Book One
CHAPTER TWO
It had been a year and a half since that day, and we had learned so much more about the Cullen's since then.
To start off with, there were only about a million and one changes to the Cullen's life in Forks. The 'original' wolf pack they had told us about had nearly doubled in size. After Nessie had been born, the Cullen's had had a major encounter with the Volturi, or the 'leaders of our world' as they liked to call themselves. At that time, there had been a major outbreak of wolves on the La Push reservation. The names of the wolves were Caleb, Jeremy, Matt, Lucas, Nathan, Kyle, and Wyatt. About six months later, a new, and very different kind of wolf had emerged. His name was Joel. Joel is different because he changed at the age of twenty-one, and not when he was a teenager. He was late because Jacob's dad's younger brother had been his father. Joel had never met his father, seeing as he died before he even knew the girl was pregnant. Joel had grown up not knowing any of his father's family, and none of his father's family knowing about him. Now this is where it gets really weird. Leah Clearwater imprinted on him at the same moment that Joel imprinted on her. It was the first time that this had happened, but certainly not the last. Joel and Leah were now married with four kids; Nicholas Sam, Alexis Jane, Cole Andrew, and Paige Olivia. Sam and Emily were also married with four kids; Jennifer Rose, Brandon Michael, Allison Grace, and Ryan Joel. All of these births had happened at the same time. The wolf gene in these kids was funny that way.
But that's just the beginning. There was also another new wolf in La Push. Her name was Brooke. She was Jared's little sister, and had changed when she was sixteen. She and Embry had imprinted upon each other, in the same way that Leah and Joel had. Brooke had given birth to twins about two years ago. Brooke and Embry had named their babies Madison Grace and Marcus John. Rachel and Paul had a son named Joshua Kyle, and their older daughter was named Kristen Skye. Kim and Jared had a daughter named Kelsey Renee, and their older son was named David Tyler.
Seth Clearwater had imprinted on a girl named Abbey about six years ago. They were now happily married with twins whose names were Elizabeth Grace and Evan Mitchell. A few months after Brooke had changed, twin girls named Lauren and Kaylie had also changed into wolves. Collin and Brady, the ones who used to be the 'kids' of the pack, had imprinted on these girls. And you guessed it, at the same time that they imprinted on them. Collin and Kaylie had a little girl named Anna Nicole, and Lauren and Brady had a little boy named Tyler Jonathon. Lauren and Kaylie also have a younger brother who is officially the newest member of the wolf pack, and whose name is Bryce.
Now here's where things start to get complicated. Jacob and Nessie had married about a year ago, and they now had a daughter named Eila. Eila was the most precious little girl in the whole world, and we all loved her to death. We now lived in Cleveland, Ohio, but we were all planning on flying back to Forks for Eila's first birthday in a couple of weeks. Bryce, the newest wolf, had imprinted on Eila. Bryce was Lauren and Kaylie's younger brother. Edward called it karma, but I knew it must be a little awkward to have Bryce imprint on Jacob's daughter.
If all of this wasn't enough to set my head spinning, the next thing surely was. Just a few months before we had left Forks, the wolf world in La Push had been shaken up and almost destroyed. One night, Sam had found something mysterious in the woods. It had been a pair of bare human footprints just suddenly disappearing. Sam hadn't recognized the scent of these footprints, and had immediately called the rest of the wolves. They were gone for several hours, and Nessie eventually got worried and called us. You see, Julia has the talent of being able to find people. They work sort of like Alice's visions, only she can see all types of people, not just humans and vampires. Julia had searched for the wolves, and had found them.
What she saw was horrendous. They had all been viciously attacked, and were left broken, bruised, and bleeding. We hadn't known much then, but in the months that had followed that, we soon discovered more about these disappearing footprints. You see, the things that had attacked the wolves had been large, supernatural eagles. This was all that the wolves had been able to capture about these things while they were being attacked. But with this bit of information, we had set to work.
It had taken several weeks and almost nonstop work to finally reach a conclusion about these things, but with teamwork, our family had found a legend concerning people that turned into eagles. The Achomawi Indians of Southern Oregon were the only culture that we could find that had a legend remotely relating to humans shape-shifting.
After a series of certain events, the leader of these eagles had come into our presence. He had explained to us about how he had been excluded from his family, and practically exiled from his community. The only reservation for Achomawi Indians was called Alturas, and was located near the Oregon state border in Northeastern California. Their leader's name was Dan, and he had told us all about how he had ordered the others to attack out of pure fear, and intimidation. He was afraid of the wolves. He had apologized, and begged for their forgiveness.
Being the people that they were, not only had the wolves forgiven the eagles almost immediately, they had asked Dan to tell them about the rest of the eagles. Dan explained to them about how some of the eagles were very close to losing themselves. When you stayed eagles for as long as they did, he told us, it was sometimes hard to remember that somewhere inside of you was a real person. He told us that there were about eight girls, and ten guys. After about an hour of talking with Dan, Sam had asked him to bring the rest of the eagles back to meet them. Sam had known that these people had nowhere to go, and Sam wasn't the type of guy who just let someone who needed help walk away.
After much arguing, Dan had agreed to bring the others back. Dan was feeling pretty guilty about his conscience at that time, and I had known that he must have felt very undeserving of this act of generosity. No matter what he felt though, about an hour later, there were eighteen young men and woman standing in front of us.
That's when all hell broke loose. The weirdest of the weird things had happened. Caleb, Jeremy, Matt, Lucas, Nathan, Kyle, and Wyatt had imprinted on Mikayla, Natalie, Jocelyn, Amber, Kaitlyn, Nicole, and Ashley, the eagle girls. I almost couldn't believe it. But that wasn't the end of all of the craziness. The very next day, the oldest eagle girl, Lyssie, had imprinted on a brand new eagled named Michael. Michael was much like Joel in his genes at least, seeing as he was Dan's younger cousin. Just like Joel was Jacob's older cousin.
So all together, the eagles were Dan, Adam, Ricky, Landon, Scott, Alex, Brian, Robert, Corey, Justin, Michael, Lyssie, Mikayla, Natalie, Jocelyn, Amber, Kaitlyn, Nicole, and Ashley.
Everything seemed overwhelming even to me when I put it like that, but hey, it was even hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes.
Today was our first day of High School. It had taken us a while to get moved in and settled up here, and saying good-bye to Forks had been hard. We technically should've been in school a few months ago, but we figured we could always say that we were homeschooled during our moving period. Zach, Connor, Julia, and I were enrolled as freshmen, and Edward, Bella, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice were enrolled as sophomores. We were going to Bay High School; home of the Rockets. I didn't know what this town would bring us, but whatever it was, today would be the start of it. I wasn't nervous, but I did have a little trepidation. I hadn't wanted to leave Forks, but it was time to move on. We just had to deal with it, and start over somewhere else.
The weirdest part for me was looking at my older brothers and sisters being back in High School again. Zach and I had gone to High School with Nessie back in Forks, but the others had gone off in their own different directions. Edward and Bella had made a decision to go to med school when Nessie went into High School, and had graduated after only a few years each. Bella worked as an RN at the Forks Hospital for a while, and Edward became a doctor there a few years after that. It was kind of hard to imagine either of them going back to High School, but here we were; the day had come.
The story had been spread around the city that there was going to be a new Doctor working at the hospital, and that his family was quite large. Jasper and Rosalie were going as twins again, and they would pretend to be foster children. Bella, Julia, and I were going to pretend to be Esme's nieces who had been taken from their drug-addict mother when we were young. Our last name would be Swan, just because it was easy to pick up. Although we didn't really look anything alike, we figured we could always say we had different fathers. Alice, Zach and Emmett were going to pretend to be adopted, and Edward and Connor were going to be the only birth children of Carlisle and Esme. We expected that there would be plenty of whispers and questions, but they would die out eventually.
We didn't know how long we were going to be staying here, but we knew that it would probably be for a lot less time than we stayed in Forks. Cleveland was a massive city compared to the small town of Forks, but that would mean there was even less to talk about. The High School itself had more people in it than the entire town of Forks did. We hadn't decided if we were going to put out the story that we were 'together', but we figured that we'd figure it out as we went along.
We didn't really know what the kids were like here, but we were hoping to be able to just keep our heads down and mind our own business. It was going to be a little difficult today, especially considering it was the middle of the semester.
When we pulled up in Edward's Volvo and Bella's pickup that we had bought a few years ago, we didn't get to many stares. Our cars weren't out of place at all here, and they blended in quite nicely. I had worn my straight, dirty blonde hair down around my shoulders, and was wearing a plain black t-shirt with faded blue-jeans and sneakers. Nothing fancy, nothing unnormal, nothing that would make me stand out even more.
We stepped out into the crowded parking lot somewhat cautiously, but the stares hadn't started yet. Edward pointed out a building across the way that had a big sign that said 'student affairs' on it. I looked at Zach, and he smiled as we slung our bags over our shoulders and headed towards the student affairs building.
That's when the stares started.
It wasn't something that was just suddenly there, but gradually started as we began to walk further and further into the crowded parking lot. Although the day was cloudy, it was much warmer here than it was in Forks. First it was just one group of kids. They kind of did a double take as we walked past them, but we had disappeared into the crowd before they could get a really good look at us. There were more and more people staring at us the further we walked, and it was a relief when the door to the student affairs building shut behind us.
The office itself was much larger than anything that I had seen while in Forks, but looked a lot like the public High School I remembered going to as a human. There were a few women working behind desks, and a sign that said 'nurse' hanging above a small hallway towards the back of the building.
The woman that saw us first only paused for a second before speaking to us. "How can I help you?" she asked kindly.
"Um…" Emmett said. "This is our first day here. We… thought you could direct us where to go?"
"Right," the woman said. "You're in the right place." She looked over his head. "Oh my, are you all new students?" she asked.
"Yes," Emmett said. "We're Dr. Cullen's children."
"Oh I see," the woman said. "I do believe I heard something about the new doctor having children…"
She opened a file drawer at her feet and flipped through it for a second before she pulled out a large pile of papers. "Okay…" she said. "So I have it here that there are four freshman and six sophomores?"
"Yeah," we all mumbled.
"Alright," she said. "I have a schedule for all of you… This one is for…Connor Cullen?"
"Right here," Connor said.
"You're a freshmen?" she questioned.
"Yes," he said without skipping a beat. Connor did look a little older than fourteen, but we knew he would blend in just fine as soon as people got used to us. The secretary called Julia, Edward, and Alice's name before calling mine.
"Andrea Swan," she said.
I took my schedule from her, and squared my shoulders as I walked out of the office, giving a small smile to Zach. The wind gently blew my hair out of my face as I stepped out into the late April wind. I kept my eyes straight forward as people started to stare at me. I was heading to a freshmen English class. It was honors of course; Carlisle had made sure of that. It wasn't going to be challenging… but I figured it had to better than regular English. I had biology second hour, world history third, French fourth, and Geometry fifth. There was an open campus lunch policy, so at least I could sit in the car if I wanted. I had freshmen P.E. after lunch, and then a journalism elective class. Each period was forty-five minutes long, and we should be home by three each day.
The school's layout wasn't hard to follow. There was pretty much a separate building for each subject; English in one building, math in another, and then there was a massive building with two gyms, a weight room, several cardio rooms, and a few health classrooms in it. The stares were multiplying by the time I walked in the doors of the English building. I found my classroom, and kept my eyes down as the teacher pointed me to an empty seat. I was a little late for class, and I had completely missed orchestra which was zero hour, seeing as it was my first day. The young teacher smiled sweetly at me, and I took my seat.