Author's note: Sorry, we had a bad week followed by a very busy week. Hopefully the length of this chapter will make up for it (it was crazy hard to write!) Oh, and by the way, we LOVED your reviews last chapter (although, 'HOLY MOTHER OF EDWARD'S COUCH'? What does that even mean?)

Disclaimer: What?! You thought we owned Twilight and The Shop Around the Corner. Puh-lease.

The realization was incredible. One world had spontaneously come crashing into another, shattering in a display of colored fragments like fireworks. Complete, utter incomprehension, and almost physical pain at the impact, followed in the resulting silence.

In other words, it was like getting clobbered over the head with a stained glass window -- except awesome.

Bella's mouth moved, but her brain did not. The person in front of her was Lehstat... and Edward. But they couldn't actually be the same person. For a minute her mind floundered with trying to put the two together, and failed.

Edward had brought up a hand to his mouth as life struck him entirely mute.

Both stayed frozen in their respective positions, Bella on one knee as she had been trying to get herself off the floor, Edward with his hand partially outstretched to help her up. This was mostly because they didn't have any spare brainpower to use for such trivial things as moving... or, to a certain degree, breathing. Then there was also the possibility that as soon as they took a step, the unstable world would fall from beneath their feet.

"Oh... my... gosh..."

Bella choked on her own words and fell silent. They would have been able to hear a pin drop had not a huge party been going on around them with booming music and screaming people at a table close by.

"Lehstat!" she suddenly shrieked. "You live here?"

"Yeah, I, wow, yes, I live here," Edward answered back.

More silence.

"And... and... you live here!" he cried.

"Which... means..."

Both of them faltered, not quite knowing what any of this meant.

Edward placed the hand previously over his mouth at his temple, his eyes wide. "Which means...well, I guess that... we're neighbors...sort of...?"

"That's impossible," Bella countered.

And the delayed ecstasy broke loose.

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Rosalie, for the first time in her life, tripped over her own feet.

"What the heck is that noise?" she exclaimed, startled, as Emmett caught her a second before she hit the floor. Her boyfriend, eyes wide, didn't even bother righting her but just stood like that as both of them tried to see what was going on between the pairs of other dancers.

A few other people around them were also trying to discern the source of the noise, looking bewildered and standing on tiptoe to see over the heads of other people in the crowd. Through the pairs of shifting feet, Rosalie caught, squinting, a shape. Was that... a person...?

"Why is there someone on the floor?" Rosalie asked Emmett in a hushed voice, a line appearing between her eyebrows. Emmett shrugged, searching through the list of partying experience in his brain for a situation that would resemble this. He paused at a reasonable choice.

"Dang. Someone beat us to the break dancing," he murmured.

"But what's the noise?"

That question, however, was suddenly answered. The dancers in front of them parted, suddenly allowing them an unobstructed view of the "break dancer". Except, there were two people. Doubled up in hysterical laughter. On the floor.

"Wow. That's Edward," Emmett whistled, recognizing his brother's bronze hair.

"And Bella," Rosalie nodded.

"My brother's finally come unhinged," he continued in wonderment.

They both watched, feeling an odd sensation tugging at the corners of their lips, until the dancers shifted once again to cover up the spectacle. Emmett finally looked down, realizing that Rosalie was still in his arms. She smiled up at him.

"You know, his maniacal laughter is actually... pretty good," she chuckled.

Emmett shook his head and sighed. "Please. No one can beat ours."

And with that, they started to dance again.

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In the end, a member of the faculty who was monitoring the dance had to come over and yank them both to their senses. Mumbling something about how they were being "disruptive", he helped pull both to their feet and, finding no better course of action, glared at them until they stopped laughing.

Of course, the minute he left, they were laughing at that, too.

"You know," Edward gasped between shaking breaths, "we probably should head outside for a little while before they have to kick us out."

"Mmm," Bella managed, her eyes alight.

Edward grabbed on gently to her hand. Had they not already reached their maximum of shock for the night, this would have awakened a shiver in both of them. But as it was, they stumbled through the crowd, Edward leading Bella towards the courtyard, blinded by their own tears of laughter.

Once there, they were able to calm themselves with the music still playing softly in the background. Very few students were outside, and the night was so clear that it almost felt like they had headed off into their own private world.

They both sat down on the grass, letting themselves hiccup into silence.

Bella let out a long, slow breath, slowly calming her heaving chest. She looked up at the sky, trying to regain some composure. Or, at least, some idea of what the world had been like before this unexpected revelation.

She turned to look at Edward in the dim light. His hair was pushed back, his eyes closed as he, too, struggled to gain a grip on reality. This... this was Lehstat. Edward was Lehstat. She couldn't control her racing heart. This was... her single best friend in the entire world. Bella was looking at him for the first time.

Except, of course, it wasn't her first time looking at him... just seeing him.

He opened his shocking green eyes.

His face was turned towards hers, and Bella felt him studying her. "You know, we talked online just before we came here," he said, still struggling to wrap his mind around it all.

They had been talking almost every day. While in real life they hadn't exchanged more than a few words. Now she could see both sides of the story -- Edward and Lehstat. She tried to imagine him coming home and talking with her, singing karaoke with her, talking about poetry and programming and music.

Suddenly, she came up with an interesting fact.

"Your brother. The guy who supposedly set us up in there. He's the person who said that you looked like a doofy guy in a cape?"

"Yes," Edward grinned, transported back immediately to the summer. "Ah, my dearest brother, Emmett." The grin slowly fell as he realized something. "Dang it, you know what? I'll actually have to thank him for this."

Bella shook her head, amused by life's quirks.

"Do you want to look at constellations with me?" Edward asked, letting his grin relax.

"I'd love to," Bella replied hastily, jerked out of her thoughts by his expectant expression, "I've always enjoyed seeing just how many I could identify on a clear night like this."

They leaned back against the building contently, glad to have something to distract them from everything that was happening. One could say that you can only take so much emotion before you get exhausted.

"Hey look, a firefly!" exclaimed Edward. Gently, he moved his hand forward underneath it, finger outstretched. With an easy type of grace, the little bug, twinkling light the light of a candle, alighted on his skin. It's glow was soft, yet warm.

Bella looked down at her own hands, hiding her face. "Oh, I'm sure Mr. Phelan would be thrilled to see that you can find a bug in any situation," she laughed, a little uneasily.

"Ugh. Don't even get me started about him. I found the 'on' switch for his new computer a couple years ago and he then decided that I was some sort of computer god."

Bella glanced upward, surprised at how immensely relieved she felt. She was shocked to realize how quickly she had judged Edward. He wasn't anything like she had been led to believe. In fact, she was embarrassed to think that she had based her opinions on anything that Jessica or Mr. Phelan (that dolt) had told her.

"Wow... I'm..."

"What is it?" Edward looked at her, noticing his friend's unease. She chuckled sheepishly.

"I'm... really, um, sorry. I thought... well, I misjudged you a lot, I've acted like an idiot. I don't think that fact could have showed up more blatantly than through what has happened tonight."

Now it was his turn to look down. "Misjudged me... as Edward, you mean?"

Bella nodded tightly, angry at herself for being so easily misled. Jessica hadn't known Edward Cullen. Suddenly smiling to herself, Bella realized that she, personally, knew Edward better than anyone else in the school. Or, rather, Lehstat.

Or maybe it didn't matter what she called him. He was who he was.

Looking at their still intertwined hands, Edward thought back over all of his interactions with Bella, trying to see her as Arrwyn as she had tried to see him as her friend, Lehstat. She had never said or done anything that could be considered unkind, despite his first impressions, he realized. Certainly she was a little reserved, but it was not she who had made the comment in Statistics. Remembering the feel when they accidentally touched in Computer Science, he was overwhelmed by the intense emotions now flowing through him.

"I've always wondered about the ancient people naming all these groups of stars," Bella said after a short pause, acceptingly studying the night sky. "I mean I obviously recognize Ursa Major, but no matter how hard I try I just can't see a bear."

"Yes," Edward began as he watched her again. Her face was still turned up towards the stars and his mouth became dry as he stared into those amazing eyes. It's Arrwyn with me. She had come to mean so much to him over the last several months.

"I used to go out on summer nights in Phoenix with my star charts. I would lay on the ground staring up into the stars and it was almost like I was traveling out there with them."

"I wish I could've been with you," Edward said softly as he, without thinking too much, removed his hand from hers and placed it around her waist. "Of course, I never had to bring star charts with me. I was more the planetarium type – I went to so many shows that I simply memorized it all."

"Oh, you would love the Arizona Science Center. The planetarium shows are great and they have so many hands on exhibits." As she said the words "hands on", Bella suddenly blushed and thought about the fact that Edward now had his arms wrapped around her. She was more surprised by the fact that she didn't mind their current star gazing position.

"Uh…They even have a blue screen where they film you and put you in a sort of video game," she continued, a bit disconcerted.

"Well, I already know how you and I are when we are in video games," Edward laughed. "Thank you. I've always appreciated the extra work you've done with me."

They smiled slightly at each other, feeling the strength of their previous friendship pulling them together. Somehow, even against the bizarre network of misconceptions that the world had put between them, here they were, chatting like they had so often done before online (except with better grammar). They sat there for a peaceful moment, smiling at this fact. However, it was only when Bella realized that she was really within visiting distance of his house that she spontaneously hugged him.

Edward was a logical person. He liked to think through all his options and plan accordingly. Right now, however, his mind was blank. He noticed only his closeness to Bella and so he did the first thing that occurred to him. He leaned in tentatively and kissed her. His own daring surprised him.

Bella's surprise was at least as large as Edward's. She sat frozen for a few seconds until she smiled slightly and relaxed into him. Her smile was enough to encourage him and their second kiss was much longer and deeper than the first.

"I feel like I've suddenly reached level 100," Edward said softly.

"I know just what you mean," Bella sighed as her hands went up his chest and around his neck.

Who cared if the moment was too good to be real? Their world, the one where they had met in the first place, was supposedly not a "real" one, either. It hadn't mattered, not at all. What mattered was the person beside them. What counted was the feel of his bronze hair, the curve of her smile...

"WELL! WELL! WELL!"

The moment was immediately smashed into a million smithereens. Lehstat and Arrwyn jumped apart, eyes darting immediately to the figure standing in the doorway to the courtyard, whose finger was pointing at them exultantly.

"Emmett!"

"YES! YES! YES! BWAHAHAHA!"

Enthralled at his own genius, Edward's brother smirked down at his two stunned victims, crowing with triumph.

"Flawless! FLAWLESS, I TELL YOU! Haha, there will be no murdering me in the dead of night after this, Eddie!"

Bella, glancing at Edward, wondered how Emmett could be so sure.