Another chapter for you -

"I'm Juliene Thomas, permanent exchange student and you must be the vampire everyone is talking about."

"Whoa, wait a moment, Julie-"

"Not Julie, JULIENE, like Jolene, but better."

Mitchell tried to let her tone just roll off his back but it showed as twitch. "Okay, fine. Whatever. How do you know me and-" he dropped the volume of his voice quickly, "and what I am?"

Juliene scoffed and tossed her short hair and shot him a derisive look. "You mean other than the fact that you're just a bottle of glitter away from being a Cullen? Duh blood boy! Word gets around our social circle pretty fast, especially when one of us is in interesting circumstances and one of us shacking up with one of you is strange enough, but throw in the Wolfman-pansy and well you're one bearded lady away from a freak show."

"Okay well the show's over for today. So either tell me why you're here or leave."

Juliene stared right back at Mitchell and Annie, standing off the side, couldn't help but wondering if she was moments away from witnessing some kind of Old West showdown. Juliene moved first, shrugging her shoulders and taking a few steps away from Mitchell.

"Whatever, I really came to see her. So you can just go back to hanging from the ceiling or whatever it is your kind does."

"Whatever," Mitchell mimicked, brushing past the two of them grabbing his coat and glasses. He turned in the doorway. "Annie, I'll be back … later." He gave the door a firm slam on the way out. Annie couldn't help but feel her stomach drop a little. Given all the recent events, most of which was still be spoken about in hushed tones behind doors and very little of it to Annie, had her worried. She felt like a mother sending her children off every morning, wondering if they'd make home and she hated to see either of them leave angry. This was still their safe-haven, at least for now.

"Um," Annie stumbled, "Sorry for that… my - they, Mitchell and George I mean. They don't socialize much."

They stood staring at each other a while. Juliene rocked back and forth in her hot pink Converse sneakers, hands stuck in the pockets of her low slung baggy jeans. The rest of her was covered in zip-hoody who's choices of colors were a little too matchy-matchy to have been picked by anything except a committee, Annie looked closely and could see "Centerville Lions" embroidery half picked away near one of the shoulders. What was showing of her wrists were covered in bracelets; plastic jelly ones in obnoxious colors, some shiny metal bangles and a few embroidery thread friendship bracelets. Annie couldn't help but wonder about those, she used to make those same kinds of bracelets for her friends during the summer holidays; the bracelets were in fairly new shape and must have been given to Juliene not too long before –

"So you're," Annie started, tugging at her sweater, still unsure of the proper etiquette surround the clarification of ones death, "you know?"

"Dead." Juliene answered simply. "Yup dead as the old doornail or whatever it is you people say."

"But how – I'm you're American right?"

"Okay you're obviously new to this so here it is. Yep, you win a point, I'm American, and yes, I died over here. It was, like, a couple of years ago I think. I was over here on a school trip. We didn't have good foreign language classes, so our senior trip was to somewhere where they spoke English. We go to come over for two weeks during Christmas break because it was cheaper too. That was the problem though, ice on the wings of the plane when we were taking off to go home. I don't think we were up in the air for more than a few minutes. All I remember is thinking that there was so much more I had wanted to see. The next thing I know I'm standing on the side of runway watching the paramedics taking away my friends." Juliene paused for a moment and then shrugged it off. "So what about you? I hear that you have a good one."

"A good what?"

"A good death of course! What else?"

"I lived with a rutting bastard of a fiancé who pushed me down the stairs," Annie spat out as quickly as she could.

Juliene looked decidedly disappointed with Annie's retelling.

"Look, you're going to have to work on that story. Trust me you get farther with the London ghosts is you have a good story. I mean I met one of Jack the Rippers victims a few years ago, now that was a good story, she pretty much runs Whitechapel by now. Claims she knows who he was, but she wouldn't tell me."

"You're kidding."

"Nope, London's full cool ghosts. Though my advice is to stay away from the Tower too crowded, that Anne Boleyn chick and that Queen what's-her-name … Catherine have, like, daily rows up there and it's not pretty."

"So what, you're like Gilbert? Just hanging around because you like it here?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I mean it's a lot better than Centerville ever was and I figure I 'll see my door once I've seen everything I wanted to see and trust me, growing up in a little hick town like that with access to dish-network travel channels, I have a lot I want to see."

Annie felt a little uneasy, considering what had taken place only a few days weeks earlier. "Well, I hear the doors don't always come when you expect them to."

Juliene gave Annie a wry smile. "So I hear."

Oh what is my annoying little American teenager up to? I bet she doesn't even like tea. Stayed tuned!