Chapter Text
Forks, Washington was a pretty small town. It had just over three thousand permanent residents; the "downtown" contained a gas station, a sad little movie theater, and a handful of mom-and-pops. Its high school had 358 students, plus 25 teachers and 18 miscellaneous staff members, for a total of 401 people in the building on any given school day, minus whatever fractions were feeling sick or lazy or out on a hunting trip. Towns that small tend to have a pretty strong reaction to newcomers, since they don't often get any. I arrived in the middle of the first semester expecting some stares.
On the day I walked through the murky glass doors of Forks High, I felt about 401 pairs of eyes land right on me.
I tried to ignore the attention, making my way to the office to retrieve my schedule. The office was small, its carpet a hideous olive-green, its walls sunny yellow plaster. When I opened the door, the faux-distinguished faux-blonde behind the faux-wood desk immediately stared at me. She had the eyes of a scavenger. "Edward Masen?" she said, with an expression that disgraced the good name of the word "leer".
I smiled at her, trying not to look too creeped out. Not for the first time, I cursed whatever evil fairy had crashed my christening and made me attractive to middle-aged women. "Yes. I'm here for my schedule?"
"Well, naturally." She started rummaging through her desk. "So, what brings you to our little town?"
"My mom's finally doing well enough to take me in again. And I didn't want to spend another minute in Dad's house."
She paused, then decided to laugh as if I had just told a very funny joke. "Well, anyway, here you go. Map on the back, and all."
I took the schedule and looked it over. "Thanks."
"Don't be a stranger, now."
She actually winked.
I turned tail and fled.
I made a clean escape into the entrance hallway. Just as I was thanking my gods, I was waylaid by a brutally perky dark-haired creature who held out her hand to me with a Listerine-bright smile. "Hi! I'm Jessica Stanley. You're Edward Masen, right?"
Her hair was impeccable behind a purple band. Her outfit had a calculated ratio of Bedazzled sparkle to halter-top sexuality to messenger-bag professionalism. This girl was dangerous. I shook her hand with an attempt at a smile. "Hi. Edward, yes, but-"
She giggled. "Great! You moved here from Phoenix, right? It must be so weird for you, going from the land of sun and sand to Damp Hellhole, Middle of Nowhere. "
"I mean, it's not-"
She barreled on, an unassailable steam engine of perk. "But Forks isn't so bad, really! Do you want me to show you around and all? I know pretty much everybody around here, I'll introduce you to the body public. Come on!"
She set off at a determined power-walk, rattling off the five-dollar tour as she went. I followed helplessly in her glittery-sneakered wake.
Jessica's five-dollar tour turned out to focus a bit less on historic Room 302, home of the AB Calculus class, and a bit more on "that's Ricky Serrano, he's a real peach if you don't mind chest-thumping homophobia," and "Lauren Mallory, who once shoved a pickle somewhere that should not be named and nobody will ever let her forget it," and useful notes in that vein. To be fair, they actually were pretty useful. I got a good roadmap of the social structures around Forks High and a heads-up on who to avoid. And who not to trust with any information I didn't mind being cocktail party fodder forevermore, namely Jessica herself. (I got the definite feeling she was attracted to me, but from what she'd told me about her not-quite-boyfriend Mike it didn't seem like that'd stop her.)
After a comprehensive meet-and-greet, Jessica let me extricate myself and get to Spanish class. Like every Spanish classroom in the continental United States, the walls were covered in vaguely Spanish-themed decorations, such as maps of Spain and posters of matadors and miscellaneous fruit Señor MacDonald could point to and ask people to name en español . The good Señor MacDonald was as Anglo as the day is long, but to his credit, he didn't have pretensions to fluency. I told everyone my name, where I was from, and un dato interesante about myself ("Me gusta mucho el Jello azul," which got a scattered chuckle from the class). That out of the way, we started on mind-numbing vocab work.
The rest of my morning classes continued in much the same way. The only class of note was Bio, in which the class was doing an interesting-looking blood typing lab. I couldn't participate, because I hadn't gotten a parental signature on the form I hadn't received last week, when I lived in Arizona. Instead, I Crushed Candy at the back of the class, rolled my eyes at the XKCD printouts lining the walls, and waited for lunch.
After bio, I was immediately shanghaied by Jessica, who was waiting outside the door of the class. (Did she have a copy of my schedule? What the hell?) "Hey Edward! How was class?" she chirped, an arm slung over my shoulders to prevent escape.
"Uneventful?" I tried.
She tittered. "Well, that's how it goes. C'mon, I'm going to introduce you to more folks, we barely got through half of everybody this morning."
"Does the school pay you for this?"
She grinned. "No, but they should. Come on, we don't have all day."
She dragged me down the hallway. Now that she had her hooks in me, she wasn't so determined not to let me get a word in edgewise anymore. And she seemed to think I was funny, which was nice. She introduced me to another few dozen people before I finally mustered an objection.
"Jessica, this is really helpful and all, but I'd kind of like to eat today. Maybe you can show me around some more after I have some lunch?"
She pouted. "Oh, fine. Cafeteria's this way, eat and then we can move on. Ooh, actually, when we get there I have to introduce you to Mike. Then you can eat."
"Fair deal."
I followed her to the lunch room, a crowded little box in the center of the school. She looked over the crowd (accompanied, in my head, by Terminator scanning noises) and homed in on a table containing Lauren, Angela, Tyler, Ben, and a boy I hadn't met. He was blonde, and smallish, and cute in a soft, bland sort of way.
"Hey, all!" Jessica bubbled. "Mike, this is the fabled Edward Masen! Edward, this is Mike Newton, my best friend since literally forever."
I smiled politely and extended a hand. Mike shook it hesitantly. Slower than seemed reasonable, really. His hand was really warm and kind of damp. It was a little bit shaky, too. And he was looking at me like-
Ah, shit.
I should probably explain. All my life, I'd had a kind of intuition for certain things. I could always tell when people were looking at me. I could read people's faces really well – scary well, by most accounts. Sometimes I could practically hear what people were thinking, especially if I concentrated.
Most relevant, though? In my seventeen years on this earth, my gaydar had never, ever been wrong, and right now it was screaming "Mike Newton wants your dick!"
I wasn't sure how my low-budget psychic powers worked , but I'd learned to trust them when they spoke up. But in this case, they were not being helpful. Like, okay, I'm bi. And Mike was pretty. And hell, his not-quite-girlfriend was pretty and interested in me too, and that was the kind of situation that could lead to distractingly interesting outcomes. But my time in the Paradise Valley High marching band didn't mean I was one of those "sexually active band geeks" you hear about. The farthest I'd ever gone was an intensely awkward handjob with the son of somebody my Dad knew at a dinner party, and the less said about that the better. I was socially inept and virginal and totally unequipped to handle a social mess of this caliber.
Mike extracted his hand hurriedly after a moment. "N-nice to meet you, man. We should hang out? Some time? D'you like football?"
"Uh... not so much. Anyway, I should... go. Eat. Probably." A masterful deflection. Ten points to Masen.
Jessica frowned. "Aren't you going to eat with us?"
"I can't stand chewing sounds, sorry. Best all around if I eat alone."
"Well, alright. Just circle back around when you're done, alright? Better yet, just pick a table I can see from here so I can swoop down and get you the second you stop eating."
I snorted. "Don't you need food too?"
"Of course not, Edward," she chided. "A true lady needs nothing but choice gossip and a spoonful of aspartame to get through her day. Now go eat. I'll be waiting. "
So I went. The lunchroom wasn't too big, but some tables were empty – it seemed that not everyone ate in the cafeteria, or perhaps the seating capacity was just higher than 300-something. I set down my possessions at a slightly sticky folding table, spent a few seconds wiping it down (Purell being a gift from the gods) and turned my attention to my lunch. The apple was slightly bruised and unpleasantly mealy, but still edible. The sandwich was dry and full of cheap mustard, which should rightly be a contradiction in terms. The pretty girl in the seat opposite was staring at me with her mouth slightly open, and her irises were bright fucking red.
I jerked backwards and stifled a manly shriek. After manually resetting my breathing, I pointed at her. "You," I gasped, "were not. There. Sitting there."
"You didn't see me," she said.
"No, you weren't there. I know when people are looking at me, and you were not there. Are you a ninja?"
"No."
I waited for further input. It was not forthcoming. She just kept staring.
I looked to the table of people who acted like humans for guidance. Jessica looked ecstatic (was there some delicious gossip to be mined from this? Weird Girl Stares at New Kid, More at 11?), Lauren looked murderous (did she want in my pants too?), Mike looked bemused (not up on the latest scuttlebutt, I guess), and Angela and Eric and Ben looked like they were eating food. I was apparently pretty much on my own when it came to figuring this out.
"So, uh. What's your name?"
She sighed. "I'm Bella. Isabella Cullen. You're not going to let me just stare at you silently for the rest of your life, are you."
"...No. I'm Edward Masen, by the way," I offered.
She nodded. "Edward's a good name. Aesthetically neat. You kept your dad's surname?"
"...Yes? How did you know that? Any part of that?"
Pause. "I know your mom. We're in the same neighborhood. She goes by Segel."
"My mother lives in the forest."
"Yes," she said patiently. "We live in the same neighborhood of the forest."
"Does the forest have neighborhoods?" I wondered.
She laughed. (It sounded very nice. Her voice was nice. Sort of... crystalline?) "I don't know that it needs them. My parents and I plus Liz makes up the total population."
" Liz? "
"Liz. I like nicknames, Ned."
"No."
She grinned. "Is there a problem, Ned?"
"I am not a Ned. I am an Edward. I'm not an Ed, either, in case you were wondering. Edward."
"Ned, please try to be mature about this. Sometimes people, like me, will give you nicknames, and there is precisely jack shit you can do about it. You are Ned now and forevermore." She nodded definitively.
I sighed. "Why are we being friends now, again? Not that I mind, you seem pretty cool, but you just kind of... inserted yourself. Into my table and also apparently my life."
She paused. "I know your mom, so I decided to befriend you."
"By teleporting to my table, staring at me without blinking for a minute and a half, then assigning me a weird nickname?"
Further pausing. "Yes."
She was a terrible liar. Probably even to people who didn't have lie detection. "So, the real reason isn't going to show up any time soon," I muttered through a bite of sandwich.
Offhandedly, she added, "Plus, you're really pretty."
Fortunately, my blushing went unnoticed amidst the ensuing choking fit.