This is a story that I'm writing for Edwards-Gurl09 for giving me advice on one of my stories.

Disclaimer: I don't own any Twilight characters.

The first day of senior year. Everyone stared at me as I walked up the steps and into the building. I could feel their eyes following me. They probably thought it was pretty odd for someone to transfer to a new school for their last year of high school.

Well, let them stare. I had more important things to worry about, like finding my locker. I had already been to the office, but the little map they had given me wasn't helping at all.

"You've got that upside down."

I looked up to see a pixy-like girl with short black hair. "What?"

"Your map. You're holding it upside down," she told me.

"Oh." I flipped the map right side up, feeling slightly stupid even though it wasn't like the map had any labels so that you would know if you were holding it the wrong way. All it has was squares and rectangles. It still didn't make much sense.

She took the map out of my hands and crumpled it up into a ball. Tossing it cleanly into the recycling can a yard away, she said, "I'll help you find your locker. My name's Alice."

"Thanks. I'm Darlene." I was glad to be rid of that stupid map. "I'm looking for locker 217."

Alice grinned at me. "You're in luck. That's right next to mine."

I couldn't help but grin back as I followed her down the hall.

--- --- ---

By lunch, Alice was basically my new best friend. So far, we had every class together—Trig./Pre-Calc., Physics, and Advanced Writing.

Alice and I were the first ones into the cafeteria, but we were quickly joined by a lot of half-familiar faces. I had seen some of these people in class and they'd even gone out of their way to introduce themselves, but I couldn't remember any of their names.

Luckily, Alice whispered their names as they came to sit at the lunch table. "The freaky tall one is Jacob, the one with the spiky hair is Mike, Mr. Sweater-vest is Eric."

Jacob, Mike, Eric, I repeated in my head as each of the boys sat down. Two girls, neither of which I had seen yet, approached the table, too.

Alice didn't whisper their names in my ear. Instead, she waited until they were at the table. "This is my friend Bella and my sister Rosalie."

"Hey," Bella greeted me with a friendly smile. She was a pretty brunette with pale skin and big brown eyes.

Rosalie didn't look at all like Alice. She had long blonde hair and was tall. The only things she shared with Alice was her golden eyes and porcelain skin. Rosalie wasn't as enthusiastic, but gave me a quick hello anyway.

"Hi," I replied, smiling back at Bella and Rosalie.

"It's too bad the boys are gone," Alice said with a little pout. Then, mostly to me, she explained, "My brothers are out hiking with our father. They'll be back this afternoon for baseball practice. Speaking of which, I just had the greatest idea!"

Everyone else at the table had struck up their own conversations, and paid no attention to Alice and me.

"What?" I asked curiously.

"This afternoon is cheerleading practice. We're down a cheerleader since Lauren twisted her ankle…" Alice trailed off, leaving me to fill in the blanks.

"You want me to be a cheerleader?" I asked.

Alice nodded hopefully. "It would be awesome."

Well, I had been a cheerleader at my old school, so it wouldn't be hard. I just couldn't believe that all this was happening on my first day. I already had a great group of friends (even though I still couldn't quite remember all of their names) and I was going to be a cheerleader.

"Okay," I agreed.

"Great. Practice starts at four," Alice told me. "And you'll get to meet my brothers."