Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.

Sitting in the lounge with Alice, we worked together to formulate a plan that would not end badly. I would make a decision and Alice would tell me the outcome as far as she could see.

We spent over an hour doing this, never finding out results further than a week away, even for the best ideas.

"There is something we are missing, Bella. There has to be."

"Oh my God!" I said. "For someone who was planning to go to Dartmouth just 5 years ago, I really don't know their breaks at all! He's only on spring break. He goes back soon."

With that revelation, we began factoring these things into all my decisions, but we soon discovered that no choice would lead to a relationship.

Telling him of our family and their abilities would lead him to walk away. He would walk, so it was likely that he wasn't afraid of us, but he walk leave, nevertheless. Alice's visions only the showed the what, not the why.

I couldn't interfere with his college, but by only requiring him out of college hours meant that he would work harder to keep our relationship professional, for fear of losing the job.

Any variation on either of these, or a combination, had similar results. Then I had an idea.

"Alice, I'm going to try something new. Let me know how this turns out."

I made my decision concrete and she nodded.

"You have an amazing aptitude for languages, Bella. The Japanese is a nice touch."

I knew my smile was smug, but I couldn't wipe it from my face. The rest of the family watched with curiosity, waiting for an explanation but neither Alice or I said anything. Emmett broke first.

"What is the plan?" He sat impatiently, leaning forward and uncharacteristically, for a vampire, bouncing his legs.

"I'm going to college!"

"Hell yeah!" said Emmett. "Can I come too?"

We all looked at Alice. Her eyes clouded and she looked into the future. A future where my bear of big brother would be coming to college with me. This suddenly didn't sound like a very good idea.

Alice nodded! Oh crap!

"But Emmett, I swear to God, if you screw this up for her, you will have BOTH of us to deal with for the rest of eternity. Got it?"

He nodded, and then saw Rose's face and got truly scared. We all laughed at him and he stayed silent.

I suddenly became very nervous. "So, I'm going to do this?"

Alice nodded.

"I've never really come close to feeding on a human, even in a crowded conference room. But college, that will be different, won't it?"

They had all been to college numerous times, so I had no doubt that I would get enough advice. I just wished that I had been able to go to college when I felt I was ready.

"Just focus on your studies and Edward. You'll be fine." said Rosalie. I knew then that she was with Alice and I if Emmett ever screwed it up for me, but I didn't think he would. Despite the pranks and the jokes and everything, he was a great brother.

I began to think about what I needed to do to prepare and Alice squealed.

"This is going to be the most fun I've had since prom! Now, who else wants to go to Dartmouth? We need to know now if we're going to get a house big enough."

We all decided to go,including Esme and Carlisle, but to keep the house we had as a getaway house. Having a house close to campus would be great, but we needed a base to hunt from and a place to be our sanctuary from having to pretend we're human. And there was no doubt in my mind that Alice would organize a huge party there at some point.

Esme would do another course in Architecture and Interior Design. She needed the paperwork so that she could be accredited, and although we had people who could easily forge it, she thought that it was about time to learn what was new in her field.

Carlisle decided to change his specialization to paediatrics, and so registered to do his specialist degree at the medical school.

Rosalie was doing an engineering and design degree with the hope that she could design and build a car in our garage from scratch. She figured that she wouldn't have to get all the equipment to beat the panels into shape, but that she could do it with her hands.

Emmett was a bit more of a surprise. He did biology so that he could work in cancer research. Although there was no way we could get cancer, Emmett was always conscious of the people around us, even if we didn't interact with them. He was the one who had the hardest time with when people died. When you live forever, people dying when they have a full life is something that we have to deal with, but dying before that time was difficult for Emmett to understand, which was strange considering that had Rosalie not saved him, he would have died before his time. Maybe it was his experiences that caused him to think about human mortality more than any of us but Carlisle had.

Alice was studying art history and women's studies, thinking that it would help her with her fashion, she was also going to study French, even though she was already fluent, probably more so that the lecturer. Jasper was going to do his PhD in psychology.

And then there was me. The plan that we had come up with was that I would study French (major) and Japanese (minor). I would take electives in international studies and business, as many as I could to coincide with Edward.

Alice would have to watch the weather for us, and tell us when we could go to class, and when we had to skip; she assured us that we were clear for the first week. Although we probably didn't need to worry, we did make sure that we could watch any missed lectures on the internet and we decided on a cover story for any missed group sessions. Our grandfather was very ill and we had all moved here to be closer to him.

Our cover for starting in the middle of the semester was that we were transferred from Harvard because we had to move states. We were posing as an extended family; Emmett, Esme, Alice and I were cousins and Rosalie, Carlisle and Jasper were the significant others who got dragged along.

All I had to do now was get through the week before classes started with Edward as my personal assistant. I knew now, though, that I was irrevocably in love with him, and I would do whatever I needed to just to keep him in my life.

AN: OK, so I have no idea if Dartmouth streams their lectures over the internet, but my uni does, so let's just pretend if necessary- really though, I'm interested to hear if any colleges in the US do that... I mean, why wouldn't they, but maybe they just don't... anyway... stop me rambling at any time people! lol...

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