Jasper waited for Alayna to grab her signed first-day paper from their Calculus teacher before walking with her down the hall to the cafeteria. He was keeping a measurable distance from her, she noticed. More than Emmett, and although she hadn't walked with Alice, the girl had sat fairly close to her at their lab table. Closer than Jasper, at least. She was busily wondering if she had somehow offended the beautiful man walking semi-next to her when he smiled at her suddenly. She realized that she had been zoning out through their entire walk to the lunch room, and she wondered what Jasper thought of her not paying attention to him.

"Shall we?" he asked. Alayna grinned with him.

"We shall," she said, just as politely.

"I would sit with you," he said, "but my family has a thing about us all sitting together, and while Alice and Emmett like you, my sister Rosalie doesn't do so well with new people." They were walking through the lunch room and Alayna was sure everyone was watching them.

"It's cool," she said, "I have to find Bella anyway." Jasper smirked at her.

"New kid alliance?" he asked. Alayna rolled her eyes.

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," she informed him with a playful glare. Laughing, they separated. Somehow, no matter how early Alayna had thought they were, half the school had beaten them to the cafeteria. She rolled her eyes, smiling involuntarily when Emmett and Alice smiled at her, Emmett waving enthusiastically as the flawlessly beautiful blonde girl beside him glared at her. Probably Rosalie, she thought.

Thankfully, Alayna spotted Bella soon after and at the girl's beckoning, she hightailed it over to her.

"Ah! I have so much to tell you!" she said quickly as soon as she sat down. Bella introduced her to everyone sitting around them, then smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"It's been three hours," Bella told her, "What could you possibly have to tell me?" Alayna laughed, but before she could speak, Bella stopped her.

"Before I forget," she said, "I want to thank you. People aren't talking about me so much anymore. They're more concerned with you now." Alayna laughed at Bella's realization before raising an eyebrow with a half-smile on her face.

"Happy to be of service?" she said, forming her sentence like a question. A girl leaned over to Bella suddenly.

"Edward Cullen is staring at you," she said, matter-of-factly. Bella's head snapped to the direction in which the Cullens were sitting, and Alayna knew instantly that she would clash with this eavesdropping girl. She couldn't help but turn up the ice.

"The only way you would know is if you were staring first," Alayna pointed out, faking cheerfulness that she hoped the other girl could see through. "I'm Alayna. Jessica, right?" The girl nodded, turning to hide her red face from Alayna's obviously forced friendliness. If he hadn't been so far away, Alayna would have sworn Emmett was laughing with her, not at something else. Alayna turned her attention back to Bella, who looked too relieved for words.

"So tell me about your day," Alayna begged of her new friend. Bella looked at her as if she were crazy.

"It was pretty boring," she said. "What about these things you had to tell me?" Alayna launched into the story of her first classes, meeting Emmett and Alice, and about Jasper promising to help her in Calculus.

"It's really my worst subject ever," she groaned, "I don't know why I signed up for it." Bella grinned at her.

"Well, you've got good study partners in all your classes," Jessica said, leaning over to join their conversation again. "All the Cullens are ridiculously smart." Alayna just rolled her eyes, feeling suddenly too lazy to fight with this girl. Why were her emotions so weird? Normally, she would have come up with a fantastic comeback. Instead, she glared at the eavesdropper and Jessica turned around again.

"Speaking of all things Cullen," Alayna continued to Bella, dropping her voice to just above a whisper, "what's with Edward's sudden staring problem?" Bella's cheeks were instantly red with unspoken embarrassment.

"He hates me," she said quietly. With as much stealth as possible, Alayna peeked over at the Cullens' table. It was possible Edward had just witnessed a train wreck with the way he appeared to not be able to look away, although Edward was staring in a good way, not the horrified expression he would have had in the train wreck situation. Alayna snorted and Bella looked at her.

"What was that for?" Bella demanded.

"He doesn't look angry," Alayna assured her. Bella still looked doubtful.

"Then what does he look like?" she asked quietly. Alayna hit her arm playfully.

"Why don't you look for yourself?" she asked incredulously. Bella's eyes slowly made contact with Edward's just as the bell rang and he swiftly left the cafeteria. Bella cast her eyes down again and Alayna threw her arm around her friend's shoulders and squeezed.

"I'm sorry, Bella," she said.

"It's not your fault he hates me, Alayna." Bella said softly as both girls stood. Alayna shot her an exasperated look.

"He doesn't hate you!" she exploded. Bella jumped about a foot in the air.

"But he just-"

"But nothing! Do you have any other classes with him?"

"Biology."

"Good. Talk to him when you get there, and I bet you'll find out how right I am. But for now, I'm off to History!" Bella smiled a little and watched Alayna walk away before heading to her own class. To her surprise, Jasper was in her History class, too. He smiled in greeting.

"Do you also feel inadequate in this class?" he asked cheekily. Alayna snorted out a laugh.

"Actually," she said, "you might find me tutoring you in here!" Jasper eyed her with one eyebrow carefully arched.

"I'm not sure about that," he said. "We'll just have to see." Just like their last class, Jasper let her pay attention, and she even answered a few questions correctly. After class, he waited for her to grab her slip from their teacher and walked down the hall with her, keeping the same distance as before.

"I have to turn here," he told her suddenly. "Where are you headed?"

"Gym," she informed him, her face lighting up. He looked slightly taken aback.

"You like gym?" he asked. Her smile only grew.

"I run, I hike, and I absolutely love sports. Hockey and soccer make me happier than anything else in the world could possibly make me." He looked amused at his new discovery about her.

"I can see why you get along with Emmett so well. Our family plays a lot of baseball," he said with a smile, "but I think the only reason I like it so much is because we're all together." She nodded, quickly understanding that family was everything to Jasper. She smiled up at him and tossed her hair over her shoulder gently. His eyes darkened and his entire face changed. Given a little more time, she might have been scared, but Emmett and Alice came out of nowhere fast, Emmett tackling into the side of Jasper hard and Alice calling out a goodbye to Alayna. Confused, Alayna made her way to Gym, making a mental note to ask Bella if she'd noticed anything..off .. about the Cullen family.

Alayna found her gym teacher quickly, who informed her that she could sit out her first day if she wished, but they were playing volleyball, and Alayna had been pretty good in her New York high school. At Bella's silent pleas, she changed into her gym clothes and went to stand by her. The others on their team looked wary of Bella, and Alayna wondered just how horrible Bella was at this. For the first serve, Alayna let Bella go on her own. Bad idea, she quickly realized when Bella managed to bounce the ball off of Mike Newton's head (who was standing behind her) and nail herself in the forehead when she quickly turned to make sure Mike was okay. Alayna snorted back her laughter and addressed her team.

"I got this, guys," she informed them, holding up her arms and moving to stand right next to Bella, who looked relieved rather than offended or irritated like Alayna feared.

"Thank you," she breathed. "That was getting out of hand." Alayna laughed at her friend, her eyes never leaving the ball.

"No problem. Tell me something, though." Alayna requested as she spiked the ball hard onto the opposing side and no one dared go near it. Bella stared at her.

"What are you- some sort of professional volleyball player?" she gaped. Alayna laughed hard.

"No, I just really like sports. You just wait until we get to field hockey." she told her with a wink. Bella laughed with her.

"So what's this you want me to tell you?" Bella asked. She put her hands on her hips for lack of anything else to do with them. Alayna dared a quick glance at her before placing her hands on her thighs, resting the weight of her upper body on them as she bent slightly and turning her eyes back to the ball.

"Tell me I'm not the only one who notices something is definitely off with the Cullens," she said, her voice so low that Bella nearly fell into her trying to hear her low tone. Once she heard, she stood up straight.

"No," she said thoughtfully, "but until you brought it up, I thought I was crazy." Alayna spiked the ball again- another point for their team. While they rotated positions, both girls making up one position, Alayna looked directly at Bella while Mike prepared to serve.

"Trust me," she said, "you are definitely not crazy." They finished the game- Alayna scoring three more points- and quickly changed back into their school clothes. Alayna and Bella walked out to their cars together, oddly following each other home. Sure enough, Bella lived across the street and a couple houses over from Alayna and her aunt. Alayna unlocked the house and settled on the couch to watch one of her aunt's million movies. Within the first ten minutes, she was sound asleep. Alayna awoke only when her aunt forced dinner into her and made her go upstairs to bed.

The rest of Alayna's week went by without anything out of place sticking out at her. The normalcy, however, struck her as odd. It was almost as if the Cullens somehow knew she suspected something of them. Alice and Jasper were pleasant to her, Alice in a best-girl-friend way and Jasper seeming too polite for the emotions she could see on his face, and Emmett was his usual loud, unshakable self, but his stories seemed to be too carefully edited. Although it seemed as if nothing could shake his positive outlook on life, and Alayna knew in the back of her mind that she wanted to keep him around forever, if for nothing else than to feed off of his positivity. As her first weekend in Forks approached, she realized she had absolutely zero plans. That's okay, she thought as she drove home from school on Friday. Maybe Amy and I will go to Port Angeles and catch a movie or something. She put in a movie when she got home, like she had every day that week. Only that day, she didn't fall asleep, and actually finished "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and half of "Elf" before Amy got home and they set about making dinner together.

Alayna told Amy about school, finding it easy to tell her aunt everything except for anything about Jasper. They watched more movies until Alayna fell asleep. When she woke up Saturday morning, she went for a jog around the neighborhood, waving to Bella as the girl got into her giant truck. She got back, showered and dressed quickly before settling down for a day of homework and other monotony. She went with Amy later that night to see a movie in Port Angeles, both quickly deciding against the chick flick and going with the new action film. The rest of her weekend flew by uneventfully and before she knew it, she was waking up on Monday morning.

An uneasy feeling was spreading over Alayna as she nearly sprinted to Spanish. It was only her second week of class and she was late. She hated being late; it made her uncomfortable. She could barely believe she'd missed her first (and favorite academic) class! At least Emmett was in Spanish with her, so he could fill her in. She slid into her seat next to him right as the bell rang and he immediately pushed his desk up to hers.

"Where the hell were you?" he hissed. "I was worried!" She just smiled apologetically.

"Overslept," she said with a grimace. "What'd I miss?"

"Varner talked about the proper ways to write a paper." Alayna rolled her eyes and gave him a bored look.

"You could have just said 'nothing'," she told him cheekily. The teacher called for their attention just as Emmett laughed, elbowing Alayna gently and leaving his ice cold arm touching the length of hers.

Lame! Just when I was having fun. Alayna froze. Emmett whipped his head to look at her. What's her deal? He wasn't saying anything, but she could hear him.

Emmett, she said in her head, her eyes locked intensely on her new friend's, can you hear me? Emmett's eyes widened as he nodded his head slowly.