The F. O. R. K. S. Academy

Chapter One
Impressions

The cafeteria felt isolated as the sun rose from behind wide windows. Rays of sunlight eventually penetrated the panes of glass and shot across the vast hall at the only rectangular table occupied at this early hour. Five teenagers with faces too young and solemn sat neatly on either side of the table, the young ones—a bronze-haired boy and a pixie girl—on one side and the older girl and boys on the other, eating in silence.

"Carlisle said there's going to be a new girl coming today," said the youngest girl, the one who had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, like a pixie.

"And I suspect you know what she's like, Alice," the bronze-haired boy replied. Edward Cullen was his name.

"Bella Swan. She's really pretty, and pale, with brown hair and eyes," Alice described matter-of-factly, her gaze never torn away from Edward as she spoke.

The biggest boy of them all beamed, looking pleased with himself. "Pretty, huh? I prefer blondes though…" He glanced at the unbearably beautiful girl beside him, unearthly with the pale morning light cast over her golden hair and pristine features.

The girl rolled her eyes and said, "Oh my God, Emmett. You are incredibly nauseating." Seeing the thoughts swirling in her mind, Edward smiled to himself. He knew Rosalie was considerably more delicate on the inside than her icy front. In fact, right now Edward would say that the older girl harbored a secret soft spot for his brother.

"Incredibly nauseating—or incredibly dashing?" Emmett drawled, winking loudly back at Rosalie. Triumphant, he exchanged a high-five with Edward across the table.

His muscular body brushed against Alice's glass of apple juice gently as he leaned across the table to reach for Edward's hand, causing the cup to tilt over slowly… Edward sighed; for all his strength and guts, Emmett could be really careless sometimes. Luckily, Jasper caught the glass before it tipped over and spilled everywhere.

"Emmett you oaf!" Rosalie shouted, her thoughts voicing the exact opposite. It's like watching a lover's quarrel, Edward thought. His brother had the good graces to look reasonably sheepish and embarrassed.

Jasper shook his head sardonically as he set the glass back in front of Alice. "Now now… children, can't you all get along?" Edward grinned crookedly. Jasper usually didn't say much, but he usually had a good point when he opened his mouth.

Alice raised her newly rescued glass at Jasper's direction in a salute. "My hero."

"Monster, more like," Emmett retorted, snorting.

"Emmett… down, boy," Edward said to his brother, calmly.

"Woof, woof, Edward."

He could have smirked. Emmett could not deny, not to one who could see into his thoughts, that he was resenting being "rejected" by a cold Rosalie. Edward had more than a feeling that the two of them would eventually work things out, and therefore he couldn't be sure how much he should interfere with this, if he should interfere at all, though Emmett would most likely sulk to him about Rosalie nonstop again later, as if Edward didn't hear about her enough in his thoughts. Long sleepless nights, too many cases of Too Much Information, obnoxious thinking voices (certain people sounded incredibly loud and obnoxious in their heads). They were some minor setbacks that came with capturing every stray thought from everyone.

Jasper's mind, however, was harder to break into when the older boy guarded his thoughts, sealing them within stoic stone walls reinforced with unforgiving steel bars. It was not that Edward couldn't read his guarded thoughts if he really wanted to, though he was too thankful for one less perpetual voice intruding upon his silence to fully attempt his ability on Jasper, to trace the smooth endless walls of Jasper's hidden thoughts to find a crack to penetrate, to enter.

"What are you doing?" Alice was peering at him in a curious way, and Edward then realized his gaze had been focused directly at his long-empty food tray, unwavering, for too long.

Hastily he answered, "I was just thinking."

"I'm simply shocked. Brother Edward—thinking?" Alice pretended to gape in shock, but her act was shattered when she began to giggle uncontrollably.

"Maybe you should be one of those people who are professional thinkers—what are they called?" Emmett exclaimed. His large fist struck the table once in excitement, making a thunderous noise that echoed through the cafeteria.

The corners of his lips lifted. "You mean a philosopher?" His eyes crinkled in sudden mirth as Emmett shrugged, agreeing.

"It's like you read his mind!"

"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen." Edward bowed his head over the table modestly, his long fingers wrapped around a ripe apple, about to lift it to his lips.

The apple, crimson in his hands, contrasted with his pale skin the way blossoms of lifeblood looked against white snow, and his jaw, his fists clenched tightly shut. The apple rolled out of his grasp and fell to the ground. The empty thud of the apple crashing to the floor was hollow. His breathing faltered.

"Getting clumsy with age, eh Edward?" Edward felt concern rising from Emmett's jaunty visage and felt new appreciation for his brother who was trying to make light of this even when deep down inside, he knew Emmett didn't understand though. No one could.

"Would you like my apple?" Jasper offered, an apple in hand.

Alice glanced at the golden-haired boy sharply. "Hey! That's my apple!"

Jasper then said, unfazed, "Would you like an apple, on behalf of Alice and me?"

"No, thank you… It's not the apple."

The bells rang then, the morning one that echoed through the entire school campus to announce the arrival of morning. Rudely. But to Edward the bells were almost musical, a canticle of silvery, clangy rings that entwined as one. It also prevented him from having to explain to Jasper and Rosalie what the apple triggered for him. The bells seemed to have brought the life back to the entire F. O. R. K. S. Academy, the kiss that broke the spell of isolation and awakened the Sleeping Beauty. The bells were assurance that he was here, at F. O. R. K. S., and safe and sound and not elsewhere.

But he could already hear the thoughts flying at him already in flurries of words and feelings as the other students woke up and began to prepare for another day in school. "Don't look so stricken," Alice said, patting his stiff shoulder comfortingly.

"Why shouldn't he? I would too, if all day I am stuck in the heads of these—" A furious Rosalie was interrupted by Emmett, who stuck a silver spoon in front of her scowling face.

"Be tranquil… Rosalie Hale… Ohhhhmm… stare into your reflection and find tranquility and peace…" Emmett said in his best zen-master slash hypnotist voice, tapping his feet on the floor in an abstract rhythm.

Rosalie's scowl deepened on her beautiful face. "All I'm seeing is a big white smudge…" Of course, trust Rosalie to seriously look at the spoon… Edward thought smilingly.

"Nay!" Emmett leapt up from his seat and seized Rosalie's lily-white hand, striking an embarrassingly dramatic pose as he kneeled on one knee beside her. Jasper was watching the two with his arms crossed and lips curled wryly in a crooked smile, speculating what might happen next. "Fair maiden, thou is haughty but the moste fair of them all! I beseech thee to believe-eth that thy visage bears no resemblance to a white smudge!"

"Brownie point for the attempt at Middle English," Alice commented from the sidelines.

"I salute thee," Jasper said to the boy, raising a glass at Emmett.

Now all of their attention was directed at Rosalie. Her eyes were narrowed and her soft lips were twisted crossly. "Of course I don't think I look like a white smudge! I was just saying there was milk on your spoon!" Her voice held a dangerous edge that bode ill for Emmett.

"Oh. Erm."

"That was somewhat anticlimactic," Edward finally said, matter-of-fact for he knew it was a misunderstanding all along. "It's like when you get terribly interested in a novel and find out in the end that all the characters die and it was all a dream, though I do no know how that would work exactly."

"Edward," Rosalie began, at last drawing her glare from Emmett. Nobody cares.

Alice's fingers were drumming against the wooden tabletop patiently. "Yeah. For the benefit for the rest for us, explain?" Jasper concurred with a nonchalant tip of his head and then, silently, took a long, hesitant sip of his coffee.

"It was nothing. Rosalie was just boasting of my utter magnificence, as usual," Edward answered innocently.

Rosalie rolled her eyes in reply and tossed her long golden hair back. Emmett's widened eyes shone with wonder at where the sunlight struck her face and gathered in a halo of light around her. She's so beautiful. And he could not believe she was not his—unbound like crisp drops of rain that slipped through his fingers when he grasped at them. Edward shuddered inwardly to break free from the hold of his brother's amorous thoughts, though it was so rare that someone had remained not Emmett's for so long. He supposed it was rare that someone had remained not Rosalie's for so long as well, a smile in his eyes. "Well there isn't much magnificence to boast of, is there?" said Rosalie. Her long legs were crossed beneath the bench, so close to touching Emmett's that Edward could feel the crackling electric between the two.

"You wound me," he said back at her, uncaring.

"Mission accomplished. Let this be the day that I have officially proven my superiority over mankind. Note to self: Purchase silver plaque and matching silver dress." Her smile was brilliant, matching the radiance of the new sun, but so, so evil.

Though Emmett's interest was piqued at the mention of… "A dress, silver dress? Tell me more—"

Alice joined in cheerfully, "But see, Rosalie, do you have Edward's fantastical special ability? That is, the fantastical ability to…"

At that, both she and Edward rose from the table and announced, "Fold napkins into swans." A swan, one of those beautiful, elegant creatures.

"That's…"

"Brilliant, Jasper? Thank you, I knew you would understand me," Edwards was saying quickly.

"Yes, brilliant, we should all simply surrender to your… 'brilliance'?" There was an abrupt pause as the lanky boy choked on his coffee. It was dark as night in a porcelain cup, as if no light could penetrate the shadowy liquid. Dark as the lake of his gaze… Alice felt a sudden jolt inside.

"I think I actually like 'magnificence' better, y'know?" Emmett flashed everyone his trademark careless grin, eyeing Rosalie carefully "As in, 'the magnificence of a thousand rays of sunlight'."

Alice snickered loudly, fey-like in her mischief, and placed a tiny white hand on her heart. "You really are a poetic soul on the inside, aren't you?"

"Poet Emmett," said Rosalie, as if tasting the syllables on her lips.

"Stranger things can happen, right?"

---

"Hey Rosalie!"

Rosalie, hearing that deep, loud voice, stopped dead in her tracks. Students rushing to their first classes were air currents around her and she stood still as marble. Impatiently she asked, "What do you want, Emmett Cullen?" God. Him again, weaving through the crowds like hew as the center of the universe, face shining. She folded her arms across her chest defensively and tilted her head back.

She was frowning when he crossed the distance between them, a lopsided grin dangling over his lips. "Why…" he began to say, in between desperate gasps of air.

"Yeah?"

"Why won't you go out with me?" Emmett finished by giving her a puppy-dog-eyed look.

"Idiot."

People were gathering around them now, uncaring of being a couple seconds late to class if there was good gossip to be heard. Rosalie was made of stone that deflected nosy gazes with vehement glares, while Emmett seemed to be enjoying the attention he had garnered through his mad antics. Damn exhibitionist. But then, for just a flicker of a moment, she allowed herself to soften, for just a mere fraction, and peer at him truly. Yet she still could not bear to even think the thought of being together with Emmett… becoming reduced to nothing more than a beautiful doll for him to play with—just glass and porcelain and lace. It was bound to fail, and Rosalie would hate to fall.

"But why?" he demanded, his eyes penetrating while the pleading in his voice was heartbreaking.

Rosalie steeled her voice, her body for the final delivery of words. "Because I don't want to." Her tone wasn't snide or sharp or sarcastic but telling and sincere. She had intended to wound without wounding, to make him believe with a final "truth".

And the blow struck him hard. He looked as though he was about to stumble back from her invisible impact, drop to the ground hard like bullet shells. She suddenly felt terrified of what might happen next, if Emmett should lose control of his inhuman strength. "I'm sorry," she mouthed, and tucked a strand of resplendent hair behind her ear, eyes lowered. Half the male population of F. O. R. K. S. sucked in their breaths.

Emmett didn't want to believe her. He didn't but he did, unable to wield his own beliefs. He couldn't let his smile waver or his good intentions turn sour: that wouldn't be him. He had to take this in stride. "It's fine," he told her, calm, not giving the crowd what they wanted.

An obnoxious teenage boy piped in, "Aren't the two of you related?" There was some shuffling and murmurs of agreement within the audience, realization lighting their faces.

Emmett forced himself to roll his eyes and groan too loudly. "Not that again." When all the attention was turned to him expectantly, he explained, "We're both adopted. We both had different parents but we got adopted by the same adoptive parents."

"Ohhh…"

"Well, not that it matters now" he added, slightly regretfully. Rosalie didn't want him anyway. The crowd, enthusiasm deflated by the grim ending to the pursuit, soon scattered for class, leaving behind Emmett, and her. "I guess I'll see you 'round."

"Um. Yeah," Rosalie said before leaving him behind too. He kept hoping, wishing to himself that she would turn back to sneak a glance at him and then toss her golden waves of hair over her shoulder derisively, the way only she could, but she didn't turn back at all, not once. Sunlight trickled from the sky in bursts and cast abstract shadows over his bare, curled fists, its touch so lukewarm and unbearable. He was standing outside the school building, alone as the bell rang for class to begin. It screamed in his ears mercilessly.

So that was why he hated mornings… He couldn't even remember whether he even hated mornings yesterday, but well, he did now. Anger took hold of him like steel cuffs without the keys and before he realized it, his fist slammed into the brick wall of the school building. He felt his fury released in the long cracks that extended from where he had punched the wall, the way the bricks fell away from the building like flaking paint, leaving a fist-sized hole on the wall—reminiscent of the rip in his heart.

"You'll get better."

Emmett turned around to face Edward. "Yeah?"

"Who knows better about the things you don't' know about yourself but me?" Edward said, consoling.

"But what do you know about liking someone, little brother? What about love, eh?" He dared the bronze-haired boy to answer in that all-knowing voice of his. Edward didn't.

"Care to instruct me on that matter?"

"You'll figure it out yourself."

For a moment the large boy emerged from his dingy hole of sulk to grin wolfishly, though he ended up looking like a bear leaving his cave instead.

---

The new girl had soft brown eyes that were washed over with warmth against light porcelain skin that was seemed so fragile Edward thought she might shatter, watching her over his filled lunch tray. He noticed that she sat, painfully uncomfortable, amongst the Lucky Seven, that her eyes weren't brown like the rough wood of the lunch tables, that her eyes seemed to be staring elsewhere, somewhere besides this large rectangular room with smooth white walls and wide windows leading to the campus beneath.

What was she doing there, sitting next to the Academy's wealthiest students, completely unaware of those ravenous wolves? She wasn't rich, he knew—the only reason Isabella Swan—called Bella—was enrolled at the F. O. R. K. S. Academy was because her father was the head of security here. She wasn't special until he wanted to search deeper than the absent expression pulled over her features and couldn't, at all. Then she became too elusive to be real to him, someone not rich, someone that doesn't quite belong here, an illusion, even.

From what he'd gathered in his time here, only rich kids whose parents could afford the tuition and wanted them out of the way would be sent to F. O. R. K. S. It was the same with him—almost the exact same, only he was a freak amongst rich kids, too careful to truly form any ties of friendship outside his "family". Edward smiled grimly to himself though it was more a grimace than anything. A freak. That's what he was. Freak. Monster. Creep. Same difference. He had never been more aware of how out of place he was as he was when walled in by so many people and so many minds.

Suddenly self-conscious, he turned away from the girl and everyone but could not keep the rush of thoughts from reaching his brain. "Who are they?" he heard Bella Swan, the new girl, say through the thoughts of Jessica of the Lucky Seven, bitch that she was.

Ugh. I can't believe she's asking about them, Jessica thought. Not that she'll stand a chance with any one of them.

A faint sort of panic seized him as his gaze touched with Alice's briefly and inevitably drifted to Bella's again. Their gazes held briefly, startling a single jolt that passed like quicksilver, and lowered at the same time, embarrassed.

Then Jessica's thoughts came to him swiftly again. She giggled. "The really hot one's Edward Cullen. He's, like, some rebellious musical prodigy or something. But gay. Totally gay. I mean just look at him. Gorgeous, right? He can have any girl he wants at a boarding school but he doesn't because he thinks he's too good for everyone." Surprisingly, her thoughts actually what she had said with near perfection for once.

"Emmett's the one with the totally hot body. He's Edward's brother. Alice is their sister, with the weird hairdo. The other two are Jasper and Rosalie. They're all together."

As Bella paused to take all this information in, with his solemn gaze, Edward admitted, No, I cannot read her thoughts, dammit. Silently, the slight girl "with the weird hairdo" nodded and left the table, an unconscious grace in the spring of her light step, smiling.

He didn't need to read Bella's thoughts to guess what she was thinking: Edward Cullen, forever marked as "gay" and a "freak" on her mental ledger.

She replied to Jessica, "Together? Aren't they in the same fami—" Incest. He groaned inwardly, picking at his untouched food. Incestuous. She thought they were all insectivorous creeps.

"Oh no, not that together! I meant they're in the same family, even though I wouldn't be surprised if they really were, you know."

Edward felt a shot of anger dancing through his nerves like pain. How dare they pass judgment on him and his family? How dare this girl—this Bella Swan somehow hide her thoughts from him, like it was some kind of obscure insult, while the rest of the world broadcasted their disdain for him openly? She shouldn't deserve to be thinking about him if he couldn't figure out what her damn thoughts were. "Have they always gone to F. O. R. K. S.?" she asked quietly.

Jessica was growing irritated at the slender girl's interest in them. And why were the boys staring at the new girl instead of herself? Pithy female thoughts of jealousy and male fantasies mingled with his own anger and frustration like blood, suffocating him under the sheer weight of the thoughts. Nonetheless, she answered, "I think they got kicked out of some school in Alaska or something."

A most profound sensation overtook him whenever his gaze skimmed the Swan girl's visage, laced with anger, and disdain, and something else that he could not quite understand. It was pain settled over his chest, it was poison working through his body, and he needed to be free of this—feeling before he lost all control.

Edward, the perfect distraction to his own uncomfortable situation, was most profoundly amusing to Emmett. "What's with the sourpuss look?"

"What do you mean?" he found himself asking, glowering just a tad as his face lifted from his lunch tray.

"This." Emmett stared back at him, cross-eyed, and his handsome face was contorted eerily into some sort of evil, snarling monster-face. The large boy stuck his tongue out cheekily.

"Yes, that looks exactly like me…" Edward blinked awkwardly.

Rosalie unexpectedly took a pause from taking delicate bites of her lunch to add, "Great likeness."

"Urumph." Emmett, flushing beneath his white skin, emitted a soft sound that was the light whimper of a puppy. His focus shifted abruptly from brushing upon Rosalie back to his lunch. Edward wanted to say something, to end this delicate silence that has stretched over the three of them but held his tongue, telling himself that interference would only make things worse. After all, he wasn't even supposed to have the "ability" to begin with…

The two of them were thinking about one another, veiling their inner turmoil with blank faces that he wanted to rip off. Is this Bella creature thinking about me, he couldn't help but ask after watching Emmett and Rosalie. The question prodded him over and over until he wanted to smack his unopened carton of milk against his head to make it stop. "Awkward silence."

"Tell me about it," Emmett murmured darkly under his breath through his chewing, though it came out as something like, "Well 'e ermou i."

"What?" Edward pretended that he hadn't caught the thought, for politeness' sake.

But his brother merely rolled his eyes and said, "Pshaw."

Somehow everything would be all right. Edward wanted that. And if some banter-y, fairy-tale, completely brilliant thing were to happen to anyone, it would be Emmett. And mostly Edward didn't mind it, since he'd never been hopelessly enamored by a girl and he doubted a romance with a girl could ever work out, considering he could read every annoyance, every seed of distrust in her mind. It would just hurt too much. He dismissed thoughts of envy and regret with heavy reassurances that it wouldn't be worth the pain anyway.

His hands were twisted into nervous knots as he tried to think about the steps his fingers would have to take on ivory keys to make the piano sing the tune of his heart—a concerto, perhaps? An opera? The dramatic sharps and melancholic flats leading to bloody tragic finale, and dark velvet curtains descended upon the lone stage in mourning… He erased the image from his mind and hoped he wouldn't see that Bella creature again, because then there would be one Edward monster-face too many for any human to handle.

---

Alice stood in the hallway outside of the cafeteria, peering at Edward through the sheet of glass on the crude blue cafeteria doors. The walls here were painted a light ocean blue, reminding her of something pure and calming, like the way a little kid stared out at the world through fresh, innocent eyes, that she never really got. The floors were some kind of cheap speckled stone, hard and unfeeling beneath her feet. At least, that, Alice could understand. "Hey Jasper, did you know that Edward couldn't 'read' the new girl?" she said.

"Huh," he said in that quiet way of his. A single syllable of his expressed much more than just that, she'd learned, though she still could not fathom how much or how little she really knew about her "brother".

"Yeah. Absolutely nothing at all, just her alone. Mine works perfectly with her though. 'bout yours?" Alice elaborated, as if discussing something as trite as the weather instead of their unusual talents.

"Do you suggest," he drawled softly, "that I should try to charm and beguile her?"

She grinned, seriously considering this. "It might be fun," she concluded, arms folded across her chest gently. She rather liked this Bella Swan, but it might be fun to see how she might act around Jasper, just as a little revenge for making Edward hurt so much. "I suppose that would be a little evil? And Edward would probably spill all my dirty little secrets to the world if he finds out, and this girl probably has a crush on him already."

"Just a tad bit on the wrong side of the whole 'use our powers on the side of justice and goodness and rainbows and unicorns' bit." He ran, with ease, a pale hand through the soft hair that retained a sort of resplendence and smiled, almost sly. "I say, it's about time Edward met his match."

"If he's not too thick-headed to realize it. He probably thinks she's looking at him because she thinks he's gay or something. Sometimes he just doesn't get what's going on inside of girls' heads—"

"Pun," said Jasper.

"Point." Alice sighed. It was surprisingly easy for comments involving heads, thoughts, thinking, minds, and et cetera that related to her brother to turn into horrid puns. "But still. Boys are so thoughtless. You should know."

"I suppose that brings us to the topic of Emmett, our romantic hero? Rumors are flying around about what led to his rejection this morning."

"Ouch. In front of half the school, too. Now all he can do is sit at the lunch table next to her because leaving would be a sign that he's not man enough to take rejection and actually making conversation would be, well, needy," Alice thought aloud, now twiddling her thumbs agitatedly. "If I were him, I'd just talk just because I'd be needy already."

But Jasper, much to Alice's annoyance, broke his calm and disagreed, "Speaking to someone who just practically dumped you this morning is most likely not as easy as you make it sound, and there is too much lying for my taste. I think I would leave outright rather than to spew… falsehoods."

"But you wouldn't ever be in this situation to begin with," she said, quietly. "All you would have to is use your power and the girl'll be all over you again."

"But it's false—this power, it just affects the chemicals in your brain so you would think you feel things you wouldn't otherwise. It's based firmly on the power of falsehood. I—" Her friend froze.

He hardly ever talks this much, she thought to herself, frowning, afraid she'd touched upon something that was forbidden with Jasper. "Shows how much like Emmett we are," she said dryly, trying to pacify things between them. "Now that's one person I would hate to be right now. Stuck between a rock and a really beautiful hard place."

"Your becoming him would be—theoretically, quite impossible, or at least kind of weird, considering all the surgery you would have to undergo." He gave her a short shudder, his slender fingers tightening around his thigh and then gradually loosening the pressure again. She didn't quite know what to say to that and when in doubt, Alice always laughed.

---

Edward never really liked text-messaging to begin with (why pay in order to be able to communicate with someone freely?), and he was tempted to ignore his mobile phone when it vibrated in his pants pocket. He scanned the thoughts around him as a precaution before lifting out the phone and peering at it from underneath the table that he now shared with…

Bella Swan, who was staring determinedly forward, delicate features frozen.

Hi Edward! Like your new neighbor lol? Bet all the boys r jealous.

Alice. She'd known this would happen all along, damn her! As if afraid the slender new girl could read his thoughts, he moved as far away from her as he could without falling out of the table, rigid as a corpse, and his fingers shuffled around on the keypad of his mobile phone for a reply.

Yeah, 'she's really pretty, and pale, with brown hair and eyes'. Cheap shot.

Admit it, I got u gooood this time :3

the last luagh will be mine, he entered quickly, missing the feel of piano keys beneath his fingers even though the tips of his fingers grazed upon plastic only. He winced at his clumsy typo.

What're you doing right now?

Trying to ignore you. I admit it, that was an understatement.

You're probably trying desperately not to look at her right now, aren't ya? Ha, ha, ha. I'm laughing.

Straightening the arc of his back, Edward scowled, his hands curling into tight fists gripping the edge of the table, the feeling of the splinters of wood acute in his hands. You are dead to me. I no longer have a sister, he wrote back to her rapidly.

Just embrace the unexpected :)

Ha. It was not a triumphant laugh in the least—bitter to the core. When his gaze switched back to Bella Swan again he realized he was dying to speak to her but could not find the words to, would not allow her to speak to him and find out he was a freak, a monster, not normal. The teacher, at last, finished speaking and dismissed the class with a sweet relief Edward wanted. It would not come to him that day and yet the reprieve from temptations satisfied him for the moment. He rose from his seat as the bell rang—this time, without the harmony of the ones that morning, trying desperately to disregard the glint of tears in the girl's eyes.

He decided to send one last text message to Alice: I've got to switch out of this class.

The office was full of dead air when he walked in, apparently breathless for some unknown reason. The receptionist glanced up from her morbid pile of papers sleepily as if he was a fresh breeze entering through an open window. He made himself wrap his nervousness around his limbs and walk up to the receptionist's desk. "Excuse me, I would like to switch out of my sixth-period Biology."

"It's a little late in the year to switch out now, hon—" Well-intentioned words, he knew they were, but not good enough.

"But I… have to," he pleaded, leaning into the counter unconsciously.

The large woman looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "Do you have a serious reason for wanting a different time for the class?"

Edward could taste the refusal in her mind as clearly as the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, though he had to try. "There's this girl in Biology, and I can't be in the same class as her. I cannot become educated properly while I am in that class, and do you want to be responsible for wrecking my entire future? How can I become a pillar of society otherwise?" The words sounded insipid and limp to him, hanging around the dead air like dust mites.

"I know girls can be tough, sweetie, but it's all part of growing up," she reassured him slowly, figuring that the problem was some sort of dating thing.

The door opened suddenly. A girl entered the room, yet it was the other girl—the girl that was pressed against the back wall that caught his attention. Not her again, he thought with loathing, a cold feeling sinking into his chest like sharp glaciers. He could feel her gaze on him.

"Never mind, then. I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." He rushed for the door, nausea rising in his throat, and tried to wrench the thought of a third Edward monster-face out of his mind. And hoped that he had not made her cry for the second time today.