Chapter One—Déjà Vu
"Déjà vu" I said quietly as we walked in the door of the small, brick school. It smelled like a school, erasers, brick, cheap cleaning supplies, wood shavings from pencil sharpeners, whiteboard markers…and human, the undeniably strong, burning scent of human washed through the other scents, permeating them, tainting them. Extreme self-control, and years of practice or not, the concentrated scent of so many humans made my mouth fill with venom, and my head spin. Jasper threw me a sympathetic half-smile. They were all staring at us as we all trooped silently into the office. It reminded me of my first day at forks high school, the day I remembered as the day I first saw Edward Cullen. I felt a warm glowing rising inside of me as I glanced at him, and smiled. He was looking back.
Jasper cleared his throat, nodding to the mousey-looking receptionist. She was wearing brown reading glasses on the tip of her nose. The kind with a beaded chain so she could take them off and place them around her neck when she wasn't using them
"Can I help you?" she asked in a very fittingly-mousy manner, looking at us over the edge of her glasses.
Edward stepped forward, acting, as usual, as our unofficial spokesperson.
"We are the Cullen family. We were told to stop by the office first on our first day of school", Edward's musical voice made the simple words sound like a song. The secretary, whose nameplate said "Ms. Kirtchner" removed her glasses, folding them up, and slowly allowing her beaded chain to support their weight like a truly ugly necklace. Edward made a soft noise in his nose, a slight huff of amusement. I knew my family all heard it, but I doubted that Ms. Kirtchner did. I wondered what the secretary could be thinking that made Edward want to laugh.
"Of course, I have your schedules right here, and we will need some paperwork filled out. The rest of the students should be receiving these in Homeroom right now, but since you're all here now, I'll just give them to you." She smoothly pulled several brightly-colored sheets of paper out of a file drawer that she slid open under her desk. "This is just your basic health form, we need to know any medications you might be taking, any food allergies, and things like that. The puce form is the emergency contact information form, and the goldenrod is our release to attend all field trips for the year". Ms. Kirchner showed the papers to Edward, pointing and explaining as if we all hadn't been to kindergarten. Now I thought about it Renesmee never had actually gone to Kindergarten. But then again, she had never needed it. Not that she, or any of us really needed High School at this point either, but we had found a town nearly as rainy as Forks, and it would be worthwhile to stay here as long as possible.
While I was brooding over this, Edward had collected all the papers, and promised to return them tomorrow with our "parents"' signatures, Renesmee brushed the back of my hand lightly with hers, as if by accident, to show me her amusement. Her real parents were right here and could sign all of that insane paperwork, and be done with it.
"Our schedules, Ms. Kirtchner?" asked Edward in his "confused" voice.
"Right. Here you are, Emmet, Alice, and Bella Cullen." She read off, holding the schedules out. Edward distributed them to their rightful owners.
Ms. Kirtchner was apparently looking for more schedules with the name "Cullen" on them. She seemed quite distraught by the fact that she could not find something. I was not surprised. Her office was spick and span. She must try to keep it perfect, keep everything perfect all the time.
"The rest of us are under Masens and Hales"
"Excuse me?" asked Ms. Kirtchner, putting her glasses back on. Fairly quickly too, for a human.
"I believe our father spoke with you about this upon our admittance into the school" replied Edward.
"Oh, yes of course, you would be the foster children as well", replied Ms. Kirtchner, the muscles in her face relaxing as she obviously remembered the phone conversations with Carlisle and Esme.
"Here we are Hale, Rosalie, and Jasper, and Masen Edward and Ren-Ren ess mee" she finished, passing more papers for Edward to distribute.
Jacob cleared his throat.
"I seem to have one more, would you be …Black, Jacob?" asked Ms. Kirtchner, looking at the one student not holding a crisp new schedule in his hands. She looked surprised at his apparent age. Jacob was a monster, he looked older by far than he was supposed to be, but he had absolutely refused to allow Renesmee to go to school for the first time all by herself with only her doting and wildly overprotective parents, aunts and uncles to watch over her. I had teased him about it, telling him he was more overprotective than Edward, but Jacob just grinned and shrugged giving me his patented, Jacob Black "Sure, sure".
Jacob only nodded and grunted when Ms. Kirtchner called his name. He was being uncharacteristically stoic. Maybe it was the experience of going to high school for a second time, this time as a part of a family of vampires. Edward passed him the paper wordlessly.
"Alright, you're all set, just remember to have those forms in to me by the end of the week with your parents' signature" she warned us. Edward had the stack of multicolored forms. That would take a few minutes to get through, even with vampire speed. I was glad I was not Carlisle, who would, undoubtedly be filling out those forms.
We trooped out of the office again. After the door shut, when we ought to have been out of hearing range, I heard Ms. Kirtchner say "What a strange bunch of kids. So silent for teenagers" I laughed softly. I wasn't the only one. We all had lockers assigned to us. It was printed along with the combination on the top of our schedules. The lockers were lining the hallway outside of the office, so it wasn't hard to find them. They were semi-alphabetical, so the "Cullens" and "Hales" and "Masens" lockers were in clumps. The lone Black's locker was close to the three Cullens' lockers.
Edward and I had purposely signed up for the exact same classes. Naturally, we were in the exact same classes—except for homeroom. Unfortunately, that was by alphabet, and we would be split up by "official" last name again. I sighed as I hung the bag Alice had purchased for me in my new locker. I snatched my perfect set of props, a notebook, my pencil case, and a folder, all completely color-coordinated, before shutting my locker swiftly. The lockers were crowded. Extreme self-control or not, it was still uncomfortable to be packed n so closely with so many warm, moist, beating hearts, all juicy with fresh blood. I cut myself off there. That train of thought was not going to help me resist. The rest of my family was already finished with their lockers as well—even Renesmee, who had never opened a locker before in her life. To be fair, Edward had muttered directions under his breath so low no human could possibly even dream of hearing.
We regrouped and trooped off through the halls to split off into subdivisions at our various homerooms. I felt a little sorry for Jacob, heading into the A/B Section all by himself. On the other hand, he had refused to be a Cullen with the rest of us. He claimed it was because he looked too different to possibly be related to us. Of course, as we were "adopted" it didn't matter, but we all knew it was because he was still a little uncomfortable with the idea of completely belonging to a coven, so Carlisle didn't press the matter. Besides, it wasn't like Jacob could use the moral support during homeroom, pretending that the scent of his classmates did not make his mouth water, and pretending that he was human.
Next door, at the C-E's Alice, Emmett, and I broke off, and the other four continued. Wanting to keep some sort of connection with them, I expanded my shield to follow them through the hallway. I expanded it until I felt and tasted their sparks, and then I made sure they were in their classrooms safe. Not that I was expecting to run into much danger in a high School, but hey, Forks had been dangerous for me. What were the possibilities here? On the other hand, I was much better equipped to deal with danger than I had been on my last trip though High School.
I watched Edward walk away with Renesmee, Rosalie, and Jasper, down the hall, until he was out of my sight. Alice waited until they were out of sight, and then tugged on my arm, leading me out of the doorway, into the classroom. Yet again, I was glad that I had always had a great deal of talent resisting the smell of human blood.
The students were all pumped up today—excited, though they'd never admit it, for the first day of class. I could almost taste the adrenaline in their blood. My throat became a furnace within three fourths of a second of entering homeroom.
As Alice, Emmet, and I walked across the room to find a set of empty desks, the students seemed to notice our presence in the room for the first time. And they stared. Of course they stared. How could they not? Not only had three gorgeous immortals (though they did not know we were immortal) just walked into the room, we were also wearing Alice's idea of school clothes.
I wore them, but under two conditions. First, I chose my own clothes when we were not in school (with a few exceptions) and I told Alice I did not want to know how much she had spent on them. This was after I found out how much the shoes alone had cost. My outfit probably cost more than my Ferrari. I shuddered and tried to think of something else.