Talk of the Teachers Lounge

A/N: So, these chapters are mostly going to be short, but I want you guys to have a little more to read at once, so expect me to combine a few days of gossip into one chapter (right now we're in the first and second weeks of Bella's arrival). Also, I could use a beta reader, so if you have the time and you're interested, please PM me!

Shelly Cope POV

I was back in the teacher's lounge. Again. But how could you blame me? With a new student in town, I finally had something to talk about. My enormous coffee mug was not even half-empty so far, and as long as I had any coffee left, I would be here.

"So," I began, "I guess the students are finally getting tired of gossiping about the new girl."

"Ah, yes, Bella Swan," said Mr. Mason, who until now I'd thought was entirely absorbed in his crossword puzzle. "She's a pretty good student; I have her in one of my English classes. She is a bit of a klutz, though; she's hasn't been here for one week, and she's already managed to trip over one of my other students."

"'A bit of a klutz'? Are you kidding me?" Coach Clapp asked incredulously. "I didn't even know you could trip over your own feet, until I met Ms. Swan, that is. And the way she's been going, everybody in my gym class will have to be carried out in a stretcher soon."

"Wait," I said. "Is Newton still flirting with Bella? She hasn't gotten him injured yet? I mean, how long will he go on before he realizes it's not worth it to put himself in danger like that?"

"It's not funny, Shelly, really. I'm responsible for all these kids—if Newton gets a concussion because he wants to be on Bella's team, I'm the one who's going to be blamed, not the girl. And I'm a gym teacher, not a babysitter."

"But you were just wishing for a new student a couple weeks ago! Is the poor girl not good enough? You know, I'm sure she's having a hard enough time here without you wishing she were somebody else."

"She doesn't have to be somebody else; I just wish she wasn't so lethal! That girl's a danger magnet stronger than I've ever seen before!"

"Well, you know—"

Mr. Mason must have been very annoyed at that point, because he interrupted me then to whistle. And I learned right then that Mr. Mason was a very loud whistler. He had our attention in half a second.

"Please," he begged, "please, just let me finish my crossword puzzle in peace. I deal with enough children during my classes; I don't need you two bickering. You two alone are worse than two of my classes combined!"

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then I snickered, "You know, speaking of lethal, do you do that whistle thing to your students? Because if so, I may want to start moving your students to other classes. That's really not fair."

"I use it on occasion," he admitted. "Seventeen juniors crammed into a room together for an hour can be pretty loud. Of course, they always spend the next five minutes trying to imitate the sound, so it doesn't help as much as you might think."

We laughed for a little longer, and quiet invaded the lounge until a few minutes later when the bell rang. The three of us groaned as we stood up to go back to the chaos in the rest of the school. It got a lot louder for about ten seconds as Mr. Mason and Coach Clapp walked out the door into the noisy, bustling hallway. We said our good-byes, and then I was standing in a tiny teachers lounge with only some furniture and a coffee machine for company.

I glanced into my coffee mug and frowned. I still had about a quarter of the cup to go, and it wasn't decaf coffee. As I downed the rest of the coffee, I could feel the rush of energy shoot through me. It's a good thing the day is almost over, I thought, because when all this caffeine wears off in a couple hours, I'm going to need to be near a nice couch or bed. I wonder if I even remember how to stay awake without the energy from all this caffeine. Maybe it's finally time to switch to decaf.

Almost ready to go home, I followed Coach Clapp and Mr. Mason out the door and walked back down to the front office and the big calendar that counted down all the school days for me. There would probably be more attendance slips for me. Or maybe the school had found some mistake with Bella's schedule that they wanted me to fix immediately. Either way, catching up on all the gossip at the teachers' lounge was my new favorite part of the day. I almost couldn't wait for Monday to start next week, just because I wanted to see if anything exciting would happen.

The weekend was pretty uneventful for me. I spent my Friday night watching TV with a bowl of popcorn in my lap, and other than that, the most exciting thing I did was probably when I went grocery shopping on Saturday. Monday was also typical. It did snow on Monday, but I prided myself on having more to talk about than the weather, especially in Forks where all it ever did was rain.

Tuesday was the big story of the week, it turned out.

It had all started like a normal Tuesday; I drove to the school, and I was about to go inside and dry myself off when I saw Tyler's van skid on the fresh layer of snow and ice. Time seemed to slow down as I saw the van hurtling right towards Bella Swan, and I rushed forward to see what had happened.

Bella was there along with Edward, and miraculously, they both looked fine—Bella's truck must have absorbed most of impact. An ambulance brought them to the Forks hospital, and I felt the urge to follow the ambulance along with some of the upperclassmen who were driving toward the hospital. I knew I couldn't though, since the nurse and I were expected to notify and calm down the students' parents in a situation like this.

I went to the front office, and I found that Mrs. Hammond, our nurse had already started making the calls. Although I was itching to get over to the teachers' lounge and spread the news, I knew that this was a bad time to try to leave the office. I settled for sending out an email telling the entire staff that Edward Cullen, Tyler Crowley, and Isabella Swan were at the hospital, not cutting their classes. I was in charge of reporting the students who cut classes, so none of the kids would have gotten in trouble anyway, but this way I sounded like I was trying to do my job instead of just gossip.

The rest of the day was pretty hectic as we tried to focus the students back on school. I didn't have a chance to run back to the teachers' lounge and drink a ton of coffee, but I did pass Coach Clapp in the hallway.

"Wow, Coach," I said, "you were right about Swan. That girl is lethal!"

He paled, and I could see that what he was going to say next really worried him. "What if that was my fault?" he asked. "Maybe if I hadn't said anything—"

"Oh, stop it. You know it would have happened anyway, and in any case, it's not really so bad. Even Tyler only had some scratches, and he was hurt the worst of all of them.

He still looked unhappy, but I didn't have time to reason with him; I had to go back to my desk in case anybody called about the accident or the principal came in to ask me if we'd gotten all the students back yet.

I'd seen and heard worse, so I wasn't worried, but all of the other teachers seemed to be stressed about the accident, especially when the students involved didn't come back to school that day. I was interested in the story, but only because everybody else was talking about it, and I was happy, not anxious. Somehow, the new girl had gotten the whole school talking, and I could tell there would be more to say about her for a while. I liked Isabella Swan already.

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