Hello, welcome to the longest chapter I've written so far! It was going to be longer, but I had to end it somewhere. Everyone knows how I love a cliffhanger.
And if you don't know what to write in a valedictorian speech, ask one. They're great resources.
Anyway, enough of my babble. Here's graduation!
-irishphoenix615
The rest of senior passed in a blur for Edward, Bella, Jasper, and Alice. Bella finally understood why they were called the best times of one's life; she was happier than she'd been since her childhood.
Jasper had finally joined the Drama Club. He had only been to three meetings before tryouts for the spring musical, Into The Woods. Despite what he'd originally thought, Jazz found acting a wonderful outlet for all of his energy. He had landed a lead role, Jack, with ease. He'd dyed his honey-blonde hair dark brown, which Alice had absolutely no objections to. Bella had never been prouder of her brother as she was on opening night, when he delivered an almost perfect performance. He'd been accepted to the University of Washington, where he was going to major in teaching, specifically US History.
Alice had been nominated Prom queen (naturally). She also had decided to not only support Jasper by showing up for every rehearsal, but also by getting involved with Into The Woods too. She'd volunteered herself to make the costumes, using her flair for fashion to create possibly the most beautiful play Forks High had ever seen. Word of the colorful outfits and kooky costumes had spread up as far as La Push, the reservation Jacob was friend. The turn out had almost tripled what the Drama Department had expected; there weren't enough seats in the theatre to house everyone. Alice, too, had been accepted to University of Washington to major in fashion design.
Edward had been Prom king. He'd managed to shatter the school's record for most goals scored in a single soccer season. He was considered the hero of Forks High. Every single girl in school had asked him to Prom after he'd won the first state championship the town had ever seen. Bella kept joking with him that eventually the mayor would get around to building him a statue and putting it up in the center of town. She'd been tickled many a time for that remark. However, every second that wasn't spent on the field was spent with Bella; they'd been voted "Most Likely To Get Married" by their peers at the senior picnic. Bella, of course, had blushed like mad, but Edward had simply leaned down and kissed her. He also was planning on attending UW for pre-med.
Bella herself had never imagined that she would be as involved with school as she was. She was, naturally, valedictorian, and she'd volunteered to do tech for Into The Woods. She also had attended every single soccer game, even the ones in Seattle, earning her the title of "Most Spirited Fan." The entire school had gotten a kick out of that one. She was still avoiding anything overly sexual with Edward, but she knew that her resolve would melt away sooner or later. Not today, however. Today was the second saddest day Bella had ever experienced.
Today she, Isabella Swan, was graduating high school.
She didn't really know how she felt; she was too busy trying to memorize the speech she had to make as valedictorian. She could feel something, though, resting just below the surface. It was almost like a barely-controlled sense of panic. She'd attempted to write it off as pre-graduation jitters, but staring at her note cards wasn't causing her to nearly be sick. Putting on her gown did.
Alice had come into her room around 5:30 unable to sleep anymore. Bella, who had been up for almost an hour, welcomed her gratefully; she was eager for anything to break the bone-crushing silence. She'd even given Alice permission to do her makeup, she was feeling that out of whack.
It was different for them than the boys; Edward's parents had taken to introducing Jasper to their college professor friends as their surrogate son, and Jasper had embraced it wholeheartedly. They offered the same kindness and opportunities to Alice and Bella, but the girls still couldn't come to really think of Esme and Carlisle as their parents. Bella's memories of Charlie were still fresh, and she could still occasionally recall scenes from her childhood, with Renee. Alice's parents had been killed in a car crash when she was three, and hadn't really formed a parental bond with anyone since. Numerous counselors, the best money could buy, always chalked it up to fear of loss. Alice just said it was weird to know that she had parents of her own, but couldn't remember their faces.
Bella had attributed Alice's despondent mood to this fact for about an hour before realizing that, as long as she'd known the little pixie of a girl, her parents had never depressed her. Something wasn't adding up. "Alice," Bella asked gently as the tiny girl applied makeup to her own face, "what's wrong?"
She paused for about a second too long. Her expressive toffee eyes, the only true way to gauge her reactions, went from dull to panic before carefully settling on confused. Anyone who wasn't accustomed to the emotional range of Alice Cullen would've missed it. "What're you talking about, Bells? I'm fine, just a little scared. Graduation and all, y'know?"
"Bullshit." Bella gently pried the stick of eyeliner, which Alice was gripping as though it could anchor her to the world, before pulling her to sit down on the large plush bed. She stared at her for a while, waiting for the terrified girl's wandering caramel eyes to lock on to her own, before saying simply, "Tell me."
It took maybe three seconds, enough for Bella to wonder if maybe she'd misread the signs, before Alice finally wailed, "I'm such an idiot!" and burst into tears.
Frightened by the outburst, not expecting such a violent reaction, Bella instinctively wrapped her arms tightly around the small girl. "No you're not, sweetie. What happened?" Did I just call her sweetie?
"Remember how after Prom, Edward walked in on me and Jasper about to have sex?" Bella nodded; Edward had been furious for days. "Well, we didn't, because Edward ruined the mood, and made things really awkward, and just… yeah. Well, Jazz and I had to clean up after closing night of Woods. Mr Compton left us alone by ourselves because he knew we'd get everything done, and we were just joking around, throwing dust at each other and he kept tickling me and I kept poking his stomach, and we were dancing around, and then he started talking about how he wished that Edward hadn't interrupted us because he really wanted it to happen between us, and I agreed, and we kept talking about how much we loved each other, and one thing lead to another, and we came back here, made sure you and Edward were busy, and went up to his room and just… did it." All of this came out in a rush; it took Bella a few seconds to decipher it. "That's why we had to go back the next morning, because we left in the middle of cleaning and we knew that Mr C would be so pissed if he came back that Monday morning and it wasn't cleaned."
Leave it to Jasper, Bella thought sarcastically. He finds the most inconvenient time to get in someone's pants. "That doesn't make you dumb, Als." Alice's sobs increased tenfold. Bella desperately racked her brains for something she could say.
Or something Alice hadn't said.
"Alice…" she said slowly, not wanting to startle the hysterical girl anymore, "did you guys use –"
"It broke!" she cried, burying her head into Bella's arms. "He told me it broke, but I told him to do it anyway. Don't get me wrong, it was utterly fantastic, and nothing's changed between the two of us, but I'm four days late on my period, and I don't know what I'm going to do if I'm pregnant!"
Bella didn't, couldn't, say anything. She just simply sat there and stroked Alice's hair until she calmed down a little bit, buying some time. "Have you bought a test?" she finally asked. Alice shook her head. "We're going out after the ceremony, then. You have to take one, it's just putting more stress on you. And the maybe-baby, she thought, but didn't say.
Alice had successfully cried off all of her makeup, so Bella gently guided her back over to the vanity and helped her reapply everything. She had the feeling she wasn't that much help, but Alice never complained. In what felt like mere seconds (but was actually around thirty minutes), Esme showed up in Bella's bedroom door, announcing that the guys were ready to go and quickly getting impatient.
"Carlisle and I will meet you guys at the auditorium after the ceremony," she told them tearfully. "Good luck on your speech, Bella. I know you'll do great."
Bella and Alice hugged the petite woman, greeted the guys in front of the door, and headed off to their ceremony.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the valedictorian for the class of 2007, Miss Isabella Swan!" The wave of thunderous applause from both her classmates and their families shocked Bella, so much so that she almost tripped over herself walking to the podium. You probably would have tripped anyway. She peered out over the microphone, staring down into the uncertain faces of her classmates, expressions that all mirrored her own. None of them were sure what would happen to them after this ceremony, but for the last time, they were together in the safety of their 'home.'
"It's been four long years since we first started here at Forks High," she began. "As freshmen, we weren't sure what to expect from this school. Some of us carried popularity over from middle school," her eyes flashed toward Jessica Stanley and Mike Newton, "and others of us preferred our studies to the social aspect of high school. None of that really matters now.
"Here we are, four years later; older, wiser, more prepared for the real world. We've all had some good times within these walls; some of us have had some bad times. Now, as we go out to face the world, we have these memories to draw strength from, to refer back to and say, 'If I survived that, I can certainly survive this.' Congratulations, classmates from the class of 2007. Some of us will never see one another again, but I'm fairly certain we will never forget these four years." Bella caught Alice's winking eye and, in a very Legally-Blond-esque gesture, squealed, "We did it!"
The actual diploma ceremony took less time than Bella had expected. All ninety-two diplomas were given out in less than an hour, and then the graduates were thrust into the eager and welcoming arms of well-wishers. Rose was the first to reach the group of four.
"Congratulations!" she screamed, flinging herself onto the unsuspecting Alice and Bella. "You guys did it! Awesome speech, Bells, it was super-inspiring. When do you guys move in at UW?"
"Let them breathe, Rose!" Edward chuckled. Ever since coming completely clean with Bella, Edward and Rosalie had become close friends. Bella never really worried about the two of them, because Edward wasn't really Rose's type anymore. She was more into super-jocks with more muscles than brains. Edward bent down and pressed a kiss to Bella's temple. "Find me later, okay? I need to talk to you."
And just like that, Bella's mood sunk from euphoria down into near-depression. She tried to keep her smile from faltering, but from the expression on Alice's face, she knew she hadn't covered it up well. She nodded at him, kissing his cheek, before turning to Alice as a way to escape. "Ready Alice?"
"Yep. I'll go get the car."
"Where are you girls going?" Esme asked curiously in the middle of embracing Jasper with a bone-crushing hug. "That huge pool party you four planned is scheduled to start in an hour; will you be home in time?"
"Of course!" Alice chirruped, making Bella laugh. Satan would need mittens before Alice skipped her own party. "We're just going to stop by the mall. I made the mistake of letting Bella go swimsuit shopping by herself, and the one she bought was all wrong. We'll be back in no time. Promise!" She kissed Esme on the cheek before dragging Bella off to the car.
"Swimsuit shopping?" she asked in horror as Alice put the car in gear. Pregnancy tests were one thing. Being in a mall full of swimsuits with Alice Cullen was a completely different story. "Alice, we really won't -"
"Don't worry, I was kidding about that part!" Alice waved her suspicions away with a flick of her wrist. The movement drew Bella's attention to the speedometer, and she instantly wished it hadn't; Alice was going at well over ninety miles an hour. "Although, I did take a peek at what you bought, and it is all wrong. I've already got you a replacement, though, it's navy blue and will complement your gorgeous skin. Oh, stop looking so sick Bells, you're going to be fine. Edward will absolutely drool all over himself when he sees it."
Bella tuned out the rest of Alice's monologue; that sentence stirred up all of that fear she'd built up since he told her they needed to talk. If he broke up with her, it could really complicate things for college. All five of them had found a three-bedroom apartment together near campus. If he broke it off now, she could never face him in such tight quarters, especially when he started bringing girls home. She'd end up in a psych ward before the end of first semester. And her brain really couldn't think of any other solutions. She'd never heard of those words being anything but bad.
"We're here!" Alice announced, gleeful despite the circumstance. Bella rolled her eyes; she had naturally picked the most rundown gas station in Forks. "I wanted the authentic teen pregnancy experience. If I really am, you know, pregnant. Which I'm totally not, right? Tell me I'm not pregnant Bells."
"You're not pregnant," Bella deadpanned as they climbed out of the Volvo. Alice practically skipped in front of her. "You know, we might want to wait until we get back to your house. This doesn't look like the most sanitary of places to pee on a stick."
"You're right." The second Alice grabbed the test (of course choosing the one with the brightest packaging), her tightly-wound energy seemed to drain. "Holy shit, Bella. I never thought this would be my life. You know, maybe-pregnant at eighteen. It's so strange."
"Tell me about it," Bella muttered, handing money over to the cashier. He was leering at the both of them in a way that made her skin crawl in a completely different way than Edward did. She was suddenly very aware that she did, in fact, look very much like a seventeen-year-old, and that she was still wearing the ridiculously short dress Alice had forced her to wear under her gown. He was the kind of man they posted warnings about on the six o'clock news.
"Y'all have a good day now," he called after them.
"Captain Creepy of Creeptown, wasn't he?" Alice whispered as she burned rubber out of the parking lot.
"Definitely," Bella answered back just as softly. She couldn't seem to take her eyes off of the brown paper bag wedged firmly between the console and her leg. It didn't look like anything special, but it might as well have had flashing lights and police sirens attached to it; neither girl could look away from it for long.
"We need to cheer up," Alice said decidedly after a few minutes. "Pregnant or not, we just graduated high school! We are about to go to a party, where both of our wonderful, amazing boyfriends will be-" Bella's stomach flopped sadly at that "-and we are going to look smokin'! We need to put on our game faces, or rather our party faces, and just go with it! Let's get ready to party!"
Nearly drowned out by the sudden loud, awful mix of nineties pop songs blaring through the radio, Bella muttered to herself, "Yeah, this party's going to be one to remember."
Oh, the suspense.
Yeah, I know, not really.
Not everything is as it seems (wow, I'm feeling extra-lame right now). The next chapter is the party, and will be up before the end of my Spring Break (which is, obviously, now). This chapter and the next were both written after taking the Graduation Tests, so I definitely had graduation on the brain. Anyway, hope you enjoyed.
-irishphoenix615Girlz-Rule: I hope this didn't take too long. Thanks for the review.
Blue-Eyed Chica: Thank you! I figured that was a pretty important one in their relationship. Thanks for the review.
Petaloutha: He actually explains it… next. She does get pissed at him eventually (obviously). Thanks for the review!
Thanks to my reviewers!:
Edar: If I'm not allowed to make sarcastic comments about my writing ability, you aren't about yours either. How was this for an update?
lovelywendy: Hope this didn't take too long! Thanks for the review.
yankeerose: Yes, there is. Hopefully he will. =) Thanks for the review.