Wow, guys! Thanks so much for the positivity and the reviews. They really keep me going. I own nothing, all rights reserved by Stephenie Meyer, etc. This chapter has been slightly updated to clean up some writing mistakes and ensure continuity.

It was unusually bright when I opened my eyes on Thursday morning. I panicked, flinging myself out of bed and grasping desperately for my alarm clock. Had I overslept? A bleary glance at the time showed that no, I still had about ten minutes before I absolutely had to be awake. So why all the light? I stumbled to the window and peered out, then let out the most pitiful sound I'd heard from myself in a while.

It was snowing.

I'd considered the fact that it did, in fact, snow in Forks sometimes, but I hadn't expected to find myself this unhappy about it. I had spent so much time psyching myself up for the constant rain that I was unprepared for this. I made myself a mental note to try to avoid making assumptions that would come back to bite me in the ass.

I collapsed back onto the bed, draped an arm over my face, and groaned, loudly, for five of the ten minutes. Then I dragged myself up and into the shower, where I probably stayed longer than I should have. I turned the water up as hot as I could stand it, hoping to fortify myself against the cold that was guaranteed to hit me once I walked out the front door. I hadn't lived in a place where it routinely got below freezing in about ten years, and when I was old enough to choose where I lived I would be sticking to the southern half of the United States.

I put on my thickest sweater and wedged a coat on over it, shoved my feet into wool socks under my sneakers, and dug out a pair of mittens and a warm winter hat, before filling my thermos as full of hot tea as I could manage.

If I didn't face the cold soon, I was going to be late. And ugh, I realized, I was going to have to drive in the snow.

"Stop being such a baby," I told myself sternly, standing in front of the door. "You're going outside, not to your execution." My body was unconvinced. It took all of my willpower to reach for the knob, turn it, and slowly open the door.

Brrrrrr.

I slipped and slid several times on my way to the truck. Only a combination of hanging onto everything around me and sheer concentrated willpower kept me on my feet. As I grabbed at the bed of the truck for the umpteenth time, I noticed that all four of the tires were covered with the silver pattern of chains. Charlie must have gotten up early just to make sure that I wouldn't die on the way to school. My throat twisted into a funny little knot—I was used to being the one who took care of people, not the one who was taken care of.

After a minute of basking in gratitude, I realized I was standing stupidly in the cold air when I could be inside a warm truck. It was a relief to my poor frozen extremities when I finally clambered into my truck and started the engine. The air blowing over me was cold for now, but I knew from experience that it heated up very fast once I got underway.

The drive was unusually uneventful. The truck handled better over icy roads than I had expected, and I pulled into the school parking lot with the satisfaction of having avoided all of the nightmare scenarios I had dreamed up while in the shower. I parked, grabbed my bag, and exited the truck, glancing around to see if anyone was present to witness my inevitable humiliation. My side of the parking lot was completely deserted—everyone with any sense had parked closer to the school—save for one old minivan rounding the corner, so I faced forward and marched to my fate.

My feet went out from under me only a few steps into my icy trek towards the school. I screeched like a pterodactyl and tried—only somewhat successfully—not to flail. The world tilted at an alarming angle and then stilled abruptly as I hit the ground with enough oomph to render me breathless for a minute.

"Owwww," I groaned as soon as I was able. It didn't feel like I had broken anything, but I was cold and damp and sore and grumpy. I scrabbled ineffectually at the ground, trying to gain some kind of purchase with which to lever myself back into an upright position. By dint of gripping the wheel rim of the truck and something that felt uncomfortably like doing pull-ups, I managed to get myself back on my feet, and turned back toward the school to resume my trek.

Only, I didn't. Instead, I found myself staring straight into the headlights of a silently skidding car. Tyler's face, framed by the windshield, was frozen in an expression of horror that surely matched my own.

I'm going to die.

I didn't want to die.

In the span of about a second, I saw Charlie and Renee and Phil and Jackie and Jessica and Edward—Wait, Edward? Edward Cullen was standing in front of me, shoving me backward. Dimly I heard the sound of metal and glass crunching and people beginning to scream, but it felt like everything was in slow motion compared to my movement. And then, for the second time in five minutes, I stopped abruptly and lost the ability to breathe.

Beside me, Edward was unwinding his scarf from around his neck and folding it. I struggled to understand the meaning of his actions, but that kind of critical thinking was beyond my grasp. All I could do was stare numbly at where the hood of Tyler's car was crumpled up against my bumper. His airbag had deployed so I could no longer see his expression, though a small, detached part of my brain winced for his surely-broken nose. His windshield had shattered into a cascade of glass that was still falling with little plink sounds. The truck looked surprisingly undamaged.

I was falling again. No, that wasn't right. This was not an uncontrolled descent. Something—someone was carefully lowering me to the ground. My head rested on Edward's discarded scarf. I saw him leaning over me, draping his coat across me. Some part of me wanted to push it away and protest, but I knew it was in my best interests… and I couldn't seem to get my arms to move, anyway.

I'm not dead.

People were shouting things and hurrying around. I tried to make sense of it all, but it felt like I was trying to watch a foreign movie without subtitles. Then, sirens. An ambulance was pulling into the parking lot.

"… Bella, can you hear me?"

It was like coming up from the bottom of a swimming pool. What I was seeing and hearing came into focus, no longer blurry and confusing. Most pressingly, Edward was leaning over me, concern etched into his forehead. I blinked a few times and tried a small smile. Worry gave way to relief on his face and he backed away as a paramedic bore down on us.

"My name is Meg," she introduced herself. "What's going on here?"

"I'm—I'm—" I stammered, trying to convey that I wasn't hurt. I stopped, frustrated that I couldn't seem to make the words come out, and cast an imploring look at Edward.

"She wasn't directly involved in the crash," he filled in for me. My expression melted into gratitude. "I pushed her out of the way. She shouldn't be injured, but she's had an acute stress reaction."

Oh right. He was a doctor's kid, wasn't he?

"All right, Miss Swan, can you sit up for me?"

I struggled weakly to my elbows, but it took me two tries to get myself into a sitting position and my head swam once I was propped upright.

"Good, good," she said reassuringly, kneeling unflinchingly by my side despite the snow. "I'm going to take your pulse, so just sit still and breathe as normally as you can."

Once she had told me to breathe normally, I realized that I had been panting like a greyhound. I focused on getting it under control and Edward nodded approvingly as I calmed down.

"Your heart is beating pretty fast, but that's understandable given your recent fright. Is this your truck?"

"Y-y-yes." It was like I was a fourteen-year-old at Sadie Hawkins again. My tongue just wouldn't cooperate.

She flicked a flashlight on and held it in front of my face. "Can you follow my finger with your eyes?"

I could.

"Your truck seems pretty sturdy—just like its owner," Meg smiled at me. "I'm going to take your blood pressure now. Just hold still for a minute, okay?"

"O-okay."

"Your blood pressure is high, but I'm not worried about it," she said after a moment. "How are you feeling?"

I took a deep breath, reached deep within myself to the reserves which had made it possible for me to put on a good face for Renee, and smiled my most convincing smile. "I'm feeling pretty okay, for someone who just almost died."

"I want you to drink a lot of water today," Meg suggested. "You're going to be just fine."

She was gone as quickly as she had arrived, and I found myself wishing that I had as much energy as she seemed to have. Then I giggled, struck by the bizarre intrusion of that thought into my current situation. Edward's puzzled face pulled me back into a more serious frame of mind.

"How did you get here so quickly?" I asked, mildly curious. My last memory before the minivan incident had occurred was noting how empty the parking lot was. I felt sure that I would have spotted Edward Cullen if he had been lurking around. As a matter of fact, I was almost certain that his car, with an appropriate number of Cullens surrounding it, had been all the way at the other end of the school.

He turned a look of innocent confusion on me. "It wasn't that far, Bella. I was right over there," he gestured vaguely, "and I've sprinted faster in track and field meets."

I glanced in the direction he had waved towards, squinting suspiciously. There was nothing there now, and there had been nothing there the last time I had looked either. "Are you sure you were over there?" I pressed, my interest piqued. Although his every mannerism screamed of truthfulness, the facts just didn't quite add up, and that made the future journalist in me curious.

He looked frustrated, now, as if he was expecting something that hadn't happened. For an instant I regretted my decision to push, remembering how much it had irritated me when he had questioned my competency during Biology, but his next words completely dispelled any bad feelings I might have had. "I don't know what you're talking about," he nearly snapped. "I was standing right over there." His gesture was more specific now, designed to remove any question about where he had started from, but now I knew for certain that he was claiming to have been in an area that nothing, not even a parked car, had been.

"Nobody was there," I gritted. "I would have seen you if you were." I felt my chin jutting forward like an angry toddler, and tried to keep my expression pleasant.

"You're in shock, Bella," he informed me, and I could hear how hard he was trying to keep his voice calm and rational. "Experiencing confusion and distress is common after a near-death incident."

I paused for a moment, assessing his claim. I didn't feel confused, or distressed, or in shock. Perhaps it hadn't hit me yet. "I know what I saw," I insisted.

"I don't know why you're making such a big deal about this." He was placating now, trying to convince me that nothing had happened, nothing to worry about, I shouldn't concern myself. It only made me more convinced that there was something I should be thinking about, and more determined to figure out what had really happened.

"I don't like being lied to," I hissed, feeling my polite mask starting to slip.

"I don't like being called a liar," he hissed back, and I found myself inching away from him surreptitiously.

"Then you shouldn't tell lies!" I was aware that I sounded like a five-year-old. It was not one of my best comebacks. I shoved his coat and scarf at him, holding them out and refusing to make eye contact until he took them and stalked away without further acknowledgment.

I was not done with this. No way, Jose. I picked myself stiffly up off the ice and slunk toward my first class of the day, now probably half over.

My English teacher had been forgiving, thankfully, Gov had been just fine—except for Tyler's absence—and Trig had been uneventful. Jessica walked me to the cafeteria as usual, though she seemed rather subdued in comparison with her normal bubbly self. I wasn't social enough to get her to talk, so we waited in line in companionable silence. As we headed toward our table, Alice Carter skipped past me, and I was possessed with a sudden burst of confidence. "Hey, Alice," I called, and she stopped obligingly to smile at me.

"Bella! Hi! I saw the accident, are you okay?" she asked, the words as rapid-fire as I had come to expect from her.

"Yes! I am. I had a weird question for you, though." I crossed my fingers behind my back for luck. "Has Edward ever been in track and field?"

She looked blankly at me. "No, why?"

"Um, no reason." I probably should have come up with a reason for asking, but it had been so spur-of-the-moment that I hadn't. I was not good at spontaneity. "Good talking to you."

"Have a nice lunch!" she tossed over her shoulder, already hurrying away.

"What?" Jessica began, and then shook her head. I breathed a sigh of relief at not being asked to explain myself. I liked to think that Jessica and I were friends, but I wasn't really eager to sound like a crazy person as I laid out my suspicions about why Edward was lying about his ability to… to appear out of thin air. I wasn't sure what else to call it. Teleportation and super-speed were both comic book powers that came to mind, but I couldn't imagine either of them existing in real life.

We had arrived at the table while I had been musing. I sat down in my usual chair, prepared to quietly eat my salad, but suddenly I was the center of attention.

"Wow, Bella," Lauren started, her voice somewhat less caustic than usual, "you almost died. Are you okay?"

"Yes," I replied, less snippily than I would have liked. "As you can see, I have all of my limbs and about a gallon and a half of blood."

"Are you sure about that?" Mike challenged me. "That's an estimate for someone who weighs a hundred and fifty pounds. I think that—"

I ignored the rest of his words and started eating my salad. Around me, people estimated my body weight, argued over the percentage that was likely blood (scientific estimates put it at seven percent, apparently) and then converted it to measures of volume. I appreciated the ability to fade into the background in the aftermath of the accident. The next time I looked up, Mike winked at me, and I marveled at the way he had so quickly sidetracked everyone into a science fight.

"I'm glad you're okay," Jessica said suddenly. "Tyler's still in the hospital."

"How is he doing, do you know?" I asked, grateful for the snippet of information. It wasn't my fault that he had been injured, of course, but I couldn't help but feel slightly guilty all the same.

"His sister says he has a broken nose, broken wrist, concussion, and possible internal bleeding."

I wasn't sure if I had ever met Tyler's sister. I definitely didn't remember anyone who had been introduced to me as his sister. "I hope there isn't anything more serious. Tell her I'm thinking lots of good thoughts for him?"

"Will do," Jessica smiled at me. Her usual good nature seemed to be reasserting itself. I smiled back as the bell rang and chaos erupted around us. I dragged my feet on my way to Biology, not eager to sit next to Edward after our argument. He was already in his seat by the time I arrived, but as I sat down he pointedly leaned away from me, his sharp chin pointed stubbornly in the opposite direction. I balled up my hands into small fists, fighting the urge to demand what his problem was. I already knew the answer, though. I was his problem, and I had no intention of letting that change. One way or another I was going to find out what in the world was going on with Edward Cullen.