Luminosity Read online

  Everyone wanted to know how I liked Forks. I told them honestly that it was good to get more time with my dad, that the rain took some getting used to, and that everyone I had met was very helpful and polite. They were pleased with this assessment, especially the part where the rain comment gave them a hook into the world's most usual conversation topic. While Jessica and several of the others at the table traded half-remembered fragments of unreliable meteorological knowledge, I looked around the room where I'd be taking my midday meals for the next several months. That's when I saw them.

  "They" were simultaneously completely unalike and obviously a group. They all sat at one table, but no two looked similar at a glance. There were three boys and two girls. One of the boys was the approximate size, shape, and menace of a bear; he looked like he was planning to go to college on a weightlifting scholarship, or like he'd done it a few years ago and was only sitting in a high school cafeteria for kicks. His dark curls contrasted with the bright honey mop on his neighbor, a lean, muscular, and vaguely leonine boy. The last boy was wiry, and looked younger than the other two, more like an actual high school student than a professional athlete. His hair was untidily bronze in the light, reddish-brown in less flattering shadow.

  The two girls looked as opposite as could be while still both being white, female, and able-bodied. The tall one could have been a statue of Aphrodite with gold leaf caked onto her long, styled hair. She didn't look college-bound so much as Hollywood-bound, or maybe Paris - she'd do well anywhere that being decorative was a job skill. The other girl was littler and spindlier than Jessica. Her black hair was short, pointed away from her head in all directions, and gave her a pixie look.

  But apart from the variations in size and hair color, they were all alike. They were paler than me, pale like marble, or ice - all just the same shade. And their faces were all the same. I had a momentary impression that they'd been drawn by a cartoonist who only knew how to sketch a single sort of face, but that wasn't right: they would be recognizeable by face alone - but it would be hard. Not because they had anything that registered as family resemblance; they didn't. Rather, because the easiest thing to think about when looking at any of those five faces was something along the lines of "Pretty!". It occluded the individual character of the features (a sharp chin on the pixie, a few faint scars on the lion). They were too stunning, to the point where it took me a second look to notice that each had dark circles under their eyes, as though they were all very tired.

  The pixie got up and moved like a gymnast towards the trash can, where she discarded an unopened soda and an equally unmolested apple. None of the five were eating, now that it occurred to me to look.

  The conversation among my table-mates about the weather lulled, and I took the opportunity to ask, "Who are they?"

  Jessica looked where I was looking, and then the youngest-looking boy made eye contact with her for just a moment - then, his black eyes flicked over to me, and then they went back to staring at nothing in particular. Jessica giggled, embarrassed, and told me, "That's Edward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife."

  The younger boy was disintegrating a bagel as she said this, picking it to bits; I didn't see any of it making its way to his mouth. "Which ones did you say were the Cullens?" I asked, tempted to make a remark about the pretty! but restrained by the impression that it would be rude. "They don't look related," I said instead.

  "Oh, they're not," Jessica informed me. "Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are brother and sister, twins - the blondes - and they're foster children. And they're all together - Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean."

  "Foster children? How old are they?"

  "Jasper and Rosalie are both eighteen," said Jessica, "but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt or something like that."

  "That's nice of Dr. and Mrs. Cullen to take all of them in like that," I observed.

  "I guess so," said Jessica, but she sounded disapproving, like she didn't care for the doctor or his wife. "I think that Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, though," she went on. I noted - mentally only - that Jessica was not, until further evidence accumulated, the person to trust with any personal information I might want to confide.

  I kept stealing glances at the lovely family; it was hard not to, even when all they did was stare at the walls, mutilate food without eating it, and sit. "Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked, expecting the answer to be yes simply because everyone in Forks had always lived in Forks - but these people, if I had noticed them, I would have remembered, and it was such a small town...

  "No," said Jessica, sounding like she expected the Cullens and Hales to seem un-Forks-like even to a newcomer. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."

  In a city, two years' residency didn't mean "newcomer" anymore, but in Forks, it did - so that meant I wasn't the only one. That was comforting, in a way; I'd found the attention useful, but I had no reason to expect anyone else new to move to Forks until I graduated from high school, and it would be convenient not to have to bear all of the scrutiny allotted to Forks's novelty. And it was unsettling, in another way, because they were sitting with each other and no one else, and Jessica seemed a fairly typical student and didn't care for the family. That didn't bode well for my eventual integration, although I seemed to have gotten a good reception so far. Perhaps it was the Cullens' and Hales' own choice to set themselves apart and that was all I was seeing.

  I looked back at their table one more time, and the younger boy looked at me again. He was so beautiful it was distracting, but as far as I could tell despite that, he looked... expectant? Frustrated, maybe? Something he'd wanted or thought likely wasn't happening. "Which one," I asked Jessica, pulling my eyes away from him and making polite eye contact with her, "is the boy with the reddish brown hair?"

  "That's Edward," she labeled him (and now I had identifications for all five: Emmett the bear, Jasper the lion, Rosalie the Aphrodite, Alice the pixie, and Edward, the one who expected something to happen with or to or near me that wasn't). "He's gorgeous, of course," Jessica went on, "but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She made a sniffing noise, and I had a mental image of her flinging herself at him only to receive some genteel but firm rejection.

  The image was amusing on one level, but sad, and so I chewed on my lip to avoid smiling. Then I looked at Edward again; my eyes just drifted there naturally, as though he were a bright red object on a background of gray or the only moving item in a still visual field. If I hadn't been right in the middle of talking to Jessica, I would have pulled out my notebook and written on my to-hack list, Learn to quit staring at pretty people. He wasn't looking my way anymore, though. A few minutes later the four of them remaining at the table since pixie-Alice's departure got up and left. Even Emmett-the-bear was coordinated and precise when he moved; watching the group walk together was eerie.

  I risked lateness to my next class, Biology II, in order to linger with Jessica and her friends, hear their names a few more times, and - it turned out - get an escort to the correct building from Angela, who kindly reminded me what she was called en route after discovering that I was bound for the same class as she. The class was held in a room dominated by two-person black-topped lab tables like those in science rooms everywhere. Unluckily for me, Angela already had a lab partner. There was one unassigned student in the room, though, towards whom the teacher obligingly brought me. Sitting next to the empty chair that was to be my home in Biology for the rest of the school year was Edward Cullen.

  * * *

  I walked towards the empty chair. This was going to be awkward until I cured my tendency to stare at him every fifteen seconds. I hoped that the class would be on something new and unfamiliar that would be easy to attend to.
/>   As I approached, he looked at me. Not an expectant, puzzled look like in the cafeteria. He looked enraged, and he looked it at me. I automatically flinched away from the threatening gaze and promptly tripped over a book in the aisle. Barely catching myself on my new lab table, I regained my footing, and gingerly sat in my chair. I was scared out of my wits - enraged people were dangerous, might hurt me, I didn't have even a clue what provoked him or how to stop doing it and calm him down so he wouldn't snap and do me harm. There were eighteen students in the class besides us, plus the teacher - surely if Jessica hadn't thought to mention any rumors of violent scandal, he was at least controlled enough to avoid exploding in front of numerous witnesses. Until I figured out what was wrong with him, I just needed to stick to groups when he was around, that was all. I tried to control my trembling as I resettled myself in my seat.

  The class was on cellular anatomy. I'd covered it already, and the teacher's presentation style wasn't enthralling enough to hold my attention with a terrifying distraction just to my left.

  Edward hadn't looked at me like that in the cafeteria, and no one else was reacting to me the same way. I hadn't spoken a word to him - could he be offended that I hadn't introduced myself? Was there some cue to do so that I'd missed? Did I smell weird? I tilted my head to bring a lock of hair near my nose; it smelled like my shampoo, sort of fruity, quite clean. Was he allergic to fake strawberry scent?

  I peeked, hoping for more clues. He was holding himself absolutely rigid - if he was breathing, I couldn't tell - and up close, without his older brothers next to him, he didn't look so young and slight at all.

  He glared at me again, his black eyes full of unadulterated hate. I scooted my chair an inch away. If he could have disintegrated me into my consitutent atoms with a stare he'd have done it. I made up my mind to try to change classes - or at least lab partners. I looked at the girl who shared Angela's table and wondered if she'd take a bribe to accept Edward Cullen as her new neighbor. Or were the partners assigned? Would I need to convince the teacher? Should I offer to clean glassware -?

  The bell rang and I almost jumped out of my skin. I wanted to run home with a notebook and write the fear and confusion away and make the back of my neck stop crawling. Edward got to his feet, facing away from me - he was tall - and was first out of the room.

  I stayed put for a moment. I wanted to collect myself, and I wanted to give him a good head start to whatever not-near-me place he was headed for. I inhaled deeply, held my breath for a moment, and then let it out. I tried to call up my mood zapping routine, but I didn't have enough information to really believe that I oughtn't be afraid. There was probably no genuine danger, but there could be, and part of my brain wanted to keep the fear in case it was importantly motivating later in a high-speed chase across campus. Spooked I would remain until, one way or another, the hazard was moot.

  "Aren't you Isabella Swan?" asked a boy's voice.

  I looked up. The speaker was marvelously nonthreatening, at least as far as I could tell (swell, I thought, am I going to suspect all my classmates are axe murderers now? This boy is no more or less likely to attack me than he would have been if I'd met him in Government this morning, and then I felt quite safe and I was right to feel that way, so I should feel safe about him now. My emotions grudgingly obeyed this logic.) The speaker was a marvelously nonthreatening, cute, blond boy, his hair coated in product and coaxed into rows of little spikes. He was smiling at me, friendly, not infuriated or filled with loathing.

  "Yes," I said for the tenth time that day, "but I prefer Bella." I smiled back at him.

  "I'm Mike," he said.

  "Hi, Mike. It's nice to meet you."

  "Do you need help finding your next class?" he asked eagerly.

  "It's gym," I said, nodding and getting to my feet with a little help from the lab table.

  "That's my next class too!" He seemed thrilled about it, easily made happy by the small coincidence. I tried to soak his glee up and cheer myself. Mike talked all the way to the gym building, which was easy on me. Apparently he'd lived in California until he was ten and considered this a reason to commiserate with me about sunshine's local scarcity. He had noticed me in English too, but hadn't had a chance to introduce himself because Eric had beaten him to it.

  My relaxed role of listening to Mike's pleasantries came to an abrupt end as we entered gym class and he said, "So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen him act like that."

  "I have absolutely no idea what might have happened to provoke him," I said at once, trying to sound categorical but not like I'd been coached by a lawyer. "I never spoke to him."

  "He's a weird guy," Mike told me, hanging back instead of veering off to the boys' locker room. "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you."

  The sentiment about conversation was nice... the word "lucky" set off a little alarm bell. It wouldn't do to be entangled in a more than friendly way immediately after moving to Forks. I smiled at Mike and walked into the girls' locker room. The gym teacher found me a uniform, but didn't make me participate in the day's activity, which was volleyball - a good thing, as I bruised very easily and didn't want to walk around all week with black and blue forearms. Or, almost as likely with my brand of grace, veer into one of the posts holding up the net and wind up sprawled on the floor bleeding.

  * * *

  After gym was over, I was done for the day. I made sure I'd gotten all of my little paper slips signed by the relevant teachers, and then headed for the front office to turn them in. It was cold outside, and I rushed into the colorful little building. The door had shut behind me before I realized that in addition to the secretary I'd met that morning, the office also contained Edward Cullen. My luck was such that he didn't notice, or ignored, my entrance; I moved near the wall, waiting for him to finish his business and free up the receptionist. They appeared to be arguing. A few sentences later, I realized he was trying to get her to move him out of our biology class to some other class, any other class. He had an oddly smooth voice - I wondered if he always talked like that or if he was just trying to convince the secretary by turning up the charm. I wondered, crazily, if he sang.

  Between the timing and Mike's evaluation of Edward's hostile behavior, it seemed impossible that the attempt at transfer didn't have something to do with me. But then - what did I want? I wanted never to be looked at that way again. Good riddance if he wanted another class, good luck to him.

  The door opened again, letting a waft of frigid air into the office. A girl ducked inside, dropped a note into a wire basket on the counter, and slipped out again. And as the door shut behind her, Edward turned around slowly and stared at me with hateful eyes. "Never mind," he said curtly to the receptionist. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." And then he disappeared out into the cold.

  "How did your first day go, dear?" the receptionist asked kindly. She hadn't seen Edward's expression and apparently couldn't tell I was shaking in my boots.

  I considered lying, considered telling the whole truth, and finally said, "I met a lot of nice people."

  I stalled in the office after I'd turned in my paperwork on the pretense of re-lacing my boots. If Edward wanted so badly to avoid me I wasn't going to give him any trouble. By the time I arrived at my truck, the parking lot was almost deserted. I drove home, resentful and confused.

  By the time I got done with it, my notebook was going to regret the day its component trees had sprouted.

  Good Things, read my notebook. Eric, Jessica, Angela, Jessica's other friends, and Mike are all friendly. Classwork looks easy (poss. exception trig (work with Jessica? (is she any good at math?)), def. exception gym (break a toe or something? look up attendance rules (cut as many of the worst days as possible) check up on provisions for alternate requirement fulfillment (is this one of those schools where you can just write an essay on the history of soccer??))).

  Things To Fix, said the next section.
What is Edward's DEAL? See Exceptions re: classwork above. Jessica poss. untrustworthy w/ personal info. Mike too friendly too soon.

  I looked at the first Thing To Fix. I looked at it some more. I had no idea. My brain generated hypotheses, but none of them were plausible enough to be worth having thought of, let alone following up on. Edward was not an experimental robot programmed to make scary faces at girls from Phoenix when they got within ten feet of him. Edward was not a rabid anarchist who thought police officers and their families all deserved to die. Edward did not believe that he could stare holes through my skull and thereby learn more about the brain and earn higher marks in Biology.

  That didn't tell me what his deal was, but I decided that I didn't have a way to make progress on that question at the moment. And he hadn't gotten out of the biology class, either. I drew a little arrow towards "What is Edward's DEAL?, and at the other end of the arrow I wrote "Discuss issue with bio teacher, request lab partner change." If Edward had found every other science section full, I'd surely find the same thing, but that didn't mean I had to sit right next to him. And if "he looked at me scarily" wasn't moving to the teacher, I could say instead that I was new, didn't know all the class procedures, and would rather have a lab partner who was more willing to spend time bringing me up to speed on things like lab report formatting. So I wouldn't have to bother the teacher with too many questions, of course.

  I moved on. Talk to Jessica about trig, I wrote. Talk to gym coach about how I probably have an inner ear problem and that's so a medical excuse and make vague insinuations about lawsuits or something if I crack my head open and BEG "forget" my uniform a lot, and find some non-sports chore the coach is responsible for and offer to help with that to make up for it. Maybe cleaning gym equipment or doing paperwork or something? Or come up with less risky alternatives?

  Don't write thoughts in notebooks around Jessica unless plausibly taking class notes. Talk to her only about non-private things.