AN: Hey there :) Just wanted to make you aware, I am cross-posting on AO3, so if that's your bag these days head over and follow me there, also under Glitterb1234. I'm hoping to upload a new chapter every Friday, although this may slip thanks to the wonders of writer's block and the fact that I go back to work in a few weeks.
In terms of what I'm keeping/using from each book, I've tried to make it a roughly even blend of characters from each story. This includes mixing Cullen family members, human friends, teachers and others. I won't actually list who I'm using here as it will become apparent through the course of the story, but I will say that I've chosen characters based on the relationships that I wanted to retain and the interactions I want to have. Most of the characters will remain largely the same as they were written by Stephenie Meyer, allowing for some creative liberties and twisting them to my own uses. The major changes will be to Beau and Edythe. My Beau has grown up with Charlie, so while he has shared a lot of responsibility he hasn't quite been the teenage parent in the same way he was for Renee. Likewise, Charlie is more comfortable with his role as Dad. Edythe has a different power (to be revealed later) which has a significant impact on the way that she views the world, as does the fact that she came into vampirism with the familiarity of having her brother there to help her. She isn't as angry as Edward and, while she has her moments, her degree of self-loathing is much lower. Crucially, Edythe and Beau have been together for about a year at the beginning of the story, so they've already been through a lot of the relationship drama and figuring things out that Edward and Bella did around the time of Eclipse; they are comfortable and happy together, without loads of tension. Hopefully that will become clearer as the story progresses.
The only other characters I wanted to mention are McKayla and Jeremy, who will be borrowing lines and personality traits from Jessica and Mike as necessary.
Hope you enjoy the story :)
P.S. This story will follow the plot of Twilight pretty closely, including chapter divides where this makes sense. However, I'm thinking of switching to Beau's point of view for certain sections that aren't substantially changed by the introduction of extra characters, the meadow being the big one that comes to mind. Feel free to let me know in reviews if that's something you would find interesting.
Chapter 1: First Sight
January 17th, 2005
It was raining as the plane touched down on the rough tarmac of the tiny Port Angeles airport. This was not unusual; the Olympic peninsula of Northwest Washington State saw more rainfall every year than anywhere else in the continental United States. It was as far as one could conceivably get from the baking deserts and shifting heat haze of Phoenix, Arizona, the place I had happily called home for the last 12 years of my life. But, with our planned move to Florida still something of a question mark and the vast distance between my mother and her new husband wearing on all of us, I had decided that at least a short period of self-exile was probably in everyone's best interest.
Even if it made me feel like crying just imagining it.
That was overstating things, of course. There was nothing inherently wrong with Forks. But I was too much my mother's daughter not to feel at least a pang of sadness to be leaving the bright sunshine and warmth behind. The stifling cloud and rain had been one of the reasons Renée had left Forks herself, finally giving up on trying to make her relationship with my father work when the magic of her impetuous infatuation had well and truly worn off. It might have been easier if she hadn't had two children with him first, something my mother fully admitted, but she was always careful to make sure we both knew she wouldn't trade us for anything in the world. Still, I had heard "College and career, then boys and babies, okay, Bella?" one too many times not to wonder if there wasn't perhaps a tinge of regret festering somewhere deep down inside her.
I knew I could be unfair to Renée sometimes. She was flighty, excitable, and had something of a short attention span when it came to hobbies – or remembering where she'd left her keys – but she was a good mom who'd had to make some difficult decisions in her life: giving up the relative stability of life with Charlie when she had six-month-old twins to take care of; throwing the three of us on the mercy of her disapproving mother, who surprised everyone by taking us in and helping her get through college; admitting, when the topic of custody agreements came up, that she didn't feel like she could look after both of us on her own; agreeing to split us up, one with her and one to our father, Parent Trap style. That was one choice she had refused to make – which one of us was going to Charlie.
"I didn't want either of you to think I didn't want you," she'd admitted to me, in one of many probably-too-candid discussions we'd had over the years. "Selfish of me really, and cowardly. We let Gran pick in the end. I think she pulled names out of a hat."
So it was that the Swan Twins had gone our separate ways; with the random whim of a piece of paper, I stayed with our mother and my brother Beau was banished to this rainy corner of the world to live with our dad. Not that Beau saw it that way. He was quite happily acclimatised to Forks, his home for all of his memory. We were barely a year old when it all went down, so neither of us actually remembered being together for more than a few weeks at a time. The visitation arrangements had always been an interesting balancing act; one week together with one parent, then one week alone with the parent we didn't live with, then another week together with the other parent. Rinse, repeat, every summer from the age of four. Renée and Charlie traded off on who got us first, and who had us for holidays. Our birthday was usually spent apart, since it was smack in the middle of the school semester, but we'd always made a point to call each other and send presents. Others would always comment on our unique situation, expressing a whole range of concerns about the impact on our development, but it never much mattered to us; what was normal, except what you habitually experienced? At least it was all fairly amicable. The only hiccup had been when I'd refused to keep coming to Forks when we were fourteen, prompting us to switch to a two-week family vacation in California instead.
Now, I would be living in my father's house permanently for the first time in 17 years, and the only silver lining I could eke out of the whole affair was getting the chance to spend more time with Charlie and Beau.
I did smile, despite the downpour, when I saw the two of them waiting for me just past the luggage carousel. They were smiling as well, Charlie the shy slight curve that barely showed beneath his moustache, Beau the giant goofy grin that practically split his face in two. In typical fashion, I practically tripped into their open arms and Beau laughed.
"Watch it, Bell," he chuckled. "Dad isn't strong enough to hold us all up anymore."
I scowled up at him but couldn't hold onto the ire for long; I was too pleased to see him. Beau and I were fraternal twins – the result of two separate eggs fertilised at the same time – and therefore not precisely identical, but we were startlingly alike. We were both slim, although Beau's height made him lanky and somewhat awkward, while I had been kindly described as 'petite' by several people. We both took after Renée in terms of facial features, frequently being mistaken for a trio of siblings, much to her delight. We were both pale, even after I'd spent most of my life in the sun, with dark brown hair that curled ever so slightly. We both had a tendency to trip over thin air, blush at the drop of a hat and cry when we were angry. We liked a lot of the same books and music, and very occasionally got caught doing the creepy twin thing of speaking in unison or finishing each other's sentences. We had learned quickly the many illogical assumptions people made about twins; whispers of 'telepathic' had followed us all our lives. It was ridiculous, of course. Twins, especially fraternal ones like us, were no more alike than any other siblings. So what if we'd shared a womb for eight and a half months? It didn't mean I could somehow tell that something was wrong with Beau from hundreds of miles away.
Beau, unfortunately, did not share my ridicule of such ideas, and had frequently played at reading my mind when our dad forced me to spend time with him and his friends in our younger years. I indulged him only long enough to satisfy their curiosity, then retreated to the comfortable familiarity of my books. He had always been more outgoing then me, at least within the narrow boundaries of his small group of friends, more like Renée, if only selectively. Somewhat counterintuitively, I took after Charlie, preferring quiet and solitude. Beau had theorised it all had to do with our eyes; his were blue like Renée's, while mine shared Charlie's chocolate brown shade. I had let him know exactly what I thought of that theory, of course – completely ridiculous.
Still, being with him again felt like coming home, softening some of the sting of spending a protracted amount of time in Forks.
"Very funny, Beau," Charlie chuckled, patting us both on the back as he pulled awkwardly out of the hug. Another trait we all shared: discomfort with over enthusiastic shows of emotion. He smoothed his jacket self-consciously. "How are you, Bella? And how's Renée?"
I smiled my own small smile. "I'm good, Dad. Mom's fine. I left her packing up the last few things she needs for Florida."
"How's Phil's job hunt going?" Beau piped up, clearly eager to hear the news. Our stepfather had earned Beau's approval before they'd even met each other, purely because he played baseball for a living.
I shrugged. "Okay, I think. No signing yet but he's had a few try-outs and got himself on a list or two for spring training, whatever that means."
Beau laughed, leaning down to sling the strap of my duffel bag over his shoulder. "We'll make a sports fan out of you yet, little sister."
"Two minutes," I shot back reflexively. Beau was technically born before me and liked to remind me of that fact; in return, I always reminded him how slim the window of difference was.
"Now you two, don't start," Charlie chimed in, heavy with sarcasm. Beau and I rarely truly fought, or even bickered much these days. I could count our major arguments on one hand.
We continued catching up as we walked through the rain to Charlie's cruiser, my new coat and rainboots getting their first workout. Just as we got in, Beau joining me in the back seat as usual, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to check, and the goofy grin was back, this time with a soft, doting edge that I had only seen a handful of times.
"Edythe?" I asked, and he turned pink.
One positive, or at least interesting, part of moving back to Forks, apart from spending more time with the boys, was the chance to finally meet the mysterious Edythe.
Edythe Cullen and her family had made an impact on the entire town when they moved down from somewhere in the wilds of Alaska two years earlier – not least my hapless brother. After gazing at her from afar for months, he was just building up the courage to try talking to her when she shocked everyone by asking him to the Spring Sadie Hawkins Dance. It had taken him a month to ask her on a follow-up date, and another month to ask her to be his girlfriend, but they'd been together ever since, and he was deliriously happy. He was oddly shy about talking about her, though he would wax poetic about how amazing she was once you got him going. Weirdly, in all the time since they made things official, Renée and I had never actually met her, or even seen a picture. Renée had gone as far as inviting her to the wedding, hoping that Beau would convince her to come and meet us despite the potentially high-stakes environment of a family celebration. But no such luck; Edythe's own family had apparently been busy that weekend, and she couldn't get away. It was a reasonable enough excuse, and our mother had accepted it with only the requisite disappointment. I, on the other hand, recognised the tell-tale signs of my brother trying to lie. Neither of us were very good at hiding things – a pair of open books, Mom called us – and we were especially bad at keeping anything from each other.
Right now, anyone would be able to tell than Beau was utterly smitten with whatever she had just sent him.
"Shut up," he muttered, suddenly as shy as he'd been at age ten, admitting he had a crush on McKayla Newton.
"I said nothing!" I insisted, holding my hands up in surrender. "I'm just looking forward to meeting this girl, at last."
"You'll love her," Charlie assured me from the driver's seat, glancing back at us in the rear-view mirror. "She's a wonderful girl, isn't she, Beau?"
"Obviously," Beau replied, curling into his seat and clearly uncomfortable with all the attention. He started tapping away at his phone, holding it in front of his face in a way that was clearly meant to end the conversation.
I gave him his moment, turning to stare out of the window at the dark green wall of trees that lined the highway. I mulled over the greenness of it all, so different from the tans, greys and dusty whites of Phoenix. I checked my own phone, finding a text from Renée that had arrived while I was in the air, and sent a blandly positive reply, passing on hellos from Charlie and Beau that they hadn't actually offered but which would make her happy. But try as I might, I couldn't shake my curiosity, and my mind strayed to cataloguing what I did know about the girl who seemed to have completely bewitched my brother.
Edythe was a senior, though only about six months older than us – I had a vague memory of Beau saying her birthday was in February or March. She came from a big family, all adopted by a doctor and her husband. If my memory served me correctly, her younger brother was her only biological sibling; the Cullens had adopted them when they were about ten and eleven, respectively. They had a set of fraternal twins in their family too, a niece and nephew of Mr Cullen's who had been living with him since they were eight, some kind of long-term foster placement. Then there were two sisters, also adopted but not related to each other. I couldn't remember how old they were, or any of the names, though I must have been told them at some point. Aside from that, all I could recall about Edythe was that she was kind, liked music, did well in school and was very beautiful – all Beau's report, of course. I couldn't even remember him saying what colour her hair or eyes were, or how tall she was, or anything physical about her. I'd always put it down to Beau's awkwardness; really, what boy wants to tell his mother and sister every little detail about his girlfriend? But shouldn't I know a little more about her after over a year?
My musing was interrupted by our arrival at Charlie's house – home, at least for now. It hadn't changed at all since the last time I'd been there, or in the nearly 20 years since my parents bought it, to be honest. As we ferried my things inside (just one trip, I didn't have a lot with me) I noted the yellow cabinets in the kitchen, painted by Renée "to bring some sunshine into the room." There was the familiar parade of school pictures on the living room mantle, little pairs of faces jostling for space with Charlie and Renée's one nice wedding portrait and a photo of the four of us at the hospital just after Beau and I were born. There was Charlie's squishy recliner, facing the TV, and the worn-out couch where we'd enjoyed so many movie nights and Saturday morning cartoons over the years. And upstairs, the familiar little bedroom that had always been mine, with its same bed and desk, though the second hand-looking computer was a new addition.
Beau and I had shared the room for a while, until we were about seven and it became clear we had outgrown the space, even for the short periods when we both occupied it. Charlie had weighed up the cost of moving to a bigger house – which was Renée's solution to the same problem in Phoenix – and had eventually decided just to extend this one instead, adding an extra bedroom at the back of the house downstairs. Beau had gotten to choose which room he wanted and picked the new one because he was allowed to help with the design. One of my favourite memories was the summer when we were nine, when the three of us spent our week together painting both rooms, camping out in the living room to escape the fumes. Now I could still pick out the spot where I had accidentally painted an inch of the skirting board, and the patch of blue Beau had insisted we put beneath the window; there was a matching strip of lavender in his room, the same shade as the walls in here.
"So we don't forget about each other," he had insisted, smiling his gap-toothed smile. Renée had practically melted when he'd asked to do the same thing at her house.
I ran my finger along the blue stripe and smiled at the memory. When I turned around, Beau was parked firmly on my bed, tapping away at his phone again.
"Is this what I have to look forward to? A brother who spends all his time talking to his girlfriend?" I teased.
Beau looked up, a guilty expression on his face until he saw my smirk. He stuck his tongue out at me, then put his phone aside and yanked me down next to him. Of course, I over-balanced and sprawled across the comforter, making both of us laugh. When I sat up, he put his arm around me a squeezed.
"It is good to have you here, Bella, even if you don't really want to be."
I looked sideways at him, my turn to be guilty now. "Is it that obvious?"
He shook his head and patted my shoulder reassuringly. "Only to me. I'm pretty sure you have Renée and Charlie fooled."
I sighed and slumped further into him, putting my head on his shoulder. "Thanks, that's very reassuring."
I felt more than heard him laugh. "Wait until we get to school tomorrow. Everyone's dying to meet you and I have told them nothing." He lifted his hands into a classic evil villain pose. "Mwahaha."
I groaned and flopped back on the bed as he left, still chuckling over his own joke.
Like me, Beau was the primary cook of the household, though for rather different reasons. Renée had a habit of experimenting with food, and the results weren't always especially palatable. Charlie had once nearly blown up the microwave trying to heat up pasta sauce without taking the lid off the jar. To his credit, he made a mean breakfast spread... but that was about it.
Beau made beef stroganoff, our Grandma Swan's recipe and a mutual favourite between the three of us. Charlie ate quietly while Beau and I hammered out the framework of a schedule for meals, dishes and who would drive his beast of a truck to and from school every day. Charlie had surprised Beau with the truck as an early birthday present at the start of the school year, bought second hand from a family friend who could no longer drive, and I'd been hearing tales of it ever since. Some of them made me nervous – the noise, the age, the sometimes-unreliable gear box – but, just like Beau, I had unexpectedly fallen in love with the beautiful red monster as soon as I saw it parked in the driveway. There was also the small matter of the bathroom – namely, who would use it when. Thankfully that one sorted itself out, since Beau was in the habit of taking morning showers while I had evening ones, so there was only the delicate balance of brushing teeth to contend with.
Charlie insisted on doing the dishes, then we watched part of a baseball game; seeing how bored I was, Charlie switched it to some mindless sitcom that none of us enjoyed. Beau would periodically bury his nose in his phone, but all in all it was a comfortable evening. If my brother seemed somewhat eager to go to bed, Charlie didn't comment on it, so I felt no need to either, though it did seem odd to me; Beau had always been one to push bedtime when we were little.
My first night in Forks was restless. The rain drummed on the roof for hours, the pattering sound impossibly loud above my head. I finally passed out from sheer exhaustion around 1AM, then woke before my alarm to the sound of Charlie's heavy tread on the creaky step halfway down the stairs. I rolled over and tried to sleep for another half hour, before giving up and going to get ready.
Beau joined me soon after I got downstairs, just in time to say goodbye to Charlie, and we ate a quiet but amiable breakfast. He showed me the jar of cash in the cupboard labelled 'Food Money', our source for both lunch money and grocery shopping, before we finally donned our almost matching raincoats and headed out to the truck. He drove, which left me with plenty of time to get even more anxious about his comment from the night before; I hated being the centre of attention and the idea of hundreds of curious eyes on me was terrifying.
The truck pulled noisily into the student parking lot, garnering a few looks but not the staring I had expected. Until we got out, then it felt like everyone was looking at us... at me. Beau didn't seem bothered; he was looking around as he led me towards the main office, not meeting anyone's gaze but clearly searching for someone. Probably Edythe. But he didn't find her before we reached the building, and I saw his shoulders slump ever so slightly. It disoriented me, this new side of my brother. I'd never known him so fixated on anything, except perhaps baseball.
He introduced me to Mr Cope, the friendly receptionist, who eagerly welcomed me and handed over a schedule and a map. I tried to memorize the latter so I wouldn't have to walk around staring at it all day. Beau filched my timetable.
"Looks like we've got first period together, that's good... and Government and Gym. Not much, but it could be worse. Of course, you can come sit with us at lunch, we can..."
His babbling trailed off, and I looked up from my study of the map. Beau was grinning that soft, smitten grin again, staring at something across the lot. I followed his gaze, and my jaw dropped.
Walking towards us was quite possibly the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was slight, no taller than me if I had to guess, slender and delicate. Her features were very fine, set in a slim, smooth face, every aspect perfectly proportioned, not a thing out of place. Her wide, doll-like eyes were dark and ringed by deep circles, almost as if she were recovering from a broken nose... but her nose was as straight and perfect as anything else. She was even paler than us, almost chalky white, with a flowing river of long, copper-coloured hair that seemed to blow out behind her as she walked, like a fashion model turned to face a fan. Her lithe limbs moved with a grace and smoothness that seemed impossible, like she was floating more than walking. She came to a stop right in front of Beau, closer than any casual acquaintance would stand, a small smile on her perfect pale pink lips.
"Good morning," she said, and her voice was like honey, rich, smooth and sweet, with an almost musical quality, as if she were singing rather than speaking.
Beau didn't say anything in reply, just put an arm around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. It was soft, chaste, barely more than a touch of lips to lips, and yet I felt the need to look away. There was an intensity to the moment that made me feel like I was intruding on something private. No, something... sacred.
The girl pulled away first; Beau chased her with his lips, and she chuckled, laying a finger on them to stop him.
"Not now, my love," she murmured, barely loud enough for me to hear. "Whatever will your sister think of me?"
Beau blinked and looked at me like he'd forgotten I was even there. "Oh. Right, of course, uh..." He cleared his throat. "Bella, this is Edythe. Edythe, Bella."
"I figured," I joked, the weakness of my own voice making it fall somewhat flat. "Nice to finally meet you, Edythe."
I put my hand out and Edythe shook it lightly and quickly, like she didn't want to hold on for too long. Her hand was freezing cold; the weather maybe, or did she suffer from poor circulation?
"Likewise," she said, smiling a beatific smile. "Beau's told me so much about you. Welcome to Forks High."
"Thanks!" I was probably being overly cheerful, but I wanted to make a good impression on Edythe, even more so now that I'd seen her. I re-evaluated my earlier assessment of Beau's bias – she really was stunning.
"Alright if Bella joins us for lunch?" Beau asked, still a somewhat dreamy tone to his voice.
"Of course," Always that lovely smile, yet I was beginning to get a nagging sense that it was somehow forced, just a touch too polite. "I look forward to it. But we should probably all get going, I only wanted to say a quick hello before class."
Edythe turned and kissed Beau again, on the cheek this time, then turned and walked away, throwing a breezy, "See you both later," back over her shoulder.
"Woah." I breathed, utterly unable to come up with anything more coherent.
"Tell me about it," Beau sighed. "Man, I'm lucky. Well..." He seemed to shake himself slightly and clapped his hands together. "To class we go then."
Our morning classes passed pretty much without incident. Beau introduced me to the members of his small, select friendship group that shared our first period English class, and they in turn introduced me to others in the following few hours. A handful of other students introduced themselves too, and almost all of them said the same thing.
"You must be Beau's sister, Isabella."
I corrected each of them – "Bella." – and suppressed the vindictive urge to remind them that my brother's full name was Beaufort. I did my best to memorize their faces, though not a single name seemed to be sticking in my head. I tried to at least recall Beau's close friends: Jeremy, Logan, Tyler, McKayla, Erica and Angela. The boys were somewhat familiar, because I'd met them before; I could see hints of their preteen selves in the faces before me. McKayla, I knew by reputation, and I couldn't help comparing Beau's one-time crush to his present partner. Poor girl, I thought. She never had a chance. She seemed nice enough, as did Erica and Angela, though they both had an awkwardness to them that their other friends lacked. Erica's was more obvious, the nerdy patches on her backpack and her giant thick-lensed glasses speaking volumes. Angela was just quiet, a little like me, I thought. Uncomfortable with attention. I decided quickly that I liked her the best, mainly because she didn't ask as many questions as the others.
At last, lunch time rolled around. I walked from Spanish to the cafeteria with Jeremy and McKayla; he flirted with her shamelessly, but she either didn't notice or was playing hard to get. After we got our food, they led me to a long rectangular table in the middle of the room, where the rest of the group was already gathered. Beau was ostentatiously saving the seats beside and opposite him, bookbag on one and foot on the other, making good use of his long legs. He kicked with his other foot at Tyler when he tried to take the opposite chair, but both boys laughed and I understood that it was a game, not a serious fight. My brother lit up when I reached him, kicking out the chair he was using as a footstool so I could sit in it.
"Hey Bell," he said, wide grin firmly in place as he almost absentmindedly waved to McKayla and bumped fists with Jeremy. "You survived your first morning, congrats."
I rolled my eyes at him and sat down, cracking open my can of soda to take a sip.
"Where's Edythe?" I asked, nodding to his bag and trying to sound casual.
"She'll be here in a minute," he replied with a knowing smile; my interest was noted, by him at least. "She's just checking in with Rosalie about some homework, I think."
Just like this morning, I followed his diverted gaze to the other side of the room. And, just like this morning, the sight I saw took my breath away.
Edythe was stood beside a table in the corner, talking quietly to an absolutely stunning statuesque blonde girl who looked like she had just stepped off the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Beside her was another girl, a thick brown rope of a braid pulled over her shoulder, her arm resting on the back of the blonde's chair. Even when seated, I could tell she was tall, and well-built too, not the lithe slender shape of the other two, but muscled while somehow still retaining a distinctive femininity. I wondered if she played field hockey or volleyball, or maybe swam competitively; that would explain the muscles. The third girl sat at the table was tiny, pixie-like, with a shock of short, artfully messy black hair. She was leaning into the side of another blond, a boy, the other half of the twins perhaps. His hair was more honey where the girl's was golden, and he wore it longer than most boys I knew, the ends brushing the curve of his jaw. He looked older, like he should be in college rather than high school. The last figure was another boy, younger looking than all the others, even the tiny girl. He had to be Edythe's biological brother, I decided at once; that bronze hair was far too distinctive not to be a shared genetic trait. He was picking at a sandwich with long fingers, looking bored.
Edythe alone had been incredible enough, but all the siblings together was like something from another world. They were all gorgeous. And even though I knew that they weren't all related by blood, I couldn't ignore the glaring similarities between them. Like Edythe, they were all chalky pale, with dark eyes despite the range of hair tones. There were deep shadows under their eyes, like none of them had gotten a good night's sleep last night. Each one had a tray of food in front of them, but with the exception of the bronze-haired boy's fiddling, none of them were even touching it, let alone eating. Apart from Edythe and the sister she was talking to – Rosalie, Beau had said – none of them were looking at each other, simply staring into different corners of the room.
"Which is which?" I asked Beau quietly, leaning towards him and hoping his friends wouldn't hear. "I know you've told me their names, but..."
I trailed off, and my brother nodded, not chastising or even teasing me for my lack of attention to his reports.
"Well, the blonde girl is Rosalie, like I said. The other blond is her brother, Jasper. Then the bigger girl is Eleanor and the little one is Alice. And that of course leaves Edward." He grinned. "The awkward seventh wheel."
Strange, old-fashioned names, like grandparents. I had thought the same thing when Beau first mentioned Edythe, though I knew from his emails that her spelling of the name was a little more unusual.
I must have looked confused and must not have been sneaky enough; McKayla leaned in from the seat beside me with the eager smile of a teenage girl with gossip to impart.
"They're all together," she hissed conspiratorially, "Like together, together. Alice and Jasper, and Rosalie and Eleanor. And they live together."
There was censure in her tone, especially when she spoke of the two girls being a couple. I couldn't help frowning; did she have to be quite so small town? This was the 21st century, after all.
Beau didn't like her tone either. "Drop it, Kay," he almost growled.
She waved him off; clearly, they'd already had this argument. "I'm just saying, it's weird. Almost as weird as how Edward doesn't date at all. Apparently, none of the girls here are good enough for him."
She sniffed and my frown turned into a smile that I tried to hide behind my drink can. I wondered when he'd turned her down and resolved to get the story out of Beau later.
I looked back at the Cullen siblings, to see if Edythe was coming over so I could brace myself for the impact of her presence. She was still talking to Rosalie, but that wasn't the first thing I noticed. The bronze-haired boy, Edward, had stopped playing with his food and was no longer staring into the middle-distance. Instead, he was looking directly at me. I looked away, my cheeks flushing pink, embarrassed to be caught looking. When I peeked through the fall of my hair a moment later, he was back to his abstraction. Had I imagined the look? It hadn't been precisely interested, I didn't think. He still looked hopelessly bored. It was as if someone had called his name and his head had turned reflexively, though he had already decided not to answer them.
"There certainly are a lot of them," I mused. "It must be a lot of work for their parents."
Beau shrugged. "They pretty much take care of themselves at this point, really. There's a lot of looks and whispers..." He shot another stern look at McKayla. "... but Carine and Earnest are good people, and I've never had a problem with any of the kids. Honestly, you should hear Dad gushing about them. He thinks Carine hung the moon." He sat up a little straighter, his posture and face clearly meant to mimic Charlie as he quoted him in a gravelly voice. "'All those teenagers, but never a whit of trouble. Better behaved than some kids whose grandparents grew up here.'"
Jeremy overheard that one and flicked a mushroom from his pizza slice at my brother. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, man. I don't remember you objecting to teepee-ing Banner's house until after The Chief caught us."
Several people laughed at that, and the conversation turned to recalling pranks they – mainly the boys – had pulled over the years. Beau picked the mushroom off his shirt (he'd tried to catch it in his mouth and failed) and chomped on it, smiling. It made me happy, that smile; knowing that my brother was happy here was comforting. At least one of us deserved to have this level of ease around people, this natural aptitude for social connections. It certainly wasn't me. Of all the things I was already missing about Arizona, I couldn't honestly name one that was a person, other than Renée.
Edythe arrived then, sinking gracefully into the seat beside Beau and greeting him with another oddly intimate kiss. I thought perhaps I wasn't alone in feeling like an intruder to these moments, because the whole table got quieter and no one else really greeted her. I felt the need to make up for the deficit.
"Hi Edythe," I said with a brightness that I hoped didn't seem too forced. "How was your morning?"
She looked almost taken aback by my question, but in the next split second the polite smile was back. "Pleasantly average, I suppose, thank you for asking, Bella. And yours?"
"Good. Everyone's been very welcoming."
"I'm glad." Her reply wasn't a dismissal, precisely, but it did feel like the end of the conversation. Awkward, I focused on making a bigger dent in my lunch. Edythe had a tray, and she picked at it in much the way her brother had. Beau stole a grape from her fruit salad, but she didn't chide him, just smiled and fed him another piece of fruit.
Again, their quiet intimacy had me averting my eyes. Everyone else at the table was either blessedly engaged in other conversations or too far away to comfortably talk to, allowing me a moment's respite to scan the cafeteria at large. In every direction, curious eyes stared back, and my gaze skipped across all of them, my embarrassment so acute it was almost painful. Remembering the Cullen siblings' odd non-directed staring, I looked to their table as a potential safe place. To my surprise, Edward was looking at me again, not the bored look anymore but an intense stare, as if there was something about me that confused him. Our eyes held for a long moment, before I dropped mine to my tray, feeling the heat of a blush colour my cheeks. Beau was absorbed in his quiet conversation with Edythe, but I thought I saw her eyeing me, too quick and circumspect for me to read any particular intention in the look. Did she see her brother's stare and, like me, wonder at its reason?
Lunch passed, and the students scattered. I watched the Cullens, first Alice alone and then the others together, stand and dump their still full trays. Edythe too seemed to have barely touched her food, apart from what she had given to Beau. Before I could comment, she had swept away to her next class, and Angela was shyly approaching me, offering to walk with me to Biology, which we both had next.
The class was assembling gradually when we arrived, a typical state for the after-lunch period. The teacher, Mr Banner according to my schedule, was in the room but still getting himself organised, and students drifted in without much sense of urgency. Angela quickly crossed the room to her seat, and any hope I might have harboured of spending a bit more time with her was dashed when I saw she already had a partner. It didn't take me long to locate what seemed to be the only empty seat, in the centre table of the back row, because beside it was the distinctive bronze head of Edward Cullen. Abruptly more nervous than I had been before, I tried to project some kind of calm as I approached the teacher's desk to have him sign my slip. As I passed the desk that would surely be mine, I glanced sideways, trying to be subtle about it.
What I saw made me stumble into the table in front of me.
Edward Cullen was glaring at me, a hatred in his eyes that I could only think to describe as murderous. This close, I could see those eyes were pitch black, barely a distinction between pupil and iris. They bored into me with the force of two black holes, repelling rather than pulling me in. Fear raced up my spine and I felt my heart start to pick up speed.
I righted myself, muttering an apology to the girl I had almost fallen on top of, and continued to the desk, knowing I must look visibly shaken. Thankfully, Mr Banner didn't ask me to introduce myself to the class, like Mrs Varner the Trig teacher had, merely handing me a textbook and signing the slip with barely a glance at me. By the time I turned to take my seat, I had composed myself somewhat. Still, I was more nervous than I should have been, sitting down beside Edward. He didn't speak, didn't even acknowledge me; he'd shifted his chair, so he was as far away from me as the desk allowed, his body tensed and utterly still. When he did look at me, it was still with that brutal, inexplicable anger. I turned my gaze to the tabletop, shaking my hair out to provide a barrier between us. Mr Banner began his lecture, and I hurriedly flipped open my notebook and scrambled for a pen.
It felt like the longest hour I had ever lived through. I was glad the material was something I'd already covered, because I wasn't paying very good attention at all. I did my best to take careful notes but couldn't keep from being distracted by the tension and hostility fairly radiating from the boy beside me. He never relaxed his tense posture, perched on the edge of his stool at the far end of the table. Every time I glanced at him, he was glaring back at me, his temper never seeming to cool. His hand was a fist on his thigh which never loosened. He was so still, it didn't even look like he was breathing. When the bell finally rang, he shot out of his seat like a jackrabbit and was out of the room before I'd had time to close my books. I watched him go, my mouth slightly agape.
A low whistle drew my attention to McKayla, who had appeared beside me while I was distracted.
"Did you stab him with a pencil or something?" she asked, incredulous. "I mean, he's not the most warm and friendly person on the planet, but that was..."
Not his usual behaviour, apparently. If I'd had time to hope he was always so violently standoffish, that banished such thoughts.
"I... I don't know," I said, finding it a little hard to speak. "We didn't even say anything to each other."
McKayla raised an eyebrow at that. "You'd think he would at least introduce himself, all things considered. Oh well." She shrugged dismissively. "I told you he was weird. Let's go to Gym."
I trailed beside her as she chatted about something inconsequential, I couldn't muster the focus to listen properly. My mind was fixated on that harsh, hateful glare, wondering what had caused it. Something must have happened before I arrived, I decided. He couldn't possibly hate me so quickly, so completely, without so much as a word exchanged. And yet his focus had been so clearly on me.
Beau was waiting for us outside the gym. Unlike McKayla, he noticed my strange mood at once, and he was concerned.
"What's wrong, what happened?" he asked, hands grasping my arms and ducking his chin to try and meet my eyes.
"Nothing, it's nothing," I tried to reassure him.
"Edward's her lab partner for Biology, but he was giving her the stink eye all through class," McKayla chimed in helpfully. "Didn't introduce himself or anything, did he, Bella?"
Beau's eyes widened, a wordless request for confirmation.
"It's fine, I'm fine," I insisted. "I'll tell you later, okay? I don't want to be late."
He let it go, thankfully, though he frowned, and I knew he would hold me to that promise of 'later'.
Coach Clapp issued me a uniform but thankfully didn't make me change. I watched from the side-lines as my new classmates played three-a-side volleyball with varying levels of skill. I smiled just a little watching Beau play. Despite his love of baseball, my brother was not athletic in the slightest, something else we shared. He was convinced our balance issues had to have some kind of medical explanation, as did our tendency to faint at the merest hint of blood. I knew we were just somehow both chronically clumsy. His team generally tried to stay out of his way and keep him from having to get involved, but their opponents would occasionally take advantage of the handicap he provided. Twice the ball hit him squarely on the top of the head, and he took so many tumbles I lost count. McKayla and Logan, who had gallantly agreed to be his team, were visibly exasperated.
I went to hand in my paperwork while Beau changed, feeling a little bit better. His performance in Gym had amused me enough to lift my spirits. As soon as I entered the office, they plummeted again.
Edward Cullen was at the desk, arguing with Mr Cope. I quickly realised that he was trying to switch out of his sixth hour Biology class to another option, any other option – another time, another course, permission to take the time for independent study. I was aghast all over again. Something must have happened before I arrived, he must have some issue with the teacher or another classmate. This couldn't possibly be about me... and yet I couldn't shake the feeling that it was. How horribly narcissistic of me.
Another girl opened the door while I stood there, plastered against the wall in fear. She didn't pause, just put a slip of paper into the basket and dashed out again, but Edward stiffened and turned, the glare already fixed on his face before he even saw me.
"Never mind then," he said, and the words were nearly a growl. "I can see it's impossible. Thank you for your help."
He swept out of the room as quickly as he had left Biology, like something was chasing him. I had to blink a few times and take a deep shaky breath before I could approach the counter to hand in my completed form.
"Good first day, dear?" Mr Cope asked kindly.
I couldn't speak; I just nodded and left as quickly as I could.
Beau was waiting by the truck, an expectant look on his face, but he held his questions at least for the moment. A silver Volvo pealed past us, too fast to see the driver; another shiny white car, much newer than any of the others in the lot, followed at a slightly more sedate pace, and I could see Edythe was driving this one, her sisters in the back seat. Of course, they were rich as well as beautiful. 'Twas ever thus.
We were on the road ourselves before my brother launched his interrogation. "Well? What the hell happened in Biology?"
I gave him the run down, not editing or leaving things out as I might have done with someone else. Beau and I had long since agreed not to keep secrets from each other, a very 'us against the world' mentality to be sure, but it worked for us, kept us close across hundreds of miles of distance.
He was quiet when I finished, contemplating it all with more seriousness than I had expected.
"It can't be me, right?" I prompted. I needed some reassurance. "Something else must have happened to put him in that mood. Has Edythe mentioned anything?"
"No," he shook his head. "No, she hasn't said anything. Edward's pretty reserved though, doesn't even really talk to the others that much. I'm sure you're right, there must be something else going on. I can ask-"
"No, no, don't do that," I said hurriedly. No need to reveal my self-absorption to Edythe when we still barely knew each other. "It's fine. I can handle it."
But though I braced for either renewed hostility or some kind of explanation the next day, I was disappointed. Edward wasn't at school. He wasn't there all week, though the others still sat at their table across the cafeteria. Edythe still came to greet Beau each morning, sat beside him each lunchtime, said goodbye each afternoon outside the gym. None of them gave any sign that there was anything wrong. When Beau finally asked after Edward on Thursday, his own curiosity apparently getting the better of him, Edythe brushed him off.
"He's not feeling well, that's all," she said, so confidently one couldn't help but believe her. "He's fine, nothing serious, but Carine is being overcautious, and Earnest is babying him, as usual."
She'd rolled her eyes, clearly showing how ridiculous she thought that was. It was the reasonable explanation I had been waiting for, and it made perfect sense. Oddly, it was Beau's expression that made me doubt it, some little twist to the set of his mouth, even as he asked her to pass on a get well soon from us, that made me think there was something else going on and he knew what it was. But the only other answer that made any sense, that Edward was avoiding me for some unknown reason, was so ludicrous and self-centred that I knew I shouldn't even consider it.
My new lab partner's sudden unexpected disappearance notwithstanding, that first week was uneventful. I joined in with Gym, the coach very careful to make sure Beau and I weren't on the same team after the first day, when poor Logan was practically playing alone. I settled into my classes and got to know Beau's circle better. I could recognise most of the school and name 90% of the people I had classes with. At home, we moved around each other seamlessly and the various rotas we'd put in place worked a charm; it was as if we had lived together all our lives. We did a grocery shop together and I knew I would be able to manage the next one by myself, including stashing everything in the kitchen according to Beau's exacting system of organisation. The weekend too passed without incident. Charlie worked for most of it, picking up extra shifts to cover someone else's vacation time, and Beau was with Edythe at her house practically sunup to sundown on Saturday and almost as long on Sunday. Having the house to myself was nice, and I took the chance to get ahead on a few assignments, do some chores and send a bogusly cheerful email to Renée. Whenever my mind strayed to the bizarre bronze-haired boy and his terrifying glare, I very firmly found something else for it to do.
