This is a re-post. I haven't plagiarized it. Recognizable characters owned by SM
Girl, Ordinary
Chapter One
The New Girl, Again
We are all of us - saints and sinners, the knowing and the unknowing, all creatures great and small - governed by the same laws. I don't mean dusty old statutes scratched centuries ago with quill and ink on softest vellum, I mean the absolute laws that rule our physical world, the unspoken edicts adhered to by man and beast alike, by animals that slither or swim, or with a lift of wings are airborne. By creatures that walk or stalk, play or prey, breathe, eat, sleep, wake, mate and die. I am speaking of the natural order, yet this is not the only truth, there is an improbable, opposing truth co-existing. I don't know how it came to be, I don't know anything. At night I stare into unfathomable reaches of space, and wonder how it is that these immutable facts preside in the world that hosts something such as me.
My mother and I move every couple of years, and I start a new school, always in the same grade. I don't have to, but lately I choose it. At my age I sometimes find teenagers shallow and boring, yet I am attracted to their fervor, their passions, their outrageous sense of themselves as centre-of-the-universe. I never experienced those feelings and I seek to connect with them. I know I don't really think like a teenager but I have taught myself to talk like one, and I try to find ways of fitting in, even though it's always temporary.
This time we are in a small town called Forks, a rainy, misty, damp place tucked away in the backwoods of Washington state, and I am the new girl again. We'll do our tenure here, and I'll finish school, having held myself back so as not to be valedictorian, as once you've come top of your entire school a dozen times or so, the thrill palls. I would rather be ordinary, and this has been my gameplan for a while now.
My mother is different, as I am. It is not something she is able to explain to me, it is not something either of us understand, and as far as we know, we are the only ones like us. She is not even my mother to tell the truth, she found me and saved me when I was at my lowest ebb, despairing of this lonely life and yet unable to find any escape.
The two of us move and settle, move and settle, careful not to make friends who might try to look us up once we've left, yet careful to be sociable enough that we don't arouse suspicion, or attract attention.
My name is Tamara North, this time. My mother is Allyson. She is older than me, although neither of us are quite sure how old we are, or where we have come from.
And so to my first day at Forks High School. Everyone here is pale, due to the dearth of sunlight, however I am pale myself. Everyone is wrapped up, for the same reason. I love these conditions with a fierceness, finding the silver of the sky makes me yearn - it holds more than the flatness of blue on a clear day.
I don't stand out as my difference from others is not something that can be seen, and the students disposed towards friendliness are friendly to me immediately. A new face must be cause for considerable excitement around here. A girl introducing herself as Jessica takes me in hand straightaway, and she is chatty and amiable, asking questions about me that are easy enough to answer, as I have done this so many times before. She tells me readily about teachers and classes, and other students, and I am glad for her information. The work will be easy, the hard thing is not to anticipate questions, and not to get everything right, as I already know all of this stuff. I attend a couple of classes, and then Jessica indicates the seat next to her at the cafeteria for lunch.
In the cafeteria, I am looking around, seeing the lie of the land, so to speak, when my attention is caught by one group of students sitting together at a corner table.
To my surprise, they are not human. This is nothing short of unbelievable. They are blood-drinkers, base things my mother and I call Eaters, here, in a room bursting with luscious, pulsing, blood-filled living meals! No-one seems to be taking any notice of them, the room is buzzing with chatter and laughter as though no-one is aware of the danger they are all in.
I stare, covertly. Three males, two females. They all look high school age, although of course with their type, this doesn't mean anything. They could be hundreds of years old, or they could have been born yesterday, although from what I know, those born yesterday are wild and have no restraint and simply could not be in this sort of situation, so that means they must all be mature.
"Oh, you've spotted the Cullens," Jessica murmurs to me, noting the direction of my gaze.
"They're a bit like Forks royalty - they're all gorgeous aren't they? They're an adopted family, it's a bit incestuous really, the small girl Alice goes out with the blond boy, Jasper, the blonde girl Rosalie is with the big guy, Emmett, and the love-god Edward is the school heart-throb, but he doesn't go out with anybody. You can look all you like, and we all do, but he's not interested in anyone. He's got some classes with us - you might meet him this afternoon. He hardly ever speaks."
They are gorgeous, but the beauty of vampires has never held any appeal for me. Their perfection strikes me as bland, and lacking in character. They have no scars, no lines, no flaws, just cheekbones and intensity. I'm still looking, wondering how it is that they can be in a school and not eating everyone in sight, when the one called Edward turns his head and sees me. He is shocked. In all the busy, happy hubbub of seething humanity all around, he can see that I am not quite human, like him and like his family. I return his gaze, expressionless, but he is not, he frowns and he is trying to work me out. He won't be able to. The others notice, and they turn and look too, and they all react, the girl Alice with an instant smile, the girl Rosalie with narrowed eyes and suspicion, the other two boys with speculation.
I turn back to Jessica. "What's after lunch, did you say? Biology?"
I am not sure whether to be amused or chagrined when I discover not only is Edward in my biology class, but we are doing an exercise in pairs, and the only place left is next to him. He is to be my partner. We have to look at slides under a microscope and identify them. He will have done this many times before, and won't even have to think about it, just like me. It is not hard to see why he should be sitting alone, as it would be difficult for him to sit next to a human, I imagine, with an afternoon snack mere inches away from his teeth. We pass the microscope backwards and forwards between each other, and I am determined to be casual, telling him what I think I see, and asking if he agrees. He barely speaks. His discomfort is huge, and the not knowing what I am must be irksome for him. Vampires are intelligent, and immortality grants the opportunity to acquire a vast body of knowledge, yet he will never have come across someone like me before. As I have said, Allyson and I are the only ones. I am well aware that every time I peer into the eyepiece, he is examining me.
"Where I come from, it's considered rude to stare," I tell him, finally.
"I'm sorry, excuse me," he offers immediately, and looks away.
"My name is Tamara," I say, although everyone already knows, as the teacher announced it at the beginning of class.
"I'm Edward," he mutters, and he is not meeting my eyes now. It is a tricky situation. I know what he is but he doesn't know that I know, and he can't ask what I am without giving himself away. It takes a non-human to know another!
That night I tell Allyson there are vampires at school.
"Oh Lord," she says, which is a saying she likes, even though she and I don't consider there is any such thing. How could there be, with monsters such as Eaters stalking the earth? "And what is the student mortality rate like at the school?" she asks.
"I don't know. There wasn't any talk of bloodless corpses and trails of the dead. Maybe they don't tell you that sort of thing on the first day," I answer.
I guess we have a pretty black sense of humor, my mother and I.