My 4B pencil moved over the textured paper of my sketchbook, creating a soft skritchy-scratchy sound as I absentmindedly filled in the shadows on the portrait I'd done. It wasn't very good – that wasn't me being self-deprecating, it was simply the truth. I couldn't bring life to the page; the face I drew was lopsided, the eyes were outlined too harshly, and the hair didn't have enough shine to it to make it look like hair. Normally these screw-ups were small enough that my drawing could still be deemed passable, but when my subject was Alice Cullen, a girl who had the delicate face of some priceless china doll, my attempt at capturing her likeness was insulting.
I looked at her over the top of the sketchbook where I had it propped up against my legs on a large art clipboard. She would look down every once in a while to scribble something on her paper and then look back up at me, smiling. It was disarming, beautiful, and the first few times she did it I had to fight down the blush that spread over my cheeks; it wasn't my fault she was flawless.
I had to keep looking at her, too, had to study her for the portrait, and as I did so I wondered why she didn't sparkle under the harsh fluorescent lights. Why was it they only refracted sunlight? I wasn't a light scientist or anything, but artificial light and sunlight weren't that different, were they? Well, sunlight had UV rays; was that why they sparkled, as a reaction to the ultraviolet? I resolved to research shit about the sun later.
I froze.
I made a resolution, a resolution to research vampire things. I decided. I glanced up at Alice through my lashes and stifled a relieved sigh when I saw she didn't appear to be in any sort of trance – she was turning her head and studying her drawing from different angles, looking as normal as a vampire ever could.
"Alright," Ms. Howe called attention to the front of the room with a clap of her hands, "Put the finishing touches on your drawings in the next five minutes, then come up here and grab a mirror. We'll be doing self studies for the rest of the period." The rail-thin woman gestured to a plastic box full of mirrors on her desk, clapped again, and said, "Get to it, folks."
Alice set her pencils down on our table and let her sketchbook rest flat on her lap. I tried to ignore her, well, maybe not ignore, but resist the urge I was getting to just drink her in, admire her, study her. I put the last few strokes into my drawing, signed my name in the bottom right corner with a practised flourish, cleared my throat, brushed a ticklish feeling away from my nose.
Alice looked completely at ease.
Even though there was always a part of me, an emotional, thrill-seeking part that craved contact and conversation and, hell, friendship with the Cullens, I struggled against those impulses and moved towards safety instead. I'd already taken a big enough risk with Edward; I didn't need to go poking the bear by starting small talk with Alice, despite how rude I might've appeared.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) the petite girl, woman, vampire in front of me was undeterred by my feigned indifference.
"Hey, Etta?" She began, then brought a hand up to her mouth nervously (was it genuine?), "Is it okay if I call you Etta? I'm sorry, I just heard everyone else calling you that so I assumed that's what you liked."
Her voice was clear and soft and, somehow, still rang out over the room like a bell. I had a feeling that, if I didn't know, if I hadn't been looking for some sign of unnaturalness in her and her siblings, I'd would've been enraptured.
"Yeah, yeah that's fine. You can call me anything, really, Etta, Loretta, Lora, it doesn't really matter," I said, and my voice was a bit too quiet for how loud the room was, a bit too raspy to be nonchalant, "You're Alice, right?"
"Yes!" She beamed at me, "I just wanted to ask how you're liking Forks. I know it can be hard, moving to a new place in the middle of the year."
"Well, Forks isn't actually that new to me," I said, pushing past the lump in my throat, "I've lived here most of my life."
Surprised wasn't the right word for how she looked, intrigued was more accurate, "Isn't this your first week?"
That wasn't what I wanted. I wanted her to think I was boring and leave me alone. Why wasn't she leaving me alone? "Uh, yeah, at this school, anyway," I chuckled awkwardly, "My Mom wanted me to live with her for a while, said she missed me, so I went to her place in Arizona after grade seven. I got back just a few days ago."
"Why?"
She really was kind of nosey, "Why'd I come back?"
Alice nodded.
I caught my lower lip between my teeth. People were looking at us out of the corner of their eye, whispering behind their hands, examining us as they walked by to get mirrors from Ms. Howe's desk. I didn't know for sure, but I figured Alice didn't talk to many people in this class, or many people in general outside of her siblings, and our conversation was going to be gossip-fodder for a while.
"Forks has always felt more welcoming to me than anywhere else," I said, "Arizona was always too bright or too hot or too dry, I was never comfortable like I was here." I stood up and asked, "Do you want me to get you a mirror?"
She paused, like she was catching up to my change of subject, then said, "Yes, please."
Her voice, again, was clear and chiming and beautiful as a bell.
Even Ms. Howe gave me a searching look as I took two of the mirrors. I noticed both had their sharp edges wrapped in duct tape and I was grateful; it wouldn't do to have someone slice their hand open in art class. Blood would go everywhere and, god, that would be a mess. I wondered if we were going to use x-acto knives for anything. That was a tragedy just waiting to happen. Alice would see if someone was going to have an accident and avoid it, though, so I was worrying for nothing.
I got back to our table and handed her one of the mirrors as I sat down. My finger brushed the side of her palm and it was like rubbing my skin over soft marble. I couldn't describe it any other way, there was the faint texture of smooth stone but it was somehow still supple like human skin. Cool, not cold, like air-conditioning turned on low rather than chewing an ice cube.
She stilled, as if she were waiting for me to comment on the oddity that was her body temperature, but recovered when I didn't speak. I began to examine myself in the mirror I held; I saw her watching me, watching like how everyone else in the room was watching the both of us, and I waited. Would she start asking me more questions? Would she get the hint that I didn't want to talk? Would she focus too hard on me, see something in my future, and seal my fate?
Alice opened her mouth and I went stiff, bracing myself for another onslaught of questions. She had to have noticed but wasn't deterred, "What about your friends? Wasn't it hard, leaving them behind?"
I watched the reflection of my mouth purse, "Yeah, but I keep in touch with a few of them so it's okay. Your family moves around a lot, right? Don't you keep in touch with old friends?"
Of course they didn't. They didn't make friends. They kept to themselves and sat by themselves and did their work by themselves. I doubted they'd given a human their phone number once in their entire lives.
The look Alice fixed me with made me feel like she was peeling my ribs back and inspecting my soul. It was hard, harder than the soft gazes she'd been giving up until that point, "We haven't moved that often, actually, just Alaska and here."
Shit. Shit shit shit. I fucked up. "Oh, sorry," I said, my mind racing for an excuse. What could I say? How did I get myself out of that hole? There! They said they were fostered! "I, um, I assumed cause you guys are foster kids that you must've moved a bunch... sorry, I shouldn't have."
Would she buy it?
She was quiet, a small frown marred her perfect features, then she shook it off with a little wave and was all smiles again, "It's okay. You're right, though, we do have friends in Alaska we still talk to. Not very many, but we call each other from time to time."
I made a soft noise of acquiescence. There were other 'vegetarians' in Alaska, weren't there? The Denver clan or something like that, something starting with a 'Den' anyway. It had been so long, a literal lifetime, since I'd laid a hand on those books – my details were slipping.
I didn't know what else to say, so I moved the mirror back in front of my face to block her from view. I was torn. So much of me wanted adventure, but so much of me was scared. So much of me was trapped in an endless pit of anxiety attacks during the night, so much played at being aloof and carefree during the day; why couldn't it be easy?
"Can I see the portrait you did?" Alice asked, and it was sudden enough that I jumped a bit in my seat, "I'll show you the one I did of you, too."
"Uh, sure," I said, even though I was embarrassed with just how bad it was. I flipped from the faint sketch of my own face back to the one of Alice in my book and held it out to her.
She reached out to take it. I was hesitant, but let her slip it gently out of my grip so she could get a closer look. Crinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes, though I couldn't tell if she was laughing at me or scowling at my inadequate representation of her face.
I wiggled in my seat, "I know it's not very good. I promise you look a lot nicer than that."
"No, no, it's nice!" She said as she handed it back to me, "Maybe you could practice a bit more, but it's not bad." Her voice was too sweet, simpering, like I was a toddler who'd just handed her a particularly coordinated crayon drawing; fair.
She showed me hers then, and I was looking at a photograph. It was that good. The shading, the hair, she even got the freckles that dotted my nose and cheekbones, and the eyes were uncanny in how they stared out from the page. I imagined that drawing was my clone, that it could step out into the world at any moment.
"That's amazing," I told her, and it was the first time in our conversation that I spoke in a normal tone.
Alice giggled; it was wind chimes in the breeze, "Thank you!"
We drifted into silence and I could hear the chattering of the other students buzzing like a mosquito in my ear. I went back to my self portrait, looked every so often at the face in the mirror, almost gave myself the corkscrew curls from Before, and I wondered how Alice could stand it. The lying, the secrets, all the time just hiding and playing pretend. I knew she had to, they all did, they had no choice, but I could hardly keep it together after one day and they did it for years and years.
I felt sorry, for the first time in this life I felt sorry for a vampire. Alice was bubbly, kind, and she could never be outgoing or make new friends or anything like that because she had such a huge secret to keep. She would be stagnant, stuck with the same five people, for the rest of eternity.
When the bell rang, I was up and packing my things away before Alice even closed her sketchbook. She was waiting, it looked like, for the room to clear before she got up. I shrugged my backpack onto my shoulders and walked over to Angie, who'd been paired up with some boy I didn't recognize. We headed out together, but before we crossed the doorway I turned around and caught Alice's eye. I smiled and waved and mouthed a 'goodbye'.
She beamed at me and waved back.
Paige and her boyfriend sat at a table shoved all the way into the back corner of the cafeteria. They weren't the only ones who sat there, however. Seven other teens, all dressed in varying degrees of dark clothing, squeezed their way into formation around them and grumbled when they had to make room for me. They didn't appear to be a close-knit group of friends, but they smiled greetings at each other and engaged in small bouts of conversation. I was sat between the boyfriend, whose name I learned was Gregory James, and a tall Korean girl named Joy.
"So," Paige said from her place on Greg's other side, "I hear you and Alice Cullen were all buddy-buddy today in second period."
I rolled my eyes, "So?"
"I dunno," She replied, and she sounded honestly perplexed, "The Cullens don't really talk to anyone. What did you talk about?"
"Oh, just how I was liking Forks, why I moved, friends we've left in other states, stuff like that."
Paige nodded, "Huh. Was she nice?"
"Yeah," I said, "I don't get why everyone is always talking shit about them." That was a lie. I knew it was a mix between people being driven off by fear they didn't understand and the Cullens' own standoffish behaviour.
Greg piped up, "It's cause they're rich and hot and people are jealous, not to mention the two girls are frigid as fuck."
Paige whacked him in the arm and he let out a mock yelp of pain, smile on his face the whole time. He leaned in and tried to kiss her, but she put a hand over his mouth and pushed him away, gesturing with the spoon she was using in her yogurt cup, "I'm eating! Do you want gooey, yogurt lips?"
"Alice wasn't mean to me," I said, a bit confrontationally I must admit. Why did he single out her and Rosalie, was it just because they wouldn't date the shitty boys in this school?
Greg gave me a once over, like he couldn't believe what I just said, "That's not what frigid means, babe."
Paige then scolded her boyfriend for calling another girl 'babe', but she did it in such a joking manner that I could tell it didn't really bother her. I didn't know Gregory James, I'd only shared a few words with him, but I didn't like him at that moment. Honestly, he made me a little uncomfortable. I promised I'd tell him to shut up or something if he said something like that again.
He didn't. After our delightful exchange, he and Paige leaned together and began to not-so-subtly whisper about hooking up in Greg's car instead of going to next period.
I studied my tray and the half-eaten beef patty that lay on it, and the rest of the table finally stopped filleting me with their eyes. I pushed the remains of a few french fries around with my fork, speared a few, and shoved them into my mouth – they were cold. I considered just getting up and heading to the library, but my back was to the wall and I was boxed in by people I didn't know. Why couldn't I have gotten the seat at the end?
Instead of push past them and draw attention to how awkward I felt, I flipped open my phone to check my text messages. Only two people would text instead of call; one was a friend from back in Arizona and the other was Joan, the girl I'd met on my flight. Nadia, the Arizona friend, still hadn't replied to the goodbye text I'd sent her before I'd boarded my plane, but Joan and I had a small back-and-forth going. Her last message was sent from work, she was telling me about this club she was going to hit on the weekend and asking if I wanted to come. I replied that I'd love to, but I still wasn't twenty-one, Joan, same every other time.
I snapped the phone closed and shoved in back into my pocket. Joy had just stood up and left to take her tray to the garbage, so I took my chance to flee. "Paige, hey," I called over Greg's head, "I'm gonna head out, okay? I wanna see if the Bio room is open so I can finish some homework."
Paige just nodded and sent a wave my way before going back to very nearly necking her boyfriend in view of the whole student body.
Some of the others gave me a halfhearted goodbye but didn't look all that torn up that I was leaving. Which was fine by me, I didn't think I'd be eating with them very often anyway. I liked Paige, she was a good partner in English and Spanish, but we just didn't have the same relationship we used to and I didn't think that divide would heal anytime soon.
The Cullens' lunch table stood, a glaring sentry, between me and the doors of the cafeteria. I tried to let my eyes pass over them in clear indifference, tried to convey that I cared very little about them and their affairs and their flawlessness, but my gaze lingered on each one individually. I recognized, then, it didn't matter if they noticed my stares; Eddie had read my mind or he hadn't, he was biding his time or he wasn't – nothing I did could change that now. So I would look at them, I would think my goddamn thoughts all I wanted. If Edward Cullen hadn't heard them already, he never would.
I had slowed down, hesitated, but when I realized I sped right back up. Fuck 'em, they weren't the boss of me, I could walk anywhere and look at anyone and they would have to do something about it if they didn't like it.
Sitting together, the Cullens vaguely reminded me of a renaissance painting. Not that I'd studied many renaissance paintings in either life, but it was something in the air they gave off. It surrounded them, their table, and basically emanated outwards like the soft glow of a streetlamp in the fog. They were posed, poised, perfect, and they all fit like puzzle pieces despite the obvious differences between them all.
Emmett could so obviously crush my head between his hands. He was built like a linebacker, yet still had kind eyes. He threw his head back and laughed at something someone had said, and a black curl fell over his forehead. A hand appeared, belonging to Rosalie, to brush the stray hair back out of his eyes.
Rosalie herself was... god, she was difficult to describe. It was the most cliche thing, but she was a goddess, Aphrodite come alive, with golden hair that fell in waves to her waist. I was scared that if I looked too long, too hard, I'd never be able to stop, and I didn't want to oogle her like I was sure everyone else did.
Jasper, somehow, looked the most dangerous even as he hunched over in his seat, and it might've been a trick of the light, but I could've sworn I caught sight of a silvery crescent scar on his neck. His hair covered the side of his face, hiding his eyes from view; I wondered what colour they were, if he were hunched like that because he so desperately wanted to tear into the nearest human throat.
Alice wasn't facing me, but she had her hands fluttering about at her sides as she, presumably, spoke to one of her siblings. Her head bobbed, little flyaway hairs bouncing where they stuck out at all angles. How did she make bedhead look couture?
Edward was Edward; lean, bronze-haired, brooding. I could see his eyes well enough, and they were darker, more amber than the gold they'd been yesterday. How often did they need to feed, anyway? Once a week, twice? Once every two weeks? It had been mentioned in the books, hadn't it?
Not one of them glanced in my direction until I was walking right by their table, at which point Alice swiveled around in one uncannily smooth motion and somehow managed to look friendly while blatantly staring me down. I stumbled on a rogue chair leg, stumbled, and righted myself just as I was about to spill onto the floor.
"Lora, are you okay?" Alice asked from her seat, eyes wide and imploring.
Lora? "Oh yeah, totally fine." I thought she called me Etta back in art? What was with the change?
Her siblings were staring at her, Rosalie was glaring daggers, and it might've been my imagination but I thought I saw Eddie give his head a little shake. What was Alice doing? Why was she doing whatever it was when everyone else obviously thought it was a horrible idea?
"Sorry if I startled you," she said, then stood up, "I just wanted to you a minute and I saw you coming this way and I thought-"
I cut her off gently, "It- it's fine, Alice. What did you wanna talk about?"
She held something in her hand, halfway behind her back, and I tried not to stare at it as she spoke, "I just wanted to ask if you'd be my partner for the rest of our portrait assignment."
"I thought we had to paint ourselves," I said, and took a small step back. I was feeling very crowded. People were staring again.
Alice giggled, "Well, we can either do that, or we can paint someone else, and I would really like to paint you. Would that be okay?"
Me? Why did she want to paint me? Was this a ploy? Was this some plot to get me to lower my guard and reveal what I knew? Why would they get publicly close to me if they were going to kill me? Were they going to kill me? Why was Alice even talking to me?
"Lora? Are you alright?"
"Yes!" It came out louder than I wanted and a sheepish smile pulled at my lips, "Yes, I'm fine..." What did I do? What should I do? "I mean, if you want to, I don't mind at all. The partners thing, I mean. So, uh, you'll paint me and I'll paint you?"
She nodded, then held out her hand, revealing a piece of paper tucked in her grip, "This is my number, just call if you have any questions about the project. Ms. Howe sometimes skips out on instructions, so we'll help each other out, okay?"
My hand shook as she dropped the paper into it. I could hardly tell I was nodding in agreement, my head was spinning so fast. I don't know what I said, exactly, some combination of thank you and goodbye, but I got it out and then, out of sheer habit, waved at the rest of the Cullens. It was polite, okay, to acknowledge them. I did that and I was able to walk at a steady, normal pace down the rest of the length of the cafeteria and out the doors.
Outside, I leaned against the side of the building and inspected the note Alice had given me. It was innocuous, just a string of numbers underneath her name, both written in large, looping cursive. The pencil was starting to smudge against my sweaty hands, so I tucked the paper into my pocket before crossing the field towards Building 2.
I would deal with that later.
AN: Thank you for reading. Please, if you have the time, tell me what you think! I love hearing feedback, criticism, any comments you may have. How did I do with Alice's character? How did I do with the more in-depth descriptions of the Cullens? Did it seem too much like it was shoved in there randomly? I'm no professional by any means, so any advice is awesome.
To Aladine98, MozzarellaMermaid, BookishBeast, rachel2799, orchidluv, GraceEllingson, and NuncaNiem; thank you so much for taking the time to review and tell me your thoughts, it means so much to hear back from you guys.
Oh, before I sign off, I'm having some computer issues right now. Like, I thought I lost all the writing I'd ever done kind of issues. I don't know when the next chapter will be up, but I'm gonna aim for sometime before November 10th. I'm sorry about that, but a new computer might be in my future.
