Chapter 1
Every parent tells their children that their senior year is supposed to be the best year of their life, filled with excitement, memories that you will cherish and look back on and laugh. But it's just a stage in our lives. High school is just high school. The only thing that makes senior year different from the previous years of school is the fact that this is the last one, so you finally have something to look forward to. There's nothing exciting about it except the fact that next year half of us are going to college to attend underage drinking filled frat parties and the other half, like myself, just can't wait to get out of this small town and onto the rest of our lives. It's almost half way through my senior year and the most exciting thing that has happened to me is when I got my new Nikon camera that I use for photography. That is, until Isabella Swan stumbled into my life.
Sexuality has never been a big thing to my family and me. Some of my distant family members are gay and even my mother once told me stories of her "experimenting" in high school and college while trying to give me the awkwardly embarrassing, pre-teen sex talk. I don't even have a scary, emotional "coming out" story. I just never put an actual label on my sexuality. And everybody at school knows it. I'm not a social outcast. Everybody is fine with everything. I'm not hated by the whole town and there's no big group of homophobic teenagers that make my life a living hell Monday through Friday.
Unlike those horrible small towns most people complain about, West Concord, Massachusetts isn't some hick, homophobic town with a star football team and dads sitting with shotguns on the porch. It's just one of those towns where the population is 6,028 and everybody knows everybody. It's a town where you grow up with the same kids and attend the same schools with them, kindergarten through twelfth grade. Yes we do have the occasional new comer, like I was in the third grade. New people are like shiny new toys here. When you're eight it's really fun and exciting to be the shiny new toy, but when you're a teenager I can imagine it can be quite uncomfortable.
So when Mr. Garnier had her stand up in front of the entire classroom to state her name plus other usual statements, I felt bad for her. Isabella Swan, a beautiful name. And of course you don't really know when one of those life moments hit you. But Isabella Swan was MY moment. Her tall stature with the light gleaming off of her aviator sunglasses that laid carelessly on her head made me really look at her. She was holding what was obviously a leather jacket in her hand, which made her look mysteriously sexy. To say I was smitten from the start would be a complete understatement. But I'm not the type of person to automatically think like that or stupidly jump into things. Her chocolate brown eyes scanned the room until she looked right at me. Yes right next to me is the only empty seat left in the classroom, but her looking at me definitely built my ego up.
As she walked down the aisle you could see a number of immature guys trying to stare at her ass. She kept walking with a smirk on her flawless face until she reached the seat right next to me. When she sat down, she turned to me with her that smirk and winked, then turned back to pay attention to the teacher lecturing about ancient roman philosophers. We didn't talk for the rest of the period.
When the bell obnoxiously rang, she glanced at me with a smile and walked out of the classroom. I was the last one out of the class and had to slowly jog across the campus towards my next period to get there before I was late again.
When I walked in I was automatically bombarded by my best friend since I entered this town, and my next door neighbor, Alice Cullen. "Did you see the new girl? I saw her this morning when she drove up on her bike, which is dead sexy by the way. I think she's your type! Ya know, if she roles that way…wait do you even have a type? You know Rose you need to date before you become a crazy old lesbian with fifty cats" I rolled my eyes at her craziness.
I metaphorically "came out of the closet" to the school in tenth grade. That very same day, Andrea looked up the closest gay pride parade, which was held in Boston. Being the sneaky individual she is, she asked for my parents' permission behind my back and kidnapped me for the weekend to take me. The first night we arrived, we made t-shirts in the hotel room. My t-shirt had a simple rainbow pattern with two of the female symbols linked together, while hers was shiny and stated that her best friend liked girls. We got plenty of compliments that weekend about them and even made friends from different towns that we still meet up with on occasion. It was an incredible miniature vacation that turned into an unforgettable adventure.
Alice and I have been inseparable since the first day I met her. We were introducing ourselves in my front yard. Her parents were helping mine bring in moving boxes from the moving van and into our new house. As we were talking about whatever eight-year-olds talk about, My twin brother Jasper, pulled my ponytail. I cried to say the least. She retaliated for me by punching him in the nose. She broke it. He said sorry to me. And ever since then she's had him wrapped around her pinky finger and us three have been best friends.
Four years later, he finally grew a pair and built up enough courage to kiss her as we were all walking home and asked her to be his girlfriend. They have been together ever since. They are the town's most loved teenage couple and are most likely going to become the prom king and queen this spring.
All three of us have had almost every class together since what feels like the beginning of time. So when Alice basically attacked me with her rambling, it wasn't surprising that she was holding Jasper's hand. We took our seats in the back of the room as we do every day. When the teacher walked into the classroom, Alice softly chatted my ear off and Jasper was actually paying attention to our spastic English teacher.
Five minutes into the lesson, a soft knocking interrupted Mrs. Warner's monotone blabbering. As Isabella strolled in through the door, you could see that her glasses were covering her gorgeous brown eyes and her jacket was on this time. Alice elbowed me in the stomach and gave me an excited thumbs up as I glanced over at her.
Our school is relatively small. Small schools equals packed classroom. Like my previous class, my second period had limited seating. The only two seats that were available was the one up at the front of the class, and the seat right in front of me.
Once she saw me, she grinned and casually walked down the rows of desks till she sat in the seat front of me. "Nice to see your face again, Beautiful" She smirked, as she took her sunglasses off. I blushed and smiled. I wouldn't say I'm ugly, but I'm not beautiful. My monotone blonde hair, average body type, and height of five foot eight height is what made me ordinary. The only thing attractive about me would be my violet eyes According to Alice, it was my best feature. "Hi." I said softly.
Alice quickly stuck out her hand. "I'm Alice and this is my boyfriend, Jasper." Isabella shook both of their hands while smiling brightly. "Isabella Swan. But please just call me Bella. And your name darlin'?" She said as she turned her heads towards me. I looked up at her with a shy smile and stuttered my name. "Rosalie Hale." Her grin widened and she turned back into her seat. As class continued, the last thing on my mind was the English proverbs or the upcoming assignments. I was aware of my surroundings, but my mind was filled with images of bright brown eyes and the sound of her voice echoing through my head.
Alice was trying to get to know Bella and Bella was happily replying to her questions with a smile on her face. I caught her trying to a glance at me more than once, which I thought was quite adorable. Alice must have caught it too because she had to kick my leg to stop one of our staring contests. With that, I looked down at the desk and laid my head down to try to hide my blushing.
When the bell rang, everyone got up quickly, trying to escape the dreadfully boring classroom. Well everyone except me. I didn't even hear the dratted bell through my so called day dream. I was jolted out of my haze by a tingling sensation caused by a hand softly shaking my shoulder. "You don't wanna be late for your next class sunshine! What do you have next? Maybe we have another class together." She handed me her schedule and I looked through it. At West Concord High School, it wasn't weird when kids at the exact same schedule or at least a lot of classes together.
So when her schedule was the same as mine, I wasn't shocked. "Well it looks like you're stuck with me all day!" I smiled. "That sounds good to me! Lead the way then darlin'!" She then looped her arm through mine and we slowly walked our way down the hallways to Study Hall.
We sat in a secluded section of the library and quietly acted like goof balls and got to know each other. Our laughing had gotten us more than one warning from the librarian. In the middle of our joking around, I took her sunglasses off her head and put them on myself. "How do I look?" I giggled, turning towards her and making a face. "Badass, Sunshine!" She grinned. Then I lifted my arms and pretended to flex my non-existent muscles. We busted out into a semi-quiet fit of giggles, which caused us our final warning from the stingy librarian. We spent the rest of the sixty minutes talking about things we hate and things we love.
I explained to her my love for Nutella, while she tried to convince me that strawberry ice cream tasted better than chocolate. She talked about how she moved here, with her aunt, from Washington and I told her all about the school and West Concord itself. "Sadly there's not much to do in town if you're into going partying and going out 24/7 and all that stuff. Alice, Jasper, and I hang out at my house and watch Netflix and whatever junk food we want. Y-you could join us this Friday, if you want to..?" I stuttered. She looked shocked. Then she looked at me with that smile that make my lungs go out. "Of course darlin', It's a date!"
Something about that sentence made something in me just clicked. I don't know why or how it happened. But something told me that Isabella Swan was going to change my outlook on life. We spent the rest of our morning classes getting to know each other more and more.