A/N: Okay, after this chapter I'm going to try and break away from the big shadow that Twilight casts. It'll snowball to cataclysmic proportions and you'll all be like 'What the heck is she doing?' No, really. Okay, maybe I was kidding about that last part but at least you won't have to feel like you're reading a failed clone of Twilight soon. Don't give up on me yet. ; D

Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyers. I own nothing.

An Ode to Silence

There were five of them sitting at a table in the corner on the other side of the room. They were each looking off in different directions, away from each other, away from the other students, at nothing in particular at all. Most importantly, they were among the few that weren't gawking at me.

They weren't talking, they weren't eating yet the trays in front of them were full and untouched. They most certainly didn't look very much alike.

The difference between them all was immense. The most intimidating of the three boys was overly well muscled with dark curly hair. I might've wondered whether he was on steroids. The next one was a taller honey blond, still muscled but thankfully not as big as the first. The last of them was leaner and less bulky with hair the color of bronze. He also appeared to be the youngest of the trio.

The girls were as much alike as night and day. The one sitting closer to me reminded me of a pixie. She was extraordinarily thin with small features and deep black hair that was cropped short and spiky. The blond on the other hand was tall and shapely. Her figure would make a model turn green with envy and other girls instantly have smaller egos. She possessed golden hair that waved to the middle of her back too.

Taking in all these amazing differences, they were also exactly the same. Each and every one of them was paper white, easily the ones who would get voted 'least likely to get a tan' if ever there was such a thing. They were even paler then me. They had dark shadows under their dark eyes as if they were all insomniacs or something.

And they were all devastatingly, overwhelmingly, inhumanly beautiful. They owned looks I had never expected to see on anyone except maybe after an excellent photoshopping job, or painted as the face of an angel by a master.

I stared, enchanted by the sheer magnitude of their beauty as the little pixie-like girl stood with her tray and strode away with a graceful dancer's step that wouldn't have looked out of place in a ballet. My eyes almost involuntarily followed her until she glided through the back doors and then snapped back to the table she had left. One word caught in my mind, astounding. The others hadn't moved even moved a fraction of an inch.

I wanted to stare at them longer but my desire to know more about them outweighed it. "Who are they?" I asked softly before turning to see Jessica. Her face held a knowing glint to it and I had to force myself to concentrate to understand her slew of words running swiftly into one another as she rambled. Clearly, she was proud of her knowledge and was more then happy to show it off.

"Those are the Cullens and the Hales. Edward and Emmett Cullen, Rosalie and Jasper Hale, and the girl who left was Alice Cullen. They live with Dr. Cullen and his wife. They're all together though. Emmett and Rosalie and Jasper and Alice, living together but they're not really related. Although the Hales are brother and sister, twins, the blondes. Mrs. Cullen is like, their aunt or something but I think she can't have kids."

I never ceased to be amazed at how that girl could talk. It seemed I was right about her being the gossip queen of the school though. Since she somehow managed to steer her fast moving spiel onto herself, I redirected my eyes to look at the Cullens again. As I watched, the youngest one looked up and met my gaze with curiosity and… something else. What's that word? Frustration or that he was expecting something that didn't happen. Odd.

"Which one is the boy with the reddish-brown hair?" I asked, resisting the urge to roll my eyes as she appeared startled that I would interrupt her trying to dish out everything I never wanted to know about everyone but she recovered quickly and sucked in a breath for more blabbering.

"That's Edward. He's absolutely gorgeous like his adopted siblings but he doesn't date. Clearly, none of the girls here are pretty enough to catch his eye," she sniffed and what was that? A hint of a pout. She was an open and shut case of sour grapes. I wondered when and how many times he'd turned her down.

Eventually though, lunch ended and I walked with one of the girls from the table called Angela. I could tell I was going to get along with her. When we stepped into the classroom, Angela smiled timidly at me before moving to go sit at a black-topped table just like the ones I was used to. Unfortunately, she already had a partner like everyone else except for one table by the center aisle.

It was Edward Cullen's table. Strange, I would've thought he would be swarmed by girls making googly eyes at him. Swiftly, I began to make my way up to the front to get the dreaded slip signed. The moment I passed him, he went rigid in his seat and my eyebrows furrowed since I didn't understand why when I noticed his eyes. They were coal black and absolutely furious. I might've chalked it up to a bad day but out of everyone else in the class, he was throwing that look directly at me and no one else.

I looked away in a hurry, going red from his contrary looks at me. Mr. Banner signed my slip and he didn't have to tell me where I would go before I knew I was going to have to sit beside Edward. I didn't yet know what I had done to provoke him but I felt like apologizing.

When I sat down, he instantly started leaning away from me like it was painful to be near me. That hurt. He didn't know me from Eve. Thoroughly unnerved, I let my dark mahogany hair fall between us for me to hide behind. During the whole class, he managed to never relax his stiff position as far away from as his chair allowed. His fist was clenched under the table so tightly that his tendons stood out. He didn't even relax that.

When I was sitting this close to him, I realized that he wasn't nearly as slight as he appeared next to his gorilla of a brother. The class dragged on and on and I peeked at him again through my hair. His eyes seemed more hateful then earlier, the cruelest I'd ever seen anybody look.

That was it. I was filled with sudden anger. I'd received too much of this to flinch away like everyone else. In Phoenix, I was mostly ignored but bullies were still bullies and they didn't go away when you reached high school. They just got more vicious but more subtle most of the time. Every school had them at some level. I was filled with a bold and rebellious spirit and was about to tell him off when the students around me started getting up.

Fastest of all of them was Edward, so eager to get out of there. Oh, next time I saw him, I was going to give him hell. My nervousness about ruining my chance at a semblance of normalcy had nothing to do with this type of thing. I glared in the direction of the door where I last saw him when I felt someone poke my arm and I turned my glare on him. He flinched away so I softened my gaze.

"You okay? You didn't respond when I spoke to you," he asked, concerned I blushed red. Of course I couldn't hear him but I couldn't tell him that. "Oh, sorry," I apologized quickly. I wondered if my voice had set off any alarms in anyone's mind but no one had mentioned it so I assumed that everything was fine.

"Anyway, aren't you Isabella?" He was a cute, baby-faced boy with pale blond hair carefully gelled into orderly spikes. He seemed nice enough but my previous anger hadn't fully melted. "Bella," I corrected sourly. "I'm Mike. Do you need any help finding your next class?" "Don't worry about it. It's gym, I think I can find it myself," I replied, still sticking to my instinct that it would be best if I walked myself to my classes.

"I'm headed there too," he said with a huge grin, I was too tired to leap through the hoops and find a way to walk by myself so I agreed. As we walked, I realized that he was another chatterer but of the good type. I wouldn't be relied on to keep the interaction going but there were many places in the easy conversation that I could pitch in. He didn't talk too fast at all but since he was faced forward sometimes, I missed whole sections of his jabber.

As I pushed through the doors on our way into the gym, he asked, "So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or something? I've never seen him act like that." My expression hardened and my eyes narrowed automatically when the conversation took a turn in that jerk's direction.

"Apparently, something," I responded stiffly before walking into the girls' locker room. Instead of Phoenix's two year requirement for gym, Forks required four years. That further reinforced my thoughts that this place was my very own rainy hell on earth. The fact that they were playing volleyball brought back memories of my own volleyball experiences. At least the gym teacher didn't make me to play this time.

Last time I had played volleyball game in a gym class, I ended up with a sprained wrist and five stitches in my head above my left eyebrow. No one ever urged me to get the ball again and the teacher didn't make me play again for a whole month.

Finally, the day was over and I walked into the warm office again to deliver my paperwork. There stood Edward Cullen in all his raging angel of death brilliance. I scooted over to stand against the back wall, waiting for him to finish his business with Mrs. Cope until the door opened again, bringing cold wind into the room.

The girl who came in placed a note in the basket and walked out quickly but Edward stiffened and slowly turned to glare at me with virulent eyes again. This time, I wasn't backing down like before. I glared back boldly, trying valiantly to make my eyes match the intensity in his. Something like amusement flashed into his eyes but he hastily turned back to the receptionist, said something to her before leaving.

Once again, the anger didn't fade and I strode confidently up to the desk with a new feeling of defiance then was present earlier in the day. "How did it go?" she asked cautiously, feeling something was wrong. "Just fine," I said curtly, handing her the slip of paper.

When I got back in my truck, I didn't feel the surging power that fury had brought on. Instead, I wasn't sure how I felt. Confused, mostly. I got through the day without it ending in disaster, someone I'd never before met seemed to have developed a strong dislike for me though I'm not sure what I did, and I took out my frustration on two different people. Great job, Bella. I thought to myself as I drove home.

A/N: If you liked it, tell me what you liked so I can give you more of that instead of flailing around and trying to guess at what you enjoy. If you have any suggestions about what you want to see in this story, tell me that and I'll see what I can do. But most of all, the greedy little author wants reviews. =D