Wake Me Up When September Ends.

I'd have hoped that my alarm clock would've woken me up on the first day of school, but of course not. I had to get hit square in the head by a big, fat, raindrop that fell from my leaking roof. Instinctively, I scrambled out of bed, grumbling and half awake. I walked out into the kitchen, where I pulled the cabinet door open as quickly as I could.

CRASH!

A cascade of big plastic bowls, large pots, and frying pans came tumbling down on me. I'd gotten whacked pretty good by a cooking pot. I cursed loudly, as I rubbed my aching head. There was definitely going to be a bruise there, I figured.

And you know what? Normally, none of this would have bothered me. Usually, I would have laughed at this. But, the last month has been-different. Let's leave it at that.

As I knelt down to pick up the pans, someone came up behind me. I felt that someone touch my shoulder and I jumped. I could feel a headache and a bad mood coming on at the same time, and combined with being half awake, I was like a nuclear power plant on a fault line. "Geez," Was all I said.

Jake helped me pick up the mess I'd made. "'Woke me up," He said with a faint smile, "What's going on?"

I rolled my eyes, which sort of contradicted my smile, which was basically a reflection of his. "My roof leaked again," I said, "I only wanted one bowl. But with my luck…" I added, indicating the scattered miscellaneous cooking equipment that had just attacked me. Jake laughed.

We started to pick up the bowls first. I stood up quickly like I was used to doing, and put the bowls in the cabinet. As soon as I lowered my arm, though, the room began to spin. I exhaled nervously. The room was spinning faster and faster. I clapped my hand on my aching forehead. I might have even moaned.

"Are you okay?" Jake asked me, clearly concerned, as he came to my side. My mouth was beginning to fall asleep.

"I'm f-f-fine," I managed to say. My brain knew exactly what it wanted me to say, but my mouth just couldn't say it. Now, I was really afraid.

"What's going on with you?" Jake asked me.

That was the one question that I didn't want to hear. I clutched my tingling jaw. Thankfully, the weirdness was beginning to fade away. I thought about telling Jake about the last month, I really did, but I knew I couldn't. If Jake knew that I'd stopped hunting for an entire month to have things in common with humans, he might just take advantage of my weakness and kill me for it.

Instead I said something lame like "naogling," Which made him ask me what I'd just said. I only shook my head. He got the picture; nothing, never mind.

At this point, I didn't care about the leak in my ceiling. I had to fix my weird headache. I was beginning to think that I was getting a migraine like my best friend, Laine always gets. I didn't want that. She made it look so painful, and I bet it really was worse than she showed.

I barged straight into my room and shut the door quickly. I had an emergency stash of pain-killing pills under my bed that nobody knew about. No, I'm not a druggie, I was just preparing for the worst. Like now.

With greater difficulty than usual, I read the back label of the small, white container. If you think the small writing is bad, try being a dyslexic with a migraine. It's not fun. Despite my difficulties, I was able to decipher the writing in a good five minutes. By then my temples were roaring in pain.

I quickly uncapped the pill bottle, and let two small circular pills fall into my palm. I then put them in my mouth. Oh God, was I supposed to swallow them? Not knowing how to take my pills, and feeling rather stupid, I spit them back out into my hand.

I looked up and around, thinking, bottle in one hand, pills in the other, and then I noticed someone standing in the door. Jake was checking up on me. Oh, how I hated being half vampire…

"So that's it," was all Jake said, and I had no time to explain. I shoveled the pills back into my mouth, and set the rest on my night-stand, and trailed after him.

"That's not it," I practically yelled, and he stopped.

"Then what is it, Nessie?" He asked, enraged, "Why have you been acting so weird, lately?"

He stared at me with intense anger. I might have flinched. "Um," I murmured quietly, like a scared puppy (if scared puppies could talk), "I can't tell you." I said weakly.

"Oh yeah, and that totally proves your point." He threw his hands into the air, and turned his back on me to look out the window.

"It makes sense," I added to hopefully lighten his mood, "If you don't think about it,"

"Huh!" He grunted. I was shot down.

Soon, we heard footsteps coming down the stairs with a loud clunk, clunk, clunk. It was Seth, and he was half-awake. Great. "What's all the noise?" He asked.

Jake sighed angrily before he accused me again of getting high on painkillers. I tried to argue, but every time I did, my temples throbbed more and more. I wanted to scream. Seth kept looking between me and Jake, trying to figure out who was telling the truth.

Then Leah came down. Now, you've probably heard the saying One's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party. That is totally wrong. This was definitely anything but a party. If you get three half-awake, grumpy, werewolves in the same room, you're pretty much in trouble. One's accusing you of popping pills, two's glaring at you like you just killed his grandmother because he thinks you're lying, and three's about to drop kick you right on the spot for waking her up.

Sounds like fun to me. Not.

So, needless to say, I was very excited for school this morning. Alpha dog called off the pack and after a good long lecture/shouting match, he finally allowed me to get ready for, and go to school. That's exactly what I did. The best part about today so far, was how my headache seemed to be fading away a little bit, from my excessive drug use. (Ha-ha.)

I walked about a half a mile through rainy woods until I reached my school-Rosedale High School, population 367, home of the Renegades. I'd never been so happy to return here, and the fact was, I was barely happy to see the stupid brick building at all. Right as I approached the concrete walk, the bell rang.

I was late, as usual.

Quickly, I scoured my bag until I found my schedule. I opened it up wide to find which homeroom I had to sprint to. By the time I'd gotten inside, my paper was dotted with big, fat, raindrops. I had to run upstairs to room 216, Mr. Brighton's homeroom. I groaned. I had Brighton last year and the year before, and right now, I basically guaranteed a detention.

I stepped through the doors and looked around the lobby for an excuse-a reason to be late. There were a bunch of new freshmen and new students from other schools rushing around and getting lost, but I wasn't either of those anymore. I was now a junior, and according to Mr. Brighton, that meant I needed to be responsible, have a good work ethic, and be on time. He made sure he ground that into my cerebrum in the two prior years of his hellish detentions.

In his eyes, I wasn't what I should be in order to be successful. He'd even said that. But who cares about him anyway?

In my eyes, I was always responsible for my own secret-that I'm half vampire, and I was raised by a bunch of basically bipolar werewolves who almost ate my face off for the last few weeks because I haven't, well, been "eating" right, and they don't know it. I guess I've been acting weird to them, but I like the difference. It's so annoying when I'm at school in gym class, and I have to explain why I almost shattered the glass on the basketball hoop. (That's not exactly a picnic.)

And what does he know about work ethic? It takes me twice the effort of an average person in school because I'm dyslexic. Reading books is maddening. I often get frustrated and impatient because I have to read one line at a time, and unscramble the words one-by-one. Before I went on a "diet," I used to have it easier, because I never got headaches. Now, it's just another thing I have to deal with.

As much as I hate to admit it, about the late thing, Brighton was kind of right. I have to give the old simpleton some credit there. It's not like I'm going to sit here and make excuses, but I have legitimate reasons why I'm late, even though I'd never say them to Brighton. Sorry I'm late! Three werewolves tried to reenact an episode of Intervention! No, I don't think that would fly very well…

Now that we've got that cleared up… Where was I? Oh, yeah.

I was now, desperately searching for a good excuse to be late to the old coot's class. My mission didn't seem very promising. Until…

"Ms. Green!" I shouted, quickly crossing the main lobby, and I followed her into the guidance office.

Ms. Green was the person I went to every time Brighton compromised my self esteem. (Or tried to, at least.) She was the only person I knew who hated him (almost) as much as I do. A while back, Mr. Brighton was actually principal (for some stupid reason), Ms. Green had told me, and he tried to have her fired. Well, she turned out to be the wrong person to mess with. The school department had found so much dirt on Brighton, he had to settle for teaching eleventh grade English.

Oh. Crap. I tore open my schedule again, once I'd already squeezed my way through a crowd of new students that appeared to be my age, and I'd found myself at Ms. Green's desk.

She looked rushed. Her brown hair was a mess, and her face looked like she hadn't slept in a day and a half. She slammed a stack of new looking files on the desk directly in front of me, and then noticed how I was standing there.

"Hi, Renesmee," She said, using my formal name as always. She was the only one I allowed to do that. "What's up?"

"Well," I began, and then I opened my crumpled up schedule. "I'm late to Brighton's. Can you please, please, please help me out?"

Her gaze met mine from down on the already almost ruined schedule. "You look different," She said skeptically, with maybe a note of concern in her voice. "Is something going on?"

"No," I said at first, but Matilda Green has this uncanny way of always knowing when I'm lying so I came clean. Sort of.

"Bad day," I hinted.

"If it's anything you need to talk about…" She said, glancing up at me while signing the pass, as if to guilt me.

"No. It really isn't anything," I said, trying to lie to her once again. "Just rain, and you know…" I added lamely.

"No I don't," She said, and I took the pass gratefully.

"Um, thanks!" I said, turning my back and bolting back through the crowd before Ms. Green could ask me about my horrific morning. I was pretty sure I'd bumped into something really cold on the way out, but I couldn't be sure since my mind was a hundred percent on getting this day over with.

I'd stopped at the music hall before heading to homeroom (since I had a pass) and I dropped my things off in the little room they leave for us to put our instruments in. By the time I finally got up to homeroom, I realized that Mr. Brighton's door was locked: Wonderful.

I shook the door knob viciously. I pounded on it, and even groaned like a menace, but it still wouldn't budge. Nobody would answer the stupid door…or Mr. Brighton was just being his usual jerky self and not allowing anyone to let me in.

I finally got tired of pounding, and I left my fist hanging high up on the door. I leaned on the door, all my weight resting on my fist. I watched new freshmen, schedules in hand, lost and searching epically for their homerooms. I was once there too, two years ago. The only difference was that I'd never been to school before so I never formally learned how to read.

Finally the door lurched open. The problem was, I'd moved along with the door and I face-planted on the floor just inside. I could hear my best friends, Laine and Stephen laughing as I picked myself off of the tiles.

"That made my day," Stephen said, his face red from laughing so hard.

"Glad someone's having a good day," I muttered and fell into my seat.

A/N: Thank you SO much for reading this! It means so much. Obviously, it's not perfect, but I tried please give me some feedback and tell me what I can do better, and things you'd like me to continue to do! Look forward to alternating perspectives between Bella and Nessie! Coming soon!

xoxo sarahliz 3