I'd already ruled out the possibility of any ghostly relations.

They seemed somewhat solid, I was pretty sure I'd seen them brush against other people.

They weren't icky enough to be zombies. Nothing "magical" seemed to be the case of the mystery, so I could probably scratch over the witch theory as well.

Maybe werewolves. They did look as if they hardly ever slept, though I guess that could count as a common vampiric trait as well.

Vampires...

Why hadn't I thought of that?

"They're vampires." I said softly, leaning back into Charlie's armchair.

There, problem solved.

"Aw, shit! Why didn't I think of that!?" A greasy popcorn bounced off the head of the godawful random actor on the television screen.

"I can't believe we're still watching this crap." Jacob groaned.

He was lying across the couch in the living room, his tired eyes too lazy to focus anywhere else but the screen lightening up the otherwise dark room.

"Why the grumble, Jakey? You'd rather we spend the evening watching french porn or Martha Stewart playing house with her plastic tools? 'Cause we can do that, Jakey, you just had to ask."

Quinn reached for the remote on the coffee table, accidently spilling some more popcorn onto the carpet.

As Quinn started channel zapping and Jacob grumbled about Charlie getting home and stealing the remote so they could watch something of more substance than Nickelodeon or crappy vampire-movies, I stared at a discolored spot in the tapestry and got somewhat lost in thought.

We'd been in Forks for about a week now, and I guess you could say that it had gone by smoothly.

Socially, neither Quinn nor I (surprisingly enough) seemed to be suffering, seeing as people were basically throwing themselves all over us.

Quinn, with his ultra-directness and just plainly adorable personality, I could understand why people wanted to be around.

Me, on the other hand, I did not find very many reasons for anybody wanting to befriend, unless they appreciated the company of a plainfaced quiet girl who was clumsy to the point of it being count as a handicap.

However, these traits did not seem to turn my very being into a social biohazard suit (not that it had in Phoenix either, I did have a social circle, of sorts).

Mike, the blonde haired guy whom I'm hoping is using hairwax from the store, not his body's natural supply of grease, had along with Eric been stalking me in class, inbetween classes, during lunch, in gym, and that sole event where I went to the school's embarassingly limited library - they pressed their faces against the glass door to the awful Hall of Shame, for the librarian had thrown them out for sticking gum to some random ancient encyclopedia of something mindnumbingly boring.

The actuality was that Quinn and Theodore had stuck the gum to the ancient encyclopedia, and then run off to accidently insult each other in French, neither of them really having a clue what "bouffe ma queue calisse de fag" actually meant.

But the fact that I had gained a pair of very enthusiastic stalkers was not what had bothered me the most this first week.

Edward "insert-awesomely-awful-nickname-such-as-assface" Cullen was the source of my second biggest headache, the number one slot already being occupied by my new therapist Dr. Sloane, a 30-something ex-New Yorker who seemed to think that the gateway to a person's psyche was the amount of brushes one struck over one's teeth each morning.

10 or less meant some kind of depressive disorder, and 80 plus meant you were suffering from OCD.

Seeing as Forks was a small town with a limited amount of nutjobs, and being able to see dead people was considered a pretty severe level of insanity, I had a minimum of one hour of therapy every afternoon after school.

Apparently I was too docile a kitten to be kept behind bars anymore, so as long as I co-operated, took my meds and repressed the dead folks away, I'd probably lead a relatively normal life.

I was proud to say that I no longer saw dead people.

Dr. Sloane was convinced this was due to the fact that the dead people were hallucinations, whilst I was pretty sure that my subconscious had just supressed my "sixth sense" in an attempt to, for once, act kindly towards me.

I did not mention this to Dr. Sloane though. It seemed indescribably dumb to tell a woman who'd just love to place you in a white-pillowed cell that you "thought" you knew that your so-called hallucinations were for real.

I chuckled as I imagined the amount of pills a day I'd be on if I briefed her on this information.

I felt stoned just thinking about it.

By the Monday after that first week, I had almost forgotten (well, okay, repressed) the reason as to why Edward Cullen was number two on my "Giver of Major Migraine" list.

Note: Almost.

For lunch I did not only receive a coke and a slice of pizza, I was also handed a milkshake of completely irrational emotions that I couldn't fully describe.

Edward Cullen was back.

He'd been gone the entire previous week after our silent war of eyeballs.

At first, I was unsettled.

I was convinced I was the reason he was gone, even though that sounded completely unreasonable. I did not mention this to Dr. Sloane - I didn't want to add "paranoia" to the list of "unhealthy" personality traits I was sure she kept somewhere in her office.

By the time Friday came by, I had managed to convince myself that I was just being paranoid, and even if I was the cause of his absence, he was the one being a douche.

I shouldn't really give a shit. Screw him.

This entire weekend I had succeded in not thinking much of him at all.

Sure, a passing thought occured every once in a while, but other than that I was actually enjoying my weekend with my twin, my newly acquired brother, and a few of his friends, whom I was suspecting were on the border of becoming "our" friends.

But now he was back, and all the things I should've felt during this blissfully ignorant weekend, I felt in the moment of a heartbeat.

You could say it sort of hurt. A lot.

"You okay, Bella?" Quinn sounded concerned. I didn't want to worry him, so I tried to give him a small smile and tell him I was fine.

The smile looked like a retarded grimace, and the "I'm fine", ended up sounding like "Er...fine?".

He gave me a weird look, but didn't make a big fuzz out of it. He knew he'd only embarass me if he tried.

However, I knew from experience that he wasn't letting me off the hook just yet.

If I knew Quinn correctly - which I was pretty damn certain I did after sharing our mother's uterus and then living with him for seventeen years - then this meant he were to study me intently all day inbetween his childish attempts at humor (you know, make sure I wasn't talking to somebody who wasn't there), then he'd corner me at home about seven,eight-ish, most likely in either of our rooms (most probably mine, I'd try my very best to avoid any kind of confrontation with him about what ever it was he wanted to know), and then we'd end up in a competition of who could be the most stubborn.

I was considering flipping a coin on whether or not to let him win, just to have the bullshit over with.

We went over to Theodore, who'd waved at us from across the cafeteria.

It was with glee that I followed my brother across the room, glad to be rid of Mike and Eric for the moment being - they didn't seem all too fond of the Narcoleptic furball and his "amigos", as he so lovingly called them, much to Daphne's dismay.

Daphne was the girlfriend of Theodore and Jacob's friend Dylan, and to be honest, with the exception of Angela Weber - a quiet and thoughtful friend of Jessica's - she was probably the only girl here that I sincerely enjoyed the company of.

She was a naturally redheaded girl, with exceptional womanly curves that had most of the boys (and some of the girls) turning around to ogle her.

She was my shade of pale, and had bright green eyes that sparkled when she spoke of Dylan, whose eyes were bright red.

Dylan was a tall and skinny albino, with shoulder-lenghted white hair that he let flow freely around him.

I was by now way too familiar with Daphne's habit of dragging Dylan over to her place after school where she made sure his hair was thouroughly brushed and sometimes even plaited.

She insisted she only did these kinds of things (like bringing him leftovers from home, doing his laundry and making his bed) because she found his mother, an over-scheduled Seattle lawyer, way too neglectant of him.

However, at the moment I did not linger on any of these details as I took the corner seat next to Dylan and ignored my food, afraid that I'd barf if I ingested anything at the moment.

I took a peak at the Cullen's table and noted that Edward was staring intently at me.

He didn't look like he wanted to slaughter me anymore, just merely curious of me, which didn't just weird me out a little.

What was with this boy?

Bitterly I thought that maybe I wasn't the only one in Forks in need of heavy drugs and daily therapy.

"You're abnormally quiet today." Daphne mused, her warm eyes studying my face curiously.

"Er...yeah, sorry." I blushed, ripping my eyes from Edward "I'm a bit...distracted, I guess."

"Distracted by what?" she said, trying to see where I was looking before.

I seemed suddenly motivated to open my Coke can, just to have something to do.

She chuckled.

"What?" I asked nervously, cracking the can open, letting the foam overflow the container.

"Edward Cullen's staring at you."

"Oh." I said, acting over-enthusiastic about the process of soaking up the Coke spillings on the table with napkins.

"Yup." she said, taking a swig from her own can. "I've never actually seen him give anybody this much attention. You should be flattered, not flustered."

I looked up at her and noted that she was still studying him, whilst drawing patterns in Dylan's pale palm.

"I'm not flustered." I said with a contradictive blush. "S-stop staring at him!" I hissed, frustrated by my traitorous cheeks.

She looked at me and my obviously flustered state of being.

"Sure, what ever you say." she smirked at me.

I liked Daphne, but this was just... embarassing.

Lunch passed by quicker than I'd wished it to, since it meant going to Biology, which would also mean some kind of contact with Edward Cullen, which was a situation I wasn't sure of how I felt about.

I thought of that saying that humans feared everything they couldn't understand. This was certainly hard to understand, and it gave me anxiety of some sort, proving that the saying was somewhat accurate.

However, I held my head up high - I did not skip Biology.

I was actually a bit proud of myself. A girl of less nerve would've not stood up to this friction in the breeze that is, supposedly, life.

Beware world, Bella Swan, Ghost Whisperer Extraordinary, is shoving up Cullen's murderous glares up his arse.

Or something along those lines.

As he sat down next to me. I tried to ignore him, though my heart was beating straight out of my chest.

I doodled a sketchy design on the inside of my notebook, careful not to accidently brush the pencil over any of the notes I really didn't need to take.

"Hello," I heard a quiet voice speak to my right.

I stopped drawing, imagining, in my mind's eye, the panic and shock of the deer caught in the headlights.

What the hell was I supposed to do now!?

I took the first step: A deep breath, and then I turned around to face his angelic face with my own.

"My name is Edward Cullen," he said, continuing our so far one-sided conversation "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan."

This was... pretty fucking weird. Had I OD'd on my medication last Monday in an attempt to appear sane enough for the public eye, therefore making me hallucinate for real?

Wait, how-?

"How do you know my name?" I said accusingly, as if he was the creepy loony who could've perhaps stalked me, or something along those very uneven lines.

He laughed, cracking me a crooked grin that I couldn't help but find absolutely lovely, no matter how much that voice in my head was screaming "It's a trap, Bells! Just wait 'til that humongous tongue flies out of his mouth and snatches you like an insect!".

"Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you and your brother."

Well, yeah, it did sort of seem like that was the case.

However, the paranoid loony (or, say, that tiny ounce of self-preservation) wasn't letting the subject go quite just yet.

"No. I meant, why did you call me Bella?"

His eyebrows scrunched together in a slightly confused expression.

"Do you prefer Isabella?"

"No, it's a bit of a mouthful (A/N: Oh, the irony :P). It's just that I've had to correct everybody else."

"Oh."

He looked away, and I dropped my eyes down to my sketch.

Mr. Banner cut the intro to our potential awkward silence by starting class.

He started describing a lab that I had already done in Phoenix, so my interest was not quite enough to keep my thoughts from straying to the forbidden apple next to me.

Halfway through his explanation of the lab I realized, without listening to a single word Mr. Banner had spoken, that we would have to work.

With eachother.

Shit.

"Get started." he said in a voice that was supposed to be commanding, but, like most teacher's orders these days, ended up sounding more like a plea.

Not good, not good...

"Ladies first, partner?"

I turned around, once again, to face his awfully beautiful smirk.

"Er..." I prayed to all religious rulers I could think of at the moment that I wouldn't drool.

"Or I could start, if you wish."

The look he gave me had me running my hand across my chin checking for the feared drool, which, thankfully, was not there.

I guess my staring just makes me look really dumb.

I blushed, but said "No, I can."

I tried, in an attempt to regain a few intelligence points, to take as little time as humanly possible to identify the phase at hand, but my clumsiness probably made me look even dumber, if that was possible.

Despite my physical awkwardness, we managed to finish before anybody else.

I tried to focus on my sketch again, but it felt as if he was staring at me.

I looked up at him to confirm my paranoia, and yes, I was right. There he was, golden eyes boring a hole through my skull with their-

Golden eyes?

"Did you get contacts?" I asked, staring skeptically at him.

"No." he answered shortly, giving me an odd look, and then looking away.

"Oh."

So, not only did he at times look like he felt like ripping people's heads off, he was also a liar.

I knew for a very certain fact that his eyes had been black as coal the last time we'd had a close encounter with one another.

The sheer creepiness of them had made me need to go to the crappers.

They, literally, freaked the shit out of me.

After Mr. Banner had checked our results, he once again began one of his world renowned (well, in the "World of Bella", anyway) Staringfest's.

This time it was he who was speaking Awkwardnese.

"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?"

Urgh, I'd tried really hard to forget that there had even been any of that icky crap around today.

"Not really." I said, continuing to add more and more complicated layers to my sketch in an attempt to act nonchalant.

As if he didn't have as big an effect on me as he in reality did.

"You don't like the cold." he stated.

"Nope."

I could see, out of the corner of my eye, that he was still staring at me, seemingly completely consumed by our somewhat onesided conversation.

"Or the wet." I added.

Meh, might as well humor the boy. If it's info he wants...

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live." he said, I could tell by his voice that he was smirking.

I shrugged, a non-committing response.

He was silent, as if he was waiting for me to say something else.

After a while, he must have decided that I wasn't going to add anything else, so he said, "Why did you move here?"

I stopped drawing and turned around to look at his curious expression.

"That's really none of your business." I said, now boring my eyes into his head.

See it as a revenge stare, Cullen.

He smiled curtly. "I guess not."

I gave him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. I just... It really is none of your business."

He smiled again, this time a bit more sincerely. "I'll respect your privacy. Let's talk about something else."

Though parts of him scared me witless, and others confused me beyond the term "confusion", I found this boy, in all his glaring glory, pretty damn irresistable.

I thought of the glimt in Daphne's eyes when she spoke of Dylan, and half wished, half feared that a similar one could be found in my own at the moment.