I haven't written anything for absolutely ages, don't know why. But here's the next thing.

This story is M rated. Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer.

Love's Blue Flowers - Part 1

Mealtimes are quiet affairs in our house, as there are only two of us. Dad always says that the dinner was real nice, and I clear the table and wash up. That's it.

Years ago, our family had three members - Dad, Mom and me, but then Mom left, and I didn't know what had gone wrong.

"Grown-ups' business, darling, you'll understand when you're older. But both of us love you very much," she'd said with a sad head shake, hugging me. She'd gone away though, despite how much she claimed she loved me, and I'd stayed in the blue house.

I'd cried for quite a few nights, because I thought it was my fault. I hadn't tried hard enough to be a good girl, so my mommy couldn't stand to live with me. Dad had come in and stood helplessly by my bed until one morning when I opened my eyes he was holding out a box to me. On opening it, I saw he was presenting me with a ragdoll.

I was eight years old, and none too into dolls, and I took this one wordlessly and left it on the pillow as I got dressed and ready for school. When I came home that afternoon it was still lying there, with its sewn-on eyes staring blankly into space.

"Stupid doll," I scoffed. "What would you know about anything?"

It was still there when I came up later to go to bed, and I shoved it onto the floor. In the night though, I looked over and saw the doll was as sleepless as I was. I picked it up and gave it some space next to me.

I don't remember how long it took for me to start confiding in the doll. I just somehow found that if I whispered secrets to it, once I'd unloaded them I could sleep. I wasn't crying so much either, with my silent friend to share my feelings.

I named her Angela, and she lay on my pillow all day, waiting for me to come home and talk to her. It was like prayer I guess, the talking. It was my therapy. First I told her about my mom, and my guilt, and then it tumbled into everything. I related what I did at school, who was mean or nice to me, what I thought of my teacher, whatever. Angela took it all and she never judged me. She never said anything back. She accepted me.

There was one person I didn't discuss with Angela, though. That person was my dad. He just never came up in my conversations. Looking back now, I know I avoided even thinking about him for ages when mom left. I know why too. Maybe it wasn't just me who'd driven her off. If I thought about him, I would have to admit to myself how angry I was.

Reasons to be angry with my dad:

MOM LEFT.

- it was his fault.

- he didn't make her happy.

- he didn't stop her from going.

- he didn't go after her.

- he didn't keep our family together.

- he caused the emptiness.

And when the emptiness had settled on me, he didn't make it go away. He couldn't make my mom happy because he was too dumb, and he couldn't make me happy either. Any happiness that had been in our blue house left, never to return. It was all him.

I started to tell Angela about being angry.

The thing was, Angela wasn't the right one to talk to. Angela was accepting and passive, the uncomplaining recipient of all my sad offloading. I needed someone else for venting my more aggressive feelings.

And that's when Tanya came along. With shifting the blame for my parents' split from myself to my father, I'd gone from sadness to rage, and Tanya took over from Angela because Angela was soft and kind, and she comforted me. Tanya agreed with my more aggressive emotions, and Tanya supported me. She lived in the same cloth body as Angela, but her personality couldn't have been more different. Angela thought I should learn to live with my suffering; Tanya thought I should punch walls and people and yell my head off. Yeah, shit, I hate everyone! Who cares if I curse? What the damn hell are you going to do about it? That was Tanya.

My Dad was quietly puzzled by the change I began to manifest, but so what? Dork! Loser! Fool!

Between them, Angela and Tanya got me through my parents' separation and divorce. They were two faces of the same coin - the currency of pain. One allowed me to be sad and quiet and confused, the other let me be raging and loud and confused. They were my silent sentinels, privy to what I never told anyone else. They saw me through the dark.

In time I adjusted and my life with my dad became the norm. I didn't see him as the bad guy any more, just someone whose marriage had broken down irreparably, and who had endured quietly, and gone about his life. All three of us were injured parties. I saw my mother when I was on vacation, and all up I was just another one of the kids from a broken family. School was full of them.

And I went on to high school, and it was time I stopped talking to Angela and Tanya by then. I wasn't traumatized over my parental situation any more. I could go visit my mom in Phoenix regularly, which was more than the kids with intact families ever got to do. I called it The Hot Place. Yeah, a sense of humor. I'd discovered somewhere along the line that I had one, and I'd discovered that my dad did, too, buried under layers of quietness. Mom, not so much. I got along just fine with both of them, in different ways.

Dad kept the house the same as it had been until one day he got the idea from somewhere that it was a shrine to our past, and was stopping us from moving on, so then he decided he wanted to change it. My dad is not one for change though. He got as far as accepting some new cushions for the sofa from a well-meaning friend, and that was it. But it was around about then that Angela and Tanya got promoted. I didn't want them in my bed any more, now that I was a teenager. They came downstairs to enjoy the ambience from the window seat in the kitchen, and to preside over family interactions. Pretty much all the talking that Dad and I did was over the meal table.

Things were slow and quiet, but that was okay.

Now, where are we? Let me just think back to when Edward Cullen appeared in my life.

I was in twelfth year. His family appeared at school, all seventeen of them, or that's what it felt like. They were an invasion, a bunch of aliens turning up to subjugate the indigenous people. There was Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper, Alice and Edward. That's a big family by modern standards. For a couple of days, people muttered "Catholics," when the Cullens arrived in the morning, almost like it was an insult, although our town has plenty of Catholics. It's just, in our town, only poor people have that many children, and the Cullens were rich. They were filthy rich, if their clothes were anything to go by. As far as any of us could see they were better dressed than movie stars.

And they all actually looked like movie stars. They were so goddamn beautiful, each and every one of 'em. Edward was the most beautiful of them all, and he was in my year. I couldn't believe it, could not actually believe it, when I found he was in most of my classes.

I started talking to Angela again, because I knew I could tell her without being embarrassed. I could tell her that along with every other girl in the entire school, I had a hopeless crush on Edward Cullen.

The Cullens kept to themselves a little, being the small army that they were, and the rest of us hovered around their periphery. We tried to pretend that we had been perfectly okay before they turned up, and we'd been perfectly okay since. I steeled myself against Edward's sheer presence on a daily basis, because I had never been so hyper aware of a boy before and I thought perhaps I had a bit of an allergy. I all but broke out in a rash whenever he sat down next to me, and I fidgeted restlessly in my seat for the entire period of whatever class it was, holding my breath until I let it out in gasps. He would give me strange looks, and I didn't blame him.

"Are you asthmatic?" he even asked me one day, and I shrugged and nodded, figuring he would surmise that asthma led to speech problems in that it's a respiratory complaint.

We were all sitting in English Lit near the end of term wrestling with having to write an exposition on Murder in the Cathedral, when he muttered under his breath, "Never mind Thomas Beckett, I'd like to murder my fucking brother."

It had been loud enough for me to hear clearly, and I wondered if it had been meant for my ears.

I turned.

"What?"

"Have you got a brother? Would you like to swap?" he asked. "Oh, no, forget about it, I wouldn't wish Emmett on anyone."

"What are you talking about?" I asked him. The teacher had excused herself from the classroom for ten minutes, and we were taking advantage of the opportunity to talk freely about anything other than twentieth century plays.

"Oh, it's pathetic. I don't know why I'm even talking about it. Someone ate all the ice cream out of the freezer last night, and when my mom questioned us this morning, Emmett said it was me! It wasn't, so that means it was him, because no-one else said anything. He is a fucking moron," Edward lamented.

Edward Cullen, unattainable and god-like, was upset he'd been accused of being an ice cream thief.

"Did you take it?" I asked him.

"No! Do you think I'd sneak around in the middle of the night, like some sweet-tooth petty criminal, stealing ice-cream? Jesus!" he exclaimed. "Emmett's a fucking liar!"

For a Catholic, he sure cursed a lot. "Well, didn't your mom believe you?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes.

"She didn't know who to believe. What happens in your family when everyone's telling a different story?" he asked.

"Um, there's only me and my dad. I would never try to steal anything, because there's no-one else I could blame. My dad would know it was me," I admitted. Miss Goody Two-Shoes.

"Really?" he said. "No siblings? You are blessed. God, your life must be peaceful. You never have to fight for the remote."

I had never thought of myself as blessed.

"You never have to listen to someone playing fuckawful hip hop that you hate at a decibel level that's illegal. Nobody bangs on the bathroom door when you're trying to get five minutes' privacy. Do you know how lucky you are?" he continued.

"I guess," I answered doubtfully.

"You don't have to eat everybody else's favorite fucking dinners four nights of the week. Just you and your Dad? Oh my God, when it's my turn with the washing up, there is seven people's worth of crap to scrape off the plates!"

I wanted to keep the conversation going, but I didn't know how to. It was a fascinating insight into family life, after my sheltered years with my father, and it was Edward letting me in on it. Edward.

"We don't really have much washing up to do," I offered.

"And no-one pinches your socks, probably, and if you put your i-pod down somewhere, it doesn't turn up three days later in your sister's pocket..."

When the teacher returned Edward was shaking his head in dismay at the antics of his family, and I was reassessing my envy of people who had brothers and sisters. We were directed back to our essays, and the rest of the class passed in silence.

On my way out of the classroom, Edward was right behind me.

"Hey, I kind of zoned out for a lot of that last hour," he said. "Could I maybe look at your notes? You want to sit with me at lunch?"

I had no aversion whatsoever to sitting next to Edward at lunch and talking to him about T. S. Eliot.

Edward didn't really speak out in class, but he was obviously very bright, and from what he said at lunch I realized he was already familiar with the text and didn't need my notes at all. So why was he with me?

"You didn't really ask me here to discuss martyrdom and its relevant aspects, did you?" I said, boldly. "Did you want to talk some more about ice cream?"

My Dad's sense of humor is so understated it's almost not funny. Mine's the same.

Edward looked startled, and then thankfully he laughed. "Ice cream, and criminal responsibility. The two are closely linked. I wouldn't steal choc-swirl if I was having a fit, but boysenberry ripple... that's a whole different kettle of fish."

"Fish ice cream? Yuck."

"Funnily enough, we don't buy much in the way of fish-flavored cold confectionary."

"Well what exactly was missing from your freezer? A simple stocktake would be enough to identify the culprit. A mother who knows her kids' preferences would know that."

"Yes, but Emmett's cunning."

This nonsense conversation was flirting. Surely.

The bell for next period rang and lunch break ended, but something had started. I mentioned it to Angela when I was preparing dinner for myself and Charlie that night. She was happy for me, I could tell. I was wondering if I was misreading the signs I thought I'd picked up from Edward, and building them up into something that wasn't there. Ever the voice of reason and calmness, Angela was all for biding my time. Tanya thought I should should jump straight on him. They were polar opposites, the twin holders of my fears. It was good to talk to them again, and reassuring, in lieu of a mother. Well, Renee was only at the other end of the telephone, but I wasn't going to call her and ask her what to do about a boy. Her marriage had failed! Her advice couldn't be worth much.

To my delight, Edward sought me out again at school the next day, and again after that. And oh my God he was lovely. We talked about school stuff mostly, then as we got to know each other better our conversations got more general. We agreed and we argued, and I was loving every minute of it.

"The intelligent watchmaker?" he started. "If he's that intelligent, why is there an extra six hours per year? Why couldn't he just get it all to work mathematically?"

And, "Democracy is a farce. Under our current so-called democratic system why is power and wealth so concentrated in the hands of so few? Are you telling me the majority voted for that?"

And, "If I see one more picture of one more so-called beautiful woman celeb skinny clothes-horse plastic-faced nobody who's had her tits done, I'm going to barf. Stand clear."

I continued to get the rundown on his family, though.

"Jesus, Emmett's a fuckwit. You are so fucking lucky. Nobody needs an Emmett in their life."

"Rosalie is such a primadonna. What did I do to deserve being related to her?"

"Jasper is the world's biggest pain in the ass. You don't know what moaning is until you've heard him."

"Why does Alice have to be such a fucking flake?"

Not that he was always complaining. Most of the time he was good-natured, if slightly serious. We didn't see each other out of school, though. Edward never so much as asked me what I was doing on the weekend, let alone whether I'd like to do anything with him. In the face of his apparent disinterest I didn't have the nerve to mention concerts and parties to him and suggest he come along, although I was starting to go out now and again. Despite Charlie having set a rule that I wasn't allowed to seriously date until I finished school, I could go out with groups. Edward was never anywhere I went.

"So there was a party at Newton's last Saturday? So what?" he said once on a Monday morning. "I was busy making my own fun."

"Doing what?" I asked.

"Reading, homework, study. Increasing my brain power. You should try it," he said, although my grades were as good as his.

"No need," I smirked.

"You're not stupid, are you?" he asked, when we compared test results.

"Thought you had a monopoly on A's?" I grinned.

It was over a long weekend when I got a call from him, out of the blue. He'd never called me before.

"Do you want to get together? Go hiking with me? You know, the great outdoors. Wear practical shoes. There'll be walking," he said. He sounded hesitant.

"On foot?" I asked, trying to sound hesitant back. On the inside I was woo-hooing.

Dad wasn't even home, so I didn't need to get his permission. It was day time anyway, so it wasn't a date. There would be any alcohol, and I wouldn't be home late.

It turned out what Edward had in mind was to drive to the school car lot and climb Mt Kilimanjaro behind the school. In all my years living in this town, I'd never been up there.

"Who do you think you are - Sir Edmund Hillary?" I asked him. "Do I look like a sherpa to you?"

"Shut it, Swan. You're not even carrying anything," he answered.

"Edward, the habitats are changing. It's becoming alpine. Did you bring yak-wool hats in your backpack? Maybe it's time to break them out."

"You're worse than Jasper."

"I think I just saw a condor."

"Do you pay any attention in geography? We're too far north for condors."

"Nobody knows they're here. Nobody human has reached this altitude before. Icarus got this close to the sun and look what happened to him."

"He was a self-immolator. You're nowhere near high enough above sea-level to worry about it."

"I can practically touch the moon."

We went on, and I swear we were almost in the clouds. It got colder as we found what appeared to be the crest of a ridge, amongst trees.

"Did you bring food?" I asked Edward. "I wouldn't want to perish up here."

"I've got food and water and a blanket, Bella. If you would kindly stop complaining, you might appreciate the scenery."

Just as he said that, he pulled me through some tree trunks, and a vista appeared right in front of us. It was a clearing in the woods with sunlight streaming down, a rich and verdant place with blue-purple flowers springing in abundance out of the grass. I had never imagined a place of such enchantment a mere couple of miles from my home.

"How did you know about this?" I demanded in astonishment.

He shrugged.

"I googled cool places around Forks to impress a girl," he said.

Okay. I had to hide a blush of sudden nerves combined with sudden absolute pleasure, and I proceeded out to the lush grass, stepping carefully to avoid the clusters of flowers. I was impressed all right. By the place, and by what he'd said.

"What are these flowers?" seemed a safe question.

"Ah - bluebells? Violets Forget-me-nots?"

"I thought you googled this place! Why don't you know?"

"I just looked at the map. I didn't say I read the stub," he mumbled.

Exploring a little awkwardly while keeping an eye out behind me, I was aware Edward had slung off his backpack and unrolled the blanket strapped beneath it. By the time I returned to him he'd set out bread rolls and ham and salad.

"To your good health," he said formally, handing me a plastic flute glass with sparkling water.

"Yours too. Ditto," I answered.

He blinked at me a couple of times, and I wondered what was coming next.

"At your house you probably have good manners and restraint. You probably say things like "Pass the biscuits please," and "May I have another slice of apple pie?" You probably don't fall on the food like lions ravaging a zebra carcass. At our house it's the quick and the dead. I'll try not to shock you," he said, and then I saw him eat. It was hilarious.

"You're a hog!" I exclaimed.

"I'm not as bad as some," he mumbled defensively with his mouth full, and I still hadn't even picked anything up. "I used a lot of energy getting up here. I'm hungry. You're not a bulemic sparrow, are you? You only eat one crumb at a sitting, and then you have to throw up?"

I took some bread to prove I could eat with the best of them. He and I had had lunch together at school unnumerable times, but this was still an eye-opener.

"My life kind of revolves around food, this year," he added. "Last year it was music. Next year I'm planning to move onto astrophysics."

I nodded in consideration of what he'd said. "I'm sure NASA will be interested in your resume. There hasn't been a lot of research into pigs in space, and it's a burgeoning field."

Edward snorted and it made him cough and he spat partially chewed bread all over me. Grabbing a paper towel from his backpack, he dabbed at my chest, and then stopped in shock when he realized he had actually touched my breasts. I was shocked, too.

"Sorry. I didn't mean..." he whispered. "Oh, God, I would never touch you without your permission..."

We were both scarlet and we both dropped our eyes and ate quietly, willing the embarrassment to pass. At least that's what I did. I was hoping for a distraction, like a thunderclap or something, but nothing happened. When I finished my mouthful and swallowed I looked back at him and he was still blushing so furiously I ended up just laughing.

"Sorry," he mumbled again, shaking his head. "Glad you find me so amusing."

After that he produced an ipod and gave me one of the earbuds, taking the other one himself. We lay down side-by-side and talked about the songs, and even sang along to some of them. My singing is awful and I know it, but his voice was lovely.

"Don't ever do that in public, will you?" he said. "People will call the nearest emergency vet. They'll think there's a cat being strangled."

"You can talk. If you ever do that in public people will call the nearest emergency vet because they'll think there's a cat that should be strangled."

We spent an hour or two there, sometimes chatting and sometimes not, until he said we should mosey on along.

"Does your Dad even know you're with me today?" he asked, and I had to say no.

"Would he be okay about it? Or would he shoot me?"

"The latter is a distinct possibility."

"Well, Jeez, what about the grapevine? Won't he hear that I picked you up and dropped you off?"

"Probably. Oh, crap. We have to silence the neighbors."

"Okay. We need a plan. Bribery, blackmail or a hatchet job and a shallow grave?"

"You have such a criminal mind. Why don't we blame hallucinogens in the town water supply?"

"I have a criminal mind? Yours is twisted. Why don't we take the easy way out and offer sexual favors? It's worked for me in the past."

"I heard about that you. I thought it was just gossip."

We grinned conspiratorially at each other, and he pulled up in the driveway to the blue house. I'd have to work out something to tell my father, something credible.

By the time Dad got home though, he already knew. Old Ma Big Ears, the nosey bitch two doors down whose face was permanently glued to her window, had apparently called him at the station.

"I heard you went somewhere with the Cullen boy today. Bella, we've talked about the subject of you dating. There won't be dating until you're through with school."

"Dad, Edward and I are lab partners in Biology class, I told you that. We were supposed to collect some samples for the botany unit that starts this week. I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you about it. We just went and picked some mushrooms. We're doing an assignment on the toxicity of funghi. I washed my hands."

Thinking on my feet like that gave me an adrenalin rush. I would be in very serious trouble if he checked up on me, but as long as my report card only showed the first two letters of the alphabet and nothing beyond that, he wouldn't check, I was sure.

Back at school I told Edward I'd nearly been hung, drawn and quartered and chained to the bed leg and that I needed to know a lot about mushrooms, fast.

"They grow on trees and they're silvery-green," he said.

"You dweeb, that's lichen. You're going to get me killed. And then he's going to hunt you down."

I couldn't believe my eyes, or ears, a few nights later when my window slid open and Edward climbed through it.

"Have you got a fucking death wish?" I stuttered at him, but my father would be at the station until after midnight, and as long as Ma Big Mouth didn't know he was here, Edward would survive.

"No, a Bella wish," he answered. "Look, since that time I got bitten by a radioactive ant I'm really good at climbing walls. Besides that, I have the stealth of a ninja. You didn't hear me coming, did you?"

"I heard something but I thought it was a herd of wildebeest."

Not knowing what to make of Edward wanting to be in my bedroom, I stood biting my lip as he looked around slowly at my stuff.

"What happened to you valuing privacy?" I managed, while he peered at the titles on my bookshelf.

"Only my own," he shrugged.

When he spotted Angela and Tanya in their usual place on my pillow, where they waited for my reflections on the day, he raised an eyebrow at me.

"I wouldn't have taken you for the doll type."

"It's not a doll, it's a piece of highly sensitive surveillance equipment and it's recording everything you say and transmitting it to Operations HQ, secretly located underground in Nevada."

I was still nonplussed as to why he was here and wondering what I was going to do about it, when he sat on the bed, back to the headboard, long legs stretched out in front of him and his feet crossed at the ankles. How on earth could he be so relaxed?

"Come and sit down," he said, patting the bed next to him.

"Weren't you ever told not to put your shoes on the furniture?" I grumbled, and his response to that was to kick his shoes off. I climbed gingerly to the middle of the bedspread and sat in a half-lotus.

"I wanted to talk to you about Hamlet," he began, which was the play we were slated to study next semester in English Lit. "I'm thinking of doing a rewrite of it, using Candide as a starting point. I want to make poor Hammy think everything happens for the best, and it's all good. I need a partner to help me cheer him up. We can submit it for our final assignment. What do you reckon?"

Was he kidding?

"I reckon you're bonkers, of course. I'll just make a quick phone call, and then someone will come and collect you."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. They'll call you Mr Cullen, and take you somewhere very clean to live and every day you can line up and get colored candy in a little plastic container. You'll feel much better, and the voices in your head will stop."

"I'm crushed that you don't like my idea, but I have another one," he said, and with no forewarning other than that, he leant over and kissed me. Kissed me on the mouth.

I'd never been kissed on the mouth before.

There was just a gentle pressure from lips as soft as mine, and the lightest puff of a breath against my cheek as he exhaled and I barely had time for my eyelids to flutter closed before he pulled back and looked at me.

The kiss was a surprise, and maybe an invitation, and a question, and something that promised more, but the look was none of those. It wasn't like he was confirming the color of my irises, or checking for pupil dilation or anything anywhere near that prosaic. It was like he could see all the way through, all the way into me. There was an information superhighway between his eyes and mine and he was reading me. It was two-way, and I was reading him too. It felt like a soul connection.

My mouth dropped open and I sat gaping at him and wishing he'd kiss me again. Surely he had to have known, but he swallowed and said, "Maybe I should go."

Maybe he should stay.

He seemed confused. "I didn't come over here intending to ravage you. I'm sorry."

He swung his legs to the side of the bed and found his shoes, pulling them on.

"And I sat on your doll. Sorry about that, too."

Angela and Tanya were absolutely goggling at him, embroidered eyes wide as they could be. Of course, they were always like that, but in this particular instance they really did look incredulous. He'd sat on their face.

It appeared he couldn't get out fast enough.

"You want to use the front door, Antman?" I asked with more sarcasm than poise, but he slipped through the window as easy and quiet on the way out as he had been on the way in, and I plopped back down on the bed to face my inquisitors.

Tanya had plenty to say. "Why didn't you didn't kiss him back, idiot?"

Angela thought it had all been perfectly sweet. "Well, he likes you."

I went back over every detail of how he'd looked and what he'd said, and his body language.

"He was on your bed. He even took his shoes off! You were supposed to go for him."

"It was romantic. He was testing the waters, because he didn't know how you were going to react."

The trouble with Angela and Tanya was that they couldn't offer anything other than what was already in my head. The trouble with me was that I didn't have anyone I was close enough to to ask what they thought.

The next day I took Angela and Tanya back downstairs because their contradictory opinions were making me a nervous wreck. When my Dad saw them there under the window, watching as we ate our breakfast, he ruffled my hair.

"Still got that old thing, huh? It's starting to look a little shabby now. I'm kinda glad you've kept it all these years, though."

Angela and Tanya would both be in a huff about what he'd said, but for now they were quiet and I had my cereal and cleared up after me and Dad, and got ready for school. It was Friday. I had gym and Edward had music, and we were only in the same class for one period - European History. We were usually required to listen to an hour's worth of lecturing, and make intelligent comments at the end of it. Our teacher would select students randomly to ask questions, and if you didn't come up with something relevant you'd be given a detention, on the grounds that you hadn't been paying attention. There would be no chance for Edward and I to talk, unless we had lunch together. Usually on Fridays however, he was off with the Athletics club training at lunchtime.

I sat with another classmate, Jessica, and tried to muster interest in the upcoming Sadie Hawkins dance.

"You hang around with the Cullens a lot, don't you?" she asked slyly. "Are you going to invite Jasper?"

"I hadn't given it any thought yet," I answered.

"He's damn cute, and he looks sort of - you know - like the kind of guy who'd be all polite in public, and then reveal a different side once you were on your own. You know, like he'd park somewhere dark on the way home and screw your brains out in the car."

"Jessica, I really haven't thought about it. And now that you've mentioned it, I"m not going to think about it," I said hastily. Was that what people thought of Jasper Cullen? On what grounds?

"Of course, you could ask the brother, Edward. He's so totally gorgeous. But it's such a waste. Everyone knows he's gay," she added.

I was shocked, but I tried not to show it. "Everyone who?" I asked coolly.

"Everyone who's seen him with his boyfriend, Seth Clearwater," she said triumphantly.

Act casual.

"Seth Clearwater? Who's that?"

"Oh, you lead such a sheltered life, Bella. He's a Quiluete kid from the Rez. He's only fifteen, so it's kind of hush-hush about him and Edward. Edward could go to jail if anyone found out. But I can't believe you didn't already know - you're around him such a lot. Haven't you ever suspected anything?"

I formed a new opinion of Jessica. I'd thought she was dim but harmless, however I'd just downgraded my assessment to thick as pigshit and utterly poisonous.

"Edward and Seth go out "training" together in the mornings. What they really do is go to the woods and have mad gayboy sex," she continued.

Enough was enough. I couldn't bear it.

"Well, Jessica, who were you thinking of asking to the dance? It's only fair to let you know though that I heard there was a width restriction on the venue doorway and your ass might just be too wide for you to even get in," I snapped, gathering my things together and getting out of there as fast as I could.

And no, I had never suspected anything, and I'd never heard of Seth Clearwater, and gay guys don't climb in your bedroom window at night and kiss you.

Tanya thought that Edward might be of uncertain sexuality and had kissed a girl to see if he liked it. According to Tanya, odds were that he hadn't, since he'd failed to follow it up, and he'd practically thrown himself out of the window in his hurry to leave. Infinitely kinder, Angela thought the whole Seth Clearwater story was a beat-up by Jessica, who was probably jealous that Edward showed me any attention. After all, Jessica was a fat cow who was low on the popularity stakes and who was probably suffering from unrequited love of Edward, who had no interest in her.

"Because she has tits," Tanya suggested, evilly.

I had tits too, but one of Jessica's would equal four of mine. Or six. She had extreme tits.

I had to move Angela and Tanya upstairs again for this conversation. Charlie was going to start suspecting they were independently mobile. If he heard me talking to them he was going to start suspecting I needed the sort of hospitalization I had suggested to Edward. It's bad enough to attribute a personality to your doll, and then have conversations with it - but to give it split personality disorder and two names?

Edward didn't come calling in the night again, which Tanya claimed confirmed Jessica's gay allegation, and I didn't know how I made it through the next week. I didn't know to act with him, though I dutifully sat next to him in our shared classes. It seemed he noticed I was a little withdrawn.

"Is everything okay?" he asked on Tuesday, after I'd barely spoken to him all Monday. "You seem quiet."

"I'm paying attention, and I'm thinking," I answered. "I intend to pass everything this year, and with very high marks."

"You already get very high marks, and I've never noticed you thinking before. You get high marks by spending entire lessons talking to me."

"I'm sorry to have to tell you you're wrong. I get high marks by going home and having to study all fineckin' night after having wasting entire lessons allowing you to distract me."

"Fineckin'? Is that in the urban dictionary or did you just neologize?" he asked, but he was hurt, I could see it.

At lunchtime I sat at Jessica's table, and watched him get his food. He hovered with his tray next to me momentarily, and when I resolutely ignored him he sighed and went and sat with his siblings. Watching him go I had absolutely no idea how my inner bitch could could have arisen with such force and taken over my personality.

Sitting with Jessica was boring beyond measure. She was so stupid she'd forgiven me for the ass remark, and she just went on about dresses for the dance, and about showing off her cleavage. It wasn't like she could possibly avoid showing off her cleavage - her tits were not only gravity-defying, they could barely be contained.

"Do you want to come to Port Angeles with me on Saturday to shop for dresses?" she asked, as if there was a dress in the state that could accommodate her over-endowments.

"Yeah, I guess," I answered, which was a lie. But I needed something to do on Saturday.

As she and I talked, Edward was at his table a few yards away, watching me and scowling. I couldn't avoid catching his eye every time I looked in his direction, and since he was just to one side of Jessica's shoulder, I seemd to catch his eye every two seconds. At one stage he poked his tongue out. I grimaced, and Jess turned around to see what I was looking at. He poked his tongue out at her as well.

"G. A. Y," she said to me, like it was a foregone conclusion.

And then Edward and I had history together.

"Since when did you become BFF's with Stanley?" he asked. "And what the fuck have I done to incur your ire like this? You've barely spoken to me for days."

"Nothing," I mumbled.

"Well, it was a whole fuckload of nothing then, not just a little bit," he responded, and was reprimanded sharply by Mr Garrett, who thought the world began and ended with the Peloponnesian war.

"I'm not finished with you," Edward warned under his breath.

After school, I was negotiating the parking lot in my truck when I spied Edward's volvo right behind me through the rear vision mirror. Instead of turning in the direction of his house, he followed me. Oh, great. If he stayed behind me all the way to the blue house the phone line would be running hot between Big Nose's place and Law Enforcement Central. Flicking my indicator on a couple of miles up the road, I headed along Highway 101, not actually having any idea of where I wanted to go. The volvo came right along after me.

Only ten miles out of town is the Sol Duc bridge. I kinda love it. It's not too pretty, it's not Golden Gate or Brooklyn or anything, but it's ours. I pulled over just before it, and waited. Wouldn't you know it? The volvo pulled over, too. Edward was at my passenger side door before I could blink.

"I've worked it out, Swan," he said as he got in. "I'm fucking mortified, and I'm seven kinds of sorry, and I know why you have the shits with me."

"Listen, Sparkles, I don't have the shits. I've been a bit scarce because I wanted a little girl time, okay? Some oestrogen, that's all."

His face was all grave and he faced me and hunched his shoulders and then dropped them back down, and he tightened his lips and then relaxed them again, and he clenched his jaw too. He was the very picture of nervous.

"Bella, I was a complete dickhead. I trespassed in your house - in your bedroom, which is even worse. It should be your safe place. And then to make matters worse still, I kissed you. I should never, ever have done that without asking you first. You didn't expect it, and obviously I've offended you. It was just a stupid impulse, and I won't do it again. Please don't stop being friends with me."

I could just imagine Angela and Tanya's response. Well, Tanya's anyway.

"He said it was a stupid impulse! That's because of his sexual orientation! He doesn't like kissing girlmouth! He wants to kiss boymouth! Bella, you are such a fool."

Angela wouldn't really be sure what to say. She was such a soft wussy optimist. "Don't jump to conclusions," would be about the best she'd have to offer.

I was silent for a while, considering a reply. Edward and I could go back to the way we had been, friends united in cynical sarcasm against the moronity of the pathetic world around us, we could blunder through working out new terms for whatever the hell our friendship was, or I could push him hard back against the door, kiss the bejesus out of him and see whether he kissed me back or threw me off.

Or I could say something stupid.

"Who's Seth Clearwater?"

"Huh?"

If I shut my eyes and wished hard enough, could I disappear? Had physics worked that shit out yet?

"What on earth are you talking about? Seth is a guy I know. What's he got to do with anything?"

"You tell me."

Oregon vortex, move north a bit and take me.

"Can we talk about the kissing?" he asked, clearly bewildered. He didn't know what train I was on.

"Let's not."

He let out a long sigh.

"Anyway, Edward, I've got to go. You may be able to spend hours driving around the county bridge-spotting but I've got a busy afternoon lined up," I said after a long and awkward silence.

"Oh?" he said, eying me.

"I'm defrosting the freezer. I have to sit in front of it and oversee the whole process."

"You're such a bitch."

He was right, but I wasn't going to just there and take it from him.

"You're a jerk!" I retaliated, although it wasn't true.

"Jesus, Swan, at least have the decency and guts to tell me what I've done that was so fucking wrong. Was it kissing you? You hated it, okay, I get that. I've apologized. Don't make me keep paying for it."

"You're sitting in my vehicle," I pointed out redundantly, because I couldn't think of a proper reply that didn't involve me confirming forever and always that I was a total dick.

Edward, I really like you, and I thought maybe you liked me too, then somebody who is colossally witless planted a seed of doubt that you could possibly feel anything for me, and not only did it throw me off balance, I've let it flower into a mighty oak, insofar as its eating me from the inside out, and now I can barely manage to string sentences together when you're around. And you say you want to be friends?

"When whoever has taken over your body decides to give it back and you return to your usual annoying but strangely endearing self, come find me, because I'll have been waiting all that time for Bella Swan," he said.

"Pardon me?" I stuttered, but he'd already gotten out, slamming the door behind him. Before I could react any further, the volvo was speeding away back towards town.

"He called me endearing! Tanya, you are toast," I muttered triumphantly as I drove home.

.

.

.

This is a two-parter. Next bit soon.