Holy moly I'm completely blow away by the response to the last chapter! I love how opinionated you all are—mostly about how much this E sucks. I love it so much and love all of you.

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28.

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Even though classes at Seattle North don't start until the middle of August, the courses Shelly wants me to take are nearly full already.

We sit hunched over her old computer and navigate through webpages and are on hold with Forks High's counselor to ask them to send my transcripts for what feels like hours. I fill out applications and it takes two weeks for them to accept me. I keep telling Shelly that I only need to audit the courses-since I'm not actually getting a degree-but she insists that I take them for credit.

"Just in case you find that you enjoy it."

I doubt I'll enjoy introduction to Business Management and a basic finance class but I hold my tongue, still in awe that she believes that I can actually do this.

Preparing for school is a nice distraction from the constant ache in my chest and my throat whenever I think about Edward (all the time).

You really don't notice someone's presence in your life until you have to experience their absence.

Absence hurts. It fucking suffocates.

But I don't regret the things I said to him-he needed to hear it and I needed to say it. I might need to grow up, but fuck, he does too.

I don't hear from him after the festival.

I don't see him.

He's a ghost. A shadow.

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It's nearly the middle of July when Jake calls screeching to let me know that they got signed to Duck for Cover. I scream with him, feeling so, so happy for my friends getting everything they deserve and when he asks if Jasper and I will play at their album release party in late September, I cry with gratitude.

Almost immediately, Jasper starts going through our roster, trying to put together setlists.

"Have anything new you wanna try out?" he asks me one night while we're sprawled on the living room floor, his computer open in front of us. I put my head on my forearms and groan.

I've tried to write-really-I have, but still, my most recent completed songs were from...before. They're too hopeful and I don't feel like that anymore. They no longer feel real or honest.

Jasper, bless him, doesn't push me to elaborate on anything but I think he knows. All my friends know. That first day-the day of the festival-they all beat me home and were immediately on me as soon as I stepped inside.

Em was worried, saying stuff like, "you can't just leave and not tell anyone, I've been freaking out."

Alice saw my red face, the no doubt devastated look in my eyes and my growing sobs and pulled me upstairs.

I didn't need to tell her about it, I think she already knew. I think they all knew right from the start.

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Phone calls with my parents become unbearable. I don't tell them about taking classes yet-I don't want to get their hopes up and I don't want their growing expectations. I keep it to myself, I keep most everything to myself

Instead, I listen to what my former classmates are doing with their lives and what movies are good and how my dad is redoing the upstairs bathroom and try to participate.

When I tell them that Jake got signed and that I'm playing their album release party, they don't bother to muster any excitement. My mom whispers in her gossipy tone that she thinks Emmett has a girlfriend.

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I miss Rose until she and Em become an official item and then she's over at our place constantly and never stops talking to me.

"Your place is closer to the shop," she explains when I find her shampoo in our shower.

"Em really is sweet when he's not being a stick in the mud," she muses over eggs one morning.

"You look like hell," she tells me as they come home from a date. "I wish you'd both just make up already, he's driving me nuts and his mom won't stop calling-"

I'm really getting sick of Rose.

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The first day of school is nerve wracking. Alice lends me an old backpack and we filled it with notebooks and pens and even my shitty, barely working laptop. Since my class doesn't start until 6, I work at Ballard all day and try to give lessons and try even harder not to anxiously puke.

At five, Shelly makes me leave and dread is filling the pit of my stomach until I see Em leaning against the wall of the building next to our, waiting for me.

"What are you doing here?" I ask suspiciously. He usually isn't off work until five thirty.

"I'm here to walk you to school. My little baby is all grown up," he says will a fake sniffle, wiping an invisible tear from his cheek.

I want to tell him to fuck off, to say that I'm an adult and I can handle taking myself to a night class, but I'm so relieved that he's here that I could cry.

"Intro classes are so easy," he says as we wait for the bus. "And I can definitely help you with any of the finance stuff."

I squeeze his hand.

Thankfully, he does most of the talking, just trying to distract me from my own head. He tells me about Rose and how he wants to get a tattoo from her, that he thinks she's the coolest person he's ever met-besides me, of course-and that it sucks that Edward and I didn't work out.

I stare at him, turning his phrasing over in my mind.

Didn't work out?

Is that all it was?

It sounds so much simpler than I'd been making it out to be.

Too simple to still hurt this much nearly two months later.

I still want to tell him I'm taking classes and let him know about Jake's band and walk with him and make him relax for like five minutes and it makes me so sad to think that we just...didn't work.

We never should've worked anyway, I'm not surprised or anything by that truth, just annoyed that I let it get to me, that I allowed myself to hope that maybe we would have.

When we're off the bus, Em asks, "do you have pencils?"

I nod.

"Paper."

Nod.

"A desire to better yourself through sweet, sweet education?"

Eye roll.

As we near the building whose name I scrawled messily on my palm, he stops me and smiles softly.

"Seriously, B, I know this is hard for you and I'm so fucking proud you're doing it anyway. You're gonna be great." He squeezes my shoulder and I hug him tightly and try not to cry.

"Now get in there and kick some academic ass."

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