The parking lot in front of Forks High School was nearly empty when I arrived. I was around ten or fifteen minutes earlier than I'd planned to be to show Jack around and I was a bit nervous. I had no way of knowing how the students of Forks High would react to me now. I'd been a ghost amongst them for quite a while. They'd seen me at my absolute worst and I knew that it would take time and effort to form a new place for myself amongst them. I'd almost started to wonder if maybe a new school wouldn't be an easier route, when the low rattling of a very old and very small car distracted me as it pulled up a few spaces over from me in the parking lot. It was Jack.

I got out of my truck and walked over to greet him. He smiled at me and then looked over my shoulder at my truck.

"That's yours?"

"The red truck that I just got out of? No, I stole it."

"I can see why you would. It's a beauty. I brought us some hot chocolate and that cookie I promised you. Can we sit on the back while we eat?"

"That depends."

"I didn't know what kind you'd prefer. I have chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and oatmeal chocolate chip. If none of those appeal to you, then I reserve the right to postpone the tour and take you to the nearest bakery before class. "

I laughed for a moment.

"Can I have one of each?"

"Absolutely."

"You've got a deal. Come on."

We ate on the bed of my truck sitting on a blanket that Jack had pulled out of his trunk. While we ate, I asked him where he'd moved from.

"Tucson, Arizona. It's about a hundred miles south of Phoenix."

"Missing the sun yet?"

"It's real? I'd begun to convince myself that it something from a dream I'd had once."

"I know how you feel; I used to live in Phoenix before I moved here."

"Small world," he said smiling a bit, "I've only been here for a few weeks and it's already hard to imagine the heat, and the dry air, and the sky. Cacti and distant mountains are like things from another world. Do you remember them at all?"

"Sometimes I do, when I think about my mom. She's always been a bit scatterbrained, in the best possible way of course. She'd get lost looking at the sky sometimes or looking off towards the mountains or the stars. It's too cold or too cloudy to stargaze here, most nights. Why did your family decide to move here?"

"Dad's an anthropologist and he wants to write a book about La Push. It helped that my mom wanted to be closer to my brother Jamie. He's over in Seattle, studying at Washington State. As for me, I Knew that we were meant to be together and I heard that you'd moved here. I figured that I should help fate out by following you rather than waiting for our paths to cross once we were older and married to other people. Affairs are far too dramatic for me."

I laughed for a moment before replying, " Oh certainly, all that sneaking around and paranoia; who needs it? Hold on… Calling me Sweetheart in a language that I don't speak is forward, but claiming to have followed me across three or four states before we'd ever actually met and implying that we are soul-mates isn't?"

"Izzy, I would very much like to continue our acquaintance and it would help me ever so much in that endeavor if you would…"

"Shut up?"

"I was going to be more polite about it."

"And I thank you for that, and breakfast. It was very sweet of you. Now, do you still want that tour?"

We shook the cookie crumbs off of his blanket then, after putting it back into his trunk, we went to the office so that he could pick up his schedule. He would be joining my English and Biology II classes. I showed him where everything was and then we walked to English.

The seat next to me was full, so he took a seat near the back and I tried, with little overall success, to listen to Mr. Berty's lecture on Animal Farm. When class ended Jack walked over to me.

" Am I going to have to bribe you into eating lunch with me, or will my charming manner suffice this time?"

"I think the chance of seeing this charm in action is a bribe in and of itself, because it really does seem to be rare with you."

"That hurts. You really shouldn't talk to people the way you do; a forked tongue in Forks is far too clichéd. May I assume that there was a "yes" hidden in your cheap shot at me?"

"You may, now we'd better leave or we'll both be late."

"You are cruel, but you are wise. I'll be waiting by the doors at lunchtime."

I was smiling on my way to calculus. Jack was certainly something else, and as I sat inattentively though Mr. Varner's lecture, my thoughts turned to him. It occurred to me how easy it was to let go with him. When I talked to Jack, I was a different person. I was confident and witty and he could match me step for step, no awkward pauses or clarification needed. Renée's voice floated through my mind. Give your heart the freedom to find what you've lost in someone who deserves it.

Jack was a good person, and I felt like I'd known him for far longer than I actually had, but the fact remained that it had only been just short of twenty-four hours since we'd met. Even if I were ready to move on, I had no way of knowing yet whether or not he deserved my heart. I was still hurting from my last whirlwind romance. This time, if anything happened it would happen only once I was sure and ready.

I met Jack by the cafeteria doors and we ate lunch with Ben and Angela. I sat back and watched the way he interacted with them. He was different. He was still charming, still funny and smart, and still arrogant, but it was toned down slightly from our usual interactions. I took an odd sort of pleasure in knowing that he felt comfortable enough around me to speak more freely than he typically did with new acquaintances. That's a good sign, I thought. Friends should be comfortable with each other, right?

"Izzy? Earth to Isabella, we need you to return from Mars now ," Jack said, interrupting my thoughts but seeming to apologize by lightly touching the back of my left hand, which was resting on the table.

"We'd better go if we want to make it to biology on time," he said. Looking around as I got up, I realized that the cafeteria was nearly empty. I grabbed my bag and we hurried to biology. I tried harder than usual to pay attention to Mr. Banner's lecture, taking irreproachably good notes as though paying attention in biology could make up for spacing out in Calculus and at lunch.

After school, Jack was waiting by my truck.

"Izzy, are you ok?"

"Sure, Jack, why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know, you just seemed really quiet at lunch and the Biology lecture wasn't half so interesting as to demand such attentiveness. You don't have to tell me anything, and forgive me if I'm prying."

"I was just thinking during lunch, and then I was trying not to think in Biology. It's a bit confusing to be honest. I'm fine though. You seemed to get along well with Angela and Ben."

"They're easy to like, thank you for introducing me."

We stood there for a long moment before I broke the silence.

"Breakfast today was nice but, since I only asked for one cookie and you brought me three, I owe you, don't I?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On what it is that you think you owe me."

"My soul. Would you like it now or when I'm done with it? It's that or breakfast, my treat, before school tomorrow morning."

"But then I'll owe you."

"I suppose we'll just have to meet for breakfast every day then, because we can't have that kind of debt left hanging over our heads. We aren't even college students yet."

"I like the way you think. May I have your phone number so that can call if I'm running late?"

We exchanged numbers and then I climbed into my truck and left. When I got home, I went upstairs and did some homework. I studied my Calculus book for a while, hoping to make up for the lecture I'd ignored. When I got tired of studying, I made dinner for me and Charlie.

Over dinner we exchanged small talk. Charlie told me about a noise complaint he'd been called to investigate and I mentioned sitting with Angela at lunch. After dinner I cleaned up, and went upstairs to check my e-mail. I replied to messages from my mother and Angela. All things considered, it was a fairly normal and productive evening, so it really startled me when my dreams that night were as far from normal as possible.

To understand this next part you have to realize that since the night after Edward left, I'd had the same nightmare every night. In that nightmare, I'd been searching through the woods, looking for Edward as I had when he'd left. I'd woken up screaming upon realizing that he wasn't there, and that he was gone forever. It happened every night, though the horror of it had started to fade in recent days.

When I fell asleep that night, I noticed immediately that the dream had changed.

I was in the meadow. It was just as I remembered it, but different somehow. Something was wrong. I looked around. The meadow was the same size and shape as it had always been. The same sounds filtered in from the surrounding forest. This place was timeless and unchanging except, I noticed suddenly, for the flowers. There was something strange about the flowers. I bent down to look closer and then I realized why. Hundreds of small patches of rainbow colored light were being cast onto them. I turned around so quickly that I nearly fell. Laurent and a row of other unfamiliar vampires stood glittering in a wide patch of sunlight. Their eyes, predatory and red, made my heart pause in fear.

Then a girl appeared at my side, so suddenly that I couldn't see where she'd come from. Her stance was defiant and she looked as if she intended to try and fight them. Laurent moved towards me and the other vampires seemed to focus their attention on her. As the vampires broke into a run towards us, I glanced up. Just as I was about to see her face…

I sprung up in my bed looking around for a moment before laying back down, covering myself with my comforter and going back to sleep.

Hey everyone! I hope you enjoyed this new chapter. Thanks go to everyone who has reviewed or alerted this in some way since the last chapter. In particular thanks go to my suitemates in their infinite patience and helpfulness. Review please if you haven't or if you think that something is moving too quickly ( Bella's recovery or other things…) because I'm impatient and I might get ahead of myself.

Oh! And Bella's nightmare, the one she's had every night before this new one, is Canon. I summarized it but the full description was written by Stephenie Meyer and starts on page 122 of the hard cover edition of New Moon if you want look it up.

Thanks again for reading this, and "see" you next chapter! (or later today in the case of my suitemates)