Chapter 1

First Sight

"It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them. They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room…"

-Twilight, 18:1

It was the first day of school again. I wasn't particularly looking forward to going back to Forks High School, but we didn't have much choice if we wanted to stay here as long as we were. Rosalie looked the incarnation of perfect perfection, as usual. She had combed her glistening gold curls until they shone even more than usual. Her pale face had a sour look on it as she poked it around the doorframe of our bathroom. "Alice," she said, sounding annoyed. "Have you seen my favorite black top?"

I had seen it in the laundry the day before. "No," I said, just to annoy her. Rose could be extremely pig-headed sometimes. She was sour because she didn't have her favorite top. The act was so human that I almost wanted to laugh out loud. As if both of us didn't have the rest of eternity to wear our favorite outfits: we would never outgrow them in any case.

I continued trying to find my own favorite top. There was a word for this: hypocrite. I frowned, flipping through my closet a second time. My super-charged vampire brain thought. Where had I put that stupid turtleneck? Wait a minute. "ROSALIE!" I yelled, sprinting down the hall. She had a mischievous grin on her face as I reached she and Emmett's room. "WHERE DID YOU PUT MY TURTLENECK?" I asked, glaring at her. Rose smiled innocently. "What turtleneck?"

Of course, that smile wasn't going to buy me for a minute, having lived with Rose for a good half century now. Granted, I decided to play along. "Oh, nevermind. You mind if I sit down?" Rose looked alarmed for a split second before composing her face readily. "Sure," she said breezily, patting the mattress next to her absently. I noticed that her arm muscles were tensed.

As I sat down, I reached under the mattress, probing for what felt like cashmere. I found it. My fingertips grasped the fabric and pulled. It was a sock. Rosalie was doubled over with ridiculing laughter as I threw the dirty sock across the room. "That…was…Emmett's…ball-playing…sock," she gasped for air, grinning evilly at me. "OH I'LL GET YOU FOR THAT!" I launched myself and started tickling her. Rosalie, even though she wasn't ticklish, laughed.

Edward was driving as usual. Rosalie pouted, also as usual, that we couldn't be ostentatious and drive her convertible. Right, like we could stay undercover much longer with that red beast roaring around, especially over 80 miles an hour. As soon as I had lightly shut the door, Edward was off, steering the car with a relaxed hand and trying to find something jammed in the seat with the other. His eyes constantly left the road, and the car didn't swerve a bit. It felt as if we were standing still, but the flashing greenery by the window proved that assumption wrong.

There was practically only one normal road in Forks; it was a town of trails. Off of the rusted silver-railed main road was the large, rotting sign: FORKS HIGH SCHOOL. I peeked out of the Volvo's windows, seeing the almost-empty campus stretched out before my eyes. We were always here early; it came with the need for speed. I suppressed a smile, seeing a few early birds chattering nervously by the gym.

The blast of the smell of blood always hit me hard, all of the humans milling around here. They were fairly normal-smelling people; you could say that to humans, they were the average meal. It was our private joke. Every now and then, there would be the odd one out that smelled a little different, but I could handle that. After all, I'd been handling it for the last half century.

We didn't spend the summer with people; we spent it out in the open with each other. There were a lot of "camping" trips, some which were actually camping trips and not hunting expeditions. The spacious house couldn't make us reckless, even though to vampires, time is an annoyance. It was a bit sorrowful seeing everybody around us growing old, having children, when we never would. We had all the time in the world, quite literally.

The door of the shiny silver Volvo clicked shut gently behind me as I waltzed out with my small and dainty backpack slung over my shoulder, and the turtleneck on, after finally found it under the bed, (strange…). Heads turned, as few as there was then, toward us, just as they had everyday of last year. I thought that the whispering intensified. Edward's eyes were narrowed. I wondered what both he, and they, were thinking.

A bulbous red cab of an old model car caught my eye. The engine stopped blasting, and a pale girl climbed out. From here, with my powerful eyes, I could see that her skin was almost as pale as my own, which was surprising. Even with the pale people here from lack of sun, she was even paler. Her skin looked transparent. Her hair was slightly wavy and a golden honey color. She climbed self-consciously out of the car, looking around and scowling a little.

She was definitely a newbie; that much was obvious.

I looked twice. Wait. Could it be? The girl from my visions? I squinted closely. Yes! It was her. The others were already moving at a human speed toward the lunch benches. I continued looking at her as I forced myself to drag my feet along. "Move, Alice!" I commanded myself. The leaden feet moved a little. It had been a long time since I had stared at anything less than vampire. This girl was human: how could, how SHOULD she affect me and my family?

"Edward," I caught up with my older brother. His golden eyes looked at me. We always fed before the first day of school; it helped to overpower the sense of blood all around us. "It's the girl. The one from my visions." Edward's face wouldn't have shown change to those around us, but I knew him well enough to know that the wrinkled marble of his forehead was more than an itch. It was worry.

His voice was all and full of forced calm as he let it out through gritted teeth. "Let it go, Alice."

"What?" I asked him blankly. I knew that I sounded like an imbecile, but this was my brother, who had spent half a summer worrying right along with me about the girl that repeatedly appeared in my visions. "I saw that girl, Edward. Her, particularly, as a vam-" Edward shushed me. "Alice!" he hissed. "Not here," and I realized that all eyes had been turned on us, in our own little private bubble, like we always were: the pale outsiders, the ones who were different.

Jasper had his large, pale hands on my shoulders. I closed my eyes, let out an optional breath through my nostrils, and opened my eyes again, trying to stare Edward down. "No. We talk, now. I know that you don't want to face the fact that one of us will be the one to kill the girl. She will become one of us, isn't that clear? I had a vision of her multiple times, pale and with red eyes. We can't just ignore it, if that's what you're asking for, Edward! You know better than that," I said forcefully.

Edward sighed, raking a hand through his messy bronze hair. "Alice, please. Can we not talk about this? At least not now?" His butterscotch eyes were pleading. Jasper had released his hold on my shoulders. "Not now, then," I agreed. "But you can't avoid the subject forever." With that, I turned on my heel and walked ahead of my three brothers and sister to my first class as the buzzer bell rang.

My morning's thoughts were preoccupied by the girl.

Walking into the crowded, bustling lunchroom at the school was a lot like walking into a crowd of fans on the red carpet, in Hollywood. For us, the vampires, at least. I pushed open the tacky tan-colored double doors, heading instinctively toward the usual table as we had always done last year. All heads turned toward me, Alice the Graceful, and silence fell like a dark carpet across the room. I allowed myself to smile a little, but ignored them otherwise.

"Excuse me," I said politely to a group of punks, and all of their jaws dropped open. This was pathetic.

Rosalie and Jasper were already there. Edward was making his way across the room. Emmett was behind him. I pulled out my chair and was in it in the same fluent motion. I had a bottle of water, just for show, with me, but nothing else. Rosalie had an untouched plate of pizza in front of her. I raised an eyebrow at the three slices. "Rose, you know that every one of the girl population wants to know how you stay so thin." Rosalie snickered, but otherwise ignored me.

I opened my mouth, my lips humming with the speed of my words already wanting to come out of it. But Edward turned pointedly away, looking at the wall like he always did. "Her name is Isabella Swan," he said flatly, taking me by surprise. "I'm drawn to her," he confessed, looking down at the wood grains on the table. I gasped. "Edward, don't you see?" I breathed. "You're going to be the one to change her!" Edward stared at me furiously. "Alice! I don't want to talk about it."

That was that. It was all back to staring at the wall for him. Rosalie was staring at her pizza, Emmett was painfully turned away from both of them, I was still looking at Edward, painfully aware of our predicament. Jasper was inspecting his pale hand, spread out upon the lunch table. I refused to move my head out of curiosity, to simply peek at this Isabella. She was right behind us, across the lunchroom. I could hear her make the occasional comment as she was introduced to Jessica's bunch, and then she fell silent.

Edward had a frustrated expression on his face, and he turned his head slightly. At the same moment, Isabella looked up. Their eyes met for a split second before Isabella bent her head, a pretty shade of red in the face, and briskly lowered her head a little more so that her long gold hair covered up her face.

My brother kept looking at her a little longer. His stare was intense, frustrated, and looking a little bit angry. After a moment more, he looked away. I risked a glance at the girl. She was peeking at Edward, but Edward ignored her. The tendons stood out on his clenched fist on the table. I understood what it must be like for him, to be this close to a favored human that smelled remarkable. Her smell was different from the rest, it was floral in a way.

The rest of us felt it too, but it must have been worse, oh so much worse, for Edward.

Edward drove even faster than usual on the way home. The Volvo was almost protesting against the speed. I glanced at the speedometer. It was nearing 95. I pretended that I had never seen it and glared out of the window, at the flashing greenery and the houses that all looked identical. At this speed, we would be home in under 5 minutes. I adjusted my hand to a more comfortable position under my chin.

Our large, spacious house loomed up ahead. I was first out of the car, even faster than Edward. He seemed to be trying to race off the feeling that Bella, as he had told me to call her, gave him. The door was open before I was halfway there. "Slow down, Edward!" I said, worried about him as he glared at the floor, holding the door open grudgingly for me and Rosalie. Rosalie was all pig-headedness as she went up to her room.

"She's human," she sneered to Edward. "You can't even handle that?" Edward's silence scared me more than if he had just roared at her.

Edward must had told Carlisle about this newest problem, because as we sat down that night in my room, just me, Edward, and Jasper, he seemed very grave when Carlisle came in. He smiled, but it was an aggravated, bothered sort of smile. I put my elfish face in my hands. Why had I ever had a vision of her, especially as one of US?

"Its alright, Alice," said Carlisle, guessing my thoughts. "Its not your fault." I felt the slight creak of the sofa as he sat down next to me. I still had the comforting dark shield that my hands created around my face as Carlisle's muscular arms wrapped around me. I peeked around the cracks of my fingers. It was all dark, so I put my hands down and just let Carlisle, my adoptive father's, kindness wash over me.

"Its really not your fault, you know," whispered Edward, the first words that he had said to me since lunchtime. I wanted to throw my arms around them, Jasper, Carlisle, Edward, for being my family. It was a good thing I was going to have them for the rest of eternity. I mean, I should have cheered up: Edward had it worse than I did. I told him so, which drew the first smile I had seen on his face in a while.

We were a family. Whatever troubles the new human girl Bella might bring into our lives, we were going to deal with it: after all, we had all the time that we needed to figure it all out sensibly.

A/N: Please review! (Thank you for the review, by the way. This chapter was by Kami. Haillie will do the next chapter: All Alice chapters are by Kami, all Rosalies are by Haillie). The preface was short: because it was a preface. Hope this one was long enough!