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"You should've seen Edward Scissorhands in Biology, today!" Mike – he's already managed to tell me his name is Mike, not "Mikey" – is talking loudly enough that practically the whole lunch line can hear him. Jessica is glaring at him. "You shoulda seen it. He looked like he was eating fried worms the whole time." I think Mike is going to slap his knee, but he doesn't.

"Mikey, do you even have half a brain?" Jessica kind of slaps him on the arm when she says it.

"What?" And he has the most innocent, hurt, puppy-dog look I've ever seen.

"You're hopeless." And she rolls her eyes in a big circle. "Don't pay any attention to him, Bella, the boys in this school are all clueless."

Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. "Edward Scissorhands." Except that I have this sudden image of my heart being held by those scissors, and then the blades cutting and flying faster than the eye can see, then opening up my heart and holding it like one of those paper cut-outs of people hand in hand like a daisy chain.

Lunch is chicken nuggets – "chicken maggots," Mike calls them, which earns him another slap from Jessica – canned corn, canned carrots, milk, salad and fruit if you want any, and some kind of cake with frosting. I can see I'd better be sure I eat well at home. I just grab an apple and call it a day. Three more classes to go, then I can escape in my red monster. Until tomorrow. Please, please, please God, don't let Edward Scissorhands be in any of my other classes.

I shuffle over with Jessica and her crew to their table. It's nice not to have to sit alone at lunch, but it still doesn't keep the kids at the other tables from staring. New kid. Smells funny. Makes handsomest boy in school eat fried worms.

A movement catches me from the corner of my eye. It's all I can do to keep my jaw from dropping onto my tray.

There's more than one?

The anorexic girl, Angela is her name, leans over to me and whispers, "It's criminal, isn't it."

There are five, to be precise. Edward, two other boys, and two girls. And every single one of them is drop-dead gorgeous. They walk into the cafeteria together and amble past us to a table in the corner. Like they belong on a runway. In slow-mo. Edward doesn't look at me. Not even a glance. There's a way of not looking at someone that is worse than giving them the biggest, meanest, stink-eye ever, and this is it. I can almost feel the waves of I hate you rolling off of him. And onto me.

Back in the girl's bathroom, I'd promised myself that I was not going to care. But still I can feel a lump growing in my throat. Why is he ignoring me in such a dirty look kind of way? Here, away from class? I'm not anywhere near him. I'm not trying to get close to him. It hurts my feelings. Really hurts. My heart rises up in rebellion. I don't deserve to be hated. And I never did anything to you!

One of the other kids at our table is snickering softly. "The Cullen coven."

Why do they have to be the topic of conversation at our table, now? It's like I can't escape. And still I can't help sneaking a look at them.

I don't see how they can all be Cullens. They would be too close in age – Edward looks like the youngest, and he's a junior, like me, so how much of a spread does that leave for the rest of them? Or had some of them been held back? They don't really look related, either. Well, perhaps the two blonds, who stand like boy and girl versions of the same tall and willowy template. But the two dark-haired ones couldn't be more different from each other. The boy is tall and big, muscled and cut – like a wrestler. His sister barely comes up to his shoulder – an impossibly lovely manga girl, with hacked-off hair, bottomless eyes and a heart-shaped face. And of course none of them looks like Edward. The only thing they all have in common is marble-pale skin, dark eyes – even the blond ones – and absolutely startling grace as they move. It's really hard not to stare, actually.

Luckily, they breeze by, not even glancing at anyone or any thing, almost as if they are in a bubble, or a different dimension. Even Edward, with his storm cloud eyes.

Mike nudges the boy beside him, a spindly-looking kid with a flaming zit under his chin. "Stop my breathing and slit my throat – I must be emo!"

Everyone at the table giggles in a muted sort of way. But these Cullens don't really fit the type. No piercings – at least no visible ones. As for hair, well, maybe the black-haired girl does come close. Or Edward, maybe. And if they all are wearing somber clothing, well, so does half the school.

"Sometimes they have the mascara on so thick you can see it smudging down their cheeks. On the guys!" Mascara? Is that what makes the skin around their eyes look so dark … shadowed? I had taken it for bad sleep habits. Like mine.

"They're posers. The real Goths won't have anything to do with them." Apparently, no one else at school will, either. Angela must have seen me looking confused, because she's leaning toward me again, explaining.

"They kind of keep to themselves."

"Yeah," the boy with the acne puts in, "they even date themselves." Everyone sort of giggles at that, too, and he looks like he thinks he's been very clever.

Jessica leans in to the gossip circle that has quietly created itself at the table, and fills me in.

"The big guy with the dark hair, that's Emmett. He and the blonde girl, Rosalie, are like, a thing." I see that they are, in fact, holding hands under their table. Now they casually let go, almost as if they know they're being talked about. Maybe they do, although no one at their table is looking over at us.

"And the blond guy, Jasper – looks like he's in pain all the time – he's Rosalie's twin … he and the little dark-haired girl, Alice, are, like, totally doing it." As they had walked by, I had seen how Alice had kept one hand lightly under the blond boy's elbow, then, half-way to the far corner table, he'd taken her hand and she'd done a graceful little ballerina turn under his arm. I'd thought it was sweet; had even, for a moment, forgotten Edward's hatingly averted eyes, and felt my heart moving toward the light-footed girl, wanting to be friends. Now I am being told, and seeing with my own eyes, that all of them are brothers and sisters – with benefits. I don't know what to think.

Silence stretches at the table, and I slowly realize that somewhere in this I am being had.

Angela breaks it first. "You guys, come on!" She turns to me. "They're all adopted."

"Jasper and Rosalie really are twins, though," Jessica says.

"Yeah, but – "

"And they really are dating each other, all in the same house."

"They probably sleep in bunk beds." The clever boy, again.

"Yeah, one on top of the other!"

More nervous and prurient giggles.

"Except for Edward."

"Yeah, he's gay."

"No, no, he's doing it with mommy and daddy!"

"Ewww!"

Angela looks about the way I feel. My cheeks are burning, and they aren't even talking about me. I don't believe that last part, about Edward with the parents. I know that kind of thing does happen, but not in Forks. Not here. My dad would never let something like that go on in a town where he was Chief of Police.

"Have they always lived here?" I ask her. I can't believe I wouldn't have heard of such an infamous family if they'd been living in town before, even if I'd only been around for two weeks any one year.

"No, they moved down from Alaska or something, two years ago. Dr. Cullen – he's the dad – works as a surgeon at the hospital."

"Oh my God," a red haired girl at the end of the table joins in. "He is so super-hot. You have to see him. Last year, Lisa Bukowski fell out of a tree and broke her ankle, on purpose, just to get onto his examining table."

The boys roll their eyes and groan in disgust. "Only a girl would do that!"

Angela is still trying to make this all sound normal. "Dr. Cullen's wife can't have kids, so that's why they adopted."

"Is that even legal?" Jessica wonders. "Five all at once? I mean, Dr. Cullen and his wife aren't even thirty yet, I bet. How can they have adopted five kids who aren't even that much younger than them?"

"It's not like real adoption. They're like foster kids. And they had to keep the Hales together because they're twins."

Rosalie and Jasper. Their last name is Hale, then. Or have they changed it to Cullen?

All of this is being said in low, secretive voices. There's no way anyone at the tables around us can hear the words, let alone all the way across the noisy lunchroom – which is where the Cullens are sitting. But the way that everyone is leaning together, it's so obvious. Whisper, whisper, whisper. I wonder what they think of these kids, filling in the outlander on all the 'dirt' about their family. Is that why Edward is hating me on first sight? Because he knows that along with all the stored up old jokes people have, the one thing they'll be most eager to show off to a new kid will be the local gossip? Maybe he shouldn't have drawn so much attention to himself to start with by saying I stink.

Mike is leaning toward me again and whispering. "Edward really is gay, you know."

I do my best to concentrate on my apple, but the juice is stinging my lip, and everything aches going down, and I can't help but glance at that distant table again. They're sitting together, but all looking away. Away from each other, away from the other students, just … away. They remind me of a flock of birds. Ravens. Perched on a pine bough, their large sharp beaks all pointing away from each other, yet still communicating, the way wild things do, by nearness and the inflection of their feathers. The image is so strong that for a moment I see the Raven Dancers at the Pow Wow my dad took me to, the summer I turned nine. Three men in heavy, painted, wooden beak masks, their bodies hidden by long, grass capes. Squatting and leaping on the impromptu stage. To the sound of rattles and flutes. And the drum.

"When Lauren Mallory asked him if he wanted to go out, he just said, 'You should respect yourself more.'"

The spell is broken, and the Cullens are just five extraordinarily and unfortunately beautiful humans. I look away, but not too soon to see that, even though he is staring into blank space, Edward is still scowling. Like he's looking for something and can't find it. Or listening. Is he trying to listen to what the kids are saying? Don't even try it, I think, your ears will be on fire for a week.