I woke up a couple of hours after I got home, and was initially disorientated until I realised that I had fallen asleep at my desk. I was also rather turned on, as a result of a vivid dream staring cute guy. I determined to get to work on the second step immediately, before I forgot any more details of the evening in my fuggy haze. The only piece of information I had so far was that cute guy was friends with Jacob, the guy whose birthday it was, and fortunately I was friends with him, at least on Facebook.

I made my way to Jacob's Facebook profile and proceeded to look for any clue as to cute guy's identity. A large number of people had written on his wall to wish him a happy birthday, but none of their profile pictures matched the memory I'd had of that perfect face. I then tried looking through Jacob's photos, and this was where I struck gold. About fifteen photos in, there was a photo depicting cute guy along with Jacob and a couple of girls, all dressed up for formal hall. Fortunately he'd been tagged, so I was able to find out his name: Edward Cullen.

I clicked the link to his profile, but was disappointed to find that most of it was hidden. I certainly wasn't going to add him as a friend right away, not wanting to appear too keen, so I read the information that was available. It seemed that he plays the piano, likes listening to music, his favourite colour is blue and his favourite season is autumn. All of those seemed good, perhaps I could find a way to use the colour by dressing in blue (not much of a departure from my usual attire), and the piano playing was a real turn on.

There wasn't much else to see on his profile, his photos were the generic 'snow in Cambridge' and 'formal hall at Cambridge' albums, and there wasn't anyone who turned up a lot in his pictures. I then looked him up on Google, where I had a little more success. The first listing was the Cambridge Athletics Club. This wasn't a bad thing, as it had presumably resulted in his lean physique, but it wasn't a massively good thing either. The second and third results were for articles in the rival Cambridge paper, Varsity. He'd written two articles, one about crime and security in the colleges, and the other about communes in Cambridge. So that was one thing we have in common, we're both journalists. And his subject matter indicated that he was somebody who thought outside the box and beyond the Cambridge bubble – definitely a good thing.

The fourth hit on Google (ignoring all the ones which obviously weren't relevant) was for the Cambridge Union Society, where he was listed as one of the officers. This showed, most likely, an interest in politics or debating; both are good attributes, so I was pleased with the results of my search. By this time it was the early hours of the morning, so I went to bed, where I dreamt of Edward again, and his pianist's fingers.

The next day, after I'd got over my hangover and completed my ritual of swearing never to drink again, I wrote my article for the paper. I was a little worried about this one, as I was not sure what tone to set, and I just hoped people would realise it was tongue in cheek and not think I meant it literally. I was also nervous I was becoming too invested, and that this might be impairing my ability to write. I could only hope that the readers would soon let me know if this were the case. I knew from experience that people weren't afraid to speak their minds about what they thought of articles in the student papers. Sometimes it seemed as if people forgot that there was a real person sitting at a desk writing this stuff though.


The Cambridge Student

Isabella Swan is writing a series of articles entitled A Number of Steps to Acquiring a Boyfriend. This week's edition of The Cambridge Student contains the second article:

Step 2: Carry out reconnaissance

Hopefully you were all successful in identifying a suitable target and remembering his name, so this week we'll be looking at carrying out reconnaissance. The aim of this step is to ensure that the target is as suitable as he at appeared at first by finding out more about him, using the tools available to you.

The first of these tools, as I'm sure you're all well aware, is Facebook. Yes, I know this is rather clichéd, but the fact remains that it is usually the most effective method to find out more about a person, especially a fellow student. As long as you've remembered their name, this should be fairly straightforward – you type the name in the search bar and press enter, I should think Cambridge students ought to be able to manage that. If you don't remember his name this becomes rather more difficult; however as long as you have at least one mutual friend it's often possible to find him by trawling through photos. Perhaps I should have mentioned that this step can be rather time consuming.

The second port of call is another cliché – Google. It can be surprising how much you can find out about a person this way, from sports clubs they're members of, to which school they went to. The relevance of the results is aided by Google's location driven searches, which mean that results within the university will turn up first.

The third option is through word of mouth. Find out who any mutual friends might be and try to (very subtly) bring up your target in conversation. Skirting around their name, for example by mentioning a sport you know they play, can often be the most effective method here.

Fourthly, keep your eyes open. You'll be surprised how often you can spot someone when you're deliberately looking out for them. You don't necessarily have to approach them at this stage, but you'll be able to see which crowd they hang out with and where their haunts are.

Make a note of the things you find out and see whether your current target fits your specifications. If they do, great; if they don't, start again with a new target, and repeat until you're successful.

Something to note: do not take this stage too far. Stalking is not healthy, and will not endear you to your target if you get caught. Sneaking in their window and watching them sleep, for example, tends not to be a good idea. In addition to which you're likely to get caught on your college CCTV cameras and could get in a large amount of trouble. You have been warned!

Watch out for next week's edition of The Cambridge Student, containing Step 3: Infiltrate his circle of friends.


That evening in the canteen, I happened to be sitting with Jake and some mutual friends, when Edward's name came up. Jake mentioned a friendly rounders match happening later in the week, with the purpose of being a chance to get away from the stress of exams, and it seemed Edward had gone along the week before. It wouldn't usually have been my thing, but if Edward was going to be there, I thought I'd give it a shot. I'd just have to hope that I didn't trip or anything embarrassing like that in front of him.

I didn't like to ask Jake anything else about Edward in case it got back to Edward that I was asking questions, but I felt that I knew enough to get on with. I was glad that I now had a name for cute guy, and hopefully I'd get to see him again soon.

A/N Thanks for reading, reviewing, alerting and favouriting this story. You can follow me on twitter at perspicuous to find more information about updates. This update wasn't supposed to happen – I was supposed to be doing schoolwork and I ended up writing this instead – and the next update definitely won't happen until after my work is handed in next Wednesday. I'd love to know what you think of this story, good or bad; I appreciate constructive criticism. I'm also sorry that this chapter is rather short, but this seemed like a natural place to stop.