ALICE POV
"Would you at least fucking talk to me?" I asked, taking my eyes away from the road to look at my twin brother. He rolled his green eyes, turning his face to look out the window. We drove through the rain-slicked streets of downtown Forks on our way to our loathed high school in complete stillness, the air conditioner buzzing quietly. "You can't just quit talking to me," I insisted.
"Wanna bet?" he remarked smartly, still staring at the passing buildings.
"This isn't my fault, Edward. Even Emmett's over it."
"That's because Emmett isn't your twin fucking brother. You don't even talk to Emmett that much. I even tried to talk to you like…twice. You at least owe me some sort of fucking explanation." It was a sick thing, but I was pleased that Edward was at least speaking to me, even if he was yelling and cursing. He had been avoiding me for almost five days.
"But Emmett is still my brother, Edward. And yes, I do talk to him. You make it sound like you and I are BFF and I kept some deep, dark secret from you." He rolled his eyes and mumbled something, his grip on his own knee tightening. "But I only knew a few days before you. You can't hate me for not telling you something that wasn't mine to tell."
"Quit the fucking shit, Alice. I'm not interested."
And that was it for the conversation.
Esme and I went on our dutiful Port Angeles shopping trip, buying useless things that we'd never wear and wasting as much time as possible. We knew the house would be a concentration camp when we got home. Carlisle and the boys were probably home by then, and we regretted not trying to beat them there. Today was the day that Carlisle was going to tell them. He still hadn't made any attempt to talk to me about it; I think he was hoping Esme's explanation would suffice. But we were scared.
Emmett would be sad. But he'd hide it at least, shrugging it off and clapping Carlisle on the back, wishing him luck and telling him he'd be there for him. He wouldn't be mad at me, because he probably wouldn't have expected me to tell him. It was Edward I had been concerned about. It was Edward who was so obsessed with the family loyalty twin bonding shit. School was about to start, and Edward didn't handle heavy things like that with any particular sense of grace and poise. Edward was the angry one out of my brothers. Jasper and Emmett were his closest things to friends, and people at school sort of avoided him. It wasn't because he was frightening or tough or anything, he was just always very distant. Ben Cheney was an acquaintance, and he and Edward occasionally went to see a movie or ventured off to some random kegger together. But I didn't know how Edward would handle starting off a new school year knowing that his dad was dying. He was jaded and spoiled and hadn't a care in the world. Until now. And I knew I would have hell to pay for not telling him.
I tried to get up the stairs as quickly as possible, my shopping bags slapping against my legs as I bolted towards my bedroom. But something stopped me dead in my tracks. It was Carlisle's study. There was light coming from the doorway, which was odd, because he always had the door closed. And as I approached it, I noticed something else peculiar. Light was coming out to the hallway because a giant hole was gauged from the center of the white wooden door. Beside all of the wood shavings and rubble was a giant wood saw and my brother, Edward. And Edward was crying.
Edward wasn't just letting out little pussy, frustrated tears. Edward was sobbing. He was choking out deep, pained sobs from his chest, his face all screwed up in a folded mess as he slid his feet roughly against the wooden floor with frustrated anger. His fingers flexed slowly, whimpers escaping through his gritted teeth and he grasped at his scalp with one hand. Then he saw me.
Before I could do anything, he was to his feet, smacking at his tears with the back of his hands.
"What the fuck, Alice!" he screamed. His intonation reverberated off the walls, and I heard Emmett shift behind his closed bedroom door over my shoulder. I decided to play dumb.
"What are you talking about, Edward? And what the hell did you do to Carlisle's door?" I set my bags down on the floor and looked up at his face, which was dripping with tears against his will.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he begged, ignoring my question. "Why didn't you tell me? You know I would tell you in a second. But you lied. You hid until my own father had to tell me he's fucking quitting on us." I leaned towards him to touch his arm, but he pulled away with a hiss.
"Edward, I didn't know—''
"Oh, hell Alice. You didn't know? You didn't know? So is that why you hid in your little bedroom from me for three days? Because you didn't know? God, you're a stupid bitch."
His words stung me as if I'd been slapped. He took a sharp kick to the wood saw, and I had to jump to avoid collision with it. It ricocheted off the molding of the opposite wall and skidded down the hallway before wedging into the wall. I heard Esme's bedroom door quietly shut from the floor below.
"I know you're angry. I know you're mad at me. But this isn't my fault. I was supposed to find out from Mom today just like you, but she accidentally told." My eyebrows pulled together as I tried again to touch him.
"That's no excuse," he said, backing away again. "Did you do this to me because I went through your things? Because I told Jasper you accidentally hooked up with Mike Newton that one time? Is it because of the pink icing thing when we were thirteen?" He didn't even to wipe the tears teeming from his eyes anymore. I hardly noticed that now I had tears of my own.
"Of course not! This has nothing to do with anything you've ever done to me, or vice versa. This was me trying to protect you. I know you're my brother and you try to watch out for me, but this time, I had to try." He laughed bitterly.
"God forbid little Edward has to deal with something that fucking sucks. Not that everything else in my life doesn't suck, too." I wanted to grab him and hold him and smooth his hair like I did when he got hurt when we were little. His bottom lip was quivering and the redness of his eyes made the green of his irises eerie and wild.
"I'm so sorry. I thought you'd understand. I'm so sorry."
Those were the last words spoken, even when we stood side-by-side at the sinks in the morning and even when we sat next to each other at the dinner table. Esme somehow managed to be at home every night that week, and after so many failed attempts at pleasant conversation, our home grew completely silent at all times. I felt badly for Emmett. He was the only one who seemed fairly accepting and he was trying to make it better, but to no avail. His brown eyes were no longer playful, and his optimism was fading as quickly as it had come. Carlisle purposely picked up extra shifts and stayed away from us. Guilt ate away at me; it seemed unfair that the person actually suffering from an illness was put on the backburner as his family crumbled to pieces due to their own selfishness. Carlisle was the one dying, but we all managed to act like we were. That Sunday night, the night before the first day of my junior year, I grew a new feeling on top of the Russian roulette of all the ones I'd already been feeling. It was jealousy.
As I tiptoed up to bed, I saw the muted light coming from the hole in Carlisle's office door. I still wondered why Edward had taken the time to carve a hole in the study door of all things, but that notion passed as I heard Emmett's voice resonate from inside the room. Inching quietly towards the doorframe, I shamelessly eavesdropped.
"I'm here for you, Dad. I want you to know that." Emmett's voice was thick with emotion.
"I know, son. That means so much to me, you don't even know." My stomach dipped when I heard Carlisle's shaking voice and realized that my father was crying.
"We're going to fight this. You don't have to do it by yourself."
"I do, though. Esme can't handle this." Carlisle inhaled sharply, his throat raspy.
"You still have us, Dad. Al and Edward, you know. And me." I heard a smack, Emmett clapping him on the back? Maybe the shoulder?
"Alice, maybe. Edward, definitely not. You saw how he was last week when he found out. He hates me," he choked. I wanted to hug him, but I wanted to smack him. Maybe? He'd said that I maybe would be there for him? I deserved more credit than that.
"I don't think that you give Esme enough credit. She'll hold us all together. Remember in third grade when my hermit crab died? I cried for days and days. And Mom made me smiley-face pancakes every single day until I eventually forgot all about it."
"You're relating lymphoma to a hermit crab? You are truly a diamond in the rough, Em." Carlisle let out a humorless laugh.
"I know, I know. But at least I'm trying. Edward will come around. He's just mad Alice never told us. I don't really blame her, though. She's tough, Dad. I think she's in it for the long run."
"I hope so, son. I hope so."
I couldn't listen anymore.
**
I parked my Volvo in our usual spot, thankful that any underclassmen didn't think it a good idea to park there. Emmett always insisted on driving separate from us for reasons unknown, and I wanted to laugh when I saw him pull his stupid white Jeep up beside us.
"Senior year, motherfucker!" he shouted moronically, slapping Jasper a high-five as he approached. Despite my recent woes and heartache, Jasper never did fail to make me swoon. The boy had chosen the tightest, dark blue skinny pants to debut on the first day of school that did him no justice. Emmett materialized a can of black spray paint, hastily scrawling something on the white dividing wall in front of our parking spots. Cullen Parking Zone, it read, All underclassmen will be ass-whipped. Edward stifled a laugh, forgetting he was supposed to be angsty and brooding.
"Emmett!" I shrieked. "You'll get suspended!"
"Blame it on Newton," he shrugged, shoving the can back in his backpack.
"And why in the hell would Mike Newton want to write a 'Cullen parking space' warning on the divider?"
"Why the hell would Mike Newton do anything that he does?" Emmett's reasoning was completely messed up. I wondered how he was still functioning in society after eighteen years. I grabbed my bag from the trunk as someone caught my elbow. I turned, thinking it was Edward trying to be rational or something. But to my intense surprise, Jasper Hale's blue eyes were baring into mine.
"Walk you to class?" he asked with a little smirk. I had to remember to breathe. I glanced at Edward, who was still sulking like a damn girl, and then nodded eagerly. Anything was better than walking to class with someone who hated me, especially when that someone was my own brother. And especially since the someone who'd just offered a nice alternative was Jasper Hale.
"Ditching me, Sissy?" Edward called sarcastically, his voice laced with an extra, Rosalie-sized dosage of venom.
"It's like you read my mind," I replied over my shoulder, wrapping my hand around the crook of Jasper's arm.
Jasper didn't talk much. Usually, that would have bothered me. But today, it was perfect. We were sort of opposites, in the sense that Jasper was extremely introverted and kind of intimidating where I was…not. But I had more or less spent the week prior to the first day sulking in my bedroom away from my mom, away from my brother, and most of all, away from Carlisle. And hearing him talk to Emmett the night before in his study had cracked an additional hole in my heart. I wanted him to trust me and hold on to me, but I knew I didn't deserve it. I'd been a jerk to my father for my entire existence, resenting the hell out of him for no particular reason other than because of his frequent absence. But it was kind of messed up, considering I knew people whose dads had pretty much walked out on them and didn't even care enough to check in on occasions such as birthdays and Christmases. My friend, Angela's dad left her before she was even born, and she'd never met him. I understood that shit happens. It just does. But I never expected it to happen to me. And Edward's building anxiety wasn't helping at all. It was nice, however, to see Emmett falling back into the swing of things after only knowing for less than a week.
"I'll see you after first hour, okay?" Jasper's gravelly voice broke me from my reverie. I uttered a barely audible agreement before shuffling into my Spanish class.
"Alice Cullen!" Ms. Goff smiled, extending a handful of worksheets. "These are for you. Put them in your notebook designated for this class, we're going to try and get right down to work."
"Thanks, Ms. Goff," I muttered, taking the paper and looking to find a seat. I was late, which was unlike me, but I was unlike myself a lot lately. The only open seat, other than one next to Eric Yorkie, was by an unfamiliar girl with pale skin and shiny, brown hair. I wanted to steal it and replace it with mine, or at least play with it. I slung my bag over the back of my chair and sat down as Eric Yorkie's hopeful face fell.
Ms. Goff started the class off, and consequently the entire year, with solid Spanish and no English speaking whatsoever. It made my head spin, but I was able to flawlessly keep up as I took notes in my uniform print.
Escriba unas pocas oraciones que describen su casa y su familia. ¡Utilice muchos adjetivos!
Write a few sentences describing your home life and your family. Use plenty of adjectives!
I began considering the assignment. Would Ms. Goff prefer the condensed version, or the truth? Well, Ms. Goff, my dad just got diagnosed with cancer and will most likely die, my twin brother hates me and the only reason that my older brother doesn't is because he doesn't have the mental capacity to. Oh, and my dad, you know, the one who's dying? Well he may or may not hate me. Yeah, she would definitely prefer the abridged version.
"Um, do you have any 0.5 millimeter lead?" A soft voice distracted me from my cynical and sort of fucked up daydream as I glanced up to meet the brown eyes of my desk mate. "I ran out," she stuttered quickly. "Sorry."
"No, I don't care. I might just have 0.7 but I'll check." I rummaged through my bag to find lead for Random New Weird Girl, but to no avail. "My bad," I shrugged. "You can borrow a pen if you want."
"N-no. It's fine. I don't like to finish assignments using a different writing utensil than I started them in," she stammered, biting her bottom lip. Weird Girl was a trip. "That's really weird, I know. Sorry."
"Kind of, yeah," I laughed, looking back to my notebook to answer the next question. "I'm Alice, by the way," I added after a few uncomfortable moments of silence.
"Alice? Cool. I like that movie Alice in Wonderland. You know that one?"
"Um, yeah," I laughed again, glancing at her worriedly. "Isn't that like a Disney movie?"
"Well, yeah. But I like it all the same." She began wringing her fingers nervously, and I began to wonder if the poor girl was on meds or something.
"Do you have a name?" I asked rudely after she seemingly decided that our conversation was over.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, hastily reaching over to grasp my hand in a haphazard handshake and knocking over her water bottle in the process. "I'm Bella. Bella Swan."
EDWARD POV
I regretted in that instant ever praising Alice's fucking name to Jasper fucking Hale. I watched them walk away, Alice grinning like a thirteen-year-old and Jasper in his skintight fucking jeans. It was disgusting.
"Oh, man up, Cullen," Emmett's voice rumbled as he elbowed me in the shoulder blade. I'd forgotten that he was still behind me. "Don't get all sad because your sister decided to walk to class with a boy that she wasn't blood-related to."
"Fuck off, Emmett," I growled, slinging my bag over my shoulder and locking the Volvo. Alice had even left her door wide open.
"Re-lax, bro. I'll walk you to your little class if you'll dry your tears and take your tutu off." I wanted to hit him. So I did.
"Jesus, Edward. Knock it off. That kind of hurt," he complained, rubbing at his jaw.
"Good," I chuckled, climbing the stairs. I looked back at Emmett to make some other smart-aleck remark, but the look on his face distracted me. His mouth was wide open, revealing his back molars, and his eyes were wide. He looked like a blind man seeing for the first time, and I almost smacked him to make sure he hadn't gone into some epileptic shock or something. But then I saw what he was gaping at. And I'm not going to lie, I fucking gaped too.
Rosalie Hale stood alone in the center of the courtyard, bent over her purple book bag that sat on the ground, rummaging for something. And it was a fucking sight to behold. Despite the fact that the girl was bitch-tacular and could probably kill me blindfolded with both hands tied behind her back, she was looking particularly edible. Emmett let out an ear-piercing whistle, Rosalie turning her head at a whiplash-inducing speed and a smile grazing her plump lips. Her jeans looked painted on and her blonde hair fell in perfect ringlets to her impossibly thin waist. I had to look away as she crossed the quad to Emmett, determining that I would never allow Rosalie Hale to give me a boner if it was the last thing I did.
"What's going on, Edward?" she asked in a bored voice, smacking her gum annoyingly and popping it for unnecessary, attention-seeking reasons. I swallowed and took a deep breath as I turned to look her in the face, giving myself a two-second pep talk and willing my pants to stay loose. Emmett's hands were shoved into her back pockets and his tongue was in her ear, so I didn't necessarily need the pep talk to stay in control. Emmett draped around any hot girl was enough to make me gag. Without answering her question, I turned on my heel to my next class.
I had English, which was impossibly easy for me considering that I was the only kid in Forks High School who ever seemed to complete the summer reading list. I liked to read, legitimately, and Ms. Berry loved me for it.
Funny story: Once Ms. Berry gave me back a report I did on Romeo and Juliet with a two-paged note attached. The note included her review of my paper, followed by her favorite, particularly passionate scenes from the Shakespearian play and concluded the letter with her phone number and a post-script that read simply, "If you don't tell, I won't." Emmett had that shit framed and hanging on his wall. Emmett and all of his stupid friends wouldn't shut the hell up about the fact that a teacher practically begged for it from me, and an attractive teacher at that. Ms. Berry still blushed when it was my turn during our weekly poetry reading.
I knew eventually I'd have to forgive Alice. I didn't want to, but I really didn't like many other people at school other than her. Emmett seemed to have some kind of weird almost-relationship but mainly sexual thing going on with Rose that I really didn't want to get in the middle of, and Jasper was my friend but in truth, the kid moved too quickly and it scared the shit out of me. Ben started dating Angela, whose party I never made it to after I freaked the fuck out that Wednesday, so that friendship was sort of down the drain. And Mike Newton…well…hell no. I thought of ways to apologize as Ms. Berry droned on. I was going to have to drop that class and take a senior AP if she didn't stop trying to fucking flirt with me every time she gave me back a graded paper.
The bell rang, and I shot up from my seat before Ms. Berry decided it was a good idea to try and catch up with me after the summer break. Alice wasn't hard to find, I just simply had to find her little spiky black head among the tiny student body. She was in the middle of the courtyard, where Rose had been this morning wearing those sinfully tight pants, and she was talking to some chick I didn't know. I marched towards her, already prepared to receive some name-calling and possibly a kick to the shin.
"Alice," I started, "I need to talk to you."
"Edward, don't interrupt. Bella was just telling a story and you cut her off. Say you're sorry." Alice's lips tightened and she put a hand on her hip.
"Sorry," I muttered dismissively. Already, she wasn't making this easy. The Bella girl turned to look at me, her thin eyebrows knit in confusion. Her eyes were cinnamon-colored, and she looked really fucking nervous.
"It's fine. It was stupid, anyway," she explained. "I was just talking about how my mom and I used to make rain sticks out of paper towel rolls and chinchilla droppings."
I snorted. She had to be kidding. Her blank stare told me she wasn't. Fucking Psycho.
"Anyways, Alice, let's put this whole Dad thing behind us. We don't need to talk about it and I'll stop being a dick to you and all that stuff." Her face screwed up in annoyance—she obviously didn't want Weird Chinchilla New Girl to know about our family problems. And I had obviously forgotten over the summer that at school, Alice was the girl who had it all together. No one other than her family and Rose and Jasper knew she had problems, and she wanted to keep it that way.
"It's fine, Edward. Don't bring it up anymore," she said, clearing her throat and smearing some goopy stuff on her lips that smelled like birthday cake. "What class do you have next?"
"AP Chem.," I answered, glancing at my schedule and making awkward eye contact with Chinchilla Girl.
"Me too," she muttered, the right side of her mouth pulling up slightly.
"Well that makes three of us," Alice huffed, slugging her giant bag purse thing over her shoulder. "Let's get this over with."
ALICE POV
Bella was my little tag-along for the remainder of the day. I wasn't sure if this was a slowly forming routine of sorts, but I didn't really mind. She seemed to have a bad case of nervous word vomit, and I figured that within time she'd stop saying the first thing to pop into her head. At least I hoped so.
Jasper sat with us at lunch. Edward told me in Chemistry that he though Jasper was interested, and I was elated. He'd been around forever, for as long as I was friends with Rose, which was a very long time. I found it odd that I was never particularly interested in him growing up, but it seemed kind of rational--natural, even--for me to develop an interest. Rose didn't know that I liked him, though, and I planned to keep it like that for a while. It usually was just Edward, Rose, Angela, Ben Cheney, Jessica Stanley, Tyler Crawley and I at the table, but now Emmett was basically intertwined with Rose right in front of me and Jasper had decided to wander over. I was livid at the sight of fucking disgusting Emmett tangled up with my best friend. My brother and my best friend. I suddenly didn't feel so nervous about telling Rose about Jasper, just to give her a taste of her own medicine. I was mad that Rose hadn't thought to tell me that she was with my brother, or at least fucking him, but then I realized that I'd sort of been on emotional lockdown for the past week. To my great surprise, Jasper began rubbing the back of my neck with his thumb and his pointer finger in a hasty attempt to calm me down, but it was sort of ruined when everyone's eyes zeroed in on us.
Alice Cullen? Chipper, stylish Alice Cullen and the creepy dark guy? Really?
Edward scoffed, shoving a spoonful of macaroni and cheese into his mouth. He was trying to be pleasant since his semi-apology on the quad after first hour, but I assumed that all the random new PDA was disturbing to him. He seemed to be irritated even further when Bella plopped down in Jessica's usual seat, which was right next to him.
"Hey," she breathed, setting down her tray. I wondered briefly if she dieted, because she had tiny legs, and all that balanced on her tray was a bottle of water and a plate of celery.
"Well, hi there. Who are you?" Rose was the only one to answer her muffled greeting. I smiled despite myself at the big picture. Bella was shaking with nerves in her oversized jacket as Rose, the epitome of beautiful, lounged against her boyfriend with muscles the size of Arkansas. Rose snapped her gum while Bella tried to form a coherent sentence.
"Um, I-I'm—,"
"Spit it out, honey," Rosalie spat, an uninterested look on her face. Bella just mumbled and stuttered some more, an ant under Rose's magnifying glass.
"Bella," Edward blurted. "Her name's Bella. Jesus, Rose." Rosalie just laughed and traced a design on the tabletop with a perfectly manicured finger.
"Nice to meet you, Bells." Her catty smile indicated that it was not nice to meet her. Not at all.
It got worse when Jessica walked up, a tray piled with food in her hands and a scowl on her face.
"Clean your face up, Stanley," Rosalie remarked. "You look ugly when you do that." Emmett tried to stifle a laugh. Jessica ignored her, which was probably a wise decision.
"What the fuck is going on? Who are you?" she asked pointedly, glaring at the back of Bella's shiny brown head.
"What? What's going on?" Bella was pitiful, and a little pathetic. She had relaxed a little bit after Edward had interceded to Rosalie on her behalf, and she had even began participating in some of the shallow conversation we had started. But now her head was snapping back and forth, left and right, looking to all of us for help or at least some sort of explanation.
"Um, you're sitting in my fucking seat, that's what's going on." Jessica slammed her tray down on Bella's empty one, nudging the back of Bella's chair forcefully with her knee.
"Calm the fuck down, Stanley," Edward grumbled. He was all-too helpful when it came to Bella today.
"You're supposed to save this seat for me, Edward. Like always," Jessica pouted, her eyes softening a bit. Edward's shoulders tensed.
"Yeah. That was last year. You'll have to get someone else to save you a seat now. Bella is sitting here." Bella glanced at him thankfully as she sunk lower and lower into her chair. Jessica's jaw dropped, and for a minute she looked as if she would cry.
"Fine," she replied curtly, grabbing her tray from in front of Bella. "I'll just sit somewhere else I guess."
"Don't let the door hit your fat ass on the way out, Stanley," Rose cackled, Emmett planting his lips onto the top of her head.
For the first time since I'd met her, Bella laughed.
