The next morning at school didn't go by fast enough. I caught glimpses of Bella in the hallways and later at lunch, but never had a chance to talk to her. Eventually, finally, Biology came round and I waited for her to show up, waited for her to sit down next to me.
She came in together with Mike Newton. Mike must have told her something funny, for she was laughing. I felt the urge to strangle him.
The moment she sat eyes on me, her smile fell and a crimson flush colored her face.
Damn.
"Hi, Bella," I said as if I hadn't noticed her reaction.
"Hi, Edward," she replied coldly, took her seat and then looked away.
For the rest of the hour she ignored me. The seat I was occupying might as well have been empty. Banner was showing slides, so no interaction was actually required, but still it annoyed me.
Why was she ignoring me? What had I done to displease her?
Why did I care?
The hour seemed to fly by, but at the same time seemed to crawl excruciatingly slow.
Finally, far too soon, the bell rang, and before I knew it, she had gathered her things – today without any mishap – and practically ran out of the room, leaving me once again behind, feeling mystified.
The next two days were basically a repeat of the day before. I only saw her from afar, and in Biology she pretty much ignored me.
On Friday, I decided that I should stop obsessing over her. It was more than obvious that she wasn't the least bit interested in me, and with any other girl that would have been perfectly fine by me.
I joined my family at lunch, forcing myself to sit with the back to the room, so I wasn't tempted to start looking for her. I played around with my salad, being not particularly hungry, when Emmett looked over my shoulder and said: "The new girl's watching you."
I whipped around so fast I toppled my chair over and landed ungracefully on the floor, spilling my food all around me.
Jasper and Emmett broke out in laughter, drowning out, what I knew was laughter from the other students in the room. Still sitting on the floor I caught a glimpse of Bella, but her face was turned away and I couldn't read what she was thinking of my mishap.
Angrily I pushed myself off the ground, rightening my chair and sat back down.
"Are you all right, Edward?" my mom asked, punching Emmett in the arm, so he finally quieted down. In anybody but a vampire this punch would have been cause for a trip to the ER, but Emmett probably didn't even feel it.
"I'm okay," I said, still angry. Nothing had been hurt by my stupid spill, nothing but my pride.
"What is it with you and that girl anyway?" Emmett asked, a wide grin still plastered over his face.
"It's nothing," I retorted, hoping he would drop it. But of course, him being who he was, he didn't.
"Ever since she came here, you've been mooning over her."
"I haven't been 'mooning' over her," I said annoyed.
"You have," he repeated. "Don't think we haven't noticed."
I groaned. I felt a headache coming. I massaged the bridge of my nose.
"Can't you just drop it," I begged, looking at him imploringly.
He opened his mouth, clearly not willing to do as I asked, but Alice intervened.
"Leave it alone, Emmett. This only concerns Edward."
They exchanged glances, and finally Emmett nodded.
"Thanks, Al," I said gratefully. I wasn't quite sure why Alice had taken my side – she usually was the biggest gossip in our family – but I was just too glad to end this topic for now to dig deeper into her reasons.
Biology was another round of torture. Not only did I have to endure the bickering of my fellow students on my way there, but Bella had this annoying smirk on her face. It was almost as if she knew she had been the reason I had made a fool of myself in the cafeteria.
"Are you okay?" she asked, sounding only vaguely interested.
"Thanks, I'm fine," I pressed out, taking my seat.
"That was quite a spill you took there," she grinned.
Wow, more than three words in a row. She was suddenly talking to me. And she was smiling at me, even if it was to make fun of me.
"I'm fine!" I repeated, more forcefully. My pride was still too much hurt to make light of the incident.
"Suit yourself," she muttered to herself, her grin falling, and turned her attention to Banner who had just entered the class room.
I wanted to bang my head against the hard surface of the table. Here she was suddenly willing to talk to me for a change and I had to shoot her down.
God, why did she do that to me?
Once again she ignored me for the rest of the lesson. I tried to do the same, though I failed in that task spectacularly. I have no idea what Banner was lecturing on and when he asked me a question I had to ask him to repeat it to me, before I could answer, which was a first for me.
* * *
It was raining on the weekend, which wasn't exactly a surprise in Forks. The fact that the small town west of the Olympic National Park was one of the places with the least amount of sunshine in continental US had played a big factor in the decision of my family to move here.
I volunteered on every other Saturday at the hospital in Forks where Carlisle worked, so that's were I was. As the son of one of the resident physicians (that was for convenience sake – officially I and the others were all adopted children of Carlisle), I had a little bit more leeway than most other volunteers. I was allowed to follow Carlisle around for the morning as he made his rounds, assisting him with whatever he was doing. I hoped to be a doctor one day, and I enjoyed working with him in those hours.
At lunch time, I helped with handing out the meals and then I went over to the wing with the long-term patients. Even though Forks Community Hospital was a rather small hospital, it still had a 20-bed long-term care facility that tended, among others, for several cancer patients.
Mrs. Jackson, a 74 year old former National Park guide was my favorite, and I was looking forward to meeting with her again. She was in the later stages of colorectal cancer, and wasn't expected to live to see 75. This didn't mean however that she was depressed or in any way down trodden. Her husband of 47 years had died two years ago, and it was almost as if she was looking forward to seeing him again. When I opened the door to her room, she greeted me with a big smile and waved me over to her bed.
"Hello, Mrs. Jackson," I said.
"Edward, my boy, come in, come in."
I moved over to her bed, mindful of the tubes and lines sneaking in from the drip at her side and the machines, to some place underneath her sheets. I pulled up a chair and sat down.
"So, have you met any nice girls lately?" she asked the same question she asked every time she saw me.
Normally, my reply would have been 'no, at least nobody as nice as you are', but today those words wouldn't come over my lips. My thoughts immediately went to Bella.
Damn!
She immediately picked up on my failed response, and her smile widened even further.
"Edward, do tell me, have you met a girl?"
I swallowed, and looked away for a moment. "Well, I do meet girls every day, really. They're all over school."
"But this week you met somebody special, didn't you?" she prodded.
Finally I nodded.
She clapped her hands like a little girl.
"Oh, tell me about her. Who is she? What is she like? Why haven't you mentioned her before?"
Taking a deep sigh, I proceeded to tell her about Bella, how she just had moved to Forks and that she was in Biology with me.
"I don't think she likes me, though," I concluded. "She ignores me whenever she's near and we've barely exchanged more than two words last week."
Mrs. Jackson placed her finger at the side of her face, looking at me with a tilted head.
"But you do like her?" she asked.
I sighed. "I don't know. She really hasn't given me a chance yet to find out. It's just … I can't stop thinking about her. When I'm in class with her, all I can do is watch her. And when I'm not with her, I can't stop myself from looking for her. I really don't know what's the matter with me."
She tutted at that outburst.
"Edward, I think you've got it bad," she said with a speculating look on her face.
"What does it help, when she doesn't like me?"
God, when did I start to sound so whiny?
Mrs. Jackson reached for the controls and pushed the button to lift the head part of the bed up, so she ended up sitting almost upright. Her hand reached out to mine and she took it. She started to stroke her thumb over the back of my hand. Surprisingly this calmed me down, and after a minute of this I smiled again.
"Okay," she said, "let's see if we can work out why she thinks she doesn't like you, Edward."
I wanted to protest on the 'think' part, for there was no doubt in my mind that Bella didn't just think she didn't like me, she simply did, but Mrs. Jackson held up her hand, and I fell silent before I said something.
"Tell me exactly how you met. Don't leave anything out. Tell me what she said and how she said it," she commanded and I obeyed.
She listened, prodding me to go on when I faltered in my narrative. At the end, she nodded thoughtfully.
"So, was it in Biology she saw you the first time?"
I was about to say yes, but then realized that this couldn't be the case. She had known my name, had said she had heard it before. And the only time this could have been the case was when Lauren broke up with me.
"I believe she must have seen me in the cafeteria earlier, when Lauren slapped me and told me she hated my guts," I said quietly.
"Aha," Mrs. Jackson said satisfied, "I think we now hit the point of the matter."
"We have?" I asked, confused.
"Try to put yourself in her shoes, Edward. She's new to the school, knowing nobody, maybe she's shy. Then she sees you breaking up spectacularly in the middle of the cafeteria with a good-looking girl. I'm sure there were others around her and they were talking about you, and she listened. There may have been some not too nice comments about you. And then, the next thing she knows is that she's thrown together with you in Biology. And you are nice to her."
I listened, but so far it eluded me where Mrs. Jackson was going. I frowned.
"Should I've been rude to her, then?" I asked, confused.
"Of course not, silly. But think about it. She sees you've just had a break up, and suddenly you're interested in her. She's new, she knows she just can't come into a new town, hook up with the most eligible bachelor in the school, who happens to be drop dead gorgeous. How long does she think this might last? You seem to be a player, and she's just a rebound, nothing any girl wants to be. And once it's over, she'll have lost any chance on making any new friends. She'll be branded until the end of school. So she tries to push you away."
Strangely enough, what she said made sense. Sort of.
"I'm not 'drop dead gorgeous'," I said in protest.
She actually rolled her eyes. "Edward, my boy, I might be old, but I'm neither blind nor stupid. If I'd been 50 years younger, I would chase you to the end of the earth. You have the looks and you have this smile that will make weaker women faint. It is actually a little bit dazzling."
I couldn't help but smile at that statement, and she actually blushed, before looking away.
"You see," she said and it only made me smile wider.
I thought for a moment. "So, what you're saying is that Bella believes I'm just interested in her because she thinks I'm a player – which I'm not – and she's afraid what will happen once we break up, which she believes will be inevitable."
"Got it in one," she praised, taking my hand again, patting it.
"So, how can I convince her that this is not true? That I just would like to learn more about her and that I'm really interested in her as a person?" I asked.
Now it was Mrs. Jackson's turn to sigh. "This I'm not so sure about. I believe this is going to take time. Don't be too pushy, give her time to adjust here. Be yourself."
Be myself. Well, I could try to do that.
"Thank you," I said from the bottom of my heart.
For the rest of the afternoon I entertained Mrs. Jackson until she got tired and dismissed me so she could take a nap. I had to promise her to keep her updated on my progress with Bella and I didn't have it in my heart to deny her that.
