Disclaimer: "Twilight" belongs to Smeyer.

Thanks to Camilla10 and Mr. Price for reading, and to TwilightMomofTwo for language help.

Chapter 2: Javani

Bob Banner had given me a list of the few rentals in Forks in my price range, and this had been the last one I visited since it was some distance out of town. I didn't have high hopes for it; there was a newly renovated duplex near enough to the high school that I could walk to work, and that seemed a smarter choice.

This place was a small, plain wood-frame house that had been built during one of Forks's brief bursts of prosperity, when lumber was in high demand in World War I. My hopes that it would have a charming old kitchen had been dashed when I saw the avocado appliances and harvest-gold laminate counters: an unfortunate '70s remodel.

It was the only house that was being shown by a real-estate agent. Jessica Stanley was my age, with curly dark hair and the sort of cleavage that must have brought her a lot of attention in high school. Normally, she told me, she wouldn't do such a small job, being the super-successful Seattle real-estate agent she was, busy dating lawyers and other super-successful real-estate agents. But she was handling this as a favor to her mother, who lived across the street and had bought the house when old Mrs. Sawyer went into the nursing home.

She was also the sort of conversationalist who would pause in her stream of babble to ask a question, hear one word of the answer and start going again. Jessica chattered as she pointed out the dimensions of the kitchen – as ugly as it was, it was pretty big – and continued as she trailed me upstairs to the bedrooms, her high heels like bullets on the wooden steps.

"Forks must be a big change from Arizona, huh?" she said. "God, I'd love to be somewhere really warm and sunny for a change. It might be fun for you here, though. The guys are going to be all over you, new girl in town." Her voice took on an edge at those last words.

I grunted, not really paying attention. We had made it to the front bedroom, and from the window I could see Jessica's mother's house. The back bedroom was bigger, overlooking an unfenced yard that was surrounded by forest, no houses in sight. I opened the window and leaned out a little over the eaves of the back porch, intrigued. If that was what I thought it was …

"Is there a trail back there?" I asked Jessica, waving toward a gap in the woods.

Jessica got into real-estate agent mode, ready to paper over any problems that would keep her from closing a sale. "That's part of network of trails in the forest, but we've never had any trouble with people coming on our land," she said. "If it bothers you, we can put up a sign and maybe a gate?"

I turned back to Jessica and shook my head. "No need. I'll take it."

Now I shut the door on Jessica's bare-chested cousin and went inside, navigating around boxes of books and cooking supplies, my bike and my mother's old cello, and the futon sofa that was pretty much my only furniture, unloaded only yesterday. I had lucked out because the Stanleys hadn't yet thrown out Mrs. Sawyer's old wooden kitchen table and chairs, so at least I had a place to eat and mark homework.

I would need to put curtains up, a task made more urgent by the knowledge that not just my landlady but also a student who didn't need to see me doing my after-run stretches in my underwear were living across the street.

Indeed, the only decorating I had done yet was to hang Raquel's paintings. She focused on portraits, and for her senior-year project had made a series of small, square paintings of our circle of friends. I had grouped them together in the living room, and I paused to look at their familiar faces – all friends, some friends with benefits, none of them boyfriends.

There was a reason Raquel wouldn't take relationship advice from me – though to be honest, she was almost as wary as I was, having seen too many girls from her hometown drop out of college or never even go because of importunate boys and unexpected pregnancies. Neither of us wanted to be stuck in a small town as our mothers had been … of course, here I was right now stuck in a small town. But not for long.

Though I had protested, Raquel had given the paintings to me before I left Seattle, saying that I might need the company in the lonely forest.

There was another, larger painting by Raquel off to the side. She had made it for me as a birthday present last year. It showed a young woman with laughing eyes and a heart-shaped face, a toddler in her lap. The painting was based on an old photograph I had: I was the toddler, my mother holding me, Charlie at her side. Raquel had depicted all of Renee, but only the top of my head. She had known without asking that I wouldn't want Charlie painted at all.

It was childish of me, but I had a sense of satisfaction every time I looked at the painting, quite apart from its demonstration of Raquel's considerable skill.

I went upstairs to change, and a few minutes later I was out the back door, on my way to explore the woods in the hours of light remaining. I took my running watch and, not sure how well the trails were marked, my compass and headlamp.

It was so different from Arizona. There were pine forests there, but nothing like this. As the elevation rose and dipped, a stand of young spruce gave way to maples and alders heavy with moss in an infinite range of greens. Ferns crowded the single-track trail and brushed my waist. I crossed a logging road as well as many streams, just trickles now, that would swell when the rainy season started. Patches of clear-cut slash gave me glimpses of the mountains that you couldn't see from Forks proper. Squirrels chattered and birds called; deer and other animals I couldn't identify had left their prints on the trail.

I returned home as dusk fell, elated and idly scratching my new collection of mosquito bites - nasty bloodsuckers always got me. I wasn't a cross-country star, and probably made the University of Arizona squad mainly because the athletics department desperately wanted women to balance the numbers on the football team under the federal Title IX requirements. Neither Raquel nor I could compete with the Kenyan women who got the cross-country scholarships. But I knew I would love running here, and I looked forward to showing Raquel the trails when she visited.

The days following were busy, which had the advantage of leaving me little time to feel lonely. Living with the taciturn Charlie had been almost like living alone, but not quite, and living with Raquel had been like a constant house party. So I wasn't used to the stabs of unease I felt sometimes in this house on the edge of an isolated town. I prepared lesson plans, and read "The Prince of Tides," the summer book for seniors; I got supplies in Port Angeles; I ran in the woods behind my house.

Angela invited me for a barbecue at her parents' house on Labor Day. There I met her twin brothers, Isaac and Josh, skinny and polite, who were in my 11th grade classes, as well as Our Valedictorian Hope Weber, nervous about starting her college career the next day.

I too was nervous about the first day of classes, which was gray, humid and exceptionally hot … for Forks. By the end of the morning I was regretting my choice of skirt and sweater, conservative to make up for my dress-code faux pas on my first day and too heavy for the temperature today. But the students were attentive and well-behaved.

And not a nonconformist among them, it seemed. They dressed as if they all shopped at the same mall, a mall whose stores sold only jeans and T-shirts with brand-name logos. American Eagle, Aéropostale, Pink, Hollister. By lunchtime the lyrics from a song I hadn't had to think about since middle school was an earworm running incessantly through my brain.

When I met you I said my name was Rich/ You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

Blech. Maybe lunch would get that out of my head.

"They're heeee—eeeere," Bruce Clapp announced at the teachers' table in the cafeteria, which already reeked of grease and chicken fingers and government surplus. "The creepy Cullens are heee-eeeere." He jerked his head to the left, but all I could see was the salad bar I was never going to use, and beyond that, the top of someone's wild reddish-brown hair.

"Stop it, Bruce." Barbara Goff, the Spanish teacher, put down her spoon with a clatter as she scolded him.

He ignored her. "Bella, have you dealt with the Cullen kids yet?" he asked me.

"Uh-oh," Angela muttered under her breath next to me.

I shook my head. "My AP class is after lunch," I said.

"Well, prepare yourself. Don't be surprised if one of them looks like they want to tear your throat out."

"Bruce!" Several voices now joined Barbara Goff's in admonishment.

"Bella's lucky she has to deal with only two of them, " Bruce Clapp said, shrugging. "Besides, I'm not the one sleeping with my sister."

"They're not really related," Angela said, her tone severe.

"But they all live together," he said. "Five teenagers, all going out with each other. It's weird."

"It's sweet," Barbara Goff said, a little dreamily, and I had to suppress a snicker at her tone. "They've lost their parents and been in foster care, and then they meet their soulmates in their new home – Alice and Jasper, and Emmett and Rosalie, they're obviously made for each other."

Bruce Clapp snorted. "Maybe if they weren't all busy being busy with their sisters, they'd do something useful like play sports."

Angela leaned over to whisper to me, "When I was in school, I never imagined the teachers talked about students this way."

"Me either," I said, cutting into a tomato slice with my fork. "I hope our students don't talk about us like that."

I misjudged how long I needed to get back to Building 3 from the cafeteria, and by the time I arrived in my classroom, my 15 AP students were already in their seats. Fortunately, I had left a "do now" assignment on the whiteboard, and they were quietly writing. I dropped my lunch bag into my desk drawer, grabbed my clipboard with the class roster, and turned to face my students as the bell rang.

A boy with wild reddish-brown hair and a girl with spiky dark hair were toward the back, a little off to the side of everyone else.

The Cullens.

Holy fucking shit. I wish I had been able to prepare myself, as the Clapp had suggested, and not because the Cullens looked as if they wanted to tear my throat out. They were both stunning, the boy especially, possessors of a pale beauty that seemed alien not only to Forks, but to the entire planet, cool and composed as the rest of us wilted in the heat. The girl beamed at me, light hazel eyes sparkling, while the boy stared at me as if I were some unidentifiable species of insect. I flushed hot under his scrutiny, and realized that I was staring too, and in a most improper-for-a-teacher way. I walked to the windows and cranked one open, welcoming the breeze on my cheeks.

I turned back around, and avoiding the gazes of the distracting Cullens, welcomed my new students and said, "I know it's the rule here to use honorifics and last names, but I'd like to know what first names you prefer, so tell me as I do the roll call." I looked down at my roster. "Alvarez?"

"Gracie," came the answer from a brunette with Abercrombie emblazoned on her faded T-shirt and an accent in her voice. Mexican, I guessed, born Graciela.

"Banner?"

"Brett." Principal Bob's son had Fitch on his shirt.

"Crowley?"

"Tiffany." Victoria's Secret. Well.

"Cullen, A.?"

"Alice," a beautiful soprano announced, and I finally looked in the Cullens' direction again. Jesus. The only logos on this girl's clothes were discreetly stitched onto the lining, and probably said something like Gucci. Or Chanel, if the bouclé jacket she was wearing was the real thing.

Not that it mattered. The important thing was the Alice was no longer beaming, but grim-faced. And Edward looked as if he was about to throw up, his head down, his hand over his mouth and nose.

"And this is Edward," she added, indicating the boy in the desk next to her with a graceful wave. "His throat hurts a little today, so it's best if he doesn't talk."

"Oh, that's too bad," I said, though I didn't believe her. The boy looked as if he was in utter agony, not just as if had a sore throat. I thought of suggesting that he go see the nurse, but reconsidered. He was a senior who could decide for himself.

I returned to calling the roll, which ended with Teague, Eliza (Hollister). I went on to collect the summer homework and hand out books – both times, Alice Cullen glided up to the front of the room to drop off her and her brother's summer homework essays, and to collect their copies of "Four Greek Plays" – and start the introduction to "Oedipus Rex," the first work we'd be tackling.

As I conducted the business of the day, I kept surreptitiously glancing at Edward Cullen, without intending to. His head was still bowed, but his hand was now gripping the edge of his desk. Even from my position at the front of the room, I could see the muscles and tendons tensed in the forearm extending from the pushed-up sleeves of his white button-down shirt. Periodically, his sister put her hand on his shoulder – in reassurance? In warning? I couldn't tell.

All the while, the other students seemed unaware of the bizarre tableau being acted out behind them. They never looked at the Cullens, never talked to them or interacted with them in any way. It was as if they were invisible to everyone but me.

I glanced up at the wall clock – the period was about to end. As my eyes flickered down, they met a pair of black ones. Edward Cullen was staring at me now with an undisguised, burning hostility.

Then the bell rang, I blinked, and the next second both Cullens were gone. What the fuck?

The experience rattled me, and I wasn't as on top of my game as I should have been for the next period, the last class of the day. Unfortunately, that was the class that included Justin Stanley, neighborhood lothario. He sprawled out in his seat, smirking at me, and probably telling his football buddies around him that I had been a total bitch to him. Embarrassment was apparently going to turn into being a pain in my ass. Great.

I forgot to get a volunteer to take the last-period attendance sheet to the main office, so once I locked up my classroom, I headed over to the administration building.

Edward Cullen was there, talking with Shelly Cope. I stood, frozen, just inside the office door, silent witness to their conversation.

" - I could take a class at Peninsula," he was saying, I hadn't heard his voice before, and it was just as gorgeous as the rest of him, low and smooth and persuasive. And definitely not the voice of someone with a sore throat.

Shelly was flustered. "I'm sorry, you can't take a core class at the college," she told him. "You need to stay in AP."

Dammit, he was so uncomfortable in my classroom he was trying to get out of it. What, oh, what was his problem?

Just then, the door opened behind me, and Eliza Teague brushed past me waving an attendance sheet, presumably from a teacher who was more on the ball than I was. Edward Cullen turned around and glared at me balefully before returning his attention to Shelly.

It seemed that his problem was me.

"Never mind then," he said to Shelly, that voice making his words seem poetic instead of abrupt. "I see that it's impossible. Thank you." He spun on his heel, and giving me a wide berth, followed Eliza Teague out of the office.

"Well!" Shelly breathlessly said as I approached the counter. She had to take a deep inhale before she could ask, "Bella, how was your day?"

I couldn't help thinking that her question was more than rote, considering the topic of her exchange with Edward Cullen. She wanted to hear what had happened with the strange, beautiful boy in my class.

But I found that I didn't want to describe Mr. Cullen's unsettling behavior. There was something … private about it that I couldn't share with her. "Fine," I said instead. "You know, if Edward Cullen doesn't want to be in AP, surely he should be able to get out -"

"No," she interrupted me. "Bob Banner won't allow it – Edward and his sister are our only chances at 5's on the AP exam." I wasn't surprised by that; I knew that the top score on the English test was rare. But I was surprised when she went on to say, "If you get even one 3 out of the rest of that class, you'll have done well."

At last, a bright spot in my day: Val Berty had set the achievement bar pretty low.

I went home and ran hard, sweating profusely in the heavy air and finding a hill that made my legs burn and my mind forget, briefly, the disturbing Cullens. A clearing at the crest of the hill gave me a view to the west of tangling rivers and the hazy possibility of the ocean. I'd have to figure out how to get there one day.

After dinner, I settled down at the kitchen table with the summer essays on "The Prince of Tides," Pat Conroy's superheated story of the troubled Wingo family, a big bestseller 25 years ago. A couple of hours and 50 tedious plot recitations later I had come to several conclusions: Shelly Cope was dead-on in her assessment of the skills of most of the seniors of Forks High; Gracie Alvarez was remarkable, especially considering that she obviously had learned English only a few years ago; Eliza Teague should never have been forced to read a novel whose centerpiece was an excruciatingly violent home invasion.

And I had that disconcerting experience every teacher besides Einstein has at some point in her career: discovering a student who was far smarter than she is. In fact, I had two who were.

The Cullens had ignored Val Berty's directive to type their summer homework, but their handwriting was so beautifully formed that I couldn't bring myself to mark them down for it. And their essays were beautifully formed as well, if scathing. Alice scoffed at Conroy's "turgid, high-flown rhetoric and grandiose designs," while Edward noted that "as bizarre, hyperbolic episodes mount up, a reader may feel that he is being bombarded by whoppers told by an overwrought boy."

"An overwrought boy." Edward Cullen should know all about that. Still, valid points, and I now felt embarrassed that I had devoured the book, the steamroller plot making me overlook the florid prose and even my discomfort over the fact that one of the major characters was a psychiatrist who falls in love with her patient and admits it to him – how unprofessional.

I shoved Edward Cullen's paper back into my homework folder, and called Raquel.

"Bella!" she said cheerfully. "Hold on a sec." She turned away from the mouthpiece, but I could hear her say, "Hey, Ben, it's my girlfriend. Do you mind?" He apparently didn't, and Raquel's door closed with a muffled thud.

"How are you feeling? How was your first day?" she asked.

"Tiring, of course. How about yours?"

"Frustrating! You won't believe this. I was sent to an elementary school in Burien – it's near viva viva Sea-Tac - apparently because with my name I must speak Spanish –"

I laughed weakly in acknowledgment. In Tucson, everyone expected Raquel Salcedo, with her looks and name, to speak Spanish. She would greet such assumptions with a look of scorn and a stream of invective in the language she grew up with, a dialect of the Tohono O'odham tribe. It would be left to me, the pale girl with the Anglo name, to explain to the cabby or guy next to us at the bar or head of the Latino Students' Association that mi amiga no habla español, lo siento.

"-And because the kids are all immigrants from Mexico they must speak Spanish too. Except that they all speak something called Purepecha. Which as you probably know" - Raquel's voice took on an exaggeratedly pedantic tone – "is an isolate and thus has nothing in common with either Spanish or the languages I do speak."

"Thank you, professor. So what did you do?"

"Art is a universal language so we made it work. Give kids paper and glue and glitter and they'll figure something out."

I wished things were that easy with my own students - everything fixed with an application of glitter. Every time I glanced at Alice and Edward, I would be reminded how pointless it was that they were in my class.

"So, tell me about the youth of Forks," Raquel demanded at the other end of the line.

I gave her the T-shirt tally I had collected: Abercrombie, A&F, Pink, Fitch, AEagle, Hollister, Amer. Eagle, Aéropostale, even a Gap.

"Ooh, that guy saw 'The Social Network!' Maybe he wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg," she suggested. "Which reminds me how annoying it is that you don't have Facebook anymore."

"You know I can't do it, not with my job. Teachers have been fired for their Facebook pages, their Twitter accounts, their Instagrams –"

"—Because they were morons," Raquel interjected.

"Because some moron tagged them in a photo in proximity to a bong. Besides, it's only for a couple of years."

"It's still incredibly inconvenient. You'd better be able to move back here to Seattle next year just so I can communicate with you. Anyway, are any of your seniors college material?"

"I've got two extraordinarily smart students – top-college smart." I let out a big exhalation.

"That's good, so why do you sound unhappy about that?"

"I'm not sure my class will have much to offer them," I hedged.

"Yeah, but they'll ask you good questions, keep you on your toes, you know, make teaching more interesting for you."

If Edward Cullen keeps looking as if he's going to transform into a werewolf, it'll certainly be interesting, I thought.

"Maybe," I said, scrubbing my hand across my face. "Sweetie, I gotta go – school starts really early here."

A little while later, I lay on my futon bed, still puzzling over Edward Cullen's reaction to me, feeling lonely and unsettled. I missed Raquel. I missed the promises of Seattle. And more strongly than I had in years, I missed my mom.

Chapter title: "Youth," from "Sheila ki Javani," by Sunidhi Chauhan and Vishal Dadlani.

A/N: Alice and Edward's literary criticism is borrowed from Gail Godwin's review of "Prince of Tides." And yes, I know of a school that uses that novel for summer reading.

Purepecha is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken mostly in Michoacán state. It has under 200,000 speakers.

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