were right. They were necessary. You would think I would have learned by now that it is far better to become attached to no one and nothing. The world is just too fragile for love.

This is not a story to pass on.

I never intended on sharing my secret, because it is not just my secret. The lives of so many others depend on that secrecy. But I had to sacrifice that secrecy for the only person I have ever fallen in love with. Strange, isn't it… but anyway.

Another thing about being part of a conspiracy – you become blisteringly aware of the fact that, however bad your own secret is, there exists someone somewhere with a more dangerous secret. But I happened to forget that until it became part of my reality. I should have known – while I may be special, I am not charmed. Something had to give, sooner or later.

Now, as I race through this thick forest, dodging patches of sunlight, taking care to ruffle no leaf, the controlled breathing of my family all around me as they keep pace with me, I know that I have to make it to that clearing ahead, the clearing where the light changes from green to yellow. My heart is there. My heart is there, and I am one of the only people who can save it. I have to save it. I can't live without it. A crucial part of my existence is knowing my own limits, and I know that much for damn sure.

This is not a story to pass on.

Bella

"Mom." I strode into the kitchen of our small, cozy house in Phoenix and dropped my schoolbag on the table where she sat, grading the worksheets from her kindergarten class.

"Yes, sweetheart?" When she looked up at me, there was anxiety in her eyes. It was no surprise, really, that expression – she was used to me speaking to her in that tone, and following it with another flat statement: "I have to fly out, right now." But not this time. At least, not quite.

I lowered myself into a chair across from her. I had always loved the intricate carvings in this wood chair, and the others that surrounded our dining room table, but always hated the huge squishy cushions my mother had placed on the seats. They slid around on the finish of the wood, and I always felt like I had to hold myself extra-stiff just to not slip off. Folding my hands on the table in front of me, I cleared my throat. "They want to reassign me."

Slowly, my mother lowered her purple pen, and I hated the hope that sprang up in her eyes. "Clerical duty? Oh, Bella, how wonderful!"

I shook my head, lowering my eyes to my hands. "No." Deep breath. "Mom, you know how there's not only me, but four others in Arizona," I began, slowly.

She shook her head. "I thought it was only two at your school." She didn't know the names of Katie, José, Violet, and Nathaniel. It was a violation of the code. But I was able to tell her how many others there were around me.

"The other two are in Flagstaff. Anyway, powers that be decided that one of us could be spared." My teeth descended onto my lower lip as I steeled myself to hurt her. "One of ours… she was stationed in Seattle. She died last week. In the field. They brought her body back, so the kill was confirmed." I closed my eyes, again, on the picture it wanted to show me: Irina, a girl no older than me, with a bullet hole between her eyes, her white-blonde hair in her face.

My mother pressed her hands to her mouth. She hates that more than anything, when I have to come home and tell her that one of my friends was killed by the shadowy enemies we chase all over the world so that we can prevent them from coming here. Every time, it could be me. Every time.

"The point is," I pressed on before she could interrupt, "is that now there's only two agents in Washington State. Fontana wants me to move up there to round the number out to three. That would leave four here, and that's enough of a balance. I was picked because Dad lives up there, and I can leave without raising too much suspicion. It's the best option."

Now I had to sit there, helpless, as her eyes welled with tears. Unable to bear her pain as the implications of my words sank in, I turned and stared out the window into our backyard. There wasn't any grass out there, just a covered patio surrounded by a sand garden. But the yard backed up onto a golf course, and the contrast between the beige of the sand and the lush green of the overtended grass was always shocking.

My mother gulped once, twice, shuddering. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, attempting anger to keep the pain at bay. "And what do they expect you to do? Just up and change schools? Go to your father when he might not even be able to afford–"

"I already talked to Dad," I cut her off. "I got the text message at about ten this morning, and I called him during lunch. He's already said he can take me." Swallowing my own tears – I had seen worse than this, given worse news than this, and survived – I stood and retrieved my bag. "I have until the end of the week to enroll in school up there." Hesitating, glanced back at her, at the tears streaking down her young face, wetting a curl of blonde hair that had drifted over her collarbone. "Mom, please. Please don't make this any harder than it has to be. You know I don't want to do this."

She shoved away from the table, lurching to her feet. "Then tell them no!"

"You know I can't."

And with that, I turned my back on her, padded down the hall to my bedroom, and shut the door quietly.

When I was alone in my room, I stared around at the walls. What few photographs there were of me and my friends were always group shots in places with generic backgrounds – the inside of somebody's house with nothing to identify the exact location; the beach at Lake Havasu; a camping trip from a few years ago. No names, no titles. My walls were white, and I had no athletic trophies, no academic honors certificates, no framed team photographs.

In the frame of the mirror was one photograph of me and my dad taken when I was thirteen, and across from it was one of me and my mother taken a few years later. Beyond those photographs, my reflection stared back at me: young, pale, average height, dark brown eyes that almost exactly matched my long hair, which was at the moment bunched up in an elastic at the back of my head. Jeans, plain black T-shirt. You had to look hard to see the extra definition in my muscles, and I had gotten quite good at using concealer on my scars. I had nothing to indicate that I was a standout student, because I was not. I couldn't be.

Shortly after the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, President Truman authorized the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, a spy network with jurisdiction all over the globe. The CIA was a product of momentary panic over the Soviet Union's detonation of their first atomic bomb, but the widespread fear of Communist power had convinced Congress that the agency was necessary. And so, for the past sixty or seventy years, the world, both foreign and domestic, has been crawling with agents who answer only to their own director, who answers only to the President, dedicated to exterminating even the ghost of any threat to the country before they can arrive on our shores.

The above background information can be found in just about any textbook of United States history published between 1955 and now. But the part that no one tells you is that President Kennedy had a problem with Truman's CIA. How could the agents go undercover, Kennedy asked, if they were all white men in their thirties? So, by executive order, one of the quietest yet most widespread campaigns spread its tentacles across the country. Latinos, Asians, African Americans, and most especially Eastern Europeans were recruited for agents and, years before the public was made aware of it, women were as well. What Kennedy knew, what any man could tell you, is that it's much easier for a woman to make a man give up his secrets than it would be for another man.

But one thing that the public has yet to be made aware of: Kennedy also authorized the CIA to recruit children.

Oh, not babies. As the father of small children himself, Kennedy would never allow that. But, starting in 1961, the agency started monitoring, through the public school systems, the progress of students who fit the profiles they had devised: more intelligent than their peers, physically stronger, emotionally mature, preferably products of broken homes, only children, quiet. Only the very best of this pool were selected by the recruiters, and as soon as they all turned thirteen, their parents were approached with the agency's offer. In exchange for sixty thousand dollars a year (held in trust until the children came of age), the parents would allow their children to be taken to an intensive training camp in Langley, Virginia, for two and a half months in the summer, two weeks in winter, and two weeks in spring to begin to learn how to become CIA operatives. The camps were scheduled deliberately to coincide as much as possible with school breaks. In time, this camp would earn the unofficial nickname of the Cradle.

While at the Cradle, the children were to learn the history of espionage; the art of undercover work; how to track, evade, and capture enemies; and how to gather information. In addition, their bodies were transformed into weapons. Endurance runs, strength building, and cardio training were all part of the daily regimen. When the children turned fourteen, they also flew out to Langley one weekend a month for additional training; when they were fifteen, it became two weekends a month. The summer that they were sixteen, they were given their first field operations, working alongside adult members of the agency, but only during their summer breaks from school.

All operatives are guaranteed acceptance at either the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, or the military academy at Annapolis upon graduation from high school, so that they can be within easy distance of Langley and continue their training. As soon as they graduate college, they instantly move to the Farm, the regular CIA training camp, for a special, accelerated program, and emerge as superior agents already prepared for the more intensive work of the agency.

The system worked, and it may have continued that way indefinitely. But that all changed one sunny morning in September 2001, when four planes and several thousand lives were destroyed all along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Suddenly, the former world had passed away, and all the old rules no longer applied. Underage operatives could no longer be saved for jobs during the summertime; as they were needed, they were pulled out of class and their parents were instructed to plead illness or indisposition to the attendance offices. The winter training camp was extended from two weeks to three. Recruitment began at eleven years old, instead of thirteen, and all the theoretical education was imparted during those first two extra years. The children were made ready earlier, and they were used more often. This was the world I entered when I was in the sixth grade.

I am Isabella Marie Swan, Operative ID 11679543-C3, seventeen years old, and I am one of fewer than three hundred underage CIA operatives-in-training in the United States. I have been to Iran, Pakistan, and Cambodia on undercover operations. I have been to Egypt, China, and Honduras on black ops. I speak seven languages fluently and learned to fire a handgun before I had my braces off. My covers have, in the past, included a belly dancer, a real estate magnate's beloved daughter, and a drug lord's housemaid. But that's not what the rest of the world – my classmates, my friends, my extended family sees when they look at me. To them, I'm just Bella, a quiet B-student, one who isn't sure what she wants to do with her life, has no interest in boys, and very little in life beyond high school.

Even though the CIA chose us because we are extraordinary, all recruits are instructed to be as ordinary as possible. We can't have leadership positions in any clubs, we can't raise our GPA's above 3.2, and we can't form any close relationships with our peers. We have to become the kids nobody sees, so that when we miss class for two days or two weeks, nobody comments.

While it is unquestionably an honor to be chosen by the world's best spy network, we all do pay a price. We have no real adolescence; we can't be fully honest with anyone other than our fellow operatives. And, as proven by Irina's death, our lives are lived on a knife edge.

I flopped backwards on my bed, squeezing my eyes shut against the needles pricking at the backs of them as a memory of her face, her laugh, swam to the front of my mind. I would never know how she died. All operatives-in-training had only Level Four clearance, and you needed to be at least Level Six to see another agent's operation report. The only people who would know what had happened to her were the agents who had shared the op and those to whom they had made their report. But I still knew that there would be an informal memorial service for her at the next training weekend, organized by the twenty-two-year-olds in their last year of training before they went to the Farm.

I sighed and dragged myself upright, deciding not to delay the inevitable. By now, both of the operatives in Seattle would have already been informed of my approach, and unofficial practice amongst underage transfers was to call and introduce ourselves – carefully, of course. We knew better than to say anything dangerous. I extracted my secure phone (paid for by the CIA; your tax dollars at work) from my pocket and dialed the number given to me when I'd received news of my transfer earlier today. As the dial tone buzzed in my ear, I gazed out my window. It was still autumn, not that the light looked any different in Phoenix because of the time of year. But, since it was almost five in the afternoon, the setting sun had cast the grass of the golf course with an orange tint. I pulled my oldest, favorite teddy bear into the crook of my free arm and waited.

The phone rang only twice before there was a click and a bright, perky voice chirped, "Hello?"

"Hi." I cleared my throat. "The color of the day is aquamarine."

There was a pause, and when the girl spoke again, her tone was more serious. "And yesterday's was teal."

I relaxed, sighing. "Yes. Um, my name's Bella. I'm going to be moving to Seattle next week. I think I'll be going to your school."

"Oh, really? Cool!" The sparkle was back now, and I knew that she'd been worried that my call was to assign her a new op. "Yeah, that'll be great. Oh, you don't know my name, do you? It's Alice."

I nodded, knowing that she shouldn't give me her last name over the phone. "It's nice to get to talk to you," I told her, sincerely. She sounded like a nice person. "Does anybody else I might know go to your school?"

"I'm not sure if you'd know Jasper," she replied, "but he's cool. We've studied together before."

"You have?" I asked, understanding that she was telling me that she and this Jasper had been on at least one op before. "Does he do good work?"

"Yeah. Hide-and-seek is his favorite game, which is good, because drama is my best subject."

So, she was best with undercover work, while Jasper was a pavement artist – the person who is best at tracking people, because he's the best at not being seen. "Oh, I don't know if we have that much in common, then," I said slowly, pushing my hair back from my face. "I'm only really good at making shadow puppets."

She was silent as she digested the fact that my specialty was black ops. I waited, a little nervous. Black op agents were generally considered the most dangerous, because we were the ones who usually did the capturing, the interrogating… we were usually the ones who killed.

Finally, Alice cleared her throat. "We should all be able to learn from each other, then," she said quietly, the closest she'd come to breaking the cover.

"We should. I'm glad." I held my breath a moment, then continued. "Listen… I'm sorry. You must miss her."

Alice's silence was longer this time. "I do." She coughed once, and I figured we should probably end the conversation. It was unlikely someone was trying to listen in, but we had to be careful.

"Yeah. So I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Of course." There it was again, the cheerful tone. "I'm glad you called, Bella."

"Thanks." And we hung up.

I stared at my phone for another moment, waiting for the screen to go dark, before I carefully placed it on the matters next to me. Then I stood, wandering over to my window, watching the last of the sunset disappear beyond the golf green. The golden light had disappeared and my room was wreathed in shadow before I turned and mechanically pulled a bag out of my closet. Carefully, I started loading every trace of my life in Phoenix into that bag, and then into others. I had to pack, and I had to go. The personal reaction could come later.

Edward

The bell rang, ending my English class, and I was glad. Studying Shelley's Frankenstein and hearing the teacher – an overly blonde woman younger than my mother had been when she was changed – describe it as one of the most complex works we would ever read was vaguely insulting to someone who had once written a graduate thesis comparing the works of Ayn Rand to those of James Joyce. I slid one strap of my backpack, full of useless information, over my shoulder, taking care not to be the first one out of the classroom. I spoke to no one, and I tried not to hear the rush of adolescent babble that swelled and flowed around me. At least it was not the rush it would have been had it been nighttime. But, seeing as to how the sun was shining, I could pretend that I was one of them.

Legend says that my kind cannot come out in the sunlight, lest we be turned to ash. We do not contest this; it is an idea that helps us hide. But the truth is only that the sunlight weakens us – horribly. My supernatural strength, my blinding speed, my perfect sight, my excellent hearing, my impenetrable skin… these only manifested in the moonlight. During the day, I was reduced to the rank of a mere mortal. My skin became just that: skin. Flesh. Oh, my heart did not beat, but I returned to only mortal strength.

And I still thirsted. Always, I thirsted.

"God, I am so thirsty," moaned a little freshman girl to her friend from where they stood behind me in the lunch line. I snorted to myself without turning around, paid for a tray of food without caring what I'd bought, and turned away from the counter stacked with the human food that sat reeking beneath the heat lamps. As I picked my way through the mess of tables and books and bags and people, nobody glanced up at me. The cautious, limited familiarity of the last two years meant that I no longer frightened them. At least, not from a distance.

My brother and sister and I always shared the same small table, tucked into the corner of the second-floor cafeteria. It was situated by one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the eastern wall of the building, and the clouds that roiled above the parking lot or the seagulls that scavenged among the cars below for scraps were often more interesting than the petty human dramas that circulated the large, linoleum-coated room. For the last few weeks – it was now the Thursday of the third week of this school year – the buzz had been nervous and excited as the humans settled into another chapter of their little lives. For Rosalie and Emmett and me, it didn't matter nearly as much. I wasn't even sure how many times I had gone through the junior year of high school by now. Enough that I had not found anything about it to interest me for decades, anyway.

The anxiety usually faded by this point in the month, but the atmosphere had been disrupted – by a late arrival. Just another girl – what was her name, Bella? She'd hardly spoken to anyone, but when she did, she was pleasant. Hardly anyone knew where she came from, and nobody knew why she'd suddenly moved in with her father and his wife two weeks into the semester. Of course, because of this air of mystery, everyone wanted to know everything about her.

It wasn't as though this rather large public high school not too far from Seattle's Capitol Hill was an insular community. Far from it. Students transferred in and out all the time – my siblings and me, for example. It was just that, with the exception of me and my siblings, and now this girl, the newcomers always quickly sought their own niche. Humans, adolescent humans especially, hated to be left out of anything. The flurried whispers that followed her down the hallways and surrounded her in class were exhaustingly similar to those that had traced Emmett, Rosalie, and myself two years ago. We hadn't tried to find friends either, but our case was different. We had each other.

But I respected the new girl's want for privacy. Who could understand the necessity of privacy better than I?

Not that any secret she had could be anywhere near as sensitive as mine. All the same, I wished for her sake as much as my own that the rest of the humans' obsessive interest in her would subside.

I set my lunch tray down on the table across from where Rose and Emmett sat side by side, speaking in low whispers. Emmett looked up when I sat at the table. "Football at the rainier field tonight. You in?"

I shook my head and replied, "The teams are even without me."

He snorted. "You know Esme won't play. C'mon – you and Carlisle against me and Rose."

"We should hunt," I murmured, my eyes on the greasy mess that the humans called pizza in front of me. "It's been almost two weeks."

"Fine," sighed Rosalie. "Hunt first, then the game. We've been cooped up all week, Edward. I'm tired of it."

I bit back my retort and turned to face out the window. The light rain that had started falling around three in the morning had let up a few minutes ago, but the clouds showed no signs of clearing. Just as well – our strength was still diluted by the UV rays of daytime, but at least our eyes wouldn't be hurt by the light.

Absently, my eyes traced an empty candy bar wrapper that skittered across the asphalt of the parking lot in the light wind. It bounced over speed bumps and loose pebbles, eventually crossing in front of the school's main door, which opened. Mildly interested, I leaned forward and watched the new girl emerge, her eyes darting back and forth, before she stepped out onto the stairs and, wrapping her arms tightly around herself, began to stride briskly across the student lot.

She looked neither left nor right as she walked, her long brown hair gently rippling out behind her, but she was not heading towards the nondescript black compact I'd seen her drive onto campus once before. Instead, she seemed to be aiming for the back of the lot, where a low cinderblock wall separated the school's property from the city. As she approached, a tall blond boy – Jasper Whitlock – got out of the driver's side of a tan Camry, and a little black-haired girl named Alice Brandon emerged from the passenger's side.

That was odd. All three of them were in my next class, American History, but I hadn't seen any of them exchange two words the entire time that Bella had been there. Alice and Jasper hadn't even really spoken to each other before then, either.

I frowned. None of them, with the possible exception of Alice, had the exhausted, emaciated look of heavy drug users, but why else would they be meeting in the parking lot while the rest of the school was at lunch?

A moment later, though, I shrugged to myself. What did I care? She was just another girl, another junkie. The world was full of them. And they were all going to die anyway; did it really matter what they chose to shoot up their arms?

Rosalie had been speaking, and I made myself pay attention. She smiled complacently as she settled back into Emmett's embrace. "I've decided that we're going to Columbia next year."

"You've already got a graduate degree from Columbia," I remided her, carefully shredding a napkin into strips. I spoke quickly enough that no human ears could understand me, had they even been close enough to hear.

Rosalie shrugged, a perfectly careless gesture. "So I've been there for graduate school. Never for undergrad." She looked up at Emmett, demanding his approval.

He nodded, of course. "Yeah. It'll be fun. It's a big enough city – hang on." He glanced back down at Rosalie. "You know it'll just be us moving, right?"

"Why?" she demanded. "This is enough notice for Carlisle to find a job around there."

"But what about Edward?"

With barely a glance at me, Rosalie replied, "He can come too. Enroll in Stuyvesant or something for his last year of high school."

"That's not fair, Rose," Em disagreed quietly. "For you to expect him to up and move without finishing–"

I shrugged, interrupting him. "It doesn't matter. It'll be the same there, I'm sure. I might not even finish this time. It's driving me mad."

"You said that last time," Emmett laughed.

"Well, I mean it this time."

"So?" Rosalie asked impatiently. "Can we do that or not?"

Emmett glanced at me and I shrugged as the bell rang. "Do what you want, Rosalie," I muttered as I stood and dumped the contents of my lunch tray into the nearest trash can. I shouldered my bag again and left before either of them could say anything else to me.

I'd been living this migratory life for so long, and knew Rosalie well enough, to not care either way where I was next school year. I might even join them at Columbia next year. Or I might not. I might go off by myself again, as I did every few years. There were only so many repetitions of high school I could stomach at a stretch. But I'd hate to hurt Esme, and I knew she hated it when I took off for years at a time.

The halls were still relatively empty, as they always were just as lunch ended. Slowly, the mass of humanity roused itself in the cafeteria, but I ignored it as I strode quickly through the halls. The same thing as every day: Detour to locker, switch out books, start for opposite end of building and end at history room. Because of the detour, I wasn't ever the first one there. Deliberately.

I slid into my seat at the back of the classroom that was hung with various and sundry posters and reincarnations of the American flag and pulled out the homework that had been assigned yesterday. Mr. Berlenbach sat grading papers at his desk, two girls whispered together in a corner, and Jasper Whitlock sat alone in the middle of the last row, staring at the chalkboard. But his pupils weren't dilated, and I could tell from here that his breathing was regular. Interesting. I hadn't seen him or the two girls return to the school.

In twos and threes, the rest of the class entered the room. Alice Brandon was with a boy, Taylor Clarke, and was cheerfully putting up with his attempts to flirt with her. But she wasn't acting oddly either. And when Bella Swan entered a moment later, alone, she was moving fluidly. She slid into her seat in the center of the room without making eye contact with anyone and quietly pulled out her things.

The moment the bell rang, Berlenbach was on his feet, calling for the class's attention. "Today is a lovely day," he intoned, "for me to realize your worst fears."

Curious muttering broke out, which he silenced with a wave of his hand. I just raised my eyebrows and sat back as he continued, "Yes, the rumors you've all heard from the seniors are true: I do assign a partner project that includes both a fifteen-minute presentation and a twelve-page paper, and yes, I do assign the partners at random."

The humans groaned, and I cursed internally. It wasn't that I minded the work – in fact, that project would probably take me three hours if it took me that – it was just that a partner project meant extended periods of contact with another student. Oh, odds were that they wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary about me, but I didn't like playing the odds. I never had.

"Yes, yes, I get that reaction every year. I keep hoping that you people will mature, but you never seem to do so." Berlenbach shuffled some papers on his desk. "So, now that we've got your emissions of misery out of the way, we may as well get on with it." He began passing out a syllabus. "Our theme this year is going to be Great American Mysteries. Some of them have already been solved, some of them have been left open throughout time. Your job is to not only present me and your peers with the facts of the case, but also offer up a reasonable theory as to what really happened. I'll announce the partners, and then we'll go over the instructions together. It is due exactly eight weeks from today, which should give you more than enough time to come up with something halfway decent."

As the papers progressed down along the rows, Berlenbach returned to a list at his desk and began to read out names in pairs: "Alice Brandon and Traci Pham, on the lost colony at Roanoke. Lorene Chung and Brian Withey, on the reasons behind the Hindenburg crash. Marie Prince and – keep it down, people." He raised his voice over the babble that had sprung up as the humans began making eye contact with each other across the room. "Where was – yes, Marie and Jason Martinez on the fate of Mr. Jimmy Hoffa. Edward Cullen and Isabella Swan on who really shot President Kennedy."

I sank back into my seat, not caring if the girl saw and was offended. Well, at least she seemed to have a pension for privacy. That would make it easier for me.

Berlenbach finished listing off the names, and there was a flurry of movement as everyone stood and rushed to their partners. I didn't move. Nearly a full two minutes later, I heard her drop into the desk next to mine. A sharp voice demanded, "Are you going to try to make this hard for me on purpose?"

Slowly, I turned my head to face her. She was sitting fully sideways in her seat, her clear, brown eyes staring straight at me in a way that no human had since… for quite some time. I allowed myself a small smile as I said, "No. I'll write the paper if you do the presentation. I'd rather not speak during it, if that's all right with you."

"Are you kidding me?" One eyebrow went up, and she fingered the dark blue scarf wrapped around her throat. Despite that and her black blazer, her hair was now up in a sloppy ponytail. No makeup. And still, those remarkably straight eyes.

I forced my eyes away from the motions of her hand at her throat. "No," I repeated. "I just think that's fair."

I expected her to argue more, but she just shrugged. "Whatever. I have too much to worry about to ask you for more work." And she turned around to face front again when Berlenbach called the class to order.

But as he began to read the instructions aloud, I whispered to Bella, "If I write that the Soviets had an agent stationed on the grassy knoll, and another one in the Texas School Book Depository, and that Oswald had nothing to do with it, will you make the presentation match up?"

She hesitated, and I saw the muscles in her jaw tighten almost imperceptibly. "Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in the Kennedy assassination, as determined by the Warren Commission," she recited, her gaze still fixed forward. This bothered me; it was almost as if I wanted her to look at me when she said it.

"But what if there's more to it?" I had lived through the Kennedy assassination; my Western Civilizations class at Georgetown had been disrupted by it. And I was sure that it wasn't just Oswald.

Bella opened her mouth, closed it, then cut her eyes at me and said, "If you find enough evidence to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the Soviets, I'll write the presentation like that." There was a little half-smile on her face, like she was somehow sure I wouldn't find that information.

Meanwhile, I glared at her. If she was trying to trick me into doing all the research myself, she needn't have bothered. I would have done it all anyway. I didn't need some woman-child telling me my own limitations.

We didn't exchange another word the whole period, and when the bell rang, I left without saying goodbye.

"Go long!" Rosalie shrieked at Emmett, clutching the football between her perfect fingernails. She danced about, avoiding Carlisle, as I sped up the field to block Emmett. My motions were robotic, my mind elsewhere. Still, though, I tackled Emmett and pretended that I wasn't letting him overpower me to escape, catch the ball, and rush it to the end zone.

As he threw the football to the ground – with enough force to gouge a gash into the earth – and whooped, I straightened, staring off into the trees. This valley amongst the Olympic peaks was a favorite place of ours, for it was one of the few places we could be ourselves. Esme was refereeing from her favorite perch high up in a Sitka spruce, a gentle smile on her face and her hair back in a high bun. A laughing Carlisle looked nothing like the young, serious doctor his patients and colleagues had come to expect, with his hair mussed and his jeans and T-shirt muddied.

"Again," he shouted, motioning for Emmett to toss him the ball. Emmett's throw was harder than necessary, but he, more than the rest of us, reveled in the strength that the nighttime lent us.

Quickly, I held my hands up and began backing towards the forest. "I'm out. Sorry."

"Edward!" whined Rosalie. "The teams are uneven."

I sent a pleading glance towards Esme, and she nodded in understanding. Sometimes, I thought that she was the only one who realized how hard it was for me to be a perpetual fifth wheel. "I'll play," she told Rosalie, rolling up her sleeves as she jumped down from her perch. She touched my cheek with her fingertips as she passed me, but she didn't speak, for which I was grateful.

I was sprinting before I reached the tree lines, and then I flew. I dashed through the dark forest, which looked not black but purple to my eyes. I didn't bother to leap over the streams; I simply ran through them, passively enjoying the way the water rushed up in two fins around me. The small, gentle vermin of the forest sped away as I approached, but we had just hunted, and they were never very appealing anyway.

But the run felt good – the stretch of muscles that had been confined for twelve hours, forbidden from reaching their full potential. And the small branches that whipped and scratched my skin did no damage against its temporarily diamond-hard texture.

This was me. This was the world I belonged in.

When I reached the edge of Puget Sound, I stopped, relaxing my arms at my sides and breathing in slowly. About three hundred yards to my left lay a lumber yard, deserted for the night, but the tangy smell of sawdust still permeated the air. This, coupled with the sound and smell of the water gently lapping at the sand inches from my shoes, calmed me. Across the sound, to the north, more forest stretched, still but vibrant. I knew I had only a few hours until I had to return home, so that I would not be caught out weak and defenseless when the sun rose again. But for now, I could revel in the truth of my darker nature.

I took a step backwards and then leapt up, flying high enough to reach one of the topmost branches of the pine tree behind me, then swung my body up to sit on the limb. For once, the clouds above the Olympic Peninsula had cleared, and I stared at the starlight reflected on the still waters of the Sound as I fingered the weave of my jeans.

Bella Swan. The first human in years to initiate conversation with me. Granted, it had only been because we had to discuss something and I certainly wasn't going to speak to her first. But it was more than that – it was her tone, as if she considered me her equal. As if she wasn't afraid of me. And that, alone, was enough for me to devote more time to thoughts of her than I ever had devoted to a human before.

It was a new sensation, having a human not be afraid of me. But the fear would come soon, I was sure. Although… there was something in her air that seemed to speak to not scaring easily. She carried herself differently from most human girls. Like she knew her own worth.

I shrugged and prepared to jump back out of the tree. It didn't matter. This project of ours would be over soon, and then she would be gone from my slightly shaken life. Everything could return to normal.

As I hit the ground, bending my knees to absorb the shock of my impact, I laughed once. What was a vampire's normal?

So, what are we thinking?