Midnight Star

by Lady Dawson

Chapter Three: Edward Cullen

Alice's words hung over me throughout the night and straight through to the next day. I didn't understand what she could have meant, but it was almost as though she knew something about me, almost as though she could see who and what I was just by looking at me. It was as though she knew everything that I had been through, knew everything that had happened to me, but how could she? I argued with myself, trying to throw out those particular thoughts. How could she know what happened back in New York? How would she even know the truth about who and what I was?

Trying not to mull over this as I headed to school, I pulled my truck, managing not to hit anything—give me a break, I'm still getting used to driving a stick, not to mention, I only got my license a month ago—and headed inside as rain poured down around me, which meant that my dad was keeping an eye on me.

Scowling up at the sky, raindrops pattering on my forehead, I muttered darkly, "I can take care of myself, Dad."

If my father was listening, then his only response was the rain coming down even harder than before. Making a face, I trudged into the building, shaking the droplets of rain out of my hair as I headed towards my locker to collect the books that I was going to need for my first few classes.

The second day wasn't as nearly as bad as the first. At least I knew where all my classes were and didn't get lost on my way there. Okay, so I got lost once, but given that it was only my second day, so I think I get credit for only getting lost once today. Angela, who was in my art and history classes, was nice enough to offer to help me with history, which I'm slightly better in than science and math, but it's still not one of my better subjects. It probably has something to do with the fact that I could tell you more about the hidden mysteries of historical figures than I could about the things that they're actually famous for. I'll give you a hint: most of the people that are in history books are actually demigod children.

When I got to lunch, the Cullens were sitting at the same table that they had occupied yesterday, sitting in the exact same chairs, and talking amongst themselves as I sat down with Angela and her group, but as I glanced over at them, something seem . . . different about them.

Edward seemed to catch my gaze and his eyes flickered over to me automatically, but there was something different about his gaze today. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but they didn't seem quite so dark as they had yesterday.

Frowning slightly, I tried to sort through my thoughts, but came up with nothing and turned my attention back to Jessica as she asked me a question. I answered her, trying to keep my concentration on the topic and not on the beautiful boy sitting on the other side of the cafeteria.

If it were possible, math passed by even more slowly than it had the day before, but maybe that was because I was glancing at the clock every five minutes, waiting for it to end so I could get to science. Never, in my entire life, had I been so eager to get to science.

But then again, I'd never had somebody that I'd been so desperate to talk to before. Stefan came close, but I didn't count him anymore, since he had turned his back on us. And anyway, it wasn't the same. I didn't have the same, intense feelings for Stefan that I did for Edward. I couldn't describe what it was, exactly, but whatever my feelings were for him, they were strong.

Edward was sitting in his usual spot the second that I stepped into science and I was once again struck by the difference between yesterday and today, even if I couldn't put my finger on it. I wandered over to my seat, slipping into it and glancing sideways at him. His golden eyes flashed in my direction as I did so.

Wait, golden?

I did a double-take and realised that my first impression had indeed been correct. Instead of the dark gaze that I so vividly remembered from yesterday, his eyes were a deep gold colour, almost the same shade as butterscotch. But how could that be? I thought in bewilderment. How could he eyes so vividly change in the space of a day?

Confused beyond doubt, I pulled my attention away from Edward, focusing instead on the lesson. Or at least, that was my intention before a voice suddenly spoke next to me.

"Hello."

Startled, I looked up from pulling my notebook out of my backpack, realising two things immediately. The first thing was that Edward was looking directly at me, his gaze friendly and the second, that it was him who had spoken to me.

"I'm sorry that I didn't introduce myself yesterday," he said courteously, still smiling at me. "I'm Edward Cullen. You're Susan Dawson, from New York?" I nodded, too stunned to speak. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I apologise for yesterday; I know that I was being a bit rude. I wasn't feeling very well," he said apologetically.

"It's okay," I heard myself say and I was relieved to find that my voice was completely steady, without a hint of agitation to it. "It's very nice to meet you too." I noticed that now that he was speaking to me directly, my first impression of his accent hadn't been exaggerated. Edward carried the same lilt to his voice that Chiron, the activities director at camp, possessed. It was odd and formal.

Edward smiled crookedly at me and I felt myself melting underneath that smile; I'm a sucker for guys with great smiles, I'll admit it, but I doubt that any girl would be able to resist that smile of his, if they had eyes. If they didn't, then they didn't know what they were missing. I blushed at that particular thought, wishing that I wasn't so obvious whenever I said or thought something that was particularly embarrassing.

But I always did blush easily. Valentine used to tease me, telling me that all she had to do was look at me and I would turn about fifty different shades of red. And she wasn't wrong; I hated being the centre of attention, which was probably why I blushed so much. But with Edward Cullen looking directly at me with that amazing smile of his, with absolutely no sign of abhorrence in his golden eyes, I couldn't help but go red in the face.

Just by him looking at me in that friendly way, not in that frustrated way that he had been yesterday that had been bordering on hatred, it was enough to make everything unravel itself in my head.

I forgot that anybody else was there. I forgot that I was in a public high school. I forgot that Edward was most definitely not completely, 100% human. I forgot that I was a demigod. I forgot my own name. I forgot everything as our eyes clashed onto one another. For a moment that contained an eternity, the only thing that I was aware of was Edward Cullen. That moment seemed to last an eternity, as though we were the only two people in existence, as though the lights had dimmed everywhere else.

How long I sat there, just staring at Edward, his golden eyes completely focused on my blue-green ones, I have no idea, but eventually, I became aware of Mr. Molina conducting the lesson and I forced my head towards the front of the classroom, trying to focus on the lesson, which was very near impossible to do with Edward sitting next to me.

Focus, Susan, I told myself sternly. Focus on the teacher and what he's talking about, not this incredibly handsome boy sitting right next to you . . .

Of course, this didn't work too well, because as soon as I tried to focus on what Mr. Molina was teaching, he started passing out slides for us to look under the microscope and identify. I inwardly groaned; this exercise was bound to prove just how much of an idiot at science I really was.

Edward was smiling slightly, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking, but he simply placed the first slide on the microscope and gestured for me to take a look.

"Ladies first," he said invitingly, courteous and encouraging.

I sighed, but pulled the microscope towards me. "Fine," I grumbled. "But I'm warning you, I suck at science."

He laughed merrily, causing a few people to look over at us, apparently not used to Edward Cullen being so sociable. "I'm sure that you're not as bad as you think you are," he assured me. I frowned at him, eyebrows raised. "Besides, I'm a good tutor. How about if you identify each of the slides and I'll check your answers?"

I sighed. "Fine," I muttered. "But I'm warning you, I'm probably going to make you fail." Edward laughed quietly, gesturing his hand towards the microscope and I peered into the eyepiece, trying to determine which slide it was supposed to be.

"Prophase?" It sounded like a guess, even to me, so I was hardly surprise when Edward gave me a kind smile.

"It doesn't sound like you're sure."

Biting my lip, I peered back into the eyepiece, staring at it again before pulling away again. "I'm sure," I told him.

Edward pulled the slide towards him to check my answer and when he pulled away, he gave me a grin. "Prophase," he agreed, nodding. "See? You're not as bad as you think you are."

"Or maybe you're just a good teacher," I corrected, smiling. It was nice and easier to talk to him than I would have thought, almost completely comfortable. Granted, I don't have that much experience in talking to guys, but I would have thought that I would have experience some difficulty with coherency, but other than the fact that I was blushing more than I would have liked, I was doing just fine.

Or at least, I thought so.

With a smile, Edward slid the next slide into place and pushed the microscope towards me again.

"So . . . your sister said that you had something to do yesterday?" I said, trying to make my inquiry sound casual, but even I could hear the curiosity behind the question. But he seemed to be a master of acting, because his response sounded practiced and well-delivered.

"Yes. I had something that I had to talk about with my father," Edward said offhandedly. "It was nothing serious, but I needed to talk to him. But thank you for bringing my backpack," he added with a smile. "My sister told me that you tracked her down. That was very considerate of you."

"It was nothing," I said, looking down. "Anybody else would have done the same thing."

"On the contrary, I think you're wrong about that," Edward told me. I paused; he was probably right about that. Most people probably would have pawed through it and gone through a person's person belongings before they turned it over to the office and that was even a stretch. "Not many would have bothered."

"Well . . . I'm not an average girl," I said at last.

Edward nodded as though this particular piece of information did not surprise him much. "No," he murmured, more to himself than to me, "you're not, are you?"

Something about the way that he said that made me look at him suspiciously, but his expression was calm and composed.

Frowning slightly, I subtly checked to make sure that my necklace was where it was supposed to be, just in case, before I moved on to the next slide.

Maybe I was overreacting a little bit, but it had literally been four years since I had been in the outside world for something other than quests. Living in the demigod world for so long . . . well, maybe it wasn't too surprising that I was seeing monsters everywhere that I looked. Maybe I was just making a big deal out of something that could be nothing at all. After all, maybe my imagination was just playing tricks on me. Edward and his siblings could very well be average mortals who were just blessed by Aphrodite.

Or at least, that's what I was trying to convince myself.

We continued on the assignment this way, with me identifying the slides—or at least trying to—and Edward checking my responses. All in all, I didn't do that badly. I only got two of them wrong and I got them right on my second try. In the end, we were the first ones finished and after we turned in our assignment, we sat at our desks and talked quietly so as not to disturb anybody else.

To be honest, I figured that Edward would be getting sick of me by now, but on the contrary, he seemed to be genuinely interested in what I had to say and perfectly content to sit next to me and talk to me. What I found most shocking was that he seemed interested in me.

"So . . . how are you liking the rain?" he asked me, inclining his head towards the window, where the rain was pattering against the pane, making little chimes with every touch and blanketing the entire town with its wetness.

The question surprised me some much that I spoke without even thinking of my answer. "I like it. It might sound a little bit strange, but I love the rain. The smell right after a big rainstorm, the way that it sounds against when it hits the roof . . . back home, it never rained." I wasn't kidding; bad weather never entered the camp unless the gods allowed it to, though it did snow in winter, turning the camp into a frosty wonderland.

But Edward looked confused. "Forgive me, but didn't you live in New York?" he sought to clarify. I nodded, immediately recognising my mistake and my mind frantically searched for an answer that wouldn't sound like a lie. "I wasn't aware that it was a particularly dry state."

"It's not," I said, wishing that I hadn't said anything, but it was too late now. All I could do was salvage the situation. "But it just never seemed to rain in the part that I lived at."

That wasn't a lie and it was enough of the truth that Edward seemed to accept it, which I was grateful for. I hate lying to people and I especially hated lying to an extremely handsome boy that I couldn't help but feel drawn to, despite my uneasy feelings about him.

But Edward seemed to be satisfied by this, because he didn't press the subject, just nodded in acceptance. "So then you must be happy, living in the wettest part of the continental U.S.," he observed.

"Yeah . . . I wasn't sure about coming here, at first, but . . ." I hesitated, glancing at him slightly. "But I'm starting to warm up to it."

I realised with a jolt just how true that statement was. When I came out here—okay, forced out here by my annoying big brother and best friend—I figured that I would stay a semester, a year at the most before going back to camp and resuming my life there when I was stable enough to go back home. It never occurred to me that I might actually like it here.

But now that I was here, I was starting to realise that living with my mortal uncle and having mortal friends and going to a mortal school wasn't so bad. And it wasn't as dangerous as I thought it would be. Given, I'd only been here a day, but nothing unusual had happened, no monsters had attacked.

The only thing out of the ordinary that had happened was meeting Edward and the rest of the Cullens and while they definitely seemed otherworldly, they didn't have that "I want to kill you" vibe. Well, maybe Rosalie, but not Edward and the rest of them.

Supernatural feeling, yes, but killers, no.

"Actually, it's pretty nice here," I admitted, folding my fingers on top of one another. "I'm starting to think that I might actually like it here." It was beautiful here and besides that, there was something holding me here. There was no way that I could leave here, not without knowing Edward Cullen.

I missed camp. I missed sitting by the beach and reading, I missed the sing-alongs, I missed Capture the Flag, I missed sword-duelling, I missed archery, I missed Briar and Percy, I missed riding the Pegasus.

Basically, I just missed camp.

But I also couldn't leave here. As much as I missed camp . . . I couldn't leave without ever having known him.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you move in with your uncle?" Edward inquired curiously. "You were living with your mother, weren't you?"

"Um . . . sort of," I said uncomfortably as the subject of my mother rose. This was the first time that my mother had come up, other than Charlie's inspection of me at the bus station and I was surprised to find that my mother's rejection still left an imprint on me. "I was actually at this . . . boarding school and . . . well, it's kind of complicated."

Part of me didn't want to talk about it while another part wanted to tell him everything that had happened.

All he did was smile at me. "I'm sure that I can keep up."

For a moment, I hesitated, but Edward flashed me that same crooked smile, one that I found myself unable to resist for some reason. "Well . . . last year, one of my best friends died," I whispered, memories flashing through my mind as I spoke. "Valentine and a few of my other friends were . . . murdered right in front of me." I had to force out the word. "And it completely traumatised me. I tried to keep it together, tried to keep going, for my brother's sake and for the friends that had survived, but eventually . . . it just got to be too much. The memories of everyone that I had lost were too overwhelming. I needed to get away, so one of my teachers tracked down Charlie and I came to live with him for awhile. And . . . here I am."

"Here you are," Edward murmured, looking sympathetic. "I'm so sorry, about your friends. That's a terrible loss to go through."

"Thank you." I remembered suddenly that he was a foster child, not living with his birth parents, so maybe he understood what it was like to lose somebody. "You've known someone who's died, then?"

Edward nodded, a bit reluctantly. "Yes, my parents," he answered. "They died . . . many years ago. I don't remember them all that much; the memories are fuzzy. But that doesn't mean that I don't miss them. It might be hard to believe, Susan, but time really does heal all wounds," he told me gently, trying to comfort me, I think.

"Perhaps," I acknowledged, "or maybe there are just some wounds that are too deeply etched within your very soul to heal. Maybe sometimes time can't heal all wounds. Maybe you just get better at hiding it."

"Or maybe," Edward said thoughtfully, "you find something in life that is worth living for."

The comment caught me off guard and I stared at his golden eyes, trying to figure out what he'd meant by that, searching for some hidden meaning behind his words, but I couldn't come up with anything, so I swiftly changed the subject.

"So . . . did you get contacts?"

"No," he replied, a bit too quickly for my taste and I thought I glimpsed a hint of apprehension in his eyes.

"That's weird," I muttered, frowning. "I could have sworn that your eyes were . . . black yesterday." I remembered it so vividly; they had stood out against the paleness of his skin. "And now today, they're like . . . gold," I muttered, still frowning. "Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me."

"No, it's the fluorescents," Edward corrected.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't believe his flimsy excuse, but I couldn't come up with anything else—plus, he hadn't pressed the subject of Val's death—so I just let it go. Besides, class was just about over and Edward looked frustrated with himself, so I doubted I would get any more answers out of him, so we just spent the last five minutes in silence.

When the bell rang, I headed out the door, glancing towards Edward as I joined my classmates, before slipping through the crowd towards my locker, collecting the books I would need for homework.

As I stepped out into the parking lot, I thought that I saw someone standing near the football field, a very familiar someone, but when I looked back, there was no one there besides my mortal classmates.

Shaking my head at my imagination, I climbed into my truck and headed for my house, completely unaware of the danger that was headed my way.