dont own, dont sue.

EPOV

When I walked into the locker room earlier that morning I noticed that my locker has been rigged or otherwise mutilated by someone in the school to do some embarrassing joke on me. It was almost pitiful, these adolescences' view of embarrassing. I would have liked to see them live with Emmett for a week, let alone 80 years.

Amongst other things I didn't understand Bella's fascination with my journal. To me it was a gift from Alice that was older than Forks High School but I had only begun to write in it after she had re-gifted it to me over twenty times. I guess she didn't take the hint when I threw it in out of the plane and into the Pacific Ocean on that trip to Hawaii.

After dropping off Bella at the locker room I left the school to go fetch the extra set of clothes Alice had told me to pack in my car. I took the gym bag out of the trunk and put my other belongings into the back seat of my Volvo before go back to the school. The rest of the school had pretty normal thoughts but I discovered that we were playing basketball today in gym.

Strange sport, basketball, it was inventing in a YMCA some time during the early 1890s. I wasn't around for its birth but Emmett thought it to be a good idea to take me to a few games. I shuddered at the thought and I opened my bag. Alice was kind enough to leave out skinny jeans, palsies, argyles, plaids, and fluoresces out of my small wardrobe. A fitted mouth guard? Really....

Picking out the most normal red basketball short that few nearly to my knees I mad sure to put them around my waist unlike the other boys who preferred to let them hang at their thighs.

What could Bella see in him beside good looks?

I fought the urge not to turn around and shoot Tyler a death glare. Every person thoughts had a specific signature, like their voice. It's quite complicated to explain how my power works. Thoughts also take on certain colors depending on how the person felt about what their thoughts. Then there were the classifications of memories and silent reels of film, and the subconscious stories build up in the more insecure part of them.

It was all very hard to explain. Not to mention some people's thoughts were just sick, wrong, and completely irrelevant to life.

The Cullens were betting on something in Science earlier. They're definitely trying to sell their sisters into the sex trade.

And sometimes they were ridiculous accusations that did help me realize when Jasper was going to see how jealous he could make Bella before she yelled at me something amazingly inappropriate and out of character. I was going to have to threaten him with suggesting we debate in Social Sciences about the Civil War, forcing Jasper to take the side of the Union.

"Hey Cullen," I heard Mike come up behind me and I mentally cursed. I knew what he was going to ask me.

"No." told him firmly.

"Uh, I was just wondering whether you and Bella could come down to La Push this weekend," he was trying to sound innocent but I knew deep down Mike was pathetic and oblivious. "It's supposed to be sunny..."

Oh well, at least he had taken the time to actually ask me before Bella.

"Sorry, but I can't," I shrugged pulling on my gym shirt that St. John's on it. How long ago had a graduated there? "I have plans with my family."

Which for some reason always include Bella. How interesting could his family be? And what the hell is the automatic appeal of camping?!

"We're visiting some friends in Alaska," I said matter-of-factly. "Now if you would kindly return my sneakers, Tyler, then I will leave you be." With minimal damage to your body.

Tyler looked at me like I was mental but I knew what he and Mike were planning so there really wasn't anything to be surprised about. If I didn't love Bella then they're immaturity would bother me. I banged the tack out of my shoe and raised my eyebrows at them. Oh well, it didn't hold a candle to the time where Emmett hid my entire collecting of CDs in Rosalie's lingerie drawer. That was awkward.

Speaking of Emmett I could smell him before I heard his thoughts.

"Oh dear God," I muttered.

"I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY!!!!!! DON'T KILL ME JASPER IT'S NOT MY FAULT!!!!!!" Emmett ran past me at a slightly above average human rate. Jasper was hot on his heels and I let Emmett pass in peace. When Jasper when by I grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him back with enough force to have torn my shoulder out its socket.

"It is completely and in every feasible sense of the term his fault!" he was trying to alter my emotion in to feeling empathy and letting him go. Unfortunately I feared Carlisle punishment for me not getting involved more than Jasper's emotional wrath.

"I. Do. Not. Care." I told him spinning him on his hells and pushing him out of the locker room, away from Emmett, and towards the gym where I had a felling Alice would be. Instead she was right outside of the locker room waiting for Jasper practically vibrating in anticipation.

"I believe this belongs to you," I handed Jasper over before he had time to rip out Emmett's heart and burn it on a spit, which he was graphically planning out in his mind. That as well as my own violent demise.

"It's not nice to pour boiling tar on your siblings," Alice reminded him.

"Thank you," I started to walk away towards the gym, feeling that Bella was already done in the locker room.

"Alice, I thought you were on my side."

"Hush up before I decided to give you a make over."

I could hear Jasper's jaw clamp shut. Alice was undoubtedly planning her own revenge of Emmett and I was going to stay out of it. Part of me was wondering what it was when I pushed open the gym doors to see Bella waiting as far as she possibly could from the boys playing some variation of indoor football.

I walked over to her and the moment I caught her eyes she brightened. There was that extra sparkle in her eyes that I couldn't find anywhere else in the world and her heart accelerated just for me. When her lips twitched up into my favorite smile I had to remember that she was only human and I couldn't take her right there and then.

"Why hello my closet poet," she grinned at her new nickname for me.

"Now don't make me tell Alice you want to go shopping with her," at that moment Alice came sprinting across the gym, knocking over Coach Clapp and disrupting the football game.

"Shopping?" she really did have a one track mind as images of pocketbooks and shoes flashed through my mind. "You want to go shopping? Great, because there is this new pair of kitten heels you will completely love. I mean, they have your name written all over them. Literally!"

Bella was about to turn her down when a shrill whistle caused her to jump.

Coach Clapp was rubbing his hip, muttered about how we obnoxious teens didn't have enough of an attention span to care about our elders. He was right. I gravitated towards Bella while Alice left us to "go to the bathroom" and make sure Emmett had learned his lesson.

"Well children," he quieted us as Alice slipped out. "Seeing that a certain miss who will remain nameless has injured me so there goes our basketball unit."

There were groans of disappointment and some of the girls, and Eric Yorkie, sighed with relief. It was only then did I realize what was going to take the place of our basketball unit.

"This is going to be interesting," I whispered in Bella's ear.

"Spare me," she begged the heavens.

"TENNIS!!!!" most of the girls squealed and I feared Bella's fragile ear drums would shatter.

Even though Forks was a rain ridden place where nearly nothing of interest happened, most of the kids took up tennis from a young age and were part of the tennis ladder at the Indoor Sport Complex in Port Angeles. I didn't find the sport much more interesting than I did when I was a human and didn't know of its existence.

Most of the girls just wanted to show off their tennis outfits which I blocked images from in my mind. It was better than swim (the coach's other alternative) but I would have sooner bought the property the pool was on before I let the hormone ridden girls of Forks have a swimming unit.

"This is going to end badly," Bella told me trying to hide behind me as if it would get her out of phys ed. "What if Mike asks me to be his partner?"

"I'm hoping he'll have some dignity left," I told her lifting her chin so I could kiss her gently. "And unfortunately he has already decided that he is going to choose our partners. All that's certain is that he's not putting Alice with me because he thinks we may dominate."

"Why does everyone think you two are athletic?"

"Because we are," I smiled and listened the Coach Clapp rattle off pairs as if he had them written down before hand and wasn't making them up off the top of his head.

"I'm back!" Alice sung giving Bella a hug.

"What I don't get a hug?" I asked trying to look incredulous.

"Do you want a hug or will you yell that I'm assaulting you like you did last time?" Alice raised her eyebrows and Bella's jaw hit the polished wood floors.

"On second thought...."

"Please don't be made at me for forcing you into tennis gym style but if I didn't you would go to the ER because you slipped on a basketball and need stitches," Alice hung on to Bella until she was forgiven. This is why she shouldn't hide her visions from me! I could have just deported Mike Newton before he placed the basketball lazily on the ground! Well, maybe not deported him but at least sent him out of the state.

"You're forgiven on one condition Alice," Bella tried to push her off with no avail. Her demand was making me believe more and more everyday that she was becoming one of us. "You are not to take me to the mall to buy me a tennis skirt."

"NO!" she cried out in pain. You would have thought she would be writhing on the ground but no. "How can you say that? It's my duty to shop for the fashion-challenged."

"Am not!" Bella fumed but one look by Alice at her miss-matched outfit shut her mouth.

"Edward-" my sister turned to me for help.

"You know I think Bella looks beautiful in anything she wears."

"Cullen and Yorkie!" Coach Clapp interrupted us. Alice and I both groan in sync.

"Which one?" I asked in hope that he would change his mind at the last second.

"You Edward. Get a racket and go help Eric set up the nets before he kills himself."

I grumbled to myself so Alice would hear how much I completely despised the sport tennis only to hear her threaten to force Bella to shop and replace all here blouses with low cut shirts and transfer her into all of Newton's classes. I clenched my jaw. It was only two weeks, what could possibly go wrong?

My infamous last words.

--
all leading up to why edward has to leave for the weekend and how mike gets his grubby little hand on that leather bound book.
jace

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