A/N Okay, so first off thank you so much to Bre-Flower94 for the spectacular review! Reviews like that excite me so much I just have to keep writing. Secondly, the companion story may or may not be happening depending on feedback. It also depends on school, which will be starting soon. Speaking of which, I'd like to remind you that chapters may not be coming out as often as you or I would like starting August 24th. Finally, as much as I wish I did, I do not own anything from Twilight. Oh, and also I've never actually been subjected to a psychological test by a partner so, just bare with me.

My father comes and picks me up after gym class. I stay silent the whole ride home, contemplating how to deal with the situation. My father is going to be irritated that I have a boy in the house, even if he is my partner for a project. My dad is the kind of father that says the first boyfriend I bring home is going to get knocked over the head with a shovel and told to get out of our house.

My father notices my silence, because normally when I'm around him I'm talking my head off. As we enter our driveway he asks me what's wrong.

"Oh, nothing," I reply. I'm not sure how well he's going to take the news, and I don't know when the best time to tell him will be.

"Well, nothing has got you to quiet down," he looks at me knowingly as he parks the Ferrari, which caused a lot of trouble at school. Everyone stared me down as I got into my dad's car. Thank God they'll have the weekend to forget about it.

"Yep it has," I murmur to myself. Then suddenly I get an idea that brightens my prospects.

"Hey Dad," I say as I grab my crutches out of the back seat and he snatches my book bag on the other side. "Is our phone number and address in the phone book yet?"

"No," my dad responds. "Why?"

"No reason." Though I smile to myself. If my address isn't in the phone book, then Jasper Hale won't be able to get to my house. Then tomorrow, I can call him and we could just work at his place tomorrow or something.

"Does that no reason have something to do with the nothing you mention early?" My father knows me like the back of his hand.

"Yes, the no reason and the nothing have everything to do with each other."

My dad looks at me expectantly, and I look back innocently as we walk/crutch to the house.

"What?" I ask.

He shakes his head and then enters the house. I sigh. I normally don't keep things from my father, but I think both Jasper and I are safer if he doesn't know anything.

I crutch into the house just moments after my father does and head upstairs to my room. Stairs are the worst part about having a bum leg. They are almost impossible to climb without wincing once or twice because of too much pressure on the bad leg. Eventually, I finish climbing the stairs and go to my bedroom, which still solely consists of a mattress and a lamp. My laptop rests next to the mattress. I can't wait to decorate this place. I'm trying to decide if I want bright colors that pop, or possibly something more romantic and maybe slightly dreary. I suppose I'll have to wait until we actually go shopping, which probably won't be this weekend because of the accident. Another week with just a mattress, lovely.

In the end I plop down on my mattress and begin typing about Shane some more. I'm not really sure where I'm taking him quite yet. The last main event that happened was that he met Carrie, a girl who has taken an interest in him at his new high school in New York. Carrie is currently pestering him and he doesn't know how to respond, but he does know she can tell there's something different about him. I really want to make the story a romance, but I don't know how without killing Carrie. I like Carrie. She reminds me of me. And, I won't deny it, it seems like this story is chronicling my experience with Jasper Hale. Carrie and Shane's literature teacher just assigned them a project to work on together. Sound familiar?

After about three pages worth of typing there's a knock on my door.

"Lizzie, are you in there?" my mother calls urgently.

I close my laptop before replying. I don't need my mother to catch a glimpse of my writing. I prefer to keep it to myself.

"Yes, Mom, come on in."

She steps in quickly and looks me over. She sees the laptop.

"Oh, you were writing," she observes.

"Yes Mom, what else would I be doing?"

"Nothing," she says and then tells me why she came for a visit. "There's a boy with a southern accent on the phone downstairs. He says he needs to talk to you about a project for school?" She questions the last part. Normally, I pick a girl for a partner, and as I previously mentioned, I have no idea how my family will react to Jasper.

"Oh, okay," I say nonchalantly. I try to make it seem like nothing, though inside I'm wondering how in the world Jasper Hale got my home phone number.

"Lizzie," Mom says as I get up, "I hope this isn't an infatuation or something of the sort. You know when I was young-"

"And you lived in Detroit, yada yada yada," I cut her off. I don't need a psycho lecture right now. "Where's the phone Mom?"

"On the kitchen counter, by the stove," she replies.

"Thank you mother," I mumble as I pass her by, hopping on one foot. I hope that hopping is faster than crutching around, because if my time estimate is correct, Jasper has been waiting for over five minutes.

I arrive in the kitchen in about two minutes, which is a record with my hurt leg. The phone is on the counter where my mother said it would be.

"Hello?" I ask breathlessly.

"Elizabeth," Jazz's cool voice greets me. "Are we still working together this evening?"

"Okay, well first off you can stop calling me Elizabeth," I say realizing I haven't mentioned my nickname to him. "You can call me Lizzie, or Liz if you prefer. Secondly, I don't know." I peek up from the swirlie marble counter and glance around for my dad.

"My dad came home early this weekend because of the incident Tuesday. He isn't exactly fond of me being with a male friend that he doesn't really know, even if my father himself is in the vicinity. Maybe we could meet at your house tomorrow?"

"That wouldn't be possible," he replies softly. "How about Sunday?"

"Umm, I might have something going on then." I'm not sure if our shopping trip for my room is going to occur this weekend.

There's a silence, then he speaks.

"Well I guess that leaves only one option. Do you want to tell your father I'm coming over this evening, or shall I?" he questions.

"I don't think you'd be able to contact my father," I note. "You don't have his phone number, and I'm not letting anyone near this phone. I'm still not even sure how you got this phone number."

"Oh trust me," I can practically see Jasper grinning. "I can be very persuasive. Just ask Mrs. Cope."

I gasp. I though that information was private.

"So," he drawls. "Either I can go extort more info from Mrs. Cope, or you can tell your father I'm coming and tell me your address."

"Bastard." I mutter under my breath and I hear him chuckle as I set the phone down to get my father.

"Dad!" my voice rings through the mansion, and seconds later my father appears in the doorway. He looks frazzled and worried.

"Are you alright?" he asks, scanning my figure.

"No Dad," I reply sarcastically. Then I lean back against the counter and put my hand to my head like I'm fatigued. "I've fallen and I can't get up." A rambunctious grin decorates my face before it falls into nervousness. "Actually I've got a question." I try my best to make puppy dog eyes. "I have a project in Psychology and my partner wants to come over-"

"Oh that's fine," my father interjects and starts to walk away.

"My partner is a boy," I warn. My father stops dead in his tracks and turns back around to face me.

"A boy?" he asks.

"Yep." I pop the p.

"Oh well," my father is actually briefly confused. "What's his name?"

"Jasper Hale."

"Isn't he?" my father doesn't even finish the sentence.

"Yeah. He's on the phone right now, actually. He probably just heard our whole conversation."

"Oh," more dismay from my father and then, "Can I talk to him?"

"Hold on," I say to my father, holding up my index finger for him to wait. Then I whip the phone up to my ear.

"Hey my Dad wants to talk to you," I tell Jazz. "Is that okay?"

I wouldn't be surprised if Jasper hung up the phone from boredom but he replies.

"Sure."

I hold the telephone out to my father, who strides over and takes it. I expect him to start drilling Jasper with questions but instead he just sits there. I can just barely hear Jasper's smooth voice coming through the receiver. I can't tell what he's saying, but eventually at the end of the one-sided conversation my Dad tells Jasper our address and the hangs up the phone.

"Nice kid," he praises Jazz and begins to go head back to wherever he was before I called him. "He says he'll be here at five."

"Okay, thanks Daddy." I smile as my father exits and then awkwardly skip back to my room for crutches. The clock on my laptop says 4:00 p.m. I have an hour before Jasper arrives. There's nothing I can do to spiff up our relatively empty house, so I decide to review the questions we have to ask our partners. They're actually fairly easy questions, though they sound like they're from one of those email chain letters. The whole sheet actually looked similar to this:

Partner Analysis Project

1. What's your favorite color?

2. Are you afraid of anything? If so what?

3. How many friends do you have?

4. Describe yourself in one word.

5. What's your favorite type of weather?

6. Do you like music? What type?

7. What sports do you play?

8. What hobbies do you have?

9. How is your relationship with your family?

10. What job do you plan to have in the future?

11. Are you interested to see what your partner writes about you?

12. Come up with your own question for your partner.

Most of the questions are pretty self explanatory, and I doubt I'm even going to need to pay attention to Jasper's movements to get a page paper on this but, it should be interesting nonetheless.

Promptly at five o'clock the doorbell rings.

"Someone get the door!" I yell from the kitchen table, where I have conveniently positioned my self for the interview. The next thing I know, a pack of elephants is stampeding to the front of the house.

"Okay then," I mutter. I thought I made it clear that this wasn't a big deal. Lord forbid my family swarm poor Jasper and scare him away.

But as Jasper enters the kitchen I find out that is exactly what they have done. My mother and brother are flanking Jasper's sides and my father is eyeing him warily a few steps back. Jazz is not oblivious to the fact, and he is actually smiling a little at my family's ridiculousness. Of course, he looks like a supermodel the whole time, dazzling my family with his looks.

I look at my loved ones like they're crazy and then say, "Okay guys, you can go now. Jazz is only going to be here for like thirty minutes, so shoo!" I pretend my hands are brooms and make a sweeping motion towards the door. They get the idea and scatter, though my father dawdles longer than the other two. I have to meet his gaze before he'll leave.

In one smooth motion Jazz takes a seat on the opposite side of the table. He's gazing at me intently and I feel really vulnerable again. Ugh. He needs to stop doing that.

"Hello, Lizzie," he says simply. I meekly smile back. Sometimes I don't pay attention to how good he looks, but other times, like now, he just blows me away.

"Hi," I reply.

"Ready to start?" he asks.

"Sure," I say. "Do you need anything to record my reactions?"

"No, I've got a pretty good memory," he replies. He's still thinks he has the upper hand in our "relationship" so he's acting a bit smug right now. Let's see how badly I can bamboozle him.

"Oh, right, I suppose that's another one of the bizarre things you can do," I agree. He smiles tightly at me.

"Shall I go first?" he asks politely.

"Ask away," I respond.

"What's your favorite color?" he questions me.

"Hot pink. But that really isn't much of a personality indicator for me. My old friends said I'm somewhat of an orangish-red. I'm afraid of spiders and really tall heights, though I can ride roller coasters with no problem. The third question, I believe, is how many friends I have, and the flat out answer is I don't know." He raises and eyebrow at me, and I do the same to challenge him. "And you say you have a good memory." I smile.

"Hmm," he smiles back, and it looks like he wants to laugh. "What's the fourth question?"

"Um, I think it is my favorite type of weather, right?"

"No," he shakes his head. "Try describe yourself in one word."

"Oh, then it's what my favorite type of weather is," I correct myself. "I would describe myself as o-d-d." I spell out odd. It's funny when you do that to people and they think it's a disorder. "And my favorite weather is overcast, and sometimes rainy."

"Are you going to continue?" he asks when I stop.

"No," I chime, "I think I'll be a lady and let you ask me the rest."

I get another raised eyebrow before he continues.

"What's your favorite type of music?"

"I don't have a favorite type. Anything that has a decent beat and isn't ridiculously slow I'll listen to."

"Sports and hobbies?" the words sound different coming off his tongue, like he doesn't speak so brusquely all the time.

"I play soccer. I like to read, write, and listen to music."

"How is your relationship with your family?"

The question stops me cold as it prods one of the sore spots in my life.

"Interesting," it's my turn to be brusque.

"Care to elaborate?"

"No," I state coldly. Jazz looks surprised at my change of attitude. "Next question."

"What type of job would you like to have in the future?"

"It changes on a day to day basis. The main ones have been lawyer, engineer, pharmacist, and federal agent."

"Are you interested about what I write about you?"

"Very," I say truthfully. I want to know what Jasper Hale thinks of me. I brace myself for the final question.

"Do you feel that no one understands you?"

My mouth opens and then closes; did he really just ask that? I can't help but looking surprised.

"Well?" he demands.

"Yes," I whisper. Jasper Hale still has the upper hand.

Two hours after Jasper leaves I'm lying on the mattress in my room looking at the ceiling. I'm slightly frustrated with myself for snapping on question nine. I'm also irritated with Jasper Hale for the last question. Of course I don't think anyone understands me. It's not like I have someone to spill my guts to. Actually, if I did spill my guts it'd probably be a natural disaster. Simply, put there are things I'd rather not have other people know.

And somehow Jasper Hale knew that.

I sigh and go to review my notes on his interview. They're not very informative, I swear Jazz is like a Russian spy when you ask him about something he doesn't want you to know. He just sits there and stares you down. It's disconcerting. He'd probably even throw professional investigators for a loop.

Partner Analysis Project

1. What's your favorite color? None

2. Are you afraid of anything? If so what? Nothing

3. How many friends do you have? Subject smiles tightly and says "Interesting question."

4. Describe yourself in one word. Atypical

5. What's your favorite type of weather? Overcast. Not Rainy

6. Do you like music? What type? Country

7. What sports do you play? None

8. What hobbies do you have? Reading, Studying

9. How is your relationship with your family? Good

10. What job do you plan to have in the future? Subjects smiles to self "Professional student."

11. Are you interested to see what your partner writes about you? "Yes, actually."

12. (Come up with your own question for your partner.) What do you have to hide that makes you so aloof from the rest of society? Subject gives me a dark look. "Everything."