"Okay, spill," said Jessica. She'd already been in Trig when I'd gotten there, and we had a few minutes to kill before the rest of class started trickling in. "What happened? Are you guys like, secretly dating?"

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Dating seemed like a thing that normal, non-undead teenagers did. "I'm not sure," I said. "Um, he drove me to school this morning."

"Where'd he take you for dinner?"

"This place called Vetri...?"

Jessica's eyes grew wide. "Oooh," she said. "Fancy." She contemplated the possible meaning of such an expensive restaurant for a moment before asking her next, much more embarrassing question. "So, did he kiss you?"

"Um..."

"He did?"

"Not...really," I said. "No. He didn't kiss me."

"Well, do you want him to?" She was hanging on my every word, but I was struggling to find something to say that wouldn't embarrass me when Edward plucked it out of her mind. He was probably watching me through her eyes right now. It was weird. Like, Being John Malkovich-weird. And totally cheating!

"Yes," I finally said, feeling bold. It was easier to admit this if I didn't have to be looking at his radiant face while I did so. And why shouldn't he know? Although I knew I'd regret saying it.

"Well, I'm sure he will," she said with satisfaction. "Especially if you let him see you in that green dress. That thing was hot. Besides, he's obviously into you." He was?

"He is?"

"Um, duh?" Jessica laughed at my expression. Students were beginning to take their seats, and so Jessica lowered her voice conspiratorially. "He looks at you like you're, I don't know, he just has this way of looking at you. He's totally buying what you're selling."

"Ew, Jessica! That makes it sound so seedy!"

"Oh, you know what I mean!" she giggled. Our teacher began writing on the chalkboard, a sure signal our gossip time was almost up.

"He asked if I want to sit with him again at lunch today," I whispered, my heart leaping at the thought.

"Damn, girl!" squealed Jessica in a hushed voice. "Git it!"

It happened too quickly for Edward to shield her from it. One night there was a tearful midnight phone call from Sally, who was hyperventilating too much to make herself plainly understood. The next day, when Edward and Alice drove to Sally's house, they found it teeming with movers who tramped in and out, loading furniture and boxes onto a truck. There was a For Sale sign posted in the yard. Edward stood stock-still for a long time, staring. He'd never even seen this house before, except in Sally's mind. It was small and a little weathered, but there was a garden that someone must have been weeding faithfully. Edward plucked a delphinium and then methodically shredded it, his mind whirling in circles.

"Why would this happen?" asked Alice, breaking into Edward's reverie. She peered up into his eyes, her brow knitted in worry.

"She said on the phone last night that her mother got a job in Florida," said Edward. "But she didn't even find out they were moving until yesterday after school. Her mother thinks she's sick."

"What do you mean, sick?" asked Alice. "She's perfectly healthy, we were just playing doctor two weeks ago and I didn't find anything wrong—"

"Her mother thinks she's a lesbian," he said in a flat voice.

Alice stared at him blankly. "Why does she think that?"

"Because she's a lesbian."

There was a pause. Edward heard astonishment, disgust and confusion racing through Alice's mind, accompanied by memories of the hours and hours she'd spent half-naked in front of Sally. Then, reaching a conclusion, she said shortly, "Well, that's no reason to go dragging her all over the country. Pervert or not, she's still my friend. I think her mother's being perfectly ridiculous."

"Yes," agreed Edward. Alice had understood the situation much more speedily than he had, still further evidence that she was a jewel among women. "But what can we do?"

"I'll have a chat with Carlisle," said Alice confidently. And when Alice was confident, Edward was too.

Edward tried to carry my books to Bio, but I wouldn't let him. Now that I knew to look for it, it seemed even more obvious that he belonged to a different era. He blended in well enough most of the time, but he also held doors and automatically stood whenever a woman entered the room. It was peculiar. At least now I knew where he'd gotten it.

Mr. Banner showed us an educational film in class about the biosphere, but neither Edward nor I could pay it much attention. I would stare at the flickering screen and try to follow what was going on in the film, but before long my eyes would drift over to Edward, who would smile sheepishly and jerk his own eyes back to the screen. As the period wore on, I realized I would just have to borrow Angela's notes; no way was I going to remember any of this. Especially not when Edward kept flicking little pieces of paper at me so I would look at the goofy faces he was making in the dark. He almost reduced me to tears with his spot-on impression of a sloth eating a pencil.

When Mr. Banner finally turned the lights back on, Edward snatched my books before I could prevent him and walked away with them, so that I was forced to jog to keep up.

"Give those back!" I demanded, not nearly as furious as I sounded.

With a groan he complied. "I wish I'd met you in the Fifties," he said. "I don't even have any books of my own to carry! You would have let me, back then."

"You could have given me your class ring," I jested.

"I still could; I have a lot of them," he said thoughtfully. I looked at him in alarm; how could he possibly know how uneasy I felt about the custom of a man marking his territory with jewelry?

By then we had arrived at the gym. "Thanks for walking with me," I said, hoping he would forget what I'd said about the ring.

"See you after school?" Edward asked hopefully. I nodded, an irrepressible grin on my face, and went in to Gym.

In September of 1952, Sally Moore sat down for her very first English 101 class at NYU on a full-ride scholarship neither she nor her mother could quite wrap their minds around. Something caught the corner of her eye, and turning to look she let out a screech that could be heard all the way down the corridor.

"Why, if it isn't Sally Moore," said Alice from the next seat over, grinning so hard her face looked in danger of cracking in two.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Edward facetiously, twisting in his chair. "My old friend Sally! Do you go here, too?"

"Ggh!" said Sally Moore.

Edward was waiting for me at the front entrance to the school. We walked to his car in silence and got in. Just before we pulled out of the parking lot, I caught a glimpse of his family piling into Rosalie's baby-blue Mustang. Once again, Alice Cullen was staring at me with a speculative look on her face.

"What's up with Alice?" I said without thinking.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know, it seems like she watches me sometimes," I said, feeling foolish. "I'm probably imagining it."

"You're not imagining it," said Edward with a wry smile. "Alice watches everything that affects our family. That's sort of her job."

"To make sure I don't rat you out?" I asked.

"Well, more to make sure nothing bad happens to you. And also..."

"Yeah?" I said when he didn't finish.

"Well, she's looking forward to getting to know you better," said Edward. Oh. I hadn't realized Alice Cullen had any opinion of me at all.

We didn't talk much on the quick ride home. As we were pulling onto my street, however, Edward turned to me suddenly.

"I heard what you said to Jessica," he said. I got the impression that he'd been wanting to talk about this ever since lunch. He had an air of suppressed excitement and nervousness about him.

"And?" I asked, my heart speeding up.

"Did you mean what you said to her?" he asked. "About wanting to, um, about wanting to kiss?" He said it in a rush.

I nodded mutely. I'd never done this before. I wished I could be chill and suave, like in a movie. Edward was clearly feeling nervous as well, but nervousness looked charming and sweet and still somehow cool on him. I just felt like I had crickets in my stomach.

Gross.

"Well, we could try," he said at last. "But...listen, I haven't exactly done a lot of this, and..."

"Me neither," I prompted when he showed no sign of wanting to continue.

"Just...hold still, okay? I don't want to, um..." Hulk out and drain my blood, I finished in my head.

"I won't move," I promised. I unbuckled and turned to face him. He took a deep breath and then paused.

"Actually..." he said. My heart plummeted. Don't back out now, Edward! my mind screamed at him—not that he could hear it. "Maybe I should walk you to your door."

"Oh." Red-faced and mortified, I silently unstrapped. So he didn't want to go through with it after all. Maybe he was realizing what a boring lump I really was. Maybe he'd caught sight of my pores, which were way bigger than his. Maybe he just wasn't into me like I was into him. Well, of course he wasn't; why would he be? I felt foolish, trudging up to my front door. I'd been wrong about how much he liked me. I fumbled with my key in the lock.

"Wait," said Edward, putting his hand on my arm to still it. "Could I..."

"What?" I snapped unnecessarily, turning to him. His wounded expression made me feel guilty at once.

"Are you just going to go in?" he asked plaintively. "I thought...well, I just didn't want to try kissing you in an enclosed space. My whole car smells like you. It's really difficult for me not to, you know...murder you horribly. Just hold still, okay?" I didn't even think about what a weird and scary way this was to have a first kiss; I just straightened up and stood still. Edward seemed to be working himself around to it, looking up and down the street, leaning away from me and taking a deep breath. Then he placed his icy hands carefully on my shoulders; I could tell that he was using more of his strength than he usually did, because although I could move away from him, his hands wouldn't let me move toward him. He was like a statue.

Then he leaned forward and very softly brushed his lips against mine. His lips were smooth and cold; the skin felt human enough, but the musculature underneath might have been made of iron. This close to his face, that intoxicating Edward scent drove me wild. It was in his very skin, something that drew me in and comforted me while simultaneously making me feel more daring and alive than ever. Without thinking about what I was doing, I pressed my mouth more eagerly against his.

The second that I did this, Edward jerked away from me. Well, I say jerked, but really it was more of a teleport. He was halfway across the side yard before I even realized he'd moved.

"Edward?" I asked tentatively. "Are you okay?"

"Mm-hmm," he said, breathing heavily. "I was just admiring your, er...lawn, over here."

"Oh," I said. "Um, what happened?"

"I should go," he said. He must have seen how disappointed I looked, because his voice turned soothing at once. "Can I drive you to school again tomorrow?" he asked.

"If you still want to," I muttered.

"Of course I still want to!" he exclaimed, sounding shocked. "You don't think I...Bella, have a little faith in me! If I could have my way, we would be necking this very minute."

"We would?" Even I could hear how pathetically my voice perked up.

"Definitely," he said. "But there is the little matter of me not wanting to kill the only girl I've ever..."

"Ever what?" I whispered, mesmerized by the sight of his beautiful face gleaming in the grey, Forksy mist.

"I just don't want to hurt you by accident," he said resolutely, and I gritted my teeth, frustrated that he kept beginning sentences and not finishing them. Especially sentences that showed such promise!

"Okay," I said. "Well, see you in the morning, Edward."

"See you tomorrow, Bella," he said, smiling that crooked smile. I couldn't move a step; I watched him walk over to his car, climb in, and drive away before I gathered my wits enough to unlock my door, kick off my shoes, and flop, sighing, onto the couch.

In 1964, Alice Cullen was disrupting life. As usual.

While the rest of the family had gone out hunting in preparation for the first day of school, Alice had stayed behind to run wires under the baseboards all through the house and then hook them up to speakers strategically hidden in every room of the house. No one had noticed; or rather, everyone had noticed something was different, but since Alice tweaked the decor around the house at least twice a week, no one thought anything of it.

This morning, the first day of the school year, Alice had sneaked out to the living room, placed the latest Beatles record in the Dual, and turned the volume all the way up.

Edward was reading in his bedroom when the first strains of "A Hard Day's Night" blared through the speakers placed right behind his couch. He yelped and leaped to his feet. Around the house, he could hear Carlisle and Esme giggling at the interruption—he tried to shut that out, they only ever giggled when they were doing one thing—and Rosalie stomping into the living room to yell at Alice. He could hear Emmett chuckling, and the clink of a belt-buckle as he pulled on his pants.

Edward changed into his school clothes in thirty seconds and slid in his sockfeet over the polished wooden floorboards to the living room, where quite a sight met his eyes.

Rosalie's yelling had petered out, and now she was dancing with Emmett, her head thrown back ecstatically as he spun and twisted her around avant garde groupings of furniture. Alice and Jasper were leading Carlisle and Esme in a sort of congo line around the living room; Jasper was in such a good mood that everyone else could feel it.

"Eddy!" hollered Emmett. "Happy Fourth First Day of School! Golly, I wonder if all these PhD's will help us dissect frogs in Biology this year." The Cullens had all spent much of the previous decade travelling around Europe, picking up doctorates like stray dogs. It so happened that Edward, Rosalie and Alice were in Hamburg at the same time as an obscure little quartet from Liverpool, and were therefore a little prepared for what the papers kept calling "the British Invasion". By the time they had exchanged their Deutschemarks for greenbacks and moved to Detroit, Alice couldn't even blink without getting another vision of the Fab Four's inevitable takeover of the entire world. Edward couldn't walk down a street without hearing otherwise-respectable citizens wondering, Paul or John? George or Ringo? All four at once, or one at a time?

So much had changed since their first foray into humanity that it was hard to keep track. Jasper's self-control was quite reliable these days, and there hadn't been a scare in six years. Edward was slowly getting used to the loosening morals of the younger set. He'd spent enough time marching around and protesting things with Sally at NYU that not much surprised him anymore, although he was never as good as his siblings at acclimating. It didn't help that he could hear every lascivious thought passing through every unbridled teenage mind. And a good many adults, for that matter.

"Have a marvelous day at school," said Esme, kissing Edward's cheek. George or John? she thought.

The next day, I went about fixing my breakfast with a spring in my step. I even stepped out onto the porch to stick a hand into the light drizzle that was sweating out of the sky. It felt nice and refreshing. How had I never noticed that before?

As soon as Charlie had kissed me on the top of the head and driven off, I ran to the front door. And there was Edward, leaning against his burnt-orange BMW, looking like a...like a...well, looking like Edward.

"Good morning, Edward," I said chirpily. I wanted to lean up and kiss him hello, but I didn't dare risk it; he seemed to be keeping his distance today. Probably because I smelled so edible, having just finished my own breakfast. I didn't even remotely mind the danger of being murdered horribly on the way to school as I strapped myself in. Honestly, for all the fuss he made about wanting to drink my blood and blah blah blah, I wasn't worried at all. I trusted Edward implicitly.

He continued asking me questions about every minute detail of my life, and I continued answering them. It didn't feel weird to talk about my favorite flower and my earliest memory and the first time I'd learned to tie my shoes. It felt natural, because Edward seemed genuinely interested. And I was interested in him, since he'd had so many more years to do interesting, exciting things. Next time I got him alone, I would have to ask him about the Sixties.

Jessica was waiting for me at the door to Trig. "Any developments?" she asked with one eyebrow arched. I blushed and hurried past her to my seat, unable to dim my smile.

"Oh my god," she breathed. "No way! Did he...?"

"Mm-hmm," I said, settling in my seat.

"And?"

"It was very nice," I said.

"Bella, I swear to god, you would drive Saint Peter insane. I need more details, girl! What did he say? Was there tongue? Does he smell as good up close as he does from three feet away? Come on!"

I couldn't take any more of her wheedling—and, let's face it, I did sort of want to relive the moment. With alterations, obviously: I couldn't tell her the part about how he jumped away from me in the middle so he wouldn't be tempted to murder me in plain view of the neighbors.

"It was cold," I said. "Because we were outside." That was harmless enough, right?

"I bet he warmed you right up," she said cheekily.

"It was very small," I said, ignoring that. "Just a peck. No tongue. And yes—he smells even better up close."

"That's too adorable," sighed Jessica. "It was sort of like that with Mike..." And then she went off into an account of her first kiss with Mike. I felt guilty about not paying attention when she'd clearly been so interested in my story, but then again, she didn't seem to be waiting for input from me. I could get away with nodding and smiling until the teacher came in and class began.

I raced to the cafeteria early, and of course Edward was already there. He was smiling; as soon as I sat down across the table from him, I knew why.

"I smell better up close, huh?" he said. Hearing my own words in his mouth brought me up short.

"Edward Cullen," I said seriously, "you've been eavesdropping. You need to not do that. It's very invasive."

He looked taken aback for a moment and then said, "Invasive?"

I rolled my eyes at him, but kindly. "The inside of a person's head is the only place where they get to be totally free," I said. "And I can't have an authentic conversation with my friend if I know you're watching from the other side."

"That's fair," he said carefully, looking at me the way he did so often, as if he were confused and intrigued. Then, looking down at his hands, "I guess I'm so used to being inundated with thoughts against my will that I never really considered how different it is to listen deliberately. I mean, I sort of did. Once. I suppose I stopped questioning it a long time ago."

"You're desensitized," I said. "You just have to...sensitize."

"I suppose you're right," he said. "I don't really do it that often. It gives me a headache, and it's rarely worth the trouble. I'm usually more busy trying to keep the thoughts out. I always felt like I was the one being invaded, not the other way around."

"Well, now you know," I said. Then, because it sounded harsh, I said more gently, "And you know very well you smell better up close. I'll have none of your shenanigans." We smiled at each other, and I felt a strange buzzing pride in the fact that I had managed to speak my mind even though it meant telling him he'd messed up; it went against the grain, criticizing a single thing this wonderful boy did, and I wasn't completely prepared to face that fact. It was a minor incident, to be sure, but I didn't want him to think I was just okay with it. I got the feeling that Edward was even more backward than me, especially when it came to understanding the boundaries that kept human civilization from totally imploding. He hadn't been a true member of human civilization, not in a long time. I wondered if he needed more help blending in than I had first thought. I wondered if I had the moral backbone to be honest with him next time something like this happened.

"Hey, Bella?" he said, cutting into my reverie.

"Yes?"

"Do you still want to go to Seattle this Saturday? Or could you be up for something different?"

"Like what?" I asked cautiously. He wasn't about to ask me to the dance, was he?

"It's going to be sunny," he said. "I thought maybe we could spend the day outside."

"Really?" I burst out. Would I finally get to see what the big deal was about vampires and the sun? Maybe he turned invisible in direct sunlight. That would be so bitchin', except that I wouldn't be able to see his glorious face or tight body or... "You're on! Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise," was all he would say.

George. THE ANSWER IS GEORGE. Of course, astute readers would have picked that up already, from the title of this story.

This chapter contained Stalking Is Bad: Part 1, Mind Reader's Edition. Obviously, my Edward doesn't follow her everywhere, and he doesn't stand creepily in her room while she sleeps, but he did deliberately eavesdrop on both Bella and Sally. Later we will have Part 2: Don't Follow A Girl You Barely Know To Port Angeles Without Her Knowledge Or Permission.

It would have been easy for me to just cut out all of Edward's negative traits outright. However, while I don't think Smeyer ever intended to include Don't Stalk among the many lessons of Twilight, I do feel that there is potential here for some useful character growth. The lure of eavesdropping would be strong for a mind-reader, and I think Edward has spent so long outside of humanity that he has become disconnected from what is acceptable. I would rather him still have (some of) those negative habits, but only if they are habits that I can realistically see him developing as a result of his power and his long life. (For example, I don't see how the gift of mind-reading would naturally segue to climbing in the bedroom window of a strange girl so you can stare at her all night, uninvited. As far as I can tell, that particular habit must have come from Edward being an entitled dick, not to mention a sociopath—not, as Smeyer would have us believe, from how Flattering and Romantic he is.) Eventually, when Edward is required to learn to rectify his faulty behavior, he will become a stronger, more developed and empathic individual than if he was simply flawless from the outset. It's what happened when he left his family to hunt down Charles Evenson, and it happened with Sally, and it will keep happening as long as he's alive. In other words, I want my Edward to make mistakes, but I want him to grow from those mistakes.

You know, just like a human.