Lovingly Awkward
I walked into my sister’s room, looking up from my phone to see her staring out the window. “Is she here?” I asked with a slight interest.
“Yeah. She looks really awkward.” I walked over next to her to watch the police chief’s daughter talking to one of the boys from the Res. She looked like she was in pain, like a lot of pain. Her and Jasper would get along. I sat down in the beanbag placed in the corner of the room before pulling out my phone, snapping a picture of an unexpected Kennedy.
“I swear to GOD if you send that to Alice I will kill you myself. Delete that now I will not allow a photo of my hair like that to exist.” She says with over exaggerated anger.
“Dude, you have short curly hair, it looks the same everyday.” I said as I sent the photo to Alice. We always teased each other about our hair; she wears her curly hair short while mine is more wavy, hitting just below my shoulders.
“If you’re telling me my hair looks like this every day, I’m jumping off a cliff,” Kennedy replied, starting to get bored of the view outside the window.
“Can you imagine what the police chief is going to do if she brings a boy home? And I thought having a parent as a teacher was bad. At least we won’t come home to a History teacher loading a gun,” I snickered.
“Yeah, and can you imagine starting a new school in the middle of the year? That’s gotta suck.” Kennedy said. “It’s going to be an interesting one thats for sure.”
————
Getting out of the Cullens car the next day, Kennedy and I made our way to the new beat up pickup truck in the parking lot. Edward rolled his eyes, already annoyed about the new girl’s presence taking up everyone’s thoughts for the day.
“Hey Bella!” I said as I got closer to her truck. “Sorry to ambush you like this, we were going to introduce ourselves yesterday but didn’t have the time. We’re your neighbors, I’m Sophie and this is my sister Kennedy.” Kennedy stayed quiet, giving a polite wave.
“Nice to meet you guys. Are you twins?” Bella said, avoiding eye contact.
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be able to tell if Sophie didn’t act like she was glued to me all the time.” Kennedy explained. “Fraternal, not identical. You know the drill.”
“Yeah.” Bella chuckled. She didn’t elaborate, and an awkward silence followed.
The bell rang, and Sophie cleared her throat. “Well, you’ll find the office building to your left. If you need anything else don’t hesitate to ask one of us! Neighbors gotta look out for each other.” We turned to walk into the school as Bella nodded to us, heading in the opposite direction. Jasper and Alice quickly caught up to us, walking us to our shared first class.
Throughout the day, I probably learned more about Bella from the student body gossip than I did in our actual conversation with the girl; Mike Newton definitely took a special interest, god bless that poor girl.
When the time lunch rolled around, Bella seemed to have made some friends. She sat among Jessica and Angela. Kennedy and I joining our usual table with the Cullens. Sitting down with our food we noticed Edward in some sort of daze.
“Well if you keep that look up, you’ll look just like Jasper!” I exclaimed, stealing an apple from Jasper’s tray. Not like he was going to eat it.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” The normally-in-pain vampire said beside me. I shrugged my shoulders in response.
“The new girl is in everyone's heads today--well, everyone’s excluding her own,” Edward said, covering his face with his hands.
“He can’t read Bella’s thoughts,” Alice explained.
“Maybe she just doesn’t have any,” Kennedy deadpanned, causing Sophie to choke on her water.
“Don’t be stupid,” Rose piped up into the conversation. “So you can’t hear her thoughts? Big deal, I thought you didn’t like hearing them anyway.” She said, annoyed at Edward’s newfound interest.
“I’m not too sure,” Kennedy started, “There doesn’t look like there’s a lot going on in that girl’s head.”
“So, give us the tea. What’s Jessica blabbing on about?” I asked, bored of the current “situation”. Kennedy and I do this a lot, using Edward’s abilities to get the tea on the student gossip. He pretends to hate it, but we know he loves it just because it makes the days interesting.
Edward glanced over to the others, listening. At some point Bella made eye contact with him, but quickly looked away.
“Mainly Emmet and Rose’s weird incest relationship.” Edward chuckled, earning a harsh glare from Rose while Emmet laughed and slung his arm around his wife.
The group continued eating, well, at least Kennedy and I did. We packed a small lunch for ourselves every day, which was mostly gone within the first few classes. When lunch actually rolled around it was spent sneaking food off the Cullen’s trays, trying to make them look as human as the rest of us.
Eventually, the bell rang yet again, signaling it was time for Kennedy and I’s least favorite class, Biology. Edward was in it too and he was passing with flying colors, obviously. However, he chose to sit as far away from us as possible so we wouldn’t bug him for answers on every assignment, something about general education being important and we need to do it ourselves.
As we walked in we caught up with Mike and Eric.“That poor girl, she probably hates the fact that everyone is talking about her,” Kennedy said. “We should have organized a food fight or something to get the attention taken away.”
“Or we can just have Tyler steal Mike’s clothes while he showers after gym,” I suggested.
“I am right here!” Mike shouted as we chuckled and went to the back of the class to take our seats.
The real shock of the day was when Bella walked into class shortly after, and went to take the one open seat next to Edward. It should’ve been the perfect meet-cute, awkward meets even more awkward. But no one could have prepared Kennedy and I for what we were about to witness.
“Did he just...gag at her?” I said, shocked.
“He literally looks like he’s about to throw up. Can he even do that? Or is it kind of like a rat? Ya know, how they can’t gag or anything,” Kennedy whispered as class started.
“I would have jumped out the window right then and there if I was her,” I stated. I watched as Edward scooted his seat as close to the window as he could. Bella sat down anyway, looking perplexed.
God, Edward, stop looking like the opposite side of a magnet. I thought, not even getting a reaction out of him despite knowing he could definitely hear me. She’s a teenage girl, not a biohazard.
As class went on, the situation didn’t get any better. In fact, the second the bell rang, Edward ran out of the classroom so fast I thought he might have broken some kind of Volturi code about not revealing any Vampiric abilities to us lowly mortals. Kennedy and I looked at each other before following Edward out of the room, ignoring Bella’s confused expression. As we caught up to Edward in the hall, I started pestering him.
“You didn’t have to stay the whole class, you know,” I said, walking beside him and Kennedy. The look on his face made it clear that wasn’t the comment he expected. “You could have asked to go to the nurse and just left?” Apparently, despite being over 100 years old, this thought never occurred to him. I guess age doesn’t always confer wisdom, I thought, again knowing he could hear me. As Alice rounded the corner, Edward decided it was his time to roll his eyes and make his dramatic left turn towards his next class.
“Wow, this got worse than I thought it would,” Alice explained. We looked at her, confused, as she pulled us near a less crowded corridor. “It’s not just the fact that he can’t hear her thoughts. Her blood is almost irresistible to him.”
Suddenly, Alice went still, getting a vision. We stand around her casually, acting like we’re having a normal conversation so no one else notices her zoned off expression.
“Seems like this won’t blow over soon either. Edward is planning on going up to Alaska. He’s trying to avoid killing her.” Alice says as she comes back to herself.
“Jesus, that went dark quickly. I’m almost starting to feel bad about making fun of him gagging at her,” Kennedy said, “Almost.”
“I’m going to be honest, that was not at all what I was expecting to come out of your mouth,” I exclaimed. “Also, can’t he go anywhere in the world? Why is he choosing to go up to where Tanya is? I thought she annoyed the hell out of him,” I wondered, mostly to myself.
Alice drove us to her house, the three of us having the last period off. I smelled fresh brownies as soon as I opened the Cullen’s door. I flung my backpack to the ground as I raced upstairs after Kennedy, finding Esme and Carlisle in the kitchen.
“Emse, you won’t believe what Edward did to this poor girl today.” I started, grabbing a corner piece from the fresh tray of brownies. Carlise scooped some ice cream into bowls for us. They were always so sweet to us, making us snacks even though none of the family actually ate anything. We mentioned that it wasn’t necessary, but they insisted, saying they have to keep up their image by going to the store anyways.
Esme looked at me with a smirk, signalling me to continue.
“He gagged at her, Esme! Like looked straight into her eyes and gagged!” I explained while Kennedy reenacted the dramatic moment next to me. Carlisle laughed and handed us our ice cream bowls. I mashed my brownie into the vanilla ice cream.
“Yes, I have heard that today was quite the spectacle. We’ve been getting texts from Alice almost hourly.” He then excused himself into his study while we finished talking about our day with Esme.
When the rest of the family got back, the three of us were doing homework. I got up to follow Edward upstairs. He had already started packing. “Don’t you think this is a tad bit dramatic? I mean, Alice already said you weren’t going to hurt her. She saw it.”
“Her visions aren’t set in stone, Sophie. You know that.” He muttered back, zipping up his suitcase.
“Yeah, okay. When will you be back?”
Edward ran his hand through his hair and shrugged. I nodded and backed out of the room, opting to join Jasper in his instead.