Chapter Three

I am well practiced at first days of school. I am used to the stares and the whispers. But I haven't had to go through that in three years. Three long, comfortable years with my boyfriend holding my hand and my acquaintances watching my back. From a practice standpoint, this should not have been difficult, this pulling into a new parking lot and walking into an office. Still... it was rough.

I met a woman named Mrs. Cope. She sat behind a wide, formica desk and pushed a stack of papers into my hands. I had a schedule and a map of the school. I had a lunch menu and a health form for my gym class. I had the supply lists that are generally handed out before the school year. It occurred to me that these things would have been infinitely more useful yesterday, when I would have had time to study them and purchase my necessities, but there was nothing to do for it now, so I smiled and thanked her and waved as I exited the front office.

Forks High School, Home of the Spartans. This may have been the most unremarkable campus I'd ever walked across. There was grass everywhere, and there were long, wide concrete walkways with corrugated metal roofs. They crisscrossed the expanses of green, connecting the buildings which seemed to be constructed unreasonably apart from each other.

I briefly consulted the schedule in my hand, then the map. I had a locker in the Arts Building, though I had no arts classes. I decided to ignore it for now, and I headed off to find the History Building and my first Civics class in a new school.

I went to four classes and walked away with six new friends. The kids here are different than they'd been anywhere else. They all knew each other from birth. They'd shared birthday parties and swapped kisses and traded gossip since their inceptions. My mother hadn't gotten near a small town since she ran from Forks, and I had never experienced anything quite like these people around me. They were all nice. They all wanted to get to know me, to hear about Arizona, to walk me to my next class. It was stifling and more than a little scary. And none of them had been prominent features of my dreams.

The Forks High cafeteria was a surprisingly comfortable room. The floors were the standard white linoleum, the walls the standard institutional bone, but there were large picture windows adorning the walls, and even if they only showed off the rain choking the grass and the clouds choking the sky, they provided a nice distraction. My new friends insisted that I sit with them, and I was hardly in a position to object. The girls glared at the boys as they paid too much attention to me. The boys ignored the other girls entirely. Mark had been he only one to show an interest in me before. I didn't know what to do with their regard.

A girl named Jessica demanded my attention, talking about the English class we'd shared and the teacher's notoriously unfair nature. The girl seated next to her, Lauren, agreed wholeheartedly, and then they were off on their own conversation, gossiping about people I'd never heard of and probably wouldn't care about. Angela was the girl on my other side, and she suggested I join the Yearbook staff with her, telling me it would be a great way for me to meet new people. Eric, a boy I'd met in my first class, agreed wholeheartedly. Then Mike and Tyler, who I'd met only minutes ago, hinted that perhaps they'd like to join the Yearbook staff as well. That was enough to turn me off of the idea, but I thanked Angela for her suggestion and told her I'd think about it. Lunch had never been this stressful before.

As the group nattered away around me, I took an opportunity to glance around the lunch room. Nobody present had played an active role in any of my dreams, and I still felt that rushing in my chest that had plagued me the night before. Something was coming. Something was going to happen. And I excused myself, suddenly desiring to be anyplace but there.

I found myself in the school parking lot a few minutes later, rolling down the windows of my Bug and spreading myself across the front seat. I dug my MP3 player from my backpack and toyed with an apple I had brought from the cafeteria. I had felt so whole yesterday. I didn't understand why I would suddenly feel so bereft today.

I sat there until the end of the period, idly listening to music and watching the rain fall around me. When it was time to return, I rolled my windows back up with a sigh and hitched my backpack over my shoulder once again. The Science Building was right in front of the parking lot, so I didn't have a long walk ahead of me. When I reached to appropriate room, I waved at those who waved at me, Mike and Jessica were both in this class, it would seem, and sought out the teacher to let him know I was there. I was directed to a stool at a table in the back of the room, and I made my way cautiously down the aisle between lab tables, mindful of the squeaking noise the wet rubber of my shoes made against the linoleum, and found my spot, dropping my bag onto the table with a thud and turning towards my table-mate and lab partner for the rest of the year, preparing to introduce myself. And that's when I saw him.

I dreamed of a bronze-haired boy with pale skin and amber eyes. He sat next to me in a field of flowers and told me about his family. And here he was. Staring at me.

"I'm Isabella Swan," I whispered, extending my hand. This was the boy. The boy I had let Mark go for. The boy I had let myself move on for.

"Edward," he replied, keeping my eyes but ignoring my hand which, after a moment, pulled my locket from beneath my shirt and clutched it like an anchor in a choppy sea. It was warm from my body heat and felt solid beneath my fingers. Edward marked the movement, moving his focus from my stare to my hands. "What do you have there?"

I thought for a moment. The locket wasn't really mine. It belonged to my desk. At least, that's how I thought of it. It occurred to me that I sounded crazy, referring to my desk as though it was a sentient being, capable of property ownership. Still, though I wore it around my neck and cherished it as though it were my own, I knew the locket was in my possession through the generosity of the universe. It wasn't mine to claim. I thought of a conversation that Jacob and I had had over washing dishes. I'd noticed a leather cord around his wrist, a wooden carving of a wolf attached...

"It's my totem." I replied, smiling faintly now that I knew what to call it.

"Totem?" he echoed softly, his long, pale fingers twitching on the black surface of the table.

I nodded, offering no further explanation, and he inclined his head, telling me that he understood. I was still standing in the aisle, staring at Edward, when Mr. Banner called the class to attention. Still holding the totem, still watching those amber eyes, I moved onto the stool, curling my feet around the spokes at the bottom and angling my body towards his.

I examined him, taking in his features. His hair was an array of bronzes and coppers, sticking out in all directions and begging me to touch it. He had strong cheekbones and blush-colored lips, and his eyes were... everything. Looking into them, I was lost and found all at once. My heart took off at a gallop, and the rushing in my chest got stronger and more insistent. This was it. I knew it like I knew the sun would set tonight just to rise again in the morning. This was what I had been feeling since I'd gotten here. What I'd been waiting for. Anticipating.

Mr. Banner was lecturing in the front of the room, but in my mind I was alone with Edward. I didn't know what this meant, what he meant, but I knew this moment was important. So I held his eyes, my fingers still grasping my locket, and watched him as he watched me.

"Are you..."

I raised my eyebrows, willing him to continue.

"When did you arrive in Forks? You've just moved here, yes?"

His voice was like velvet over silk, tactile and melodious and rich. It intoxicated me. He intoxicated me.

"My plane landed on Saturday. It's been a busy weekend."

"Indeed."

His mouth quirked into a smile at his affirmation, and he seemed to be remembering something amusing, seeing something I didn't.

"And you're from Arizona," he continued after a moment. It was a question and a statement at once.

"Amongst other places. I moved a lot."

"But not anymore," he asked, a measure of urgency in his voice.

"Not anymore," I agreed. "I'm home now."

And that was it. We didn't speak beyond that exchange, opting to watch each other instead. Mr. Banner complained from the front of the room, demanding our attention, and we both obligingly turned, our movements in sync, seemingly paying attention to a lecture on mitosis, but I was still watching, marking, cataloguing the existence of the enigmatically important creature next to me out of the corner of my eye, and I could see he was doing the same. The bell rang thirty minutes later, and Edward and I rose and reached for our bags. I met his eyes once more, smiling at him as I stepped back.

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Edward," I whispered, mindful of the many pairs of eyes in the room watching our goodbye.

"It was transcendent, Isabella."

He moved to walk past me brushing past my shoulder with his taller form, but he stopped next to me, his breath cool and sweet against my skin as he whispered, "Until we meet again."

A/N: I went to check something with my story today, only to find that it apparently no longer existed on FF. Has anyone had this problem? I'm posting this assuming all three chapters will be there... let me know, please. I'm miffed.