AN: Hey guys! It's been an incredibly long time between last chapter and this chapter, and tbh it's probably going to be a long time between this chapter and the next chapter. Such is the life of a college student. I hope you enjoy Chapter 2!

Chapter 2

When I'd gone to bed the night before I had fallen asleep to worrying thoughts about what was going to happen to me and how I'd changed the future from what it was supposed to be, but when I woke up I felt refreshed. Whatever this weird new life threw at me I could totally handle it. Vampires? No problem! Werewolves? Piece of cake! Hell, you could probably show me witches who could control the elements and I wouldn't bat an eye. Although, come to think of it, I wonder if there are people who can use magic in this world. There weren't any mentioned in the books, but the books were so focused on Edward and Bella's relationship there wasn't much room for anything else.

My good mood persisted through my morning classes. In English we had another reading day, so I got about half a chapter of Wuthering Heights in. In Trig Mr. Varner called on me and I had the right answer. When Jessica and I walked into the cafeteria for lunch my gaze immediately slid over to the table the Cullens had been at the day before. There was no one sitting there yet, and Mike had come over to shepherd Jessica and I to a table full of his friends. I forgot about the Cullens for the moment, as we sat down and I was introduced to the people sitting at our table I hadn't yet met.

Probably 10 minutes into the lunch period I suddenly remembered the Cullens again, and my worry-free mood of the morning dimmed. I was nervous about what Alice would make of me watching her so intensely in the cafeteria the day before and worried about what Edward would have told the others about what I said to him in Biology yesterday. But it seemed as though I didn't need to worry. Jasper, Alice, Rosalie, and Emmett were sitting at their table. Edward was missing. No one was paying any attention to me.

I concluded that Edward must've gone to wherever it was he went in the novels – probably Alaska to hunt or run from me or both. When I thought about it, maybe Edward hadn't even really realized what I'd said to him yesterday. I mean, from the looks of him he was just trying so hard to not murder me that maybe he just thought he hallucinated it. If he'd thought I was a real threat I'm sure he would have told his family and either me or them would not be sitting in this school right now.

Lunch ended, and I walked to Biology sandwiched between Angela and Mike. Bio and gym were both uneventful and after I'd changed back into my leggings and yellow t-shirt I walked slowly through the school grounds and parking lot to my car.

Last night I had finished unpacking all of Bella's things and had discovered some gift cards to a couple stores in her wallet, probably left over from Christmas or a birthday. Cash I was good about saving – you never knew when you would actually need to have money for something. But gift cards were guilt free. You could only spend them at a specific store and couldn't ever exchange them for cash.

So, with my new gift cards, worth probably around $200 for Barnes and Noble (predictable), Target (practical), and Victoria's Secret (I couldn't imagine it being anything other than a joke gift for someone like Bella) I pulled out onto the highway and drove to the large shopping plaza located about halfway between the school and the house. As chance would have it, this particular shopping plaza had all three stores I had gift cards to, as well as half a dozen others plus a couple casual restaurants/coffee shops and a big Thriftway grocery store. It was also the only shopping center within an hour and a half of Forks, so it was pretty lucky that it had all the stores I needed.

I decided to go into Victoria's Secret first, because all of Bella's underwear looked like it had been purchased in a three-pack at Walmart, and her bras were all monotone and boring. I didn't know when someone was going to be seeing me in my underwear, but hopefully it would be sometime soon, and I wanted to be prepared.

I swung myself out of the trunk and crossed the parking lot to the store. Inside I was instantly overwhelmed by the sultry scent that all the stores seemed to have. I drifted over to the bargain bin of 5 for $25 panties, already having decided I was getting five pairs of cheap underwear and two nice, sexy bras.

I was examining a red lace thong when I heard a sharp peal of musical laughter over to my right, where all the expensive lingerie sets were located. I looked up at the sound automatically, and saw the last two people I had expected to see in this tiny little store. Alice Cullen and Rosalie Hale were standing together looking at a deep green satin bustier and thong set. It was something I could never hope to afford or look good in, but either of them would have looked magnificent in it.

The rational part of me knew that I shouldn't draw any more attention to myself than I already had, especially with Rosalie. I knew she disliked the real Bella, and I had no reason to believe that the situation was any different now. The illogical, emotional part of me wanted to run over to them and demand to know what Edward had told them and what they knew about me – what Alice had seen about my future.

I was saved from having to decide which impulse to listen to when Alice glanced up and saw me looking at them. I retained enough awareness to smile and wave at them but all thoughts of confronting them vanished from my head and I resolutely turned back to the underwear I was examining. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a figure approaching me, though, and I looked up from the panties into Alice's gorgeous elfin face.

"Hey," she said to me. "You're Bella Swan, right? The chief's daughter?" I had no doubt that Alice knew all this already, but was phrasing it as a question so that I didn't get unnerved by her.

I smiled weakly and nodded. "I got here on Sunday, yesterday was my first day at school."

She smiled back at me and said "Well, welcome to Forks."

She made a move like she was going to turn away, but I abruptly said "Wait!"

I really wanted to know what Edward had told the others about me and whether or not I needed to be worried about anyone doing anything to me. Alice was looking at me with her big eyes and I couldn't think of a subtle way of asking about Edward without actually asking about Edward so I ended up just blurting out "Did Edward say anything about me?"

Something changed in Alice's expression but I didn't know what she was thinking so I charged ahead with "It's just that we sit next to each other in Biology and he looked pretty… sick yesterday and I think I was really, um… bothering him?"

My sentence trailed off into a question. While I was speaking Rosalie had strode over to us, and she was the one who answered shortly "No, Edward hasn't said anything about you."

Well, if her tone of voice was anything to go by, Rosalie certainly didn't like me-as-Bella any more than she had liked Bella-as-Bella.

I gave them both a tight smile and said "Oh, well, ok. Tell him I hope he feels better soon."

Alice nodded and waved to me before Rosalie shepherded her out the door. I paid for my things and got back in the truck to drive home. I suddenly didn't feel like shopping anymore.

On the drive home I replayed the conversation over in my head. Rosalie clearly disliked me, or else she was like that with everyone, which was possible I suppose. Alice had seemed interested in me, but not wary. I don't think she would have acted the way she did if Edward had told her that I knew he should stop breathing my scent in.

Pulling into the driveway I sighed and put it out of my mind. Edward would probably be back in school as soon as he had himself under control and I could talk to him then.

Charlie wasn't home yet when I unlocked the front door so I put my new underwear away and changed into sweatpants before booting up the computer sitting on the desk in my room. I decided to check Bella's email to get a sense of her life. Luckily, I had found a crisp sheet of notebook paper in a drawer of Bella's desk that had her username and password for her email written out in cramped, slightly messy handwriting. I assumed that when Bella had first gotten her email she had needed to remind herself of how to access it and neither she nor Charlie had ever cleaned out the desk.

Bella's inbox had only three emails, and all of them were from her mother.

Bella,

Write me as soon as you get in. Tell me how your flight was. Is it raining? I miss you already. I'm almost finished packing for Florida, but I can't find my pink blouse. Do you know where I put it? Phil says hi.

Mom

The second and third messages were reiterations of the first, and the last one had a threat to call Charlie if I hadn't responded to her by 5:30pm today. It was only 3:16, so I had a couple hours.

Mom,

Sorry I waited so long to email you back, I've just been really busy with starting a new school and unpacking and everything. The flight was fine. It's been raining pretty much non-stop since I got here. I miss you too! I have no idea where your pink blouse is, have you checked the laundry or my room? Tell Phil I say hi too.

Bella

I hit send. I decided not to tell her about the car accident and the hospital because she seemed like the kind of person to call here even if I said I was alright to make sure I was actually alright, and I had absolutely no desire to talk to a woman who thought she was my mother. Charlie was easy, he didn't like talking and since he and Bella didn't know each other that well I was pretty much free to be myself. Renee would know if something was up, and I didn't feel like dealing with that.

Email taken care of I pulled out my trig homework and started working on it. I had finished it and was trying to get through more of Wuthering Heights when I heard Charlie's car crunching over the gravel in the driveway. Glancing at the clock I saw that it was about 5:30. I rolled off my bed and headed downstairs into the kitchen.

I met in the hallway as he was hanging up his gun belt and slipping his shoes off.

"Hey," I said. "I was going to make some pasta for dinner, do you want any?"

It was pretty clear that Charlie did not do the home cooked meal thing some of my foster families had done. Luckily, I didn't always get dinner handed to me so I knew how to fend for myself.

"Sure, pasta sounds great!" he said, and went into the living room, where I heard the TV click on.

I put a pot of water on to boil and sat down at the table to keep reading. Pasta was a simple dish to make, and it was ready after about 20 minutes. I stuck some butter, salt, and pepper in for flavor and dished out a couple bowls.

In the living room Charlie was watching hockey. He gave me an appreciative smile and a "Thanks, honey," when I handed him his bowl. I slumped down on the end of the sofa and pulled my feet up, fully intending to have another silent dinner with Charlie watching TV, but to my surprise he turned the volume down and looked over at me.

"How'd school go today?" he asked. "Are you making any friends?"

"School was good today," I said, and I was being totally honest. "This one girl Jessica is in two of my classes and we sit together at lunch. She's nice, for the most part. And I have Biology and gym with this guy Mike, he's pretty cool too."

"Mike Newton?" Charlie asked, and I nodded. "Yeah, he's a newcomer too. His parents moved here with him from California about six years ago. They own a sporting goods store in town."

"I met some of Dr. Cullen's kids too," I said. "I sit next to Edward in Biology, but he wasn't here today. And I ran into Alice and Rosalie after school. We were in the same store."

Charlie nodded approvingly. "Dr. Cullen's kids are great, they're all well behaved and polite. I was a little worried when they first moved here, with all those teenagers, but I haven't had any trouble with them."

I got the feeling that Charlie had thought he was going to have problems with them because they were foster kids, not because they were teenagers, and my stomach did an uncomfortable little flip-flop. People always assumed the worst about foster kids.

Charlie did the dishes since I had cooked, and I went back upstairs to finish my Spanish homework. I was asleep by 10pm.

The rest of the week was uneventful. I got up, went to school, came home, did homework, went to bed. Edward did not make an appearance at all, and the rest of the Cullens ignored me. I didn't really feel like going out that night, so I went to bed early and woke up at 8am. It took me a couple seconds to realize why it was so light in my room until I realized that bright sunlight was streaming through my bedroom window. This was the first day it had been sunny since I had been in Forks and I needed to take advantage of it.

I practically leapt out of bed and threw on some jogging clothes. There was a beautiful forest that backed right up to Bella's house (it must be the one where Edward broke up with her in New Moon) and I had been wanting to explore it for the week I'd been here, but I hadn't wanted to trek through mud in the pouring rain.

It felt so good to be outside. Running had always been something of an escape for me. Being in foster care was never easy for me. Unfortunately, many of the families I ended up with wanted a cute, smiley, happy little girl. Due to the circumstances that tend to get kids stuck in foster care in the first place, most of us are pretty far from perfect, myself included. When I was just a kid I couldn't really do anything to escape the families' anger at me not being perfect, but when I got to high school I joined cross country and that was it. I found what makes me feel better and gets my aggression out.

Since this was my first time in these woods I stuck to the path. I really didn't want to get lost and have to call Charlie to come find me, especially since I wasn't sure that I even got reception in the woods. Charlie's house was already at the edge of Forks, and as I ran the knowledge that I was getting farther and farther away from civilization gave me a sense of peace.

After I'd been running for about thirty minutes, probably around two or three miles, (I was relieved I still had my endurance and stamina as opposed to Bella's) I slowed down to lean against a tree and catch my breath. I didn't really want to head back to the house yet and be faced with my boredom or the prospect of doing homework on a Saturday so I ventured further into the forest.

I found that the farther I walked the quieter the forest got. It was almost like there was something in the woods that the animals knew they should be frightened of and they made sure to keep quiet. If I'd been in the forest when it was dark or stormy I probably would have taken this as a bad sign and hightailed it out of there. But it was a cool, sunny Saturday morning and it was impossible to be frightened of anything right now.

The path I had been following (though path is probably a misnomer – I had really just been running along a small bit of dirt that didn't have trees or grass growing on it) ended at this point. I still wasn't ready to go home so I decided to venture out into the woods.

I followed a bunch of big landmarks – funnily shaped trees, large boulders, etc. – so that I would be able to find my way back to the path easily. After about probably ten minutes of aimless wandering I stumbled to the edge of the tree line. I was standing on a small cliff, and probably around twenty or so feet down was a big house sitting in a valley. I was facing one of its sides, with the front to my right and the back to my left.

It was a large, graceful looking house. It was rectangular and painted a faded white color, and looked to be about three stories tall from the window placement. There was a deep porch that wrapped around the front of the house. To the front of the house I saw a long, winding, gravel driveway that probably led out of the woods onto a main road so that whoever lived here could get into town. There were no cars parked in the driveway, so there was either a garage on the other side of the house that I couldn't see or there was no one was home. On the back side of the house there was a large river flowing, but I had no idea what its name was.

I admired the house for a couple more minutes, wondering who was lucky enough to live in such a gorgeous place before I turned around and found my way back to the path where I ran home.

The rest of the weekend was boring. On Sunday it was back to raining again and I didn't feel like running in the cold, wet rain so I just stayed at home all day. I read a little and did all my homework. By the time Monday morning rolled around I was glad because it meant I had somewhere to go and something to do.

The school day started out normally enough. People said hi to me in the parking lot and I was able to recognize almost everybody. In English Mike sat next to me, as he had started to do the week before, and we had a pop quiz on the first five chapters of Wuthering Heights that seemed pretty straightforward if you'd read the book.

When we walked outside after the class the air was filled with little tufts of white. "It's snowing!" I beamed at Mike. I love the snow. Something about making snow angels and building snow men makes me feel so happy and innocent. Like I'm a kid again, I guess.

He grinned down at me, obviously noticing my enthusiasm for the weather. "Do you like snow?" he asked.

"Mike, I love snow so much. You don't understand. Oh my God!" I threw my hands up and turned to look at him.

"Where are the best places to go sledding? It's been so long since I've been sledding!"

He chuckled at me. "Yeah, I guess Phoenix doesn't have that many sledding opportunities."

"What?" I looked at him in confusion. Phoenix? "I never lived – " I cut myself off. I didn't live in Phoenix but Bella did. "Oh yeah. Phoenix was… there wasn't a lot of snow there."

Mike gave me a weird look, which was only fair after I tried to deny living in Phoenix.

"Are you feeling ok, Bella?" he asked.

I was saved from answering when a snowball smacked him in the back of his head. We both looked over at where the ball had come from. Eric was hunched over walking away from us, and I'm pretty sure that he was the one who had thrown it. Mike evidently had the same idea I did because he was bent over gathering snow to lob back at Eric. So, I made my escape.

"Bye, Mike!" I called to him, walking towards my next class. "See you at lunch!"

He barely gave me a grunt of acknowledgement, his eyes still on Eric's retreating figure.

For the rest of the morning all anyone could talk about was the snow. From what I gathered it was the first snow fall of the year, so I understood their enthusiasm. On the walk from Spanish to the cafeteria there were snowballs flying everywhere, and I kept my hood tight around my face in the hopes of preventing snow from getting inside.

Jessica thought I was hilarious for disliking snowballs, but clearly thought it would be funnier to wait to throw a snowball at me until we were in the doorway of the cafeteria and I had taken my hood off.

That's how Mike found us moments later. Jessica was doubled over laughing hysterically and I was standing there, probably pouting, with wet hair and snow making its way down the back of my shirt.

"Hello ladies," he greeted us, shaking his wet hair all over us. As we got in line to buy food I think Mike was telling us about a big snowball fight he wanted to organize in the parking lot after school was over but I had stopped listening.

Out of habit I glanced over at the Cullens' table again, expecting to be greeted with the two couples. But today there were five vampires sitting at their little round table. Edward was back.

To my surprise I was feeling a little nervous about interacting with him today. I think mostly it was due to the fact that I didn't know what he was going to say or do today because I had already changed the course that the novel was set on when I got here. But there was definitely another part of me that was nervous to be around him because I knew that he and Bella ended up together. I didn't like the idea that I was supposed to end up with a specific person, especially someone with all the problems that Edward had.

Lunch passed without incident. The one time I glanced over at the table where the Cullens were sitting, Emmett was shaking his wet hair out all over everyone. They looked like they should've been in a magazine or a movie, not an actual high school cafeteria.

Like always, I walked to Bio accompanied by Mike and Angela. Sometime during lunch the snow had changed into freezing rain and Mike kept up a string of complaints the whole walk. Angela and I were content to stay quiet and let Mike rant. In the class room the three of us broke off to go sit and I walked over to where Edward was already sitting with only a little trepidation.

I nodded to him as I sat down, and pulled my hair over my right shoulder again to get my scent a little bit farther from him. I was comforted to notice that his eyes were a beautiful light golden color – no hungry vampires in biology today!

"Hello," he said, and I was struck by how beautiful his voice was. It was low and musical and very soothing. "I'm Edward Cullen. I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You're Bella Swan, right?"

It was a little jarring having him be so polite to me after he had been so freaked out last week. I was looking at his hands though, and they were clenched around the desk and I noticed that he was still positioning himself as far away from me as he could, so clearly I was still bothering him a little. But if he was going to make an effort then so was I.

"Yeah," I said, smiling at him. He seemed at a loss for what to say to me next, and I wanted to know what he remembered from the previous week so I kept on talking. "Hey, were you feeling ok last week? You looked pretty uncomfortable during class and you basically ran out of here."

"Oh, just a little under the weather," he replied. He gave me a searching look but didn't seem inclined to bring up how I had told him to stop breathing so I figured he had attributed his hearing that comment to the bloodlust or hunger or some other vampire-y thing.

Mr. Banner took that moment to start class. Today we would be identifying the different phases of mitosis using onion root tips. The slides were out of order and we had to put them in order and label them on a piece of paper. We had twenty minutes.

"Would you like to go first?" Edward asked me.

I shrugged and pulled the microscope closer to me to have a look at the first slide. To be honest, all these dumb cells looked pretty similar to me so I decided to start at the beginning of the process and go with prophase.

"Prophase," I said as I pulled my head up to look at him. He was staring at me intently, and it was just a little creepy. I guess he was just trying to figure me out seeing as he couldn't read my mind and all but it was pretty weird.

"Do you mind if I take a look?" he asked me finally. Gratefully I slid the microscope closer to him. I was starting to get a headache and wouldn't have minded him doing the rest of the work at this point.

"Prophase," he agreed after looking at the slide for maybe a second. He wrote it down and I noticed that his handwriting was beautiful. He snapped the second slide into place and again glanced at it for barely a second. "Anaphase," he murmured quietly, already writing it down.

He grabbed the third slide and started to snap it in place before stopping and glancing at me. "Would you like to do this one?" he asked politely.

Honestly I did not feel like looking at any more slides. "No it's ok," I said, rubbing my forehead. "I'll double check you."

He glanced up at my forehead with an expression of concern on his face before nodding and turning to the microscope. "Interphase," he said confidently, before sliding the microscope over to me. I bent and looked at the cell. It looked like it wasn't in the process of dividing so interphase was probably right.

"Yeah, interphase," I confirmed. I was a little miffed to see that Edward had already written it down without waiting for me to confirm, but I suppose with as much schooling as he's had he can be trusted to identify an onion root cell correctly.

We finished the next two slides pretty quickly. I managed to correctly identify the next slide as metaphase and he said the last one was telophase. We were the first pair done with the lab and we still had about ten minutes before Mr. Banner was coming around to check our answers. This gave us nothing but time to talk.

I didn't really feel like talking because my headache was starting to get more severe, but Edward apparently had other ideas. "It's too bad about the snow," he said.

"Yeah, I guess," I said. I massaged my forehead with my fingers and kept talking. "I like snow as much as the next person, but I don't like snowball fights and that's what everyone wanted to do in the parking lot after school today. So I'm kind of glad I don't have to worry about that now."

I glanced over at him and noticed that he was staring. "What?" I asked, maybe a little rudely but my head hurt!

He seemed a little startled by my abrupt tone but still managed to sound totally cool and collected when he said "Is your head ok? You keep rubbing it."

"Yeah, it's fine," I sighed, pulling my hands down to my side. "It just hurts a little bit."

"In what way?" he inquired politely.

"It feels like there's like, a wall in my brain or something, and someone is trying to break through…" I trailed off. It felt like someone was trying to break into my brain. Edward was probably trying to read my mind right at this moment. Could it be that because I was aware of the mind shield that Bella had that I could feel Edward trying to break through it? Now that I was thinking about it I had only gotten headaches when he was around. And I had never been one to get headaches before I ended up in Forks.

Maybe if my head hadn't been hurting I would've held my tongue, but I didn't. I stared at Edward and whispered viciously, "It's you! Stop trying to get into my brain, it hurts!"

He looked very surprised and must've stopped trying to get inside my head because the pain in my head immediately receded. Realizing what I had just blurted out to a vampire I started to stammer some excuses, but Mr. Banner chose that moment to come up to us to check our answers for the lab.

"So, Mr. Cullen, you didn't think Isabella should get a chance to identify any of the slides, did you?" he asked loudly, clearly referencing the fact that Edward's handwriting was the only one on our worksheet.

Edward reluctantly pulled his gaze away from me and looked at Mr. Banner. "Bella identified two of them."

"Alright, then," Mr. Banner said skeptically. He collected our paper and walked to the front of the class. Edward looked like he was about to start asking me some questions I really didn't want to answer but Mr. Banner had started to lecture about the answers to the lab and explain the ways to identify the phases.

I didn't let myself look away from Mr. Banner as he used the overhead projector to illustrate the phases. I didn't want to try and explain myself to Edward and I had to take notes on mitosis anyway since I still didn't really understand it.

To his credit, Edward didn't try to get my attention, and when the bell rang at the end of class he was the first one out of the door.

I supposed it was too much to hope for that he would chalk up today's weird comments to bloodlust hallucinations as well. I was spared from thinking about what my next move with the Cullen family was by the appearance of Mike next to my desk.

"Wow, that was pretty hard, huh," he said. "They all looked exactly the same to me!"

"Yeah, you're telling me! I'm glad Edward was my partner, he seemed to know them pretty well," I said enthusiastically.

"Cullen seemed friendly enough today," Mike said, maybe a little sullenly, as we walked back out into the rain.

"Oh, yeah," I agreed. I didn't want to talk about Edward Cullen so I quickly turned the conversation to my disappointment in the lack of snow. Mike forgot Edward as we talked animatedly about our disappointment at the quick disappearance of the snow on our way to the gym.

As much as I tried to concentrate on volleyball in gym, I was distracted by thoughts of Edward, and Mike had to cover both my position and his.

When gym was over I changed quickly and headed out to my car. I was standing at the door of my truck trying to fish my keys out of my bad when I saw someone move next to me. Assuming it was Mike or Jessica, I turned to them with a smile on my face. It quickly fell when I saw who was actually standing next to me, casually resting his hand on my truck.

"I really need to speak with you," Edward Cullen said.

AN: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy my nice little cliff hanger, especially because I wouldn't be surprised if it's another five months before I update again. Please leave me reviews on this, because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Of course, reviews where you praise my writing style and tell me you want to send me your first born child in gratitude are my favorites, but even if you just want to leave me a review telling me to stop being so lazy and update soon I'll take it! Until next time, my lovely readers!