AN1: Let's have some fun, and post twice in one day; just to see how high I can drive the numbers. ;-) This one was one of my smaller chapters, so I figure, what the frell, I'll give it to you now since you're all so patient with this fluffy little story. This will be the last for a few days. Note that there's some more original SM scattered around this chapter, and even though I've rewritten some iconic scenes to allow for the AU, the original structure can still be seen. That won't last much past the end of Midnight Sun in canon. Now, on with the show.

Edward's POV

I deliberately tried to make as much noise as I could when I approached our table. Given my previous behavior, I couldn't afford to frighten her further. Not only that, but a deeply buried part of me cried out against frightening her further. The monster roared and hurled himself against his fetters as her scent made my throat burn, so I blamed him. Frightened prey could flee. Then I cringed inside as my mind shied violently away from any image of this girl as prey.

She was hunched over her notebook, doodling, when I came up to the table and dragged my chair out, being sure to make more noise than usual in the process. I studied her, trying to divine what was going on behind that curtain of hair that hid her face from me. My fingers twitched with the sudden desire to pull that hair back so that I could see the roses and cream skin of her cheek. When she remained focused on her doodling and didn't look up I decided to take some initiative.

"Hello", I said quietly.

Bella's POV

I jumped, I know I did. When that silky, honeyed voice said 'Hello' I jerked. I looked up startled; to see Edward Cullen looking at me with an openly friendly expression, wearing this crooked smile that gave me an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. My name is Edward Cullen. You must be Bella Swan," he said with a politeness I'd never seen before – in anyone.

I felt like I'd fallen into an episode on one of those black and white DVD's of the "Outer Limits" that Renee loved so much, where someone else was controlling 'the horizontal' and 'the vertical'. What happened to the death glare? Had I only imagined it? My brain was fuzzy as it tried to consider my current subjective reality, so my mouth took advantage of its momentary freedom and out popped the first thing that came to mind.

"How do you know my name?" Swell, I couldn't think of something witty?

He laughed gently, and said, "Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."

How does a laugh give you goose-bumps? I shook myself and focused instead on his answer. "No...I meant, why did you call me Bella?"

His smile faded slightly. "Do you prefer Isabella?"

"No, I like Bella," I said. "But I think Charlie — I mean my dad — must call me Isabella behind my back — that's what everyone here seems to know me as," I tried to explain, feeling like an utter moron.

"Oh." He let it drop as I looked away awkwardly.

After that the day's lab started and our conversation was limited to the phases of cellular mitosis. I got into this ridiculous one-sided competition with him, trying to prove that I could match him in identifying the slides we were looking at. I cheated; since I'd already done this lab back home in Phoenix. I was still supposed to be angry with him, so I felt kind lousy when he stood up for me in front of Mr. Banner, who seemed to think that I would be the dead weight at our lab table.

There was one truly odd moment. When we were doing the lab, our hands touched, his hand was cold as ice, so cold that I wondered if he ever wore gloves, and for just the briefest moment it was like sticking my finger in a light socket, then I jerked away. This wasn't some stray spark of static either. I know that he felt it too, because he made an obvious effort not to allow our skin to touch again. What was that?

While we waited for the rest of the class to finish the lab he tried to open up the conversation again. With the weather of all things. Suddenly I didn't feel quite as lame in the conversation department as I explained my pathological aversion to the cold and wet as, all the while, I studied him. Something was different today; something besides the faint flush to his cheeks.

"If you dislike the weather so much, why move here at all?" he said, with an inquisitive look.

No one had been quite that blunt and demanding yet, so I felt compelled to answer; sort of.

"It's complicated."

"I think I can keep up," he pressed.

"My mother had an accident."

Edward's POV

I kept my expression bland yet friendly as I considered the spotty information that I'd gleaned from the minds of our schoolmates. There'd been precious little gossip to be found in adult minds on the issue. Apparently the Chief Swan wasn't exactly a man to over-share when it came to his troubles, or his family's troubles. All I really knew was that her mother had been hospitalized, apparently long enough to make caring for her children problematic. An accident?

"What happened?"

Bella sighed and looked sad. I yearned to do something, anything to make that look go away. Somewhere inside I noticed that I wasn't second guessing my feelings anymore when it came to this girl; which, of course, made me start again. What was happening to me?

"She remarried last September. They were on their honeymoon when it happened."

I didn't have to work too hard to look sympathetic. I'd never been in love, but I'd seen what it meant in the minds of my family. Having a loved one hurt was never good, but of all times for it to happen…

"They were honeymooning in Acapulco," she continued, as she looked away," when the catamaran they were day-sailing on was rammed by some rich idiot on a yacht who was drunk out of his mind at the time. Their boat got plowed under."

She looked back at me. Another girl might have broken down by now, but not Isabella Swan apparently. Aside from a faint glistening in her eyes, she was holding her own. Her voice had become stoic.

"My mom's husband Phil was okay, but Renee was seriously hurt. She was in the hospital down there for a long time, and up here almost as long. Now she's in rehab trying to learn to walk again, and they may have to take her back for more surgery." She leaned forward, resting her elbow on the desk and her cheek on the palm of her hand. She seemed to be relaxing a bit in my presence. I liked that.

"Anyway, Phil is a good guy. Aside from Charlie, one of the best guys I know. He'll stand by Renee to the bitter end, but he's new to being a dad and he already gave up his career as a minor league ballplayer so he could look after my mom. I guess it seemed like a bit much to ask for him to look after me and my sister too, so Renee and Charlie conspired to have my little sister and I come and stay with Charlie for a while."

Somehow I found it hard to believe that this girl could possibly be so high maintenance that she needed to be 'looked after'. "You don't agree?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, I do, I just like to arrive at my own decisions. I love my mom, but I've pretty much been the primary caregiver in our house since Kat came along. I'd pretty much resigned myself to looking after my family, including Phil, until mom was back on her feet."

"That hardly seems fair," I observed.

She shrugged. "And your point is?"

Ah, an important bit of data on Bella Swan. She was selfless. She placed her own needs far below the needs of others in order of priority. "Well, it's hardly fair to expect a young girl to carry that sort of load, while she's still a child herself."

She raised a dark eyebrow. "Haven't you heard? Life isn't fair. And I'm not a child. I haven't been a child for a very long time. Mom says that I'm an old soul, something she got from this tarot reading thing that she was into once. Anyway, I'm a firm believer in the lemonade theory."

"Lemonade?"

She smiled faintly and the world seemed to brighten. "Yep, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade."

I found myself wearing an unwilling and unaccustomed grin as I stared at her intently. For a moment, just a moment, the scent of her blood seemed to fade just a bit. "That sounds like 'every cloud has a silver lining' to me, and we have abundant cloud cover here," I said, as I thought, "Otherwise we wouldn't be here."

I suddenly felt alarmed as she seemed to stare at me blankly for a minute. What was wrong? Had I frightened her? I cursed myself as I remembered my smile a moment earlier. I'd flashed my teeth. Something that was known to scare off grown men let alone young girls. Why wasn't she running away screaming? After a frozen heartbeat her eyes seemed to clear and she spoke.

"Did you get contacts?"

I froze.

Bella's POV

Oh crap! He was doing this thing with his eyes and my impulse control switched off again, so my brain once again took advantage of its lack of supervision and engaged my mouth. He looks like a deer in the headlights. But his eyes are different. Not the obsidian black of last week. They're warm, golden, almost topaz colored. The change is obvious. I was so caught up in them that I almost missed it when he spoke.

"No," he said abruptly.

"Are you sure?" I responded, once again hearing that cold voice from the Outer Limits intro. Something was off here. I just didn't know what.

"I think I would remember getting contacts. It's just the light in here," he snapped. The bell rang and he scooped his books up and left without a goodbye. I guess our brief camaraderie was over, and Edward Cullen was an even bigger mystery than he had been before.

Mike Newton walked me to my gym class while bemoaning the difficulty of the lab that we'd just completed. Like Mr. Banner, he seemed to assume that Edward had carried me through. I disliked it when people think I'm stupid, so I corrected him, and then had to back and fill lest I hurt his feelings. I sighed. High school was already complicated enough, why did it have to include social relationships too?

"Cullen seemed friendlier today," he noted.

I pretended indifference. "I wonder what his problem was last week." The last thing I wanted to do was discuss Edward Cullen with my ever-attentive puppy Mike. Later in gym class I blessed those puppy-like tendencies as he faithfully covered for my uncoordinated butt on the volleyball court.

After gym the usual torrential rain had faded to a drizzle. Not enough to make me use an umbrella, but enough to make me not waste time getting to my truck. I was happier once I made it to the truck and got its heater going. Shaking my hair out I luxuriated in the warm dry air. It was then that I noticed that I had a spectator. Edward Cullen was leaning against his car, three cars down, watching me intently.

Suddenly feeling self-conscious I threw my truck into reverse and started to back out – only to narrowly miss taking out a battered Toyota Corolla that had the right-of-way. I jerked to a stop and waited for the Toyota to pass before backing out more carefully. As I passed the silver Volvo on my way out, I could see Edward Cullen shaking with silent laughter.

Stupid shiny Volvo driver.

TBC

AN2: If you're so inclined, drop me a little feedback. If it's good, tell me. If it blows, well, tell me that too, but politely. ;-)