Chapter 7 – Hannah Montana
BPOV
I felt slightly self-conscious as Edward opened the car door for me. He insisted on driving me to school alone, today. He took my hand and kissed it gently, his eyes stealing a quick glance toward me. I grinned and hugged him, drinking in his delicious scent.
"We have all day together," he reminded me.
"Yes," I grinned, but then my smile faded. "Except one. Cursed chemistry class."
He lifted his lips from my hand and kept one arm around my waist as we walked across the lot. I had a small backpack on my back, and Edward would have insisted on carrying it, but I refused. The only things in it were my binder and my laptop.
Students were beginning to stare. I turned my head slightly away and buried my face in Edward's shirt. He patted me reassuringly.
However, judging by the expression on his face, the students' expressions, and the way that his teeth were clenched, I was certain that things were most definitely not okay.
I could see a guy approaching me. "Hey, hottie, wanna come over tonight?" he asked in a way he thought was hot. Edward and I giggled silently. His voice was high and nasal, like a girl's. No – like Lauren Mallory's!
"Um, why would I be interested?" I retorted.
That made him take a blow on his ego. "Well, because I'm hot, obviously! And a hottie like you deserves a hottie like me." He winked pathetically, having to scrunch the whole left side of his face in the process.
"Sorry, my husband's hotter," I replied smugly, and turned my hand just a bit to show him the ring. His face colored and Edward and I laughed out loud this time as the boy slunk off.
"Good one," he whispered, and kissed me on the top of my head.
My arms wrapped around his waist. "Love you."
"Love you more," he replied.
"Love you most. No," I laughed as he opened his mouth again. "Most is more than more. It's most, so there!"
He laughed. "Absurd, love. Just another reason you are so lovable."
We walked in silence for a while, holding onto each other tightly, ignoring the stares of infatuation and resentment that shot at us. Edward's jaw tightened a little, again, until I kissed the exact spot where his muscles were tightened into a knot. They relaxed and he smiled at me gratefully.
"Um...." I heard a human say.
"Bella?" A male voice.
"No, Aidan. It's not Bella Swan. She moved out of Phoenix a long time ago, and what are the odds that she's in Dartmouth?" the first voice, a female, continued.
The voices were strangely familiar.
I whirled around at the two conversing people and couldn't believe my eyes.
"Are...are you...."
"Bella!" the female cried. "Oh my gosh! I never thought I'd see you again after you moved!"
"Hey, Bella," the male said, grinning like Emmett. "Still the klutz?" I feigned offense, which made him screw his face up.
I laughed. "Not quite anymore, thank God. Edward, this is Aidan Polovski," I said, gesturing to the male. "And Livanna Jensen." I moved my hand over to the female. "They were next-door neighbors in Phoenix, who happened to be across the street from me. We were kind of childhood friends, I guess." The friendship bond between the three of us was nowhere near the best-friend-forever (literally) bond I shared with Alice and Rosalie, but it was strong for humans.
They smelled like the tempting humans they were, but for some reason, I couldn't really find the same aching thirst in me. It must be that they were two of my closest human friends and I couldn't lift a finger against them.
"Nice to meet you," Edward murmured, perfectly composed.
"Hey, dude," Aidan greeted my husband, being outright and friendly as ever.
"Call me Livvie," Livvie said when Edward moved over to her. I grinned; her reflex was to tell everyone to call her Livvie, just like mine was to tell everyone to call me Bella. I heard a squeal, and my head jerked up. "You two made it official?" Her eyes darted from the ring on my hand, to my face, to Edward, and back, in a triangle.
Edward laughed. "Yes, we did."
"So have you guys," I observed, looking down to see that Aidan was holding Livvie's hand. "Wait...I thought in sophomore year that you guys swore to everyone that you would never, ever go out?"
We all laughed. "Things change," Aidan remarked. "It's only engagement right now."
Livvie cringed, and I chuckled, since she was acting much like I had whenever someone used that word to describe me.
I looked at the two of them, looking so perfect together. Aidan was just slightly shorter than Edward, by perhaps an inch or two, and he had dark blond hair. Aidan was one of those guys who was perfect at everything, perfect at sports, school, and had amazing looks, but wasn't one of the boys who were considered 'popular'. Livvie was sort of known as a bookworm (hence the bond between her and I). She wore glasses, and had long, light brown hair. She was always picked on by the plastic popular crowd.
They were perfect for each other. Aidan picked up Livvie's ring-adorned hand and kissed it gently.
Livvie's slate-colored eyes stared into mine. "Hey, why are both your eyes like that? You too," she added, looking at Edward.
He flashed me a vampire-fast look before I replied smoothly. "Well, the optometrist told me I needed glasses or contacts after a while, and Edward was just switching to contacts, so we decided to make ourselves...different, by buying a set of multi-colored contacts. We have this color," I paused to point to my eyes, liquid gold at the moment, "a sort of honey color, light brown, and black." I grinned. "Black is usually very goth-ish. I don't really like to use it, but...it is more natural than this."
Aidan nodded, unsurprised. "That doesn't really surprise me."
"You've changed a lot," Livvie said. "You seem more...confident, and I can't believe you didn't even trip yet!"
We all laughed again. "It took a while, but I finally took her to a class that helped improve balance," Edward said, hugging me.
"Oh wow, how did that go?" Aidan smirked, causing another round of laughter.
I cringed, pretending that I knew exactly what was going on. "Not...very...well."
"We better hurry along," Edward said, whipping out his cell phone to check the time, though he knew very well what the time was. "Class starts soon."
"What's your schedule?" I asked Livvie.
She smiled broadly. "Aidan and I both have the same schedule." We compared schedules and found that we had our first and third classes together.
"That's the upside to college, I guess," Aidan remarked. "Four classes a day. Start at eight a.m., finish at noon. Perfect."
"And twice that many hours of homework, so I've been told," Livvie grumbled.
Edward chuckled. He had decided not to take the nighttime classes, and in case of a sunny day, we would run extremely quickly into the shadows, where we stroll about as if we were there the whole time. No human would ever notice. Besides, no one called your parents if you didn't show up for school. Fortunately, today was overcast.
"Speaking of which," I asked him quietly. "When do the others have theirs?"
"Rosalie and Emmett have their classes from ten to two," he replied, rubbing the back of my hand against his cheek. "Alice and Jasper's are from eleven to three."
"Oh," Aidan cut in. "Speaking of which, shouldn't you be in...sophomore? You are one year older than us."
"Uh...that..." I mumbled. I had no perfect explanation.
Edward stroked my cheek reassuringly. "She had a severe sickness," he told them quietly. "I chose not to go here for two semesters and stay home with her."
"Aww...." Livvie just had to tease us.
"No wonder you're paler than you were," Aidan joked, or so he thought. "I wouldn't have thought that possible."
Edward and I both laughed. "Yup, now she looks like me!" he managed out.
"Why are you so pale?" Aidan asked.
"Um...my parents were albinos?"
"You're strange," Aidan said, but in a friendly way.
"Oh, Bella, did I tell you about the band?" Livvie asked suddenly.
"Nope, what band?"
"Remember that band Aidan was in when you were still there?"
"Yeah...?"
"Two of the four other members are in Dartmouth too!"
"That's great!"
"And it's good that we're here," she muttered. " 'Cause Matt sucks at singing! So the band performs once every two weeks, at the 'every-other-week-Saturday-night-campus-get-together'," she informed me, pointing to a flier that advertised just that on a bulletin board as we walked into the building. "And once a month, they perform at the chapel on campus on Sunday."
"I haven't even performed yet. I don't know how they're doing, and if I'm going to mess their amazing reputation up," Aidan worried. "I haven't practiced lead guitar or singing for a while, because the rest of the band all went to college a year before I did."
"I can help," Edward offered. "Up until we came here, I was taking private guitar lessons and voice, too."
"Really?" Aidan perked up, his jade green eyes sparkling.
"Really," Edward promised, grinning widely. "The choir teacher said something about me having an 'angelic' voice." He rolled his eyes.
"It's true," I whispered quickly, softly, so that only he could hear. "My angel."
He grinned and pecked my lips.
I returned to the conversation about the band. "Aidan, stop worrying, or I'll tell Livvie to make you. By the way," I continued innocently, ignoring the red that flushed both their faces, "what's the band called?"
"We don't really have a good one yet," Aidan admitted. "We're trying to throw an album together...we have a few record deals."
"Wow," I mused. "You've come a long way from being the neighborhood garage band that made the neighbors holler at you, huh?"
"Yep," he and Livvie both said, popping the 'p', and we all laughed.
"Forks needed a band to make it more alive," Edward reminsced sadly. "At some of the dances, from what I...." He trailed off, and I realized that he was about to say "read from their minds". "...heard, the bands weren't even real ones, just some stupid, arrogant fools who thought they could make music." He winked at me, and I knew that he was just pretending to be human.
Aidan just snickered.
We stopped talking for about ten seconds and took that precious little time to walk, not talk. When we stepped into the classroom, in which most students were already seated, all conversation ceased.
Then the whispering began.
"She's so hot," a guy whispered to his friend quietly. I cringed and Edward held me tighter, his eyes stormy.
"Oh my god, does that guy really need clothes?" I heard a girl gush to her friends. It was my turn to glare as Edward closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
Some stares were directed toward poor Aidan and Livvie, who looked as uncomfortable as we did. I knew, even without Edward's power, that they thought of themselves as utterly human near us - the irony was almost funny. However, the two were extremely attractive for humans, if I do say so myself.
The four of us sat down in a corner, in the back.
I hadn't noticed before, but Aidan had been carrying a large backpack that held both their laptops. The four of us quickly popped ours up like the other ones. I tapped my fingers impatiently, almost seething at the seemingly inanimate laptop, until I felt Edward's lips at my hand. I could feel him smile.
Finally, the piece of technological crap was working. I opened up Microsoft Word and prepared to take 'notes' on the lecture.
"Good morning," a male voice boomed as our teacher walked into the room. He looked young, as if he couldn't be older than in his early thirties. "I am Professor Baroet. And my first statement: you will have lots of homework, so prepare yourselves, or fail out. Your choice."
I gulped, and Edward stroked my hand lightly. I leaned into him as best as I could, given my stupid, restraining, one-person desk. Aidan and Livvie, being, well, the totally loveable and outright friends they were, let out loud, audible groans. The professor's gaze snapped to them, and he glared.
"Nice," Edward murmured.
"Thirty-six seconds into the class, and you've gotten to the teacher's bad side, but hey, who's counting?" I was impressed and let out a chuckle along with that.
Professor Baroet opened up his bag, and I'd been expecting loads of papers or books from there, but there was only a thin stack of papers and some packets to work on, I concluded.
The rest were jars and jars of peanut butter and one loaf of bread (barf).
Well, now I knew who amazing_peanut_butter_amazing was on the student-teacher intranet.
...
The first two classes passed uneventfully, with Edward and I whispering sweet nothings to each other under our breaths. Then it came time for the third class, in which I was to be reunited with my human friends but separated from my Edward.
"In the future," he murmured. "Tell me all about your friends so I'm prepared."
I gasped. "Was one of them a...you know...um, singer?"
"Oh, no, Bella," he reassured me. "I was just surprised, to see you greeting two humans like lifelong friends."
"That's what we are, technically." He didn't answer, so I hung my head like a little child caught stealing from the cookie jar. "Sorry."
He lifted my head with one soft, warm finger. His eyes were forgiving and molten gold, and I found myself melting into them. "It's all right, love. I love you...I love you...I love you...." He breathed the words between kisses on my eyelids, nose, and neck.
"I do, too." I kissed him one last time on the lips before we had to scurry off to our classes.
...
"Bells!" Emmett boomed in the chemistry classroom.
I groaned inwardly. Could he be any less inconspicuous?
"Who's that?" Aidan inquired as I sat down in the two-person lab seats next to him and Livvie.
"My brother-in-law," I automatically answered. I'd forgotten my alibi already, again, so I hoped that what I said was making sense. He just nodded.
"Hi, are you Bella's friends?" Emmett asked, bounding over.
"Where's Rose?" I asked him, and his face turned down just a little.
"Different class," he muttered.
"This is Aidan, and Livvie. They were my neighbors and friends in high school."
Aidan and Emmett bumped fists, for some reason. Livvie and I rolled our eyes at the exact same time and we laughed.
As the teacher, Professor Isana Rachin, continued explaining about her classroom policies, my mind drifted until I was fantasizing about Edward again. Ah, my one true Adonis. He was amazing. We wouldn't be doing anything...just lying in the grass somewhere, late at night, holding each other, gazing at the stars.
"...all right, students, this should be a fairly easy lab that you may have done from your junior or senior years. When these two solutions are heated over a burner, they change chemically. Read the instructions in your packet, and when you are done, fill out the questions." (AN: I know this is way too much like high school, but I've never been to college so....)
Emmett had gone ahead with the lab before I could blink out of my daydream.
"Hey, Em, give me that. I haven't done anything yet."
"Yeah," he smirked. "Obviously, Bella misses a certain someone."
I would've blushed. "Okay, so you basically did everything but put this over the burner."
"Yep," he replied.
I gazed at the complicated-looking heated machine in front of me. "This actually spouts flames?" I exclaimed, incredulous, as I caught a bit of the instructions.
"Uh-oh," Emmett muttered.
Aidan and Livvie seemed to be gliding right along. They were now trying to figure out how the burner operated.
"Look," I muttered under my breath. "If humans can do it, so can we."
"Yeah," he snorted. "But they have a much less chance of being burnt to death and smelling like incense."
Ugh. I did not want to be reminded of the smell that accompanied a vampire death. "Okay, just be ready, Em. Who's doing this?"
"I will." He swallowed.
"On three," I commanded. "One...two...three!" I flipped the burner on, and a flame shot up from the center. I winced, but what happened next was worse.
Emmett tossed the solution into the flames.
Screams came from the tables near us, who saw the small explosion.
Emmett and I were under the tables, which I noticed were fireproof.
As our heads slowly came up, we had several dozen pairs of eyes on us. The explosion wasn't too bad...just a nasty scorched substance that blew halfway across the room and a disgusting, acrid smell in the air.
"Emmett," I murmured quietly. "You're going to pay."
He smacked his forehead. "I didn't see 'put it above the burner'; I thought it was 'put it in the burner'!"
"Emmett, you're going to pay," I reminded him again. "And no, not financially."
Both of us stiffened at the same time and slowly swiveled toward the teacher with slightly frightened eyes.
Professor Rachin had her headphones on, plugged into the computer, and Hannah Montana / Miley Cyrus was playing at top volume. She was nodding in time to the music, and she was typing away furiously. Totally oblivious, but hey, Hannah Montana's terribly addicting!
Okay, not addicting. Just terrible.
Aidan broke the silence, as I'd expected.
"Guys, that was amazing! You should totally do it again!"
"Excellent plan, my friend," Emmett agreed, reaching over to high-five Aidan.
Livvie and I just glared at the two.
A piercing scream came from the middle of the room. "OMG! My amazingly beautiful, snow-white, four-hundred-dollar, sexy, man-magnet, revealing, perfect-first-day-of-school-outfit skirt is, like, now covered with, like, this, like, brown stuff! It's, like, ruined!"
"Wash it under warm water," I suggested coldly.
The girl glared at me. "It's war!"
"You're on," I muttered in a bored tone. Whatever this girl was going to do to me, all I had to do was poke her, and her life would...okay, maybe I was getting carried away.
That broke the rest of the humans from their silent stupor, as they all continued just working on their labs like nothing had happened. Emmett and I went and got paper towels and cleaning spray at a quick, human pace, and cleaned up the mess.
I suddenly heard heavy, thudding footsteps approaching our classroom. My eyes were wide with horror as I realized who it was a moment before the door flew open.
"Is everything all right in here, Professor Rachin? I heard a commotion in here, and - Professor Rachin!"
She was still oblivious, typing away as she continued to nod her head, her golden tresses bouncing up and down.
Enraged, Dean Mosnac strode to her computer, his belly jiggling like Santa Claus, and yanked the headphones out.
Miley Cyrus blared out of the speakers, which just happened to be turned on at top volume. "You made me laugh, you made me cry, and I don't know which side to buy...."
Half the girls (the one who had declared war with me, and the other dumb blondes with blank brains who make me wonder how someone like that could be admitted to Dartmouth) (AN: sorry to blondes) started squealing and singing along with Miley Cyrus. The other half (Livvie and all the other ones with some IQ points) clamped their hands over their ears. The males in the room and myself looked disgusted and folded our arms across our chests.
The bell rang.
AN: Like it? Love it? Despise it? REVIEW!!! Please!!! REVIEW!!! Please!!!
Gustar? Encantar? Chocar? (now if you'll excuse my crappy Spanish, I need to finish this AN before I hit the said homework.)
In the next chapter, another human declares war, too. And the blonde airhead (again, my apologies to blondes who may be reading this) will be extremely mortified. Hee hee....*cackle*