The sound is coming from Renee and Phil's room.
"Mom? Phil? You guys here?" I call.
Their door is ajar so I push it open.
The first day back after the holidays Alice had decided to walk beside him to school instead of catching a lift with Carlisle like she usually did.
Edward hated being in cars with other people, no room to escape their thoughts in a tiny metal box. Come rain or shine (it was mostly rain) he rode Carlisle's old mountain bike to school. On the occasions when Alice decided to walk with him he obligingly slowed down so her short legs could keep up.
He left his bike to the side of the school's main entrance. He never bothered locking it up, in a small town like Forks it wouldn't be stolen.
He could tell that the Forks student body was in uproar and he wasn't even properly inside the school yet, but then again the whole town had been simmering like this for a few months.
Ever since Chief Swan's ex-wife and her new husband had been violently murdered, it was all anyone could think about, and it seemed that today was the day the Chief's surviving daughter was to finally start school.
The excitement was palpable, boarding on hysteria, and Edward felt genuinely sorry for the poor girl. When he and Alice had moved here, Edward had migraines for days. He was glad he had better control over his shields now, because the excitement and speculation when he and Alice had arrived was nothing compared to this.
Edward pinched the bridge of nose wearily and tried to visualise a brick wall between his own mind and the chaos of mental voices around him.
"You alright?" Alice asked him.
He tried to give her a reassuring smile but he could see in her mind's eye that it wasn't very convincing.
"Everyone is just really excited about the Chief's daughter," he grumbled. Alice zoned out for a moment and Edward saw a blurry image of the girl entering Mr Banner's biology class.
'Only one empty seat left over there,' vision-Mr Banner said apologetically.
"Sorry Edward," said Alice.
He scowled darkly. He sat alone in all his classes for a reason. Firstly, he needed to keep his distance to keep his mental shields up. Secondly, there had been a few… incidents over the years and no one was too keen to be near him.
They were known as those two weirdo Masen twins. No one said it to their faces, but of course they didn't need to speak aloud for Edward to know they thought it.
Edward was quiet and polite but had those crazy green eyes, and he could flip like a switch for no outwardly discernible reason. Edward personally felt that he had excellent self-control considering some of the things he heard. He tried very hard at first to fit in and seem normal with some success, but after punching Mr Anderson in the face… Well, there was no coming back.
No matter how 'normal' he managed to act everyone still remembered.
Alice was less scary, and was actually much friendlier; the green eyes set in her face looked less intimidating. However, she unnerved people with her blank spells of staring into space for minutes at a time, or sometimes saying the strangest, most perceptive things that tended to make people uncomfortable.
She once called Jessica Stanley at home just as she was about to leave for school to tell her to remember to turn off her hair curler. Sure enough, it was on.
They were by no means outcasts, they both got along well enough with most of their peers, it was just widely accepted that the two of them were a little eccentric, that that Edward in particular felt very strongly about personal space.
They got cut a lot of slack for their strangeness on account of their parents tragically dying in the 'house fire,' and their Uncle Carlisle being the kindest, most handsome, Doctor that had ever graced Forks. He was the fantasy of bored housewives all over town, much to Edward's disgust.
In his usual sickeningly good and wholesome way, Uncle Carlisle was obvious to this, too modest for his own good and too busy being immersed in his work.
His thoughts were just as kind as he was, and largely occupied by his patients; treatments and diagnoses and many long words that Edward did not know the meaning of.
Carlisle was one of those few people whose thoughts more or less exactly matched what he said aloud.
"Sup Masen!" Edward braced himself when he heard Emmett McCartney's voice and sure enough, Emmett flung an arm over Edward's shoulder when he reached him. He was only able to do so because although Edward was tall, Emmett was truly enormous.
"Good morning Emmett," said Alice, neatly sidestepping Emmett's other arm.
"I'll see you at lunch?" she said, waiting for Edward to nod before gliding off to homeroom.
"So listen, a bunch of us were going to go down to La Push this weekend to surf. You in?" asked Emmett in a sotto voice.
"It'll be freezing," Edward deadpanned, knowing it would be no use.
"Great! We're leaving at eleven and remember to bring a wetsuit. Catch ya later buddy," Emmett thumped him on a back in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture before taking off, no doubt to bother someone else.
Emmett was the quarterback and captain of the football team, one of the most popular guys in school, and one of the simplest and most straight-forward people Edward had ever encountered.
He also had no concept of personal space.
Just like Carlisle, his thoughts and spoken words always matched up.
Ever since Edward and Alice found Emmett's little sister after she wandered into the forest surrounding Forks, Emmett had sort of taken them under his wing and assumed a familiarity with them to which they were forced to acquiesce.
Emmett McCartney killed you with kindness and a dimpled smile that was incongruous with his hulking frame.
Edward managed to get to homeroom and sit in his regular seat by the window without being accosted by anyone else. He concentrated really hard on bolstering his mental shields while staring out the window.
He was much better at blocking than he ever used to be, it helped being around people all the time. The first day back after vacation was always the hardest because unless he was forced to work at it every day, his shields tended to slip.
He went on autopilot to his classes, took notes, and tried to ignore the voices in his head. Despite his best efforts, some things slipped past his shields.
Mike brushed past him in the hall and Edward got a very clear image of a girl with a heart-shaped face and long brown hair. The image was accompanied by a name, Bella. It was the Chief's daughter.
By lunchtime he could have picked her out of a crowd despite never having laid eyes on her himself.
He took a seat at his usual table where Alice was already sitting; making her way through the lunch she'd bought and chatting amicably to Angela about surfing. Edward liked Angela; she had uncommonly kind thoughts, and she bore Alice's exuberance with good humour.
Jessica Stanley arrived at the table and dropped her tray to the table with a clatter. She wanted their attention.
"Oh my gosh, have you guys seen the Chief's daughter yet?" Jessica usually didn't sit with them, but she was thinking about how she'd seen Angela speaking to Bella outside English, and she was hoping for some gossip.
Edward tuned their conversation out by putting in some headphone and blasting Chopin's Waltz in C minor just shy of bursting his eardrums. It was the piece he was currently working his way through. He absentmindedly tapped out the rhythm on his leg as he visualised his fingering.
Alice had to nudge him to get going when the bell rang.
He started developing a headache during Government, and massaged his temples as he trudged along to biology.
He stared thoughtfully out the window at the cloudy sky as he waited for class to start. It looked like it was going to pour, but then again Alice wouldn't have walked with him to school if there was the slightest chance of rain.
He heard Mr Banner think his name; 'Only seat left is next to Edward, nothing for it.'
He turned to see Mr Banner directing the Chief's daughter apologetically to sit in the empty seat beside him.
She tripped on the way over but managed to catch herself on the edge of the table. She looked up at him through a curtain of brown hair and for a moment, they examined each other.
"Hi I'm Edward," he said blandly, trying to block out Mike Newton's thoughts on the view he had of her backside.
"Bella," she mumbled looking down. She allowed her long hair to fall like a curtain between them as she took her seat. She placed her books on the desk in front of her, pulled a pencil out of her backpack, and then sat very stiffly.
And to think he was worried when Alice told him he was going to be sitting by the new girl. She was quiet, and she had a quiet mind to match. He wasn't even exerting his mental shields that hard and he was succeeding in blocking her out.
In fact, since she sat down beside him the mental murmur of voices in his head had diminished significantly, along with the burgeoning headache from Government.
"Okay class today we're going to be covering mitosis-" for once Edward was actually able to pay complete attention to the lesson. Mr Banner lectured at them for a bit and then he had them turn their attention towards the microscopic slides in front of them.
"Shall I go first?" he said, pulling out the first slide and affixing it to the little stage on the microscope.
Edward looked up at her when she didn't reply. At his expectant gaze she nodded, but there was something brittle and not quite right about the girl.
Edward knew that there were many things not at all right about him after his parents died, and he felt a lot of empathy for poor Bella Swan.
She was very very pale with dark circles under her eyes that stood out in a stark contrast. Despite looking like she needed several nights good sleep, she was pretty, is a delicate breakable sort of way.
Sitting beside him, shoulders hunched, small hands clasped tightly together, she looked like a stiff wind would blow her away.
They completed the lab silently, only speaking when necessary, but it was a comfortable sort of silence. At least it was for Edward. Sitting beside her was the opposite of a headache, and he was sorely tempted to try and persuade her to sit with him and Alice at lunch the next day.
He was in the middle of daydreaming of things to bribe her with, (I'll buy you lunch, you won't have to talk at all, I'll make sure people won't ask you any questions, and I'll do all the work in Biology-) when his hand brushed against her and all his thoughts came crashing down.
Bella yanked her hand away quickly and went back to looking through the microscope, but Edward's mind was in turmoil.
When he touched her cold hand, he couldn't hear her thoughts.
To make sure it wasn't just chance that he'd touched her when she wasn't thinking anything, Edward deliberately brushed his hand against hers once more.
Nothing. She was completely silent to him.
Edward didn't say a word to her for the rest of the lesson. When the bell rang, he gathered up all his things and left as quickly as he could.
Well, I'm not sure that I'm completely satisfied with this. But it moves the plot forward so I'll post it for now and possibly edit it some more later. What do you think?