BPOV

I combed out my short mahogany hair. I never liked the hassle of bothering with long hair and I never had the patience to grow it so my hair just reached the below my ears. It was the first day of fifth grade and I was feeling happy. My mom came inside and smiled. She took her camera and snapped pictures of me. For the first four years of my education, my mother Renee had always been trying to dress me up in girly dresses with pretty bows and frilly lace. I pulled on an orange top with brown pants. My mom dropped me to school and it wasn't long before I heard an ear piercing squeal.

"OMG BELLA!!!!!!" My best friend Alice Cullen came up to me and engulfed me in a hug.

"Alice!" I smiled. She chatted away happily until we gathered up the rest of our group which consisted of m other best friend Rosalie Hale, her twin brother Jasper Hale and the big guy/bear thing that was my best guy friend Emmet McCarthy. We were all pretty close and had been like that for over four years. Alice shoved us over to a small corner in the corridor and smiled.

"I have an announcement to make!" she cleared her throat. "You all remember my brother Edward?" How could we not? Alice's brother- well step brother Edward had been living with his father and step-mother in Alaska for most of his life while Alice had chosen to stay here with her mother Esme and her step-father Carlisle. None of us had ever met him though Alice had described him a lot. "Well, he's at our school now!" We all shared our chorus of wows and Alice promised that we would meet him at lunch. We compared schedules and then headed off to class.

At lunch, I made my way over to Emmet and sat next to him as usual. I unwrapped my tuna sandwich and took a bite. I had almost finished when Alice scurried over with a boy with bronze hair. He had deep emerald colored eyes and a small smile on his face. He looked mostly normal except his features seemed all to be growing at a different rate. His ears were big while his nose was small and his eyes were at the right size.

"Everyone-this is Edward Cullen, my step brother!" Alice said in her high-pitched voice.

"Hi, everyone!" he said.

"That's Bella, Emmet, Rosalie and Jasper…" she said, matching names with faces. Edward took a seat across the table and bit into an apple. We made small talk for a while and broke into our conversations. Jasper and Alice were talking and so were Emmet and Rosalie so Edward turned to me.

"So- Bella is it?" he asked, eyes twinkling.

"Yes?" I asked.

"What kind of music do you listen to?"

"Rock, Pop, classical mostly…"

"You listen to classical?" he said, eyes in shock

"Yes… got a problem with that?" I laughed at his reaction.

"Not really, but most people think that classical 'sucks eggs' as my cousins put it" I faked mock horror and then smiled.

"Well, I think it rocks so they'll just have to deal with it" I smiled. I went back to finishing my apple juice but continued to talk with Edward. We found out we had a lot in common. We both liked tuna and spaghetti (but not together!), the color navy blue, classical music, we both liked to read and listen to music, I was picking up the flute and he played the piano and we both had divorced parents but his father Carlisle had married Alice's mother Esme. By the end of our discussion, we had become good friends and it seemed the group had welcomed Edward too. I compared schedules with Edward and was sad that we really did only have one class other than lunch together and it was P.E, the subject of my worst nightmares. I had it next- oh joy! Edward and I dumped our trays and headed to the gym. We headed our separate ways to the different locker gender rooms and emerged twenty minutes later to laugh at the fact that both our uniforms were way to big. We were playing softball. Wow. I knew I was going to fail, so I hid in the back and thankfully I wasn't called to play until the second game. Once the dreadful P.E. lesson was over, Edward and I said goodbye and we parted out separate ways.

Over the next few months, Edward and I were inseparable. Ewww, but not like a couple! Alice had sworn she would eventually spill her true feelings to her secret crush and one of my friends Jasper. I smiled, knowing that Alice was determined and would probably end up getting what she wanted. Anyway, Edward and I would always sit together. We hung over the breaks and fell asleep when we had phone conversations in the middle of the night when neither of us could sleep. It all came to a stop at the end of the school year when it was finally warm enough to swim. Mike Newton entered with a smug smile on his face. Mike Newton was the bully of the fifth grade. He would always call me names, him being the brainless, dumb jock and me being the intelligent bookworm. Anyway, he was of course, the star of the swim team, but when Edward offered to demonstrate his skills, we all were surprised. When he propelled through the water like the next Olympic swimmer, we were astonished. Mike immediately bombarded him with questions and pleas to join the swim team. I didn't see Edward much after that. He spent most of his time at the swim meets and winning his medals, becoming the hunk of the school. Edward left, leaving a empty hole in my life. We still saw each other in the hallway but that wasn't much. When we tried to strike up conversation, it was awkward. We drifted apart, until the summer of my senior year…