A/N Stephenie Meyer owns, I just play.

I dropped by the auditorium on my way to track practice to see if I could catch Alice. By the time I made my way there, though, she was already pacing to the left of the stage and mumbling in a metered fashion to herself. I spotted Bella waiting patiently for her against the back wall of the massive space, so I quietly sidled up beside her.

I bent at the waist and whispered so as not to disturb the aspiring actors. "Hey Bella."

She startled, letting out a squeak and whipping her head around to face me. Her signature flush hit only moments later, but she and Alice had been friends since nearly the day we moved here four years ago, so I had known to expect it.

I waited amicably for it to subside before asking, "So. This was your idea?"

She nodded, swallowing down her embarrassment before adding, "I thought it would be good for Alice to have…" she waved noncommittally at the stage, "an outlet. For, you know…"

I chuckled quietly and leaned against the wall beside her because I did, indeed, know. "You're a good friend." She didn't answer, but instead dropped her eyes to the ground with a faint blush, so I changed the subject. "I didn't think they usually cast freshmen?"

"Yeah. Freshmen are sorta the exception, not the rule. But then again, Alice is usually the exception to things."

I nodded again, but remained quiet when I saw Alice take a step onto the stage. It was hard to hear her from such a distance, but she looked enthusiastic and committed – certainly better than I could have done.

Within a minute the director, a teacher I had never bothered to get to know, seemed to thank her and dismiss her. Alice skipped down the center aisle, practically vibrating. When she saw me, her skipping sped up to almost a run.

"I didn't know you were watching!"

I grinned down at her and raised my hand to ruffle her hair, but she successfully ducked to safety.

"Oh, come on. What if this is the start of a long and promising career? I have to be able to say I was there at the very start."

She returned my grin with a wink and said quietly, "I'd have let you say it anyway."

She wasn't fast enough to thwart my second attempt, and this time my hand left her hair thoroughly mussed.

"Teddy!" she whined.

"Shh!" called the director from the front of the room.

We bashfully snuck out the side exit of the great hall – well, except Alice, whom I wasn't sure had ever been bashful a day in her life.

By that point, I didn't need to check my cell phone to know I was running behind schedule. "I gotta get to the locker rooms. Are you staying at Bella's again tonight?"

For confirmation I looked to Alice, who looked at Bella, who in turn looked back at Alice.

"What? Ali, you know you're always welcome. I stopped putting away the sleeping bag years ago." She waved a hand dismissively.

Alice turned back to me. "Okay, then. Yeah, I am. Why?"

I didn't bother dropping my voice. "I figured at least one of us should go home tonight."

"Oh." She glanced surreptitiously at Bella. "I don't have to—"

I cut her off. "Don't sweat it, Teeny. I was just checking so I could, you know, plan what I'm doing tonight."

"You do love your planning."

I just rolled my eyes at her jab. Yes, I was the anal-retentive in the family. Yes, I insisted on knowing where everyone was sleeping. Ali was fourteen for god's sake, someone in her family should know where she spent her nights.

"Anyway, you girls have fun."

Alice wrapped her arms around my chest and gave me a quick squeeze, which I returned. With a short nod to Bella, I was off.

I hurried to the locker rooms, but not without a backwards glance. Looking at them, they seemed an unlikely pair – Bella in her faded jeans and grey knit sweater and Alice in a striking mess of blues and greens – but I knew they were inseparable.

It was nice not to have to worry about Alice, about where she was sleeping when she didn't come home or if she was overstaying her welcome somewhere. Charlie Swan had practically adopted Alice as one of his own, just as the Cullens had taken me in. Despite his law-enforcement reputation of being a jaded hardass with one hand always on his gun, Charlie was absolutely devoted to Alice, just as he was to his own daughter. I'd always tried not to be one of those brutishly overprotective big brothers, and it certainly helped my cause that I knew the Chief of Police was looking out for her when I wasn't.

I speed-dressed in my running shorts and Forks High t-shirt, slamming my jeans into a rickety metal locker, before booking it to the gym. I was already planning my apology to Coach Clapp in my head but he was preoccupied setting up… hurdles?

Jasper was helping him, and when I caught his eye he mouthed 'Where were you?'

There was no good way to mime 'watching my little sister audition to be a fairy' so instead I gave an apologetic shrug.

Soon the hurdles were set up and Coach had rounded us all up on the bleachers. It wasn't hard, there weren't very many of us. Of the sprinters I was the only senior, and both Tyler and Leah were juniors. Leah was the only girl though, so she usually just raced with us. There was also a freshman named Eric I'd never really talked to. Jasper was more of a long-distance runner, along with fellow senior Mike and some other sophomore.

Coach launched into a quick pep talk about the meet with the Quileute Wolves and how they were good, but not necessarily better than us. He admitted that they had been doing well in most events lately. I nodded along – we had all heard stories. Most of those kids were from the Rez, and everyone mumbled that there must be something in their water, or peace pipe, or whatever. They had always been our rival, mostly because they were the closest school within driving distance, but suddenly they were beating us in most sports. No one was happy about it.

Apparently, the Wolves had made a good showing in hurdles, and Coach Clapp wanted us to have a chance at competing with them. That meant that Tyler, Eric and I were to spend the next hour practicing speed and form over the hurdles at different intervals.

Coach dismissed the endurance runners with a quick five mile run – no wonder Mike had said it'd be an easy day. I groaned in jealousy.

Luckily, I'd found that I was pretty good at jumping any obstacle put in my way. Speed and agility came naturally to me, and I found I enjoyed the feeling of spending the extra time soaring through the air without touching down. I couldn't say it came effortlessly, though. I was still panting by the time Jasper signaled me over.

"Coach said we can all go."

I wordlessly thanked him for the second water bottle in his hand, and we headed off to the showers. Well, he headed off to the showers. I had to pause to rest my hands on my knees and pant some more.

Jasper turned to face me, but kept walking backwards towards the lockers, looking all smug and cocky, calling, "Come on man, it's not like you ran any farther than usual."

It was taking most of the effort I had to stay upright and take in a lung's worth of air, but I managed to deliver my best glare and mutter, "Asshole." Whether he heard me or not, he still laughed at my impudence, but walked slowly beside me to accommodate my aching legs. As always, we rinsed off and dressed before heading back to his house.

"So, why were you late?" he asked as we carried our bags into his room.

"Oh. Just talking to Alice."

He shrugged. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Just touching base. I figured I should go home tonight."

From the corner of my eye, I saw his expression shift. It looked like it tweaked, just momentarily, into a miniature frown.

Actually, no. I must have imagined it – it was wishful thinking on my part. I certainly wasn't relishing the thought of traipsing across my dad's threshold tonight.

Settling into our routine, we chipped away at our leaning tower of AP Calc homework until Esme called us for dinner.

Like any good family, the Cullens swapped anecdotes from their respective days as we all ate. Esme and Carlisle sat at the ends of the table, with Jasper and I on one side and Rosalie on the other. Sometimes her walking earthquake of a boyfriend, Emmett, would fill the empty space beside her but he was noticeably absent. I had grown so accustomed to his presence, the table practically seemed lopsided without him.

Carlisle was filling us all in on the antics of a disoriented but amusing grandmother he had to reason with at the hospital when Rose, apparently, couldn't take it anymore.

"Jesus, Edward, stop shoveling like you're in a coal mine."

My entire body came to an abrupt halt, a spoon of peas just inches from my mouth. Without making eye contact, I carefully placed the spoon back on my plate with a little 'tink' and straightened my posture. I tried to think of some pointedly nonchalant retort, but all I could think was, 'damn, damn, damn.'

I looked up hesitantly, not eager to face the four pairs of eyes I knew must be on me, but was shocked to find that they weren't. Instead, everyone was staring at Rose.

"Rosalie," Carlisle began with a bark. "That was a horrendous thing to say, especially to a guest."

During the years of my perpetual sleepover at the Cullen's we had all been reprimanded and chastised in front of each other, so I wasn't shocked to see Carlisle react so sharply. That fact didn't exactly lend his point credence, though.

Which, of course, Rosalie was fully aware of.

"But he's not a guest, Dad! He's like an exchange student that won't leave."

Carlisle placed his palms on the table and leaned in, as if he were about to stand up. "Young lady, if you insist on keeping this up, we can continue this discussion after we've decided how long you'll be grounded."

Her eyes stuttered to mine, full of malice and teenage vendetta, before dropping to her lap. "No, Dad."

Below the thick plank of the table, I felt Jasper's hand grab my elbow in a silent show of solidarity. Luckily, no one asked Rosalie to apologize – they had tried that before and it was, in a word, gruesome.

I hated this – the feeling that the only smudge on their happy family photograph was my presence. God, I couldn't even bring myself to look at Esme's face.

To break the tension, Esme reached over and began piling more peas onto my plate. As if I wanted them now.

"Go ahead and eat, dear. I made plenty."

When I didn't make a move towards my utensils, Jasper leaned forward to see Esme better. "Mom, you should have seen the drills Coach had Edward doing today," he began. "An insane workout. No wonder he's starved. The Wolves apparently have some guy named Black who owns the hurdles event, but it looks like Edward's going to be our secret weapon. He was passing the rest of the team without even looking."

I kept my eyes on my stupidly delicious buttered peas to hide my shock. That's certainly not what he'd said when I was practically on the gym floor, gasping. Still, I appreciated the rescue.

Carlisle turned his focus to me. "I thought that meet would be coming up soon. Do you think our own Racin' Masen can put those Wolves in their place?"

I swear I didn't blush. At least, I better not have, because I was focusing all my concentration on making sure I didn't. Instead, I thought about it for a moment and gave Carlisle a crooked, optimistic smile. Jasper, between us, was grinning at me and nodding his head. He knew my running better than anyone, and the idea that he thought I could beat La Push's best guy added more kindling to the little flame of hope I had been nursing. "Hopefully," I gulped. "Jasper's gonna whoop them, though. His times have gotten so much faster this semester."

"Well then," Esme cooed, "maybe this is a race we shouldn't miss. Carlisle, do you think you'll be off work in time?"

"I certainly could be. Boys, what time should we come down to La Push?"

I shook my head vehemently. It was an early meet for a school day – four o'clock – and that much hassle was completely unnecessary. "You don't have to."

"It's really no problem, dear."

They had asked us both, but all eyes seemed to be on me. "Not unless Jasper thinks he'll have any tight matches."

"Don't worry, Mom. We'll be racing them again in the winter. If La Push High puts up a good struggle, you guys can come to the next one."

"Alright, then. Jas, Rose, please help me clear the dishes."

I stood alongside Jasper, reaching for my plate but Esme pushed me gently back down. "Not you, Edward. Finish up those peas first. Then you can help."

Obligingly, and because I really was still hungry, I dove back into Esme's amazing home cooking. My dad had never gotten the hang of cooking with butter and salt, and the concept of spices was as foreign to him as what girls did when they left to powder their noses.

Rosalie whisked over to the sink with a flip of her hair, but not before trying to melt my spoon, and probably my face, to molten goo with her laser-stare.

Eventually, I helped with the dishes and then left to gather up the belongings I had scattered around Jasper's room like Pick-Up-Stix.

He dismissed me at the front door with a wave, and I ambled to my car with my school things in tow.

Esme had offered me leftovers to take but I declined, dismissing the thought of bringing them home for my dad. He could take care of himself just fine. He still had a job, he reeled in a decent paycheck and kept the house tidy. He had friends and hobbies and, I was pretty sure, poker nights on Thursdays.

Absolutely. Dad took care of himself just fine – it was his children he couldn't manage to look after.

I was doubly reminded of that fact when I carefully pushed open the front door of our quaint one story, three bedroom house to the acrid smell of cigarette smoke.

"Dad?"

Our front door led straight into a small entry way that was indiscernible from the actual living room. There was a small kitchen to the right that also opened up into the living room, and all the bedrooms were down a hallway to the left.

The couch straight ahead of me grunted.

I waved my hand through the air deliberately, making lazy eddies in the lightly visible smoke.

"Dad, you're gonna set off the smoke detector." What was he thinking?

I walked right past him to the screen door that revealed our postage-stamp backyard and yanked it open. The negative pressure did a menial job of herding the smoke eddies towards the open door, so I spent a few minutes trying to usher them faster with hand gestures. Futile. Then, still wordlessly, I stepped up to the couch.

Dad looked… old. His thinning hair and a belly that rudely resisted his belt gave him a look that screamed 'bored in middle management'. He was perched on the edge of a cushion, elbows on his knees, delicately ashing his cigarette into a tray on the coffee table. The tray was an old pressed soda can with sequins on it in little daisy formations. Alice had made it in elementary school, though I remained unconvinced it was designed to encourage smoking. Once upon a time, it had held her barrettes.

Moving swiftly, I pinched the cigarette out of his hand with my thumb and forefinger, like one would carry a dead rat by the tail, and grabbed the ash tray too. I carried them to the glass table on our concrete back porch and left them there. I absently rubbed my fingers together, hoping they wouldn't smell like tar.

"No smoking in the house," I commanded.

He didn't answer, just stepped into the backyard with me and plopped into the chair, the cigarette already back in his hand. He pressed the filter to his lips and took a long, steady drag. Then he shrugged. Fucking. Shrugged.

I swear to god, Jasper's shrugs irked me, but seeing my dad do it made me so riled up I wanted to smack the addiction straight out of his head.

I didn't though. I just stared at his aloof, distracted eyes, daring him to make eye contact long enough to acknowledge my ire. "House rule, Dad."

He chose to stare at the remnants of a flowerbed along the back fence of our property, and I knew he didn't give a damn. He would have never smoked in Mom's house, back in Phoenix. She had made that rule, and he followed it diligently. Worshipfully. But this hadn't been her house long enough to really count.

Maybe if it had been the smoking that killed her…

I didn't bother to finish that thought.

"Dad, you know track is really important. I can't come home to a house full of smoke." We both let the irony of that one slip by. Like that was the reason I stayed away. "I wish you wouldn't smoke them at all."

"You know what they say. That which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."

No, I thought. That which does not kill you builds up over a lifetime of exposure and then kills you. And he should know that, despite his status as a walking cliché. My annoyance seethed, raising itself up to its full height like an antagonized cobra, and now it felt more like fury. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Jasper. Eternally calm Jasper. What would he do?

He'd keep his voice low, and tell it like it is.

So I did. I opened my eyes, stared straight down my nose at him and said, "That is fucking bullshit."

"Edward!" he snapped. I thought he might reprimand me. For a moment, I thought he might stand up and be the father who cared about his son's behavior, who wanted to mold him into a respectable person. I carried his namesake, for god's sake! But, instead, he let his elbow rest back on his knee and raised the cigarette back to his lips, mumbling.

I threw my hands up and spun, letting my hand slap the glass of the door on my way back inside. I hoped the noise made him jump, but I refused to do him the service of looking at him again that night.

I stalked to my room with a reverential nod towards the eight-by-ten glossy photo of my mom on the mantle. The picture was probably ten years old but, really, she was always that beautiful. Her copper hair was in wispy, delicate layers around her face but still reached her shoulders. The portrait was only her shoulders and up, but it was obvious that she was wearing the periwinkle blue sundress with capped sleeves that Dad had always said made her look like an angel. It was long and flowing, I remembered, and swayed around her ankles when she walked. Or, floated. Mom was quite petite (as evidenced by Alice) and the dress covered her feet when she stood, giving her a floating, ethereal quality. It was an obvious choice for the day we took our family portraits.

Of course, we had all taken individual photos that day, but we hadn't bothered to put anyone else's up in this house. Why would we? We could see the rest of us whenever we chose.

I considered stopping to spend more time with the photo. Just like Catholics went to confession and junkies went to meetings, I came to Mom to ask Why am I here and What am I doing with my life? I walked on by, though, because I was still in Dad's line of sight. Plus, I'd already asked for a solution to this Dad-situation about a thousand times and the answer had yet to come.

So I shut myself in my room, nestling down into the grey and black patchwork comforter Alice had picked out for me when I got too tall for my old bed. My room was smallish, but only compared to Jasper's. It just felt so impersonal.

The walls were beige, and mostly bare. I had thought to make this house a home when we first moved in, so I had decorated a bit. The pictures of my old friends had since come down – it's hard to stay in touch when you're thirteen and easily distracted. The only vestige of my carefree youth was a poster of the Mojave Desert at dawn tacked to the wall above my desk. I thought briefly about taking it down.

It was still early, barely nine thirty, and I reasoned that it would only take thirty seconds, tops, to crumple it into the trash, and then I'd go right back to being restless. So, instead, I sat motionless, staring up at the cracks in my ceiling and wondering if I was inhaling plaster particles in my sleep.

Eventually I pulled my computer out of my bag and checked my email. The Cullens had actually given the laptop to me, collectively, for my sixteenth birthday, though I knew better than to assume Rosalie had willingly signed that birthday card.

I was flabbergasted to say the least, and completely humbled. I had, of course, asked them to return it and, when that had failed, suggested maybe exchanging it for one of those nano iPods that fit in my pocket. I didn't bother to point out that it was a tenth of the price, but they saw through my charade of frugality anyway and insisted I keep it.

When they gave me a black thirty gig video iPod for Christmas later that year, I threw up my hands in defeat. Who was I to argue with the Cullens and their zealous desire to spend money?

Of course, when Rosalie heard me gushing about it on the phone to Alice she muttered, "Well, we give to charity, so why not you too?"

I almost did a lot of things in that moment. I almost stormed into Carlisle's office and slammed it on his desk, demanding a refund on my pride. I almost hit her, because she was clearly picking a fight and that was the only way I knew how to throw down.

I almost cried.

But Ali had launched into how Chief Swan wanted to take her and Bella to Yosemite, and Jasper had stepped into the hallway mouthing 'awesome' over his matching gift iPod, and I just didn't have the energy to flip out. Besides, I loved the gift too much to make a scene.

In fact, I still treasured it. I pulled that out of my bag too, scrolled to my Recently Added list, and let the earbuds block out the neighborhood sounds of everyone else trying to get through another of the earth's rotations, just like me.

Up next, how do you think our boys will fare against the Wolves?