I still remember the day that she stumbled into my Biology class. She had been expected, of course. The gossip mill had been anticipating the arrival of Isabella Swan for weeks, ever since Irina Denali, daughter of the current president of Meyer Academy's School Board, had not-so-accidentally mentioned that the board had granted the Meyer Scholarship to 'poor white trash'. With Irina's intimate access to her father's study, there was no doubting the information that had spread throughout the school: Meyer Academy was awarding its most prestigious award to an outsider. An interloper. A girl who came from an Arizona trailer park that was definitely on the wrong side of the tracks. One didn't need to be a genius to figure out that Isabella Swan didn't belong in our world. Or that she would struggle to exist once she was cast into our sphere. It was expected. She didn't belong in an exclusive co-educational boarding school in Washington, especially one like Meyer Academy, which was literally an educational rite of passage for the offspring of the crème de la crème of American society. She didn't belong in a classroom sitting alongside the daughters of senators, or the sons of multinational CEOs. She would be ignored, or merely tolerated at best, as nothing more than the physical manifestation of the philanthropic tendencies of our rich and influential parents. But Isabella Swan would always know her place. The student body would ensure that. She would never forget that the only reason that she was amongst us was because someone somewhere had decided that some poor impoverished girl with a perfect GPA and no prospects deserved our charity in the form of the full-board, full-tuition Meyer Scholarship.
Not that I hadn't pitied the girl, whoever she was, because I had. Unlike the majority of students, I had only been at Meyer Academy for two years before Isabella Swan's arrival. My parents, Edmund and Elizabeth Cullen, had been killed in a horrific car accident on their way home from the restaurant in Chicago where they had quietly celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary. September thirteenth. It was a date my twin sister, Alice, and I would mourn forever, because it signalled not only the end to the life of my parents, but also the end to the life that we had known in Chicago. Our mother, an only child whose parents had died in her teens, and our father, a twin himself, had appointed his twin brother as our legal guardians in their final will. If there was anything that helped Alice and I heal in those horrendous months that followed the accident, it was the love and devotion of our Uncle Carlisle and his wonderful wife Esme. They were goodness and kindness personified, and they welcomed us into their home and into their lives with open hearts. My cousin Emmett was like a brother to me in every way, fiercely loyal and protective, and I loved him. And I suppose it was his loyalty, protectiveness, and admittedly his massive popularity amongst the student body, that made it possible for both Alice and I to assimilate into Meyer Academy with relatively little fuss. It did help, I suppose, that the Cullen name screamed old money and prestige. As though money and prestige were the only things that mattered, were the only things worth fighting for. I know better now. But that is a story for another day. I digress. Isabella Swan was certainly to be pitied, and I pitied her even before her inelegant arrival in class that fateful day.
It had been raining. No surprises there. It always rained in Forks, the small town on whose outskirts the grounds which Meyer Academy were situated. With a population barely over three thousand, and minimal visitor traffic, it was the perfect location for a school that educated students from the best families in America, who guarded their privacy as vehemently as their good name. It was close enough to Port Angeles for students to sneak out after curfew in order to engage in typical teenager pursuits and rebel against the institution. I guess Emmett, Alice and I had it a lot easier than most of the other students. Carlisle and Esme owned a house in Port Angeles, one of several, and we got to spend more time with them than most of the student body did. They always made time for us, despite their busy careers, flying down on the Lear jet from Seattle every other weekend to touch base with us. As I said, the Cullen name screamed old money. But I remember the rain, because when Isabella Swan had literally tripped into class that day, wet and shivering, I had felt as though the sun was finally about to peek out from behind the cloud cover that surrounded Forks.
She was beautiful, and painfully shy. A rosy hue coloured cheeks that were too pale to be on the face of a native Arizonian. She had stammered through an introduction to the class, ignoring the cool reception from her fellow classmates, and sat down in the only available seat. Right next to mine. And as she did so, I was assaulted by the sweet scent of strawberries and vanilla, as her hair cascaded across her face to establish a protective veil of shimmering chocolate. And when the teacher, Mr Banner, paired us up to complete the exercise in mitosis, she turned to face me, her dusky lashes framing deep brown pools filled with hope, fear and....determination? She had raised her head, smiled shyly, and studiously set about completing the exercise, her soft voice engaged in discussing the difference between prophase and anaphase. Isabella. Bella. Beautiful. And I knew at that instant, wrong side of the tracks or not, that I was drawn to Isabella Swan in a way that scared me and thrilled me at the same time. And I didn't have the strength then to turn away.
I won't bore you with the details of how we overcame the obstacles of class and money to become a couple, or the circumstances that led to the recognition that I was as much the twin of her soul as she was to mine. I'll leave others to mention the stares and the innuendo that lingered for months after our relationship became public, as to exactly how a poor girl from Arizona could "catch" the great Edward Cullen. All I will say is that she became my entire world, and I was hers in every way. She trusted me with her heart, her feelings, and her dreams of becoming the first person in her family to go to college, of becoming a doctor. She had hopes, and I hoped with her. And she had pride. She didn't want me spending money on her, and although I wanted to lavish her with everything I had, I respected her independence, her need to prove to the world that the daughter of a woman who lived in a trailer park could make it in this world with her intelligence as the key that would make everything possible. Alice loved her. Esme loved her. Carlisle and Emmett loved her. And despite the universal snobbery of Meyer Academy, she made a couple of close friends that were able to look past her less than auspicious origins, and saw the goodness in her heart. And so when our senior year drew to a close, and our college acceptance letters had come through, and Bella had been accepted with full scholarship to Harvard pre-med, I knew one thing with absolute clarity. Bella was my life. All I needed now was to make her my wife.
I remember it rained the day that she stumbled into my Biology class. I remember it rained on the day after graduation, when I knelt in the wet grass of the meadow where we had first sealed our love, and placed my mother's engagement ring on her trembling wet finger with the promise that before the end of the year we would be man and wife. But most of all, I remember that the sun had never shone brighter over Forks, nor had the sky ever been bluer, than on that day, a mere month later, when I ended our engagement and walked out of her life. The day I ended the two sweetest years of my existence. And I would have thought that of all the days for it to rain, it should have been the day that I deliberately broke Bella's heart eight years ago. And that's the story that needs to be told.