Hi, hello, bonjour :)

Thank you, guest, for your nice review :D to answer your question, I have no plan to pair Esme with an OC for now, sorry :/

I really hope you like this, don't hesitate to let me know what you think!

Feedback is always appreciated!

Sorry for the mistakes *facepalm*

Enjoy!

It was nice for both girls to be alone, not to have to smile or looked pleased. Bella stared dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and sighed. It had only been a few hours and she missed the sun already. Evangeline didn't have a problem with the rain. Or the cold or the weather at all. She had bigger problems.

Both sisters dreaded the morning to come. Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven – now fifty-nine – students; there were more than seven hundred people in Bella's junior class alone back home. All of the kids had grown up together – their grandparents had been toddlers together. They would be the new girls from the big city, curiosities, freaks.

Maybe, if they looked like girls from Phoenix should, they could have worked it to their advantage. But both girls had always been ivory-skinned. They looked like ghosts. Bella's skin stayed white, no matter how much time she would spend in the sun. And Evangeline never showed her skin. She was always wearing a hoodie or a shirt with long – too long – sleeves.

Neither of them were athletes, though Evangeline could run without hurting herself, unlike her older sister who would harm herself and others if she tried to walk and chew gum at the same time.

After Bella finished putting her clothes in the old pine dresser, she took her bag of bathroom necessities and went to the communal bathroom to clean herself up after the day of travel. The fact that there was only one bathroom was another inconvenience to the girls, even though the room was big enough for them not to complain.

Bella looked at her face in the mirror as she brushed through her tangled, damp hair. She sighed. Maybe it was the light – she thought – but she already looked sallower, unhealthy. She was stepping out of the bathroom when her sister opened her door. They almost ran into each other. Bella moved out of her sister's way and got back to her bedroom.

Evangeline was careful to lock the door behind her before she settled her bag on the sink. She didn't look up at the mirror, she rarely did. She liked it there, alone in the cold bathroom. She couldn't hear anyone think. Though, if there was anyone else in her sister's bedroom right now she would have been close enough to hear them, but for some reason she never understood, her sister is the only person she can't hear. But the next morning would be a nightmare. All the other students would be talking about her. Thinking about her. How would she be able to escape that?

She opened her bag and emptied it. She took a silver shining blade out of it. She hid the sharp razor blades in a place she knew nobody would find them. Not that anyone would be looking into her things, but she had a sister, and Bella could be out of make up one day and find the blades while innocently looking into her sister's bag. She removed her hoodie and brought the long sleeves of her shirt up to reveal her scarred wrists. She passed her thumb over the latest cut. It still hurt but not enough. She was going to need a bigger distraction if she was to survive the next day.

The rain and the wind kept both girls awake until midnight. Thick fog was all they could see out their windows in the morning and claustrophobia creeped up on them. They couldn't see the sky; it was like being trapped in a cage.

They ate breakfast quietly with their father. He wished them good luck at school. Both girls thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid Bella and nothing could stop the voices in Evangeline's head. Charlie left first, off the police station that was his wife and family. After he left, his daughters sat at the old square oak table in the unmatching chairs and examined the small kitchen. Nothing had changed. Renée had painted the cabinets yellow eighteen years ago in an attempts to bring some sunshine into the house. Bella saw the pictures over the small fireplace. First, a wedding picture of Charlie and Renée in Las Vegas, then one of herself the day she was born next to the same picture of Evangeline, followed by school pictures. Those were embarrassing to look at – she was going to have to get her father to put them away, at least while they were living there.

Bella couldn't stay in the house anymore. They were going to be early for school, but the pictures had made her uncomfortable. They took their bags and jackets and stepped into the rain. It was just drizzling. Evangeline locked the door before she followed her sister to the truck. The sloshing of their new waterproof boots was an unusual sound and very unnerving to Bella. She missed the normal crunch of gravel as she walked.

Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. The engine started quickly, to Bella's relief but it was so loud it surprised Evangeline who jumped in her seat.

"Sorry," Bella quickly apologized, as if it was her fault. "Are you gonna be okay today?"

"Sure," Evangeline nodded, looking away.

She enjoyed the ride. It was never quieter but when she was with her unreadable sister.

Finding the school wasn't difficult, though neither of them had been there before. The school was, like most other things, just off the highway. It was not obvious that it was a school; only the sign, which declared it to be the Forks High School, made Bella stop. She had no idea where to go, but she followed Evangeline's instructions. Evangeline's instinct was to be trusted. She was rarely wrong. Bella drove around the school and was glad to see that most of the cars were older like hers, nothing flashy. In Phoenix, it was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car there was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out. Bella was quick to cut the engine as soon as she was in a spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention.

They both took a deep breath before they got out of the truck. They kept their face pulled back into their hood as they walked to the sidewalk, crowded with teenagers.

Evangeline did her best to stay focus on her own thoughts. She was playing a song in her head and focused on the lyrics rather than on the other voices that were trying to invade her mind. She followed her sister in the reception where they were welcomed by a red-haired woman wearing glasses.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"I'm Isabella Swan. And this is my sister Evangeline."

Immediate awareness lit her eyes. They were expected. Daughters to the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.

"Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for. "I have your schedules right here and a map of the school."

"Thank you," Bella tried her best to smile.

She handed the map and schedule to her sister before they inspected them. It looked like they wouldn't see each other again before lunch.

"Are you gonna be okay?" Bella asked again.

"I'll be fine, Bella," she nodded, not trying to smile. "See you at lunch."

Evangeline escaped the small office where the receptionist's thoughts were becoming as loud as screams.

Bella watched her sister walk away before she looked down at her own schedule.

English class was going to be boring. She had already studied everything back in Phoenix. She wondered if her mother would send her a folder of old essays, or if she would think that was cheating. Bella was distracted and didn't listen to a word the teacher said. After English, she met Eric, a dark-haired boy with a skin problem who insisted on showing her the way. Mr. Varner, her trigonometry teacher, was the only one who made her stand in front of the class to introduce herself. She would have hated him anyway, just because of the subject he taught.

Mr. Varner wanted Evangeline to do the same, though she didn't have a problem with trigonometry, she didn't like him either. She looked up at him, catching his eyes in hers.

"I don't think that's necessary," Evangeline said.

"If you say so," Mr. Varner nodded after a few seconds of silence, ignoring what had just happened.

Evangeline didn't like being surrounded with people. It was like being in a room where people kept screaming louder and louder. It was easier with time, to block the familiar voices. As her classmates walked into the room, pictures of herself sitting at her table came flashing at her from different perspectives. The voices were merely curious, nobody thought anything too mean. Evangeline started pressing on her wrists, trying to bring silence into her mind.

The best way to ignore the voices was to focus on something else, but the best way to stop it all was pain. She tried to focus on the lesson as she pressed on her cuts with her thumb. She managed to build a wall in her mind, hoping it would be strong enough to last the entire day.

After the bell rang, a tall boy with light brown hair came to meet her.

"Hey, I'm Dean," he smiled at her. "You're Evangeline, right?"

"Angie," she corrected him. She spoke so low he almost didn't hear her.

"Angie. What's your next class?"

"Um, let me look."

Dean insisted on showing her the way. He was very nice and couldn't stop talking. He asked her one or two questions but he mostly spoke about the teachers, telling her who was nice and who shouldn't be messed with. Evangeline was grateful for his help. She was relieved she couldn't hear his thoughts. She had spent the last hour building a wall to block the voices out and there weren't enough people around her to destroy that wall.

The rest of the morning went smoothly. Evangeline was in total control of her mind. Whenever the wall would start to shake, she'd press the cuts on her wrists with her thumb and the pain would make her gain control again.

She wouldn't have minded eating alone, but she was grateful for her sister because she knew if Dean had seen her alone, he would have insisted on eating with her.

"Angela, this is my sister, Angie," she said. "Do you mind if she eats with us?"

"Of course not!" she smiled. "Nice to meet you Angie."

"Hello," Evangeline gave her a shy smile.

Evangeline stared at her plate and ate in silence. She focused on the voices, the real voices, of the people at her table. But, she heard someone call her sister's name. Nobody else heard it, they couldn't have. Evangeline looked up to see a dark-haired boy at the other end of the room. He was eating with seven other students and they were talking about Bella. Finally, the boy started to wave at her.

"Bella, I think he's calling you," Evangeline told her sister.

"Oh, that's Eric," Jessica – Evangeline thought her name was – said.

Bella shyly smiled and waved back. That's when she first saw them.

They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, at the other end of the long room. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at the two sisters, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, Bella's attention.

They didn't look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big – muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers rather than students.

The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.

And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes – purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.

Their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful – maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze haired boy.

"Who are they?" Bella asked Angela. As she looked up to see who she meant – though already knowing, probably, from her tone – suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish one, the youngest, perhaps. He looked at Angela for a fraction of second, and then his dark eyes flickered to Bella's.

Evangeline suddenly looked up, a picture of herself sitting between Angela and her sister flashing in her mind. She saw him, the unbelievably beautiful boy sitting at the other end of the room. He was staring at her sister but his eyes quickly landed on her. He was frustrated. He knew she knew he was. But how could she know? And how could he know she knew? They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity, both of them understanding their silent conversation, both of them knowing; they had the same gift.

They were both speechless. They couldn't stop staring at each other.

"That's Edward, Alice and Emmett Cullen," Angela said, bringing Evangeline back to reality.

Evangeline looked down at her hands and pressed on her cut. She won't be going inside his mind just like he won't be going inside hers.

"And Rosalie and Jasper Hale; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his sister," she said, under her breath.

Bella glanced sideways at the beautiful boy, who was looking at his tray now, picking a bagel to pieces with his long, pale fingers. His mouth was moving very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening. The other four suddenly looked up at Evangeline which surprised her sister.

"Why are they all looking at you?" Jessica asked.

"I don't know," Angie quickly said in a whisper, staring at her plate.

"I'm Edward." She heard suddenly, which startled her. She couldn't believe it. Another one. Finally, she had met someone like her. She wasn't alone. And she wasn't crazy.

"You okay?" her sister asked.

"Yeah, I'm just cold," she lied.

He wasn't inside her mind. He couldn't be. She was inside his. She was hearing his thoughts. If she wanted to, she could directly speak to him inside his mind, without him needing to read her thoughts. She didn't reply, she didn't want him to know she heard him. She pressed once again on her cut, suppressing a cry of pain. Hopefully, she didn't open it. Blood could get messy.

"They are…very nice-looking," Bella struggled with the conspicuous understatement.

"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though – Emmet and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town.

"Which ones are the Cullens?" Bella asked. "They don't look related…"

"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are brother and sister, twins – the blondes – and they're foster children."

"They look a little old for foster children."

"They are now, Jasper and Rosalie are both eighteen, but they've been with the Cullens since they were eight."

"That's really kind of nice – for them to take care of all those kids like that, when they're so young and everything."

"I guess so," Jessica admitted reluctantly. She didn't seem to like the doctor and his sister for some reason. With the glances she was throwing at their adopted children, Bella presumed the reason was jealousy. "It's still weird Dr. Cullen and his sister would live together though with a bunch of kids…"

"Why are they still looking at you?" Angela asked Evangeline.

She looked up at her neighbor before she looked at the Cullens.

"I don't know, I've never talked to any of them," Evangeline shyly answered.

"Well, he looks interested," Jessica scoffed, a hint of jealousy in her voice.

Evangeline looked up once more at Edward who was smiling, amused.

"We're new here," she shrugged. "Everybody is looking at us."

"That's true," Bella sighed. "Have they always lived here?" she asked.

"No," Jessica answered in a voice that implied it should be obvious. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."

Bella and Evangeline felt a surge of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted. Relief that they weren't the only newcomers here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard.

Evangeline looked away, trying hard to keep her wall up. But as Bella examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met her gaze with evident curiosity in his expression. Like he was expecting something of her.

"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" she asked. She peeked at him from the corner of her eye, and he was still staring at her, but not gawking like the other students had today – he had a slightly frustrated expression. She looked down again.

"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him," she sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. Bella tried to hide a smile so she wouldn't upset her new friend.

After a few more minutes, the Cullens left the table. They were all noticeably graceful – even the big, brawny one. It was unsettling to watch. Edward gave one last look to Evangeline who looked away, hoping she made it clear she didn't want to talk to him.

The rest of the day went quietly for Evangeline, who started to recognize a few faces. She sat next to a girl called Emily whom she liked. The blonde girl didn't ask too many questions and she was smart and nice. They would get along fine.

The final bell rang at last. Bella and Evangeline were supposed to return their paperwork to the office. When Evangeline stepped in, her sister was already there, as was Edward. The cold wind gusted through the room, rustling the papers on the desk, swirling Bella's hair on her face.

Edward's back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at her. At first Evangeline thought he had noticed her presence. But he hadn't. He was looking at her sister with piercing, hate-filled eyes. Surprise, curiosity and incomprehension made Evangeline let go of the wall she had installed in her mind. What she heard and felt didn't make any sense. Rage, hunger, disgust, restraint…It was like all he wanted to do was jump on Bella and… she couldn't make sense of the rest. As the thought crossed her mind, Edward's eyes flickered to hers.

"Never mind, then," he said hastily in a voice like velvet. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you for your help." And he turned on his heel, giving one last look to Evangeline before he disappeared out the door.

"What did you do to him?" Evangeline asked, stunned.

Her sister didn't answer. She went to the desk, her face white for once instead of red, and handed the signed slip.

"How did your first day go, dear?" the receptionist asked maternally.

"Fine," she lied, her voice weak. She didn't look convince, never was Evangeline.

When they got to the truck, it was almost the last car in the lot. It seemed like a haven, already the closest thing to home Isabella had in this damp green hole. Once inside, Evangeline looked at her sister who was staring out the windshield blankly.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Nothing," she shook her head. She was trying hard not to tear up. "I…I didn't even say anything to him…It was like…I smelled horribly bad or something."

Evangeline frowned and leaned forward to get a whiff of her sister.

"You smell fine," she said.

"I know!" she cried, upset.

"Maybe it had nothing to do with you."

Bella scoffed. "He was trying to get out of Biology. He just doesn't like me, but…it's like he hates me, I never even said a word to him!"

Evangeline had nothing to say so she didn't say anything.

Bella was too upset to drive but soon both girls were cold enough to need the heater, so she turned the key and the engine roared to life.