A/N: You'll all be pleased to hear that I since I worked my butt off, I'm a week ahead on my homework for several subjects and feeling pretty free without the extra load. In other words, you guys get a bonus chapter. But, here's the thing… I'm also going to have to be absent for about a week starting this Friday. You'll survive. It's just a week. Oh! By the way, today's chapter is in Edward's POV.

Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyers. I own nothing except my squeaky ducky named Fred.

An Ode to Silence

I watched Bella's expression shift after I responded. What did she take from that simple every day answer? I wished for the hundredth time I could read her mind. She was always doing and saying whatever I least expected no matter how I tried to prepare myself. Once in a while, I catch her with this look on her face that makes me wonder just how much she sees without ever saying anything.

I found myself following the minds of those surrounding her, watching her through everyone else's eyes. It's likely that I would still be watching her in that manner except that Alice commented that I was managing to stalk her better than some humans could so much as dream about. Even with all of that, I still had no idea what was going on in her head though. It was irksome be almost clueless about the real her as Mike.

After a brief period of time, she lifted her chocolate colored eyes to mine and I was surprised at their depth. There was a fierce intelligence and wit lighting her eyes but also a sorrow, loneliness, and strength not belonging to a girl her age. What had she gone through to get to this point, to possess eyes like that? For a moment, I thought I saw her but then the moment passed and she shattered the silence.

"Is your family close? I heard that you and your family like to go hiking when it's sunny," she asked casually. Well, that question came from left field but I didn't see any harm in it. In fact, it seemed much more dangerous not to answer it properly.

"There are no secrets in my family. As for hiking, the forests around here are very beautiful and sunny days are rare enough that it would be a shame to waste them." She nodded and I could see her turning that over in her head, wondering how that must be.

"That's how my mom and I used to be. She always tried so hard to be responsible and a good parent…" she laughed at some memory, "But then she'd forget one of her appointments or where she placed something and then that façade crumbled and I was the adult again. Sometimes, she wanted to take care of everything for me again like she did up until I was five and it was always interesting to let her try once in a while."

"Do you miss her?" I asked, unexpectedly drawn in by her memories.

"I miss her. I miss Phoenix… but this change needed to happen." Before I could open my mouth to ask why, the nurse bustled in with a cold compress in her hand. Carefully, she laid the pack across Bella's forehead with a smile.

"Would you like me to check out that hand of yours?" the woman asked and I stiffened. I would probably have to leave the room if that bandage came off even though the already diluted smell of her blood had become even less potent during the day. Fortunately, Bella shook her head and sat up and the door opened just enough for a red-headed Ms. Cope to stick her head in. It was open just enough for a faint whiff of a dark and seductive scent to reach my nose. It wasn't nearly as nice as Bella's though, even diluted.

"We got another one," she said and Bella quickly hopped down from the cot, handing her cold compress back to the nurse as Mike staggered in with another boy from biology.

Didn't even get to help Bella for very long. Stupid Cullen… Now I even got stuck with Stephens just to come back this way, Mike grumbled internally as he put forth an effort to look helpful and valiant for Bella. Mike and his issues aside, there was still visible and dripping blood on the boy's hand.

"Oh no," I muttered, "Go out to the office, Bella." She looked confused. I could tell she wasn't going to do what I told her. Like she'd heard my thought and wanted to prove me wrong, she took one breath and then darted out of the infirmary. I was stunned but quickly followed her. Here was yet another example of her always doing just what I didn't expect. It was part of what made her so special.

"You actually listened to me," I said softly.

"You were wrong earlier, you know," she stated, adding to my confusion, "I don't get sick from the sight of blood." Now I was really confused. "I get sick from the smell of blood… that rust and salt smell. I smelled the blood." Her nose wrinkled up and she cringed.

Bella could smell blood? That was a first, for a human anyway. She just couldn't stand to be normal could she? I didn't understand how she alone was so different from people I'd encountered before. I was becoming very glad to have met her and that was a dangerous thought to have.

"What?" she asked and I snapped out of my musings.

"It's nothing," I dismissed her question as Mike came out from the infirmary and immediately turned to Bella. His thoughts… were so unoriginal. I'd seen such thoughts of spineless jealousy thousands of time and I didn't even want to guess how many I would hear them again in the future.

Bella kept the conversation between her and Mike simple and short and then he left looking pitiful and depressed. Poor Bella, I thought to myself.

"Gym," she groaned, appearing honestly distressed. I had to fight back a chuckle when I remembered her usual performance in gym as seen through the eyes of the innocent bystanders she called classmates.

"I can take care of that," I said to her in low tones. She looked at me with such a grateful expression, I let go of that chuckle I'd withheld. She was simply absurd.

Bella's POV:

Edward was amazing. The more I saw of and spoke to regular him, the more I truly felt relaxed around him. I never could really relax around anyone else because they either spoke too fast, hated me, or they followed me around like a fan club even though I did enjoy the company of some. I liked Angela. She had a calming presence around her but I didn't know her well. It figures though. I actually got along best with someone who wasn't even human once we got past the original aggression.

I gained more ideas about Edward today alone than I'd had in the past three weeks combined. First was his reaction to my bandaged hand. I hadn't seen him so much as glance at it before his eyes suddenly turned black and he stiffened. He only looked at it right after that. Then he skipped blood typing although I could understand that one pretty easily. If he wasn't human, then his blood would probably be different.

Finally, there was his knowledge that Stephens had pricked his finger and that it wouldn't be good for me to stick around. He could've just seen the blood but it made me wonder if he could smell the blood too? How good was his sense of smell? Good enough that he could smell the blood through my bandage? But if that was it, why didn't his eyes turn black when he smelled Stephens' blood?

My intuition flickered and I was reminded of something though. My first day in school, Edward had glared at me with a pair of positively livid black eyes. Mike told me that he'd never seen him like that before and then he was missing from school for the rest of the week. I'd thought it seemed like it was painful for him to be near me during biology too.

The way he'd acted this morning was like a weaker version of his reaction to me on my first day. If I was right, he had a better sense of smell than I'd originally thought, the black eyes meant he was hungry, he fed on blood, and I was pretty high up on his list of favorite foods. If humans could have favorite foods, why not vampires?

The fact that he drank blood said he was a vampire. That meant that his siblings and adopted mother and father were vampires too. I was guessing the vampire myth about not being able to go into the sun was true because he and his family always went 'hiking' those few sunny days. I couldn't help but wonder how many of those myths were actually true and how many were just cover up or made up to make vampires scarier.

I met all these new ideas with simple curiosity. If he wanted to kill me for a snack, then he probably could do that easily without trying to get close to me first. Besides, he saved my life before so now I couldn't bring myself to be afraid of him even though I had no doubt he could be extremely frightening if he so wished. My ideas were somewhat formed and I thought I knew what he was even if it was rather crazy and out there. Should I ask him about it? I wasn't sure yet.

By now, we were near the parking lot so I veered left toward the safety of my truck to rest my confused brain. I didn't get very far though when something grabbed my coat and halted any advance I might've made. Surprised, I faced him.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked with an expression somewhere between an angry father and a security guard, delighted at catching someone doing something they weren't supposed to be doing.

"I'm going home?" I was going home instead of gym, right?

"Didn't you hear me promise to take you safely home?" Actually I didn't. He was faced away from me too so I didn't even see him promise that. "Do you think I'm going to let you drive in your condition?" He seemed to still be caught in that father/security guard thing.

"What condition? I'm fine. And what about my truck? I actually need that thing," I pleaded, not liking where this was going.

"I'll have Alice drop it off after school," he stated with finality and immediately started striding toward his car while dragging me along behind him. This was one of those bad situations I promised myself I would never get into here. It wasn't that I was going to get into a car with a vampire to whom I was probably one of his favorite brands of food. No, it was that I was deaf and had some problems reading people's lips when they were mostly sideways even though I'd been practicing.

I tried maneuvering myself out of my jacket to escape but he didn't bat an eye and twirled me around to grab my arm and tow me that way. I was doomed. When we arrived at his car, he released me to climb into the driver's side of the shiny Volvo. However, I figured that since he wanted to take me in his car, there would be no chance I would get to take my truck anywhere. I reluctantly climbed in.


A/N: Well, there you go. This was one of those chapters that developed a mind of its own. I didn't plan on her figuring it out. In fact, all I thought she would get to would be wondering about his sense of smell and then being confuzzled about his black eyes and what they meant. There is probably something in there that feels kinda incomplete. That's because I had some ideas while writing this and just as I was about to include them in somewhere, they floated away. Oops. Anyway, tell me what you think. Do you want her to blurt out something like, "Doesn't my blood bother you?" or do you want her to hold onto this knowledge for a bit longer? Comments, questions, concerns? Whatever. ^.-