Disclaimer – I hold no proprietary or artistic rights over Twilight or any of the characters or scenarios created by Stephanie Meyer.
Chapter one: Don't Forget to Smile
Edward's POV
I sighed heavily before hitting a button on the small silver remote. Immediately the quiet jazz track stopped and I was left sitting in silence, relatively speaking, I of course, could still hear everything. I could hear my father Carlisle shuffling papers in his study and my sisters Rosalie and Alice rummaging through their closets to select the perfect outfit. Their husbands - my brothers - were in the living room playing a video game and my mother Esme was humming to herself as she entered her studio.
Of course that was not all that I could hear. Sifting through paperwork in his study, Carlisle was comparing the pros and cons of two different regimens of medicine for one of his patients. Alice was planning a shopping trip to Seattle because naturally having even more clothes would make choosing the perfect ensemble that much easier. Meanwhile Rosalie had just caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was admiring her own perfection. Downstairs, Emmett was focused on his game or rather how much he was going to gloat when he won Jasper, ever the military strategist, was analysing Emmett's every move in the game trying to spot a pattern and subsequently an opening to attack. Esme's gentle thoughts were focused on the beautiful if somewhat overcast day developing outside.
I never had any peace. The ability to hear everything within a mile radius with such clarity that it appeared as though it were carefully directed to my ears was as much a curse as it was a blessing. There is nothing quite like hearing every movement of the three perfectly matched couples one lives with. But unlike the others of my kind, I also had the dubious pleasure of being able to hear the thoughts of those around me as clearly as their spoken words. And there is nothing quite like hearing the thoughts of the three couples that one lives with.
To be fair, most of the time my family tried to be sensitive to my gift but this only made me resent them even more as they highlighted once again how I was different from the rest of my family. Then of course there were the times when they weren't quite so understanding, although this was usually just the times when Rosalie was sick of my extra sense. We'd had numerous arguments about it. 'Can't you just turn it off?' No, believe me I've tried. Not that she believed me of course. I'd contemplated telling her that it didn't really matter since she rarely thought anything overly personal. I certainly didn't consider analysing ones own perfection to be personal, but that definitely would not have gone down well. Still, I tried my best to tune my family out and not trespass the privacy of their minds.
The purposeful movements of my siblings and a glance at the clock in my room told me that it was time to depart for our first day at Forks High. Our family had moved from Denali, Alaska to Forks, Washington just this week passed. We could only ever stay in the one place for a limited amount of time lest the human populace notice that we weren't changing, that we weren't aging. This most recent move, however, was precipitated partially by the fact that twelve vampires living in the one location was drawing too much attention to us and partially by the sheer torture that Tanya's numerous advances were inflicting on me.
The Denali vampires; Carmen and Eleazar, Tanya, Kate and Irina were like our extended family there were precious few vampires who followed our alternate lifestyle. Despite Tanya I had enjoyed living in Denali, it had been a pleasant break in the routine, and it had been nice to just be ourselves for a time. Rosalie, on the other hand, wasn't so happy with our move. She loved Forks. But she was annoyed that I hadn't taken Tanya as my mate so that I would stop sulking around the house. Her selfishness never ceased to amaze me; I had no interest in Tanya. She was just a friend, and was sometimes relegated to even less than that when her advances became too persistent.
We had not lived in Forks for decades, it was important that we not return to a place before all the humans who may remember us had moved on. The Olympic Peninsula was one of the family's favourite places to live. It was one of the rainiest places in the US and consequently had very few sunny days. The Forks weather was ideal for vampires and as Rosalie constantly reminded us it almost made her feel human.
The last week or so had been spent fixing up and renovating our Forks home. It was a more drawn out process than usual because Alice's room needed major modifications. This was becoming a common pattern; each house we returned to had to have an enormous walk in wardrobe attached to satisfy Alice's needs. For most houses this only required some minor remodelling but for the most part once Alice and Esme got started the whole house was usually refitted. The white mansion was a new home so it required a complete refit to meet our needs.
Esme insisted on keeping the façade of the house intact. Alice, Rosalie and Esme all adored the wrap-around porch so Emmett had been dispatched to match the timber exactly to replace the few boards that had rotted with age. Jasper and I had the unenviable task of repainting the outside of the house in white. Alice had somehow convinced us that it had to keep its faded look despite the new coat of paint.
The attention to original features on the exterior of the house was in stark contrast to the interior, which was practically gutted. Most of the first floor walls were removed to create a large open area, which was flooded with light once we had replaced the entire southern wall of the house with glass. The second and third floors comprised private studies, bedrooms, bathrooms and some very extravagant walk in wardrobes; of which Alice's was the most impressive. Esme had also been kind enough to create room for my Bösendorfer downstairs.
I glanced at my piano whistfully as I made my way to the garage and fished my keys out of my pocket. I was greeted with a fresh wave of my siblings' thoughts.
'Why so glum?' came Emmett's far too cheery thoughts, but I decided to ignore him as I slid into my silver Volvo.
The rest of my family followed my example and we were soon driving smoothly down the driveway heading towards the main road and Forks High. As usual I said little and did my best to tune out my family's chatter both mental and verbal.
'I wish I could drive my baby,' Rosalie was once again basking in her own vanity as she envisioned herself sliding elegantly from the driver's seat of her red BMW convertible. She cut a striking figure amongst the cacophony of second and even third hand vehicles that filled her imaginary student lot at Forks High. Alice was visibly vibrating in her seat with excitement as Jasper tried to keep her emotions under control. Even with the help of his gift to influence emotions he was failing miserably.
It had been a couple of years since the family had lived among humans; we did not create that facade while we were living in Denali, and Alice especially was looking forward to it for some unfathomable reason. To keep up pretences, we had made sure to arrive at the school early today so that we could collect our schedules and wander the school acting a little lost and overwhelmed. As we all gracefully exited the Volvo, Alice's eyes went out of focus for a moment. It was a telltale sign that she was having one of her visions, so I focused in on her mind.
Five vampires walked into a small office and smiled politely at the grey haired receptionist. In response, she proceeded to get extremely flustered and had a great deal of trouble doing anything but gawk at us. Instantly the vision shifted. Now, only Alice entered the office and proceeded to collect schedules for all of us. The receptionist was only mildly dazed, and was left looking far less like she would suffer from heart failure; unlike in the previous vision.
'You explain,' Alice thought as she danced off to the office to collect our schedules… Leaving, as usual, the rest of our family staring after her in confusion.
"What was that?" grumbled Rosalie.
"What did she see?" asked a worried Jasper.
I smirked to myself and proceeded to explain that Alice had seen the receptionist practically have a heart attack when the five of us waltzed into her office. However, she looked far healthier when only Alice went to collect our schedules. A moment after I finished the explanation Alice reappeared with our schedules and slips for our teachers to sign. We promptly began to compare them and work out which classes we had together; at that moment we almost looked human. I had five classes by myself, Alice and I were in the same gym class – that was going to be painful – and I had Spanish with Emmett.
Other students began to pull into the student lot and my mind was bombarded with new thoughts. As the resident mind reader it was my job to scan the thoughts of the humans around us to make sure they were buying the charade.
'Wow, she's hot… blonde.'
'Cop a look at his muscles.'
'New… blonde… muscles… ass…'
'Maybe she'll need help with her calculus?'
Nothing seemed overly unusual so I tuned the voices out before the truly vulgar thoughts started. I would check again during lunch period. Maybe then, the inevitable portion of the student population who couldn't even compose their thoughts into coherency will have a better handle on the situation.
I turned on my heel and walked at a painfully slow pace away from my family – or at a brisk walk for the benefit of any human observers – and headed towards my first class. Locating it with ease, I hovered by the doorway waiting for the teacher and the other students to arrive. Soon I had to retreat into the classroom to wait as the obscene thoughts of the girls passing me in the hallway started to make me nauseous. I was glad that I couldn't blush today; some of the thoughts made Tanya's advances seem positively innocent and angelic.
When the teacher finally arrived, I got my slip signed and was directed to a seat at the back of the classroom. One would think that this would make staring difficult but none of the class appeared to find my position any hindrance.
"One of Dr. Cullen's kids…"
"I heard they're all, like, adopted or something."
"Did you see the big one… or the blonde one?"
"Yeah, they looked kind of together."
"Is that even legal?"
"I guess… if they're adopted…"
"Well, they're all gorgeous. Is Dr. Cullen like a plastic surgeon?"
The speed that gossip travelled in Forks was impressive but that was about as much as I could handle. I tried to focus on the teacher's pitiful lesson instead but it barely held my focus. English was one of the few subjects that had the potential to not be a monotonous hell but this teacher was particularly uncreative and the class promised to be painful. Pulling out a sheet of loose leaf paper I began meticulously taking notes in an effort to drown out the thoughts around me. Now that the class had started, the conversations had died down but that only made the class' internal chatter increase and become that much harder to tune out.
Alice's POV
I don't know why Edward was always so negative. Playing human is fun, maybe I could even make friends with one in a joint project or whatever? Although he's right about gym, having to move that slowly and pretend to trip over and fumble the ball is just plain annoying! As the bell rang for lunch I scooped my books up quickly and skipped out of the classroom and around that blonde haired boy, Mike. I'd seen him asking me out in a vision the second he'd made the decision. Avoidance seemed like an excellent strategy so I made my way to the cafeteria.
Skipping down the line I placed an assortment of food on my tray. Not too much mind apparently human girls tried not to eat too much and secured a table in the corner of the cafeteria for my family. It was strategically placed; Jazz would be proud. Emmett and Rosalie arrived next; they must have had class together. Rosalie put too much food on her tray. The bitchy comments about that are going to be fun. Emmett proceeded to not put enough on his tray. What are they thinking? Or not thinking…
As another vision came to me. I picked a bread roll to pieces in an effort to ensure that I didn't become too still while the vision played out in my mind. While I viewed a series of images of a very happy Edward talking and laughing like I'd only ever seen once before I felt the rest of my family sans Edward take their places at the table. I shifted my attention to the female vampire with Edward. She was still blurry and out of focus. Clearly there was still an unmade decision. But there was no doubt in my mind that she would one day become Edward's mate.
Snapping out of my reverie at the sound of Edward joining us at the table, I looked down at my bread roll, which could now only be described as bread crumbs. Glancing up, I was greeted by Edward's glare.
"Edward's mate," he hissed.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' I thought back, glad that I was already blocking my thoughts from him.
"When do I get to meet her… or him?" Emmett asked with a grin. Jasper and Rosalie snickered in response to Emmett's antics.
I sighed and gave up as I compared the different outcomes for the future. Edward's tantrum would be lesser if I told him what I knew sooner rather than later.
"I don't know, it's just like last time," I hedged waiting for the future to firm up.
"Last time?" growled Edward.
'Oops!' I thought with a smile on my lips earning another low growl from Edward. Jasper stiffened in the seat next to mine.
"I just see you incredibly happy. I don't know when the vision will take place," I explained directing my words to Edward.
"Ok, well what exactly do you see?" pressed Jasper.
"Well," I hesitated, "I see Edward, happy, but I can't see the female vampire he's with." I emphasised the word female for Emmett's benefit while rolling my eyes at him. "Just like last time," I finished.
"What do you mean, just like last time," Rosalie snapped.
I sighed. "Well clearly, once again," I emphasised the words for Rosalie, "Edward has made a decision that will lead him to her but she is yet to make the corresponding decision that will lead them to each other so I still can't see her clearly."
"Was she blurry in the other vision?" Rosalie pressed.
"No," I sighed, "But last time her back was to me so I couldn't see her face then either."
Before Rosalie could say anything else, Jasper cut her off and asked Edward what the students of Forks High thought of their new classmates. I was thankful for the reprieve and Jasper squeezed my hand knowingly under the table.
A/N: Please review. Anonymous reviews welcome.
04-June-2009
22-June-2009 -- beta'd