A/N -Happy Thanksgiving, to those of you who celebrate! As I hinted previously, now the real fun begins...

Chapter Thirteen: Reunion

*Five years later...*

"BELLA!"

I was so startled by the volume at which someone squealed my name that I dropped my luggage on reflex. I swore loudly as it bounced down the entire flight of stairs I had just labored up, but it wasn't important.

"Alice," I murmured excitedly. I ran up the stairs as quickly - and safely - as I could.

"Bella!" she shrieked again, throwing her diminutive little self at me the minute I reached the landing.

"N-" I started to protest, fearful that she would catapult us both down the stairs, but my worries were needless. She was such a featherweight that though she leapt on me, wrapping her arms and legs around my torso, I didn't stagger back a step.

"MMfgh, nss t ss ooo," I told her, my voice muffled by her hair.

"What?"

"Nice to see you," I clarified.

"That," she said, rolling her eyes "is a colossal understatement. ROSE!"

"Don't you holler at me, small-fry," Rose called back. "Just because we are fellow RAs and are supposed to set a good example for the kids won't stop me from kicking your ass. Especially since the newbies aren't here yet."

Alice ignored her completely, flitting down the hall to show me my room. It made me a little sad that we couldn't have illegal sleepovers like in the old days, but as Resident Assistants, we were each in charge of a hall of campers.

I soon became privy to the perks of being in charge, however: I had an entire suite to myself.

"Did somebody drop a suitcase?"

I ran right out of my room and skittered into the stairwell at the sound of Emmett's voice.

"Baby sister!" he crowed happily, as I launched myself into his arms to be suffocated by a monstrous hug.

"Hey, get out - this is a girl's-only dorm," Rosalie teased, leaning against the doorframe just a few feet behind me.

Alice was next to hug Emmett before looking around for Jasper. She spotted him standing in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, looking the perfect gentleman, slightly hesitant. She floated down the stairs with a serenity that was uncharacteristic, and stopped right before him.

"Jazzy," she said, and flung her tiny arms around his neck.

I smiled, and turned around to find Emmett and Rose having their own little 'reunion' right behind me. I would catch up with them later.

"Still fifth wheel," I grumbled, as I inched past them to go back to my room. It was nice to know that little had changed.

"Esme," I was overjoyed to find my favorite instructor still at camp, and even more delighted to learn that my girls were in her class.

"Look at you, Bella," she exclaimed, enfolding me in a hug before holding me at arm's length so she could get a better look at me. "You're so grown up!"

"You haven't aged at all," I teased, embarrassed. "What keeps you coming back all these years, something in the water?"

"Something in the staff, actually," she said candidly, displaying a beautiful and simply elegant ring on her left hand. "The director."

I gaped, and she took advantage of my momentary mental incapacitation.

"Speaking of which, did anyone happen to tell you who the boy's RA - "

"Esme, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we need Bella back at the dorms - some of the students are starting to arrive."

We both glanced at the door to find ourselves being addressed by none other than 'something', Esme's man-candy and site director Carlisle.

I blushed to my roots, given the new information I had, and I made for the door. "I'll be right there," I squeaked, two octaves higher than usual, squeezing past him into the hallway.

"You just couldn't help yourself, could you?" I heard him murmur to Esme as the door swung shut.

I scurried back to the dorm and arrived panting, just in time to help my first girls get their luggage up the stairs.

"Hi, I'm Bella," I said as perkily as possible, channeling my inner Alice. "And you must be...?"

"Hi, I'm Jessica," a girl with wildly curly dark hair chirped, matching my tone so well that I had the faint impression that she was mocking me.

"Welcome to camp! Your room is on the third floor, and if there's anything you need..."

"Actually," she cut in "I could use some help with my bag - it's too heavy to carry by myself."

Then why did you bring it? I thought critically, before keeping myself in check with a hasty smile. Best RA ever, I chanted, hoisting the bag to waist height while she took the back end.

Unfortunately for me, the weight of the bag was not allocated evenly, and between the second and third floor, I found myself sprawled on the stairs.

"Gosh, are you OKAY?" Jessica said loudly.

The racket of my fall, the clatter of the suitcase, and Jessica's shout were enough to bring one of the guy's RA's running. It was neither Emmett nor Jasper, both of whom it was safe to assume were still 'catching up' with the girls, but a guy with pretty russet skin and jet black hair - good looking, and a stranger. Which made my situation doubly embarrassing. If it had been Emmett or Jasper, the worst they would've done was laugh at me, but now I had ruined one first impression.

He took the stairs two at a time and had the suitcase off me in a jiffy. Jessica had shut up, looking to impress they new guy, I thought.

"Thanks," I gasped, as what felt like 75 pounds of suitcase was removed from my chest.

"No problem," he grinned. "You look like you could use a hand. I'm Jake, by the way. Jake Black."

"Just because your initials are J.B. doesn't mean that you should introduce yourself like James Bond," Rosalie sniffed from a doorway, coming to watch the spectacle.

"Rose, you know Jake?" I asked, as he gave me a hand up.

"No, we just met at orientation," he explained.

"Which you missed," she added pointedly.

I jerked my head at Jessica, who was not-so-subtly eavesdropping on our conversation. Let's try to be professional in front of the kids.

"Well...let me get this for you," Jake offered, filling the silence and slinging Jessica's bag up into his arms.

I thanked him profusely, and Jessica directed him to her room, smiling coquettishly and fluttering her eyelashes. I ran back down to welcome the other girls on my hall, of which there were eight in total: Kate, Zafrina, Maggie, Siobhan, Leah, Emily, Kim, and Jessica, of course.

Though I tried very hard not to dislike her, given that she was my charge, I was annoyed by the way Jessica stuck to me like glue. Though it was an academic camp, there were no grades, and I wanted to tell her she could stop being a suck-up, because it wouldn't get her anywhere. After a while, I realized that she just enjoyed my inexplicable popularity.

On our way to the classroom for the first night class, we were stopped by Emmett, Jasper, Rose, Alice, and Jake again, each one chatting with me enthusiastically. In Jessica's eyes, they were the beautiful people, and by "chillin'" with me, she could bask in their glow.

She kept up a running commentary on who was hot and who was not, though it had hardly been two hours since the last camper had arrived.

"And that hot guy's RA, he's smokin'," she declared.

Irritation aside, I couldn't help but be amused by her adolescent obsession with the good-looking guys, so I played along.

"Emmett? Or Jasper? They have girlfriends, you know." I smirked a little at the thought of how Rosalie or Alice would react to this would-be boyfriend-stealing seventeen-year-old twit.

"No, but they're pretty hot too."

"Jake?"

"No, the other guy - the one who is in charge of the guys in our class."

I threw her a perplexed look as we reached the building and rounded the stairs to Esme's room.

"You'll see," she said dramatically, pushing into the classroom.

I followed, frowning slightly as I scanned the faces of the boys already seated. They were much too young to be RAs.

A figure turned in the corner on my right, where he'd been chatting with Esme. A figure with messy bronze hair.

"Edward?"