A/N: Boring chapter is, well, rather boring. More E and A next go-round.
Chapter Two
Second period was Government, but Dodie could really care less about the class and she took her time getting there, only arriving approximately twelve seconds before the late bell rang. The teacher, who stood at the front of the class flipping through a textbook, gave her a withering glance. She noticed, as the man was signing the slip of paper Mrs. Cope had given her, that he had a receding hairline, but couldn't really take the time to examine any of his other features.
"There's an empty seat at the back," he said and handed her the slip of paper, turning his back on Dodie without another word.
Feeling blatantly rebuffed after Mrs. Cope and Madame Nelson's show of excitement at the idea of a new student, she frowned. While she wasn't someone who basked in the glory of attention and adoration, she did, however, like feeling welcome. Clearly this was too much to ask of the weedy man who was to teach her Government.
She trudged to the back of the classroom and took her seat at the empty desk, wondering why, once again, she was seated in the empty desk at the back of the room – weren't teenagers supposed to be mentally frustrated and enjoy sitting as far from the teacher as possible? A cold something dropped on her right shoulder and she jumped, squeaking. Dodie looked up at the ceiling of the classroom and groaned at the rather large water stain.
So that was why this desk was empty.
The teacher (whose name she had yet to uncover) was still flipping through the textbook as if it were written by God himself, absorbed in its pages, when Dodie covertly pushed the desk and herself slightly to the left, closer to her neighbor who sat next to the wall in the back row and further from the leak in the roof.
She hadn't even bothered to glance at any of the other students in the classroom until then. She saw a few from her French class (minus the pixie-like girl who had recovered her pen), but knew none of their names. She studied her neighbor from the corner of her eye. He was breathtaking in the same context as the girl from French, with the obvious exception of being more handsome than anything. His hair had a reddish tint to it – one that Dodie had always tried unsuccessfully to achieve through cheap non-permanent hair dyes (the only ones her mother would allow her to buy; "You have beautiful hair," she had always said condescendingly, "why would you want to destroy it?"). He was currently focused on twirling a pencil in his fingers around and around; he honestly looked bored, which Dodie found to be understanding as she focused her attention back at the front of the classroom – this teacher who taught such a boring subject seemed to be equally, if not more, dull; she couldn't figure out what was so fascinating about that textbook he had remained glued to since she had stepped foot into the classroom.
Her neighbor (she mentally resolved to give him the name Al, feeling honestly tired of referring to him as her "neighbor") next to her snorted (elegantly, mind you) as if enjoying a private joke, but she paid him no mind for the rest of the period. (The teacher somehow eventually found the self-control to pull himself away from the textbook and give the class instructions to read chapter ten and write a one-page summary; the class complied grudgingly.)
Third period was English. Dodie was fortunate enough to be in possession of a good teacher who graciously introduced herself and briefly outlined the course, even giving her a syllabus and a copy of the book they were currently reading (a translated version of Candide by Voltaire). Al from her previous class was there as well, but he sat on the complete opposite side of the room of her and, as an added distraction, Dodie sat next to a bouncy girl with a mouth problem (i.e. it didn't shut properly).
"So your name's Dodie, right?"
"Um, yeah, it is."
"Oh." A pause and a flicker of understanding. "Like the bird?"
"N—" Dodie started, but stopped herself. Her negative answer would, undoubtedly, raise yet more questions. "Sure." While the comparison of her name to the extinct Dodo bird slightly irked her, she found the attempts of the dark-haired chatterbox of a classmate to get to know her oddly endearing. Had their roles been switched, Dodie was without a doubt that she would have simply ignored a new student, merely because she wouldn't feel it was her duty to make them feel comfortable.
It's not that she was antisocial; to put it bluntly, she was just somewhat lazy, a common enough quality in those of her age.
And you could say that, because of her laziness, gym was certainly not one of her favorite classes. She had never really seen the point of physical education – was the act of throwing foam balls at her classmates really supposed to encourage teamwork and good sportsmanship? Was it really supposed to make her a better person, taking aim at the awkward kid, Eric, from her Government class? She didn't think so.
But she participated anyway, simply for the effort grade.
As it turned out, Al was, yet again, in her class. Huh. Dodie wasn't sure if she were lucky or just severely unfortunate. As he tossed a flamboyantly-colored foam ball back and forth with Pixie from her French class (while not as classy as the nickname Al, it would simply have to do), she seized another opportunity to study him from afar. Perhaps, like Pixie, there were no real words that could be put to his presence, but she could try.
He was graceful; that much was obvious. The lilt of his arm as it arced and swung the ball away from him was smooth and full of power. Fast, too. His skin was pale, almost sickly, and he was rather slender.
Really, she could go on and on, but she stopped there and turned back to whatever it was the coach was yelling about. Something about not hitting people in the face and whatnot, but her brain was drifting with her stomach, somewhere along the sidewalk outside of the gym building that led to the cafeteria…
The bell signaling lunch rang and her stomach gave a particularly unattractive gurgle, both sounds completely synchronized. She fell into a line of girls that were heading off to the locker room to change back to their normal clothes and followed them outside and to the other end of the campus towards the lunch room. It was when she arrived in said cafeteria and joined the queue for food that she realized she didn't really have anyone to sit with. The thought made her frown minutely. As she grabbed a Styrofoam plate to pile grub on, she covertly darted her eyes around the spacious room of food-driven teenagers.
Dark haired, chatty girl from her English class sat with a group of raucous, conceited looking girls in the dead center of everything having a grand old time. They were probably discussing the latest season of some Bravo reality show and comparing shades of nearly identical rouge nail polish.
Geeky Eric was leaning up against his yearbook editor girlfriend, Angela, and sharing a tray of tater tots at a table in the far corner (she knew Angela's name because the gentle brunette had graciously introduced herself after Government and let Dodie know to ask if she needed any help).
Both Al and Pixie had moved to a table that was devoid of any other students in the rear of the spacious room, forsaking the lunch line entirely. As Dodie approached the cash register to pay for her greasy meal (she would really have to remember to pack her lunch tomorrow), she idly wondered if they were seeing one another. The careful space the two kept between themselves, however, seemed to say otherwise.
In an effort to avoid mind-numbing conversation, forced politeness, and downright awkward silence (all ordered respectively), she steered clear of the aforementioned three tables and retreated to a vacant one by the cafeteria entrance. At least that way, Dodie told herself, she could make a quick getaway when the bell rang and high-tail it to Calculus (and successively procure a seat that wasn't under a leaky patch of ceiling).
Calc, as it turned out, would be her only escape from both Al and Pixie. She was able to take a breather from their flashy, attention-grabbing presence and immerse herself in math – her best friend. It was her good fortune that Forks High's Calculus class was slightly behind her old school's course and so she was able to pass the lesson on volumes of solids of revolution in relative peace of mind, working ahead of her peers on that night's assigned problem set.
Her peace of mind, however, was interrupted during her last class of the day as Mr. Banner, her biology teacher, directed her to the only free seat in the classroom – right next to Pixie.
Dodie did not dislike the girl. On the contrary, she was sure she was a rather charming person. The only problem she could credit to her name (er, nickname) was that she radiated perfect. Her cropped hair was perfect, every tendril flawlessly disarrayed. Her unblemished skin was perfect, not a freckle or imperfection to be seen. Her clothes – good God, her clothes – they would make a model frown in shame at their own lacking designer attire.
Dodie didn't do perfect. Her frizzy hair she left to air-dry and used no product on, instead leaving it to curl in the moist air. Her skin, while only marred by teenage acne around that time of the month, still sported its battle-wounds (she had a scar she was rather proud of on the top of her knee from a nasty fall) and a random array of freckles from summer trips to the Gulf Coast with her mother. Her clothes came from various resources – hand-me-downs, flea market bargains, clearances at large retail stores.
Obviously, neither girl had much in common. With that fact settled, Dodie flipped idly through her new biology book, not bothering to look in Pixie's direction.
But if she expected Pixie to respect the silence, she was caught extremely off-guard.
"I don't think we've been properly introduced," a lilting voice said to her left. Dodie's head popped up from the confines of a section dedicated to osmosis. "My name is Alice Cullen. You're a senior too, right?"
"Uh, yes, I am. I'm—"
"Dorothy Cooper, I know," Pix—Alice cut in.
"I prefer Dodie, but yeah," she replied, scratching at a nonexistent itch on her arm for something to do with her hands.
"It's really nice to meet you, Dodie. Forgive me – I've not gotten a chance before now to say hello; it's been a very distracting day."
It took an extreme amount of effort, but Dodie stopped her scratching and instead settled her hands clasped in her lap. "Oh? Don't worry about it. I'm the new kid; it'll just take a while for me to adjust."
"Yes, but you sat all alone today at lunch."
"S'not a big deal," she insisted. "I'm just not good around new people—"
"That may be the case," Alice interrupted (she seemed rather skilled at doing so), "but I insist you sit with myself and my brother tomorrow. We're probably not the best company, but I'm sure we're a lot better of an option than sitting alone."
Dodie had never met such an assertive, yet pleasant, person. She was unsure as to whether she should be pleased or disgusted. She settled, instead, for a medium degree of confused.
"I really appreciate that, Alice, but we've just met, you know? Shouldn't you take the time to get to know me and make sure I'm mentally stable before you invite me to sit with you and your family at lunch? I could be a hazard," she joked.
Alice smiled a smile that Dodie could only interpret as an inside joke. "I'm sure whatever your mental status, Edward and I will be quite safe. We get a lot of protein; I think we could both take you down if the situation called for it."
"Oh. That's good, then."
Mr. Banner took that moment to shut his classroom door and begin the unit on mitosis. Dodie, usually turned off by science, was able to maintain a relative amount of interest in the lesson only because of Alice's whispered commentary. It seemed the fashion enthusiast was an aspiring scientist.
"No, that's hardly the case," she whispered in reply when Dodie voiced this thought aloud to her. "I just have a lot of time on my hands and my father is a doctor – he has a modest library on biology subjects that I've perused."
At the end of the lesson, Alice paused after collecting her things while Dodie stowed her notebook away in her bag. "I expect to see you at our lunch table tomorrow. I'd hate to embarrass you by having to drag you over." With that said, her petite classmate strolled out of the classroom, a skip in her step.
Oliver picked her up that afternoon in his hunter green Jeep after she dropped her slip full of teacher's signatures off with Mrs. Cope. "How was school?" he asked without hesitation as she slid into the passenger seat, lodging her backpack on the floorboard between her knees.
"Excruciatingly long," was Dodie's short reply. She was still slightly reeling from Alice's persistent kindness.
"Make any friends?"
"Uh, kind of."
He glanced at her funny, taking a right out of the car rider's pick-up line. "Kinda? How can you kinda be friends with someone?"
She laughed at his expression, his lopsided brows and pursed lips. "I have a few classes with this one girl, Alice, who was really nice to me. She's making me sit with her tomorrow at lunch."
"Ah, the forceful type, is she? That's exactly what you need, Dorothy."
"I am going to take that as a compliment, Liver," she replied, utilizing a nickname she had taken up a few years ago to respond with whenever he called her by her full first name. He pinched her on the side of the arm in retaliation.
"I'm sure whatever the case is with this Alice gal, whatever it is that's holding you back from being more than 'kinda' friends with her—" he flicked his right hand in her direction, while his left steered the vehicle, as if to show he wasn't really sure what was causing his step-daughter's hesitation "—that you'll get over it. You're in a new place and you'll need all the back-up you can get."
They pulled up to the house shortly after that. Dodie made her way through the sticky lavender living room and up to her bedroom. She spent the few hours before dinner on homework and unpacking knick-knacks, carefully filing away any thoughts for later perusal that didn't have anything to do with those two things.
