I swear I wasn't planning to chapter-dump like this, but it's the first one with real Edward interaction :"0 Hope you guys had a Merry Christmas and Whatnot!
Chapter 3
Strangers
Monday started out pretty well. It was snowing for one thing. Lily could count on one hand the number of times she had met snow. Even a mild shower of flurries like this was enough to excite her—and apparently the rest of the student body, judging by the hyperactive atmosphere that seemed to rule the morning. Mike and Eric even played snow ball at one point. Lily wanted to stick around for that, but she had woken up too late for breakfast today. A grumbling stomach sent her inside the cafeteria while the boys' antics drew other eager participants.
Her stomach wasn't the only reason Lily was anxious for lunch. Although she did her best not to get her hopes up, it was impossible not to scan the lunch room for that head of perfectly mussed reddish hair. She didn't seriously expect him to be there just because she wished for it, of course...which was why it surprised her so badly when she saw him.
"Hello—Earth to Lily," Jessica said, waving her hand in front of her face. Lily had stopped right in front of the cafeteria doorway, and there was a small but disgruntled crowd forming behind her. She muttered some apologies and went in.
"What's the matter?" Mike asked. His hair spikes were in a losing battle against gravity and moisture. It looked like he and some other kids had been covertly continuing their snowball fights indoors—half the student body's clothes were soaked. She would have felt sad about missing out on the fun, if not for her current distraction.
"Nothing," she answered honestly. Nothing at all...and yet when she stood in the lunch line, Lily found her appetite suddenly absent. All she grabbed was a Diet Coke. Angela noticed the lack of lunch right away.
"Are you not feeling well?" she asked with heartwarming concern.
"Just a little...jittery," Lily admitted in a low voice.
"Well, if you feel like eating later, I'd be happy to share. I shouldn't have bought pizza and fries."
"Hey, it's pizza and fries. No way you should ever not buy both of those."
Jessica finished her conversation with Mike just then and turned around to face them. Her blue eyes blinked down to the soda and back up with an odd expression. The look was sympathetic, but something in her tone made Lily's ears turn pink when she asked, "Trying to go on a diet?"
"Jess," Angela scolded gently.
Lily shook the soda can a little and laughed as casually as she could. "I could certainly stand to skip a meal or ten," she joked.
Eric popped up behind them and said, "Diet soda isn't good for you." Mike turned away from him with a roll of his eyes. Jessica giggled at his dramatic expression and bought herself some pizza. Lily smiled as her friends paired off into their own discussions—Eric to Angela on the questionable nature of aspartame, and Mike to Jessica about his latest workout routine. All was well on the home front, at least.
They all sat down, and she tried to focus on the conversations. Eric had brought sushi for lunch today. Jessica looked grossed out when he started identifying the different components, like eel and octopus. Mike had started talking to another girl who was sitting at the table—Lauren something—and Angela was nibbling on a slice of cheese pizza while listening attentively to Eric's seaweed-based discourse.
Lily waited as long as she possibly could before looking back over at the Cullen-Hale table. When she did, the sight that met her was astonishing. They were all smiling and laughing. Each boy's hair was wet, just like Mike's; the burly one shook his curly hair at the girls, who leaned away from the resulting shower of moisture. It was bizarre only because they were all so beautiful, making them look more like an ad in a teen magazine than a normal family...but that's exactly what they were. A normal family, enjoying the snow day like everybody else. No trace of enmity remained in Edward Cullen's eyes now….
That's when she noticed it. Something had been different about him, but she thought it was just the damp hair and the smile. If Lily had tried to put their Biology interaction out of her mind instead of obsessing over it so relentlessly, she might not have noticed—and it was amazing that she did at all, with how far away she was sitting. But she had pictured Edward Cullen's pitch black eyes too many times this past week not to recognize the contrast now.
They were a completely different color. She couldn't tell what color, but after blinking hard a couple of times, Lily felt certain. His eyes were lighter.
Thoughtlessly, and to no one in particular, she asked, "Does Edward Cullen wear glasses?"
All conversation at her table immediately stopped, as if his name was a kill word.
"What are you talking about?" Jessica asked.
Eric asked, "Is he?" He and Mike and a couple of others turned in their seats to look over at the Cullens.
"Don't look!" Lily blurted without thinking.
...Well, at least it worked. Nobody was looking at the far corner of the lunch room anymore. Their eyes were all glued to her now—with varying expressions of confusion and surprise. She could have died.
"I mean, um...it's just—uh—just..." she stammered lamely... "not polite to stare." Even if she could have produced a believable poker face to go with that weak excuse, it would have been ruined by her completely unconvincing delivery. And topping it all off was the blood rushing into her cheeks. She was too much like her father in that regard; all it took was a little teasing from her, and his face would light up like a Christmas tree. On him, it looked adorable. On her, it looked like rosacea.
The girl named Lauren muttered, "What's her issue?" Someone coughed a little, or maybe it was a snicker. Eric picked up his chopsticks and popped a pinwheel of sushi into his mouth.
"Oh, you mean the bags under his eyes?" Mike asked with a generous nod—her hero. "Yeah, pretty noticeable, aren't they?"
"Especially considering how they all match," the Lauren girl scoffed.
"I don't know why they don't just use some cover up," Jessica said.
One of the other girls asked, "Can you get bags from wearing glasses? Or is it needing glasses and not wearing—"
"Maybe they just don't sleep enough," Mike said with a roll of his eyes. "Probably out partying all night."
"Bet they run off to Seattle every other afternoon."
"Oh yeah, they def could. Have you seen the cars some of them drive?"
The conversation quickly slipped away to safer grounds, thank goodness. Lily tried to make herself as unobtrusive as possible while her friends began comparing stories about their longest late-nighters. She sipped at her soda and enjoyed not being noticed by anyone. Well, almost anyone.
A soft touch on her arm had Lily looking up into Angela's gentle brown eyes.
"Are you sure you're okay?" her friend whispered. "Are you tired?"
She nodded and quietly said, "Yeah. Tired of looking stupid." She cracked a smile, but Angela just frowned.
"You don't."
"Okay, tired of being stupid."
"You aren't."
Lily tried to put a little more effort into her smile this time. Angela really was sweet. Mistaken, but sweet.
The urge to hide her face in the nice, soft table was strong, but she resisted it for fear of drawing even more attention to herself. She knew it was extreme paranoia to imagine a certain redhead overhearing her outburst, let alone looking over at her...and even if he did, there was no reason to care what he thought of her, of course...but she couldn't help it. He already thought badly enough of her as it was; no matter how much Lily tried to convince herself that he didn't, and that there had just been some misunderstanding or something else on his mind at the time, she knew the truth deep down.
"I think Edward Cullen might hate me," she admitted in a whisper, staring down at the drink in front of her.
"What?" her friend whispered back. "Why would you think that? Because of what happened last Monday?"
Lily nodded. Her eyes were stinging all of a sudden. Geez, she just couldn't stop making a fool of herself, could she?
Angela's voice was thoughtful and soothing. "He was probably just having a bad day, or wasn't feeling well. Honestly, Edward doesn't seem like the type who would dislike someone for no reason."
"Maybe I just bring out the worst in people." She tried to say it with a laugh, but it didn't work. It was too true to be funny. Renée was the nicest woman in the world except when she was around one person—her daughter. Lily turned her mother into someone unpleasant. Was it so far-fetched to think she might have the same effect on others? On Edward?
"I don't think you do," Angela said. "You don't seem like that type either."
Lily scrubbed at her eyes as inconspicuously as she could. Some adult she was going to be, always crying left and right. She managed a smile all the same.
"Thanks, Ange. You're the best."
The tall girl blushed and took another bite of her pizza. She reminded Lily vividly of her father in that moment.
The soda can rolled between Lily's palms, cool and smooth. After another quick swig from it, during which she kept her eyes firmly away from the Cullens, she said, "I'm going to talk to him about it today."
Angela's pizza dropped. "Wow, really?"
"Yep," Lily answered with way more resolve than she felt. "Even if it kills me."
Jessica leaned around Angela and said in a stage whisper, "Edward Cullen is staring at our table."
The three of them immediately looked over. Edward was indeed staring—openly, intently, and straight at Lily. Even from far away, she could see how deeply his brow was furrowed. He had the same perplexed look on his face as before; it was so intense, he almost looked upset.
If there was more to the expression, she couldn't have said. Locking eyes with him for just two seconds had taken ten years off her life.
She ducked her head over her soda can. "Don't look at him," she hissed desperately. A sideways glance revealed that Jessica was still staring full-on in the direction of the Cullen table, much to Lily's chagrin. "Jessica!"
"Oh, what's your issue? It's not like he's looking at you," she said, and then added, "I mean, probably," in a much nicer voice.
The can crunched soundlessly in her hand, silent as the venom that bubbled up and out as she retorted, "Why—do you think he's looking at you?"
Jessica's face scrunched up in surprise and offense. If that's all there had been to her expression, Lily might have felt just a smidgeon less guilt, but there was hurt there too. Jessica quickly covered it up with an indignant sneer and turned her face away.
Lily sighed and hung her head for real this time. Geez, apparently a cooler climate did nothing for her temper. A cruel tongue was just another part of her talent for bringing out people's bad sides.
It was her turn to lean around Angela. She put a few fingers on Jessica's sleeve and waited until the other girl looked at her.
"I'm sorry, Jess. I didn't mean that, I swear. I'm just a little frazzled today. ...Maybe a little jealous of you too, heh." Lily smiled sheepishly. It was true, she realized. Jessica was smooth-skinned and slender with beautiful blue eyes and curls like a dark brown storm cloud. That was everything Lily had always wanted for herself, but instead she got stuck with a slow metabolism and looks that were boring at best.
Jessica's disdainful expression vanished instantly. "Aw, girl, that's okay! No big deal. The Cullens are way too high and mighty to actually notice anyone anyway. He was probably staring at the wall or something." She rolled her eyes with a perky smile. Lily's smile grew relieved in return.
"Ha, probably. So, um…." She trailed off, searching for a conversational topic now that she had both Jessica and Angela's attention. "What did y'all think of the literature quiz?"
"Y'all?" The shorter girl snickered, but it didn't sound unkind, especially when she said, "That's so cute," and then…. "Wait, we have a quiz?"
"Oh, that's right," Angela said, turning to look at Jessica now. "You have English next, don't you?"
The rest of the lunch hour was spent preparing a panicked Jessica for her Wuthering Heights assessment. Angela tried to summarize the chapter that Jess hadn't read while Lily tried to get her ready for the quiz without actually giving her the answers, just in case Angela would think that was cheating—although it was obvious Jessica would have preferred that method. Still, she seemed appreciative of their help, and Lily was appreciative of the chance to get back on her friend's good side. She didn't look over at the Cullen table again.
Everybody groaned en masse when they walked outside. Mike had been planning a big snowball bonanza after school, but the rain had returned, reducing the lovely layer of snow to little more than freezing puddles. Lily was disappointed too. She'd never had a snowball fight in her life. It looked like this wouldn't be the day that changed.
"Sorry, Mike," she said as he grumbled on the way to building four. Angela walked behind them while Lily tried to comfort the downtrodden boy. "There'll be other snow days. Even better ones, right?"
"I guess." He kicked at a stray piece of gravel. His hands were shoved deep in his coat pockets, his chin tucked down like a sad puppy. When Lily patted his arm, his expression swiftly cleared. The adorable baby-faced smile was back. "I'll invite you the next time we have a battle, okay?"
"Ha! Oh, you are so on!" She gave him her most maniacal grin, and he didn't so much as flinch. On a more heartfelt note, she added, "That sounds great, thanks."
"Great, it's a snow date." He winked at her and started whistling as they walked. Lily blushed. She was grateful that Mike didn't look at her again—not in embarrassment, but for fear of him thinking that her blush meant something extra. When he held the door open for her and smiled again, really smiled...she began to worry that that's exactly what he thought.
Of course, "snow date" could have just been a joke, and it wasn't like he didn't smile at everyone else that way, but she had started to wonder if Jessica might have a crush on him; she always giggled a little when Mike smiled at her. Even if Lily had been interested in him at all, the boy would have been off limits according to girl code. First come, first serve—you snooze, you lose. Not that she minded at all. Mike was just a friend, and, anyway, she was used to it. She'd had a lifetime of losing regardless of whether or not she snoozed.
She was still mulling the issue over when she sat down in Biology. For a full minute, she didn't think about anything but the uncomfortable question of whether or not she had somehow overstepped a boundary with Mike, and what she would do if she had, and if Jessica would pick up on it and get mad, and if she was just imagining this whole thing—because what boy on earth would be interested in her after only, like, a month of friendship, and….
The anxious reverie shattered when she happened to look at the chair to her right.
Edward Cullen's chair.
Her heartbeat turned into an urgent staccato, and sweat prickled all over her scalp. Their forthcoming conversation had completely slipped her mind after the impromptu lunchtime study session.
Frantically, Lily pulled out her textbook and flipped it open to a random page. She rested her cheek in her right hand, angling her face away from where he would inevitably sit. Oh boy, she was in for it. After all that time spent brooding, she still had no idea what to say. What little she could remember of the speeches she'd planned suddenly seemed inadequate. Her mind raced twice as fast as her heart with nothing to show for it but the start of a headache.
She jumped when the chair beside her moved, and then attempted to disguise her startled jerk by straightening up and rearranging her books.
"Hello," said a quiet, musical voice.
The green binder slipped from her hand. It clattered to the floor, rings popping open as it bounced. Pages and pages of notes came loose, and all the blank index cards she'd stuffed in the left-hand pocket fell out.
Without looking at her neighbor—her face was too red to bear showing—Lily got out of her seat and squatted on the ground. She hadn't managed to pick up a fraction of the mess when a white hand entered the narrow field of her tunnel vision and started gathering papers.
"I'm sorry," came that voice again. Her heart leapt into her throat at the sound of the bewitching, radio-smooth tenor. On cue, she dropped the few index cards she was holding, a klutz complete with shaking hands. Oh well. She probably would have dropped them all anyway when she looked up into his face.
Edward Cullen was kneeling nearby, maybe three or four feet away; she noticed the odd distance because he had to bend forward just to pick up her notebook, giving her a better view of his red hair. It was dark with moisture, dripping wet, but he looked as far from bedraggled as a swimsuit model fresh out of the pool. His face was as beautiful as she remembered and ten times more devastating up close. Did this boy have a single blemish? Not so much as a pore showed in his incredibly pale skin, and the angles of his face reminded her of the golden-headed Hale sister—all perfect brushstrokes like a painting come to life.
Seeing such beauty up close and personal would have thrown off any girl. That wasn't what made Lily blink like she was seeing things, however. It wasn't even the amiable expression and the stunning smile, so different from his cold, seething glare. No, it was his eyes.
She had been right about the change in color. They were the precise opposite of the pitch black pair she had pictured seven days straight, an impossibly light shade of amber now—almost a dark butterscotch. Or would gold be a better word? Yeah, gold, that was it. They also looked extremely careful in contrast to his open smile. Maybe because she had been staring at him without speaking for a solid thirty seconds, if not longer. He already had all her papers gathered up and everything, held away from him in a cautious offering. He probably thought she was crazy.
"Sorry," she apologized as she reached out to take the notebook, her papers neatly stacked inside of it. It seemed she was incapable of doing anything but saying sorry to him. This was the second time. She hoped it would be the last.
He didn't help her to her feet, but he did ask, "Are you all right?"
She tried to smile—it felt more like a grimace—as she nodded. Lily felt sure that if she opened her mouth to speak, nothing but gibberish would fall out. She felt dizzy too, and the sensation only increased when Edward continued to address her.
"My name is Edward Cullen," he said as he went around her and took his seat. He made the simple action look as elegant as a ballet, and she felt hyper aware of every clumsy motion as she sat down. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Lily Swan."
Every beautiful piece of music she had ever heard was suddenly jolted to second place at the sound of Edward Cullen saying her name. The words were written in shining silver with clouds behind them and flowers bursting into bloom all over the foreground. The rest of her brain held still for a few seconds, just so she could enjoy the echo of his voice.
...Oops. This was the part where she was supposed to say something like, That's me. It's nice to meet you. Sorry if we got off on the wrong foot last time. I can change my shampoo, if you need me to. No, that wasn't right. Better not say anything too complicated, lest her foot make its way into her mouth.
That was easier said—or not said—than done, sadly. Instead of just smiling and nodding, maybe turning away and letting the rest of the class pass in silence, Lily laughed at him. It was the nervous titter that sometimes came out when she had a bunch of unfinished homework in front of her at 11 PM. He was being so nice all of a sudden, and it made so little sense to her, all she could do was giggle like an idiot.
She slapped a hand over her mouth to stop the offensive noise. Edward Cullen winced. His eyes looked more cautious than ever. Well, if he already thought she was certifiable, there wasn't much for her to lose, was there?
"Y'know, I think you're the first person here who hasn't assumed I go by Lillian," she told him over her hand with a perfectly honest smile—the smile of the mad, the peace of the damned. "Thanks for that."
Edward Cullen blinked at her. The blink of the unsettled, the stare of the blah blah blah. Her reckless mood had too much momentum to stop now anyhow; if anything, it was gathering steam. Even if she regretted everything after she stopped speaking, the catharsis was too tantalizing to deny. Let it all out now and move away later, yippee.
"I'm pretty sure my dad calls me Lillian to everybody else," she rushed with lighthearted abandon, "but that's such a stuffy name, don't you think? He's the chief of police. He said a lot of nice things about your dad. Oh, I forgot to say thanks for helping me pick up my stuff. I like your contacts—do you wear different colored ones a lot? Also, did I do something to make you angry last Monday? If you need, I can—"
Before her self-destructive ramble could progress any further, Mr. Banner cleared his throat at the front of the class. Teachers sure did that a lot. It was more polite than telling the chatterboxes to shut up, probably. Lily hadn't been one of those since seventh grade, when she left her only friend behind in Mobile. It seemed that the years of not talking in class after that point had all come out in a single thirty seconds of terminal word vomit.
She couldn't bear to look at Edward Cullen in the wake of such a catastrophe. She had no idea how she was supposed to have a friendly discussion with him now...not that he'd want to talk to her after that display of insanity anyway, and not that she could have spoken if she tried. Her head was spinning so hard, it felt like she was about to fall out of her seat. She concentrated on not doing that. Nothing else. Do not achieve atomic separation. Gravity. But not too much gravity. Why was it so hard just to sit? Maybe this was what panic attacks felt like. Oh, breathing would probably help some. In, out, etcetera.
By the time she had returned to the land of the living, there was a microscope set out on the table. Edward Cullen was looking through it. His lips were pursed and his forehead was creased.
"Sorry," fell out of her mouth for the third time in their short acquaintance. He looked up from the microscope. His eyes sliced through her. There was an emotion there she couldn't begin to define. "About the um…." She twirled her finger in a Ferris Wheel loop that got her nowhere. "So, uh...what are we doing?"
He looked away towards the rest of the class. She saw his hand clench bone-tight on top of his thigh and felt her stomach drop, but when he spoke, his voice was smooth as a fresh jar of peanut butter, no hint of tension at all. "Separating slides of onion root tips into the proper phases of mitosis," he recited like an unconscious sonnet.
"Oh. Mitosis. Right. Um…." This was it. The absolute perfect chance to leave behind disaster and just focus on the class. Did she do that? No. Of course not. "Sorry about that. Babbling, I mean. And zoning out. It's been a day. I swear I'm not as crazy as I look. Sound. Whatever. Have you been at it for long—the lab? ...Agh, sorry, I'm babbling again."
Edward's smile was serene and so heartbreakingly beautiful, it made her breath catch in her throat. But his eyes were as guarded as they had been to begin with, and his hand was still clenched in a fist under the table, knuckles sharp and tendons standing out like cords beneath his skin. The sight was such a strange contrast to the rest of his demeanor, it left her mind blank with confusion.
"You apologize quite a lot," he said. His voice had the same sort of dulcet tones she had heard from Esme Cullen—and the exact opposite effect, too. No magical comfort there. Shame washed through her like a red tide...but when Edward continued, it was without any reproach at all in his lovely voice.
"There's no need to be so anxious. I promise I won't bite." His smile turned lopsided, and it took another ten years off her life. She was down by twenty so far today. Totally worth it though. "I haven't been very polite to you, and I need to apologize for that. You caught me on something of a difficult day myself, the last time I was here."
"Oh." The haze of embarrassment was pulling back like a veil. So she'd been right after all. "Does it have to do with you being absent all week?"
Edward's expression tightened a little, although his smile didn't seem to change.
"Sorry—never mind," she amended quickly. "Nosy is my knee-jerk reaction. You don't have to tell me. So, um, how many of the slides have you done? I should probably contribute, heh."
He stared for a few more heart-pounding moments before pushing the microscope towards her with a quiet, "Not many." He slid a worksheet over too. "Prophase" and "Anaphase" were written with extraordinary neatness in the first two spaces.
"Thanks," Lily croaked as he handed her the third slide.
The tip of her fingers touched his, and she nearly dropped the small transparent square. It was like an electric shock passed from his ice-cold hand to hers; the place where their skin touched was tingling as she slowly, mechanically inserted the slide. He might have mumbled something like, "I'm sorry," but the blood was rushing so hard in her ears, she didn't know for sure. Another minute of this, and she was bound for unconsciousness.
It took her longer than it should have to identify the slide, and then even longer to tell him what she saw. Matching pairs of chromatids. It was obvious. Less obvious was the reason for a sudden disconnect between her brain and mouth. Calm down Lily, geez.
"Um, I think—uh," she stammered with the eloquence of a caveman, "I think it's...Interphase."
"May I?" Edward Cullen asked. His hands were folded in his lap.
She slid the microscope over the way he had done. "It looked like Interphase, at least. I'm pretty sure."
"That's right," he answered after barely a second. He continued looking through the eyepiece even as he asked her, "Would you like to write it down?"
"Oh." She looked at his elegant script. It was practically calligraphy. "It's gonna look like chicken scratch next to yours, but I guess diversity's the, uh...spice of life and all."
He smiled without looking up at her, and Lily spiraled into abstract once again. His poor teachers—how did they get anything done with such a breathtaking boy in their classes? Either they would be wracked with envy for his youthful perfection, or they would be lusting after him like illegal cougars. But that was an ugly thing to think. She needed to stop being so darn superficial.
Lily realized that he had said something without her hearing it. Darn it, now he would think she was crazy and rude. The blush came back with a vengeance, but, hey, had it really ever left?
"Sorry, what?"
"I asked if you would like me to take the next one," he said gently. His golden eyes were on hers now, and she had to look away just to answer him.
"That's okay. They should probably be as even as possible, right? You can rock-paper-scissors me for the last one, if you want." She cringed the moment such a juvenile thing came out of her mouth, but then….
Edward laughed.
Mrs. Cullen's laugh was the most heavenly thing Lily had ever heard...until that moment. She stared at her lab partner openly. Maybe it was inevitable, what happened next.
"You have such a beautiful voice, you know that?"
Wow.
If shame was hot, then regret was cold as ice water, and the two warred for her soul as Edward Cullen looked at her with a bemused expression on his face.
"Sorry," Lily whispered, quickly pulling the microscope over to herself. She looked through it only to realize that it still had the Interphase slide.
"Here," came Edward's cool voice, and the slide shifted.
She managed to mutter a microscopic thank you.
Their remaining slides were identified without incident. He let her do them both, but she needed his help on the very last one. She had become too distracted by that point to think clearly anymore.
The questions had returned to her mind like flies—irritating, madcap, and impossible to shoo away. More pressing, however, was the conversation that had to happen before class was over. When Lily looked around, she realized that they had finished ahead of schedule, or were at least doing better than the rest of the class. Most of the expressions in the room were confused ones. Mike and his partner had their heads bent over two slides and were looking back and forth between them. Another group had the textbook open on their legs and were trying to look inconspicuous.
So she had some time then. Good. Also, bad. She wouldn't have minded being struck mute at that moment, honestly.
Mr. Banner gave her a few more seconds of reprieve when he came over to their table then.
"So, Edward," he said, looking over their shoulders at the worksheet, "didn't you think Lillian should have a chance to answer more than one question?"
"Lily," Edward corrected, and her pulse went from presto to vivace the instant her name left his lips. "Actually, she identified three of the five."
Mr. Banner's expression was skeptical as he looked at her, but she hardly cared; her head was once again full of the sound of Edward Cullen saying her name.
"Have you done this lab before?" he asked.
It occurred to her to look sheepish then. "Um, yes sir. I mean, not with onion root, but, um…."
"Whitefish blastula?"
"Yes sir—I think?"
"Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?"
"Yes sir."
He hummed. "Well, I guess it's good you two are lab partners," he said and walked away.
"I think he thinks I'm smarter than I am," she said under her breath once Mr. Banner had returned to the front of the class. He was looking around for his next victim with an oddly dissatisfied expression. Incredibly enough, Edward's looked rather similar when she glanced at him. She realized it might not be such a good idea to do that; his face was distractingly beautiful. Lily looked down at the table instead, tracing imaginary patterns with the nail of her index finger.
"You don't think you're smart?"
"I mean—well—sure, about some things. Not, uh...Biology, usually." She frowned. It was a good opportunity to shift the subject to easy fare. Do you like school so far? What's your favorite subject? Small talk. Safe and boring talk.
Lily swallowed. Small talk wasn't what needed to happen. Time to be eloquent. ...Pfft, as if.
"Hey, Edward." She began to dent the paper with her nail, making a little trail of barely discernible crescents. "Um. About last Monday…." She sucked in a silent breath of courage and looked up at him, distraction be damned.
His eyes were intense, almost urgent. His lips were pursed. His pure white forehead was furrowed as if in concentration—or pain. And he was leaning as far away from her as courtesy would allow.
"Okay, do I, like, smell or something?" It was blunt, but tact had never been her forte. Better to cut out the middleman and waste less time.
Edward's bright eyes widened. His lips parted a little, and then he flinched. His body slanted even farther away than before.
Lily leaned back in the opposite direction. She continued in a sharp whisper, "Seriously, if you're allergic to my shampoo or whatever, or if I stink, just say so. It's better than gawking at me like I'm about to set you on fire." There was that cruel tongue again, dulled only by her nerves. She needed to be careful, or she might end up on the wrong end of that glare yet again, golden though it was now.
The tense expression on his face thinned into something she could hardly describe, let alone decipher—something intensely expectant, yet almost aggressively blank. But maybe that was completely wrong. When was she ever good at reading people? He could have been an open book, and she wouldn't have been any better off than if she were trying to guess a stranger's thoughts.
He actually was acting a lot like a stranger, come to think of it. Was this really the same boy who had stared at her with such inexplicable daggers in his eyes? Right now he looked more like a deer frozen in oncoming headlights.
She remembered Mrs. Cullen's words. A very sweet boy, she had called him. That could have been plain old mother's bias, but still…. There had to be something more going on here than typical teenage awkwardness. Maybe something was wrong with Edward, like mood swings or a split personality. Maybe Lily was the only one who knew about it.
"Are you okay?" she asked, nearly forgetting to whisper. It wasn't until his seat creaked that she realized she'd been leaning forward unconsciously.
She reset her posture.
"Please," Lily said as quietly as she could with so much worry gripping her heart. She hoped he could understand her with how quickly the words came rushing out. "I know you don't know me or anything, and we haven't exactly gotten off on a good foot, but if you ever need to talk to someone, I can be a pretty good listener when I'm not jabbering. Like, if you feel like something is wrong but you don't know what, or you don't feel like yourself and don't know why—anything like that. I don't know much about mental things and problems—not that I'm saying you have a mental problem—but if you did, I hope you would know that it's perfectly okay to talk about it. With me or a counselor or something. Probably a counselor'd be better, but if something's wrong, then I'm here too. I wouldn't tell anyone or anything—unless you needed, like, emergency help ASAP—but I'm also just here if, uh...if nothing's wrong and you're just...having a hard time or, um, something…."
Edward Cullen looked positively nonplussed. At least that was better than the previous expression he had developed during her tirade, something between shock and dread. Now he just seemed confused—or maybe agitated was a better word.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about," he said through his teeth, and suddenly she realized that he was peeved, not perplexed, "but I can take care of myself—thank you. If you're concerned because of my behavior last week, I assure you it was nothing more than a momentary aberration, and I hope that you will put it out of your mind entirely."
He flipped around in his seat to look out the window on the other side of the classroom. He put his cheek in his hand, the way she had done at the beginning of class in order to escape his inevitable gaze. As she looked at him, the hand cupping his cheek slowly curled into a fist. His entire body looked like it had gone rigid. Yep, he was definitely mad at her now. But why wouldn't he be? Hadn't she just implied that there was something wrong with him, well-meaning though it might have been? Anyone would be grumpy after having their mental stability questioned by a complete stranger.
Maybe Charlie was right. Maybe she did come off as a snob, just not in the way she had pictured.
Lily intended to give him the rest of class without more of her dumb chatter, but guilt was a merciless thing to bear in silence; it demanded to be spoken, admitted, absolved.
"I'm sorry," she whispered not even a minute later. Lily didn't mind silence when it was full of comfortable companionship, but the low murmurs of her classmates and the scribble of pens and pencils had started grating on her nerves. If she didn't speak to Edward, she was going to explode.
"Don't be," he said in a flat voice. Don't talk about it, he seemed to mean. Maybe she wasn't as good of a listener as she thought, because she went on with her explanation anyway.
"It's just that you were...I mean, not to be rude, but you did kind of glare at me. A lot. But today you're nice. I don't get it. ...Dude, if I smell bad, tell me. You don't have to pretend."
"You don't smell bad," he said, and there was a strange hint of tension in his reply. His voice was smooth, but the words sounded raw somehow.
"Okay, what then? I just want to make sure you're...okay, you know?" Lily looked at his stiff shoulders. They seemed oddly slumped at the moment. "We are lab buddies and all," she added facetiously with a cheesy whaddya-say crook of her arm that he didn't see.
Suddenly, Edward's hand was gripping the edge of the table.
"I assure you," he practically hissed, softer than a sigh but sharp as a knife, "there is nothing you can possibly do for me, so please. Stop. Asking."
...Well then.
Lily blinked back tears. The fact that there were tears to blink back at all just made her angrier, and the anger produced more tears…. It was a vicious cycle.
She flipped around in her seat and clasped her hands in front of her. She squeezed them tight, trying to keep the words in. It didn't work.
"I met your mom in church yesterday," she whispered in a voice that was almost as sharp as his. "She said that you're sweet, and that you would never try to be mean. ...Somebody who makes a liar out of a lady like that deserves to be slapped."
Edward didn't say anything, and she didn't care. Lily sat there clenching her hands and fuming for the rest of the class. It looked like her lab partner was doing something similar. She didn't care about that either. He could take his mysterious tension and shove it up a stovepipe.
Mr. Banner's lesson went in one ear and out the other, and when he finished, right on time with the bell, Edward jumped up and rushed out of the room just like he had that first day. This time, she was too mad to admire his odd grace. She slammed her books together with the exact inversion of that grace and stomped out of the building.
Mike walked with her today, Angela trailing behind them again. The gym wasn't that far from the choir building, so sometimes he tagged along until they were halfway there. His presence didn't cheer her up this time, but, luckily, he didn't notice her foul mood.
"That was awful," he groaned. "They all looked exactly the same. You're lucky you had Cullen for a partner."
His remark irritated her. It reminded her of what she'd said to Edward about not being so smart, and her face burned with shame and anger. But when she opened her mouth to snap at Mike, she saw his happy smile and baby blue eyes and managed to rein it in. Mike was her definition of a sweet guy—the exact opposite of Edward Cullen.
"We did that lab at my old school," she said simply, and then she added, "but yeah, it was hard," to ensure she didn't sound snobbish. "Did y'all do okay on it?"
"I guess…. So, Cullen sure put on a friendly act today."
The comment seemed out of nowhere and absolutely unfounded, based on the last chunk of class; she couldn't tell whether it was sarcastic or not. All she managed was a noncommittal hum. If she opened her mouth, that cruel tongue might come out to play again. Mike didn't deserve that.
Fortunately, he was either too nice to notice her disinterest in talking, or too oblivious. They parted without preamble, leaving Lily to sulk the rest of the way to choir. Angela was smart—she didn't try to make conversation after the first failed attempt.
On days like these, Lily belonged as far away from people as possible. It was prime time for senseless mother-daughter bickering back at home. Renée had times like that too, where she was mad at everyone and everything. Although, in her case, it was usually a result of frustration with her daughter. Lily had a feeling that Renée would have been one hundred times less irritable overall if only she'd had a different kind of kid. One who didn't get in bad moods and then take it out on the people she loved. When Lily got like that, all she could do was keep to herself, wait for the anger to burn out, and then she would be civil again.
...But that was the old her. The new Lily had made a vow to change, and the harder the spot, the better the gold, right? That's why, even with the irritation still burning in her stomach, she forced herself to strike up a conversation with Angela when she got the chance; thankfully, after a try or two, her friend acquiesced.
It turned out to be the right thing to do. Despite how shy Angela was, talking to her was a breeze, and the soothing, aimless conversation blew away the cloud of anger from Lily's head. By the time the five minute bell rang, she was already feeling remorseful.
"I think something's bothering Edward Cullen," she said to her friend during the last minute or so of "talk time," as Mr. McCormick called it—a reward if they had sung well that day. Lily thought they hadn't, but they sure did try.
"What do you mean?" Angela asked, closing her choir binder.
"I don't know, it's just...he was really nice today, but then he went back to being upset…. I might have upset him myself, I think. I said something mean to him." The back of her neck burned, and she was grateful for shoulder-length hair to hide it. "I just had to open my big fat mouth. If anything is wrong, he's definitely not gonna tell me now."
"But why do you think something's wrong? Couldn't he just have been in a bad mood again? Or maybe he's having trouble at home."
"I know it could be that, but...I don't know…." She hadn't ruled out a personality disorder, especially after his mood switch today. She sighed. "Or maybe he's just being a typical teenage boy, and I'm overthinking this." Angela didn't look convinced by her attempt at a dismissive smile, so she tried a subject change instead. "I don't have much experience with that kind of creature. Do you?"
A delicate but telling blush lit her friend's face.
"Oh-ho, so you do, huh?" Lily elbowed her a little. "Huh? Huh?"
Angela shook her head vigorously enough to make Lily grin.
"Aw, come on, Ange. Who is he?"
Angela clasped her black choir folder to her chest and stared at the ground. Her lips pressed into a tight line that might have been hiding a smile, but Lily could have been wrong about that, so she let it drop just in case.
"I've never had much luck in that regard," she sighed dramatically. "Whether it's North or South, none of the boys—"
The bell buzzed and cut off the rest of her silly chatter. When Angela was still staring at the floor, Lily bumped her arm gently and said, "Don't worry, Ange. I'm not gonna tell. But whoever he is, the guy's a fool if he doesn't snatch you up ASAP."
"Lily," Angela begged adorably.
"Okay, okay." Lily stuck her choir folder under her chin so she could put both her hands in the air. "I know nothing."
Lily smiled all the way outside where she said goodbye to Angela. Maybe she had just been playing around, but it was true: the boy who let Angela Webber get away would be a dunce. Of course, nobody knew better about letting perfect opportunities pass you by than Lily. That's why, when she was pulling out of the parking lot and saw Edward Cullen leaning against his silver Volvo three cars away, she rolled down the window instead of staring straight ahead like she desperately wanted to do.
In spite of a face full of flame and a fear of further fiascos, Lily waved him over. He looked as surprised as she felt when he actually started to walk her way.
She would have to be concise. The line was going to start moving any second now.
"Hey," she said when he was close enough to hear. "I'm sorry about what I said—about your mom and all. That wasn't cool. I mean, she's cool, obviously, but about, you know, the liar thing, and...slapping you...uh...sorry…."
What had begun as a respectable apology trailed off into incoherent drivel. Lily's hands clutched the wheel tight as she stared at Edward's nice shoes. Maybe she would get lucky and a monster truck would hit her on the way home.
"There's no need to apologize," the boy's river-cool voice washed over her. "I was rude. You were perfectly justified in what you said."
The car in front of her started to move, so Lily looked up. Edward's face was calm—too calm. His topaz-colored eyes revealed no emotion she could put a name to. He must have still been mad at her.
She let off the break as slowly as she could without daring the wrath of the people behind her.
"I am sorry though," Lily said, and she couldn't think of anything else to add except, "See you tomorrow."
Lame. She was so lame. She couldn't bear to look at him as she drove off. Who needed mirrors anyway?
The small rusty car behind her blared its horn when she almost cut it off as she turned out of the exit; it swerved to avoid her. Well, that was the cherry on top for Edward Cullen's opinion of her, no doubt. Crazy, rude, and a bad driver. She wished they could go back to being strangers again, and he was probably thinking the exact same thing.
I have all the way to chapter 11 written, but the rest of the story after that is going to be so much harder to write hhhhhggg ;-; Not looking forward to leaving you guys with multi-month gaps (you've all been so dadgum wonderful with the faves and follows and things :"3), but that shouldn't be for a while at least!
Anyway. Happy almost New Year's! I'm sick in a hotel with my mother, who is also sick now. 10/10 omen for the coming year lol. Woot.