Sorry if I took a while-- my school BANNED from our laptops! GRRRRR, CURSES ON YOU NASTY TECH-HARPIES WHO SIT IN YOUR OFFICES AND PEEP AT OUR SCREENS ALL DAY!!! I was paranoid for a week after that, because you never know when they're spying on you...
On a happier note, thank you so much to all my wonderful reviewers!! I honestly hadn't expected to get more than three or four reviews, but WOW!! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this-- I drank a chocolate-caramel-pecan cappuchino and wrote a little more than the last half of this chapter on a caffeine high, so sorry if it's a little weird. I scared everyone in my fourth hour class so badly that they forbid me from ever drinking more than one cup of coffee a day XD.
Disclaimer: I own Philomena Morgan, her family and pets, but everything else is the property of Stephanie Meyer and various other people.
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In my history, some days have started off with a bang (in the form of my brother kicking my door down), ice cubes down my shirt (courtesy of my mother), prodding of tender body parts with sharp nails (due to my sister), or an antique cowbell clanging in my ear (also courtesy of my mother). On a rare occasion my dad knocked on my door and called for me to get up and rarer still were the days I was allowed to sleep in. Much to the fiendish delight of my oh-so-wonderful family, I had the uncanny ability to ignore my alarm clock and sleep straight through it's blaring, which in turn allowed them to practice their early-morning sadism on poor helpless little me.
Today, however, was a day that started off with a 'toot', which I had not experienced before.
I would have more than cheerfully let it stay that way, seeing as that 'toot' came out of my cat's rear end, which happened to be right next to my face.
"GAH!!" I sputtered, rolling off the bed and falling to the floor with a spectacular 'thunk'. I swore out loud (thank God for grandparents who don't turn on their hearing aids) and struggled to untangle myself from the sheets. Meow-Meow trotted to the edge of the bed to stare down at me smugly, and crouched to knead her claws into the mattress.
"Goddamned sneaky feline," I growled, still grappling with the covers. "That's the last time I let Alan kitty-sit you when I go to work. You learned that from him, didn't you?"
The evil kitty purred and switched her tail, obviously pleased with herself. I freed myself from the clinging blankets, stood up and threw them on top of her. I ignored Meow-Meow's howl of protest and her mad wriggling in favor of getting dressed after I caught a glimpse of the clock, which read 7:33 and way past time to get up. She'd managed to free herself enough to glower at me when I stumbled to the door of my room, yanking on my left shoe with one hand and brushing my curls with the other.
"You keep that up and I'll put you in the backyard with Rosie," I promised sternly. "We'll see how gung-ho you are about farting in other people's faces then." Meow-Meow tolerated Puu most of the time, but she absolutely hated Rosie. The dog, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of either of the cats, and was all over them as soon as they so much as touched the floor, and sometimes when they didn't.
I breezed into the kitchen and snatched up a package of chocolate fudge pop-tarts that I had managed to convince Grandpa to let me buy in the event that I woke up late with no time to eat breakfast properly. Tearing open the package with my teeth, I grabbed a spare thermos and filled it with coffee, adding three spoonfuls of sugar, cream and hazelnut flavoring. Ah, coffee, the one thing that got me through the day and kept me from assaulting everyone in sight with a mop and beating them like a birthday party pinata.
It had been one week of hellacious torture at school in the forms of five people, one of which wasn't even present. Jessica, who was Numero Uno, was seemingly a closet masochist that had taken to making herself out to be my best friend. Most likely scenario was that she was nursing a grudge from that first lunch and was sticking around to see if she could plot some sort of humiliating revenge on me. Oh, I was just shaking in my boots. Really. In the meantime, I just ignored her and her 'subtle' insults that she dished my way.
On a happier note, Jessica had developed a prominent vein on her temple that clearly stood out when she was particularly irritated with me. When I wasn't ignoring her, I took liberal steps in antagonizing the hell out of her in the hope that one day the damn thing would just pop and I would get to see it. Mwahaha...
Annoyance Number Two: Mike What's-His-Face, as I had taken to calling him in my head, who had apparently seen me stab Edward Cullen (or That Asshat, as I referred to him) in Biology and was now nursing a serious(ly annoying) case of hero worship that had damn well better not turn into a crush. He now followed at my heels like a stray puppy-- no, I wouldn't refer to him as a puppy. I liked puppies; they were cute and cuddly and you could play fetch and tug-of war with them, and I most assuredly did not want to cuddle Mike What's-His-Face. I would now refer to him as Mike the Barnacle That Must Be Terminated At All Costs.
It did not help, I thought as I bit a little more savagely than necessary into my pop-tart, that Jessica had a crush on Mike and they now came as a two-for-one deal (translation: whenever Jessica saw Mike tagging along with me, she latched onto the both of us like a starfish trying to pry a clam apart). The two of them talking next to me and constantly invading my personal bubble often forced my brain into commencing emergency shutdown for fear of irreparable damage being done to my brain cells. I abandoned dignity in this case and took off in the other direction whenever the pair of them came at me.
Number Three was Mr. McStork (or Eric, as I had to remind myself. I didn't think he'd appreciate it if I called him by what I thought of as his name), who was by far the least likely to induce fits of wanting to rip my hair out and run around the school screaming "THE IDES OF MARCH HAVE NOT COME!!!". Though that might be a little bland, seeing as I had already done that back in my old school. I had been a little annoyed with my English teacher, because we had spent two months on Julius Caesar and showed no signs of stopping there. That class had been an ENGLISH class, not a JULIUS CAESAR class, and so far that was all we had learned about. Thus I had protested, dressed in a toga and brandishing a plastic sword, in the form of running through the hallways and screaming random lines from the play, as well as bursting into random classrooms and challenging random people 'for the honor of Rome'. When security had finally grabbed me, I had claimed temporary insanity due to the overabundance of Julius Caesar in my schedule. Unable to classify my actions as anything but insanity, the staff had convinced my English teacher to rethink her curriculum in a hurry.
...Anyway, Eric was a nice kid for the most part, but he had some serious staring problems. And I mean serious in the complete sense of the word because I don't think he blinks. Ever. He stared at me whenever I was in staring range, which aside from being incredibly irritating, also pointed to creepy stalkerish tendencies. So I avoided Eric when I could and tried to scare him off when I couldn't. So far there hadn't been a lot of success-- he was too dense to scare properly. I'd have to work a little bit on that, I decided as I sprinted to my truck and revved it up loudly.
Nuisance Number Four: Mr. Varner. I hated that guy with all the force of one of my brother Alan's after-dinner farts (and that was pretty damn forceful, since I could hear and sometimes even smell them when I was on a seperate floor and opposite end of the house). As soon as I found out his address, I was going to stake out his house, egg it, toilet paper it, uproot his mailbox and leave a flaming bag of dog poop on his doorstep. I would be the first to admit I'm no mathematical genius-- quite the opposite, in fact-- but he did not need to rub it constantly in my face. He always called on me, nevermind that I didn't raise my hand, and if I got the answer wrong (which I most often did) he would smirk and condescendingly, with many pointed remarks about stupidity directed towards me, show the class how to do the problem. On the off chance I did get it right, would smirk yet again and make allusions to the fact that I cheated. In retaliation, I blew spitballs at him when he was at the board and laser-pointed rude words on his back, put rubber cement on the seat of his chair, superglued his desk drawers shut and was now making plans to spray-paint his car (once I figured out which one it was).
A few blocks from the school, someone in a blue van pulled out in front of me without so much as slowing down or turning on their blinker. I cursed, slammed on the brakes, laid on the horn and gestured angrily at the moron who got in front of me without so much as a by-your-leave. I thought about riding his ass all the way to school, but dismissed the notion in case Chief Swan was making his rounds early this morning. I had become reacquainted with the good Chief earlier this week in the grocery store after finding him loaded down with instant dinners in the food isle as I was shopping for something suitable to cook, in the hopes I could stop Grandpa from cooking his infamous reuben lasagna. I had a strong stomach, but I really wasn't looking forward to testing that on his Concoction of Evil (that damn stuff had made two of my favorite cousins throw up in their plates).
I only knew Chief Swan by sight and a few hazy instances in my childhood that I could remember playing with his daughter whenever my parents brought me to Washington and she happened to be there. I did remember that she and one other boy from the reservation-- damn it, why couldn't I ever remember their names?-- were the only people I had even remotely considered as 'friends', and that was saying something. Nonetheless, the chief had remembered me and had made a point of saying hello whenever we ran into each other. I kind of liked the guy; he was pretty easy to get along with. So I wasn't in an incredible hurry to be put on the 'naughty' list just yet, thank you very much.
I pulled into the school's parking lot with a bit of screeching protests from my brakes and some liberal swearing at the people who wandered in front of my truck. Damn teenagers and their sheep mentality, always having to wander in front of cars driven by wigged-out people who hadn't gotten to drink their coffee yet and would have more than happily run them all over. And then backed up over them again to make sure they stayed flat on the pavement where they belonged and set fire to their corpses and laughed manically while doing the Irish Polka in a poncho and purple stilletos with the little live fishies in the heels.
Hmm, maybe that last bit was just a little bit shy of psychotic...nah, of course not.
I parked and took a drink of my wonderful coffee, relieved that I still had five minutes to spare before entering Forks Penetentiary-- er, I mean the high school. The roar of an engine next my truck made me jump and choke on a mouthful of caffeine before whipping around to look out the window, vowing revenge on whoever had made me lose precious droplets of the Elixir of Life. At the sight of who the culprit was, I damn near jumped out of the car to beat him with the old umbrella I kept beneath the seat.
Annoyance Number Five, Edward Cullen, had parked his stupid shiny car right next to me and was currently smirking-- SMIRKING!! -- at my face from behind the layers of glass between us. Well, not for long, I thought grimly, and groped around in the back seat for something to fling at him. Nothing met my fingers, not a tire iron or a spare rock or even that one little rubber strap with metal hooks on the ends. Curses, foiled again! Damn that stupid son of a biscuit to an eternity in a pit full of-- of Jigglypuffs!
It really was beyond me how Edward could have been gone all last week and still managed to annoy me when he was gone. Every day I'd get all tensed up and ready to give him the smackdown should he start up with his Glare-O-Doom again, and every day he. Was. GONE. Part of the reason he irritated me was because I couldn't understand what his problem was and was therefore more than a little stung that he'd judged me before getting to know me-- usually people waited until after I'd spazzed out on them at least once before running screaming into the night. The much, much, MUCH larger part of me just wanted to spork out his eyeballs and have done with it, which would actually give him a LEGITIMATE reason to hate me.
The bell rang, and I jumped a little, startled from my daydreams of sporking Edward. I downed the rest of my coffee in one go, wincing a little as it burned in my throat, grabbed my backpack and swung myself out of the car, wincing a little as the rain pelted me mercilessly. I didn't see Edward, so he must have headed in before me while I was considering trashing his shiny car in order to wipe that smug grin off of his face. Oh goody, a day where all five of my Nuisances were present.
I sighed, pulled Mr. Spork out of my backpack, and stowed it in my pocket-- better safe than sorry, right?-- and marched into the bowels of Hell.
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"-- and did you see that look she had on her face, ohmigod, it was like, so totally bogus--"
I whimpered quietly and thumped my head against the lunch table, praying for unconsciousness, for someone to distract Jessica, for a meteor to hit the school and blow us all to kingdom come, anything to make it stop.
"--there was no I was going to put up with that, I mean like, hello, do you know who I am--"
"Mmn," I muttered disparagingly, but she prattled on, obviously mistaking my grunt for agreement. In order not to get motion sickness from watching Jessica's motor mouth go at a mile a minute, I stared blankly at the Coke can in front of her. No matter where I tried to escape to after lunch, she always followed me-- the library, the bathrooms, outside, it didn't matter. She was on me like a nasty little tick on a dog, and she wasn't going to let go until she'd sucked a copious amount of blood out. Eeeyuck, disturbing as that was, it was also quite accurate.
The Coke wobbled dangerously against the tabletop. I gazed at it flatly, not really caring (it couldn't hurt, just this once?), even as it began to jitter back and forth. The tinny clatter of the can against the table was nearly inaudible in the typical roar of voices in the lunchroom. The space behind my eyes felt pressured, compressed, and they burned.
(i can't make it STOP!)
"--I mean, did she honestly expect me to put up with that, there's no way--"
Clang. I blinked rapidly, the compression behind my eyes vanishing as Jessica's indignant shriek pierced my ears. The Coke can had fallen onto its side, splattering the pop all over the front of her shirt. I winced as her banshee-like screech tore through the lunchroom, fighting the urge to slink bonelessly under the table and hide there until the bell rang. Maybe I'd get lucky and she would forget about me?
Yeah, and maybe I could click my heels three times, fly to Mars and conquer the Martians with an army of man-eating bagpipes while I was at it.
"Did you see that?" Jessica yelped, turning to face me with a completely offended look on her face. No idea why she was so damn put out, it wasn't like the coke had a mind of its own and had suddenly decided that it hated her and would therefore endeavor to make her life miserable by spilling soda all over the front of her white shirt.... which was now showing more of Jessica than I had ever wanted to see in my life. Would she be even more offended if I ran to the bathroom screaming, 'MY EYES, MY EYES!!!'?.... Yes, she would, but it wouldn't be enough to make her stop clinging to me. Damn it, there goes that evil plot.
I blinked innocently at her, making sure to keep my eyes as large and vacant as possible. Mwahaha, payback's a bitch-- especially when she has puppies. "See what?"
"The coke!" she hissed, her face turning an unattractive shade of scarlet.
"What about it?" I tamped down on the smirk that was tugging at the corners of my lips. This was just too easy.
"It fell over on it's own!"
I twisted my hands underneath the table and pinched my arm to keep from laughing outright. Oblivious, I reminded myself. "Really? When?"
Hmm, maybe I was pushing it a little. That shade of puce she was sporting couldn't be healthy for anyone's blood pressure...on second thought, there was that throbbing vein again! Screw blood pressure, I want to see that damn thing pop!
"Just now!" Jessica all but screamed in her fury as I cackled inside my head and did a scary little dance. Come on-- pop, vein, pop!
"But Jessica, there's nothing happening right now," I protested, careful to keep my 'Zonked-Out Stoner' look, as my sister called it, plastered on my face.
Alright, I'll admit that I had made a mistake at that point in time. I had forgotten one of the fundamental rules I lived by (and occasionally broke) in high school: Don't tease the simple-minded people. They can only take so much stress on their little brains, and when they snap...enraged two-year-olds on caffeine in destructo-mode came to mind in these scenarios (except they were a lot bigger). Hey, I would know, I do babysit every now and then. One set of parents actually had the bright idea to give the damn kids some coffee that was jazzed up with an unbelievable amount of sugar before setting them loose on me, in the misguided notion that they would get worn out just that much quicker.
Four hours, six destroyed pieces of furniture, two drawings on the wall in permanent ink, one completely obliterated dining table, three ambushes with Whiffle bats and Nerf guns and one particularly memorable instance where I was locked out of the house and forced to climb back in through the window, all three of them were out like a light. After unceremoniously informing the parents that they were idiots of the highest caliber and to never contact me again on pain of restraining orders, I swore off babysitting for good.
But as I said, these kinds of tantrums were to be avoided at all costs-- unfortunately for me, I was just a bad karma magnet in general, and therefore had no chance of escape.
"AARRGH," Jessica snarled, face twisted in a demented convulsion of mania. I began to edge back worriedly, eyeing the tray she clutched white-knuckled in her hands. If she took a swing at me, I'd have to run for it, dignity and pride aside. No way was I going to get clonked on the head by a fluffy parasite cheerleader with a lunch tray. The voices in my head would never let me live it down.
"You--" she roared, and what she was going to call me I never did find out, because at that moment she hefted her tray like a lumberjack taking a chop at a tree and slammed it right down on top of my untouched chocolate cupcake.
I blinked once. Then twice. Then several more times just to be sure my eyes weren't playing a joke on me. When the horrifying image didn't disappear, I reached out and slowly peeled the tray off of my poor unfortunate confectionary-- that now resembled a nasty cow pie instead of a yummy chocolatey cupcake like it SHOULD have been.
There are two universal rules in my family. One: Mother's word is law and will be carried out, regardless if you have to be dragged by your hair, kicking and screaming.
And two: Never mess with someone else's chocolate. If you do, God help you.
"You killed," I said, eerily calm, "my cupcake." I smiled my most terrifying 'I-will-rip-your-face-off-and-make-you-eat-it' smile, and Jessica paled and shrank back. "I was looking forward to eating that cupcake ALL. DAY. You squashed it and now it is NOT EDIBLE," I got to my feet, still smiling, and began to advance on her. "I can't eat it if it's not edible, and now I have NO CHOCOLATE," at which I got right up in her face. "You know what that means, don't you?"
Jessica shook her head from side to side frantically, edging back and almost falling off the chair. I smiled again, this time my 'enjoying-that-hole-you-dug-for-yourself?' smile.
"This means war," I declared, and snatched a cup of orange jello from a passing tray before upending it in Jessica's shiny dark hair.
Jessica's face went from chalky white to a enraged crimson in the span of one point five seconds (seriously, I was going to call her mother and tell her to buy the girl a pacemaker or something, because her poor overworked heart was just going to clock out one of these days-- hopefully not because of me) and she seized a carton of unidentifiable noodle/mystery meat-goop from her tray and hurled it at me. Forseeing this, I hit the floor, and the noodles sailed over my head and landed with a wet and chunky 'splat' directly onto the head of a particularly grouchy-looking junior girl whose name escaped me at the moment. She turned around and saw Jessica, and her eyes spelled murder as she reached up and pulled a glob of what the lunch ladies always tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to convince us was 'food' from her hair.
A beat of total and complete silence encompassed the lunchroom-- and then, true to form and copyright, all hell broke loose.
The unnamed junior grabbed a fistful of ketchup-soaked tator tots and flung them back at Little Miss Motormouth for the perceived insult. Not all of the thrown potato-munchies hit their intended target-- quite the opposite in fact, seeing as she had really bad aim, but the tots had struck enough of the other students for them to have an excuse to start the Great Food Fight of 2009. I mean, seriously, who does not want to start a food fight? I had personally incited a grand total of six of them back in my old school (not exactly a hard thing to do, seeing as everyone hated me anyway), and hadn't been collared for a single one of them.
I grabbed my lunch bag and evaded some flying canned pears by ducking beneath the table and crawling out the other side. Rolling out the from under the chairs and getting grazed by some tuna salad, I filched the remains of my cupcake and darted into the crowd. I was nowhere near done with my payback to Jessica for leaving me stranded in a sea of superficiality and inanity without the magic tolerance that was imbued into me by chocolate. Seriously, it was either chocolate or start tossing back aspirin like they were Smarties.
Pausing to fling a handful of grapes at some rambunctious freshman and giggle manically as they shrieked and covered their heads, I didn't see the milk carton flying at my head until it was almost too late. Big hands suddenly grabbed me around the midriff and dragged me out of the line of fire before the projectile could connect with my cranium. I squeaked (though if anyone else asked, such a thing was physically impossible for me) in shock when I was set down behind a partially overturned table-- when had that happened?-- and saw the golden eyes of Edward Pain-in-My-Ass Cullen's biggest brother. To be fair, he actually looked perfectly friendly when he was grinning like that, so I decided not to tar him with the same brush as his brother just yet. If need be, though, that selfsame brush could always be jabbed into his eye.
"Thanks," I called over the roars of the other students. "That could have been messy."
"No problem," he shouted back. "Nice shot on dumping that jello on the loudmouth girl. I'm Emmett!"
Well, that saved me the trouble of asking what the hell is name was. "I'm Phil, but I'm pretty sure you already knew that!"
"So, what are you going to do with that?" he indicated the squished confectionary still in my hands. I raised my eyebrows and grinned wickedly, an expression which slowly became mirrored identically on his own face when he realized my intentions. Or he could just be humoring the crazy person. Everyone knows you have to keep the crazy people happy or they do crazy things, like stealing all the dodgeballs from gym and gluing them to the ceiling or hacking into the school broadcast system and declaring that they will take over the world with an army of flying monkeys armed with sporks and detailing the lists of laws they would put in action (the outlawing of canned green beans being one of the most prominent among them).
All very hypothetically, of course.
"I am nowhere near finished with Jessica..." I paused for a moment, racking my brain futiley, then shrugging, "Whatever her last name is."
Emmett let out a booming laugh that made some people turn to look at us in scandalized irritation. I scooped up a carton of soggy, dilapidated fruit that had probably been sitting around since 1985 and pitched it at them, making the little gawkers squeal and dart off. That was one thing I loved about food fights-- you could throw anything at anyone and no one would care. My new partner-in-crime snickered with me, and I decided that he was nothing like his little brother. At all.
I pulled myself from those thoughts before thinking about Edward could put me back in a sour mood, but allowed my subconscious to grumble a few expletives in appeasement. Large hands seized me and swung me up in the air onto a broad back as I shrieked indignantly before settling down and peering out over the raucous sea of humanity when Emmett easily stood up under my added weight. Huh, so this was what it was like to be tall...
"You ready?" he asked, tilting his head up so I could see his mischievious smirk.
"Ready for what?" I demanded, narrowing my eyes and debating if he needed to get sporked for stealing my copyrighted Eyes of Pure Evil©.
Emmett pointed through a gap of students busy slinging the noodle-stuff at each other at Jessica, who was engaged in a hair-pulling contest with the blonde she had mistakenly hit before. And how old was she, again?
"Oooo," I murmured, shifting my ruined chocolate goodness to my right hand. "I see. Shall we?"
"Let's," the giant teenager laughed, and he took off. I'm sorry, did I say 'took off'? That's too general-- what I meant is, he blew everyone else out of the water like a turbo speed-boat on legs. Damn, is this what the charge of the Light Brigade felt like? It made me wish we had a fanfare of trumpets announcing our progress.
Jessica must have had some latent preservation instincts that were previously unheard of, because she turned around and saw Emmett bearing down on her like a bull elephant on a mouse-- a very annoying mouse, may I add. She didn't even have time to squeak before Emmett was LOoMing over her (was the LOoM copyrighted to the Cullen family? I'd have to ask, in case I ever had some intimidation on my seven-year-old nephew to do, seeing as I was so damn short it wouldn't work on anyone but small children and midgets) and I was grinning like the maniac most people swore that I was.
"Hiiii, Jessica!" I sang merrily, and smashed the cupcake into her hair with considerable gusto. She emitted the loudest, most piercing shriek I had ever heard in my life, scrunching up her face and batting at her hair hysterically. Emmett's laughter filled the lunchroom along with my own as he carted me away from my ex-leech (Thank you, God!) and now number one enemy.
If I hadn't been laughing so hard, I probably would have noticed just where exactly he was carting me to and started making loud and explicit protests, new buddy or not. But I didn't, until I was deposited, still snickering, on the ground next to the rest of his family. Right next to his girlfriend, in fact.
Can we say 'Yikes'?
Rosalie (and the only reason I remembered her name, which I would never tell her, was that it was so similar to my dog's) stared down her nose at me, perfect features smooth and blank of any feelings she had. I suddenly realized what the situation probably looked like through her eyes-- her man saving me heroically from flying milk cartons (every girl's worst fear, I'm sure) and then giving me a piggyback ride across the lunchroom to smash an already smashed cupcake into another girl's hair.
It must have looked pretty damn crazy to her. She was probably wondering if she would need to sign Emmett up for some professional therapy after all this weirdness.
In reparation, all I could do was offer her my best sheepish look and toe the ground with my foot like a kid waiting for a scolding because they didn't know they weren't supposed to tell Mom that the dress she was wearing really did make her butt look big. Off track, but somewhat accurate, I thought as I peeked up at Rosalie awkwardly. What I didn't expect to see was her golden eyes actually softening and her reaching out to pull a...squelchy piece of pineapple out of my hair. I blinked and stared at the mushy fruit-thing, wondering when exactly that had gotten there. My question must have showed on my face because she smirked and tossed it away.
"It fell out of the container when you started throwing fruit at the freshmen over there," Rosalie explained, pointing out a particularly rowdy group of teenagers and eyeing them with disdain before turning back to me. "I don't believe we've been introduced personally. I'm Rosalie Hale, you know my boyfriend Emmett Cullen," said boyfriend grinned broadly and tugged playfully on my curly mop, earning him a swat from both his girlfriend and I, "and this is my brother Jasper Hale and my sister Alice Cullen." Alice beamed at me, bouncing in place as Jasper nodded his head politely in my direction. "... and you've already met Edward." Who had somehow made himself scarce sometime during the initiation of the food fight and was nowhere to be found. Stupid asshat chicken-wuss.
"Ah, yeah. I suppose he probably told you about that," I muttered, feeling vaguely guilty before reminding myself that their brother should have kept his eyes to himself if he hadn't wanted to start something he couldn't finish.
"Told us?" Emmett snorted. "He hasn't stopped brooding about it since. You're the only girl aside from Alice and Rosie who haven't fallen over their own feet to please him."
That didn't answer the question of what the hell his problem was in the first place, but I wasn't about to ask his family about that. Still, it would be refreshing for Edward to get a reminder that there were actually some girls with self-respect who wouldn't just throw themselves at his feet and beg to have his babies. Blech...mini-Edwards... at least with the way he acted, there'd be a slim to none chance of him actually procreating.
"I think it's good for him," Alice insisted, twisting her head to fix her bright eyes on my face. "Edward takes everything a bit too seriously."
"Including himself?" I said dryly before I could stop myself. I was just about to kick myself for letting my mouth run off without the attendance of common sense when all of them laughed. Honestly, it was quite a pretty sound-- like those tinkly wind chimes that I always half-thought about buying but always wound up forgetting them.
"Yes, exactly," Alice giggled, and for the first time since I'd come to Forks I smiled an actual smile, not any of my patented ones designed to terrify the witless and shut up the blabbermouths. It felt a little weird to do it, but hey, anything for the people who gave me my first actual intelligent conversation in this penetentiary.
The bell shrilled self-importantly overhead and I glared at it out of the corner of my eye, deciding that sometime before I graduated I was going to take a sledgehammer to that thing and knock it right off the wall. A muffled wind-chime laugh reached my ears and I glanced back at Alice, who had her hand pressed over her mouth and her golden eyes were sparkling with suppressed mirth. I raised my eyebrow but decided to leave it alone. If she wanted to snigger about things I didn't understand (I was going to take a leap of faith and say that she wasn't laughing at me, judging from the lack of maliciousness in her expression), then she could go right ahead.
"Guess I'd better go before I'm late," I said apologetically. "It was nice talking to you." And it actually had been, miracle of miracles. I wondered if that made us friends. Probably not, but how would I know anyway? I had never once wanted or needed a friend, but I found the idea of being friends with Cullens kind of appealing. I don't know why, but I just did.
"Oh, and Phil," a low, unfamiliar voice said as I began to walk away. I paused and turned to look over my shoulder, surprised to see that it was Jasper who was the speaker this time. He'd seemed like the silent military guy from the few occasions I'd observed him on.
"Yeah?" I asked curiously.
"Don't mind Edward," the blond teen said gently. "He isn't a bad person, no matter how much he likes to think he is."
"...If you say so," I returned with a roll of my eyes, and continued to class. Jasper seemed to know what he was talking about, but he hadn't exactly been on the receiving end of Edward's Glare-O-Doom for twenty minutes straight and for NO APPARENT REASON. And what did he mean anyway, liked to 'think' he was a bad person? Did Edward run with a gang? Were there any gangs in Forks?
Oh please, I scoffed at myself, annoyed that I had even considered it in the first place. An honest-to-God bunch of car-stealing, motorcycle-riding, drunk-off-their-asses gangbangers in Forks? Pfft, perish the thought.
I walked through the door of the Biology classroom just as the bell rang, earning an irritated look from Mr. Banner which was returned full-force. One reason I didn't like most teachers was because in my mind, they had no business chastising me for anything. They were neither my parents nor were they held high in my regard, which left them in a not much higher position above the students. I simply didn't care what they thought, about me or anything else. The school councillor had once diagnosed me as having an intolerable disrespect for authority-- I had retorted that there wasn't much to respect in the first place, seeing as most of the so-called authority figures were little better than oppressive control freaks armed with a few diplomas and the iron knowledge that they were In Charge.
As soon as I came into view, Edward locked his eyes with mine and initiated a staring contest with me. Hmm, Jasper must have been on to something. The youngest Cullen wasn't looking at me like he wanted to strangle me with my own intestines anymore. Odd, yes, but I wasn't going to complain-- much.
I dropped my books on my side of the table, plopped down in my chair, and proceeded to thoroughly ignore Edward. I still had this morning to think about, after all; nobody interferes with me and my caffiene. This was not an unbreakable law in my home, but it was something of a fact that if you got between anybody and their coffee, you might wind up getting your arm chewed off.
Mr. Banner deposited a microscope and box of slides on our desk before moving on, and I sighed inaudibly. I preferred a straight up worksheet to a lab, but Lady Luck had apparently decided that this was all the good fortune I deserved for today and had clocked out. Damned hag abandoned me just when I needed her, as per usual. I stared despondently at the microscope, hoping it would disappear and go back to whence it came. It didn't, obviously.
Edward reached out for the microscope and I tensed, wondering if he would take the chance to brain me with it while he could still get away. Hmph, well, I had Mr. Spork with me and I wasn't going down without a fight. In fact, I wasn't going down at all if I had my way. It really was too bad that I'd left the mace in my truck, though...
To my disappointment, however, my lab partner only slid the microscope towards me without a single indication of violence. "Ladies first?" he offered in a soft, velvety voice that would make most girls swoon on the spot. Sadly for him, I wasn't most girls.
"Sure," I said emotionlessly, and pulled the scope to me to adjust it before I put my eye to it. Meh, cells always looked like indistinct blobs to me, but as Mom told me, 'Learn it, get through it, then forget about it.'. Those were the words I lived by in high school.
"Prophase," I muttered as I leaned back and then made to pull it out.
"May I look?" Edward asked quietly. I shrugged and pushed the microscope over to his side of the table. He examined it, then nodded. "Prophase," he agreed.
Alright, there didn't seem to be a screamfest on the horizon, I surmised warily as I watched him swap the first slide for the second and study it. He had been perfectly civil so far... would he continue this line of behavior or was he going to snap at the least little bit of provocation? Much as I hated being patient, I would have to wait this one out and see what happened.
"Anaphase," Edward deduced, and wrote it down. I gnawed my bottom lip for a moment, debating the pros and cons of my alarmingly social intended action, and then threw the mental list out the window when I remembered all the people who had avoided me after a single conversation when I hadn't even been trying to be weird. I really did doubt that my lab partner hadn't meant any harm to me-- nobody glares that hard without putting some real feeling behind it-- but I, who everyone had called Freak and Psycho and a whole other onomatopoeia of names, should and did know better than to judge other anyone else for reasons I didn't know about. At the very least I might be able to air out what got him so worked up in the first place, and we could go back to either hating or ignoring each other in peace.
"May I?" I requested, a hand extended slightly toward the microscope. Edward's lips quirked up, his eyes caught between disbelieving and amused, but he handed it over for me to check. Hmm, he was right. It was nice to know that I didn't have a complete dunderhead for a tablemate. I reached for the next slide, jumping a little when he pressed it into my hand. I barely had time to register that his fingers were icy cold before he immediately drew them back, a slight look of chagrin flickering to life on his face before it disappeared. I looked at him and noticed that his hair was slightly damp, indicating that the crazy son of a gun had obviously been outside without a coat on.
"Interphase," I stated after a glance, and nudged the equipment back to him without being asked. Almost unconsciously, my eyes flickered to his left forearm, where I had stabbed him last week. I couldn't see if it was bandaged or not underneath his long-sleeved shirt. Truth be told, I'd been hoping he'd gotten ink poisoning for acting like such an asshat, but now I couldn't help but feel a little-- just a little, mind you-- guilty. Not that I'd ever let him know that, of course.
"Metaphase," Edward proclaimed, pushing the microscope in front of me. I checked it absentmindedly, noting that he was right again, before gesturing for him to hand the last slide over. He complied, that strange little quirk still on his lips. Our hands didn't touch this time.
"Telophase," I finished, and set the microscope aside. Awkwardness settled between us like a shroud almost immediately after the last phase of mitosis left my lips. We sat for an indeterminable length of time in stony silence before I risked a peek at Edward out of the corner of my eye. He was staring at me, puzzled frustration written clearly all over his face. I faced him, frowning slightly.
"Say something, dammit," I ordered crossly. "If the tension in here gets any thicker, I'll be covering it in frosting and serving it up on a silver platter."
The golden-eyed boy raised an eyebrow at my tone. "What do you want me to say?" he asked sardonically.
Ooh, bad move. Mr. Thirty-Nine-And-A-Half-Foot-Pole-Up-My-Ass had just given me control of the conversation. I grinned sharkishly at him, and watched gleefully as what he had gotten himself into sank in. "Well, to start off with, why were you acting like a menopausal old woman last week?"
"Ah..." Edward murmured, turning his face away. "I'm sorry about that. I wasn't feeling well."
The lame excuse set my teeth on edge, and my hand twitched toward the pocket where I kept Mr. Spork. 'Not well', my ass.
"And just how many times do you think I was dropped on my head as a child, if you expect me to believe that?" I forced through gritted teeth. Any regard that had built up for him during the class had collapsed and went flying to the dark closet of my mind. Did he think I was an idiot or did he just have a low opinion of the intelligence of the human race in general?
"I'm sorry you think that," Edward said coldly, turning back to face me. His golden eyes were glittering like hard jewels. "But it the truth, nevertheless."
I opened my mouth to retort, then closed it, and thought about what he had said. And then I thought a little more, turning the new revelation over in my mind. It all began making sense to me-- the glares, the stiff posture, the almost palpable loathing. But of course, it was the only logical assumption. How could I have not seen it? This explained everything. I turned back to my tablemate, who was watching me warily, and offered him a bright smile before dropping my bombshell.
"Were you constipated?"
Edward sputtered helplessly as I leaned back and watched him with an ever-widening grin. Poor guy, I'd caught him out, and he hadn't even been expecting it. That's what he got for underestimating the awe-inspiring deductive powers of the Morgan family.
"No, I was not constipated," he stressed when he finally regained the power of speech. I gave him a mock-pitying look that clashed horribly with the Chesire Cat smirk on my face. Oh, I was never going to let him live this down.
"Yeah, sure," I snickered, and the golden-eyed teen sighed heavily and dragged his hand over his face in frustration. I decide to cut him some slack for the moment and not tease him any further-- it would probably shock his already fried brain into a Phil-induced coma. He obviously wasn't used to being taunted by anyone other than his siblings. Boy, was he ever in for a wake-up call.
"How's the arm?" I ventured after a moment or two of Edward-angst. And let me tell you, he had some serious angst-y skills. I could only take so many Cullen Clouds of Emotional Wreck. The gorgeous boy lifted his head with a crooked, self-depreciating grin.
"It healed fine, all things considered," Edward admitted, shooting me a narrow-eyed look at the last part. I batted my eyes at him in wide-eyed, sweet-faced who-me? innocence. Ugh, gag me with a spoon. What if my face actually froze like this one day?
"Oh, yes indeed," I agreed cheerfully. "Especially considering that I could have twisted the pen in a little deeper and then broken a chair over your head-- purely for the general effect, I'm sure you understand."
"Right," Edward mocked, rolling his eyes just slightly. "Why did you come to Forks, anyway? Assuming, of course," he added the last bit with a generous helping of acrid sarcasm, "that you didn't come here specifically to irritate me to death?"
What a jerk.
"Oh, Eddie!" I lamented dramatically, pressing the back of my hand to my forehead and mock-swooning. His teeth ground together audibly and I witheld a cackle. "How could you think that I could come to this dreary, dismal town for anything other than the brilliantly shining light that is you? Your detriment comes before all else, you know this! Never doubt me again!" I demanded, leaning forward and giving him my best starry-eyed gaze and clasping my hands to my heart. I held the pose for about ten seconds before collapsing into almost silent shakes of laughter, tears sliding down my face from mirth and the completely weirded-out look on his face.
"Alright, seriously now," Edward interjected, a small smile twitching at his lips. I sobered quickly, wiping the tears off my face, though my smile still lingered.
"Well, if we're going to be serious," I drawled. "I was on the verge of getting expelled, and I decided it was best to quit while I was still ahead." I heard a gasp behind me, and turned to fix the girl behind me with a gimlet stare. She flushed and ducked her head, having the courtesy to at least pretend she wasn't listening. I rolled my eyes at Edward, who was frowning once more, that frustratingly puzzled expression on his face.
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," he admitted quietly. I blinked-- what was there not to understand?
"You know how I am at school here?" I questioned, and continued at his nod. "Well, take that and multiply it by a couple thousand, and there you have it."
"And your family?" Edward pressed, seeming strangely intent. What was with this guy acting like my life story was the most interesting thing he'd ever heard? He must not get out much.
"My family's fine, if that's what you're asking," I said irritably, flicking a strand of hair back from my face.
"That's not what I meant," he said, becoming frustrated again.
"Should have said what you meant then, shouldn't you?" I fired off, turning and presenting him with my back and fuming silently to myself. What exactly was he trying to insinuate here, that my family beat me or something. How cliche-- my mother didn't need to beat an unruly child. All she had to do was say a few scathing words and give a single look, and you were crying from utter repentance.
Sneaking a glance at Edward, I saw something like shame in his bowed face and clenched fists. Oh geez, I thought in horror, feeling the dreaded Guilt gnawing its way through my intestines. Damn that Cullen boy for making me feel guilty about being what I was naturally; a complete bitch. Never before had I felt remotely ashamed of anything that came out of my mouth, but here I was, wallowing in my blameworthiness like some sort of...normal person. Well, it's what I always wanted, wasn't it?
"Look," I asserted tentatively, and he inclined his head in my direction. "I was just... tired, I guess. Of dragging my parents into my messes all the time and them having to clean up after me. Of nobody giving me the time of day at school except to chew me out if I did something wrong-- things like that. I didn't want to be a bother anymore, so I decided to hightail it out while I still had some time left, and start over fresh; maybe tone down the behavior a little bit," I trailed off awkwardly, dropping my eyes to the desk beneath me. I didn't dare look at Edward-- what if he was disgusted? I'd seen enough of that to last me a lifetime. Even worse, what if he pitied me? I'd have to hit him for that, and all this crappy heart-to-heart stuff would go down the tubes.
"Thank you for telling me this," he said softly after a long silence. I stared at him blankly-- why the hell was he thanking me? I hadn't done him any favors.
"You're weird," I told him, ignoring his light chuckle.
And if he knew about the other things...
The bell shrieked, making me start and half fall out of my chair. I scooped up all my other books and hurried out the door, not risking a glance back at Edward.
And if I was walking a little faster than normal, well, whose business was it but my own?
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Edward closed his eyes in relief as he slid into the driver's seat of his Volvo to wait for his family. Another day was finally done with, leaving him free to go over the conversation in Biology with Phil. He fiddled with the radio, envisioning her face when she had confided her reasons for moving to Forks. She had been despondent and resigned, her thoughts murky and barely audible to him. He had caught a few snatches of what she had been thinking every now and then, but it was nothing substantial enought to tell about her interesting personality.
To be frankly honest, he had never been so insulted and amused in that one class period than he had in his entire hundred-odd years of vampirism.
Edward watched Phil bolt to her truck and unlock it before tossing her things carelessly inside. Strange, he had more often attributed this behavior to human males than females. Yet another of her odd quirks.
How...fascinating.
"Meet Virginia, I can't wait to, meet Virginia, yeah-yeah," his fingers paused on the radio dial, "Well she wants to be the queen, and she thinks about her scenes, well she wants to her life, and she thinks about her lies, pulls her hair back as she screams, I don't really wanna be the queen, I don't really wanna be the queen, I don't really wanna be the queen, I don't really wanna live..."
Edward's lips quirked-- yes, that was just as confusing and contradictory as Phil was. His smile quickly dropped off on his face to be replaced with an uncharacteristic scowl when he saw his siblings coming into view. While this was an everyday occurence, it was the new event that had him suppressing the illogical irritation that swelled up inside him.
Emmett was waving to Phil, and she was waving back enthusiastically.
Don't be jealous, Edward, Alice's voice chided him gently. Emmett and I have always wanted a best friend. He's just a little excited.
Jealous? Ridiculous, how could he be jealous? Of what? Of the fact that it was Emmett who was making Phil smile, and not him? She did look rather pretty in her own way when she smiled. It made her gray-green eyes sparkle and showed the dimple in her left cheek.
Oh. That was what.
I told you, Edward. You're going to love her; all of us will.
Edward revved the engine angrily, cutting off Alice's mental assurances. No, absolutely not. He would not let himself love Philomena Morgan.
It was better for both of them this way.
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A smidge of angstiness in this chapter, which was sadly unavoidable. Still, I hope this somewhat measured up to your expectations. Stay tuned for next time!
Read and review, please!