Chapter 2
"Good morning!" chirruped the tiny bespectacled woman, with mousy brown hair carefully stroking her pale cheeks. I suddenly realised, "Sun Blush" is tanned in Alaska.
The class stared up at us, just as I'd expected, with gawping faces, parted lips and wide eyes. I wanted to grab onto Edward for support so much at that moment, but I knew I couldn't, I was Bella and I was independent and here to make friends. I slowly smiled at a girl in the second row with tightly curled blonde hair and dazzling blue eyes, to my shock she tentatively smiled back. I looked at Edward, my eyes questioning whether she was afraid or genuinely pleased to see us, he caught my gaze and nodded with a subtle smile, she was a friend. After we had been introduced to the class of around 20 kids we took our seats, deliberately we sat apart. Once again this was part of my plan to have friends at Copper River, I hated the thought of being so isolated in a crowd of people, and I'd enjoyed my friends in Forks, they became my guide, my gauge of what to do, what to wear and how to behave. The blonde girl was called Flora, she'd moved to Alaska from Vancouver with her mother, who was the school nurse. Though she spoke to me a lot throughout the day, her eyes frequently darted to Edward; I would have been intensely frustrated that I wasn't enough to capture her attention had my eyes not been doing the exact same thing twice as frequently as hers.
I'd decided to focus on different subjects now, this year I was going to become an art master, every stroke of the paintbrush would have a devastatingly powerful effect, yet swathe the canvas in beauty. At least that was my aim. Art was the one class where Edward sat next to me, perhaps a mistake to allow him so close in the subject I had intended on actually working in. His scent made my heart tingle, it had no need to skip a beat any more, it just enjoyed every sense of Edward it got. He didn't say a word to me for the entire hour, at first I was appalled and panicked I'd done something wrong, something against the rules, after all I was still a relatively young vampire, but then he let his hand rest on mine for just a second as I reached for some charcoal and I sighed in relief, he was still mine. Forever.
It seemed, from my amateur viewing, that every girl in Copper River High had noticed Edward's arrival and was rather over excited by it. I didn't need Edward's confirmation at lunch that he had taken over all their thoughts, you could see it in their eyes, whether there or not he had been reflected in them. As we took our seats with Flora and her friend Ellie, a stunning girl with straight midnight hair, Renesme came over to join us briefly, as we'd hoped she had made a swarm of friends within her first hour at school and was quite happy to spend the entire of her lunchtime with them, if we didn't mind. Of course I minded, how could I not, I spent every second of every day wanting to hold her and protect her but I still had a vague sense of rationality and knew this was the best way forward so, smiling painfully I sent her back to her table.
Ellie seemed keen on engaging Edward in conversation, I smiled inwardly, wondering if she'd be so intent upon him if she knew what he was, what we were. Lunchtimes we're a challenge, I'd found that the best way to appear you were living in normality was to eat, so I'd packed two salads, the delicate green leaves topped with several slices of exceptionally rare beef. Edward and I picked at the salads, carefully only eating the slices of beef, the blood dripping tentatively from them. We heard all the gossip at Copper River by the end of lunch, it was apparent that Ellie and Flora wanted to bring us up to speed on everyone and their boyfriends so that we could partake in their conversations of delirious happiness about someone named Scott who had evidently paid Flora more attention than was common earlier that day. I scoffed at first but quickly remembered how exhilarated I had been when Edward first spoke to me, however harsh his words. I knew I had been just as obsessed as they were about him and I recalled the first night I dreamed of him. I didn't care that I could no longer dream as I was living one of bliss with Edward every day. Edward looked over at me and grinned, as though he was about to burst into hysterical laughter, I answered his grin with a quizzical look but he just mumbled, "Later."