Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight.

It's been a while since my last fanfic. Hope you like it!

Paths and Cycles

This incessant fly is ruining the hell out of my night.

First of all, I was supposed to be done with Chapter 5 homework. Second of all, I was supposed to be not sick.

The fly zooms around me again, and the moment I concede and give it some undeserved attention, it is nowhere in sight.

Fuck you, fly. It's late October. Why are you not yet hibernating?

"What is your problem?" I snap, glaring as I once again hear the buzzing noise make its way. It's having the time of its short life, and here I am failing to ignore all the whizzing and the figure eights in the air.

I look down at my work. I take in my set-up: lecture notebook where I take lecture notes, copy notebook where I rewrite the more difficult parts of lecture, and the homework notebook.

The slightly used textbook sits in front of me, closed, with a pencil sticking out of the page I'd marked.

I sigh. What a way to spend Thursday night.

When my friend Alice had mentioned taking a course on Graph Theory, I was interested. I needed some math credits, and it seemed easy enough. It was about dots and lines, she said. Much simpler than calculus and the like.

What she failed to say was that she was a math prodigy of sorts, so math came really easy for her.

(Alice graduated and moved to California before I could give her a piece of my mind. It was for the best, I guess, because right now I needed all the pieces of the mind I had to finish this homework.)

I was lucky there was still one copy of the book at the school's bookstore in the middle of the semester. It cost fifty bucks, and it was the current edition. Bargain.

Of course, if the class had been the easy A that I'd expected, I wouldn't have had to buy the thing in the first place. But oh well.

I open the book. Page 207. Wrong page marked. The exercise problems are on 208.

Whoa.

I shit you not. There are writings upon writings upon writings on the pages. Some in black ink, some in various other colors.

"What the hell..." I say in awe. The small, scribbled writing is neat. Do my eyes deceive me, but has the previous owner really done all the exercise problems?

This was a sign. A gift from the Gods. I was the chosen one. Harry Potter in the Half-Blood Prince.

My phone vibrates once, jolting me from my elation. It was Mike. Hey what's up.

I ignore it.

Back to the book. I rifle through it, realizing that not only does this book have most of the answers written in detail (the textbook did have uncharacteristically large white space), but there were inserted comments and explanations on the theorems in the chapters.

"Proofs woes begone!" I whisper to myself.

I looked at the front cover and the title pages, expecting something to identify the previous owner. But no. It was anonymous.

Well...

I take my pen out from my backpack. On the space behind the front cover, I write, in Sharpie Pen, Property of Isabella Swan.

A few weeks later

"That's impossible," says Eric. "I thought you got a 71 last midterm."

"I did," I say, proudly. The second midterm is currently in my backpack, but I can still feel its golden rays radiating on me. Apparently, Eric feels it too.

"How'd you do it?"

"I just... studied."

I grin, and I grin more because Eric is clearly jealous. Seriously, the guy's been so cocky in class, it felt nice to beat him at a test. It also didn't hurt that he'd been the valedictorian in my high school.