Author's Note: This chapter beat the shit out of me. Thank you to Mac214 (for the complete overhaul), jkane180 and DoUTrustMe for making it better. Thank you to Mac, Lizconno and Kassiah for featuring Stigmato on the Fictionators! This chapter is dedicated to Kassiah. I'm drinking Vodka and OJ while posting.

Facebook Status: I've been personally victimized by Regina George!

I was dressed entirely wrong for this school. My run-in with that evil gnome Alice had totally provided me with misinformation about appropriate attire. Hyperventilating in the driver's seat, I took stock of the other kids milling past my truck. They were dressed modestly in jeans, sweats, t-shirts, and non-descript rain jackets. In contrast, my fancy jeans and fitted gingham button-down shirt seemed far too precious.

That cunting bitch, with her pointy Lisa Simpson hair and overpriced shoes - she'd been selling me lies, and I totally bought them. Actually, I blamed her brother, mostly for fucking with my already fragile ego... I mean, my complex was complex enough already, comprised of a multitude of insecurities and doubts.

"I'm a sexual compulsive, and your pussy is like a drug to me."

Right. Except he made it clear he didn't want anything to do with me. Cullen's words were as paradoxical as the perpetual wood he sported, but was unwilling to split me with.

Fuck, I just wanted to get through this day, to survive so I could see Jake tonight. He was so sweet... practically perfect. It was too good to be true, of course, which left me with a nauseating brick of foreboding in the pit of my belly.

This too shall turn to shit.

Fuck that! I was going to adopt a new attitude. If I walked through life expecting to fail, it was bound to happen. I refused to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With renewed determination, I wrenched the truck door away from the chassis... and plummeted to my death. No, not really. But I did manage to fall flat on my ass. It happened seemingly in slow motion - one minute I was stepping casually out of the car, and the next I was splayed out on the tarmac in a questionable puddle in front of practically the entire student body.

Huh. So I had it right the first time: today would be another epic fail.

The pavement was wet and cold against my ass, and I kind of wanted to cry. First impressions had never been a talent for me.

"Shit, are you okay?" A nice-looking blond guy suddenly hovered over me, offering his hand.

"No," I said honestly, pouting.

"Did you hurt yourself?" I guess not all the guys in Forks are douchebags after all. He picked my bag off the ground and heaved it over his shoulder.

"Only my pride." I did my best to smile without looking like a creepy asshole. I even tried to blink demurely, but I had a feeling it was coming off more like a psychotic twitch than a delicate flutter. "Um, can I have my bag back?"

"Oh... yeah, of course. I was just going to offer to walk you to class since you're new and stuff." He smiled warmly, his cheeks dimpling in a kind of adorable way. Was it possible he was flirting with me? He wasn't a sex god like Edward or Jacob, but he was certainly too hot to be bothering with the likes of me.

"You could, I suppose." I wiped gravel off my dark blue jeans and frowned. Renee sent them as an early birthday present after she received a frenzied email from me asking if Old Navy denim qualified as jeans. She assured me I could do better, and now my ass was clad in a brand called Sevens. In a misguided move, I armed myself with expensive clothes like a shield of natural fibres. That was stupid, I realized, as pair of girls passed by wearing what I assumed were Wal-Mart pants from the Miley Cyrus collection. Obviously the Cullens were the anomaly of Forks High.

"You're Bella, right?"

"Yeah," I agreed.

"What's your first class?"

"AP English in building three." Hm, did that sound like bragging? I wasn't bragging about being in advanced placement... not that guys find that kind of thing hot anyway. It's just that there could be other English classes in that building, and I couldn't remember the teacher's name.

"Advanced, huh?"

Shit.

"Yeah. I'm really smart," I said, because I might as well own it.

"And modest too," pretty blond guy said with a smirk.

"I also have a bitchin' body and a random talent for naming things."

"Um... what?"

"I really good at naming things. Seriously. It's almost freaky to see this talent in action."

"What kind of things?"

"Um... anything really. Show me something and I'll name it." This conversation had become flaccid. Seriously. Viagra couldn't incite excitement into it.

"Like that squirrel?" He pointed to something grey and furry that cut accross our path as we walked toward a really ugly, dilapidated, brown building.

"Shelly. Her name's Shelly."

"Nice."

"Yep. Told you - it's a gift."

"This is you." He handed me my bag, and I felt like a scunt because it occurred to me I had no idea what his name was.

"Hey, thanks. So, what's your-"

"Jasper!"

We both turned abruptly toward the shrill noise.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Sex-hair's sister, Alice, twitched with what I could only suspect was either an epileptic seizure, or a fit that someone stole her gold. Jasper glared as she approached and slung his arm casually over my shoulder.

"Whatever the fuck I want. We broke up, remember?"

Yep, the gods certainly were defecating on me today, alright.

"So, um, you two obviously have some shit to work out over here..."

"Really, Jasper... are you so desperate you'd fraternize with one of Edward's little slut puppets?"

Oh, them's fighting words! I dropped my bag and attempted to form fists, except I had no clue how to throw a punch.

"No, it's fine," she said suddenly as two ridiculously tall and blonde girls approached her. To my horror, the three of them turned into the classroom I was about to enter.

"You know Edward?" Alice's boyfriend... ex-boyfriend or whatever the fuck he was asked.

"Yeah."

"Are you guys together?"

"Not even a little bit. Hey, thanks for walking me to class, Jackson."

"Jasper," he corrected, even though it was really a stupid name.

-({})-

Those blonde girls certainly weren't wearing Wal-Mart knock-offs. They had that laminated sheen Alice possessed, like their make-up had been applied with indelible paint and their hair had been shellacked into place. They giggled behind my head, whispering in cackles. I was pretty sure I wasn't being paranoid in thinking they were talking about me.

Couldn't I just call them out on it? Wouldn't dealing with the consequences be better than hiding?

Social code dictated that I suffer in silence and pretend not to hear them, but I'd sooner live with the humiliation of their taunts than swallow the caustic anger corroding my stomach lining.

Bravely, I turned my head around and said, "Hey, beetches."

Alice and one of the blondes she was sandwiched between laughed, probably at my audacity.

"So, I take it you're, like, laughing at me?" Dude, what did I have to lose, really?

"I don't know, Lauren?" Alice asked the blonde to her right flank. "Were you, like, laughing at psycho girl?"

"I couldn't be bothered," Lauren said flatly. "Alice, I refuse to believe your brother is fucking that girl. Did you see the plaid shirt? I'm thinking she plays for Rosie O'donnell's team."

Well, I did love baseball…

"Hey! Who the fuck pissed in your cornflakes? Also, I wouldn't fuck Edward with your slop hole," I snapped. "And I'm not a dyke." Not that there was anything wrong with it. "I totally have a boyfriend."

"Who?" Alice asked, and even though her voice remained calm, for an instant, a look of fear registered in her eyes.

"No one you know." I was being purposefully cryptic. Let the little bitch live in fear I was fucking her boyfriend. If it wasn't for Jake, I totally would've just to piss her off.

"Did you see the way the boys were all ogling her in the parking lot?" the one with the strawberry hair asked. "Like a shiny new toy or something."

"So?" Alice demanded.

"Nothing, really. I just thought maybe she'd like to sit with us today at lunch…"

"Tanya!"

"Don't be so dramatic. It could be fun." Tanya smiled at me, and I almost agreed for some perverse reason.

"Sure, Isabella," Alice said suddenly in a saccharine voice. "Have lunch with us. It's not fair that Edward and Jasper are the only ones who know anything about you."

Yeah, this was obviously some sort of set-up to humiliate me. I could smell the pig's blood from a mile away. "Thanks for the offer, er, Tanya, but I refuse to be the Lindsay Lohan to you little Mean Girls group. Sell bitchy somewhere else. I'm already stocked up."

I faced the front of the room, feeling pretty fucking pleased with myself.

"Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen," an excited Lilliputian gushed from the front of the room. I had to crane my neck because she was eclipsed by the desk. Jeez, what was wrong with this freaky town? Everyone was either too big or too small!

"I have an exciting announcement!" she yelled, probably making up for her slight stature with an annoyingly loud bellow. Oh, shit, was she staring at me? "We're extremely lucky to have the illustrious Isabella Swan in our class!"

Um, illustrious? Moi?

The tiny teacher looked expectantly at me.

"Um… hi?"

"Oh, Isabella, don't be so modest! Tell the class about your achievements in poetry."

No! She was not doing this to me on the first day in a new school surrounded by ravenously evil teenagers. Fuck my life!

"Um… pardon?"

"According to your transcripts, you have quite the way with words."

Yes. And to illustrate this point I replied with a very eloquent, "Guh?"

"You've been published?" she prompted, her smile faltering at my lack of enthusiasm.

"Yeah, 'lil bit."

"Please come to the front of the class, Isabella."

"Bella," I corrected and stumbled through the narrow aisle of desks to stand beside my teacher, the midget.

"Tell us about Sirens."

No, thank you. "Um, okay… so yeah, I wrote a poem called Sirens."

"Yes? Tell us more!"

"It was influenced a bit by T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," although, the format and much of the imagery is more Prufrock." Baffle them with bullshit!

"What's it about?"

"Desolation," I said automatically.

"Care to be more specific?"

"Well… as a professor of literature, I'm sure you're aware of how cumbersome it is to offer an interpretation of a poem, even as the author, outside of the text itself." I was totally speaking without saying anything, and my teacher, whose name I didn't even know yet, was nodding emphatically.

"Oh, I agree, which is why I brought a copy of the literature review you're published in with me. I'd like you to read an excerpt for the rest of the class."

This so wasn't happening. I gaped in horror at the dog-eared book she thrust into my hands.

"No... I mean, please, no." How could she request such a thing of me?

She asked again, probably mistaking my terrorized fear for humbled modesty. I shook my head, and she kept harping.

"No," I said rudely, my shoe echoing against the linoleum floor as I put my foot down both in the literal and figurative sense.

I was immovable about this.

"Well... you'd think you'd be grateful. Some of us write our entire lives without being published by even a small University press anthology. Some of us..." she trailed off, smiling stiffly. "It's quite poignant."

"Thanks," I muttered.

"Please, Bella?"

"No."

So she wrote an excerpt out on the chalk board:

Remember the place I would go to hide?
The garden. My secret place of worship.
The flowers no longer bloom in my garden,
and the rosebushes are covered in blood.

I am the girl you gave away in the grocery store.
The girl you raped and cherished in the parking lot.
I've been loved so dearly I've grown immune.

It was beyond terrible. This was the equivalent of that dream that everyone has - where you're standing in front of a group of people, and suddenly you realize you're naked. Well, instead of my tits showing, the entire class could see my most disgusting scars and primal fears.

I wept silently into my notebook for the rest of the class while the mean girls snickered.

-({})-

Sex-hair wasn't anywhere I could see in the cafeteria, and my stomach was too tangled up in knots to attempt any food.

I saw Alice and her evil army of blondes enter the lunchroom. She tossed her head, barely jostling her immovable hair, and the throngs of students parted like the Red Sea to her Moses.

Cruelty reigned. It always did. I could see it... the fear in the other girls' eyes when Alice and her harpies passed them... the naked jealousy, the terror, and admiration.

Meh, I wasn't impressed. Lindsay Lohan took down Regina George in Mean Girls with foot cream, energy bars, and little bit of duplicity. Maybe I could organize a coup, but then again, who the fuck had the energy for that shit?

Alice and I only shared only the one class, thank fuck. The rest of the girls seemed nice enough, but I could feel their judgment. At least Alice was straightforward with her hatred... the others hid their distrust of me behind lightly veiled hostility masquerading as benign curiosity.

Survival mode was all I needed. I could totally bear the slings and arrows of this outrageous fortune. All I had to do was get through the day and keep my head down. Quietly, I muttered an inspirational mantra akin to the Little Engine that Could's famous affirmation, while expertly plucking out an email to Jake on my iPhone.

"Oh my god! You're the new girl, right?"

I buried my face into my hands and nodded.

"Right. Well, I'm Jessica."

"Don't care," I mumbled into my palms.

"You're so funny." She dropped her lunch tray beside me and sat down as if I'd invited her. Which I hadn't. Okay, when a person is texting on her phone, she's busy! Honestly, there needs to be some sort of legislation implemented about not bugging a person when she's interfacing with her phone.

"So, is it true?"

"Yep." No, I had no clue what she was asking, but answering in the affirmative made her eyes bulge out of their sockets in the most disturbing way.

"Lauren told Kate, which means soon everyone will be talking about it."

"Neat."

"Lauren is totally freaking out. Edward is supposed to take her to Homecoming this year."

"Wait, what?"

Jessica started chewing obnoxiously on her celery like a rodent – like Shelly, the squirrel. "So are you dating or just fucking?"

"Who? Edward Cullen?"

"Yeah."

"Neither."

I decided it would be more prudent to hide in the bathroom for the rest of the lunch period. Interacting with other human beings was proving to be a failed experiment for me.

-({})-

A thrill shot through me when I saw him, despite myself. I squeezed my eyes shut and placed my palm flat against a locker, steeling myself against a possible confrontation.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Swifter than Shelly, I skittered past him, narrowly missing a collision when he abruptly turned and jogged into my path.

"Wait!"

"What the fuck?" I tried to push by him but he grabbed my arm, his fingers burning me though my shirt.

"I just—Alice said something happened first period and you freaked out."

"Yeah. Totally," I confirmed.

"Well… are you okay?"

"Nope. I'm thinking of drowning myself in the school pool. Want to watch?"

"The school doesn't have a pool."

"Damn my shitty luck!"

"What happened?" he asked, following me into the biology lab.

"Nothing really… don't you have to get to class?" I asked distractedly, taking stock of the kids in the room. Jasper sat up front and waved his arm, kicking the stool beside him as if to indicate I should sit there. Suddenly, Edward grabbed my arm and pulled me to a table at the back of the room. "Go to class, Edward," I snapped.

"This is my class." He set his books down beside me and jumped up onto the stool. "We're going to be lab partners," he added nonchalantly.

"I thought you didn't want to be friends." I couldn't help the bitter sarcasm lacing my tone.

"It's probably not smart…"

"Oh my god! Your mood swings are giving me whiplash." And horny. Again, I found myself turned on, even though I was doing my damnedest not to look at him. I swear I could smell him. He was sweating sex hormones or something.

"Look… I just… I know you have a boyfriend, and I swear I won't mess with you again like what happened on Saturday."

"Dude… you don't even know me. Why does it matter?" I ground my teeth into my lower lip in frustration.

"Honestly… I'm not certain." He smiled suddenly. "I just really like being around you."

I had avoided looking at him too closely. It was difficult to think or even breathe when faced with his mischievous green eyes. Oh, fuck, I should have kept my gaze averted. He was motherfucking perfect – the way his full lips half grinned at me while his strong jaw flexed.

"Thirsty?" he asked suddenly, and I shook my head. He dipped his hand into his bag and withdrew a bottle of orange juice. "Are you sure? You kind of look like you're going to pass out."

"I'm fine," I huffed, kicking my foot against the bench. "Ow."

He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a rather annoyingly sexy manner. "More for me," he shrugged and tipped the bottle back against those full lips I'd been coveting. He took long swallows, his Adam's apple waggling hypnotically. A tiny orange drop escaped and dripped down his chin. Fuck… I wanted to lick it off.

"I changed my mind," I said suddenly. "I'm thirsty."

He cocked his eyebrow and wiped his chin. The truth was, I wanted to kiss him, but since I couldn't, I'd have to settle for lip contact by proxy of the bottle. He passed the juice to me, and I wrapped my mouth around the bottle, taking slow, calculated sips. Since I seemed to have his attention, I licked the rim.

"Fuck." Edward's eyes were glazed over.

"What?" I asked innocently, and took enough of the neck back into my mouth to be considered vulgar.

"I've never wanted to be orange juice so badly in my life."

He wasn't getting his juice back. I watched him pocket the cap, and for the life of me, I didn't understand why.

Author's Note: Tomorrow, October 16th one of my favourite fellow Canadian's (DoUTrustMe) fic will be featured on the Readalong. Even if you've already read Died and Gone to Heaven, make sure to check it out on twitter. There may be a surprise!

I am dying for a good pocket buzz, ladies (and like three gentlemen). It's been a rough week... help a girl out?