By the time lunch came around, I was exhausted. For the last few hours I had stopped worrying about vampires and spent all my energy on trying to keep up with my lessons and keep my eyes open.
The lack of sleep had finally caught up to me and I was dying for a caffeine hit. Unfortunately, the high school did not have coffee services for students so I had to settle for next best option: sugar.
"Woah, that's quite the interesting mix you have there," Jessica commented.
I looked down at my generous helping of cake, chocolate mousse, cookies and milk as well as some salted fries, before looking back at her with a questioning look. She didn't respond so I dug into my food.
A few people joined us, since we had both been let out early from our trigonometry class. A few faces were familiar but the rest I could guess based on character description.
"Hey guys, look who's joined us," Jessica gushed, gesturing towards me. All eyes were on me as Jessica introduced me to her friends. She had been friendly enough during trigonometry, so I decided to follow the original plot of the story and join her for lunch.
"Nice to meet you," I added, once Jessica had finished firing off names. I didn't think I'd have a hard time remembering who was who and while none of the people resembled their respective actors in any way, it was pretty easy to guess who each person was.
"How are you liking Forks so far?" Mike asked from beside me. I'm pretty sure Jessica had been saving the seat on her other side for him and he ignored it, moving his chair closer to mine as he had sat down.
"It's alright. Haven't been here long," I shrugged, not quite enjoying the way they all watched me like an exotic animal. I was pretty sure the table behind us had also turned to listen to me.
"I really like your accent. Where abouts are you from? You sound kinda British," Angela asked.
"I was living in England for the last 8 or so years of my life but I was born and raised in Germany," I explained. "But ethnically I'm half Sudanese half Ethiopian," I added, answering the silent question about my race.
"That's really cool. What's it like in Europe?" Eric joined.
"Alright. Rains a lot there too," I added, earning a few chuckles.
"What brings you over here then?" Jessica asked bluntly, clearly not too pleased with everyone's attention on me.
I looked at the curly haired girl, surprised that she didn't already know. I figured news of my tragic backstory had spread in such a small town. Maybe my foster parents had kept it tightly under wraps.
"My foster family. They live here and now I live with them," I answered simply. Clearly that wasn't the answer they were looking for, but most of them awkwardly looked away.
The awkward air didn't last for long though, because the cafeteria door burst open dramatically and, as if straight out of a movie scene, a slight hush fell over the entire cafeteria. Jessica buzzed with excitement and I didn't need to turn around to know who had entered.
I felt the nerves from earlier return and my stomach drop with dread and anticipation. Five unearthly beautiful, unnaturally graceful vampires glided in, each leaving a trail of dazzled teens in their wake.
Much like Carlisle and Esme, they had this air that was both enchanting and terrifying about them that no movie actors could capture. Seeing them, especially in such a large group, left me feeling transfixed, which was even more terrifying.
Ripping my eyes off them, I looked down at my plate, the sight of my food making my stomach turn. I had to take a couple of breaths to myself to avoid vomiting.
"Those are the Cullens, the new kids before you," Jessica began. I could barely hear her over my spiralling thoughts. I suddenly realised I wasn't too far from a mind reader and if he got a whiff of my thoughts, I was as good as dead.
Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.
The moment I tried to not think about vampires was the moment I couldn't not think about vampires. I begrudgingly glanced at the table of vampires, to see if my fate was sealed, but was pleasantly surprised.
The Cullens seemed occupied with each other, completely unaware of my plight. They were all conversing lightly with each other, their bodies the perfect image of relaxed (kind of) and Edward was tearing a chunk of bread into tiny pieces, seemingly not paying me or my thoughts about vampires any mind.
Another thought occurred to me. What if Edward couldn't read my mind? It seemed like I took Bella's position as the new kid in Forks, so maybe I inherited her gift too?
My body seemed to relax a little with this idea and I managed to tune back into the conversation, catching the tail end of Jessica's rant.
"They're all dating each other too, which is weird."
"They're not actually related Jess," Angela reprimanded.
"Still weird," Mike grumbled. "I don't get the hype. They're all so creepy,"
"Anyways, they're all adopted, except the twins, they're foster kids. Mrs Cullen took them in when they were all young. I think it's because she can't have kids or something,"
"So? That doesn't make it any less noble. For her to open up her home to so many kids, that's really kind of her," I snapped. "I'm also a foster kid too and it's pretty fucking insensitive to say that, much less in my presence,"
The lack of sleep as well as my roller coaster of my emotions left me feeling exhausted, which meant that I was getting pretty overwhelmed and annoyed. I was sure Jessica didn't actually harbour bad intentions and just liked gossiping for the sake of it, but hopefully it also meant she'd stop saying awful things about people.
She cleared her throat awkwardly, before Lauren suddenly changed the conversation.
"So why are you in foster care anyways. Where's your real family?"
Now her, I was 100% sure had bad intentions and wanted to humiliate me for what I did to her friend.
But I was not easily embarrassed. Sharing is caring and if she chose to make me uncomfortable, I would make everyone feel it with me.
"They all died," I answered. She just blinked at me, probably not expecting that answer and so I continued, "Every single member of my direct family died in a freak house fire. So my mum died, my dad died, my two sisters died, my brother died and our two cats also died,"
She finally looked away, clearly embarrassed.
"You can imagine how busy the funeral was. And expensive. None of them had life insurance so all the funeral processions had to be sorted and paid for up front. Mostly by me too, so what little inheritance I got essentially went to financing the funerals. I don't have much extended family you see, they're all estranged because of a massive fall out a few years ago, so I had to deal with the brunt of it all," I continued, taking a huge bite out of my cookie as I finished my little trauma dump.
I managed to eat another entire cookie before someone finally broke the heavy silence that settled after my little spiel.
"Amani, I'm so sorry you had to go through that by yourself. No one should have to deal with all of that alone," Angela offered. I could tell she was genuine and I gave her a small smile, appreciating her words of comfort.
"Thanks Ang." She smiled back and a few beats passed before everyone began talking again, mostly to each other and not me.
I didn't mind as I turned my attention back to the Cullens to test my hypothesis.
Vampire! You're a vampire and I know it!
No reaction.
I'm going to tell everyone you're all vampires. I'm going to scream right now unless you stop me!
Still no reaction.
They all looked like something out of a teen fashion magazine, all posed carefully to look like the epitome of effortless beauty.
It seemed all my staring didn't go unnoticed as Alice briefly glanced up at me from where she was sharing earphones with Jasper. She appeared slightly curious, before she froze and her eyes glazed over.
It took me a second to realised she must have slipped into a vision. Jasper straightened up beside her, giving me a quick glare before covering Alice from my view.
Emmett and Rose seemed unbothered while Edward stared at Alice, before turning his hard gaze onto me. It was difficult to decipher the exact look he gave me, but it was a hostile look and he appeared angry and frustrated.
It confirmed that he couldn't read my mind, which eased my nerves, but I was also curious as to what Alice saw. Edward broke off from our staring contest and appeared to be in a heated but quiet argument with Alice. Rose seemed to get involved and judging by the harsh glare thrown my way by Rose, my uneasiness quickly returned.
I had a bad feeling I was somehow involved and I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.
I looked away from them, cursing under my breath.
It seemed my life here wouldn't be easy.