Chapter 3

So I could go on about how my life continued on as normal as ever. I joined the school paper, got to know the other people in my classes and at lunch a little better, everything a new student would do. But that's not why you're reading this story.

You don't care about my life. But that's ok, not many interesting things can happen to a sixteen year old girl who does nothing but go to school, do homework, and take pictures. I don't blame you for only wanting to see the parts that match up with or defy what Stephanie Meyer wrote.

So I'll just tell you this: Edward did not go to school for the rest of the week. Yeah, I know, surprise, surprise. He was tempted by your blood so he had to leave, what's next?

What's next is that you need to forget everything you think you know about me and Edward.

Do you think I even noticed that he was gone? Nope. I mean I noticed the lab table was a lot roomier without him, but that's about it.

So anyway, I'll start you off with the day he came back, the next Monday. And you know what, I'll even skip right to Biology, just for you.

I didn't know Edward was at school until I stepped into the classroom and saw him taking up the spot I had started putting my backpack in. So I was already grumpy when I sat down after sliding it under the table.

"Hello,"

I pulled my gaze from the board which was making me feel dumb as dough with all of its vocab and looked at him. And then I had to blink a couple of times.

"Whoa," I started, already digging around in my bag for my camera blindly as I continued to stare at him. "Can I take your picture? Your eyes are just…wow."

His purple eyes studied me. "Umm, no?"

I already had my camera in my hands, but I stopped my preparation to look back up at him. "No?"

"I don't know what you're going to do with it."

I gave him what I hoped was an assuring smile. "It's just for me, I swear. For artistic reasons, I mean. I need to get more pictures for my portfolio for college. And it would just be your eyes, no one would even know it was you."

He quirked his eyebrows. "So you're an artist? Figures as much."

"What do you mean?"

He gave me a half smile. "Nothing. You can take a picture, I guess. But just one."

My whole face lit up. "Thank you!" I practically shouted.

I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed that first day, through all the glaring, the color of his eyes. It wasn't every day you met someone with purple eyes.

The shot had to be perfect, I only got one try. The camera clicked and I looked down into purple perfection.

I glanced up at him.

"Good?" he asked.

"Perfect," I put the camera away and then tried to decipher the words on the board again.

"I'm sorry," he blurted.

I glanced at him. "Ok," and then I looked back at the board.

"Ok?"

"Yeah," I started. "I mean, bad day right?"

He didn't answer so I looked at him. He was staring at the board grinning a soft smile to himself.

"Yeah, actually."

I shrugged. "No big deal."

"So you just moved here?"

I sighed, I thought I was done with all these types of questions. Instead, I just looked at him.

"Stupid question, sorry, so why?"

The teacher was teaching now, but I was lost after the first mention of a ribosome.

"Why what?"

Edward wasn't even bothering to pay attention to the board.

"Why did you move?"

"The scenery."

He was still looking at me. "Serious, why did you move here?"

"My mom got remarried." Not like it was really news. They had been dating for years.

"So you had to change zip codes?" he asked, incredulous.

Man, it was like explaining life to a five-year-old. "They're newlyweds."

He caught on. "Oh, makes sense."

"Yeah,"

Edward raised his hand. "Prophase."

I didn't even know what that meant, but he was right.

And then we were given slides and told to find something scientific sounding in each of them and write it down.

"You're on your own." I told him, and lucky for me he didn't argue.

"So where did you move from?" His faced was glued up against the microscope for all of two seconds before he wrote an answer down.

"Phoenix."

"Uhuh, I'm assuming Biology was not in Phoenix?"

"Biology was an elective in Phoenix. I elected not to take it."

"Didn't like cutting up critters?"

"Exactly."

He was halfway down the sheet now.

"So what about this artist thing?"

"Artist thing?"

"What do you draw?"

That was always the question, 'what do you draw?' as if drawing was the only form of art in this world.

"I don't."

"You don't?"

"No."

"Soooo…what do you do then?"

"Photography."

"And you're going to college for…"

"Photography."

He let out a huffy kind of laugh. I glared at him.

"What's wrong with that?"

He was smirking in a way that said laughs were crowding around in his mouth. "Nothing, I just thought, you know, that you might actually get somewhere in life."

"You're an ass." I turned back towards the board and tried to ignore him.

He started laughing. "Oh, come on. It's not like you thought you could actually make a living just taking pictures."

I ignored him.

"Bella, be serious for a moment."

I remembered my counselor saying the same thing back in Phoenix.

"Yeah, but what are you going to do as a job?" He kept asking.

"That," I said, "I'll go to college and get a degree in some art major and then apply to different companies."

"What about being an art teacher?" He asked, talking over me.

"I don't draw."

"But you could."

"But I don't."

"Bella," Edward said for probably the millionth time. His head was back in his hands on the table, the way he had been sitting on my first day in that class. "Forget it, I take it back."

"No you don't."

He pulled his head up and let his hands drop to his lap. "Can we please just let this go?"

Hell no.

But I didn't want to say that. He was a jerk, a now blatantly obvious trait, but he was my lab partner and I'd have to get along with him for the rest of the year or else he wouldn't do all the work for me.

"Fine," I said coldly and turned back to the board.

The bell rang, signaling a change in classes, and he got up and left before I could bend over to grab my backpack.

My only period after that, gym, went quickly because we were playing cricket and I could never make it up to the bat to swing in time.

As soon as I walked through the door to my house, my phone went off.

Hey girlie! Guess whos got a blind date this Saturday?

I smiled. Juliet was forever getting set up on blind dates by friends, relatives, and co-workers but they never worked out.

Is it the same girl who dumped the last one for eating with his mouth open?

Its the one who will dump this one if he does the same thing

Whats his name?

Chance

Hmm…played varsity hockey last year?

So Ive heard…you know him?

ICA last year…cute but short

Me too…meant to be?

Haha maybe

Oh wait gotta go…..manager is looking at me

I sighed, one of these days she was going to get fired for texting on the job.

The rest of my night went like usual: homework, dinner, homework, and then sleep.

When I woke up the next morning I couldn't pull myself away from the window. Snow covered every inch of space in our yard, towering higher than I had seen it within my nine days in Forks.

I made it downstairs just in time to leave but Charlie stopped me.

"Hey, Bells, remember to drive slow. The roads are slippery today with ice, take your time."

I smiled. "Ok,"

I did take my time, so as soon as I got my truck parked (no heat by the way totally sucks) I had to start walking to class. No time to sit around before the day started.

I slid out of my seat though, and had to grasp the door for life. The entire parking lot was nothing but ice. I gripped the bed of my truck as I slammed the door and locked it behind me. Then, eyes glued to the pavement and hands slightly out for balance, I carefully began placing one foot in front of the other.

I had almost made it past the bed of my truck when I heard the shouts. Looking up and straight ahead, my eyes connected with Edward's as he leaned against the back of his car. That was when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a van sliding uncontrollably across the icy ground and headed straight for him.

Others had noticed this as well, and I could almost feel the shouts building up in peoples' throats as we all watched the inevitable. But that's the horrible thing about these moments of terror: as soon as your mind realizes what is about to happen and forms a rational plan of action, it's too late.

The van crashed first into the car in front of Edward's, a person who had unfortunately not pulled into the spot all the way. There were screams as the car shifted with the impact and the front end hit an unprepared student. My eyes immediately searched the ground for the person along with everyone else's, but then I realized that the car was still moving.

The van and the right corner of the car it had hit were now smashed into Edward's car which in turn had hit the car next to it. It was a pile up of the worst kind and I could only imagine where Edward lay in the middle of it. There was no way to escape it, in some way he had been hit.

And my last conversation to him had involved me calling him an ass.

The cars all finally came to a stop, and I quickened my careful steps in order to go help the injured. I kept waiting to see his arm or leg protruding from under one of the cars. But how gruesome would he look? Would I even be a help to him if he was that damaged?

A figure approaching the cars caught my eye and I slowed my steps, and then I stopped altogether.

Edward, perfectly fine, was striding from his standing point three cars down from where he had been over to the accident. His cell phone was at his ear and he was talking into it, probably calling for an ambulance.

How did he move out of the way?

I just stood there in the middle of the icy parking lot, trying to piece together the impossible. Then my legs were able to move again, and they took me towards the answer.

He was now off the phone and standing off to the side of the accident, letting the school nurses and those who knew what they were doing handle the situation.

"Edward," I called, wincing when my words came out harder than normal. He watched my carefully placed footsteps closer with an expression that was almost pained. "Hey," I said when I finally stopped next to him.

"Hey," he responded guarded.

"That was lucky, you know, that the cars didn't hit you." I had been observing the progress of the ambulance as it shrieked into sight, but I glanced out of the corner of my eye up at Edward when I said this.

He turned to me and raised his eyebrows. "I am lucky; adrenaline is some lifesaving stuff."

"So you ran?"

He laughed without humor. "More like dove."

"That was a pretty big dive, fast too. Especially because we're on ice. I'm surprised you didn't slip."

He shrugged. I didn't even know what I was doing, why did it matter so much to me? But I just kept seeing him seconds from being hit followed by him walking back from three cars away. Why would he try to lie about something like this? Unless…

Oh, God, what if he threw a kid in his place in his haste to get away?

I watched the people being helped by the EMT's. I had missed where some of them where found; could there have been someone lying in Edward's place?

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye again. His eyes were closed but his face showed complete serenity.

Oh. My. God. I was standing next to a psychotic killer with no remorse for his victims.

I started stepping away and then stopped. Wait, Iz, I told myself, you're jumping to conclusions. Edward's not a killer, what kind of bull shit is that? You've been watching too many movies with Renée. Calm down.

But then why was he lying to me?

It all came down to that. Edward was hiding something, possibly the fact that he threw a kid in front of a car. It could be something else, I just couldn't think of what that might be.

His face now looked pained.

"Well, I just…I'm gonna…umm…go to class."

He opened his eyes to look at me like I was crazy. "Bella, classes aren't really running at the moment." He pointed to the area by the ambulance. Most of the staff was body blocking the more emotional bystanders.

It totally didn't fit the situation, but I suddenly felt excited. "Do you think they'll cancel school?"

That same look, intensified. I looked back, eyes wide, showing him I was serious.

He rolled his eyes and snorted. "Only you would watch a pile up this ugly and wonder whether it would get you out of school or not."

I suddenly got angry. He was totally right, but that didn't mean he had to call me out on it. "Only you would somehow escape said pile up and then have a reason to lie about how you did it."

He turned to me sharply. "I didn't lie."

I started walking backwards towards the building. "But you didn't tell the truth either." Then I turned and finally made it to the grass where I could walk at a normal pace. If I felt Edward's stare on my back, I didn't let it on.