Discalimer: I own nothing.

Author's note: So, I was really tired the other night when I posted chapter one and realised that I cut it off at a weird spot. I added to it today and wasn't sure if anyone following this story got notified about that. Anyway, there is more in chapter one now. Hope everyone enjoyed :)

Chapter Two

I stood in a white hall. There were stairs in front of me, climbing u, up, up as far as the eye could see. There was nothing up there but there was no way out of here. I had to go up the stairs. Why was it always stairs.

I took and deep breath and took off running, following the winding path around and around but it felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. Suddenly, I felt like I might actually be running from something. But what? I ran faster, relieved when I finally saw a landing, a dark doorway leading somewhere I couldn't see.

I didn't think, only leaped through the doorframe, only to realise that there was no ground for me to land on on the other side of the threshold.

I was falling.

I jolted awake, tumbling foraward and out of the chair I had been slouched in. It was Wednesday. I was halfway through the week. But today was a long day. Since we were having our first lab today, I wouldn't be going home until six o'clock.

I straightened myself up in my chair. Alice and Rose, who were sitting around a computer to my right, gave me a cursory glanc before turning back to whatever it was they were looking at. I fell asleep in the library quite frequently and, likewise, woke up from a nightmare (or daymare?) more often than not. I checked my phone. It was almost two. It didn't do me any good to go to class with bedhead (or chairhead), so I go up and headed to the bathroom to fix myself.

I always had a hard time finding the women's room no matter how many times I had been there. It was tucked away in a remote corner of the library beside a very discreet sign. The university had a thing for artsy, new age bathroom door signs and they all confused me. Once found, I pushed the swinging door open and threw my bag up onto the sink. When I looked up, I sighed.

Mirrors were and will always be the worst sort of reality check invented by man.

My hair was a mess as usual but there was no helping that. I had let it air dry last night and now it was wildly curly and unmanageable. My eyes scanned downard to my white lace top and black joggers. The fabric of both was light and comfortable. The top was soft, feminine, and hung from my shoulders in a way that made me look particularly thin. Angela was right. I drank more coffee than I ate food and it was taking a toll. I had lost eight pounds this semester and this was only the second week.

What was wrong with me?

I pulled my hair up into a messy bun, my go-to hairstyle, and thanked God I had worn nice earings. Popping a few pills, I decided that makeup probably wouldn't hurt me. And by makeup, I meant tinted lip balm.

That should do it.

I went back to where Rose and Alice were sitting and asked them if they were ready to go to lab. Mostly, I was wondering how our merry little threesome was going to divide. I had originally agreed to register for bio with Alice, mostly with the intentions of never leaving her side until the semester was over. But then Rose had showed up on the first day of lecture, thrilled to be in the same class as us, and suddenly all of my plans flew out the window. I couldn't help feeling that Rose and Alice were just a little bit closer than Alice and I, which meant I had the oportunity to do a lot of third-wheeling.

"Are you going to homecoming?" Alice asked me as we boarded the elevator. I pressed the 'close doors' button a few dozen times before finally giving up and waiting like the adult I was supposed to be.

"Um...I don't know. When is it?"

"Saturday."

I thought about that. Did I want to go to homecoming?

I'd always hated school dances. I'd even ditched out on senior prom. My date and I had ended up making out in the parkinglot for two and a half hours just so my mom wouldn't ask me why I was home so early. Why would college dances be any more exciting? I shook my head.

"That's a negative, Ghostrider."

Rose groaned. "Ugghh! Why not?"

"It's not my thing."

"You need to make it your thing." Rose huffed. We were halfway across the main counrtyard now. If I could hold my own just a bit longer, we would be in class and they would have to drop it. "Besides, I need a ride."

"No." I told her with a roll of the eye. "Alice can take you. I don't like dances. They're dumb. No one ever has fun."

"Yes they do. I had fun at prom." Alice argued, skipping a little every other step.

"Of course, you did, Al. You always think eveything is fun."

"It was fun!"

"I just...it doesn't sound that great, okay? If it makes you feel any better, I volunteered to work on the homecoming mural."

Rose chuckled dryly. We were walking through the doors of the lab building now. I had almost made it. "That is not a social event, Bella. You painting a picture to advertise a social event is not the same as you being a part of one."

"But I like to paint. And it is! There will be other people there and I absolutely promise I will talk to them. Maybe I'll even get someone's number. It'll be like homework." I joked but Rose nodded in a way that told me she was serious.

"We'll see about that Swan. I expect to see this phone number. And I'm gonna call it to make sure it's not the phone number to, like, the China Wok or something."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny." I groused, checking her into the doorframe as we wondered into room 123.

Aisles of lab benches grouped into two sat before me and, just as I had suspected they would, Rose and Alice took their seats at the table closest to the front of the room, leaving me an empty seat at the table next to them.

I screamed internally. Why me? I didn't bother setting my bag down gently. I chucked in under the table, fitting the sheet metal at the back of the counter and causing a loud clattering.

"Really?" I half shreiked, plopping into my seat and crossing my arms.

"You okay there?"

I turned to see who was talking to me. I half expected to see the boy from lecture, but it was someone else entirely. I had never met this boy. I smilled and gave him a quick, polite "I'm fine," guessing that he would probably sit down at my table.

Instead, he offered me a single nod and went to sit on the other side of the room. One after another, students filed in. In between my eavesdropping on Alice and Rose's gosipping, I watched them. Some I recognized from lecture, mostly the people who sat at the front and that one girl who somebody said was an "exotic dancer." I waited expectantly for someone to take the place next to me but nobody did and when the TA got up to begin instructing us, I gave up hope. I was terrible at labs. At birth, I had been afflicted with an age-old curse known as shaky hands. It really was quite tragic. Small, detail-oriented tasks and I did not mix well. Not to mention the nerves.

I leaned back, pushing off on the cross bar of the lab bench and hit something behind me. I heard what sounded like pencils clattering to the floor. Glancing back, I came face to face with the guy from lecture.

Was this some kind of cosmic joke?

"We've gotta stop bumping into one another like this." he jested, bending to get his things.

I spun my chair around swiftly and bent to help. "I am so sorry." I insisted, handing one of the pencils back to him. I was blushing again.

"They're just pencils, Bella."

He'd remembered my name. I don't know why this threw me but it did. I smiled, nodding. I needed to hear what the TA was saying so I straightened and turned back to the front. I was hyperaware of his moements as he took a seat to my left. This was going to be a very long three hours.

He were supposed to start out by looking at slides through the microsope which was something I had done a million times. The slides were up at the front table all laid out and sorted into boxes for us. My lab partner (I felt relieved that I now had a term to refer to him by other than "that guy from bio") had offered to grab them. Now, we sat close together, taking turns peaking through the microsope's lenses.

"Wow. The miracle of life." he enthused.

I laughed. "It's a leaf."

"It's alive."

I raised a brow at him. "Touche."

Slipping in the next slide, my partner peered through the bifocal momentarily before handing it off to me. I looked. It was green. I was a plant. It was utterly, mind-numbingly boring.

"You excited?"

I didn't answer, only gave him a look.

It took us about ten minutes to get through our microscope mini-lesson and another ten to get the instructions from our TA on what to do next. We were testing semi-permeable membranes of dialysis tubing. It was something about sucrose concentrations and centrifuges. I only half listened. Everything was foggy today. Maybe it was the three cups of coffee I'd had at lunch.

"Why are your hands shaking?" lab guy asked.

I smirked a little. Stupid curse. "They do that."

"Do they?"

"Yeah."

I glanced over at Alice and Rose, totally at ease but having trouble opening their tubing. If I was being honest, I would say I was more than a little mad at Alice for leaving me to fend for myself. We'd had plans and now I was trapped with "lab guy."

"You know..." he began, regaining my attention. "I'm really sorry if I make you nervous."

I could feel my eyes grow wide. I looked down at my shaky hand as I pressed down the plunger on the pipette. I felt murderous. Alice definitely should not have abandoned me.

"You do not make me nervous."

"No even a little bit." he laughed, staring down at me with humorous green eyes. I looked away. I refused to make eye contact. "It's okay."

"No, it's not." I insisted. "I don't get nervous."

And there it was: literally the biggest lie I had ever told in my entire life.

"Really?" he pressed, clearly thinking I was full of shit which, of course, I was.

I stuck with it anyway. "Really."

When we finally finished filling the tubing, I placed it in the solution and passed him the label and marker. We wouldn't want Shaky Hands writing out her name and...oh, yeah, I didn't know his name. I was beyond asking at this point. I decided that I didn't care. That was also total bull. Of course, I cared.

I waited for him to fill it out but he didn't, only continued reading his lab papers and then mumbled something about getting what we needed next before walking away. I was beginning to think he didn't want to tell me his name, that or he was the most socially inept human I had ever met. Why in the world hadn't he told me his name yet?

I didn't say anything else to him as we put together the samples for our next lab. I held the test tubes this time while he pipetted in the ingredients-mostly things like corn starch with a side of Sudan IV for that science-y touch. I managed to remain silent though all the labeling and hand shaking of our test tubes. I didn't even respond verbally when lab guy asked me to go put them into the centrifuge.

Now, here's the thing about the centrifuge. My mother had been sick for years and we had one on the shelf in her office. When I would help her take her bloodtests to give to the in-home nurses who came on Thusdays, I would pop them into the centrifuge on the shelf before putting them in a bowl in the fridge. I had done it once a month for the past three years but, for some reason, on that first day of lab, I forgot something very important.

If you've ever used a centrifuge (or even if you haven't, the TA gave us instructions), you would know that the chamber has to be balanced or it will shake off the counter. I didn't know just how loud that whole event was, however, until, in front of thirty-five of my peers and a very agitated Teaching Assistant, I almost broke the centrifuge.

I rushed to hit the stop button but it didn't stop and the TA had to stop it for me. When there was finally silence again, she told me in a thick accent that I "must ballance the centrifuge" before walking quickly back to her desk. I did just that and started it spinning again, humilliated by the barely contained chuckles humming through the room.

I went to sit down.

Hadn't I done enough damag for one day? Cupping my face in my hands, I exhaled slowly. Now would be a wonderful time to disappear.

"You shouldn't break the equipment, Bella." lab guy told me. I could hear the smile in his voice. I knew I must be beat red.

"Uggghhh..."

"And you said you don't get nervous..."

That was it. "No." I shook my head at him, dropping my hands to my lap and imploring him with my eyes to listen. "You think I'm acting like a moron because you make me nervous but really I'm just..."

I hadn't thought this through.

"A moron?" he finished.

And this time I coudn't help myself. I bursed out laughing, nodding in acquiesense. "Yeah. Pretty much."

We were both laughing now and I felt as though I had finally broken the ice. I was still embarrassed. My cheeks felt like they were on fire, but at least I was laughing about it. That was better than my first choice which had been, obviously, to crawl under a rock and die.

"So..." lab guy started once we had calmed down a bit. We had ten minutes of incubation before we could measure our results and get the hell out of Dodge. "What's your favorite color?"

"For real? What is this? 20 Questions?"

"Maybe." he smiled. He had such a nice smile.

I looked at him for a moment before answering. "Green."

"Ok. Favorite decade?"

"Favorite decade?" I asked, a little confused, but he looked at me with an expression that urged me to reply. "Um...the 70s, I guess?"

He looked surprised. "Really? The seventies was only the most gaudy, ridiculous decade in American history. Why the 70? Is it the music, fashion, general pop culture?"

I chuckled again, leaning mu elbow on the table and my chin on my fist. "All of it." I said. "I love how out there it all was, like, there were no rules. Anything goes. You wanna go into the wilderness and like slay a giant fuzzy puff ball creature and harvest its skin and wear it as a coat with a peace sign and some bell-bottoms? Do it. Great. You're Sonny Bono."

For a long moment, lab guy wouldn't stop staring at me, just sitting there grinning like a kid on Christmas. I stared right back, watched him closely as he ran a hand through is messy auburn hair. His nose was slightly crooked but I liked it. It suited him.

"What?" I asked.

"I'd like to get to know you, Bella." was all he said before getting up to retrieve our samples.

Five minutes later, all out stats had been recorded. We lad a lab report due next Wednesday. It was ten 'til six. I had spent nearly three hours with lab guy and I still didn't know his name.

"Well, it was a pleasure working with you, partner." he said as she pulled on his leather jacket and shifted his book bag onto his right shoulder.

"Ditto." I said. "You want me to just go up and turn in these charts, or..."

He thought for a second. "Umm, no we'll just go up there real quick before we go. Cool?"

I nodded, snatching the papers up and heading towards the TA's desk, lab guy close behind me. She looked over out charts quickly, bobbing her head up and down a few times before conceding that "these were fine" and "we could go."

We both turned to leave, but she stopped us.

"Sorry." she said. "I just need your names."

"Oh, sorry. It's Bella Swan. S. W. A. N. Swan."

The TA wrote my name down and I waited not so patiently for lab guy to take his turn.

"Edward." he said. "Edward Cullen. C. U. L. L. E. N. Cullen,"

"Ok. Good. Thank you." was all she said before packing up her folder and leaving us alone in the lab.

"After you."

"Edward, huh?"

He laughed. "Did I not tell you my name before just now?"

I shook me head 'no,'

"Sorry about that."

"It's alright, Mr. Cullen. I forgive you."

And this time when I turned to leave I did not look back.