OOOO

When I get home, I go straight to the kitchen where Esme, bless her little homemaking soul, is making some sort of tomato and cheese on toast thing with extra green stuff that she calls something vaguely Italian sounding and I call 'tomato and cheese on toast with extras". I'm chomping into my second one and telling her how good they are when Alice and Jasper walk in. Jasper sits straight down and grabs a snack and I give him a territorial glare. If he thinks he's going to hog the snacks he's going to have to think again. Focused on my snacking, I ignore Alice until she forces herself on my attention by saying reproachfully "Edward!"

What's up with her? What have I done now? "Yeah Awish?" I reply with my mouth full.

She continues to look like a drowning kitten. "Edward, didn't you drive Bella home?"

Great. Now Esme and Jasper are all looking at me as if I'm the worst person in existence. "We didn't say anything about a lift home" I protest. "I'm sure she just walked home like usual". The accusing stares only get worse. Actually, I did look for Bella a bit after school to see if she did want a lift home, but I didn't see her. Not that I'm going to confess to that in front of this hostile crowd.

"Oh Edward!" says Alice sorrowfully. What the hell is it now? "Edward! After you so publically took her to school this morning! And then you just leave her behind! They'll all be so mean to her about it! Edward, how could you?"

"Nice Oscar clip, Alice" I say. "I'm sure it'll be fine".

"What's all this?" asks Esme.

"Edward gave a girl a lift to school this morning" Jasper tells her "And everyone was staring at them and talking about it. Alice is worried that it looks a little cold for him not to bring the girl home as well".

I facepalm. Telling Esme about it all is a disaster. Sure enough, she says brightly "What girl?" Exhaling heavily, I tell her "Just a friend who's helping me out with something, Esme. It's all fine. I offered her a lift to school to be able to talk about a little project that I'm doing but that was all. I'm sure she wasn't upset that I didn't give her a lift home".

Esme murmurs "Oh Edward" with something of the same reproachful flavor as Alice, who by the way, is still standing in the middle of the kitchen shaking her head at me.

This is only going to get worse. I have to cut my losses here. "Nice toast things, thanks Esme" I say breezily and get up quickly. I dump my plate on the sink without rinsing it, which is a crime against the kitchen usually but today I need to get out of here as fast as possible. "See you all later" I say, scoop up my backpack and head up to my room.

Once there, I put on some music and stretch out on the bed.

I sing along to the music for a while but thoughts of Bella keep popping back in to my head at odd moments. I wonder if Alice is right? My giving her a lift to school this morning did attract a lot of attention. And Bella made it clear that she doesn't really like a lot of random attention. Alice would just shrug it off and Rose would actually flip it off but Bella … then again, Alice and Rose have Jasper and Emmett and Bella … only has me. I mean sort of. I mean, she's my friend.

'Do I wanna know?' warbles the singer. Even if I do want to know how she is, I don't have her number or anything and for the first time it crosses my mind that it might be useful to be able to text Bella. I don't even have an email address to try facetime, apart from the school one and no-one would use their school email as their apple ID, surely. I wonder if Alice has it, but it wouldn't be worth it to ask her. I don't even know if Bella has an iPhone or an iPad. I turn on my laptop and go to the class Facebook page. Bella isn't online but that doesn't mean that she isn't at home.

I'm hesitating over the computer when there is a knock at the door which can only mean Jasper, as Alice and Esme would just walk in. "Hey Bro," he says. I quickly close the tab on my browser so he can't see what I was doing. "You dick!" I tell him "Why did you tell Esme all that stuff?"

"Sorry but I figured it was better that I said it than Alice." Actually he has a point there. I'm not willing to openly concede this though so I just grunt a bit. The shithead who caused all of this is clearly not getting my 'leave me alone vibe', he just goes over to the bed and sits down.

"I've been thinking about it all a bit" he says slowly. Now what?

"Ye-es?" I drag out the word, not sure that I want to hear what's coming next.

"It's like this." he says. "It must have been someone who knew what happened to Jessica. I mean, even more than that, it must have been someone who knew straight away what happened to Jessica. I mean, you told me that your mystery girl was already there when you got to the cupboard, right? You were kind of dragging your feet but we still got you there only a few minutes late, so, whoever it was had to have found out about Jessica pretty much immediately. I mean it kind of looks like it was someone who was there at the time she got hurt. What do you think?"

I take a moment but I have to say, I think he is right. I know gossip moves quickly but really there were only a few minutes. "It could have been someone who saw her on her way to the School Nurse" I protest. "Granted" he agrees "But I reckon I'd start with everyone who was there in the girls' bathroom at the time. You know?"

"Hmmm… thanks Jas" I tell him. He doesn't say anything more for a bit while the singer in the background lists lots of dangerous activities that he condones while strongly advising against taking a seat.

After a few minutes of silence, he gets up and says "See you" and leaves.

I turn back to my laptop and open up the class facebook page again. Bella is online this time so I presume she made it home. I have a moment of doubt. I don't think Bella is the sort of girl to get all upset because I took her to school but didn't take her home but then again, what do I know about girls?

Without thinking too hard I send a PM. "Walk home OK? No-one staring?" and I sit back mumbling "The only one I let down more than you is me" along with the song.

After a few minutes, "No, no stares. You were right, they were all looking at you".

A couple of minutes go by while I think about this. "Do you feel up to sharing the attention again tomorrow morning?"

I open a video game and play mindlessly for a bit until I see "Sure thing Sherlock. I'll be the one wearing the paper bag. Do you think anyone will notice?"

I'm chuckling and feeling better about everything and I note briefly that everything involving Bella seems to feel this way, that is, better. Alice was all wrong as usual. Bella is obviously fine despite not getting a ride home.

Under my breath, I sing along on the chorus, about how everything is shit except the singer's friendship with someone.

A/N Edward's playlist obviously includes Arctic Monkeys, Hilltop Hoods and Ball Park Music. Actually it's quite similar to one of mine, strangely enough. Next bit was not part of the original outline and requires thought unfortunately so may be a bit slower. I have written the ending though so we will get there!