I would be lying if I said that the fact that everyone at Forks High drove cars didn't annoy me. As if I didn't feel out of place already in this tiny town, now I was also the freak who rode a motorized scooter. Great.

I drove the scooter up onto the gutter and parked it near what I guessed to be the cafeteria. My bag was heavy as I pulled it out of the case on the back. Slinging it over my shoulder, I walked up to what was obviously the office.

A lady with unnaturally red hair greeted me. After informing her who I was, she gave me a sheet that had to be signed by all my teachers during the day, and a timetable. I was expecting a map of the school, but didn't get on, so it took me a while to find my first class for the day- English.

After introducing myself to the teacher, I took a seat near the back. My class mates eyed me curiously. In a town this small, any addition to the school population was cause for excitement. I couldn't say I blamed them; who didn't want some extra excitement in their life.

English was long and boring. We were studying a book I'd read before and hadn't really enjoyed. I was glad when the bell rang, signaling the end of class.

As I left the room in search of my next class- Spanish- a girl with dark hair but blue eyes fell in step besides me.

"Hi, I'm Katie." She told me,

I paused before replying. What name should I give..?

"I'm Juniper." I said, deciding on the truth. It was bound to come out eventually anyway.

"That's unusual," Katie said, looking unsure if she was being rude.

"Yeah, it's a type of tree." I told her. "My parents were foresters." A tiny lie. But no one would ever know.

"So, what classes do you have?" she asked, changing the subject to one she was more comfortable with.

"Um, Spanish now, then History, Math, and Gym and Biology after lunch."

"Oh, you'll be in my Math class." Katie said, "I'll show you were it is if you want."

"Thanks," I said, grateful for her help. "Do you know where," I checked my timetable, "Room 12 is?"

She pointed me in the right direction and I went off to Spanish. I liked Katie. She was nice. But there was no real point making friends here. Friends expected you to sit with them at lunch and go shopping on the weekends. And I was far to busy for that. And real friends could tell each other everything. Obviously I couldn't tell Katie all my secrets. Because who'd want to know someone who was 50% sprite, 50% human, 100% freak?

I found my room for Spanish and gave my slip to the teacher, Mrs. Goff. She seemed nice, and was very understanding of the fact that I had never learnt Spanish before in my life. French was more my thing, but the French class had been full. That was what happened when you started almost halfway through the year.

I took a seat behind two girls who were chatting about someone called Isabella. I unconsciously listened to their conversation- eavesdropping was a habit I had gotten from my mother.

"Isabella Swan, Chief Swan's daughter. She's coming in a few days apparently."

"I didn't know he had a daughter. Is he even married?"

"Divorced. His wife ran off on him ages ago.

, with his three month old kid. She lives in Phoenix, but now Isabella is coming to live here for a while."

"And she's going to school here?"

"Yeah, she'll start as soon as she gets here I guess."

I tuned out then. So there would be another new addition to the school in a few days. And Isabella Swam was a lot more interesting than me, being the daughter of the town's Chief of Police. Good. I didn't want attention.

I concentrated on the lesson. Spanish was very different to French, but I managed to learn most of the vocab. The rest of the class seemed to be struggling just as much as me, so I didn't think I had to much catching up to do.

History and Math passed in a blur. History was easy- I liked History and I never had problems with it. Maths was harder; it wasn't my strongest subject, and I knew it was a subject I had to work hard in to get any results. But I could do that.

Katie sat next to me in Maths and caught me up on some notes. After Maths, she asked if I'd like to sit with her at lunch. Feeling terrible, I declined, telling her I had stuff to do. She looked confused and disappointed, and I almost said I would to make her feel better, but I didn't. She went to the cafeteria, and I found an empty classroom as far away from the cafeteria as possible. Once there, I got out my homework that I'd gotten so far and began to do it, eating some fruit as I did. I didn't have too much homework because it was my first day, so I was done quickly and spent the rest of lunchtime designing singlets in my sketchbook.

After lunch I went off to Biology. It took longer than I expected to find the room and so when I got there almost all the seats were full. The only spare seats were next to a surly boy with reddish-brown hair and a bored-looking blonde girl. I took the seat nearer the front, next to the blonde girl; Biology wasn't my best subject and I wanted to get all the notes. The girl ignored me, and continued to chew her chewing gum absentmindedly. A boy with blonde spiky hair at the table next to me smiled, and I smiled back politely. He looked like he was going to say something, but then the teacher, Mr. Banner, walked in and I gave him my slip to sign. He started on his lecture and I took the notes religiously. I didn't understand everything that he was saying- we seemed to be halfway through a topic- but I wrote it all down. I could figure it out later.

After Biology I went to the gym, one of the only buildings that was easy to find. I didn't have a proper Gym uniform yet and so I had brought the closest thing I could find. I could see the other members of the class staring at me, and I didn't blame them. I was wearing the only shorts I owned that weren't too good for playing sport, and they happened to be very short and black. Luckily, they matched by t-shirt, which was white with black writing. Some of the boys in my class seemed to take a long time to read the writing stretched across my chest. It was only 2 words and a symbol after all: I heart Oz.

The rather overweight Gym coach had us playing volleyball. It wasn't my favourite sport, but I was fit and so I didn't find the game difficult.

A boy with brown hair that he was clearly trying to grow out a bit (I could tell because it was a funny length, not long and not short, and it was all uneven, like he hadn't had it cut in a while) approached me.

"Do you have a partner?" he asked, almost shyly.

"No. Do you?" I asked.

"No." he said. We stood there for a minute.

"We'll be partners then." I said.

He nodded eagerly.

"I'm Juniper." I said.

He wasn't thrown by my name at all. Maybe he'd already heard it from someone else?

"Andy." he said.

Andy. What a normal, human name. It made me almost hate my weird one.

"Nice to meet you." I said.

"You too." he said, "So... you're new here right?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Today's my first day."

Andy nodded like this wasn't news to him.

"Did you just move to Forks or something?" he asked.

"Yeah, a few days ago."

He nodded again, and looked like he might have said more, but we started playing then and we didn't have time for talking. He wasn't that good at volleyball, but no one else was either, so it didn't matter. He seemed to think I wouldn't be able to play and so he tried to do it all himself. I had to shove him out of the way a bit so I got have a go.

When the bell rang I left the gym quickly and went to the car park, wanting to get out before it became full of students and cars. I put my bag in the case on my scooter, put my ipod in again and got on, driving out before most people had made it to their cars. It was raining lightly, and I wished my coat had a hood. But hoods were so ugly when you weren't wearing them.

It only took me 5 minutes to reach the main shopping strip of Forks. I stopped in front of a little shop crammed between the video rental place and the watch repairer. Newspaper covered the windows, but I'd run out and so in the corner there was a gap, making some of the empty room inside visible from the street. I went to the door and let myself in.

I had removed all the shelving from the electrics store, and now the shop was an empty shell. Nothing remained but the counter. Behind the counter was a doorway that led through to a small kitchen. The doorway had no door, but I had a curtain I could hand across it. I went through into the kitchen. It was very small and held nothing but a toaster, kettle, microwave, minibar fridge and a large sink. The blue laminate bench was covered in plastic bags from my last trip to the supermarket- I was lacking in kitchen cardboards.

Through another small door was the bathroom. In the corner were the stairs leading up to what used to be the storage area for the electrics shop. The stairs were my favourite part of the whole shop. They were made of blueish iron, and they were the kind that spiraled upwards. I would get some fairy lights to put on the bannister. I'd be the only one to see them, but that didn't matter.

I went up my lovely stairs. At the top was one big room, that happened to be my bedroom/study/workplace. In one corner was my bed. It had previously been a bunk bed, but I had removed the slats on the bottom bed and so now I had a bed on stilts. This left enough room for my chest of drawers and desk to sit underneath. My chest of drawers still had most of the drawers taped shut from when I'd moved in the day before, and my desk was covered in boxes, still full of stuff I needed to unpack. But it was the other side of the room that was my first priority. That side was covered in more boxes, full of fabric paints, thread, fabric, beads, sequins, wire, clasps, string, dyes, brushes, cord, buttons, elastic, tape measure, needles, pins, pin cushion, tailors chalk, safety pins, unpicker, bobbins, felt, glitter, zips, mesh, lace, cardboard, ribbon, diamantes, fabric markers, and pencils. Amongst all the boxes was my sewing machine, and balanced on top of it was my sketchbook, which held every clothing design I had. My card table was folded up and leaning against the wall. My one and only chair was sitting on the corner.

Putting my ipod on a playlist I liked, I sat down among the boxes and set to work.

It was a few hours later that I finished. My entire room was now organized. To a stranger, it might look messy, but I knew where everything was. And I was the only one who'd ever come up here, anyway.

I was hungry now, and so I went downstairs to make myself some dinner. Cooking could be difficult when you have no oven and no stove, but obviously i couldn't afford to install either, and besides, I could make do with a microwave. i made myself some pasta by boiling the water in the kettle and then putting in it the microwave. After stirring through some Napoli sauce, I heated it again. Sure, it didn't taste as good, but who cares.

Being half-human, I could eat all human food, but I didn't eat meat anyway. Animals ate trees after all. My mother hadn't been able to eat anything that wasn't grown- she was pretty much a vegan. Whenever she had accidentally eaten some processed food, she had been so sick she's spend days in bed. I was glad I could eat anything I liked.

I finished my dinner, and then went upstairs. I had to start making some stock. I wanted to open the shop by the weekend.

It was going to be a clothes and accessories shop, naturally. I had enough materials to make the stock for at least a month, and after that I would have to go to Seattle and buy up. I knew a good discount fabric store.

I had made my own clothes since I was old enough to use a sewing machine. I never bought clothes. All my clothes were totally original and unique, and that's how the clothes in the shop were going to be. Sure, they'd look similar, but none would be the same. People liked that, knowing that no one was going to wear the exact same thing as them. And that's why my shop would be popular. Or at least, that was the plan.

I needed the shop to earn money. Normally underage people who's parents had died got money from the government, but according to their records, both me and my parents had died a long time ago. It made things easier for when we had to have doctor checkups and vaccinations if no one knew we existed. Who knew what a doctor would find if he gave me or my mum a check up. We'd had someone organize legal stuff for us- a sort of family friend back in Australia. We'd lost touch a little when we'd moved to the states, but when my parents died, he'd taken care of selling the house and everything for me. I hadn't heard from him since moving to Forks.

I had a few tops that were in the process of being made, so I got them out and started working. I liked doing series of clothes. This particular series was of famous cities. I had chosen Paris, Rome, Sydney, New York, and Shanghai. I had a whole heap of stencils I'd made- of the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, etc.- and now I rolled different coloured paint onto each white t-shirt, into the shape of the stencil. I had a lot of letter stencils too, so I wrote the name of each city across the picture. I spread them out on top of boxes to dry. I wondered what would I put on it if I made one of Forks. A giant raindrop?

When I'd finished them all I went to bed. I didn't bother having a shower- a moisturizing cream my body produced would clean me while I slept. It sounded gross, but I always felt clean and fresh when I woke up. I climbed the ladder up to my bed, and collapsed into it, not even bothering to change into pyjamas. It had been a long first day in Forks. And I still had a million more to go.