Bella Swan was certainly a strange girl, it was just difficult to put my finger on exactly why that was. On the surface she seemed entirely normal, but it was in the her small mannerisms that her queerness presented itself. It was so painfully clear to me that she was hiding something. Her movements were measured and careful, and yet she carried herself with confidence, as if she owned every space she entered. In spite of this, I could detect no arrogance from her, she would never dominate a conversation, never raise her hand in class, she let her new friends drag her around the corridors as if she were a new assessory. I could see through the eyes of others the way that she scanned every room she entered as if to check for threats and escape routes. Her behaviour seemed utterly automatic and I had to wonder if she even knew she was doing it.
It felt like time was slowly dripping by as I waited for lunch, and for my first chance to see Bella with my own eyes instead of through the eyes of others. I did my best to ignore Alice's teasing thoughts, she was claiming I was obsessed with the girl. Which wasn't true. I was interested, sure, but obsessed? That was a stretch.
I heard a delightful laugh sound out across the lunch room and I turned to see Bella sitting with her new group. What she saw in Jessica Stanley was beyond me. Her thoughts were vapid and shallow, her only redeeming quality was that she seemed to genuinely like Bella, even if she only started to befriend her for the bump it would give to her social status.
Jessica glanced in my direction before quickly turning to Bella, "Edward Cullen is staring at you." she whispered conspiratorially.
Bella glanced over her shoulder, when our eyes met I wanted to offer her a friendly smile but before I could she quickly frowned at me and turned back around to face her friends. "Someone should tell him that it's really rude to stare at people." Her tone was clearly irritated and I quickly turned my face away so I was no longer looking at her.
Yeah, bro. So rude. Emmett thought in my direction. I glowered at him coldly, but it just caused him to smirk.
"I don't know Bella. He usually keeps to himself, this isn't normal for him." I heard Angela Weber speak up. I grimaced, I didn't realise I was being so obvious. This wasn't how I wanted things to go at all.
Exactly, Edward. Stop staring at the girl, it's suspicious. Rosalie's thoughts were like a sneer, and her scowling face matched her thoughts perfectly.
"I don't know Angela, nothing about Edward Cullen seems normal to me." Bella responded, her tone was playful but I couldn't help but feel like there was some hidden meaning to her words. Like there was some private joke that only she were privy to.
The Newton boy chortled loudly, "You got that right, Bella. The whole lot of them are a bunch of weirdo's"
"Aren't we all?" Bella responded coldly, all measure of humour gone from her tone. I saw through Newton's thoughts that she was frowning at him.
Strange girl. I didn't want to listen to their conversation any longer, so I stood up and got rid of my prop lunch before I headed to biology. I coldly ignored my sibling's teasing thoughts of 'good luck' and 'don't scare the new human' as I walked away from them.
I sat down in my regular seat in biology, and then I waited. I ignored the other students as they slowly filed in and found their seats, and as the beginning of class came closer I could hear a stuttering jack hammer heart beat just before Bella walked into the room. She wasn't looking at me, rather she was staring down the chair next to me, before she slowly trudged forward like a condemned man walking towards the guillotine. Was I that repulsive?
I had to force myself to keep a neutral expression on my face as she came closer. She dropped her bag on the ground, it landed with a heavy thump and I had to wonder what the hell she kept in there for it to make such a sound. It sounded like she lugged around every one of her textbooks with her, and then some, but that would have been entirely too heavy for such a slight girl to handle. Bella sat on the edge of the chair, and scooted as far away from me as the desk would allow. I watched from the corner of my eye as her tongue slowly damped her lips, before she took a deep breath. Her entire body stiffened as it waiting for a physical blow, before she relaxed entirely.
I took a breath of my own, and was instantly over washed with the most bewitching scent I had ever encountered. I waited for the rapid fire burn in the back of my throat, and was confused by the lack of thirst her delicious scent invoked. Bella's scent of honeysuckle and ripe strawberries was sweet and natural, and yet also completely unnatural in the way my body responded to it. I had no desire to sink my teeth into her neck, but I did want to be close to her, to be able to breath in that scent and surround myself with it for the rest of eternity. It was like I was ensnared, trapped by this odd beauty that sat next to me.
Bella took another deep breath, and as she did so I could hear her heartbeat slow down its panicked beat. She shifted in her seat, moving towards me a tiny amount. I figured I should say something, I just wasn't sure how to do so without scaring her like I had yesterday. I turned to face her,"Hello, my name is Edward Cullen. You must be Bella?" I spoke softly, as not to frighten her.
She peaked a glance in my direction, her eyes flitting to my face before darting back to stare at the desk top. "Hi," She said quickly, it was almost a whimper. I didn't want her to be afraid of me, and I needed to do something to change her perspective of me. I already knew that I needed to be near her, her scent was like a siren's call drawing me inwards.
"I didn't get the chance to introduce myself yesterday. It seems you fell ill?" I continued, trying to keep my voice friendly.
Bella shrugged, her hair fell away from her shoulders with the movement and cascaded down her back in gentle waves. "Uh, yeah. I just didn't feel great."
That wouldn't do. She was lying to me, hiding something. Hiding the reason she was so deeply afraid of me yesterday. I wasn't sure how I could go about asking her about it without giving away how I knew, but before I could figure it out the teacher started the class.
Paper's were distributed and students started to pull out textbooks and whisper to their partners as they tried to answer the set of questions. I watched as Bella studied the question list, flipping it over to scan over the back before turning it to the front once again before she started to scribble in her answers with furious determination. So, she was smart, very smart if the speed of her writing was any indication.
"How are you liking Forks so far?" I inquired in what I hoped was a friendly tone,
"Good," She didn't look up from her work sheet, "It's nice to be closer to my Dad." A gentle smile curled on her lips as she spoke about her father, I smiled as well even though she wasn't looking at me. Something about seeing her smile made me want to make her do it again.
Her answer seemed like an inroads to her working mind, how she came to the decision to live here would give me at least some answers. "Is that why you moved here? To be closer to your Father?"
"Not really." She said simply and I resisted the urge to huff like a petulant child. This conversation was like pulling teeth, every time I thought I was getting anywhere it was like she put up a verbal road block. How I wished I could read her mind! It would make all this so much easier. What thoughts was she hiding in her head? She didn't seem to have to think all that hard about the questions on the sheet in front of her, and I watched as she wrote down her detailed responses with fervour. Was she even thinking about that? Or were the answers automatic, and her mind elsewhere?
"Why did you then?" I asked, and my sudden question seemed to pull her out of some sort of trance.
"Huh? Why did I what?" She looked over to me, her eyebrows furrowed adorably and a confused sort of frown on her face.
I couldn't help but smile at her, she truly was a beautiful girl, even in her confusion. "Move to Forks?" I clarified.
Bella's eyes flickered over my face, seeming to take in every little detail. She studied me relentlessly, and as I listened to her heartbeat I was relieved to find that it wasn't speeding up into a frenzied panic like it had yesterday. Bella looked deeply into my eyes, it was like she was trying to find something there that no one else could see. Maybe I was just as much of an enigma to her as she was to me. She sat there, staring at me for a while and I was starting to become concerned for her. I frowned slightly, and I was about to ask her if she was okay before she snapped out of whatever spell she had found herself under. "It's complicated." She snipped, before turning back to her work sheet.
One minute she is staring at me as if I held the answers to the universe in my eyes, and the next she was snapping at me like I had personally offended her. I really didn't understand her at all. "I think I can keep up." I replied somewhat snarkily.
Bella huffed out and for a second I was worried that she wasn't going to answer me. She turned her work sheet over angrily and wrote down her answer before she replied. "My mom got remarried." She didn't look at me as she answered my question.
I frowned in confusion, that didn't seem all too complicated. "And what? You don't like the guy… or?" Come on, give me something. Anything I could work with, any little clue about you. Let me know you. Please.
She looked at me now, as if she had heard my silent plea. Her brown eyes seemed to hold maturity beyond her years, as if she held deep secrets that aged her. "My Mom just didn't really want me around him." She uttered as she pulled her gaze away from me.
I blinked in shock at her statement, and I watched as she grimaced to herself. She obviously hadn't meant to let that slip and I rejoiced in this small victory. This small morsel she had shown me, a tiny glimpse into her true self, was a precious thing that I would treasure forever. I couldn't for the life of me understand why her mother wouldn't want Bella around, it seemed… cruel.
"That doesn't sound…" I wanted to tell her what I thought, and that her mother sounded cruel, but I thought that saying that would do more to drive her away, so instead I said. "Nice."
Bella was quick to defend her mother, "I wasn't an easy kid to raise."
My dead heart seemed to break for her, "I'm sure that's not true." I murmured, wishing that I could reach out to comfort Bella. I wasn't sure where all these urges were coming from, never had I felt the need to touch a human, much less comfort one. But for some reason Bella was different.
Bella hastily wrote down her final answer on her work sheet, and when she looked up to meet my eye her face was ablaze in quiet anger. "You don't know anything about me." Her eyes narrowed at me as her cold words hit me in the chest like a wrecking ball.
She rose from her chair and stalked to the front of the classroom to turn in her worksheet, and I quickly filled in my own as I listened to her talk to the teacher. Bella was right, I didn't know anything about her, but I wanted to. If only she would let me. She certainly wasn't making things easy for me. Between her silent mind and strange answers I was becoming more confused by the second. My ears pricked up when I heard the teacher mention me to Bella, and then I was saddened when I heard her scoff.
"To be honest with you, Mr Banner. Edward isn't as much help as you would think." Was that a hint of jest in her tone? Was she teasing me? Surely not. Bella was at the front of the classroom, there would be no way that she could know that I would be able to hear her conversation. Then again, Bella seemed to know things she shouldn't. She responded to her friends so acutely, so in tune to their reactions and emotions almost as if she could read their minds. She chatted with them like one would an old friend you've known for years, not someone you've known for all of two days. Intuitive. That was the only way that I could describe her, Bella Swan was scarily intuitive.
Bella waltzed back towards our table, a small smirk on her lips. She sat down and grabbed her backpack, ripping open the zip and unceremoniously shoving her worksheet inside. I could hear the paper scrunch and crinkle as she stuffed it down between her books. Bella rooted around in her bag for a moment before she produced a thick paperback book. The spine had many creases in it, and the pages were yellowed, either this was a well-loved book that she re-read many times, or it was a preowned book. I needed to know which it was.
I managed to peek a look at the title, and I was mildly shocked to see it was a Lovecraft Anthology. Bella didn't look like the type of girl to enjoy reading about Eldritch horrors from other dimensions. Bella opened her book, and I smirked at her choice of book-mark. It was an old crinkled receipt, maybe it was the receipt for the book itself, or maybe was it just the first thing she found to keep her place. "Do you like horror?" I asked innocently.
Bella paused her reading and looked over at me, "Not really," She chirped happily before turning back to her book.
What a completely contrary creature! Thoroughly inconsistent, and damn near disagreeable! Never before had I had to work so hard to maintain a simple conversation before, and it was beginning to set my teeth on edge. I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm myself, and I was surprised to find that when I inhaled her heavenly scent it instantly soothed my nerves, making my aggravation disappear in a puff of smoke.
"Then, why Lovecraft?" I asked, tilting my head slightly to the side in my confusion.
I watched as Bella's shoulders fell slightly, she then moved slowly, each action very deliberate in their execution. She replaced the receipt-turned-bookmark and closed her book. She used her palm to flatten the worn and creased paper before she folded her hands neatly on top. I eagerly awaited her response, if she didn't like horror what did she like I wondered? Was she a fan of romance? Did she usually spend her days reading about dashing heroes rescuing the girl? Or was she an avid consumer of adventure, surrounding herself with stories of long sea journeys and sword fights?
Bella turned from her interlocked fingers to look directly at me. "I'm more interested in Lovecraft as a man, than I am in his literately works."
That was not the response I was expecting, and I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that Bella would never respond in a way that would make any sense to me. For a moment I considered that I had become entirely too reliant on my gift, and that without it I was socially inept. I dismissed that thought quickly. I wasn't the problem here, it was Bella who was completely peculiar.
"If you don't like horror, what genre do you like?" I asked, hopefully I would be able to get a straightforward answer this time.
Bella shifted in her seat and pursed her lips slightly, "What's with all the questions?"
I looked at her curiously, "Isn't that what people do? Ask questions to get to know a person?"
"Well according to my friends, you usually keep to yourself." Her voice was accusatory, and I watched as she tried to bring herself up to my height, her shoulders firmly squared and her eyes hardened as she stared me down.
I couldn't help myself but smile widely at the display, she looked like a tiny kitten hissing and puffing up its tail in an attempt to scare off a lion. "I find you particularly hard to read." I spoke through my smile, it was true that I usually kept to myself, simply because no one interested me in the way Bella Swan did. All that was in their heads was clearly on display and utterly mundane, and their spoken thoughts were no better. Bella's silent mind was a puzzle to me, and every time she opened her mouth to speak I was just pulled deeper into her web. Bella surprised me again by laughing loudly at my statement, "Did I say something funny?" I frowned in confusion.
Bella's eyes were glittering with humour when she replied "No, no not really. It's just you-" She hastily cut herself off, she then frowned a tiny bit as she cleared her throat. "You say I'm hard to read, but my dad says I'm an open book."
That didn't sound right. She was clearly about to say something else, but stopped herself. What in the world was Bella Swan hiding? "You certainly are a strange girl." I muttered.
Bella laughed again, and I silently delighted in the sound as the bell rang out to signal the end of class. She slung her backpack over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing before smirking at me, "You're one to talk."
Before I could ask what she meant by that, she almost ran out of the classroom. I frowned at her retreating form, I didn't think that I was all that strange. Hell, compared to her I was downright normal.
A/N: Thanks for reading!