Chapter 1

"Gooooood morning, Spartans!" an overtly cheerful voice called over the loudspeaker, as several substantially less enthusiastic students milled throughout the hallway. The hum of conversation increased in volume to compete with the sound, and lockers were slammed shut as people made their way to class. "Welcome back after a frosty winter holiday. I hope you're ready to jump back into classes! Now is when your future begins!"

Bella rolled her eyes as she turned back to her locker. She had only been at the school for twenty minutes, had not spoken directly to anyone, but she already knew that Mike Newton, whose peppy voice was now being projected throughout the school, had been dumped by Jessica Stanley at the start of the holidays, and was taking a new, singles-positive approach to life. As far as news went in a small town like Forks, this was certainly headline material.

She closed her locker as Newton's voice rattled off administrative info for some freshman rally, and watched as people meandered past her. In many ways, she was grateful that people did not give her a second glance. She was as much a part of the background as a poster on the wall, or a broom leaning in a corner: part of a quick scan to take in the surroundings, but not worth noticing the details. It meant she was never a part of the rumour mill, never had to reject awkward requests to dances, and never subjected to close scrutiny for her clothing or hairstyle being slightly off-season.

There was a slight sadness there too, though. She never really had someone to confide in about her worries or her questions, or to share in the little victories of life. But it was hard to miss something which had escaped her for so long.

She sighed and began to walk to homeroom. English. At least there was comfort in that.

"And finally, I hope you will all join me in giving a warm Spartan welcome," (Bella wondered if he could hear the contradiction in those words at all) "to our new visitors! Unfortunately, the blizzard last week caved in the roof at the Quileute Tribal School, and so they will be using some of the classrooms in the North Wing for the meantime. And that's all for now, folks. Your inspirational quote of the day is: 'If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.' Newton out!"

Bella had just crossed the threshold of the classroom when the bell rang, and took her familiar seat in the back corner of the room, next to the frost-laden windows. A border of empty desks surrounded her, an island on the edge of the continents of cliques.

"Good morning, everyone!" Ms. Kettering crowed, and the students fell quiet as she launched into a speech about returning from holidays, and an essay they would be writing over the following months about the tropes of the hero's journey. It was already all described in detail in the syllabus, which most students had likely lost in the first week of school. Bella could not help but find the sparse snowflakes drifting over the football field to be more enjoyable to watch.

It had been just over a decade since her mother had passed and she had been found, lost in the woods, wondering where her wolf friend had gone. For weeks afterwards, she had tried to tell people about him, hoping someone would believe the magic she had experienced. But there was no realm in which she could have been believed. The other kids called her a freak, and began to avoid her like she was contagious. It was like she now had a brand on her forehead that said "AVOID." Her father had banned her from going into the woods alone, and sent her to a series of therapists, who had explained to her how trauma manifests itself in different forms, how memory was a fickle thing, and had she really seen a wolf? She had, and she trusted her seven-year-old self completely; she just learned to keep quiet and keep her head down.

The door to the classroom opened, and the classroom shifted from dull interest to piqued curiosity as an unfamiliar new person came into the room.

She seemed as foreign as a person could be to Forks; she looked impossibly good. Her hair was just the right balance between messy and styled, and her clothing looked like something that could only be found in a highbrow, European film with a moral buried deep in metaphor. She bounded – bounded? – up to Ms. Kettering and passed her a slip.

"Ah, right," affirmed the teacher, "one of our newest pupils. Well," at this she looked to the class, "everyone, this is Alice Cullen. She and her family have recently moved to Forks. I am sure you will be quite happy here," she said to Alice. "Find a seat where you like."

The girl gave a tinkling, pretty laugh, and said, "Of course!"

Bella tried not to groan when she sat down in the empty seat next to her. Ms. Kettering looked like she wanted to say something in warning to the new girl, but just shook her head subtly instead. They all knew that as soon as the class was finished, someone would explain to the new girl why it was social suicide to sit next to Bella Swan.

The lesson resumed, and Bella focussed on what Ms. Kettering was saying to avoid acknowledging the person next to her. She had the uneasy feeling that Alice was watching her, intently. A piece of paper slid in front of her confirmed this: "Hi :)"

Bella had no idea what to make of this, and so decided it was best to just ignore it. She assumed this new girl would soon realise that she had made a mistake, and find someone better to talk to.

After a moment, the paper was pulled back. There was a scratching of a pen, and then, "I think we're going to be good friends :)" was pushed in front of Bella. This surprised her, and she looked up at Alice, who flashed her a grin of luminously white teeth. Bella shook her head, and looked back up at the blackboard, where Ms. Kettering had drawn a large circle and consecutive numbers in a clockwise direction. Alice sighed quietly next to her, and seemed to give it up.

Until the bell rang.

"Bella, darling, do you know where the chemistry classroom is?" she asked in a light, sweet voice, with a look of blissful innocence etched on her face. Bella thought for a moment that she saw something else flicker behind Alice's eyes, but before she could decipher it, it had flitted away.

"Straight the end of the hall, turn left, three doors down on the right," Bella said, focussing her gaze on packing up her books into her bag. "How did you know my name?"

Alice laughed, and reassured, "You have it written on your pencil case." Alice's laugh and light voice were such cheerful sounds, that she found herself warming to this strange new girl. A grain of hope settled resolutely in her chest and refused to budge.

"Oh," Bella said flatly, not sure of what to say in return.

"Where is your next class?" Alice asked as the two of them began to walk out of the class.

"Um, biology."

Alice's grin grew even more. "Oh, I think you might have it with my brother then! Well," she rambled on without so much as a perceivable breath, "adopted brother. But still! I think you two are going to get along nicely!" With only that and no goodbye, she bounced off to the chemistry classroom, while Bella was left quite stunned, standing outside the biology room. What had just happened?

Sure enough, as she pushed through the door, there was a new boy sitting in her usual spot at the back of the class. Although their facial features were dissimilar, he was dressed just as stylish as Alice, and he had the same demeanour of intimidating perfection. Despite her initial instinct to sit faraway from him, she sucked in a determined breath, and walked forward.

He did not look at her as she sat down. In fact, he turned his head away, as she sat down clenching his fists tightly.

So not as friendly as Alice had said.

That was fine, then. Bella was about to shift to another seat, when Mr. Banner banged through the classroom door with a flourish and began expounding the wonders of blue whales without any preamble. This, inexplicably, led to half the class being devoted to watching video clips from some British panel show. It was entertaining enough, though, that Bella nearly forgot the boy beside her.

"Alright, alright, enough of that," conceded Mr. Banner, who seemed just as disappointed as his students that he actually needed to teach them something from the curriculum. "So, ecosystems. What do we already know about them? Where do we begin?" Gradually, more students began raising hands and offering different tidbits of information, which Mr. Banner would enthusiastically jot down on the board. Bella had to give it to him, he knew how to get his students engaged.

But not the new student to her left. She didn't even know what his name was, and as their peers were opening up, he seemed to only withdraw even further inwards, head twisted away from her even further to bury his nose in his forearm. She didn't think he had moved at all for at least twenty minutes.

Deciding to take a leaf from Alice's book, she pulled out a scrap of paper, wrote "Are you okay?" on it, and started pushing it his way. Before it was in front of him, though, he jumped up and out of his seat and nearly sprinted towards the classroom door. A fraction of a second later, before Mr. Banner could express concern, the bell rang the end of class.

Dizzy from the interactions with the Cullen family to that point, by the time Bella reached the hallway of her locker for lunch, she concluded that it was probably a good thing her classmates avoided her. She did not enjoy this social whiplash at all.

This was all cleared from her mind, though, when she saw that her locker was blocked by a group of five intimidatingly large male teens.

Now, if Bella had been a normal teenage girl, perhaps her response would have been to swoon at the sight of them and try to flirt with them. They were certainly very attractive; many other people ogled them as they walked past. Large muscles rippled down every visible inch of flesh (and there was quite a lot, as they were wearing shorts and t-shirts in the middle of winter) and pressed through their shirts, and the warm tones of their skin harkened to sunny summer days. Given that she had never seen them at the school, and surely there were not that many other Cullens, she figured they were the students from the Quileute school.

As it was, though, with her well-below-average height and already-well-established fear of people, she found them all quite scary. Deciding she could wait to retrieve her packed lunch, she was inspired to visit the washroom.

"Sorry, are we in your way?" a perceptive voice called. Bella turned around.

She had never been electrocuted, but she imagined that it probably felt similar to what went through her in that moment. As she met the eyes of the apologetic elocutionist, it felt like her insides completely fell down to the floor, and a buzzing sensation tingled along her skin.

Those eyes.

It was impossible, of course. The last time she had seen those eyes had been over a decade ago, and they had been on a wolf.

A magic wolf.

No. It had to be a coincidence. It had been so long ago, the memory so distant, and the eyes that she was looking at beside her locker were not wolf eyes. Eyes as dark as that were rare, sure, but that did not mean there was only one creature on Earth with them.

"Um, yeah," Bella muttered.

"Alright, guys, shift down," he said, and they complied, comically shuffling their feet as they moved as one away from her locker. Bella smiled slightly as she went up to her locker and opened it.

And was promptly barraged by an errant avalanching binder.

She froze as one of the guys started laughing behind her. He stopped abruptly after a loud thwack! indicated that he had been hit by a notebook.

"Here," said the one who had spoken to her, picking up the binder and the stray pages.

"Thank you," she whispered as he passed them to her, avoiding looking him in the eyes and shoving it all back inside.

"I'm Jacob," he said, a laughing, warm smile shimmering in his voice.

"Bella," she said quietly and grabbed her lunch.

And nearly ran all the way to the nearest washroom.

It was blessedly quiet, and she thanked whatever gods that did or did not exist that it was. She settled in a stall which looked like it had been cleaned recently, and ate her lunch in blissful, undisturbed silence.

It had been a long time since she had interacted with people who had wanted to make conversation with her, let alone actually be nice to her. She just did not know what they wanted from her. And had she reacted right at all? Or did they all now think of her as rude and selfish?

The warning bell startled her from her thoughts. She reluctantly left her stall and put her lunch bag away in her locker, with no giants blocking her way.

And, much to her relief, she went the rest of the school day completely unnoticed and without further hurdles. No one interacted with her, and even Alice seemed to have disappeared completely.

A/N: Does anyone else find second things to be the most unenjoyable parts? For the longest time, Chamber of Secrets and New Moon were my least favourite parts of their respective series. And I always find second chapters difficult to write. Just me?

Anyways, let me know what you think! How do you feel about this Bella so far? Have you ever had a teacher who is a bit unorthodox in their teaching methods?

I told my brother that I'm writing Twilight fanfiction again, and his response was "Oh no, Basil42, we're here to help you if you need it." Thanks bro.