Hey all, hope you're well. Firstly, I'M SORRY. I've been sick, on holidays, had MULTIPLE tests at school, mountains of homework, piano and singing gigs – not to mention practice – and have hada social life to upkeep. All in all, that leaves, a) not much time for writing, and, b)even less time for writing. And and and, I've been reading lots and lots. Thomas Hardy is a writing gun, did you know? Tess Of The d'Ubervilles is amazing. Although it fills me with feministic rage and horror, wow. ANYWAY, I'd like to thank my wonderful, magical, splendid reviewers. You guys give me the inspiration, and distract me in a music test so I get about 8%. And for that, I love you. Ok, so there's probably a limit to how long these things can be, and I've got at least ten times over, so with that, adios, and I hope you enjoy! Rose xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

P.S. If there are random lines in the middle of the story, please ignore them, they are rather persistent and won't go away.

Disclaimer: Really, you're just rubbing it in.

We arrived home from the beach with two days before the beginning of school, a Saturday. Edward was all nerves, coming up with a new, enthusiastic question every time he looked up. Ever since that morning on the beach, we'd been in official 'boyfriend/girlfriend' mode, much to Jasper's satisfaction, and Mum and Dad were now painfully aware of the afternoons we'd spent sprawled on Edward's double bed in the beach house, kissing and carrying on like the irresponsible teenagers we were.

And then it was the Sunday before school started, and I realised I probably needed to clean out my lunch box.

The bag that had previously smelt like ten rotten bananas and sandwiches that had been chucked in a blender then poured over shit then scooped up and force-fed to the bag, now smelt so bad that, as soon as I edged the zip open about ten millimetres, a bomb went off and the entire floor – meaning Edward and I – had to be evacuated while all the fans and air conditioners and windows were utilised for air freshening purposes.

Mum was at the office in town, sorting out some foundation issues with one of the houses she was working on, and Dad, as per usual, was working. Emmett had returned to Melbourne a couple days after we got home from Chris and Nina's, and Jasper was out at Soccer training. He was hoping to make the State's team this year, as he was incredibly gun at the sport, despite Emmett's constant dissing of it, and his racist tendency to label it as 'wogball'.

After an uncomfortable hour of minimal conversation in the bomb-shelter lounge room, Edward and I decided to brave the bedroom.

For some unknown reason, we found some surgical masks in Dad's office, and some sterilized plastic gloves in the laundry, where we set out a bit of tarp we found in the shed. Using some long barbeque tongs, Edward grabbed my bag by the handle and ran through to where I was holding the door open, and skilfully emptied the contents of the bag onto the tarp.

We both groaned at the stench that the Elmo lunchbox excreted, but stayed put. He pulled his T-shirt over his mask for an extra filter, and I followed suit. 'How do you want to do this?' he asked, voice muffled through the multiple layers.

'Um, quickly.'

'Go get a bin bag.' So I did, returning in record time.

He carefully picked up each item with the tongs, and put it in the big black disposal bag. Everything – including my old student ID card, a good-bye card I was meant to give to my English teacher who was on maternity leave now, and a stack of Christmas cards and candy canes – was covered in slimy brown rotting stuff.

Finally, all we had left was the lunchbox, which was closed, and I definitely wasn't game enough to open it. Edward, as if trying to prove his heroic manliness, stepped forward, and not even bothering with the tongs, opened it, then doubled back to the parallel side of the room as soon as the toxic gases reached his nose.

'Christ!' he said. 'What's in there?!'

Braving the smell, I leant over it, nose wrinkling in disgust. 'Um, looks like an uneaten egg and lettuce sandwich and rotten banana. And some hedgehog.'

'Don't you eat?' he said, edging carefully over to the tarp again.

'I was busy on the last day! I had to clean out my locker, and we had a Year Ten meeting at lunch... I had to do a speech at assembly…' He just shook his head. 'Come on, let's just get it over with.'

It took us a couple of minutes to get the food into the bag. We kept dropping it in disgust, picking it up, then dropping it again. At last, I dropped the banana in, Edward, the sandwich, and he tied up the bag and carried it out to the bins around the side of the house.

I picked up the lunch box with a gloved hand and took it to the kitchen, where I put it in the dishwasher by itself and put in all the disinfectants I could find that didn't have a name that sounded like it would blow the dishwasher up; like Emmett had done once with laundry liquid, mouthwash, shower gel and carpet cleaner when he was seven.

While the dishwasher churned away, I got the tarp, and Edward volunteered to hose it down in the back yard. I dropped the tongs in the sink and chucked away the masks and gloves.

I got my two school dresses, which were embarrassingly short. I'd taken them up one night in Year Eight, so there was no way I was going to risk asking for some new ones. Mum was on a strict "Break it, pay for it" policy – or the school dress equivalent thereof – and I'd rather brave a throng of teachers with Uniform Policy booklets than my furious mother any day.

I put them in the washing machine, along with my high-top undies, black bras, and striped white socks we were supposed to wear and a couple plain pairs I wore anyway, pretty much because I was a rebel.

I asked Edward if he needed any of his uniform washed, simply to break the awkward silence that fell when I walked into the kitchen, before I realized he hadn't even worn it yet.

That didn't even seem to matter yet, cause he said, 'I haven't gotten it yet.'

'What?' I asked.

'The supplier called your Mum the other day, said that my order had been muddled up, and would take two weeks to get here.'

'That sucks,' I said.

'Yeah. It'll be awkward, wearing casual clothes.'

'Casual? Have you checked that with the school yet?' Our uniform board was notorious for not letting kids who tried to incorporate some form of personality get off easily, and I doubted an exchange student without the 'language barrier' would be given a get out of jail card.

'Um, yeah. Your Mum called, asked them. They said I'd have to go get a card from the office, and to carry it with me so I could show it to teachers.'

'Oh.' It literally was a get out of jail card. 'Cool.'

'Yeah.' The awkwardness returned, so I walked out of the room stiffly, going up to my bedroom, enjoying the last few hours of freedom I had before the inevitable onslaught of homework. Edward came up about ten minutes later, and we spent a sizeable amount of time kissing and teasing before Mum got home, calling up the stairs for help with the shopping.

I was completely unprepared for the beeping the next morning. My alarm went off at the ungodly early time of six-thirty, waking me up along with Edward. I'd been having an excellent dream that involved a foot massage and Dale Thomas, but as you can imagine, beeping can be particularly mood-ruining. I managed to stumble into the bathroom first, turning on the straightener before I got in the shower.

When I got out of the bathroom, dressed in my mandatory summer blouse and light tartan skirt combination, with the little bow at the collar, I went down to the kitchen, where Jasper and Edward were sitting in almost-dark – the hallway light was on, casting a yellow light in, but nothing else - drinking coffee and eating toast. Edward looked especially cute with his bed hair, I noticed, while flicking on the lights and calling my brother a 'vampiric retard'.

'Bathroom's free,' I told Edward, pulling the out milk, muesli, yogurt and a banana.

'Thanks' he said around a mouthful of peanut butter. He washed it down with the last of the coffee in his mug, then left. I poured myself a coffee from the plunger then sat next to Jazz, who had already showered and changed into his academic-shorts-and-shirt getup.

'Year Twelve,' I commented, stirring the black coffee with my favourite teaspoon.

'Shit yeah!' he said, half-feigning enthusiasm to hide the terror I could tell was there.

'You'll be right,' I said unhelpfully. He nodded in thanks as he finished his toast, then went over to the couch to put on his shoes.

'Anything on today?' he asked.

'Not much. Usual start of term assembly. Aren't you doing a speech?'

'Um, yeah.' He grunted as he forced his foot into his old school shoes.

'We have an exchange meeting during period one,' I said, checking the calendar in my phone. The school wanted to brief all the kids involved in the program about what the year would be like for us. I knew Alice would be there because had she volunteered to be a translator for the French kids during all the assemblies.

'Yep. Where?'

'Um, T14. Above the auditorium.'

'Ok. I'll see you there.'

All the various cliques walked in to homeroom – the nerds (glasses pushed firmly up noses), the jocks (Emmett's old followers), the Indie kids who idolized Jasper (yeah, my family pretty much owned the school), and the sluts (with a freshly recruited Jessica) who, after sitting down, promptly took off their jumpers (our private school forced us to wear incredibly see-through blouses, and Rose was convinced it was because the teachers were especially perverted in private schools) and revealed what colour bras they were wearing. I cracked up when one girl (a newbie slut) took off her jumper then realised she was wearing a sportsbra and almost fell off her chair trying to put it back on. Most of us wore school vests over the top of the shirts, or singlets underneath, but these girls liked to go without.

Speaking of newbies, there were quite a few in our year. We met two new ones in homegroup – the slut, Katie, whose inarticulate speech and worship of the word 'like' put her off my potential friends list for life. There was also another guy, who, funnily enough, was on exchange. His name was Nate, he was English (with a to-die-for accent) and he was staying with one of the Indie guys who sat in our group sometimes, Jimmy (who was really James, but whatever.)

Nate played bass guitar, was in a band (!), and, when Katie's romantically orientated question silenced every girl in homeroom, each one eager for an answer, he replied, 'no, I just broke up with my girlfriend. She said she couldn't cope with a long distance relationship, so…'

All the girls fawned, then Jasper popped his head in (prompting more teenage girl hormones) to tell me that I had to go get Edward from where he'd been meeting the headmaster and other figures of importance in the school in the main faculty office building. When he exited the office and the next exchange kid, a German girl, walked in, Edward looked severely intimidated. He walked with me, back to homeroom, looking frightened and pale.

'Hey, you'll be fine,' I said, pausing outside the door. 'And all the girls in there are already flirting their heads off with an English guy called Nate, so there's no doubt they'll all love you. Alice is in there too, so it's not like you're a complete stranger, right? Just stay away from the girls whose bras are visible. They'll take advantage of you behind the photocopier if they get the chance.' I widened my eyes at him jokingly, before opening the door to the room, interrupting Mrs Griffith, who was handing out organizers and instructing the new kids with how to lay out the homework they would be given.

'It is of the most importance that you are organized in the most efficient possible way this year. Year Ten will be one of you great conquests, but only if you are always on the ball with homework and are able to hand everything in, on time, always. Miss Cullen, how nice of you to join us again. And who is this you have?' only now did she look back up at me, and it took me a couple seconds to realize what she'd said, then react.

'Um, this is Edward Masen. He's staying with my brother, parents and me until around Christmas time next year. He's from America…and maybe he wants to do some talking?' I looked at him anxiously, trying to tell him I had no idea what to say.

He smiled at me nervously, and stepped forward. 'Hi. I'm Edward. I live in Beverly Hills, in, um, America. I have one sister, who is at a dance school, at the moment, studying ballet. I've been in Australia for a month and a bit, now…and I'm loving it here.' The girls all made Ed keep talking until the bell told us to shift our asses over to the assembly hall.

About halfway through, Jasper and the other School Captain, Ruby Nichols, who had been my volleyball coach for a couple years, got up to speak.

Jasper was always a natural at public speaking, and his first speech as Captain was no exception. In the five minutes of the assembly they had been allocated, Jazz and Ruby made fun of every ridiculous school rule, feature and teacher there was. They'd asked a couple of Year Twelve kids to help them out, calling out when their lines came. When one girl, who'd been asked to make some cheesy sex joke about Jasper, spoke, Alice called,' Move in on my turf, much?'

Alice and Jasper were the kind of couple who seemed to be school property – everyone, (and I mean, everyone) knew about them, and because they were such public figures, nothing they did together went unnoticed. It was kind of cute, but for them, incredibly annoying. Just another thing they got to take the piss out of now, I guess.

The meeting started fifteen minutes late, after Mr Atkins, Head of Daily Organization (possibly the biggest blow off of a job, ever – he did the timetables, room changes, organized rosters in the staff room and supervised the school crossing) came late from where he had been directing some kids sweeping leaves or whatever. He ushered everyone in, and told us all to sit on chairs, 'Not the tables, Mr Cullen. School Captains should be setting good examples, okay?'

'Now, everyone, I'd like to welcome you all. Please, feel free to eat your lunches while I talk. You must feel starved after your first day. Now, hello, to all exchange students.

Translators, if you could please take a moment to relay that to your students.' About five different languages relayed throughout the room. I recognised Japanese and French, the two I'd taken up until Year 9, and thought I heard a bit of Spanish.

When all the translators, including Alice who was surrounded by three French kids and their hosts, had finished, Mr Atkins continued. 'Now, you're all here so I can brief you a bit on how this year is going to work for you. I'm going to hand out an events calendar, which will have things like socials and school carnivals, and the formal for in Year Ten and up. But it will also have on it a lot of parties, picnics and outings organised by the Exchange Board down in Melbourne.' He paused for the translators and then kept going.

'So, here we are. Please look over these with your exchange student.' He handed out the calendars, and the one we got had Edward's name on it. Handy. The three of us looked over it, and circled the stuff we wanted to do. I looked over, and heard Alice trying to explain what happened at the formal to two girls who looked particularly excited.

Jasper had started telling Edward about all the sporting teams at school, and I figured they'd be talking for a while, so I slid out of my chair and over to Al.

'Hey,' I said to her, interrupting what the two girls were saying to each other. 'Um...salut?' I said unsurely. 'Je m'appelle Bella.' They looked at me oddly, and I wondered if I'd said, 'Hi. My name is Bella,' or 'Hi. I'm a Bella apple.'

'Hello,' they said in reply, more confident than I had been, and introduced themselves as Gretel and Sophie before going back to looking at the calendar that Alice'd had to write up in French. I turned to her. ' Formal!'

'Ohmigawd, I know! I'm so excited!'

'Are you gonna go with Jasper?'

'Well, I expect so...you?'

'Yeah, you guys'll go together.' I filed my nails, playing dumb.

'No, silly, are you going with Mr. America 2010?'

'Ha. Funny.'

'Well, whatever, are you?'

'I don't know. It's not like he's asked. And it's still two months away.'

'Alright. Just checking.'

'Who'll Rose go with?'

'I don't know. Maybe Mitch?' Ever since Year 7, Mitch, who's in Rose's year, had been infatuated with her. It wasn't creepy or anything, but they were best friends, and Em had often gotten jealous because she seemed to see more of Mitch than of him, or because she was always talking about Mitch, or whatever.

'Yeah. That might be a little awkward, though.'

'Well, she doesn't really have much of a choice. Em's not allowed to go to the formal. It's either Mitch or some random basketball kid or a guy from the AV club. At Em and Rose got to go together last year.'

'I guess. That sucks, though.

When Rose and Em had first started going out, (in summer last year) everyone in the school had been shocked. A Year Ten going out with an Eleven? The adolescent high schoolers were won't-to-do with the slight change in the social scheme of things, and many rumours spread around the school about Rose being with Emmett to look good or to show off, or that she was only doing it for our family's money after her father passed. The worst one of all had been because she knew Emmett would be 'an easy conquer', as Jessica had said. But after over a year of strong-going, everyone's bad opinions of them had cleared up, or at least been silenced.

'Hm. When are we going to buy dresses?'

'Soon. I'd die if all the good ones sold out.'

'Yeah. I'm going to wear my birthday shoes, though. They cost so much, and-'

'Ladies, social time is over,' said Mr Atkins. 'Get back to your students, please.' I gave Alice a don't you just wish he'd go screw himself? look, and crossed back to Jasper and Edward.

Awkwardly enough, Jazz was running my good pal Eddie through Formal night procedures, and as I stood silently behind, unbeknownst to him. Edward noticed me and tried to silence him mid-sentence with facial expressions fit for a gorilla.

'So, what you do,' Jasper continued, 'is you just go and ask her, don't even worry about it, there's no way she'll knock you back. And get onto it, because every year she gets asked by about twenty million guys…' By the end of his spiel, Jasper's words had slowed down, as he realized Edward's expressions were something of a warning. He turned around and saw me.

'Oh… Hey, Bella.' He turned beet red. 'We were just talking about football. No need to worry.' He bailed, walking over to ask Mr Atkins about some School Captain duty or something.

I tried my hardest to smile warmly at Edward, but in my mind, all I could see were replays of that hot afternoon on the beach, kissing Ralph or Richie or Romeo, or whatever. I liked Edward more than I can say, but I was hindered and haunted by my ridiculous mistake. I realized that, if I wanted this to continue, I'd have to 'fess up. No matter the repercussions.

By now, Edward was talking about a subject I was sure to be swept away in any second. And, as I felt the pull of his personality and charm sweep me into the conversation, I realized that the reason I was so opposed to telling the truth was not because I was scared of his reaction (I'd had so many bad ones from people over the years, they these days seemed inevitable), but of slipping out of this routine. We were both so comfortable in these roles, playing the you-flirt-I-flirt, you-kiss-I-kiss, let's not really make it official characters. So comfortable, so familiar and happy, that any change - just the slightest of tweaks – could ultimately alter our blissful state.

And, in all reality, my confession would be far more than a slight tweak.