Hey all! Just a quick note before we jump right in to eighth grade.

Carlisle is only ten years older than the group so he's only around 21 or 22 years old. Unfortunately, Edward is not living with Carlisle. He's just tumbleweed blowing in the wind at this point in time. Unfortunately, a lot of the students I teach have situations similar to Edward's and I've seen firsthand how easy it is for good kids like Edward to slip through the cracks.

Anyway, my students had their first day of school the same day as my four year old started Pre – K so this Mama is exhausted this week but I love these guys here in The Rec, too, so I couldn't not send them your way.

Oh, yes. I wouldn't feel right about not mentioning that this chapter comes with a trigger warning. It's just a sentence really, about Rose's sister who passed when she was younger.

Okay, I'll shut up. Thanks for everything, guys.

- - - tr - - -

It was blue. A lot of blue. And it was so smooth. And once I was satisfied with the blue, convinced that I had covered every last inch and was complete, I put the eyeshadow back down onto my desk. Next, I reached for the black pencil to line the edges of the blue. That went on smooth, too. And just like the blue, there was a lot of black. And after my eyeliner was drawn on to my liking, I put that down and moved onto my mascara. I loved mascara. It made my nonexistent eyelashes grow it seemed like ten inches with each stroke of the bristled brush.

Next, my favorite part. I smeared the gloss over my lips, enjoying the feel of the slippery and tasty liquid as I pursed my lips together. Mmm, strawberry. I blotted the excess, as Rose taught me, and looked at myself in my mirror.

Wow.

I looked fabulous.

Heavy blue and black on the eyes? Check.

Pink lip gloss to make my lips sparkle and shine? Check.

A cute pair of dark blue jeans that flared at the bottom? Check.

A creamy, wintery white fuzzy sweater? Check.

I was ready for school.

It was mid-December, and luckily I did not have to deal with any fresh snow on the ground that morning. There was a little snowstorm last week and its remains still covered the ground and trees everywhere, but at least it wasn't new snow. Ice, as it turned out, was my nemesis so I had to wear boots almost every time I left the house.

Rose and Alice thought it was absolutely hysterical that I just couldn't seem to get my life together when it came to ice and standing vertically upon it. I've just accepted it as fact that when it came to ice, it was only a matter of time before either my face or my butt met the cold, wet ground.

And always, I was never by myself when things like that happened. It was always around a group of people. I've lost count how many times Edward had seen me fall on my face because of the ice, but how cute he looked when he laughed made it almost worth it.

Once Mom and Dad realized that I wasn't exaggerating about my slipping and sliding, Mom and I went out and searched far and wide for a pair of boots that were not only satisfactory in terms of keeping me on my feet, but they were also super cute. They were black and fuzzy and laced up the front. As I slid them over my socks and over my jeans, I couldn't help but think how perfect they looked with the ensemble I had for today.

You see, Edward was in all of my classes this term at school. I saw him from the minute we all met up outside of school once we were dropped off, until the minute the bell rang to go home. We didn't sit next to each other in any of our classes because the teachers must have caught on that we would talk the whole time, but it could have been a lot worse.

So because of that, I had to make sure that he noticed me even when we weren't talking. Rose, because she was a freshman now, filled us in on how to do our hair, makeup, and how to pick out our clothes so we would stand out from everyone else.

And after a lot of hours of practice over the weekend, I was ready to show off my newly acquired skills.

I grabbed my bookbag from my bedroom floor, and swinging it over one shoulder, I headed out to start my day. I pounded my way downstairs, my boots banging on each step like I was angry, but I really never was.

I made it down the stairs with three steps to spare when my Dad's voice sounded from the kitchen, "Nope."

"Ugh, Dad! You're ruining my life!"

What the hell?

I turned around on the stairs, fuming at my Dad who hadn't even looked up from his coffee. He didn't even see me and yet he was already making me change!

This time, when my big black boots hit the steps, I was angry. And I made sure Dad knew it with each passing step.

By the time I reached my bedroom door and I may or may not have stomped holes in each step on my way up, I was ready to slam it.

But no, Dad from the kitchen reminded me what happened the last time I slammed my door.

"You slam it; I take the door off its hinges again."

He wasn't joking. I actually had to spend a whole weekend with my door off and tucked into my parent's closet. Two whole days of no privacy. Two whole days of eavesdropping.

I definitely learned my lesson from that one.

With Dad's warning in mind, I shut the door with a little force behind it just to let him know that I was very, very upset with him. I let my bookbag drop to the floor again and sat down in my desk chair with a huff. I looked at myself in the mirror again.

There was nothing wrong with my face! I had done everything Rose had said. I made sure that my blue eyeshadow was spread evenly on my lids. I made sure that the black eyeliner was lined up perfectly along the edges of my eyelashes. And please, how can anyone actually put mascara on the wrong way? It's a stick you blink on.

I was mumbling to myself as I was trying to unsuccessfully remove my perfect makeup, grateful for having a door to close this time, when Mom knocked on the door and walked in.

Ugh. Why knock if you're just going to walk in two seconds later, anyway?

"Need any help?" I watched as she sat down on my unmade bed. I shook my head and turned back to face the mirror to continue scrubbing.

"No."

"Here. I used this when Grandpa used to make me take mine off." She handed me a small bottle of baby oil and I took it from her hands, looking it over before placing it on the desk beside me. I didn't want to even look her way because she was giving me a look that was only making me more upset. I could feel my frustration bubbling to the surface and unfortunately, Mom was going to take the brunt of it.

She usually did, anyway.

After a few moments of sulking at my reflection in the mirror in front of me, I dabbed a little of the baby oil onto a small cotton ball and let it all out.

"I don't get it, Mom! You told me he said I was allowed to wear makeup once I was in eighth grade. Well, hello?! I'm in eighth grade and it's December and he still won't let me!" Maybe I didn't even need the baby oil if I was going to drown in my own tears anyway.

How was I going to get Edward to like me if my dad was in the way all the time? Being the police chief was bad enough for my social life.

And when you're in eighth grade like me, a social life is all there is.

My mom reached over and handed me a tissue to help me get myself together. She patted my knee with her hand, the jangle of her bracelets filling me with a familiar sense of comfort. "No, no. He's okay with you wearing makeup. I just didn't think he'd expect you to be so…great..at it."

I looked at her cautiously, not sure if she agreed with what she was saying. She motioned towards my growing collection.

"Can I help you with it a bit? You know, to calm your Dad down."

I figured it was better than nothing and I gave my mom a shrug of indifference.

"Fine."

"See, the key is to make it look like – "

"You're not wearing any. Yeah, that's what Rose told us. I bet Rose's mom didn't make her take hers off."

"Well, first of all, Rose is in high school. And second, you know that Rose's mom and I are very different."

She left it at that, and I didn't push it any further.

Rose never liked to talk about it, but Rose had a younger sister that died when Rose's mom was having her in the hospital. Rose had been young, I think she told me she was in Kindergarten, but her Mom never was the same again. She spent most of her days on the couch, if she even got out of bed at all. It was no surprise that Rose's mom had no problem with the way Rose applied makeup. She probably didn't even know she was even wearing any at all.

While I was busy thinking about Rose and her mom, my own mother was busy working on my face and eyes. She was gentle, and I watched her face as she applied the finishing touches on her masterpiece.

"There." Mom's eyes traveled up and down my face before she motioned for me to turn around to face the mirror behind me. "What do you think?"

I don't know what I was expecting, but when I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror, my mouth fell down in surprise. She probably didn't want to show it in front of Dad, but my mom actually was pretty cool.

Beaming, I turned around from my desk chair and threw my arms around her. My social life was still alive. "Thanks, Mom. It looks great. Seriously."

She hugged me back and pointed to my bookbag on the floor before she tripped on it.

"Okay. Dad already left for work so you're safe to go downstairs. I'll drive you to school."

- - - tr - - -

"Four more periods and we're out of school for two whole weeks!"

Alice and I were sitting at our lunch table a few hours later, our stomachs full from pizza and early holiday treats. I squealed at her and grabbed her hand, giving it a good squeeze.

"I know! What do you want to do over break?" I asked excitedly, looking forward to a nice, long well deserved break from school and soccer and homework. I couldn't wait to just wake up whenever I wanted and hang out with my friends, wherever it was that we wanted to do that day.

Because of all the snow we had gotten over the last two weeks, our new favorite thing was to go sledding down the big hill near the baseball fields downtown. Everyone liked to go there so it was always crowded, but it was big enough that no one really bothered us.

I think my favorite part of sledding was what we did afterwards. We would make our way back to The Rec, dragging our cold and wet snow suit covered bodies and sleds in the snow, and spend the rest of the night around hot chocolate and the small little heater Felix had set up in the big room. Usually we lost track of time, all of us lost in laughter and warmth.

I was tingling at the thought of all of that fun for two whole weeks!

"Who cares!" Alice shouted, my attention back in focus. "Anything is better than here!"

She was right, and as I looked around at everyone around me, I was pretty sure everyone was thinking the same things as I was.

Could the day be any slower?

"Felix and Carlisle are having a cookie decorating contest at The Rec today after school. Everyone's going, right?" Alice asked. I was about to answer her when I felt a nudge on my shoulder and a warm body slide into the empty spot next to me.

"Cookies and decorating doesn't sound like something that either of them would want to do," Edward said, easing into the conversation as if he were part of it from the beginning. He reached in and dipped his fingers into a handful of the holiday M&Ms my mom packed into my bag. He gave me a teasing look as he did so, daring me to stop him.

As if I could say no to Edward Cullen. Puh-leese.

Alice replied, oblivious to the showdown between Edward and me, "I may have convinced them last night."

"Contest? I'm in. What do I have to do?" Edward's curiosity was piqued, I could tell, and I loved seeing him this excited about something. Obviously it was the break from school that brought on his great mood, but it didn't matter to me. Anything that made Edward smile and joke around was a win in my book, considering that life sometimes didn't give him many things to smile about. At least he was still with the same family that he was with last year. That seemed to always help him a little bit.

As I continued to stare at Edward from my spot next to him, Alice rolled her eyes dramatically at him. "I don't know how to win it. I just know that we get to bake and eat cookies."

"Seems like a contest I can win." He smiled and crunched loudly on an M&M, reaching for another handful. He looked over at me as he was searching through my bag. "What's on your face?"

"What?" I almost died as I frantically tried to reach into my bag for the little mirror I kept in there for occasions as embarrassing as this one. I was pretty sure my face was as red as the pizza sauce that Ben Cheney had spilled on his shirt a few tables away.

"On your eyes. It's like, sparkly black stuff." He scrunched his nose up as he peered closer at me, his green eyes meeting mine for a very small but intense three seconds.

"Does it look weird?" From inspection, it didn't seem any different from when Mom had fixed me up earlier that morning. Not a smudge was out of place so I wasn't sure what he was talking about.

"No, not weird. Just different."

"Like a bad different?"

"No. It's not bad. It's….nice."

Nice just became my new favorite word.

- - - tr - - -

Somehow, we made it to the final bell of the day. It seemed like time was moving backwards by that point, and by the last period, I think even the teachers were ready for the bell to ring. We all burst through the doors of the school, cheers and squeals from everyone as we tasted our first glimpse of freedom.

Alice and I headed for our buses, our arms linked together as we waved goodbye to our friends. It wasn't goodbye for long, as we all knew where to find everyone over break.

Felix and Carlisle were probably dreading the next two weeks with us teenagers stuffed with candy and sugar and holiday cheer, or snark, in some of our cases. Alice waved goodbye and disappeared onto her bus, promising to call when she was going to leave her house to come hang out. I walked about two steps closer to my bus when I caught Edward out of the corner of my eye riding his bike towards me. He slowed down a few feet in front of me and I walked over to him the rest of the way, reaching out for a candy cane that he was holding out for me to take. The taste of peppermint was cool on my tongue and I blew the air from my mouth outwards into a stream.

"You going straight to The Rec?" He motioned towards Alice on her bus behind us.

Nodding, I resumed the walk towards my own so my bus driver wouldn't leave me behind with Edward trailing next to me. "Yeah, I'll have my Mom take me over as soon as I get home."

Rolling his eyes, he shook his head and patted the handlebars on the front of his bike. "Just come with me. The ice isn't too bad today."

I pushed him jokingly as he laughed at me and my "ice -capades".

"Okay," I replied, not hesitating even for a second.

I wondered for a brief moment if Alice was watching from her window on the bus. I hope she was so that later on we could talk about it and figure out what it really meant. But for now, I sat myself on the bike as comfortably as I could, so happy that I had emptied out my bookbag of anything of importance right before the bell rang. If it was in the way of Edward's face he never told me, instead easing the bike out of the school traffic and through a side path that he and Emmett had found years ago. It was a quick shortcut, a way to bypass the congestion that always happened once school let out. It was a little bumpy, but nothing that made it not worth the ride. In fact, the ride was my favorite thing in the world at the moment.

Every now and then I would feel the fuzziness of Edward's hat brush against my thick hair, reminding me of just how close he was to me. If I was as brave as I wished I was, I could turn around and let him kiss me. I mean, if he wanted to.

I shook the thought from my head, trying to push it away so I could enjoy the moment. It was definitely cold, and I would probably get in trouble for not letting my parents know I was going straight to The Rec and not home first like I always did, but I could call them once I got there and they'd be cool with it. And even if they weren't, so what?

I hadn't seen Edward this happy in a really long time and getting grounded was worth every second of seeing him like this and act this way. When we turned onto the road closest to The Rec, he took a gloved hand and slid it across my neck, gently sliding my hair over onto my shoulder.

"That's better," he said loud enough for me to hear over the outside wind, but his voice sounded strange with the way he said it.

I was just grateful that I was awake to hear him say it because I did think for a split second that I was going to pass out at the feel of his fingers against my skin. All of a sudden I wasn't cold anymore and this feeling I felt in my stomach intensified and I could barely sit still on the handlebars.

It ended way too soon, and for the first time in almost four years of calling Forks my home, I wished we didn't have to go inside The Rec. I wished we could stay outside and ride around for hours.

After I hopped off the handlebars of the bike and Edward leaned it against the side of the building, he looked over at me with a smirk. His cheeks were rosy pink from the wind but the brightest thing on his face was his eyes. The white from the snow around us sparkled in them, almost blinding me.

"You ready to lose a cookie contest?" He nudged me and we moved towards The Rec.

"Lose? I don't know how to lose."

It was true. There was rarely something in my life that I set out to obtain for myself that I didn't get.

There was just one thing I had yet to call my own but with each growing smile or nudge or twinkle of the eye, I felt my hopes growing in anticipation that maybe Edward felt what I was feeling, too.

"You've never seen me bake a cookie though. Or decorate one. I can take you on, Swan." He reached for the door and opened it wide for the both of us to fit through. We took off our jackets and tossed them over in the corner near the book area.

Still high from our bike ride, I took a leap of faith and looked him square in the eye. "You could take me? I'd love to see it happen."

The look on his face was priceless.

- - - tr - - -

"Okay, so we're going to break you all up into teams and the group with the most creative and best decorated cookies wins." Felix was standing on top of the stones in front of the fireplace. One of the other volunteers, James, had lit the fire earlier in the day so it was warm and ready for us all when we got there after school.

"What's the prize?" Emmett shouted from somewhere in the back. It had gotten substantially more crowded over the last hour as all the familiar faces began arriving to The Rec. They all probably checked in at home like I was supposed to do before heading here and I dismissed the thought. I had done what I said I was going to do and had called my Mom once I had settled in, and after a solid five minutes of getting yelled at and being told how irresponsible I was all of a sudden, Mom had gotten over it and promised to keep it between us. There were some things that Dad was better off not knowing.

Mom promised not to tell Dad only if I promised not to run off on the front of a bicycle through the mountains in winter.

"Does there always have to be a prize?" Carlisle had joined Felix at the front of the fireplace and the excited crowd I was proud to be a part in unanimously agreed that yes, a consolation is always required when it comes to any type of contest.

Felix rolled his eyes at us. "An hour of uninterrupted computer time."

Silence.

It had taken Felix some convincing over the last year but he finally caved and got us a computer for all of us to share here. While it was older than I was and had been the cause of many an argument among us, it was ours, and we loved it. Felix eventually had to create a limit to the amount of computer time each one of us got, and it was a lot less than an hour.

Now the contest had turned serious and we were out for blood.

"Okay, I call Alice is on my team." Emmett from the back again. When did he even get here?

"You don't pick the teams, Emmett."

"Why not? I'm the oldest here!"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

I was laughing at the two of them going back and forth when Alice, who was sitting on my right, grabbed my hand and pulled my ear down to her mouth.

"Who's that over there?"

I looked over to where she was pointing, trying to remember some of Rose's tips on how to check someone out subtly. I wasn't sure if I had mastered it yet. It didn't make a difference though because I didn't see the person Alice wanted me to see.

"Where?" I hissed back. I continued to look around until Alice pulled me roughly back closer to her. Ouch. I guess I hadn't mastered subtlety yet.

"There. Standing next to Jacob Black." She ever so gently motioned with her chin towards Jacob, and then it was obvious why I hadn't seen who she was referring to. Jacob Black was in ninth grade like Rose and was about as tall as the ceiling in The Rec.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but he was so tall that it sometimes hurt my neck to look at him. Either way, the person next to him was dwarfed by the tree that was Jacob.

"I don't know. I've never seen him before."

It was a boy who looked to be about our age but sometimes it was hard to tell because of where we all stood in our…state of changes that take place during the teenage years.

Did I mention I was a teenager now? Thirteen and loving every second of it.

"Me neither. And why does Jacob keep looking at you?"

I turned to look over in the direction of where the boys stood and spun back around towards Alice, my hair almost whipping her in the face in my haste.

"Me?" No way would a high schooler like Jacob be staring at me. I gave him a quick glance between my hair and sure enough, I saw him keep throwing glances in my direction. I looked around to see if it was directed toward someone else.

"Who else would he be looking at?" Alice retorted.

"You!" I whisper shouted back, wanting to pinch her for being so loud.

"Me? No way. I'm way more into the guy next to him."

"You just saw him for the first time two minutes ago."

"So? Isn't he cute?"

"Yeah, I guess."

He was cute even though I never really liked boys with hair other than copper. This boy's hair was dirty blond and had curls cut into a mushroom cut. Definitely cute but not as cute as the boy that my eyes were trying to find across the room. I don't know when he slipped out from standing with Alice and me but I eventually saw him on the fringes of our large group, sitting at one of the tables and spinning a bottle full of icing for decorating the cookies. He didn't look as happy as he had not too long ago.

"Okay, so everyone write your name on this piece of paper, fold it up, and put it in…" Carlisle trailed off as he searched for something around him, eventually taking off the hat that had sat backwards on his head, "..my hat. There are fifteen of you today so we'll have five groups of three."

The next few minutes was a little bit of organized chaos, as James liked to put it, and we were broken up within our teams and ready for the contest to officially begin.

I never really knew the universe hated me until I was in a group with Jacob Black and Lauren Mallory. Lauren was okay, I never really hung out with her enough to form an opinion about her myself and now that I knew that Jacob had been watching me earlier, I wasn't sure how to act. I started with tucking a piece of hair behind my ear and sorting the supplies that he had dropped onto the table in front of us. Each group had rollers, dough, all sorts of flour and sugar and icing.

"Hey, Bella." His voice was deep but not unfriendly. Nice but not as nice as Edward's. Where was he?

"Hey, Jacob. Do you have any idea how to do any of this?" I pointed to everything on the table, and watched as he shook his head. His hair was short and dark black and it looked kind of nice against the tanned color of his skin.

"Not really. I was hoping you would." He had a small smile on his lips, and for a brief miniscule second, I thought it wasn't bad to look at.

"Can't say I do. What about you, Lauren?"

She had just gotten to our table and plopped herself down on the bench, reaching into her bag for a magazine. I hoped the magazine was about how to bake cookies because I really wanted to win this contest.

"I can't go anywhere near that stuff. I just got my nails done right before I came here and I don't want them to be ruined for Christmas."

Well, my idea of winning just took a huge nosedive.

I looked over at Jacob and shrugged, deciding to go with the attitude of not losing anything if you didn't have anything to lose. "Looks like it's just us then."

"God help us." Jacob made a sign of the cross and I laughed, all of my nervousness gone.

I heard the sound of a door slam from somewhere in the building.

- - - tr - - -

It took what felt like forever before we even made our first cookie. I can't even tell you how many tries it took Jacob and I to figure out how to roll the dough so it wouldn't keep breaking, but eventually after some patience and a lot of cheating, we were able to roll the dough out over our designated area on the large table in the big room. And after that, we were on a roll. I rolled, he placed the cookies on the racks when it was our turn to use the oven, and once all the cookies were rolled and cooled, we looked at each other and with a deep breath, we began icing.

Which was a lot harder than it looked, actually. I knew there was no chance in hell that we were going to win, especially when I looked over at Angela's cookies that looked like they were made straight from the North Pole themselves.

Jacob laughed and called me over to look at one of the cookies he made with some leftover dough.

"Hey, look at this one. It looks like a huge –"

"Lookin' good, guys. You too, Lauren. Keep it up."

We laughed at Carlisle's acknowledgment that our backs were hurting from carrying Lauren's butt the whole time. We didn't win the contest, never even came close, actually.

But it would leave me winning something else I never thought.

- - - tr - - -

With only four days left of our winter break, Rose, Alice and I were hunched in the corner of The Rec, looking over our shoulders to make sure no one could hear us. It wasn't crowded at all today with the New Year approaching, but there were enough of us here for all of us to avoid being bored. Edward and Emmett, and that new boy, Jasper, were around here somewhere, getting into who knows what. Jasper ended up being the missing link that our group of five didn't even know we were missing. He appeared like our very own Christmas present.

A present that Alice was dying to unwrap, but, today was not about Alice or Jasper.

It was about me!

"Why are you being so weird in the corner?" Emmett asked, the boys jumping onto the couches around us. So much for our privacy.

"We're not being weird." Rose said flippantly, annoyed that Emmett was interrupting our celebration.

"Spill it."

"There's nothing to spill!"

Edward reached onto the table and grabbed the remote for the TV, turning it on so another holiday movie could softly spill out onto the room. He smiled faintly at me when I rolled my eyes at Emmett and Rose and their constant bickering.

"Bullshit."

"It's none of your business." Rose huffed.

"Ah ha! So there is something!" Emmett pointed at all three of us.

"Jacob kissed Bella!" Alice blurted out, her hand coming up to cover her mouth the minute the words were out of her mouth. "Sorry, Bella. I couldn't keep it in."

I sat there staring at her wide eyed, the words I wanted to say not forming because my whole body was frozen in mortification.

"Woah, way to go, Bella. Older guy." Jasper decided to put his opinion into the conversation that was supposed to be just us girls but now included the people who I did not want to find out about Jacob and me. He put his hand up for me to fist bump and I did so hesitantly, not daring to look over at Edward in fear that I would give my true feelings away.

That yes, it was nice. And yes, I would like to do it again. But that I would do anything for it to be with Edward.

"That's what you girls are being weird about? Come on. Let's go play a video game or something." Emmett was bored and I was so, so grateful. The boys ended up following him.

I didn't see Edward until a long time later, a few minutes after I had called Mom to tell her I was ready to head home. I found him sitting in our tree so I grabbed my jacket and headed out to join him. I had learned how to climb the tree in jackets, boots, gloves, bathing suits, and dresses.

"What are you doing out here?" I asked. It was a stupid question, though. I already knew that Edward always came out to the tree when he wanted to be alone. It never occurred to me that maybe it was me he was trying to escape from.

"Just wanted to get out for a bit." His voice was quiet and lifeless as we were surrounded by holiday lights.

"It's freezing out here!" It was unbearably cold, and I shivered deeply.

It looked like it didn't faze Edward as he looked down at his feet. He shrugged, "Doesn't bother me."

"It should."

"But it doesn't, okay?"

I didn't respond right away but Edward Cullen was about to find out that he wasn't allowed to talk to me with an attitude like that.

"Well, maybe catching hypothermia doesn't bother you but something else definitely does." I could be mean, too.

"You never should have kissed him."

And he jumped down from the tree, leaving me alone in the cold and dark night.

- - - tr - - -

Dear Diary,

Why shouldn't I have kissed Jacob? Ugh, what is Edward's problem? Rose and Alice think he's jealous because Jacob kissed me and he didn't, but, for real. How many chances did Edward have to kiss me? I only saw him almost every day since I was 10, and now he gets mad at me when he finds out that someone else kissed me first?

What sense did that make? None. Maybe I should stop thinking that boys made any type of sense.

That boy makes me so mad sometimes. I even tried to stop liking him, which is why I let Jacob kiss me two more times after the first time, but it was no use. I couldn't get Edward off of my mind, which really sucked because this was supposed to be a time in my life where I was celebrating kissing boys and stuff.

I did celebrate even though I was wishing I was kissing Edward instead of Jacob. The second time we kissed, I even closed my eyes and imagined it was his lips I was feeling. And as exciting as it was that I had finally kissed a boy and had felt his tongue in my mouth, (at first I thought it was gross and was he really supposed to put that much of his tongue in my mouth, though?) I knew that kissing Edward would be a billion times better than kissing Jacob.

But I'm thirteen years old, and I'm not going to sit around and wait forever for Edward. Until then, he can be as mad at me all he wants.