Chapter One: Forks Is So Boring

To say that Forks, Washington is a boring place would be a bit of an understatement. In fact, Forks is such a boring town that I imagine it's the town that every novelist pictures when they paint the image of the perfect little white-fenced community. ...Well, perhaps that's giving Forks too much credit. At any rate, it's an awful, dreadful, dreary place and that's the main reason my family selected it as our homestead.

Forks is the kind of place where even the most mundane things are seen as spectacular and fascinating by its residents. Because of that, I wasn't too interested in what was causing the students of Forks high school to be so hyped up when my siblings and I pulled into the parking lot one morning.

"What's going on?" Emmett wondered as I locked the car doors. I sighed loudly to display my apathy but still scanned the minds of a few passers-by.

"A new student," I answered.

"Fresh meat!" Jasper exclaimed. Rosalie, who was busy fixing her hair and using the reflection off of our car to do so, managed to peel her eyes away from herself long enough to send him a look. He quickly leapt to the defense.

"I didn't mean it that way; I mean in the high school way!"

"Which is clearly much, much worse," I noted, freely allowing sarcasm to seep into my voice, though there was a part of me that was serious. My family would most likely stay away from this new girl; it was going to be the other humans that she would really have to worry about.

Alice seemed to be on the same wavelength as me. "Can you imagine having to transfer schools during the middle of your high school career?"

"And we don't?" Rosalie's question was rhetorical, so none of us answered and we just began the trek up to the building.

"I don't even know why we bother with high school, it all seems so pointless," Emmett grumbled. He never was one for schooling.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I see that it does have its merits; it keeps the townsfolk from becoming too interested in our goings on, and, let's face it, we can't afford any in-depth investigation."

Alice and Emmett gave me slight nods of agreement. Jasper and Rosalie didn't seem to be paying much attention.

"Yet, on the other hand, I feel like the act of attending classes itself is so outrageous that I want to pull my hair out. I've learned everything and more."

"Maybe you could drop out, Edward, and then we can act all disapproving and upset," Alice suggested. We were now at the front of the building and about to go our separate ways . Alice, Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie all got to be seniors. I was a junior.

"While I do like the idea, isn't it Rosalie's turn now?"

She shook her head, golden tresses bobbing. "I like going to high school with the..." She trailed off when she saw that we were surrounded. The humans, she added in her thoughts, though the rest of my family didn't need my telepathy to understand where she was going.

"Why?" I asked, genuinely curious. She gave me a shrug in response. I failed to hide my frustration; Rosalie's resistance to any sort of intellectual discourse was a habit of hers that had grated me for the last fifty years.

"We'll see you at lunch, Ed." Jasper placed a hand on my shoulder, causing a calm sensation to envelop me.

"I hate when you do that." I probably didn't sound very convincing.

Don't worry about Rosalie, Jasper thought. If you do, you'll end up popping a vessel...If you had any, that is.

I laughed aloud at that, and Rosalie glared, turning on Jasper. "Out with it! What were you thinking? Come on, there are no secrets in this family!"

"Don't I know it," he grumbled, glancing at me without even thinking about it. "Sorry," he started, but I waved him off.

"I'm sympathetic to your situation. Sometimes I wish I couldn't hear what you guys were thinking either."

My siblings sent each other guilty looks at that, as if they were just reminded that even their most private, personal thoughts came to me. And, while I'd gotten much better at blocking people out, there was still the occasional slip. Like that time when I was so concentrated on dissecting A Tale of Two Cities (Carton's martyr status is still questionable to me) that I ended up hearing Rosalie's plans for that evening's seduction of her husband Emmett. Or the times when I'd heard Esme worry about me, relentlessly, when she thought I was out hunting.

Yes, I had a great gift, but there were far too many thoughts I'd intercepted over the years that I really shouldn't have. Concentrating on my mind-reading capabilities must've made them awaken because the dim buzzing that I'd grown all too accustomed to suddenly grew louder. I shook my head, and after a few seconds, things calmed down.

"I'm going to class. The bell's about to ring." To be honest, my sense of time was slightly off due to our conversation, but I could guess at it since we were some of the only students still out on the lawn. To save my siblings further embarrassment, I went off without them, heading to my first class, English Literature.

Literature's bearable if only because re-reading novels often gives them a new life. However, having gone through Julius Caesar roughly eighty times before, I could pretty much surmise that I had taken all from the play that I could.

I took my seat at the back of the room, alone, as per usual, since most students avoided me and my family like the plague, and pulled out a notebook, ready to act the role of eager student even if I was the furthest thing from it.

Most of the students were now in their seats, though some of them, and the teacher herself, were still missing. Two boys directly in front of me were talking about the new girl. I found it odd, the way they were drawn to her, and I inspected my fellow classmates' thoughts to find the same. Almost every student had some sort of ideal of her. The girls wanted her to be their new best friend, while the boys' fantasies were a bit more graphic.

Well, she certainly had captured the imagination of Forks High! I intercepted the thoughts and gathered as much information about her as I could.

She was Isabella "Bella" Swan, the daughter of chief of police Charlie Swan. I didn't know very much about Charlie; he was quite possibly one of the only law enforcement officials that hadn't become suspicious of my family, though I suppose he still had time. We hadn't been in Forks very long at all.

I didn't find out much else about the new girl; apparently most people, for all the hoopla about her arrival, hadn't taken the time out to get to know her, which was so typically human -- They always begged for something exciting to happen and then, when it did, clung to their status quo like it was their lifeline.

By the time the teacher arrived, I was thoroughly disgusted with the humans' thinking processes and actually welcomed the Shakespearian distraction.

--

I had lost all interest in the new girl until my family and I bought "lunches" in the cafeteria and took our seats at our usual table. I was bombarded by my peers' thoughts in this closed setting, and I realized that nearly every boy was still thinking of her in a sexual manner. Wasn't she old hat by now? I shook my head, disgusted, and Jasper shared my contempt.

"The lust in this place is thick," he muttered.

"It's kind of like how people react to us, eh?" Emmett elbowed me playfully. To be honest, it did grate me when I noticed that human women were entranced by me, though most of the time I didn't pay attention. I didn't play up the fact that humans were programmed to find me beautiful the way Emmett or Rosalie did. They loved to have their egos stroked.

Emmett did have a point, though. I scanned the cafeteria and found the girl fairly easily. She was sitting next to Jessica Stanley, a blonde bimbo who made Rosalie look like an astrophysicist, and I didn't really see the appeal. She was pale and brunette and about average-looking for a human. And yet, everyone was doing flips for her. I shrugged. Maybe I was just not a good judge of human beauty.

Mike Newton, the latest object of Jessica's desire (I cringed upon remembering that I had been before him), was a very interested party from his spot a few tables away.

I wonder if I should ask her out Friday. Wait! I wonder if that'll be taking things too fast? I haven't even introduced myself yet!

I rolled my eyes. Only Mike Newton would jump to being in a relationship with a girl before formally introducing himself. How tactless.

I turned to Jessica's thoughts.

God, she's kind of boring.

I frowned.

Yeah, this town is lame. I can't wait 'til I move out to L.A.!

Oh, of course she would ask about them. They're so weird!

I began playing with whatever human food I'd gotten for the day and turned to my family. "Don't look now," I whispered, "but the new girl's asking about us."

Really? Emmett was excited.

She would. Rosalie was not shocked.

Is it sad that I still get hyped up when people gossip about us? Alice's eyes weretwinkling. I frowned.

"I find it stressful. I have to monitor those conversations really closely, you know."

I reminded my family of the last time we'd been found out.

"'Why don't you have fangs?'" Rosalie repeated the line an observant human had used on us. "She did have a good point. Why don't we have fangs? I mean, you'd think we would, since we're monsters and all."

Jasper shifted uncomfortably. He had the weakest reserve out of all of us. There wasn't a day that went by that he wouldn't compain about it, that he wouldn't lament that he wasn't allowed to drink human blood and still be part of our clan. Alice announced that she had to leave then, but that we all needed to mind Jasper, especially around the new girl since he wouldn't be used to her scent. After she was gone, I weighed my options, and my desire to be sensitive to Jasper's plight was overwhelmed by my desire to zap Rosalie, and so it won out.

"It's not an intensional quality of a 'monster' to have fangs," I reminded her, "if I were to get Philosophical on you, which clearly I am not."

"I didn't invite you to!" Rosalie stuck her tongue out at me. I rolled my eyes.

"What's the story?" Jasper asked, eyes glued to his plate like the pro he was. I invaded Jessica's thoughts again.

"Pretty mundane," I concluded. "Nothing about us possibly being murderers."

Damn it, those are my favorites! Emmett pounded the table with his fist and guffawed before continuing. "And the new girl, what does she think of it?"

I tilted my head slightly and sifted through all the voices coming at me. I searched for an unfamiliar female's but only came across Angela, a girl who was sitting with Jessica and Bella. She was thinking about her Trigonometry homework and not the new girl; she was a relatively smart human.

But Bella's voice didn't jump out at me. Odd, I thought. I turned to look at Bella, thinking that I might need to see her face to catch her mind. She was looking at me, then, and I turned away, quickly.

Nothing.

That was certainly odd.

"Well?" Jasper pushed, feeling edgy and subsequently making us feel it too.

"She's...interested in us." Granted, I hadn't heard her think it, but she'd been staring in our direction, right?

"Is that bad?" he wondered. I shushed him and continued to listen.

Ha! She's staring at Edward Cullen. Good luck, girl. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even have a dick.

I grinned, uncharacteristically amused by her crudeness.

"What?" Emmett asked.

"Jessica's still bitter."

He chuckled at that. "We're so lucky to have you eavesdrop on teenage conversations for us, Eddy. If I were you I'd end up going insane."

"I like to avoid most teenage conversations," I reminded him, now done with the spying for the day. "I just had to make sure that Bella Swan wasn't a threat."

"And she isn't?" Rosalie asked. I shook my head, surprised at my own affirmation.

"She isn't."

I decided not to tell my siblings that I couldn't read her thoughts. For all I knew, it could be a fluke, and I didn't want to worry them over nothing. I mean, how consequential could Bella Swan's thoughts be?

And, so, we left the lunch room.

--