Disclaimer: I don't own twilight. Stephenie Meyer does.

Edward's Point of View

I'd only just arrived at school, and I was already bored. It had something to do with what I knew I'd be learning, which was nothing; I already knew anything the teachers might pull out of their lesson plans – but it also had to do with the entirely predictable nature of the thoughts around me. Today, all thoughts were not on the subjects the teachers taught, or even some dramatic gossip about someone's romantic life. Instead, they revolved fixedly around the new girl, Isabella Swan. Even the people who weren't in class with her were thinking about her – what type of music did she like? What was Phoenix like? Most of the male populace was thinking the same thing – Does she have a boyfriend? I couldn't really see the draw – in their thoughts, Isabella, or Bella, as she preferred to be called, seemed just like the rest of the boring humans. Not different at all.

Although, the boys' memories of her did hold a little something strange – a pull, a draw, that made them want to be closer to her despite her slightly standoffish behavior. It was like she was a magnet and they were metal – hopelessly and inexplicably drawn. I pondered the odd sensation for a moment as I walked at a careful human pace to Biology, but quickly dismissed it. They were just children fascinated by a new toy.

I searched briefly for the thoughts in the science building, and blinked once in surprise – Bella was in the class, and was sitting in the seat next to mine. I sighed. She would not enjoy being my lab partner; no one liked being around my family for any amount of time. They didn't know that they feared us, but their sense of self-preservation was enough to keep them away. Then a smirk curved up the corners of my mouth – Mike Newton was once again proving himself to be a complete idiot by spewing a stream of small-talk at Bella, who was sitting with her shoulders hunched and her head down, obviously wishing that he would leave her alone.

I entered the building, shaking the water droplets from the light drizzle out of my hair, and continued down the hall toward the classroom. The door was open – I slipped inside without calling too much attention to myself. A few people glanced up, but then their attention returned to whatever they'd been doing. Their thoughts all held the same disinterested tone – it was just one of the Cullens. My family preferred that. The less people watched us, the less chance there was for exposure.

I turned toward the lab table I would be sharing with Bella and focused on her, trying to get a read on her thoughts before I sat down – it was always better to have a knowledge of how a person thought before I had to talk to him or her. I focused..... then frowned and focused harder. Nothing. Not a whisper. Unease stirred in my stomach – this had never happened before. No one had ever been silent like this – it was as though she wasn't thinking at all. But Mike was still chattering at Bella like a fool. The set of her shoulders was stiff – annoyed, and shy all at the same time, and she had let her long dark hair flow over her shoulder, hiding her face. She was obviously feeling uncomfortable – surely she had to be thinking something. But if she was, I couldn't hear it. I frowned slightly. This was incredibly frustrating – what was she thinking?! Why couldn't I hear her?

Not even a second had passed since I'd walked through the door. I kept walking automatically, pausing just behind Mike – he was between me and my seat, and needed to move before I could get to the chair. I felt a flicker of irritation – I'd made noise as I'd walked up behind him, and I knew that he'd heard me, but he still wasn't moving. I wanted to get closer to Bella – maybe the closer proximity would help me read her mind..... not that I'd ever needed to do that before. And it wasn't as though I'd find anything worth hearing – she was just another human, another featureless sheep in the herd. Whatever she was thinking, I'd probably hear it before. But still.....

And Mike was still standing there, practically harassing Bella with his babble. "Excuse me, Mike," I said, having to work at making myself sound polite.

Mike turned to face me, and at the exact same time, Bella Swan's breath hissed softly in, and she went rigid in her seat. Her heart beat faster, and her hands clenched into white knuckled fists.

My eyes widened slightly in surprise as Mike walked dejectedly back to his seat and I sat down beside her. How could I have made her angry? I hadn't even spoken to her yet! Had my initial assumptions about her annoyance with Mike Newton been wrong? Had she been interested in him? Was she angry with me for cutting their conversation short? Strange – she hadn't seemed to be interested in Mike. And even if she had been, her reaction was still a little off – my experience told me that disappointment and annoyance, not outright fury, were the appropriate emotions. Why was she so different? Were all humans this difficult to read? Perhaps I wasn't as intuitive as I'd thought – perhaps I relied too much on my insight.

I obviously needed to smooth things over. I turned to her, intending to say something generic and polite – Hello, my name is Edward Cullen. That was the plan. I started to inhale to speak.

And her scent slammed into me with the force of a nuclear bomb. The girl's anger at me was forgotten. Her unreachable thoughts were forgotten, as was her strange reaction to me. Her scent pervaded every part of my mind, violently shoving everything else out. I felt it in my body as well – the scorching burn that raced up and down my throat, the dry, fiery ache that filled my empty veins, the dessicated sensation in my mouth. I forgot my family, and what I would do to them. I forgot that the girl had a family who would miss her. I forgot that I had devoted myself to being good.

Only one reality existed – I was a vampire, and she had the sweetest blood I'd ever encountered.

Her scent was so strong, so amazing, that it almost propelled me out of my seat and toward her throat. I tensed, preparing my body for the action. There was no thought of resistance in my mind.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Carlisle's face appeared in my mind, his expression sad, yet filled with such a devastating kindness and understanding that was somehow worse than censure and anger. It was an expression I'd only seen on his face once – the day I'd told him that I had decided to live like the rest of our kind, that I was leaving. That period of darkness had been so filled with death and depression. I had hurt Carlisle and Esme so badly, for no reason except my own selfishness and desires.

And I was about to do it again. And this time, I wouldn't only be affecting Carlisle and Esme, but the rest of my family as well – Alice, Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper. I would force them to uproot themselves and relocate.

And I would become even more of a monster than I already was. Another face appeared beside Carlisle's in my mind – my face, from my rebellious period. A monster's face – hard, cynical, and cold, with eyes as red as a demon's. It was the face that I had worked to bury, the face that haunted me and represented everything I didn't want to be. I would become him again.

The thought hurt almost as much as the intense burning. I didn't want to be a demon, a devil, a monster! I didn't want to hurt my mother and father! I wanted to deserve the love they gave so freely, even though I knew I never could. I didn't want to kill this girl.

I wouldn't do it – I refused. She couldn't make me, no matter how much I burned.

I sharply pushed the air out of my lungs and held my breath. Relief came instantly, but it was incomplete – I could still hear her heartbeat, could still feel the shuddering waves of body heat that she threw off, and the memory of her smell remained in my mind. I could taste it on the back of my tongue.

But I couldn't think of the taste. Desperately, I clung to my reason, my hatred for the monster I was, hoping beyond hope that would be enough.

What was this girl?! Why did she have to be so ridiculously, appallingly decadent? Why did she have to be here, now? Why did she have to be in this tiny town, in this school, in this class? What were the odds of choosing the exact state, town, and school, of being assigned the seat next to one of the only vampires on earth that interacted with humans? It couldn't be a coincidence. Maybe she was a punishment – the thing the monster wanted most, after I had given up self-gratification. Maybe she had been sent by fate to burn me. It was as much as I deserved. But that knowledge didn't keep me from hating the slender, terribly appealing girl beside me.

Even as I glared furiously at her, I knew that those thoughts were foolish and unfair. It wasn't her fault, after all. What I really hated was myself, the monster in me that wanted to grip those slight shoulders, turn her toward me and pull her forward, crush her throat against my teeth, drink the warm, thick, pulsing – my hands gripped the edge of the lab table so hard my fingers left an imprint on the wood. I only had to resist for an hour – thinking about what she would taste like was not going to help anything. Just an hour.

And it was the longest hour of my existence. I was immortal – surely the sixty minutes, the three thousand six hundred seconds, shouldn't feel longer than the one hundred and ten years that I'd been alive. And yet, they did. Of course, I had never experienced such an intolerable burning before – it was driving me insane. The pain was so intense, like fire was crawling up my throat. It would be so easy to quench it – the girl was weak, and wouldn't be able to fight me off. And the other children, the teacher – they were weak, too. And they would be witnesses of my heinous act; they would have to die, as well.

My mind had no trouble with the math. If I couldn't control the thirst that raged in my parched throat, then I would have to kill twenty innocent people. Never, not even in my darker days, had I committed such an atrocity. I would truly be a monster. You're already a monster, the thirst-maddened part of me snarled. You won't change that status if you kill them. Just let go – stop trying to be something you're not. You want her!

I swallowed back the venom that pooled in my mouth. The monster didn't need to remind me how much I wanted her – even if I lived until the world ended, I would never forget the exquisite burning I was enduring in this moment. Yes, I wanted her. But I'd been denying my body what it wanted for years – this was no time to stop.

At last, just when I thought that I couldn't sit there for another second, the bell rang. Before it finished, I was out of the classroom and darting down the hall.

But I could feel a familiar presence at my back. Her heartbeat was almost right behind me. For one horrible second, horror and want stabbed into my gut – was she following me? Did she have a death wish? I didn't know if I could resist if she stopped me, if she demanded and explanation for my behavior and her breath swirled across my face.....

But then she veered off, and I heard her footsteps fade as she nearly ran toward the opposite end of the parking lot, the area the farthest away from my current destination – my car.

I gasped the clean, wet air outside as though I'd been suffocating. My hands didn't shake as I unlocked my Volvo and opened the driver's side door, but, if I had been a human, they would have been. I slammed the door behind me, breathing in the scents of my siblings to further purge my lungs of that scent.....

I ground my teeth and rested my forehead against the steering wheel. Keep it together, I ordered myself furiously. Quickly, I jabbed the power button on the car's radio, and the CD I'd been listening to on the drive to school started playing again. It was a CD that usually calmed me down, but it did little to ease the tension in entire body now. I was as rigid and unmovable as rock. And I had a feeling that I would stay that way until I was far, far away from the girl and the temptation her blood presented.

Far away. My thoughts circled around the two little words, and I was startled to find the conclusion that my subconscious had drawn. Forks was a small town – the run to her house couldn't take more than five minutes, at the most. Knowing that she – and her blood – was so close to me would be a constant, nagging thought, always pulling me toward her, toward the monster I didn't want to be. I feared that I couldn't be near her without putting her and my family at risk – without succumbing. I shuddered at the thought, and became even more disgusted with myself, for the shiver had been not only one of repulsion, but one of desire. I could not be near the Swan girl.

The car doors opened, and my family climbed into my car. I jerked; I had been so deep in thought that I hadn't heard them coming. In the rear view mirror, I could see Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper's startled expressions. I only heard their mental confusion for a moment before Alice claimed my attention.

"Why are you leaving?" she demanded, her small arms crossed over her chest, her dark eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do you have any idea how upset Esme will be? And Carlisle, too! What are you thinking?"

I wavered. Perhaps..... if I didn't allow myself to be alone often, and rearranged my classes.....

And, in my peripheral vision I was a flicker of motion at the other end of the parking lot. I glanced away from Alice to see what it was – and froze.

Bella, looking cautiously around her to see if anyone was watching, slid swiftly out from between the trees and made her way toward an antiquated red truck, digging into her pocket and bringing out a key. She was far away from me, but even at this distance, I could see her pulse throbbing in her throat, could remember how appetizing she smelled. The monster in me reared his head again. Most of the humans were gone – the teachers and faculty that remained were inside, and wouldn't be able to see what was about to happen.

My hand reached for the door handle on its own power – I never told it to move. I saw the violent vision that filled Alice's mind, and I heard her gasp, but I paid no attention. I was hunting.

"NO!" Alice's shriek was background noise, unimportant. The hand that grasped a fistful of my hair and yanked me away from the door, away from Bella, however, was not. I snarled sharply, my eyes never leaving Bella, a predator that felt its prey was being taken. "Edward, what are you doing?" she screeched. "Jasper!"

A wave of calm, almost lethargy, swept through me, and at the exact same time Bella – who must have heard Alice's screams – whipped her head around to look at us with wide, startled eyes

Eyes that, by chance, just so happened to lock with mine. Her face changed abruptly, turning severe and oddly inviting at the same time. But I only saw these changes with the lesser part of my mind. Most of my concentration was focused on those eyes, those, large, warm, doe eyes that called to me, beckoned me closer, promised me anything and everything I wanted..... My body relaxed, and I reached again for the door handle, this time intending to approach her calmly and...... I didn't know what I would do when I got there yet. All I knew was that I needed to be closer to her.

The car door swung open, and I tried to get out, but something was holding me back. I struggled against it absentmindedly, swatting at the restraints half-heartedly. I felt hazy, muddled, blissfully content and happy – a small part of my mind compared the feeling to that of a human under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but it wasn't like that, either – it was entirely foreign and indescribable.

Then a sharp, stinging something cracked across my face. The blow made my head snap around, breaking my eye contact with Bella, and the pain cut through the fog in my mind like a knife. Clarity rushed back to me – and I knew that something was wrong.

Aware of my surroundings again, I realized that I was half-way out of the car with Emmett leaning around the driver's seat and holding me down. It must have looked comical, but, from a glimpse of Bella's face through Rosalie's alarmed mind, Bella appeared furious.

"He's coming around!" Jasper growled. He was also gripping me from the back seat. "Drive!"

Alice obeyed immediately, reaching her leg over the console from where she sat in the passenger's seat, and slamming down the gas pedal, grabbing the steering wheel in the same second.

The tires squealed against the asphalt, and, with Alice steering, the Volvo launched forward and onto the highway with me still half-out of the car. I pulled myself back in effortlessly, slamming the door closed behind me. I didn't try to take the steering wheel form Alice, and neither did she offer control of the car.

I was frozen, in shock. What had that been? How had Bella, a human girl, done that? Or was she human at all?

"I think you might have been right before," Alice said tightly. "Maybe it would be best if you left for a while."

I could think of no argument against that observation.