Chapter 1: First Sight

I was standing in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with my mom who shall here to forth be known as Renee. I call both my parents by their first names because I'm…quirky? Mature? Narrating a story? I was here at the airport because I was going to move in with my dad, Charlie, in a place about as opposite from Phoenix as possible: rainy, cold, and probably full of left-wing environmental extremist coffee addicts in grunge rock bands. I mean, you gotta be high as a kite on the medical ganja to name your town Forks. I live in Phoenix right now. You know who would win in a fight between a phoenix and a fork? Think about it.

I hadn't been to Forks for years because I hate Charlie. No, I love him, I'm just a terrible daughter. But I was moving there now because of Renee's new husband, Phillip. Phillip, you see, is a minor-league baseball player (that's really all you need to know about him, so that's all the development he gets) and Renee and him had to go to Jacksonville, Florida for spring tryouts.

"Bella," Renee said to me—the last of a thousand times—before I got on the plane, "You don't have to do this."

I knew that. I could've gone with them, there was enough room, Renee wanted me to go, I prefer Florida to Washington, sun to rain. But I didn't want to leave all my friends. Pft, who am I kidding, I don't have any friends. And even if I did, why then would I be moving to Forks? I guess there's no logical reason, so let's just say Forks was calling to me or some bull shit like that.

My mom, Renee, was very sad to see me going because we're like besties. I can't think of any examples to show you, and I probably won't in the future, so just trust me when I define our relationship as close.

"You be careful out there, sweetie," she said, eyes all red and puffy from crying. Now there's a laugh, Renee telling me to be careful? Here's a question, which one of us got pregnant and married at 19 then lasted a year before calling it quits and running away to another state 1,583 miles away? Renee looks more like me than her father, except she has short hair and likes to think of herself as "free spirited." Most of the time I humor her, but let's be honest, she's a woman-child who needed me to take on all the responsibilities (literally all of them, I made the money, bought the food, put gas in the car, and used Google maps when she got lost, which was all the time) so she could go run around the bases with amateur baseball players. And I'm referring to sex bases. I realize the metaphor was a bit clouded by the fact Phillip actually runs around actual bases.

"Don't worry about me, Mom," I told her, "Just because I'm going to Forks doesn't mean I'll get pregnant and married way too young like you did," I smile, the idea was so preposterous. That would mean this time next year I'd have to be engaged, and what sensible person, like me, would make a commitment like that after knowing someone only a few months? Come on, really?

"I just love you so much!" Renee blubbers, embracing me in a hug.

"I love you too, Mom," I roll my eyes, she is so over emotional.

"Tell Charlie I said hi," she instructed me.

"I will," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now, and we've already established my mom's an idiot so she didn't notice.

Renee hugged me one more time and I got on the plane. Looking back on it, maybe it was a little extravagant for my mom to buy her own ticket just so she could go through security and walk with me all the way up to the door of the plane.

It takes four hours to fly from Phoenix to Seattle (according to Google maps) and another hour to fly from Seattle to Port Angeles, and an hour to drive from Port Angeles to Forks. So that's six hours. Even though planes crash all the time and everybody in the Seattle airport would be a complete stranger with any kind of nefarious plot in mind, and Charlie is the police chief, I was only apprehensive about the car ride with him, you see neither of us are what I would call verbose, mostly because I don't actually use words like verbose, and am not totally certain what it means, but the thesaurus on Microsoft word says it's a synonym for wordy. Now I'm not wordy when I talk out loud, but I am plenty longwinded in my writing, so don't worry, "This will have an impressive thickness," she said. Charlie had been nice about the whole moving in with him thing, probably because I'm his daughter and I haven't even called him in the past five years and he thought this would be the end of our estrangement. Ha ha! Jokes on him, you don't have to know a person well to live with them, I think we'll have maybe twenty conversations over the course of this entire series and most everything I say will be superficial or a lie.

As anticipated nothing of note happened on the flight, and as anticipated it took the precise amount of time I mentioned above. When I landed in Port Angeles it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen—just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun, and my hellos to melodrama. It had also been raining in Seattle, so that had also prepared me for the weather, and maybe this was too trivial to even bring up, but it's too late now.

Charlie picked me up in the cruiser because he's a policeman and they can't drive anything else. Most people in Forks call him Police Chief Swan and to be honest I probably would too, but that's a lot more letters to type than Charlie, and it's a bit too formal. I don't mind if people forget Charlie's a character in this story, but I don't want those who remember to forget he's my dad. The cruiser is the reason I wanted to buy my own car, no seriously. You might have thought I'd want my own car so I could drive myself around instead depending on my father for rides like a dork. Or you might have thought "I don't remember her mentioning wanting to buy a car before at all." In which case, you'd be right. This was strategic, because I figured you'd assume I wanted a car, where as you might not assume the flight from Phoenix to Seattle was four hours, and that's important information. Anyway, I didn't want to be driven around in a cruiser because nothing slows traffic down like a cop and I've got a need for speed. (But seriously, though, addiction to methamphetamines is a serious problem in Arizona, it's no joke.)

"Bella Swan!" Charlie shouted his greeting as I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac where he'd parked his cruiser. I guess sometimes he abuses the badge. He didn't usually call me by my full name, but I just realized I hadn't mentioned it before and the reader might be wondering what it is.

I climbed into the car despite my hate for it and Charlie got in the driver side.

"I found you a car" see, he assumed I wanted one, "Really cheap, it's a clunker. Wouldn't be surprised if it caught on fire while you were driving, or broke down stranding you in a seedy part of town. But I thought, hey, it's better than me having to drive you around all the time, and God knows you won't make friends who can give you rides, or friends at all for that matter."

"What kind of car?" I asked pointlessly, I know cars about as well as I know classic literature, meaning I know the titles, and I might even know what they look like but nothing deeper than that.

"It's a truck actually, a Chevy" apparently Charlie knew as much about cars as I did.

"Where did you find it?" An odd question to ask? Maybe. A stupid question? Perhaps.

"That's sort of a funny thing to ask," Charlie chuckled, "I mean, where do you think I found it? On Safari in Kenya? But I'm glad you asked because it gives me the perfect chance to introduce another character. Remember Billy Black, the wise old Indian man with the funny looking son name Jacob?"

I sighed, "Dad, why bring up Jacob? He's not really in this book."

Charlie furrowed his brow in confusion, "I thought he was a main character."

"I haven't thought about that yet."

"Whatever," Charlie shook his head, he had little patience for trying to figure out the way teenaged girls think, and quite frankly I'm with him, "Billy Black's a cripple now and he can't drive. He has a son about driving age, but why help him out when he can give it to you, the center of the universe."

I didn't know what my dad was talking about, just because everything revolves around me doesn't make me the center of the universe. I'm intelligent so I know that Galileo proved the universe revolves around the sun.

"What year is it?" You will quickly learn that I am very skilled at asking questions that allow other characters to deliver exposition. Working these questions seamlessly into the narrative I need some work on, though.

"Not too old, maybe…like…" I could tell he wasn't really thinking about it he was stalling. Either he didn't want to tell me how old it was because I would be made unhappy by it, or he was reaching his daily allotted word count and was struggling to think of the tersest way to say it.

"The fifties?" he guesstamates.

"How much does it cost?" I ask, choosing not to react to the fact that my new car is older than my parents.

"Well, Bella, I already bought it for you as a homecoming gift."

Oh, he got it free. What a douche bag! I've been busting my ass working full time at The Cheesecake Factory while being a fulltime high school student so I can pay the bills since Renee's too emotionally unstable to hold down a job and even though Charlie hasn't bought anything for me in I don't know how many years and he's got this sweet gig as small town police chief, he couldn't drop even one dollar on the vehicle I'm going to be entrusting my life to for at least the next year!

"Wow, Dad, you didn't need to do that."

"I don't mind," he said, completely missing the acid sarcasm in my voice, "I want you to be happy here." He didn't look at me when he said that but stared at the road. This might be because he was driving and you kinda have to look at the road for this, but I think it's more likely because he has a hard time expressing emotion. I inherited that from him. Well, I guess technically I have a hard time expressing appropriate emotion which is sort of a different thing.

"Thanks," I said even though his efforts to make me happy were futile. I will never be happy never EVER! I mean, I will never be happy in Forks, never EVER!

I pictured myself running to my room, hands balled into defiant fists, tears streaming down my face, slamming the door, because I was in a car and couldn't do it in real life.

That was the end of the conversation, because honestly if Charlie said any more somebody might think he actually has something to do with story, or worse yet they may think the characterizations I give in the narration are completely meaningless and not at all reflected in the actual actions of the characters.

Eventually we made it to Charlie's. Specifically, in one hour we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the little house he bought with my mom during the five seconds they were married. I didn't pay much attention to the house though, because parked outside was my new truck. It was red, and old looking, and I could tell it was indestructible. And unlike most teenage girls who would've been upset at the prospect of having to drive this ugly clunker around I fell in love with it (how's that for originality, haters!) I grinned devilishly at the idea of my big ol' truck destroying all the foreign cars, especially the Japanese ones. Yeah, those japs were gonna eat Chevy! I grinned wider when I realized that I would blend in perfectly on my first day of school arriving in a large red truck from the fifties. I can't believe Billy Black let this gem slip away for free!

I brought all my stuff up to my room. It had been my room since birth so I recognized it, I recognized floor and the walls and the ceiling, even the windows. I did not recognize the old computer sitting on the desk and was immediately suspicious of it. There was a wire attached to it that snaked its way across the floor to the nearest phone jack. Whipping out my iPhone, I researched what it could be for but came up with nothing because I had no bars and there was NO WIRELESS SIGNAL!

I got to unpacking. One of the best things about Charlie is that I can just write him out of the story whenever parental supervision is inconvenient. One of the worst things about Charlie is that he occasionally has to use the bathroom, and I do too, and there is only one in the house so we'd have to share. I HATE SHARING! I tried not to dwell on this, but you know me, it was a minor annoyance so I dwelled on that shit hardcore. What if I had to use the bathroom but Charlie was taking a shower? I would have to go out in the rain and probably get lost, or pee my pants. What if Charlie had to go to the bathroom while I was taking a shower and he just walked right in the room! What if I want to brush my teeth and Charlie's already using the sink, my teeth could rot out and I'd be hideous! I dwelled so hard I forgot how poor I was back in Arizona, we only had an outhouse and I had to share that with both Renee and Phillip and if I wanted to take a shower I had to sneak into the health club that was thirty blocks away and share that shower with hundreds of other people I didn't even know!

The bathroom had me so upset that I decided even though it was only three pm I'd turn in early have a good cry until I surrendered to the sweet darkness of sleep until the morning when I would have to go to school.

Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty seven students. Three hundred and fifty seven happened to my least favorite number, it plagued my nightmares as a child. There were no monsters in my closet or under my bed, just the number three hundred and fifty seven. It's like that old horror story, why was six afraid of seven? Because three hundred and fifty seven, eight, nine. Though, come to think of it, with me joining the ranks there are three hundred and fifty eight students. So we're good, don't worry about it.

When I walked into the school seven hundred and fourteen eyes would be staring at me, labeling me a freak. All people in small towns think big city folk are freaks, and it doesn't help that I don't look right. People from Phoenix should look tan, sporty, blond—volleyball players, or cheerleaders, perhaps—all things that go with living in the valley of the shadow of death—I mean sun, living in the valley of the sun. But I seldom do what I should. So instead of being beautiful I was plain, and like most plain girls I was naturally thin, had long luscious brown hair, and perfect, pale skin. And I'm not at all athletic, in fact, I am super clumsy. I literally can't walk and chew gum at the same time without falling flat on my face. I can't even walk and not chew gum at the same time without falling flat on my face. That isn't hyperbole, because I don't know what hyperbole is. That is my life. Then, beside the fact I think of myself as homely and idiotically clutzy, there's the fact I can't relate to people on even the most basic levels. It's like there's something wrong with my brain so I'm never on the same wave length as anybody else. That would be a nice metaphor, but as you'll find out, it's absolutely true. So remember: I am plain, clumsy, and socially inept, so all those lame-os out there who think I'm a Mary Sue eat that. And to all those lame-os out there who think I'm a terrible role model for young women…well…we're only on chapter one.

I didn't sleep well that night, even after I stopped crying the sky didn't. It was weeping and howling and it didn't even have to share a bathroom with my dad. Also keeping me awake was the fact that it was now only four pm and, even though I'm a fifty year old woman at heart, I can't fall asleep that early.

The next morning I braved the bathroom, and despite my best efforts to spot something gross I could freak out about it was relatively uneventful. It seemed redundant to have a shower in a place like Forks where it's always raining when you could just go outside. I stayed in though, body image issues and all that. At breakfast Charlie told me he hoped I'd have a good day at school. Ha! All the hope in the world couldn't save me now. Do you know what it's like to be a skinny white girl going to a predominantly white school when she's from Arizona but doesn't look like she's from Arizona? The other kids probably won't even believe I'm from there. They'll think I'm a liar. They'll think I grew up in a cave like those Plato people. They'll think I eat bugs and don't speak English! They'll think I'm Mexican and that's why I had to leave Arizona! I almost barffed up my Cheerios. Cheerios my ass. I'm not feeling cheery at all. Screw General Mills and their fake-ass marketing ploys.

Charlie left first, probably to get away from me, cause be honest, who'd want to hang around the same table where some girl was brutally beating her box of Cheerios? After he'd gone I looked around the house and noticed how sad it was. Everything was exactly the same as my mom left it, he still had pictures of her at their wedding up. He needed to move on. It would be nice to give him a new love interest, a nice outdoorsy hiker girl who was a lot like my mom but more mentally sound. But I'd rather just keep all the love interests to myself. I didn't want to go to school early, but I couldn't think of anything else to do (I often can't think of things, it's kind of a curse) so I grabbed by back pack and headed out the door.

I groaned in frustration when I realized it was still raining and I had to go back inside to put on my bright yellow poncho. It was perhaps not the most fashionable choice, but my fashion sense sucks so maybe it was. When I returned to the outdoors I took a moment to admire my truck again, it was so old and cool. Kind of like Charlie, except he wasn't cool, or this old. I shouldn't have focused so much on admiring because my brain got distracted and forgot to keep me standing up and my knees buckled and I fell to the soggy ground. Damn I hate this place.

I drove to school in the rain, obviously, and when I got there I was surprised to find that every student didn't drive a fancy sports car. How odd, I imagined they would be loaded here because…well, I guess on second thought it makes sense that a bunch of rural teenagers would have kinda crappy first cars. My truck was still the best though, because it could dominate these bitches without even trying. I guess the stranger thing was that the school was made up of a series of small buildings instead of just one big one. I could see why they might do this in a sunny place, like Hawaii, but I was kind of confused as to why Forks High School did this, when it meant that everyone would have to walk through the rain with all their stuff every time they had to change classes. Not to worry though, we'll change that for the movie.

I wasn't sure where to park so I just stopped my truck on the front lawn and reluctantly climbed out. I didn't want to look like an idiot. Just saying. I went inside the first building, assuming it was the main office because it was labeled as such. I marched up to the secretary and banged my hand on the desk to get her attention. She had red hair, which, according to my logic, made it okay for her to be pale. She also had freckles because everyone with red hair has freckles.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yes," I lied, no one could help me, not really. I was beyond help, I had been beyond help since I was born, forever condemned to a life of obscurity and mediocrity, woe! "I am Isabella Swan."

Upon realizing who I was I could see her ears perk up. No doubt I'd been the only topic of conversation in town for weeks, and now that I was here I'm sure they'd never speak of anything else ever again.

She slapped a small stack of papers on to the desk, "Here is your schedule and a map of the school, we made it really simple because we know you have a hard time figuring things out."

"Thanks," I said and stuffed the map into my bag without so much as looking at it. I couldn't walk around with a map like some kind of n00b, what was that moron thinking?

I went back to my truck and saw that some other students were arriving. I started my truck up and stealthily joined the line of cars following them to the parking lot. After I reparked, taking up several spaces, not my fault a truck like mine deserves respect, I hopped back out and began walking in a direction I hoped was right. I took a deep breath. I can do this, I lied to myself (I know I can't do anything.) No one was going to bite me, no matter how much I begged them to.

I got to the building I needed for my first class, English. I started hyperventallating as I approached the door—doors are hard, okay! Fortunately there were two people in front of me and they had the burden of figuring out whether the door was a pull or a push. Once inside I hung up my poncho and went to the front where the teacher was sitting.

"Who are you?" he asked, he looked very much like a stereotypical English teacher, white hair, balding, glasses, elbow patches, the whole nine.

"I'm Isabella Swan," I explained, even though he was clearly just asking the question out of courtesy and knew who I was, "The daughter of Charles Swan, the police chief."

I hoped he wouldn't make a big deal out of my arrival and introduce me to the whole class.

"Okay, here's the reading list," he handed me a piece of paper, "Sit anywhere."

"You don't want to introduce me to the class?" I asked biting my lip, hoping he'd say no.

"No."

"Are you sure, you don't want to make sure they all know who I am, where I'm from?"

"No."

"You don't want to take just a few seconds at the beginning of class to tell everybody I'm the much anticipated daughter of the police chief?"

"Please have a seat Miss Swan."

Few, close one, narrowly avoided attention on that one.

I sat down in a chair in the back corner where no one could stare at me without being conspicuous. I looked down at the reading list it was pretty basic stuff, "Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner, Tolstoy, Einstein, Socrates, Hawthorne, Joyce, Burroughs, and Solzhenitsyn. Nothing I couldn't find summaries of online and b.s. my way through.

When class was over this total nerd with bad skin and greasy hair tried to talk to me. I half listened cause I'm a nice person and everything.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" he observed like a creep.

"Bella, god," was he too dumb to get nicknames or something? Why waste your time saying Isabella when you can just say Bella half as quickly. It's simple math.

"Where's your next class?"

Was this kid a stalker or something, why was he all up in my business? I mean, I know I'm no Natalie Portman, but come on, this guy wouldn't have a chance with Woody Allen.

"Um…" I really didn't want him to know where I'd be in case his stalking escalated, but it was only the second period of the day so he probably wouldn't believe that I didn't have a next class, "Government in building six," I lied, hoping he wouldn't be in that class.

"I'm going to building four, I could show you the way. I'm Eric by the way."

Did this kid have no sense of personal space? Jesus Christ, why couldn't he leave me alone? Did he think I wanted friends or a social life or something? Uh-uh, those are things for happy people, and—news flash—I'm not a happy person.

"Thanks," I grumbled, wishing I could crush him with my truck.

As we walked to my next class I could tell everyone was eavesdropping on our conversation, because, seriously, what else would they be doing?

"So this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" he asked.

I wanted to say Shut the fuck up, dickwad, but I didn't want to be rude so I just said, "Very," and hoped he was smart enough to infer my real meaning.

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"No, that's the f-ing point," I said.

"Wow, what's that like?"

"Dry, are you daft?"

He shrugged and continued to smile blithely I bet the tire of my car could wipe that smile off his smug little pimply face.

I went to all my classes and started to notice a few of the same people in each of them, which was odd because I don't usually notice other people. One girl sat next to me in two of my classes. She was really small, a good couple inches shorter than my five foot four, maybe she was a baby? She introduced herself as…well I don't remember but she didn't sound like a baby. She brought me to the cafeteria and let me sit down with her friends (unfortunately one of her friends was Eric, the ugly creepazoid who was obsessed with me or something.) Baby-girl introduced me to her friends but I was more interested in another table that had a bunch of hot people sitting at it. There were five of them. The two girls were complete opposites, one of them was blond the other brunet, one of them was beautiful and sexy the other was beautiful and cute. There were also three boys, one of them was handsome and strong, one was handsome and tall, and the third was…well…picture the most handsome man on the planet, multiply that by ten, give him bronze colored hair, make him seventeen and really pale, and you've got the third boy.

None of them were staring at me, which was kind of weird since I'm kind of the main attraction around here today. They also all looked too old to be in high school, like in movies when they get thirty year old actors to play victims in a slasher. They were all really pale with dark eyes and—now I could be wrong—unusually pointy teeth. They looked exactly like vamp—like models, they looked exactly like models.

"Who are they?" I asked, wiggling my eyebrows and wink wink, nudge, nudging Baby-girl.

"Oh them," she sounded spiteful, "That's Edward and Emmett and Alice Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. They're all adopted you know, by the young Dr. Carlisle Cullen and his wife Esme Cullen."

They were odd names, I have to say. The kind of name only grandparents and vamp—models had.

"They are mighty pretty," I said, "The kind of attractive you feel down deep right in your loins."

"Yes!" said baby-girl who I can now recall is named Jessica, a really boring name now that I've been exposed to ones like Edward and Alice. "But don't bother, none of them would go out with me. They're all dating each other! Except for Edward. He's single but he still won't go out with me, so, y'know, probably gay."

I had a feeling Jessica and I wouldn't get along very well for very long. It never works out between two people who both think they are and should be the center of attention.

"Wait, they're family and they're all dating each other!" I exclaimed when I was done thinking about myself and could process what she'd said.

"Yeah," she shrugged.

"Shouldn't people be…upset by that?"

"Honestly we all can't get passed the fact that apparently they let twenty-four year olds adopt other twenty-four year olds." Jessica said.

"Did you guys ever think that maybe they're not just adoptive parents and children, that maybe they're a cult, or a coven of models or something?" I ask.

Jessica gives me a strange look, "They told us they were a family, why would they lie about that?"

I guess she had a point, if they really were something else then surely they would have come up with a better cover story, one that was remotely believable.

As I continued to stare at them they all simultaneously turned their heads to stare at me! I have to say I was surprised, what on earth could cause them to pay little ol' me any mind? We had the world's most awkward staring contest, them with their weird black eyes, me with my weird brown eyes. After a couple of minutes, I'm proud to say I won, they all stood in unison and walked out the door, the most gorgeous losers in all of history.

I had to give Jessica credit, there was something distinctly homosexual about Edward, in the most attractive way. I think it just comes from being so very urbane in an atmosphere so very provincial.

After lunch I went to biology. I was so distracted by thoughts of Edward that I crashed into at least five people and fell into no less than three puddles. I wondered how normal people could manage thinking and walking at the same time, but this only served as further distraction and instead of walking into the building my class was in, I walked into the building my class was in, as in I walked into the outside wall.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked concerned.

"Eric," I said, annoyed, "Why don't you get hot or shut the hell up?"

"I'm really sorry Bella, I just wanted to make sure you didn't hurt yourself."

Man this kid was an asshole.

I walked into the building, properly this time. The first thing I noticed was that the tables here were very much like the tables we have back in Arizona. I guess high school lab tables don't change that much from place to place. Which gives me an idea for a company that sells lab tables individually catered to represent the location they're going to. For example, the ones going to Washington would be covered in the Starbucks logo and be constantly soggy while the ones for Arizona would be modeled after the Grand Canyon and be covered in thinly veiled racism. The next thing I noticed was the other people (that's generally how it goes, tables first, people second) and the fact that there were many of them. So many people that absolutely every chair in the room was occupied. Except for one. The one next to Edward Cullen. My knees went weak, no not in a sexist, sexist, girly, swooning way but in a sexist, girly, I'm-to-weak-to-even-function kind of way. I'm pretty smart so it only took me a few minutes of staring awestruck at the empty chair to realize that I would have to sit there since there was no other option. Not that if there was another option I would have chosen it, but I was still happy to be forced into this position.

I giddily headed toward the front of the room to introduce myself to the teacher. As I passed Edward he went rigid and looked at me with cold black eyes, his mouth was turned down and his eyebrows were in a frowning position, he looked to be furious with me. So preoccupied was I with processing Edward's facial expression and interpreting it that I tripped over what might have been a book in the aisle but was probably just air and did a face plant right in the middle of the room. I tried to get up nonchalantly so no one would notice, but my attempt failed and I ended up having to drag myself to the teacher whose pant leg I used to hoist myself up into a sitting position and, getting a good grip on his desk, pulled myself up the rest of the way.

"I am Bella Swan," I said with a flourish. Edward was still throwing icepicks at me with his eyes.

"I'm Mr. Banner," the teacher said. Really, a scientist named Mr. Banner? Bet I wouldn't like it when he's angry.

Mr. Banner looked around the room trying to find me a place to sit, "Uh…" he said, the realizing the only open spot was right next to Edward, "Miss Swan you may have a seat over there next to the odd boy starring at you homicidally."

Naturally I was a bit off put by Edward's unsolicited malicious behavior, but I was sure once I got to know him better I wouldn't mind it. I sat down next to him keeping my eyes on the desk. Maybe it was my smell that had offended him, perhaps I picked up some of my dad's scent whilst in the communal bathroom. I surreptitiously sniffed my hair, it smelled of strawberries, so maybe.

Mr. Banner started to teach the class oddly unconcerned with my inability to figure out what was wrong with me. Edward was a mystery. He sat on the edge of his seat as far from me as possible clearly straining against the urge to rip my throat out. Usually people weren't this upset by me until I'd said at least one thing to them.

On the bright side, Edward was even more good looking up close.

When the bell rang Edward bolted inhumanly fast out the door. What a meanie, it wasn't fair. Why was I stuck with a lab partner who could only look at me with angry eyes? He should be grateful, it was the end of the year and he still didn't have a lab partner. He probably always had to be in the awkward three person group that the teacher would always refer to as a threesome so you can't help but spend the whole class thinking about what it would be like to have sex with the people you're working with inside of a giant beaker, your passion like a fiery Bunsen burner heating up the distilled water of your lust. At least, that's how it always was for me. That…that boy should be on his hands and knees worshipping the ground I walk on!

Speaking of boys who would worship the ground I walk on, a male voice behind me said, "Aren't you Isabella Swan?"

I looked and found that the male voice had come from a male human, one not nearly as hot as Edward and his siblings. I didn't much care for people not as hot as Edward and his siblings but this boy was smiling at me in a friendly way (as opposed to another way, I guess) and he clearly didn't think I smelled like dad bathroom so I thought I'd give him a chance.

"Bella, actually." I corrected him, "It's short for Isabella. Because I'm a very busy person and I don't have time to run around saying Isabella all day."

He tilted his head to the side, he looked kind of like the lead singer of Rascal Flatts but younger and slightly less squirly, "But it's your own name, why would you run around saying it all day?"

"Um, I think you just answered your own question. It's my name. Who else's name would I want to say?"

His smile turned suave. Not really suave, but like in a movie when one of those actors who isn't attractive but is considerd funny is trying to impress a girl so they give them their best sexah grin and the audience laughs because the girl is so not going to be impressed, "Well," he said, "My name is Mike."

"Hi, Mike," I said because it was the most boring thing I could think to say.

"Do you need help getting to your next class?" he asked.

"I'm going to gym, I think I can find it," I answered before I realized he probably meant actual physical help getting to my next class, in which case the answer was, yes, most definitely.

"That's my class too!" He seemed thrilled, he all but jumped up and down clapping his hands with glee. I shook my head, this doofus actually thinks he has a shot with me. I have some news for him, nice guys finish last. With me, nice guys don't even get passed the starting gates. Nice guys are shot in the foot when the start gun is fired. He wasn't nearly as handsome as Edward (no duh) but he also wasn't nearly as repulsive as Eric so I let him walk me to class. I even let him talk on the way there and he told me about his childhood in California and a lot of other filler crap that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

When we arrived at the gym Mike turned to me with his big puppy dog eyes, "I just want to let you know that I've been fantasizing about you ever since I saw you in English class this morning and I am determined to dedicate the rest of my life to wooing you."

Huh, I didn't remember him being in my English class. Honestly, I could barely remember his name. Something boring and generic…Monty…Micky…Sinbad. I don't know. But I thought it would be funny to watch him chase me for the next couple of books, like a dog chasing its own tail, so I smiled at him in a way that seemed to say "Try hard enough and you can win me, big boy," while what I was really thinking was Not a snowball's chance in hell, Sinbad.

At Forks high school they made you take P.E. all four years. This was literally hell on earth. God designed this godforsaken school just to punish me. Why, God, why? Why do you care about me so much? Why did you invent sports and then give me legs of no more use than jelly beans? Well, I guess jelly beans have more use because you can eat them. But you could also eat my legs and that would give you more substance than a jelly bean so maybe my legs were more useful than a jelly bean, but they were just as good at running.

I made it through gym with only a few minor injuries, to myself. One other kid had to be sent to the hospital. I'm not very strong, but I'm persistent, so when I mistook his head for the tennis ball I just kept hitting it and wondering why it wasn't bouncing away.

After gym I headed back to the main office to turn in some paperwork I forgot to mention earlier. I opened the door and immediately saw Edward. Well, I immediately saw the end table with some magazines on it, then I saw there were three people in the room, then I saw one of them was Edward.

"There's no way for me to transfer out of Biology?" he was saying.

The secretary at the desk said, "Not this late in the school year, that's kind of an odd request."

"What if I told you that if I didn't transfer out right now I was going to massacre everyone in that room?"

The secretary shook her head and I kind of wondered why she had the final say on everyone's enrollment, "If I break the rules for you, I'll have to break the rules for everybody."

A fair point, maybe, but really who else was going to try and transfer with only a month or two left in the year?

Suddenly Edward turned to face me. The beauty of his hate-filled, soulless black eyes took my breath away.

"Nevermind," Edward said to the secretary. In my opinion if I really felt I'd commit mass murder if left in a class I'd try a bit harder to be taken out of it. But Edward just ran inhumanly fast past me and out the door.

I handed the secretary my paperwork.

"How was your first day?" She asked me.

"Like you care!" I shouted, then stomped out of the building, slamming the door behind me.