This chapter would correspond to "First sight." It takes place on Tuesday, January 18, 2005, just like the Prologue, and progresses until lunch.

Translation's Note: This fanfiction has been translated from Spanish with the help of Google's tool. If you want to read more, click on my fics in Spanish and use the English translation function of the web browser.

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CHAPTER 2:
Flustered

The next morning, when the dawn dispelled my fears and I dared to look out, all I could see through the window was a dense fog and I felt claustrophobia taking hold of me again.

Here you could never see the open sky, it seemed like a cage.

Breakfast with Charlie was silent. He wished me luck at school and I thanked him, even though I knew his hopes were in vain.

Good luck used to elude me.

Charlie left first, straight to the police station, which was his wife and family. I examined the new kitchen closely after he left, still sitting in one of the chairs he had bought, next to a matching folding garden table.

The kitchen was still as small as I remembered it, but it had gotten rid of the dark wood paneling on the walls and the stained linoleum on the floor and replaced it with white and yellow geometric tiles that made the light glint in repeating sunburst patterns. It looked more like something out of a DIY catalogue than something actually used for cooking.

I smiled, getting a little excited at the idea that Charlie had finally turned the page.

But it wasn't until I looked closely at the cupboards, painted a calm pale mustard colour, that my vain hopes were dashed. It was like those pictures where you see an image made up of meaningless colours and when you unfocus your eyes and cross your eyes, you glimpse what is hidden. They weren't new furniture , they were the same ones my mother had painted a horrible bright yellow eighteen years ago.

The kitchen looked exactly the way my mother would have wanted it to look if she had bothered to learn what kind of paint was right for wood, that pieces had to be sanded and cleaned before applying primer, or that the color had to be toned down, diluted with white primer, until your eyes didn't bleed at the sight of it.

Everything I had to learn to repaint my room in Phoenix.

I wandered around the house a bit after I finished my bowl of cereal. Just above the new fireplace, which didn't look like it was just for decoration, was a long row of framed photos. The first photo was from Charlie's wedding at the Port Angeles courthouse. Then the one taken of the three of us by a kind nurse at the hospital where I was born, followed by a succession of my school photos up to last year. Looking at them was very embarrassing. I had to convince Charlie to put them somewhere else, at least while I lived here.

It was impossible to stay in that house and not notice that Charlie had never really gotten over my mother leaving. It made me feel uneasy and eager to go out looking for fear, as if it really were haunted and a ghost, not one dressed in sheets and chains, but that of the marriage that could never be happy, was lurking behind the walls.

I didn't want to get to school too early, but I couldn't stay in the house any longer, so I put on my anorak, which was so thick it resembled one of those biohazard suits, and headed out into the drizzle.

It was still drizzling, but not enough to soak me as I returned the house key to the eaves after locking it up. The sound of my new rain boots was unnerving. I longed for the usual crunch of gravel as I walked through the yard of my house in Phoenix. I couldn't stop to admire the thing again as much as I wanted to, and I hurried to escape the damp mist that swirled over my head and clung to my hair beneath the hood. Inside the truck, at least, I was comfortable under cover.

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

The journey under the meager morning light and without Jacob's company exhausted me more than I expected, it was almost as if there was some creature lurking hidden among the branches in every stretch of trees that bordered the path.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I've traveled the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

I turned off the radio because it wasn't keeping me company, and even though I tried to convince myself that it was exactly the same route I had taken the day before, I couldn't calm down.

I finally parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading front office. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot. I stepped unwillingly out of the toasty truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges.

I took a deep breath before opening the door.

Inside it was brighter and warmer than I expected. The office was small: a waiting room with padded folding chairs, a rough orange-flecked carpet, news and awards posted haphazardly on the walls, and a large clock that ticked conspicuously. Plants grew everywhere in their plastic pots, just in case there wasn't enough greenery outside.

A long counter divided the room in two, with wire baskets of papers on the counter and brightly colored advertisements plastered across the front. Behind the counter were three desks. A plump redhead with glasses sat at one of them.

She was wearing a purple shirt, which immediately made me feel like I was overdressed.

The red-haired woman looked up.

"Can I help you with?"

"I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and immediately there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. I was expected. I had certainly been the subject of gossip. The daughter of the police chief's wayward ex-wife was finally coming home.

"Of course," she said pleased.

She searched through the precariously stacked documents until he found the ones he was looking for.

"I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school."

She brought several sheets of paper to the counter to show me. He went through all my classes and marked the best route to each one on the map, then handed me the attendance slip for each teacher to sign and return at the end of class. He gave me a smile and, like Charlie, told me he hoped I liked Forks. I gave him the most convincing smile possible before leaving the office.

When I returned to the truck I was surprised to see a motorcycle parked right in front, sheltered under the eaves of the building.

Out of the rain I guessed, frowning uneasily.

I had never been interested in motorbikes because, since I was a child, my unfortunate experiences with bicycles, inline scooters and skateboards had managed to ingrain a perpetual distrust of any similar means of transport. I couldn't understand how two wheels could remain vertical, no matter how many physics explained it.

And traffic accidents in Forks were a regular occurrence for Charlie. The long, wet stretches of highway twisting and turning through a continuous forest, piling up blind spots one after another, were a death trap year after year.

People tended to avoid those places, with all those big trucks carrying logs hidden between the curves. The exceptions to the rule were motorcycles, and Charlie had seen too many victims (mostly young people) dumped on the highway. Before I was ten, he made me promise him I would never ride a motorcycle. Even at that age, I didn't have to think twice about promising him that. Who would want to ride a motorcycle in Forks?

It would be like taking a bath at sixty an hour.

In Phoenix, on the other hand, Mom had tried to convince me that she would give me a scooter for my commute when I turned sixteen. But my precarious balance put us in a bind at the dealership and I decided to throw in the towel before making a fool of myself any more. Although, I had to admit that, with the Arizona heat and wide avenues, it could have been a nice experience.

The sight of that motorcycle chained to the gutter drainpipe, with its bright teal gas tank and white lines on its frame, parked just a foot away from my Chevy was even more stressful when I climbed into the cab and started the engine. I had to check three times that I was in reverse, even though the shifter seemed to be working like a charm with whatever trick Jacob had told me, so I wouldn't end up turning that idiot's bike, which had gotten too close to me, into a pancake of steel and tires.

The other students' cars were just starting to arrive as I pulled out of that corner of the parking lot. I followed them, joined the line of cars, and drove to the other side of the school. I was relieved to see that most of the cars were even older than mine, none of them ostentatious. In Phoenix, I lived in one of the few poor neighborhoods in the Paradise Valley district.

It was not uncommon to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student car park. Even so, I turned off the engine as soon as I parked in a free space so that the noise would not attract the attention of others.

I looked over the map in the truck, trying to memorize it in hopes of not having to refer to it all day. I put it in my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and took a deep breath.

I can do it I lied to myself without much conviction.

No one's going to bite me. Finally, I sighed and got out of the car.

I kept my face hidden under my hood and walked out onto the sidewalk crowded with young people. I was relieved to see that my plain black jacket was inconspicuous. Once past the cafeteria, building number three was easy to spot, with a large black "3" painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my breathing approach hyperventilation as I approached the door to classroom "C." To alleviate this, I held my breath and walked in behind two people wearing unisex-style raincoats.

The classroom was small.

The students in front of me were stopping at the entrance to hang their coats on hangers; there were several. I followed suit. They were two girls, one blonde with a pale complexion like porcelain and the other, also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be anything special here.

I handed the receipt to the teacher, a tall, bald man whose name tag on his desk identified him as Mr. Mason. He stared at me blankly at my name but didn't offer me any encouraging words, and I, of course, turned bright red. But at least he sent me to an empty desk at the back of the class without introducing me to the rest of my classmates. It was hard for them to look at me since I was sitting in the back row, but they managed to do so anyway. I kept my eyes glued to the reading list the teacher had given me. It was pretty basic: Brontë, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd read them all, which was convenient—and boring. I wondered if my mother would send me the folder of old classwork or if she'd think I was cheating on her. I reenacted our discussion as the teacher continued his rant.

When the almost nasal hum of the bell rang, a skinny kid with acne and greasy hair leaned over from a desk across the hall to talk to me.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?"

He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

"Bella," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.

"Where is your next class?" he asked.

I had to check it with the schedule I had in my backpack.

"Um, Government, with Jefferson , in building six."

There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.

" I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful "I'm Eric" he added.

I smiled tentatively.

"Thanks."

We gathered up our coats and walked out into the rain, which was coming down harder. I could have sworn that several people were following us close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't being overly paranoid, but I didn't look back to see how many people there were.

"So, this is a lot different than Phoenix , huh?" he asked.

"Very".

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered.

"Sunny," I told him.

"You don't look very tan."

"My mother is part albino."

He studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm.

We walked past the cafeteria on our way to the buildings on the south side, near the gym. Eric walked me to the door, even though I could see it perfectly.

"Well, good luck," he said as I touched the doorknob. "Maybe we'll meet some other class."

He looked hopeful. I gave him a noncommittal smile and walked inside. The rest of the morning passed in a similar fashion. My trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, whom I would have hated anyway for the subject he taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the class to introduce myself to my classmates. I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own boots as I walked back to my desk.

After two classes, I started to recognize several faces in every class. There was always someone with more courage than the others who would show up and ask me if I liked Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but I usually lied a lot. At least I didn't need the map.

A girl sat next to me in both Trigonometry and Spanish classes, and walked me to the cafeteria for lunch. She was very small, several inches shorter than my five-foot-six, but almost as tall as I was with her dark, wild mane of curls.

I couldn't remember her name, so I just smiled as she chattered on about teachers and classes. I didn't try to understand everything either.

We sat at the end of a long table with several of her friends whom she introduced me to. I forgot all of their names as soon as she said them. They seemed proud that I had the courage to talk to me. The boy from the English, Eric, greeted me from across the room.

And there she was, sitting in the dining room, trying to strike up a conversation with seven curious strangers, when I saw her for the first time.

She stood right in the middle of the cafeteria, with a half-finished tray of food and a thin, hardbound book, wide open and resting lazily on the edge of the table. She wasn't staring at me stupidly like most of the others in the room, so there was no danger: I could watch her without fear of meeting an overly interested pair of eyes. But it wasn't her resolute indifference that caught my attention.

She didn't look like any of the other students around her. Not just because her copper-colored skin stood out in the crowd around her, or because of her daring way of dressing, which sent shivers down my spine just seeing her in that outfit, in a yellow tank top with spaghetti straps and an almost too-exposed gray sports bra, which would have fit in one of the hot mornings of my classes in Phoenix, except for the black jeans that were worn and patched at the knees.

It must not have been healthy (or sensible) to have the leather jacket she had left hanging on the side of her chair left over. The heating was not making the temperature in the large dining room all that comfortable, and humidity crept in every time someone entered through the door leading outside, creating sudden draughts.

But that wasn't really the reason I couldn't look away.

I continued to stare at her because something didn't fit in the scene, something less superficial than her particular taste in fashion or her complexion, but I didn't know what it was. It reminded me of a Sesame Street game my mother used to entertain me with when I was four or five: One of these things is not like the others.

I watched her take a red apple from the tray, without even glancing at it, rub it against a black bandana that was tied tightly around her left wrist like a bracelet or a splint, and bite into it with her ivory-white teeth, so vehemently and forcefully that I was almost certain I would have heard the snap of her jaw closing from a distance, had we been completely alone, instead of surrounded by this murmur of white noise that muffled it.

I quickly looked around, noticing the other students who were standing around her at the tables next to her. They didn't pay her a second's attention and looked away when they crossed the center of the room, avoiding her without really focusing on her. As if she were a column or another piece of furniture.

Camouflaged in plain sight.

"Who is she?" I asked the girl from Spanish class, whose name I had momentarily forgotten.

"Hey, who are you talking about?" she exclaimed, slightly distracted, breaking away from the conversation she was having with the others. I was about to point childishly with a finger when she also seemed to show no signs of reacting to who I was referring to in the middle of the room. "Ah! This is Rouse… Abigail Rouse… or Rouge, I can never figure out how to pronounce it," she added with a restrained half-smile.

"She's very… pretty," I muttered, surprising myself by verbalizing that thought.

She had the proportions of a mature woman, with more defined and rounded feminine curves. In addition, solid muscles could be perceived in her bare, square shoulders. But since there was practically no one around her, she lacked a reference point for her real height. Her carefree pose, with her right ankle casually resting on the opposite knee, was not helpful either.

"Yeah, sure she is," my neighbor admitted—Jessica, I remembered her name, like two classmates I had in History class in Phoenix—"but don't say it out loud around Lauren." She nodded back at the ringleader of the group of girls who had gathered around me during lunch and widened her eyes, like a silent warning, before whispering, "She kind of has a grudge against him."

I discreetly compared the two feuding young women and wondered, with a sudden and predictable drop in self-esteem, how I would rank in a hypothetical beauty pageant at Forks High School. Lauren, with her long, silky, straight corn-colored hair cascading down like a waterfall, her big green eyes, and her nose as straight as an engineer's work with a square, seemed to have no rival among the other girls in the cafeteria. She was the center of attention like a brilliant fireworks display, and one smile from her earned her immediate adulation from all the boys.

While this Abigail didn't seem to have any interest in drawing attention to herself, despite having placed herself in the most prominent place in the dining room. She continued to attack the unpeeled apple with her teeth until it was practically reduced to the core, reading the paragraphs of her book leisurely, apparently not paying attention to her surroundings, as if she weren't surrounded by people. But that first impression faded when I realized what it was that didn't fit in the picture that was presented before my eyes. I stared at her without blinking and I noticed a cold sweat slowly dripping down my back.

"She seems older, is she in his last year?" I asked Jessica with difficulty after clearing an untimely lump that had formed in my throat, when I realized that my suspicions were correct.

Her eyes, a shade of blue I could barely make out as they were always moving beneath his thick lashes, moved from his left to his right, as they normally would when reading word by word at a fluid pace, but then changed direction without altering speed or jumping with a blink to the beginning of the line, as someone who was really absorbed in reading would do.

She hasn't read a single syllable since the beginning of lunch!

She kept glancing around her from the corner of her eyes, strategically positioned to take in the entire room, not out of any extravagant whim. I also made sure that she took advantage of her small gestures as she took bits of food from the tray to check her bare back, as if she were on the lookout for an imminent attack…

Why the hell is she doing that? I thought, bewildered.

This was behavior that could be expected from someone who was being terrorized by the school bullies. I clearly recognized their modus operandi, because on more than one occasion I had also hidden myself behind my books to ignore the stares of others. But none of the students bothered her and seemed to respect her personal space, unlike me on this, which was my first day. In fact, she had a half-smile on the corner of her lips as she glanced at the busy students, although anyone who noticed would think she was in a good mood because of something concerning the pages in front of her.

It didn't make sense, it was like there was something more… more sinister, that I was missing.

"No, she's in the same class as us, even though she's eighteen" exclaimed Jessica, bringing me out of my state of fear and bringing me back to the question I had just asked her. "Apparently she failed a term, I don't know if it was because she transferred or because she failed."

"Transfer? She's not coming from La Push?" I replied, intrigued, forcing myself to tear my eyes away from his well-choreographed charade back to our safe corner of the dining room.

Through some absurd prejudice I had tacitly assumed that he belonged to the reservation, whose memories I had limited to only First Beach and the Black and Clearwater families.

"She's Canadian," Lauren's slightly nasal voice came out, her face poking out as she noticed we'd stepped away from the conversation she was having. The way she'd said the demonym had sounded almost like a swearword. "Her mother was Chippewa and her father moved to Alaska because he worked at an oil refinery when she was just a kid. She's been living in Forks with that man since she was a freshman."

"What? Who?" I muttered, momentarily puzzled by the third party involved.

"Roth Burns," Jessica answered, making my head turn, pivoting like someone in a tennis match, and then she put her fingers in quotation marks. "His 'supposed' foster guardian. He is in his late twenties or early thirties, single, and living alone in a huge house on the outskirts of town, with no neighbors or witnesses to what they do."

Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically. But, if I was being honest, I had to admit that even in Phoenix, it would cause gossip.

I felt a surge of pity and relief. Pity that she was clearly not being welcomed into Lauren's group of friends. Relief that she wasn't the only newcomer to Forks, and certainly not the most interesting.

"Don't be so mean, Jessica!" the girl to Lauren's right scolded her. I think she had introduced herself as Jennifer earlier. "Her parents died and he was a trusted family friend. Besides, it's very generous of him to have given her shelter for all these years when he could have left her in the care of Toronto social services."

While they were having this conversation, I stole a glance over to where Abigail Rouse sat, partly touched that she was an orphan and partly because I still had a bit of morbid interest in her strange, shifty, watchful eyes. She had finished eating and was staring straight into our corner of the dining room, never straying from the faces of Jennifer and Jessica.

"I guess so," Jessica admitted reluctantly. "Although a friend of my mother's said she saw her having dinner with a man in Seattle who wasn't Mr. Burns, shortly after they came to Forks. Okay, she's of age now, but back then she must have been, what? Fifteen? Sixteen?" she continued ranting, oblivious to the way the woman in question was examining her.

Abigail's jaw contracted from side to side, and up and down even though she wasn't chewing, pursing her lips to keep from parting, but moving them in time with the words Jessica spoke.

No, it can't be! I muttered, thinking my paranoia was reaching absurd levels. My late maternal grandmother, Marie Higginbotham, made exactly the same gestures (without false teeth she was a sight to behold) when she tried to guess what my mother and I had said, the times when her hearing aid batteries ran out. Her eyelids opened a little more and she slightly changed her slouched posture, letting her ankle slide down until it touched the ground discreetly.

"Maybe she likes older, interesting men," Lauren said, giggling, which suddenly caught my attention. She stared at me for a few seconds before adding, "Her gym teacher, for one, keeps praising her in class."

"Ugh, how disgusting! I can't even imagine it!" Jennifer exclaimed, her whole body spasming. "Clapp looks like an orc from Lord of the Rings!"

Everyone but one other girl (the tallest of the group) and I laughed along at the joke. I'd seen all three movies with my mother, but I wasn't keen on making comparisons like that. Maybe... maybe being repulsive was the most important thing to female orcs, who knows. Maybe the more warts and scars the better. Lauren, Jennifer and the others continued to review the male faculty, speculating (hypothetically or not) who the Chippewa chick was most likely to be involved with. But I was far from shocked or disgusted by their comments, it was just background chatter, like the chirping of birds. I couldn't help but stare, mesmerized, at the expression on Abigail Rouse's face as she read the conversations from a distance.

Why are you smiling? I wondered, trying to understand why her lips were growing progressively wider with each insult. Her spotless white teeth briefly showed when the chatter took an unexpected turn, but her eyes were reduced to slits and did not convey any emotion of amusement. The gesture looked more like the grimace of a predator, a wolf, a lion or a hyena, than anything else:

"At least his tutor is smoking hot," Jessica observed, not mincing her words for a second. She was suddenly very aware of what she had just implied and her eyes widened before turning bright red.

Abigail Rouse faked a soft cough to hide a laugh at her predicament, though in the eruption of guffaws and tasteless jokes that came from Lauren's group, no one heard it. She left the book (which she clearly wasn't paying any attention to) open on the table and planted her elbows, no longer dissembling or modesty in order to maintain her appearance. She rubbed her bandana-bound wrist as if she were suffering from some rheumatic pain, but her demeanor gradually softened as she caught sight of Lauren laughing heartily.

When she opened her lashes a little wider and straightened her face in our direction, I noticed that she had genuine blue eyes. Not your typical blue, which like my skin tone depends on the place or the light that hits it and which in Forks turned almost a dull gray. They were a true cerulean blue, like the Phoenix sky on a scorching summer day, so vibrant and pure, that it caught me off guard when I recognized it.

To be translated…

Chippewa: A term used exclusively in the United States to refer to the Ojibwe Indians. In Canada and the rest of the world, Ojibwa is commonly used.

Roth Burns: is a play on words between its French names «Rôtit-les-Fleurs-Vivantes», abbreviated «Rott» and the English «Burns Living Flowers», abbreviated «Burns». In addition, the name «Roth», depending on its origin, can mean «Red», «Redhead», «Wood» or «Renown».