Chapter 4 – Human Nature

I tried not to obsess about my request to be paired with Edward in art class, but when Mrs. Geist began to explain the assignment to everyone the following week, my anxiety returned full force…

"The assignment is called 'Human Nature'," she told us. "You and your partner will be searching through parks, beaches, forest, and everywhere in between for natural materials to create your very own human statue. The statue can be male or female, but it must be three dimensional and made entirely from things in nature such as leaves, sticks, branches, so on and so forth. Now, I'm not looking for some scarecrow stick figure here, I want to see a lot of time and thought put into these pieces. Look into your art history books; see how art was made before our modern resources. I want depth and passion in these pieces. You have until the end of the semester to complete it, but I highly suggest you get to work right away; I will be able to tell if it was just thrown together last minute, and your grade will reflect that."

I couldn't stop shaking.

I had wanted it, I had even asked for it, and yet, as I sat there waiting with the rest of my art class to hear who our partners were going to be, I had never been so nervous about anything in my entire life.

Was their time to discreetly tell Mrs. Geist that I didn't want to be paired with Edward after all?

"And Bella will be working with Edward," she announced.

Damn.

I glanced at Edward, and he glared back at me as if he somehow knew I was responsible. The icy look in his eyes sent chills up my spine and I visibly shuddered - which I could have sworn made him smirk - which in turn made my stubbornness reemerge. So I took a deep breath and pushed all my anxieties away. This was not time for fears. I refused to be a coward. I would not let Edward intimidate me.

"So…we need to find a time to get together," I told him after class, trying like hell to hide my insecurities.

He grimaced. "Don't worry about it. I'll talk to Mrs. Geist and get us out of it," he said unexpectedly, before busying himself with putting his things away.

"What do you mean 'get us out of it'?" I asked confused.

"Out of being partners. Most teachers understand."

"Understand what?" I asked even more confused.

"Understand that I don't work well with others," he said slowly while staring me down.

I fought my urge to blink. "Well I do work well with others."

"Well then I'm sure she'll find you someone else to work with," he said curtly.

"Everyone else already has a partner," I replied in the same clipped tone.

"Maybe you can work as a group of three," he said slightly louder.

"That's not the assignment," I retorted, raising my voice even higher than his.

"I'm sure Mrs. Geist can figure it out," he snapped back.

"She doesn't have to figure anything out because we are going to do this together like she assigned. I'll meet you at the Cullen's house after school so we can get started," I told him while grabbing my backpack and briskly leaving the room before he had a chance to argue anymore.

For the rest of the day I felt all jittery and restless, and I had to repeatedly give myself a mental pep talk to continue with the plan. Somehow I made it through, and soon found myself standing on the front porch of the Cullen house.

"Bella, what a pleasant surprise," Mrs. Cullen said when she answered the door.

"Hello Mrs. Cullen, how are you?" I asked politely.

"Oh please, call me Esme, and I'm very well, thank you. What can I do for you today?"

"I'm actually here to meet Edward. We're partners for a project at school so we need to go over everything and start planning it out," I explained.

"Oh," she said oddly. "Well…you know what, why don't you tell me who your teacher is and I can call to have him give you a different partner."

I raised my brows in shock. "Um…that's not necessary," I told her slowly. "We'll be fine working together."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," she said quietly.

"It's fine, Esme," Edward said, suddenly appearing behind her. He pulled the front door open wider so I could pass her and come through. "Let's make this quick," he told me before turning and heading up the stairs. I assumed I was meant to follow him, so I did.

"Is everything okay?" I asked warily as I chased after him.

"Well this partner shit is a pain in the ass," he replied casually as we continued climbing the seemingly endless flight of stairs.

"I guess it's a way to teach us how to get along with others," I speculated.

Finally we reached the top, but after walking through a short hall, he paused in front of a closed door. "I take art because it's usually something people do solo," he said evenly. "This is my room. Do me a favor and don't touch anything."

"Um…okay."

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but when he opened the door I was more than a little surprised to see his room looking absolutely normal. There was nothing strange at all, which only confused me.

"Why don't you want me to touch anything?" I asked as I looked over his shelf of CDs. "Oh, Debussy! I love Clair de Lune," I told him excitedly before unconsciously grabbing the CD and accidentally knocking over the one next to it, thus causing a domino effect and I watched horrified as half his collection went crashing to the floor.

He huffed. "It's no secret that you have a coordination issue," he said bitterly before bending down to start cleaning my mess.

"Sorry, it was an accident. I'll get it," I said quickly while taking the CDs from his hand and trying to clean it myself. I had no idea how it happened, but somehow I bumped into the shelf and made even more CDs fall.

"I got it!" he shouted at me. "Just stop."

It was an utter disaster and I was humiliated, but then he pinched the bridge of his nose as if he was trying to control his anger, and when he looked back at me his entire face was suddenly softer.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you. It was my fault anyway; I shouldn't have stacked them like that."

It was weird how his simple apology seemed to relax me. "That's okay; I get a little intense over some of my stuff too."

He took a deep breath. "So…let's figure this statue thing out so you can head out and go do whatever it is that you do in the afternoons."

I shrugged. "I'm not in any rush. I don't have plans today, except to maybe go home and make my dad dinner."

"You make dinner for your dad?" he questioned. "Where's your mom?"

I bit my lip and did my best to ignore the abrupt stabbing sensation in my gut. "She died…awhile back."

"Oh…sorry," he mumbled uncomfortably.

I swallowed my emotions and tried not to think of my mother. "What about you, what happened to your parents?"

We were having an intensely serious moment and a part of me actually thought he'd answer my question, but I should have known better.

"It doesn't matter," he said coldly, "they're not here now." He took another deep breath. "So how are we going to do this?" he asked, getting back to the project topic. "Mrs. Geist doesn't want us doing a scarecrow; have any better ideas?"

"I kind of think we need to just go out there and see what we can find. I don't know, collect a bunch of sticks and leaves and such, and just try different things until we make something that works."

"Okay. There's actually some hiking trails behind the house here, we can go up there on a weekend to look for stuff."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Why don't we meet up at a beach sometime as well? The one I always go to has a lot of great driftwood and shells we might be able to use. Maybe even some seaweed for our statue's hair," I joked.

"Which beach?" he asked surprisingly quiet.

"La Push."

His face hardened. "Nah, I don't go there."

I cocked my head to the side. "Why not?"

His jaw visible clinched, and then he spoke through his gritted teeth. "It's just a little too crowded, that's all."

"Um…okay, we'll go to some other beach."

"Fine, when should we go?"

"How about next weekend?"

"Yeah, I suppose it's best to just get it over with as soon as possible. Next weekend we'll take the trail behind the house, and the weekend after we'll go to some beach."

"Some beach not in La Push," I added, hoping he'd offer a little more of an honest explanation as to why he didn't want to go there. Of course, he didn't.

"Good. It's planned then," he said, and then stood there and stared at me for a minute. "You can leave now," he said abruptly.

"Yeah…fine. See you at school," I said awkwardly before practically darting out of the room.

I absolutely hated the fact that he seemed to bring out the moronic side of me every time we were together, but it was in the human nature to be stubborn, and I was definitely that. I had never failed at anything, and I certainly wasn't going to start then…