Standard disclaimers apply.

Believe Not the Make-Believe
Cantrelle

"My girlfriend, Bella Swan," Edward announced.
Bella choked on her food. This was the joke of the millennium! They didn't even know each other!

Chapter One

The Need for a Girlfriend

It was one of those days when Edward Cullen actually hated his seemingly perfect life.

Emmett Cullen was practically rolling on the floor, laughing his arse off as he watched the pile of pink, scented envelopes come clattering down from Edward's locker. "Batshit fan girls strike again!" he choked out, unable to stop laughing like he had gone mad. Several pairs of eyes immediately turned to him in curiosity, but he simply didn't care. He was too busy laughing at his brother's dilemma to bother with them.

"I'm warning you, Emmett," Edward said, throwing his brother a glare before he giving a helpless stare at the pink heap on the floor. "What the hell am I going to do with this?" He glanced at his locker; there were still about a hundred pink – and for the life of him, fuchsia! - envelopes in there.

Ah, shit.

A lot of people might think that someone like Edward would not have the time to actually curse his life. After all, he had everything perfect.

Edward and his family had just been in the neighborhood for no more than five months, but the young man had already gained quite a reputation both in and out of his school. He was quite the charmer, although without trying. With his good looks, agreeable personality, and remarkable intelligence, he was every girl's dreams come true. The epitome of the modern Prince Charming, which always made melodramatic girls go 'aww!' or faint, or if they maybe even, "Fuck! Now that's a real man!"

People liked Edward, were drawn to him somehow. He didn't have to ask anything as a favor, because most were willing to do a lot for him without a fee. (Maybe a date, but that didn't really count.)

'Told you he was perfect.

Unfortunately for him, he was living in the real world, not in some La La Land where he could get everything without anything in return. In the real world, everything had a price. For him, the price was his legions of batshit fan girls – just like Emmett always called it.

His fan girls, who were quite normal as long as it didn't concern him, were either obsessed with him and hounded him every chance they had, or simply worshipped him. They were very scary, especially when they followed him around like some creepy stalker. There was nothing romantic in this (although for most of them it was quite so), because he couldn't live a normal life like he wanted.

He liked them; their loyalty to him alone was worth appreciating. They were sweet, too, sending him gifts which he would always politely turn down because he didn't want to seem like an opportunist.

But the ritual of receiving their love letters every single day of his life grew boring. The ritual of receiving calls at night from girls in school that he didn't even know of was exhausting. The ritual of having to put up with their high-pitched giggles and squeals were annoying too.

He couldn't move without them watching, and it was not as if they only watched – they also interrupted.

One time they even scared away the guy who was just his partner in some project! For Pete's sake, it was a guy!

In short they did everything but literally put fences around him.

It was making him really sick now. He was tired of being chased around. This was too much even for him: He, the perfect Edward Cullen. He was seventeen, and he had a lot to do and a lot to learn. He had no plans of wasting his life on fan girls.

"Nice going, Edward," a deep, mocking voice said, snapping Edward back to reality.

Edward turned and forced a smile when he saw who it was. If there was anyone who rivaled his popularity, it would be him – Demetrius Maximillian Cavendish.

The seventeen-year-old Demetrius Maximillian Cavendish was one of the most popular students in their high school, an established name in the campus even before Edward moved to the town. The young man was tall, good-looking, and wealthy; he was both street-smart and book-smart. His hair was black, and naturally unruly; his long bangs falling over his face as if to accent his pale features. He had the bluest pair of eyes, and the glasses he wore did nothing to obscure the intensity in them. He was not unapproachable, but he seemed distant and cold; and there was a certain conceit in the way that he carried himself. He could be kind or cruel, depending on the situation, and most people feared and respected him for it.

While Edward's fan girls adored him for his kindness, Demetrius' own multitude of fan girls – who formed their own group long before Edward's could - liked him for his aloofness and mysteriousness.

When Edward first met him, Demetrius had rudely sized up the former. It was established, at that very moment, that Demetrius didn't like Edward. The feeling was mutual, so the two simply avoided each other whenever they could.

These past few days, though, Edward had been continuously getting more and more popular in the school. Demetrius did not explicitly express his distaste for it, but it was evident in how he spoke. In fact, he hadn't missed a chance to taunt Edward about the matter, whenever they saw each other.

"He loves attention and doesn't want sharing it with anyone," Alice had pointed out when Edward voiced out how insufferable Demetrius behaved around him.

Edward didn't really mind so much who was more popular between them. He was too preoccupied by his own problems and academics to pay attention to Demetrius. He didn't see the point of the whole popularity idea. He had friends, and they were enough for him.

"Reading all of them, Cullen?" Demetrius asked, his voice as cold and as bored as it had always been.

Edward flashed a small smile, feeling the stares upon the two of them in the hallway. "It's quite difficult," he said, rather evasive. He tried reading them once. Suffice to say he didn't enjoy the repetition in the messages (if misspellings and chatspeak could be called messages at all) and the various scents numbed his sense of smell for about a week. He decided he'd just pack them in a bag and sold them to a junk shop that bought papers. He knew that his fan girls didn't really expect a reply from him anyway.

Demetrius smirked. "Oh," he simply said, and walked to the locker a few feet away from Edward's. Fates' cruel joke: Their lockers were pretty close to each other.

Edward sighed, not in the mood for Demetrius' wordplay. He kicked the rolling Emmett playfully, muttering for his brother to stand up and stop laughing. Afterwards he picked up the bunchload of scented envelopes and stashed them into his locker carefully. He didn't want to break any girl's heart, was all.

Demetrius pulled open his locker door. Sure enough, masses of pink, scented envelopes tumbled from there, too, and he shook his head. "Another pile," he muttered, glancing at the letters with what seemed to Edward like a mixture of pride and… distaste?

Strange.

"Wrong locker," Emmett said, and bellowed with laughter when he saw the irritation in Demetrius' face. "I gotta go, Edward. Rosalie's waiting for me," he said, and flashed a sneer at Demetrius before making his way downstairs.

Edward shook his head, used to Emmett. His brother didn't like Demetrius either, and he couldn't blame him.

"I don't like your brother," Demetrius commented, picking up the envelopes like Edward did.

Edward shrugged, now forcing his locker shut. "He doesn't like you either," he said bluntly, and had the satisfaction of seeing Demetrius narrow his eyes at this remark. The whole school heard the Edward's words, and Edward didn't think Demetrius liked to be answered like that – especially not by Edward Cullen, whom he seemed to consider to be his archrival from the very beginning.

Still, he kept his cool. He was Demetrius Cavendish, and people were watching. "Fair enough," he said, a cold, dead smirk on his lips.

Edward sighed, confused by the young man before him. Ah, well, he couldn't claim to know Demetrius to begin with. "I'll just see you around then."

x~x~x

"What is that?" Alice asked as soon as Edward entered the door to their house. She was clad in a blue dress, like she was going to a party.

Then again, Edward thought, she always looks like she's going to a party. "Letters." He dragged the black garbage bag behind him, his shoulders slumped.

Alice frowned. "I'm going to do the dirty work again?" she asked, pouting. She was actually the one person who helped him take care of all the letters.

She jumped down from her seat and walked up to him, her eyes not leaving the big bag. "I should tell you, a group of your fan girls cornered me this morning so I could give their letters to you," she said, and pointed to one corner of the foyer. "Kind of personal touch, as they say."

He couldn't help but groan at the sight of more letters. "Alice…"

She raised both hands, shaking her head. "Not my fault. If I didn't accept them, they promised they would make sure to ruin my pretty Porsche. Answer is: No way. I'm not sacrificing my car for you, brother dear," she said, a small smirk playing on her lips.

He let out a frustrated sigh. "All right, all right," he said, dragging the garbage bag behind him. "I know you love your car more than anything else." Alice would probably kill for her car, which was kind of scary, for most part.

"I love Mom and Dad and Emmett more," Alice replied, and grinned. "And Jasper, of course," she added, beaming at the mention of her boyfriend from school.

"At least I have my fan girls to love me," Edward cracked, trying to lighten up the situation.

"Brother, that's not love; that's obsession," Alice said, and leaned against the wall as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Edward turned to look at her, knowing that specific stance and tone very well. There was something playing in Alice's mind right now, and he was intrigued. She was the most brilliant schemer he had ever met in his life. "All right, let's hear what you have in mind, sister dear."

"Since I don't really like my Porsche threatened because of some girls' whim," she said, lowering her voice for that mysterious factor that she loved playing on him, "I thought I'd tell you the simplest, easiest way to get rid of your fan girls."

Edward cocked an eyebrow, definitely hanging onto her next few words. "How?"

She pushed herself away from the wall, looking very smug. "How does getting a girlfriend sound to you?"

to be continued.

It's an alternate universe, so I made Edward's personality lighter and more approachable. I think he won't be so serious if he doesn't have something to angst about anyway. Everyone is human, and Forks is a normal place in a normal neighborhood. Only Emmett and Alice are Edward's siblings.

Demetrius Maximillian Cavendish is my original character; just someone to play against Edward.

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