Oh my gosh, I'm finally back! I apologize for the long absence and I'll try not to let it happen again. I don't own any of this, etc. This chapter has been slightly updated to clean up some writing mistakes and ensure continuity.

My day was not going particularly well. I woke up groggy after only five hours of sleep, too late to get a shower or breakfast (and I burned my tongue on the cup of coffee I hoped would help me wake up a little) before hurrying off to school. On my way out of the house, I slipped on the icy porch and landed in an undignified heap at the bottom of the steps. I killed the engine on my truck twice on the drive to school, once just as a stoplight turned green, which resulted in the impatient honks of the three cars behind me.

Things hadn't gotten better once I had arrived (seven minutes late) at my first class of the day. I fell asleep for fifteen minutes in Gov, missing some important test prep for the exam we would be taking on Friday. Maybe, if I was lucky, I could beg notes from Tyler or Ben. In Trig, I had been called on no fewer than three times, and once been unable to answer the question. My stomach was still churning from the mixture of anxiety and embarrassment that always accompanied being singled out in class as I sat in Spanish, stumbling and slurring my way down a list of vocabulary words.

"¿Qué sabes de el contemporáneo arquitectura?" My tongue felt like a wooden block as I pronounced the unfamiliar sounds.

"Nada," my conversation partner—Lauren, who sat with us at lunch sometimes but always ignored me—replied. "¿Qué sabes de estatuas clásicas?"

"Ellos son bonitos."

"Bonitas," she corrected. I sighed and slumped back in my chair, wishing once again that I had taken my two required years of foreign language in Phoenix, which had an excellent French program. Spanish was probably more practical, but at least I could pronounce French words.

Well, there was no use crying over spilt milk. I looked back down at the vocabulary list, mouthing the words to myself and trying to commit them to memory.

I felt like a pardoned criminal when the bell rang during my third clumsy attempt to make conversation in Spanish. I thought Lauren looked relieved to be done with my stilted sentences and frequent mispronunciations, and I couldn't really blame her. I was six months behind the rest of the class, and it showed. I would have to spend extra time going over the material that I had missed.

I swept my belongings into my bag and trudged toward the door, wondering if my day could get any worse. I didn't think so, but it wouldn't do to tempt fate. I apologized silently to any higher powers that might exist and knocked on the doorframe as I passed it.

"Hey, Bella!" Jessica's unmistakably cheerful voice was a welcome distraction from my gloomy thoughts. I slowed my steps until she bounced alongside, grinning up at me with comradely glee.

"Hey, Jessica," I said, briefly resenting her for looking so comfortably warm when I was freezing. I winced at how petty my thoughts were becoming. Maybe it was the fact that I was cooped up in this small town… but no, that was petty too. I forced a smile to my face and hoped that my mood would soon catch up.

"How was your weekend?" she asked, seeming completely unfazed by my lack of enthusiasm. "Mine was great! Mike took me out on a surprise date to this great restaurant in Port Angeles—it's actually called La Belle Italia, which is hilarious and I giggled every time I thought of it because it's almost like a restaurant named after you!—and the food was great and he was too utterly sweet and I don't know how I got so lucky."

I wasn't sure how she'd gotten that much out without so much as a breath or a pause, but it was impressive. As she talked I nodded and tried to make the appropriate facial expressions, but they didn't feel very convincing to me. It took me a minute to realize that she was finished and staring at me expectantly. I smiled vaguely and tried to remember what she had asked at the beginning of her onslaught. How I was doing? What I had been doing?

"Good," I finally answered. That covered most possible questions, and, while not strictly true, was more polite than the truthful version.

"Good how? Did you go anywhere? See anyone?" she pressed, steering me not-so-subtly towards the cafeteria, which I had almost walked right past.

I assumed she was talking about the weekend. "I went to a farmer's market and we had the Blacks—Billy Black and his son, Jacob—over for dinner." That was all, right? It sounded so banal when I said it like that.

"How fun!" Jessica exclaimed, yanking the cafeteria door open and ushering me inside. "Mike and I went for an overnight hike with Connor and some of Mike's friends from work. It got pretty cold, brrr."

I remembered the conversation I had had with Billy and Charlie over the weekend. "You could have been in danger!" I gasped, staring at Jessica with wide eyes. "There was a cougar that attacked some hikers—it's still out there somewhere!"

Odd little Alice Carter had a queer expression as she passed us by, her walk so rhythmic it almost looked like she was dancing to unheard music. She was probably laughing at my citified ways, I reflected ruefully.

"Relax." Jessica was definitely laughing at me, sounding supremely unconcerned. "There were too many of us for even a hungry cougar to be interested in. We were fine, I promise."

I let her pull me through the food line, not entirely convinced but unwilling to press the issue any further. We squeezed in at the usual table, where conversation centered on the two hikers. I ate my veggie burger in silence, not wanting to embarrass myself any further with the fearless local population. Unfortunately for me, my lack of contribution did not go unnoticed.

"You got anything like that down in Phoenix, Bella?" Tyler challenged, with what I suspected was mischief dancing in his dark eyes.

A spirit of fun (or maybe just Jacob's bad influence) must have suddenly possessed me, and I found myself playing along with his light-heartedness. "Oh, sure," I replied, trying to sound breezy. "Worse, even. We've got the chupacabra, when it visits from Mexico."

"What's a chupacabra?" Angela asked with a puzzled frown.

"Oh, it's really scary. It's like, this lizard-dog that hops like a kangaroo and sucks blood from animals and people."

"That's, like, an urban legend though, right?" Lauren asked. It was the first time she'd ever directly spoken to me out of class and I stared at her for a moment, probably looking like a total idiot.

"Um, yes," I finally replied, carefully not rolling my eyes at the obviousness of the response. "We don't actually have vampires in Arizona."

"Oh, right." She looked a little embarrassed and I felt bad for making fun of her, even though it had mostly just been in my head. It wasn't like I hadn't asked any dumb questions about Washington, after all. I smiled tentatively at her, but she tossed her hair and looked away.

Oh well. I shrugged to myself as the bell rang and everyone began hustling out of the cafeteria. Not everyone was going to like me all the time, and that was okay. I dragged myself out of my chair, dumped my unfinished veggie burger into the nearest trash can, and slouched my way towards the Biology classroom. My brief spate of high spirits had passed and I was once again feeling moody and dissatisfied. I couldn't help scowling at the flat grey sky that pressed so stiflingly down on me. I missed the vast expanses of desert. Forks was going to make me claustrophobic.

I walked into the classroom and immediately had to stifle a groan. I had been enjoying the freedom of a desk that was all my own, but the elusive Edward Cullen (I assumed it was him, anyway, as I didn't remember his face at all from my one brief glimpse—he had the same features as Esme but on him they looked aristocratic rather than delicate) was lounging comfortably in his previously vacant place.

"Uh, hey," I greeted him uncertainly as I approached. He looked up and smiled and I was momentarily rendered breathless by how golden his eyes were. His lips were moving and I shook myself, trying to catch his words.

"… must be Bella Swan. I'm Edward, Edward Cullen."

"N-nice to meet you," I stammered. What was it about him and his extended and adopted family that removed my ability to form coherent thoughts? Alice and Jasper had left me just as speechless. All the progress I'd made on being comfortable in Forks was flying out the window, my natural shyness reasserting itself at an alarming pace.

"Sorry to leave you partnerless for the week," he apologized smoothly. I realized that I was still standing stiffly by the desk and half-collapsed into my seat as he continued. "I came down with something, knocked me right out."

"That's lame," I sympathized, finding that it was easier to talk to him if I wasn't looking at his face.

"How are you liking Forks so far?" he inquired, sounding as though he was genuinely interested instead of just making small-talk.

"It's… okay," I answered cautiously, leaning back into the seat and trying very hard not to look at him out of the corner of my eye.

He scoffed politely. "That's the least convincing thing I've heard all day. Try again."

"Some things are okay," I clarified, unable to summon irritation at having been caught in a lie. "I have friends here. I… like not getting sunburned."

"Hmm. You do look a little pale for a desert-dweller," he commented, smiling in a way that left my mouth a little dry.

I realized belatedly that I was looking at him again and jerked my attention back to the front of the room, where the teacher seemed to be taking an awfully long time to get the lesson started. "You've seen my father," I laughed, a little shakily. "He makes me look tan."

He laughed along with me, even though it wasn't really that funny. It felt like he was staring at the side of my face, but I couldn't tell for sure without looking at him again. I decided to risk it, and—yes, he was making unabashed eye contact. I was momentarily rendered speechless, my heart racing and my cheeks feeling hot. I was unused to this level of attention from someone who looked as much like a magazine cover as Edward Cullen.

Abruptly he turned his head, leaning away from me and picking up his pencil. Confused, I looked toward the front of the classroom, where nothing appeared to have changed. I looked back at him, only to find him watching me out of the corner of his eyes.

"Mr. Banner is about to start," he predicted. Sure enough, the teacher suddenly had everything in order and began the process of getting everyone's attention and starting the lesson.

I stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of me, trying to muster up the focus to take notes, but there was a very large part of me that wanted to look over and see what Edward Cullen was doing. Is this what people meant when they complained about teenagers and hormones? I'd never personally experienced the phenomenon, but I had read about it. People didn't mention how pleasantly disconcerting it was… or maybe they did, and I'd just never had a frame of reference for it before.

Mr. Banner was saying something about a lab. Oh, right, it was Monday. It had been scheduled for Friday, but apparently not all of the necessary parts had been present, so it had been put off to the next school day. I hadn't been worried about not having a partner, since I had done a similar lab back in Phoenix—which almost felt like cheating, but it wasn't my fault that Forks didn't have an AP Biology class that I could take.

"You'll be using the microscopes—and please be careful with them, they're easily broken—to identify the stages of mitosis in onion root tip cells," he explained. I refrained from zoning out, even though he had gone over the exercise twice the previous week and I was pretty sure I remembered everything. Listening one more time wouldn't hurt.

A microscope and a box of slides were deposited at our table. I slid them into the middle, so that Edward could reach them too. He smiled sideways and gestured toward them with long fingers, which I assumed to be a request that I get things started. I dropped the first slide I picked out of the box, having to scramble madly with shaking fingers to get it off the desk. Was he smirking? My face heated as I inserted the slide into the microscope and peered through the eyepiece, fiddling with the focus until I could see the cells clearly.

"Prophase," I declared confidently, beginning to remove the slide. Edward's hand shot out, stopping just short of my fingers, and I hesitated, looking up to meet his eyes. Oops. Bad idea. I couldn't look away from him.

"You seem very sure of yourself," he commented, sounding skeptical.

"I am," I replied. It wasn't a difficult lab even for someone who hadn't done it before.

"You're probably right, but would you mind if I checked? Just to make sure?"

"Go ahead." I shrugged, trying to swallow the annoyance of having my competence questioned. I pushed the microscope toward him, putting on a smile that I didn't really feel.

He looked at me for what felt like forever. I kept the smile pasted on my face, waiting for him to take the microscope. Finally—finally—he glanced away, looking rueful. "No, I believe you. Next slide?"

I almost kept staring at him, surprised I had won so easily, but my sense of self-preservation kicked in and I looked down at the table instead. "You can identify the next one," I offered, pushing the box of slides toward him.

He flashed a crooked smile as he reached for the box, and I found myself wondering if he'd be interested in me if I were half as attractive as he was. Or attractive at all, for that matter. But no, he was way out of my league and my brief flight of fantasy had no place in biology class. In the time it had taken me to chide myself, he had swapped out the slides with perfect ease. He peered into the microscope for a mere instant before pulling back.

"Anaphase."

I itched to dispute it, to prove him wrong, but he was probably just as right as I had been, and just because he had annoyed me was no reason to be rude in return. I managed a vague sort of smile and reached out to pull the microscope back toward me at the same time as he pushed it in my direction, with the end result that it tipped over the edge of the table and fell into my lap.

Well, not quite. His hands shot out unbelievably fast and caught it. My slightly slower reflexes finally caught up and I found myself cradling both his cold hands and the microscope. My cheeks heated and my first instinct was to jerk away, but visions of Mr. Banner scolding me for the loss of valuable equipment danced in my head and I settled for carefully restoring it to the desk, then pulling my hands away as quickly as possible.

"Oops," he apologized, his voice as smooth as his quick save had been.

"Oops," I agreed ruefully, a smile quirking the corner of my mouth almost against my will.

"Nice catch," he complimented me. I squinted at him, uncertain about whether or not he was being sarcastic.

"I'm pretty sure you did all the heavy lifting," I contradicted. "I was just along for the ride."

"I'm sure you would have managed if I hadn't been around," he smiled, making the most direct eye contact we had had so far. Despite the blatant untruthfulness of his statement, I felt a warm little knot in my stomach.

I exaggeratedly looked down at his chair, then back up. One of his eyebrows twitched upward interrogatively and I hid a smirk. "I was checking to see if your pants were on fire."

"Speaking of science, we should probably be doing a little more of that," I said, blatantly changing the subject. I wasn't able to tear my eyes away from his face, so hopefully redirecting him to the task at hand would make him turn his attention to the lab that we were doing instead of me.

It worked. Edward glanced back at the table and I could breathe again. He reached for the third slide and put it into the microscope, then gestured at it. "Your turn," he offered, not pushing anything toward me this time.

"It's… metaphase?" I guessed, after about ten seconds of assessment. If he had already identified anaphase, then this had to be metaphase. Or he had been wrong. That didn't seem likely, though.

"You sound uncertain," he teased gently. I flushed and looked again.

"Metaphase," I stated a second time, trying to sound more confident. It must have succeeded because instead of continuing his teasing, the boy beside me simply handed me the fourth slide. I swapped them out and poked the microscope tentatively toward him.

"It's…" he paused for nearly a full minute and I was rather surprised, given how knowledgeable he had seemed to be up until this point. "Telophase."

"So the last one has to be…" I quickly ran through the list in my head, "interphase, right?"

"Yep, that's all of them," he agreed with a smile.

"Cool." I reached for the paper we were supposed to fill out and began recording the correct answers. It took me a minute to see his hand, still outstretched as he had reached for the paper just too late. "Oh, sorry, did you want to do some?" I proffered the page, three spaces still blank.

"I mean, sure, I guess," he chuckled, accepting the assignment and whipping a pen into existence from somewhere. His writing was elegant and flowy in comparison to my girlishly rounded letters, and I momentarily regretted not letting him do all of the writing… but it was too late for that.

His lips curved gently as I glanced askance at him, and I wondered if he was laughing at me. I wasn't sure why he would be, but he probably was. No, that was nonsense. Why would Edward Cullen, of all people, care enough about me even just to make fun of me? I was just his biology partner. Pshaw. My imagination was playing tricks on me.

Still, as I passed him in the hallway after Gym and again in the parking lot after school, I found myself wondering if I was just imagining the intensity of his eyes.