AN: I do not own Twilight or anything else created by Stephanie Meyer.

To Love a Human

Chapter One.

I stood in front of the long, decoratively framed mirror in my bedroom brushing my long golden curls to perfection with the wooden-handled brush that my mother had given me when I was fourteen. I was admiring my new outfit when my best friend, and typical annoyance, started throwing a fit.

"Alex! Alex! Alexandria!" I heard Marianna yell my name, persistently, from downstairs even though I would have heard her if she had whispered it. "C'mon! I am not letting you be late for our first day of school!" She continued.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and grabbed my lime green book bag. I was headed off to my very first day of school at Forks High School, a school full of humans and problems waiting to happen. I hadn't cared for the idea of attending a school when Marianna suggested it, I had wanted to move to someplace rural and sunny where I could be myself and write all that I wanted to, but Mari just wouldn't budge on her idea of attending school. She wanted to meet new people and make new friends, even if she had to settle for human friends, while I just wanted some of my old life back.

I had came from a time with values and morals; at least before the damn Union started the Civil War, and lived on a pretty little farm in Texas with my parents and older brother. My days consisted of helping Pa with a broken fence or doing some baking with mamma in the kitchen, life was peaceful before the war. When my brother left home at nineteen to join the confederate army I knew in my heart what he was doing was for us. But it hurt inside to see the person who had always been there by my side throughout our childhood leave home and go into the most dangerous of places.

One day a letter came from Jonathan, his best friend, who had entered the war right by his side; the letter was worn and dirty but it had made it all the way across the state. The letter stated that my brother had gone missing and that they thought the enemy, the Union, had captured him. Sad days and months passed by when a "trader" past through our small town late one evening. I was home alone when she came to the door. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen, but her eyes seemed to glow a striking color of red. That was the night I "ran away", as the rumors say.

Somehow I made it through those two awful years of life with Nettie, why she didn't just kill me I don't know to this day. Several hard years later I met Marianna, on the streets of St. Louis late at night. I was scared of her and prepared to fight her, her strange yellow eyes were startling. But she didn't tense, even when I crouched for attack, she simply just smiled and said, "Stand." I couldn't comprehend what I was doing but before I could do anything else I was standing upright. "Now are you going to listen?" she asked and tilted her head to the side slightly. Baffled and confused I nodded yes.

She explained to me her gift of persuasion; its power amazed me. She could persuade any vampire or human to do almost anything, as long as she said her commands out loud. She continued to explain herself and her golden eyes and told me of her quest to be "good". Animal blood sounded vile and disgusting but out of curiosity I followed Marianna and attempted her strange lifestyle. At first I cheated sometimes, for it was extremely difficult to convert after the blood of humans is all you've ever known. But I was lonely and Marianna was an easy to be around so I stayed close to her, I didn't want to be lonely anymore and I didn't want to fight.

So now here we are today, trapped in the bodies of 16-year-olds, full of perfect memories of an earlier century but living in a modern world and attempting a modern life.

"C'mon! Hurry up, let's go!" Mari's voice snapped me out of my flashback and brought me back to my senses. She wasn't playing around anymore and was lacing all of her words with her power and literally forcing me out the door, this wasn't normal for her. She was obviously too worried about being late for school. Weren't human kids late all the time?

She rushed me out of our small, newly purchased house that was fairly rickety but had old-fashioned character. The window boxes had small petunias in them that we had planted right after we moved in to brighten up the constant rain. The old mint green paint was peeling, revealing the old wood siding and the porch was missing a railing but it was nothing that couldn't be easily repaired.

We hurried at vampire speed to Mari's rusty little ford ranger that was parked at the end of our short driveway, to avoid being drenched in the rain. Thankfully the condition of her vehicle would force her to drive slowly; I was in no hurry to reach the school. I looked over to her in the drivers seat, her long, perfectly strait, black hair had sparkling droplets of rain in it and her pale skin was nearly glowing with the backdrop of her dark hair that whirled around her face. I leaned back in my seat, hoping that the human children wouldn't stare at our differences. Everyone I had seen around Forks, for the short two week span Marianna and I had lived here, seemed to be pretty pale other than the few Native Americans that I had seen from the Reservation up near the coast. I suppose our skin wouldn't be too much of a standout.

Before I knew it we were pulling into the schools drive. I sighed and took an unnecessary breath. I wasn't looking foreword to what this day would bring.

Stepping out of the truck I pulled up the hood on my jacket and walked toward the office building with Mari, whom I must say was a lot more enthused than I was. We entered the building and turned in our new student registration forms. The forms stated that we were sisters, it just wasn't logical that friends would just happen to move to the same town at the same time and live in the same house. We were then handed our schedules by an office secretary who gave us a warm smile, told us where to find our lockers and gave us directions to our first class.

We walked out of the office building and hurried into building three, this is where most of the junior classes were held and also where our lockers were assigned. Near the end of the hallway we found lockers number 88 and 89. My schedule had my locker combination printed at the bottom. Once I entered the combination and gently pulled on the handle it squeaked open, apparently I was the first person to use locker 88 in a while. I grabbed my writing journal and a pen from my bag and then hung it on the locker hook.

I waited for Marianna to get her stuff while I looked around the hallway. It was bland, white walls with a couple of posters promoting yearbook committee and science club, along with a couple of corkboards with schedules and dates to remember. The long hallway was clustered with kids, human kids. They were all talking about their weekend or band class or the next upcoming party. They seemed so unaware of life outside of school. I noticed two students, who looked older than the typical students, at first I wondered if they were teachers until I saw that they were dressed in jeans and long sleeved shirts like most everyone else. They weren't hanging around in the hallways or talking like everyone else they both just walked past us and headed strait to class. The girl was short with chopped black hair, that spiked out in all directions at the base she looked in our direction for a moment, smiled, and then got a real blank look in her eyes. Her eyes looked the exact color of ours and for a moment I tensed, startled.

The boy was tall with a muscular build; he had a bronze tint through out his light brown hair that was tidy and yet slicked back into a carefree look. He didn't look at us or acknowledge us in anyway. Both of them had been extremely pale and quite beautiful, but I strongly doubted the possibility of other vampires in the region.

Mari seemed to have the same idea. "Do you think…?" she whispered.

"I have no idea," I answered. "Do you really think out of all chances we have come across another clan?"

"Well, they could have moved here for the same reason we did," she countered. "I mean there is lots of hunting available and about zero sunshine."

Our conversation was cut short when the bell rang and we had to hurry (at a humanly pace) to our first class. We both had Algebra II first period, we had the teacher fill out our new student slips and he gave us our books along with seats at the back of the class. All the students were whispering to each other and passing notes until Mr. Thompson started attendance.

"Katie Bell?" he called.

"Here." Called a red haired girl from the middle of the class, she seemed the popular type, but she smiled and gave the impression of a friendly person.

He continued to call off names, one caught my attention.

"Emmett Cullen?"

A hugely muscular boy with short brown hair and very pale skin called out, "Here!" Oddly, he seemed excited to spend his morning in a math class, like everything just happened to please him.

More names were called.

"Jackson Miller?"

"Here." Said another boy with shaggy, dark brown hair and a smile that was adorably handsome even for a human.

This was a teacher I was obviously not going to get along with cause the next thing he said was, "and today class we have two new girls," oh God, I thought. "Alexandria-Karma and Marianna Palmer." It was odd not using my old last name.

"I go by Alex." I said, I tried to keep my voice light.

"And you can call me Mari." Marianna said from beside me in a totally non-strained carefree voice. She always made things brighter.

Humans turned to stare at us, and the kid referred to as Jackson winked at me, I couldn't help but giggle at his smile and grin. I was surprised that I was actually considering befriending a human.

Mr. Thompson continued, "They will be with us for the rest of the year so make them feel welcome, I know its rough being new. Okay now if you'll turn in your textbooks to page 342." The class turned around and did as they were told.

Class went by smoothly, we were assigned only a small homework assignment. When the bell rang Mari and I held back so not to be too noticed. A couple of kids held back with us to greet us and to tell us there names along those few was the kid, who looked more like a man, that I new as Emmett.

Again I was startled as I saw the bright golden color of his eyes, he seemed to stifle a laughed as I must have looked partially frightened. There definitely couldn't be this many vampires in one school could there? Are there?

The others who held back were also welcoming and nice as far as humans go, there was a short girl named Sophia James who had lots of charming freckles on her pale face and short brown hair with very curly ringlets pulled into two pigtails. She was there with a boy named Brian Miller; he was brothers with Jackson and looked very similar. And last was a fairly quiet girl named Jane Brandon, she had strait blonde hair that was fairly frizzy from the weather and bright green eyes, they reminded me of how my brothers used to look.

I didn't need to pull out my schedule in the hallway I had it memorized already, my next class was English Language Arts. Sophia had the same class next so she offered to guide me there; Mari left the room with Jane in a conversation about shoes and lip-gloss.

When we reached the classroom I thanked Sophia for the escort and she went to sit by a blond haired boy who she seemed to have a crush on. I went to the teachers' desk and had her sign my sheet and she gave me a copy of the book they were currently reading, The Odyssey by Homer. This had been one of my favorites about forty years ago. I laughed to myself, if only this teacher knew I had been reading classic literature before she was even born.

I sat in the middle of the class at an empty table thinking to myself what a long day this was going to be.

AN: Well I know its kind of slow right now but it will get better I promise, I had to have some characters and background. It will get better next chapter. Thanks! 3 Lee