Chapter Three: Frustrations and Lucky Guesses

"So, where to next?"

Charlotte took her time packing her books back into her bag before answering his question. She got to her feet, donning her backpack, and finally turned to him with a polite smile. "You do want to go to class, then?"

"Oh, yeah," he nodded. "Who'd want to miss these enlightening classes offered at Forks High School?"

Sarcasm again. Charlotte quickly looked towards Mrs. Belton from the corner of her eye to make sure she hadn't heard his comment. "I have English too, so I'll take you there."

"You better. You're my guide, remember… although you seem to be confusing the meaning of that word with that of 'mother'."

She gave him a withering look, but decided she was better off not replying. In fact, she was better of just not talking to him. In the little time since she had met him, he had made her late for class and almost got her in trouble with her teacher, all the while sporting a devil-may-care attitude.

They walked in silence for quite some time though 'silence' was hardly what was happening around them. Newcomers were a point of fascination in Forks due to their involvement with the fantastic on-goings of the town. In 2004, it had been Isabella Swan who soon married into the lengenary Cullen family. In 2007, it had been Fanny Burdow who mysteriously disappeared two months after arriving in the town. The beginning of the last school-year had paid host to another legendary Cullen—Renesmee who was the sixth adoptive daughter of Dr. Carlisle Cullen. She didn't need anything interesting to happen to her to be discussed on a daily basis in the rumors-mill. She was something interesting. Only God knew how many times she had been asked out since she arrived here. Charlotte would have found her interesting, perhaps even nice, but all the popularity the girl had to put up through on a daily basis kept Charlotte's presence a safe distance away from her.

And now there was Damon Arlington. Charlotte was sure news of his cheeky attitude against Mrs. Belton was spreading through the school even as they spoke.

"I never thought I'd end up at a place like this," Damon muttered more to himself than anyone else.

Charlotte turned to him curiously. "Why did you come here?" She asked him. Margaret had failed to mention the reason for Damon's visit in all the time that she had been telling people he would be coming.

Damon's eyes kept searching through the students around him. "How safe am I sharing information about myself here?"

"Not at all," Charlotte replied honestly.

"I'd rather keep to myself then," he responded.

Which was exactly what she did on a daily basis, so she thought his concern was fair enough. She turned away again. "This is us," she said as she walked through the door to the English classroom. She headed straight for her usual seat at the front and center of the class and dropped her backpack to the ground.

"You're not serious," Damon laughed. She looked up and found him eyeing her choice of seating with great hesitation.

"I always sit here," she told him.

"I'm sure you do, but haven't we decided it's good to break habits once in a while?"

She would never stop being surprised by his abrasive behavior. "Yes, well… I've broken one habit today already, so let's not overwork me, okay?"

He looked thoughtful. "I think you can take it."

She fought the urge to growl with frustration. "Look, you don't have to sit with me if you don't want to."

"Oh, I don't," he told her quickly. "I just thought you might want to sit with me. I mean… it would make it easier for you to continue spying on me."

"For the last time--!"

"Hey, who is that over there?" He cut her off as his eyes floated to a back corner of the room. Charlotte turned around, searching for his object of interest, and immediately knew who he was looking at. She turned back to him and rolled her eyes. One more to the list of Sullen for Cullen. Yes, such a list did actually exist and was maintained by a very bitter group of senior girls in her fifth-hour Biology class. She had to endure every painful second of their envious discussions as her lab partner happened to be their little ring-leader and decided to use their table as meeting grounds.

"That," she sighed as she sat down, "is Renesmee Cullen, the youngest addition to Dr. Cullen's brood of adoptive kids."

"Does she have a boyfriend?" He sounded like he was trying to confirm some doubt.

"Yes, she does—"

"Some guy named Jacob?"

She looked up suspiciously. "How do you know?"

He turned to her with a shrug and a crooked grin. "Just a lucky guess."

Or someone had already told him of the famous Cullen girl. She shook her head slightly as she sat down. She was a little surprised to notice that he sat down next to her as well—at the front of the room—but his glazed expression as he continued to stare towards the back corner explained his action. "So, what's the deal with her and her boyfriend?"

Charlotte didn't particularly care to answer him. Even on her best day, she wasn't much of a talker, let alone a gossiper, and today was not her best day. All throughout History, she had been trying to figure out ways to get students interested in signing a petition for a field trip to the Olympic Correction Center. Therefore, she was glad when Damon was momentarily distracted by Kaitlin Ryce who stepped up to him with an overly enthusiastic smile on her face.

"Hi! I'm Kaitlin," she announced.

Damon slowly turned to her, his eyebrows raised as a hard smile pressed onto his face at the sight of the blond-haired, bubbly girl before him. "Hi…" he replied slowly.

"You're Damon Arlington, aren't you?"

Her voice carried through the entire room, causing several people to turn to them with open interest. Charlotte smiled, noticing Damon's discomfort as a scowl passed over his face. She turned away, her eyes on the notebooks that she was removing from her bag, but unable to stop listening to their conversation. At least it wasn't difficult to hear every word Kaitlin was saying.

"That is such a cool name!"

"Yeah, my mom had an affair with Matt Damon. It was her way of telling my dad about it."

Charlotte had to stop her actions to fight the urge to turn to him with incredulous eyes.

"No… fricking… way! Matt Damon is your father?!"

She couldn't fight it. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and saw that his face had frozen with a hint of bewilderment. He turned to look at Charlotte as though to ask, 'is this girl for serious?!' She coughed loudly to cover up her laughter. "No," he replied slowly.

"Oh... well, I just wanted to introduce myself 'cuz I'm sure it must be hard being a newcomer in town and everything. This school can be pretty confusing, so I can take you to your classes if you like—I'll just get a permission slip from the office."

"Yeah… really confusing," Damon sighed sarcastically. "Thanks, but I've already been assigned a moth—I mean, a guide." He jerked his thumb towards Charlotte with an apologetic smile to Kaitlin.

"Oh," Kaitlin replied, her disappointment obvious in her tone as she looked over Charlotte quickly as though she were an insignificant painting on the wall.

"Actually, that's completely fine, Kaitlin," Charlotte smiled widely at her. "You can take him."

Damon looked at her thoughtfully for a second, then grinned at Kaitlin. "Great, you can take me." And then he winked… he actually winked at the girl who suddenly seemed pathetically defenseless in Charlotte's eyes. Her mouth dropped open and she began to blush and stutter slightly as Damon offered her a lazy smile.

The bell rang at that moment and Mr. Mason called the class to attention. Kaitlin quickly slipped away to a flurry of excited giggling from her girlfriends who had seen the entire encounter and the rest of the class continued in a blissfully uninteresting manner. The moment the bell rang, Charlotte began packing her books without looking at Damon, wondering if he would make some snide comment about her acting like a 'mother' and walk off to Kaitlin who was quickly making her way towards them.

Damon, once again, had an entirely different agenda than Charlotte had expected. "Can I borrow this?" He asked, grabbing her pen without waiting for her reply. He jumped out of his seat, not bothering with his books or backpack and walked out the door after… Renesmee Cullen.

"Hi," he called out.

Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw Nessie turn to him like a graceful swan floating in a lake. "Hello?"

"I think you dropped your pen."

Charlotte gasped. That was her favorite pen!

"No, I didn't. You actually stole that from Charlotte so you had a reason to come talk to me."

Perceptive and very blunt. Perhaps that was why Charlotte had always liked Nessie. On the rare occasion that she spoke at all, she always spoke her mind.

"Guilty," Damon replied easily. "Would you like to have coffee with me sometime?"

"I don't drink coffee."

"Okay… so what do you drink?"

Nessie simply smiled. "Good bye, Damon." She was about to turn away when Damon stopped her again.

"You know my name."

"The entire school knows your name," Nessie replied.

"And yours. Guess we have more in common than you think."

Was he serious?! This was Forks High School! Everybody knew everybody else's name—perks of living in a town the size of a very large mansion.

"Hey, Damon," Kaitlin had finally stepped forward with a little uncertainty in her voice. Charlotte knew what she was probably thinking—the same thing every other girl and perhaps even the guys thought when they were in close vicinity to Nessie Cullen—that she was like an ugly duck compared to Nessie's beauty and she had no right to stand in her presence as her peers would point out at any second. Charlotte rolled her eyes, looking longingly towards her pen which Damon was still twirling between his fingers. She badly wanted to escape. She no longer had to take him around to all his classes—he now had Kaitlin… or Renesmee for that—so there was absolutely no point in hanging around, hoping he had enough decency to at least give her pen back after stealing it from her. She sighed after a few more seconds of deliberation and decided to screw it. She shouldered her back-pack and walked towards the now-crowded door.

"Hey, Kaitlin," Damon greeted her warmly enough, boosting the girl's ego ever so slightly. "I was just returning Renesmee's pen to her."

"Oh… hi, Nessie," Kaitlin mumbled.

"Nessie?" Damon gasped. "Nessie! That is a really cute nickname—very sexy, if you know what I mean."

That was the last thing Charlotte heard of their conversation as she quickly slipped past the group of people and hurried away.

She saw him the first thing when she walked into the partially-filled cafeteria five minutes before lunch hour later that day. He sat by himself, his face hidden by a small book. She squinted, trying to recognize the cover, but there was a reason she sat at the front of the classroom in every one of her classes. Without her glasses, her vision was thoroughly buried in a thick fog that had nothing to do with the weather beyond a ten-mile raidius.

She looked down at the folder in her hand. On the top right-hand corner of it was a label reading 'Damon G. Arlington'. Mrs. Cope had cornered her just a few moments ago when she had went to the office to drop off a note for her from Mr. Varner, the maths teacher. 'I heard Mr. Arlington's showed up to first hour! I guess he didn't realize he had to check in with me, so can you just give him this folder, my dear? It has his schedule in it. Poor boy must be terribly confused as to where he should be.' Who forgets to check in at the office on their first day at a new school? Charlotte had been itching to refuse, but there really was no reason for her to turn down the lady. So she had taken the folder and stalked off to the cafeteria.

And here he was, sitting with a full tray of food before him without a single worry on his mind. She looked longingly towards the garbage can. She could dump the folder in there and no one would ever have to know… excpet for Mrs. Cope. Whatever… just bite the bullet.

"Hey."

He dropped the book—Wuthering Heights—to the table. "Hello, mother."

She rolled her eyes and thrust the folder towards him. "Mrs. Cope wanted me to give this to you."

He quirked his eyebrow at the folder, not bothering to take it from her. "Mrs. Cope?"

"The school secretary? The really nice lady at the front desk of the office where you were supposed to check in this morning?"

"How many times do you go to the office everyday?" He gasped, shaking his head with amusement.

"Just take the stupid folder."

"Yes, ma'am," he scoffed, finally grabbing the folder.

Charlotte clenched her jaw shut, willing herself not to retort, but she apparently did not possess such a strong will-power. She slammed her books onto the table and fell into a chair in front of him, ignoring his pleasantly surprised look.

"I thought you knew you had History and English with me. You were walking around school this morning without even knowing which classes to go to, weren't you? You didn't think to go check with the office as to where you should be?"

"They're all classes I need to go to anyway," he shrugged. "Who cares what order I go in?"

"The office obviously does," she pointed out. "You were wasting your time, my time, and our teachers' time by not knowing which classes to attend. You had Biology second period, did you know that? And English third period, but I'm sure you ran off somewhere else with Kaitlin and Nessie—"

"Spying on me again, huh?"

She froze. Calm, Charlotte, stay calm! "Yes, I looked at your schedule to see where your last class was and noticed you weren't even bothering to follow it. I mean, that's understandable considering you didn't even know what your schedule was, but—"

"Do you ever need to go home and just scream into your pillow?"

There was a sharp pain in her temple. She sighed. "What?"

"Have you ever actually yelled at someone?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it. "I'm trying to right now!"

"Okay," he chuckled. "I think we need to give you a lesson in yelling. See, yelling is defined by a significant volume change in your voice when you speak with the object of your irritation. It's supposed to be therepeutic, sort of a metaphorical release of your pent-up emotions. It's not going to work very well if you talk to me as though we're discussing the weather or something—'hello, Damon, how are you today? Are you enjoying the non-existent sun? I'm sorry to hear that. By the way, did you know that you really piss me off?'"

She bit down on her tongue to keep herself from saying anything she would regret.

"So come on," he schooched forward in his seat as though preparing himself for something. "Yell at me."

"Wha—no! I'm not going to yell at you."

"Do you want to?"

"I already did."

"No, no, we've already established that doesn't count. Yell like you mean it."

"I don't… want to," she bit out.

"Huh," he fell back in his chair, watching her for a moment. "Thought I pushed your buttons a lot this morning."

"You did."

"Enough to make you want to punch me, I'm sure."

"Perhaps."

"So… still no yelling?"

"No."

He smiled. "Okay, then."

She gulped, completely lost. What had just happened? She had sat down for a very specific reason and suddenly couldn't remember whether she had succeeded or not.

"Is there anything else?"

She stared at her hands, trying to focus. "Kaitlin is a really nice girl."

"What?" He laughed.

"I saw how you looked at her when she first introduced herself—like you didn't really care who the heck she was—"

"I… didn't care who the heck she was."

She took a deep breath. "Yes, well… I just wanted to say that she may not be as pretty as Nessie, but she's a really nice person and I think it was nice of her to offer to show you around when the task wasn't even assigned to her."

He stared at her silently for a second during which she stared at her hands. Finally, he sighed. "Point noted," he told her, lifting the book up again.

What the hell had she been thinking giving him that little speech of hers? He didn't even care. She knew he wouldn't care. Damon Arlington hardly seemed like the person to care about anything, not school, not people—nobody but himself. Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte, she sighed to herself. Well… at least she had tried. Now there would be no more reason for her to talk to him as long as they existed. She grabbed her books and walked away with a silent good-bye to him which left her feeling very good about the heavenly solitude she would soon be enjoying once again.