A/N:

Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns the plot and characters of Twilight, not to mention all the money it makes. I make nothing but fanfiction.

Chapter 3 – "They Go in Twos"

I stared out into the drizzle the next morning and hated Forks with a vengeance. I didn't want to leave my car. I was such a fucking pussy.

The knock that came on my window wasn't totally unexpected, and I managed a weak smile as Jasper slid into the passenger seat. "I heard you got caught in the crossfire of the never-ending Swan-Mallory battle," he said without preamble, and I groaned and rolled my eyes.

"What is the deal with her? Is she passive-aggressive or something?"

Jasper chuckled and shook his head. "No, Mallory just has a knack for pushing all the wrong buttons, and Bella hates that kind of shit. You gotta admit, the hatred isn't totally unjustified."

Jasper had unwittingly answered the wrong question, but I didn't dare correct him. "Yeah, I can see how Lauren would grate against someone's nerves. Still, it seemed a little excessive."

Again, Jasper chuckled, and I looked at him. "You ain't seen nothing. Just keep an eye out for any changes you might see in Lauren today – that's my suggestion."

My eyes widened. Truly, there was something so sinister and quite terrifying about the cryptic nature of Jasper's 'suggestion'. I said nothing, pulling out my cigarettes and lighting up in thoughtful silence.

Alice hopped into the backseat suddenly, and I suppressed a jump of surprise. "Did you guys see Lauren Mallory?"

No fucking way. Jasper chuckled and got out of the car, and I followed in a daze. Lauren was just getting out of her car, and I almost didn't recognize her. The long waist-length hair she had always worn so proudly down was gone. She was wearing a hat, but clearly the tresses were no longer there. "No fucking way," I murmured.

Jasper turned to me with his hazy smile and nodded. "Bella gave Lauren a visit yesterday after school. Hopefully, this time Lauren's learned her lesson."

"This time? There've been others?"

Jasper looked almost proud. "Most people get the hint real quick not to mess with Bella, but Lauren's been dumber than most people. No matter how many times Bella schools her, she always ends up asking for it again real soon right after."

Jesus. Psycho didn't even begin to cover what kind of girl Bella was. She wasn't fit to be let out into society.

As though on cue, Bella appeared on the edge of the woods, Rosalie and Emmet in tow. "Hey, Mallory!" she called from across the field, cupping her hands around her mouth. Lauren looked like she was convinced she was having a nightmare. "Nice hat!"

Emmet laughed loudly beside Bella, and Rosalie grinned viciously. Lauren scampered into the building, shooting angry looks over her shoulder at anyone she caught staring. Oh, the drama.

As I approached my Spanish class, a morbid curiosity about just how bad the damage was under Lauren's hat overtook me. I planned on taking surreptitious looks at her during class, hopefully without being noticed. If I was, I'd offer her a compliment that I was already certain would be insincere.

As soon as I slid into my seat, she stiffened. Slouching in her chair, she pulled her hat lower over her face, and I clearly saw why. The back of her head was visibly sporting a military-issue blonde buzzcut, and she looked ridiculous. While my heart went out to her, I had to control the unkind urge to laugh. Even if it was despicable, it was quite proficiently hitting Lauren where it hurt.

She remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout the class, and the girl on the other side of her desk, Janice or Jessica or something, was shooting her sympathetic looks that I doubted were making Lauren feel any better. As soon as the bell rang, she was gone before anyone had the chance to even get out of their seats.

In gym class, the guys discussed the scrabble night again, Emmet reopening negotiations for my presence. He tried everything from bullying me into going to pleading with me to come, even resorting to bribery with two six-packs of beer, but I always gave him the same response. "I'm not sure, Em. I'll have to see."

The lunch I was dreading came too soon, and I tried my best not to fidget in my seat – not Bella's seat, I knew better now and my hair was way too sexy to be subjected to Bella's wrath. When she came, she dropped silently into the seat beside me, immediately laying her head onto her elbows and shutting her eyes.

"She's totally baked," Alice filled us in, plopping into Jasper's lap and throwing her arms around his neck. "I tried to warn her against the second bowl, but you know how she never listens. It's like I'd be saying it just to screw with her or something. I mean, why not just believe me when I tell her she doesn't wanna do that? It's not like I'm her enemy or anything. But she'll be fine. Remember that time, Jasper, when I got so baked I couldn't stand up, and you had to carry me home, and then I threw up all over your lap, and when you got in the shower my dad came home?" Alice launched into a more detailed retelling of the story, only Jasper paying any attention to her. When Rosalie appeared, she leaned her head onto Emmet's shoulder and he played with her hair absently, gazing at her with the most ridiculously happy expression on his face. Bella remained silent.

I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She opened her eyes slowly, once, and met my gaze. Her eyes were bloodshot and wet. Somehow, the sight of her so subdued was disorienting. This girl beside me looked like she needed to be taken care of, not feared. This girl beside me made no sense.

When the bell rang, Bella picked up her bag and waved silently to the table before starting to head out. I caught up to her in the hall, and we walked silently to biology together. Not so much together as in the same direction at a similar pace. She was quiet, and her face looked sad. I wondered if she felt like a fifth wheel sitting at that table day in and day out with two couples. Jasper had said they were close once, and she didn't seem to pay any more attention to Alice's noise than I did. How close were they now that he had a girlfriend semi-attached to his hip? A girlfriend that she didn't even seem to like?

She must be lonely, I suddenly realized, and the thought made me sigh. She turned to look at me then. "What?"

I shrugged as we entered the classroom, and she watched me with her watery eyes. "I was just thinking; it's not easy being around couples all the time."

Banner was trying to get everyone's attention. Bella was looking at me, though, her expression strange, her eyes slightly more lucid. She didn't speak. "We're doing our lab on the phases of mitosis today. I need one person from each table to come up and get a microscope and a box of slides." He explained how we needed to label each slide with the phase of mitosis it represented. It was an easy enough lab, I'd done it before.

"I'll get the stuff," I offered. She stared at me with that strange look and said nothing. When I came back to the table with the microscope and slides, she was rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms. "Do you mind if I go first?" I asked as I slid back into my seat, and she gave half a shrug, looking out the window. I sighed in resignation and snapped a slide into place, adjusting the lens and looking through. It wasn't like I needed her help on this lab. Still, it continued to torment me why she hated me. I had been nothing but nice to her. It made no sense at all. "Prophase," I murmured, feeling dejected about the inevitable failure of my attempts to… to what? To get her to stop hating me? To get her to like me? To get to be friends with her?

I was just about to write it down when she cleared her throat, and I looked up at her, stunned. I had prepared myself to do this in silence. "May I?" she gestured to the microscope and I nodded, mutely pushing it over to her. She looked into the eyepiece and sighed regretfully. "Prophase." I wrote it down as she reached for the next slide, hiding my amused smirk. She was disappointed I had been right. It pleased me somewhat.

We were done within the first ten minutes of class, though we'd both insisted on double-checking after one another, neither of us accepting an answer without a personal examination. By the time we were done, she seemed less sick. This left me feeling strangely relieved. I was prepared to put up with the silent treatment for the rest of the class, playing with my pen and amusing myself by staring at the back of Lauren's head, when Mr. Banner suddenly appeared at the table and picked up our worksheet. "I take it you both worked on this together?" he asked, raising his eyebrow skeptically.

I shrugged, but it was Bella that spoke. "Yeah. I think Edgar might've done this lab before, Mr. Banner." She was smiling again, that bored half-smile that made my ears ring.

"Have you, Edward?" I tried to look sheepish and smiled at him, a winning charming smile that my teachers in Chicago had loved. Banner just nodded at me. "Advanced placement?" I shrugged and continued to smile, and he shook his head and walked away mumbling.

"Whod've thunk? Pretty boy has a brain, too."

I turned to look at her, and the smile remained in place though her bloodshot eyes were burning with fury again. "Wouldn't want to hold you back, Bella," I responded. And let her make of that what she would.

Her smile twisted for a moment and she pouted again. Fucking adorable. "Listen, Edgar-"

"Edward."

"Huh?"

"My name is Edward. Not Edgar." I smiled at her, and she gaped before she could get her expression back under control.

She shook her head to clear it and growled at me. "Whatever." As she turned back to the window, I worried I really would have to spend the rest of the class being ignored by her, but she spoke without turning to face me. "What did you mean by what you said earlier? About how it's hard being around couples all the time?"

I looked at the back of her head, willing her to turn to face me, but she didn't seem about to. I tapped my pen against the table top and wondered how to say it. "I'm not used to being around people that go in twos. I guess it's just new to me. I was sort of raised by a single dad, so couples weren't a staple in my house."

Her shoulders stiffened minutely. "I guess I know what you mean. I was sort of raised by a single dad, too. My mom walked out on us when I was a kid, so Charlie was kinda stuck with me. I didn't have a life full of people in twos either. Well, until my friends."

I was shocked that she was sharing, freely offering personal information about her life to me. I wanted to push my luck, to see if I could find out more about her, to see how much she'd tell me. "How long have all your friends been all coupled up like that?"

She turned her head so I could see her profile and frowned in thought, her face cupped in her hands as she seemed to formulate a response. "Rose and Emmet have been together since eighth grade. Then Jasper and Alice since…" she sighed then, and I frantically searched for a way to keep her talking. I didn't have to, though, because she went on after a minute. "Rose and I have been best friends since kindergarten. I mean, we've pretty much been inseparable our whole lives. Then she and Emmet got together, and it was like the three of us were some kind of special club. When Jasper moved here, he fell in with us, and I guess it was about three years later that Alice found him. When they first got together, it bothered me a lot. The two and two, and just me on the outside. But they're my friends. Rose is awesome, and Emmet's like the big brother I always wanted, and Jasper and I have so much fun together." She sighed again, shaking her head as though at a memory. "Even Alice isn't so bad once you get past the ADHD thing. They're good people. They just happen to come in twos."

I suddenly realized that in the tiny bar of sunlight that had fought its way through the clouds and across the window of the class, Bella's brown hair was tinted red. It glowed, and I wanted to touch it in the worst way.

"Where's your mom?"

I blinked myself out of my reverie and made the appropriate face. "She died when I was a kid."

"Oh." She turned to look at me then, and without the hatred or the anger in her eyes, without the tough-girl act and the cursing and the despicable smile, she was gorgeous. I worked to get some moisture back in my mouth. "I'm sorry."

I shook my head and tried to smile, to show I was okay. This was how the routine always went. "It's okay. It was a long time ago. She was always sick, and Carlisle, my dad, he blames himself. He's a doctor so I guess he thought that meant he should have been able to heal her."

She nodded, then turned her attention back to the window, presenting me once again with the back of her head. I looked at the hand that wasn't cupping her face, and it was a fist in her lap. I turned back to the front and tapped my pen against the table until the end of class. She didn't speak to me again.

***

The next day, Bella didn't come to school. It was strange, how I immediately noticed the absence of the big red truck, and then how in the cafeteria, there were just five of us instead of six. I wondered if she was just out toking in the parking lot or something, because no one else at the table seemed to notice she was gone. Alice and Rosalie got into an animated discussion about Tori Amos – I blocked that shit out – and Jasper and Emmet and I turned our discussions back to scrabble night.

In biology, she never showed. In between Banner's lectures, Lauren turned in her seat and continued her increasingly annoying flirtation. She'd foregone the hat, and I guessed she'd been to a hairstylist somewhere to try and salvage what was left of her hair, but there was just so little of it. I gave her my charming smile and she blushed, and I again pressed this to my advantage. "Does Bella often ditch classes as part of her routine?"

She rolled her eyes immediately at the mention of Bella and leaned conspiratorially closer. "She just drops off of the face of the earth for days at a time like this. The teachers never say anything about it, they let her get away withmurder." Her jealousy and resentment were blaringly obvious. I mentally rolled my eyes at her. "You know her mom was kinda like the town tramp when she was living here? Well apparently she got married to a ballplayer that wasyounger than her." She watched me for a reaction to this obviously scandalous revelation, and when I did nothing but blink at her she went on. "Anyway, her mom apparently refuses to set foot in Forks, so some people think Bella's constantly taking trips down to Phoenix to see her. Most people think that when she disappears like this, it's because she got busted for something and is being held, or performing community service or something, and Chief Swan keeps it all hushed up. Her dad's the chief of police, you know that?"

"Miss Mallory, while I'm sure your chosen topic of discussion is far more interesting than cell multiplication, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave Mr. Cullen alone and focus on me, yes?" Lauren blushed and stammered an apology, but shot me a confident smile over her shoulder when he turned the other way. Jasper was right. She really never learned. If I were in Lauren's place, I'd be singing Bella's praises for the rest of my life.

Still, Lauren's stubborn stupidity was helpful to me. I sat and pondered the information she gave me. Rumors. Hearsay. There was so much about Bella I didn't know, and so much I didn't understand. She was unkind, rude and spiteful. But she was sad, too, and lonely. She was beautiful. That kind of beauty didn't belong on a bitch.

It belonged on an ingénue.