Just so you guys know beforehand, Emmett, in my story, is a jocky nerd. He's popular and, although Piri is not poular, she is a big nerd, Emmett is Rose's best friend. Sorry to all of you Rose-lovers, because my Rose has some Victoria in her. lol. I love that name: VICTORIA. It has become the official mean-girl category for Twilight people.

Beautiful name, Victorias out there, I don't mean you. But there is this Victoria at my school....

Anyway, enjoy!


Chapter Three

My dorm room was unlocked, which meant Rose was there. I hurried inside, threw my bag off my shoulder and onto my bed, and locked myself in our room's bathroom, ignoring Rose. She could wait.

I took a quick, cleansing shower, and it calmed me down from the excited state I'd been in with Edward. Hair dripping, I tied my fuzzy green robe around me and shaved my legs. Finally, I left the confines of the tiny bathroom.

Rose's bright red, curly, below-her-waist hair was hiding her calculating face as she curved her back and neck over her desk. Her desk was in front of the side window, opposite the bathroom, so her back was to me. She was scribbling something, her mechanical pencil making scratchy noises.

"Doesn't that hurt, like, your spine, or something?"

She jumped a foot in the air, stretching to a standing position and knocking her chair to the floor behind her. Her right hand was clutched over her heart. "Bella!"

I ducked to the left, in her line of sight, furrowing my brow. "Yeah. I thought you would've heard the shower running."

"N-no. No."

I frowned and backed away to sink into my bed. I lay down and closed my eyes. "Oh," I said sleepily. "Sorry."

Rose returned to normal old Rose and came to sit beside my motionless figure. I felt her average-sized body push the mattress down.

"Bella."

"Hmm?"

She clearly hesitated. After her second big breath, she said, "why'd you take a shower now? You don't usually shower until late at night, when you claim that there's nothing better to do."

I quirked an eyebrow and opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling. "I have a date tonight. Why do you c—"

"With Edward?"

I lifted my head off the pillow to look at her. "Yes, Rose, with Edward. Why do y—"

"Because!" She shifted her gaze to my bedspread and started playing with the two inches of sheet hanging out on the end. "I don't trust him," she admitted.

I waited for more, but none came. I sat up beside her, curling my feet under me. "Why? Rose, you don't even know him."

"Neither do you!"

"Yeah, but," I bit my lip and looked at her dubiously, "That's sort of the whole point of, like, dating."

Rose looked at me, then the ground, then at my right knee, avoiding my gaze again. "I know, I just…I feel like I knew him, as weird as that sounds, and he's…" She locked her serious azure eyes with my confused green taupe ones. "He's not a good guy."

I didn't speak, and my front teeth sucked in my bottom lip and began gnawing. I never wanted to believe anything like this, but I trusted Rose with my whole heart, always had, and wasn't about to deny her because she was telling me something I didn't like. Not that I had seen evidence of Edward being a bad guy today. But when you really looked at it from my eyes, you could only look at it through this one day. Was that enough to call proof? Not in my opinion. Was I turning my back on Rose? A little, I guess. Even so, I was sure she'd be okay with that if I explained to her my side of Edward.

I took a deep breath. "Rose." Her gaze snapped to my face, probably trying to read my mind, as she often did. Well, I was going to tell her what was on my mind, so she needn't have bothered. "I don't think you're right. We can't judge this guy after a day. Nothing screamed "bad guy material" when I was with him today. In fact, quite the opposite. He was kind and gentlemanly and funny and cute about all of it. I really like him." Rose's lips tightened into a line, but she didn't look away. "I think tonight I'll make up my mind about him. A single day isn't enough to call him a bad guy or a purely good guy, either, and I realize this. I just want to find out for myself." I paused, thinking about what she had said. "You said you knew him. How would you have known him? Have you been to Minnesota without me knowing or something?" I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

"I'm guessing it's too weird for you." It was a statement and she sounded almost…defeated. Don't ask me why, and I'm not saying she's a lesbian, but she sounded like she just asked me out and I had rejected her or something.

"Yeah, it is. Does that bother you?"

Rose stood fluidly and marched to her bed beside her desk and sat, facing me from across the room. "No," she said, and it was almost mean, and obviously it was a lie. "He just seems like one of those guys who gets girls, has dirty sex with them, and leaves."

"Woah, Rose. That's…harsh, not to mention extremely unlike you. I don't understand how you see this person in him."

She got to her feet again, snatched her black leather bookbag from the floor by her bed, slung it over her shoulder, grabbed her paper and pencil off her desk and stuffed them in the pocket of her red fleece jacket, and turned to me. "I don't have to explain myself to you, Bella," she snapped. "I'm going to Emmett's to work. I may sleep over, too. Have fun tonight with Edward." She could barely stop an angry glare before she spun around and disappeared out the door.

I was alone in the ringing silence for all of two seconds before Alice pushed open the door. She took one look at me, alone, still and solemn, and scampered across the room to me. "Bell!"

Somehow, she managed to trip over my lime green rug when she was a foot away from me and fall, her clumsy limbs flailing and her too-big eyes closing shut, steeling herself for one of her regular battles with the floor. Her slim little arms flitted to push-up position, and she caught herself on her toes, but her elbows popped and buckled, so the floor belatedly kissed her nose.

I couldn't help it—I was giggling like mad.

Alice rolled onto her back on my rug, exhaling a giant gust of air from her little lungs and rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. About 5' feet tall, she dressed like a girl twisted by a tornado in the dark. In short, she wore crazy, multi-colored, un-matching clothes and five different earrings in her five ear piercings and a nose ring that was never the same for two months. She had the loveliest boy-short, naturally spiky, white-blond hair and she had a single, different spike of color in a clump of her bangs weekly. Today that color was forest green, and it made her eyes look like sparkling mountains. The color scheme of her hair and her unique eyes painted a picturesque scene in admirers' eyes every week. All of her shockingly loud apparel and personality made her a 10-foot tall giant who bellowed, "look at me," only not in a deep voice full of menace, but a high tweet of a voice that made the listener think of happy, clueless kittens.

That was Alice Brandon in a nutshell.

She wearily stood up and, her concern for me momentarily forgotten, threw her arms open and said, "I need a hug."

"Me too," I muttered, and hurled myself into her. With her chin tilted up as far as her neck would permit, she reached my shoulder. Towering over her with my slender 6 foot frame, I didn't wrap my arms around her waist when hugging Alice. No, with Alice, my forearms just rested on her shoulders.

After a minute she pulled away. She craned her neck back to look at me and said, "Sit, please. I want to tell you something."

I backed up till the backs of my knees hit my bed and bent my legs into a sitting position. Rose's outburst and departure were almost forgotten. Alice's mere presence did that to people.

"Yeah?" I said, watching her sit on my rug and look up at me.

"On my way in this dorm I passed Rose. She was in a big hurry somewhere and she told me you were being a bi— a, well, the b-word. Why would she say that?"

So much for not stressing about Rose.

I sighed, and decided to give her the simple truth. "Because she said Edward was a bad guy and I disagreed with her."

Alice shook her head, scowling. "But she doesn't even know him! None of us know him yet. However, he was incredibly hot and seemed like a nice guy, so I like him. She's awfully worked up, calling you names. It's ridiculous of her!"

"Yeah, well, it's how she feels. We've never gotten in a fight like this before, though, and I don't know why it's such a big issue anyway. He's just a guy. She says she doesn't trust him. And he said, like, one word to her! I don't know what her problem is. A nice, unbelievably hot guy asks me out and she—"

Alice's jaw had dropped. I forgot she didn't know that Edward had asked me out. I immediately felt awful—I mean, it was obvious at lunch that day that Alice had a thing, if purely physical, for Edward. I didn't want her to hate me now, too!

"Yeah," I whispered into the surprised silence. "Edward asked me out today."

Alice snapped out of her shock and asked, in a voice I could only call curious, "When are you going out?"

"Tonight."

She smiled the normal (for her), toothy smile. I let out a quiet sigh of relief. Maybe it was all okay with her.

"Alice," I said tentatively. "Are you mad at me?"

She waved her head back and forth rapidly, her hair shifting with each turn. "Not at all," she announced cheerily, "although I wouldn't have minded taking a bite out of his man meat. Yum!" She took a big, violent bite out of the air, and I giggled. "But now that you have him, you just have to tell me what he tastes like!" I laughed aloud. Gosh, I loved this girl.

I looked at my alarm clock on my bedside table. 4:18 pm. Edward was coming to get me at my dorm at 6:30, and we were going to a nearby restaurant off-campus. I suddenly had a fun, although frightening, idea.

"Do you want to…" I faltered, chickening. "Alice, do you want to, maybe, uh, I don't know, perhaps…help me decide what to wear for tonight?" I squinted away, fearing her reaction.

After a second of waiting for Alice's attack and being met with still silence, I peeked back in her direction.

She remained cross-legged on the floor a few feet before me. Her hands were still folded in her lap. She looked unbelieving but, at the same time, ecstatic. She had a gigantic grin on her little face, and her eyes were bright with excitement. Alice loved to play dress-up, especially with me. She tells me constantly that I should be a super model.

"Yes!" she squealed, jumping up and bouncing on her toes a few times.

I laughed, loving her childish joy. "Alright, but first, do you want to do homework with me?"

She stopped bouncing immediately, looking at me in horror. I stood up and walked to her, bending down to look her in the eye and placing my hands on her shoulders. "Hun," I said, squeezing her shoulders. "You can't always get what you want."

I stared in her sand-colored eyes for a minute more, then let go of her and began pantomiming playing a guitar. "You can't, always get, what you want!" I was cracking myself up, hopping around and shaking my hair and singing. After a moment Alice dissolved into a fit of giggles, holding her stomach.


HOORAY or EFF THIS DAY??

Reviews are super-duper cute like Christofer Drew and Edward combined. OOOOH, a sexy emo punk handsome adorable everything sweet with a tad of salt Grrek god. Picture that, and it'll make you want to review. XD