A/N: hey! to all of you who have this on story alert, you will have noticed some major changes already. Besides changing the title and summery, I also rewrote parts of the former chapter one and seperated it into a prolouge and a chapter. I suggest you go read the prolouge first, I changed quite a lot there. This chapter remained mostly the same, but I did add a few things.
Without further ado, chapter two! (hey, that ryhmed! :D)
Disclaimer: Nope, don't own it, never have, never will. *sigh*
Renesmee's POV
"Eve! Conan! Get down here! It's time for school. You can't be late again. I know this is your second time in high school, but it's still important."
"Okay, Mom!" they shouted in unison. They raced down the stairs and grabbed their book bags off the couch. I kissed each of them on the forehead.
"Now be good today," I warned. "No showing off, especially you, Conan."
"I'll be good, Mom," he promised, giving me a sly grin. I began to wonder what sort of trouble he would get himself into.
"Now there's the bus. Hurry up. Remember, Bella and Edward are picking you up to day and you are going to Esme and Carlisle's today. Your father and I will be there later. And so will your Aunt and Uncles."
Conan cheered. He was always excited to see Emmett. However, I wasn't always so thrilled about it. Emmett tended to be a bad influence at times, which made Conan attach himself to him all the more. A smile broke on Eve's face as well. She enjoyed the company of her aunts.
"Now off with you two!" I smiled, playfully pushing my children out the door.
They ran off to the end of the drive way, racing at full speed, about as fast as an Olympic sprinter, until they were in sight the road, at which they slowed down to a slightly normal pace.
I smiled as a watched them. Jacob came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
"Good Morning, dear," I murmured.
"It's wolf to you. How dare you call me a deer?" he responded teasingly. I laughed and turned around in his arms to kiss him gently on the lips.
We watched as our children disappeared out of sight. I remembered back to about twenty years ago, when I had first told my mother I was pregnant.
It was 2067, and Jake and I had been married for fifty years. I desperately wanted a child of my own. For the past fifty years of our marriage, my mother had insisted that we not attempt to have children. She didn't want me to die, as she almost had.
Finally, the want for children overwhelmed me. I was pregnant three weeks afterwards. It took me nearly another week to gather up enough courage to tell my mom. But my quickly growing bump was becoming difficult to hide. When I told her, she was silent for several, excruciatingly long minutes. Then she got up and merely said, "Well, I guess I should find all your old baby things, shouldn't I?"
She accepted my decision to have children, and thoroughly adored and spoiled her grandchildren, but our relationship hadn't been the same since. She was mad at me, and I knew that my father, though he mostly blamed Jacob, was mad as well. Therefore, gatherings of all the family, like the one tonight were always a little tense. We always managed to survive though, somehow.
"Are there any leftovers from Eve and Conan's breakfast? Or did Conan eat everything?" Jacob's words pulled me back into the presence.
I smiled. "Don't worry. I saved you plenty," I assured him.
I intertwined my fingers with his and led him into the kitchen, smiling at the perfect life we had somehow managed to create.
Eve's POV:
Conan and I got on the bus together. I sat in the front and he went farther back to sit with all of his friends. I didn't have any friends. Since I couldn't tell anyone what my family and I truly were, it was hard for me to relate to anyone enough to befriend them. But that wasn't the only reason.
The mere fact that I could kill a human with one wrong, uncontrolled movement made me shy away from them. The bloodlust was not overpowering; I only needed blood about once a month, but if a human walked too close at the wrong time, it would be disastrous.
There were other things as well that drove the humans away from me. My vampire qualities, the too-quick movement, unnatural beauty, razor sharp teeth, all of it made the humans instinctually avoid me. I didn't fit in with them. I was too pretty, too smart, too mature.
The bus jerked to a stop in front of the school, shaking me from my reverie. I stood up and groaned, bracing myself for another day of complete boredom. I stumbled off the bus, tripping at least three times.
"Clumsy as ever," I muttered to myself.
I, of course, inherited none of the supernatural gracefulness from my mother. Conan, on the other hand, could run up and down the field or court, and easily catch what was being thrown at him and looked almost as graceful as a full vampire would while doing it. I, on the other hand, struggled to remain upright while walking on perfectly flat surfaces.
Everyone said that I got it from my grandmother. They joked that she had been the clumsiest human alive at one time. I knew it was an exaggeration, but from the look she got on her face when the topic was brought up, almost like she was blushing, but without the actual flush in her cheeks, made me believe it to be partially true. Nonetheless, it was still hard to believe, looking at her now.
I walked slowly to class. My slow gait could be attributed to two reasons. One, I was dreading to learn, yet again, about symbolism in short stories. Secondly, I didn't want to trip.
I walked into English, my least favorite class. The scatter-brained teacher annoyed me to no end. I found my seat and sat down. Even walking slowly, I was the first one to class. The teacher sat at her desk, typing away on her computer. After a few minutes, another person walked into the room. I caught her scent; it wasn't familiar, but at the same time it was. It didn't smell like one of my classmates, but it seemed like I had smelled it before. I turned around in my desk and gasped when I saw the new arrival.
With my enhanced sight I could see the way the fluorescents made her skin glimmer slightly, not enough for a human to notice, but definitely enough for me to notice. She had beautiful, dark red hair that fell in perfect waves just past her shoulders. Her eyes were a deep green color; she was just as gorgeous as any other immortal I had met. I knew at one she was a half vampire.
"Hello," I stuttered timidly. "Are you new here?"
"Yes, my name is Emma," she said in a clear, confident voice, edged with a slight accent that I identified as Italian. She sat down at a desk near mine. Too quiet for the teacher to hear, she added. "Are you -?"
"Yes, I am an immortal, and you are as well, I assume," I stated, trying to hide my excitement. I didn't want to set my hopes high. It was already too good to be true that I had stumbled upon another of my own kind right here in this small school.
"Yes," she answered, and then added, a tone of curiosity in her voice. "Are you part of a coven?"
"Yes, my family. We are very large and live in several locations in the area. We have to split up to appear less ostentatious."
"How many are there?" she asked. I wondered what sort of family she came from. I wondered if she even had one. I had heard stories about the violent births of these half breeds. The mother usually died in the process, and in most accounts, the vampire father didn't even realize he had fathered a child. I suddenly felt badly for this beautiful girl, and I subconsciously wondered what had brought her to this school.
"We total twelve in all. Myself, my brother, our parents, their parents, and three other vampire couples. And then there are two covens that we consider like cousins to ours. A coven of three vampire couples and my father's brother, kind of, and his mate," I explained.
"That is quite a large number. How do you remain inconspicuous? This area doesn't even have any large cities."
"Well, aside from living separately, my family does not drink the blood of humans. We feed strictly off the blood of animals."
"How strange…" she mused, half fascinated, half repulsed.
The classroom had started to fill up so we couldn't continue our conversation any longer. She was the topic of all the whispered conversations. How embarrassed would they be if they knew she could hear their every word?
After class, I caught up to her in the hall and asked her if she would like to join me at lunch. She agreed and we parted ways. I found myself anxious for lunch to come. For the first time, I felt that perhaps I would find a friend in this girl, since we could reveal our true selves.
Finally lunch came. I went swiftly through the lunch line, getting just a salad and an apple. I told anyone who asked that my mom was a health fanatic, but really, the smell and taste of anything that had been over-processed, fried, or covered in chemicals made my stomach turn. I stuck to mostly natural foods. People often thought I was on a diet because I ate healthy and in small amounts. The truth was that I really didn't need to eat much, only about one thousand calories a day, which was less than half of what a normal human needed.
I sat down at my usual table, a small, four person table in the back corner of the cafeteria. I watched as Emma entered the cafeteria. Like me, she just grabbed an apple and a salad. She walked over to where I was sitting and sat down across from me.
"Hello again" she said, smiling sincerely.
"Hey, how was the rest of your morning?" I asked politely, trying not to sound too eager to be friends. I didn't want to scare her off.
"Boring," she said, making sure to roll her eyes pointedly. "This is my 8th time in high school and I have 6 college degrees."
"That is a lot," I tried to hide my shock. "I'm guessing you are fairly old then?"
"Yes, I'll be 80 in a few months."
"Then you are about the same age as my mother," I reasoned. "She had her eightieth birthday two months ago."
"How old are you?" she wondered, taking a bite from her apple, the crimson skin matching her ruby lips.
"I'm nearly 22. This is only my second time in high school and I only have one college degree," I told her, picking at my own food.
"In what?" she asked me, now poking a fork around in her salad. I could see her face twitch slightly as she took a bit. Human food had no more appeal to her than it did to me.
"Literature," I answered.
We ate in silence for several minutes. Emma chewed the small bites of her salad thoughtfully. After a moment, she asked, "So, who are all the members of your coven?"
"Well, family really." I corrected. The bond between our coven was much different than most. "Well there's my brother, Conan, he's the one sitting at the table over there. And then there's my mother, and she's a half vampire and then my father, who is a werewolf."
"A werewolf?" she asked, incredulous.
"Well shape-shifter, really. He just transforms into a wolf, my brother too. He's a Quileute Indian and it's a genetic thing in the tribe. It's kind of hard to explain."
"Oh, continue," she said, her eyes full of wonder. She seemed to have completely forgotten about her food.
"Next there are my grandparents, Edward and Bella. Bella had my mother when she was still human. My grandfather was changed almost two hundred years ago by Carlisle, our coven leader, you could say. Carlisle also changed his wife, Esme, and Rosalie and her husband Emmett. Alice and Jasper were changed by other vampires then joined Carlisle's family. "
"Wow! That's so many people! What are they like?" She didn't bother to hide her surprise.
"It would take me forever to explain!" I exclaimed, but was secretly glad she took interest in me. Barely anyone had taken notice of me before, and I found I was craving this newfound attention.
Emma's face fell as she turned back to her food. Her disappointment was all too apparent.
"Oh! I'm sorry" I apologized quickly. "It's just that it would take a while. You know, everyone is getting together tonight, why don't you come with the rest of your coven?" As soon as I said the words, I remembered my earlier concern about her family. What if she didn't really have anyone to look after her? Her face showed no sign that my words had offended her. Instead, she answered,
"Are you sure that would be alright with your family?" she asked politely, but I could tell how much she wanted to come.
I sighed with relief. How stupid was I, almost ruining this friendship in less than a day! I would have to me more careful.
"I'm sure of it," I replied confidently, "They are the kindest, most loving people I've ever met. They will definitely welcome your family."
"Oh! Thank you so much!" Emma squealed, with a huge grin on her face, nearly bouncing up and down in her seat. She reminded me intensely of Alice for a moment.
"So tell me about your coven," I dared to ask.
"It's much smaller than yours, only me and my adoptive parents, Thomas and Maria." I could tell from the tone in her voice that she loved them very much.
"What happened to your real parents?" My curiosity was taking the better of me. I prayed that I had not gone too far.
"My adoptive parents found my mother dead shortly after I was born and no one knows who my father is," she replied sadly.
"I'm sorry," I said, and I truly was. I couldn't imagine life without my family.
She waved it off. "It's okay, I never knew them anyways."
We ate in silence yet again after the awkward ending to our conversation. Before long Conan got up from his table and walked over.
"Hey Eve, who's this?" he asked, motioning to Emma.
"Way to be blunt Conan," I muttered before saying, "This is Emma, she and her coven just moved into the area."
"Coven?" he asked, trying not to sound too surprised. I could see him taking in Emma's appearance, almost immediately recognizing her as quickly as I had.
"Hi, I'm Conan," he said as he offered his hand. She extended her arm and shook his hand. Their hands lingered in each other's longer than necessary.
"Conan, I invited Emma to come tonight," I told him, suddenly angry. The only friend I could make on my own, and Conan was already going to steal her away with his never failing charm.
"Cool, cool," he mumbled, obviously distracted. I smacked him sharply on the arm, my jealousy getting the better of me. The blow was effective in getting Conan's attention, though the same smack would have shattered a human's arm bone. He rubbed his arm and winced.
"Hey that hurt!" he complained, rubbing his tender arm.
"No it didn't you big wuss" I said, not bothering to hide my irritation. "Now why don't you go back to your posse? Before you get hurt again."
"At least I have friends" he jeered. I was ready to strangle him and might have if we weren't in a crowded cafeteria.
"Hmm, you must be blind if you can't see who is sitting here," I retaliated immediately, without thinking.
"Whatever sis." He shrugged nonchalantly before walking back to his posse.
"So, are we friends now?" I asked nervously. I was so frightened I had gone too far this time.
"I guess you could say that," she grinned, her entire face lighting up.
I sighed with relief. "I've never had a real friend before, you know. I just couldn't feel like I would be a good friend always having to keep secrets from my friends."
"I've felt that way to!" she exclaimed. "But we can be the best of friends! No secrets!"
"Pinkie swear?" I asked putting my elbow on the table and sticking my pinkie out. I knew that pinkie swearing had been out of fashion for decades but I felt that the old custom would be appropriate for the occasion.
"Pinkie swear," she said solemnly as we shook pinkies. This simple promise made me feel happier than I had in years.
We spent the rest of lunch talking about normal girly things like the latest movies, make-up, music, the latest episode of American Idol, now on its 134th season, and so many other things. We could've talked for hours more, but were cut short by the bell.
I sat anxiously through my afternoon classes. I couldn't wait till tonight! I would get to see Emma again and the rest of my family. I was sure Emma and I would have tons of fun tonight with Alice and Rosalie. Finally, the last bell of the day rang, and setting me free from the binds of school.
I quickly gathered my books and stuffed them into my backpack. I walked out of school and found my grandpa and grandma sitting in Edward's Volvo, silver of course. I also found Conan and Emma talking together on the lawn. Jealousy bubbled within me once again.
"Hey Emma!" I said, trying to mask my anger. I turned to Conan and said, "Come on Conan, Edward is already here and you don't want to keep him waiting."
"Well I guess I should be going then," Emma said, her eyes lingering on Conan.
"Yeah, we'll see you tonight though, right?" I reminded her, already trying to think of ways to keep Conan away from her. He already had enough friends.
"Definitely! I can't wait to meet your family."
"See you later," I called as she walked off to where the buses lined the roads. She turned around and waved. I started walking to the Volvo, expecting Conan to follow. When he didn't, I turned around and rolled my eyes.
"Conan! Earth to Conan! Can you hear me?" I didn't try to hide the annoyance in my voice.
"Huh, what do you want?" He had completely zoned out again. What was with him?
"Stop gawking and hurry up!" I yelled at him.
"Fine, I'm coming," he said and finally began walking to the Volvo.
"Who were you talking to?" Edward asked almost as soon as we were in the car.
"Nice to see you too," Conan muttered. He was always the one to give some attitude.
"Her name is Emma. She recently moved here with her coven," I answered. "I invited her and her coven to come tonight. I hope that's okay."
"Coven?" ask Bella, sounding shocked. We only used the word 'coven' when referring to our kind.
I hesitated as I answered. "She a half vampire…like Mom."
Bella and Edward exchanged glances. I heard Edward mumble something about telling Carlisle about this.
"It should be fine, Eve, darling," Bella turned to smile at me. "Carlisle will be eager to know about this."
The whole ride home, I crossed my fingers, hoping that tonight would still be on.
A/N: Hope you liked it! Please review!!!