Summary: "Bella, what the hell's goin' on with you!?" Quinn asked, his face the perfect definition of sincere confusion.

"Um, I see dead people?" I quoted lightly, trying to downplay my now three-week long traumatic experience.

"Wait, does that mean... Am I dead?"

The boy with the axe in his head stared at me as if a third extra-slimey eye had just appeared between my two regular ones.

"I'm sorry."

Our mother drove us to the airport with the windows rolled down.

It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless, blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt - sleeveless, white eyelet lace, I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

Mom was chattering away with Quinn in the front seat, who had been fiddling with the radio for the past ten minutes.

I sat in the back seat in slience, peering out the window and saying my quiet goodbye to the sun.

"Guys, are you really sure you want to do this?" Mom said, adressing us both. "You don't have to, I can come up with some other solution." she promised.

I felt her eyes linger on me through the rearview mirror for a brief moment.

"It's okay, mom." Quinn said with a carefree grin. "College was gonna steal us away in a couple of years, anyway. Isn't it time we let Charlie steer the vehicle for a bit while he still has the chance, hmm?"

"I guess so" Mom said, and one of the less comfortable silences fell over the car.

"You know, aren't the last years of high school supposed to be the craziest ones?" said Quinn, trying to lighten up the mood. "All you really miss is being pissed about the chicks, drugs and DUI's!"

"Oh, and Rock n' Roll, of course!" he added with one of those smiles that'd lighten up an entire apartment building. "If you scowl too much your face gets stuck that way, remember?"

Mom laughed and smacked him in the back of the head with her free hand.

But her eyes caught my reflection in the rearview mirror once again, and the concern came back as quick as it went.

Damn.

"Bella, honey? You've been really quiet, are you sure about this?" she asked.

I sighed quietly and lied as well as I could in her presence.

"Of course, mom! You don't need to be worried about us. We'll be fine." I smiled at her reassuringly, hoping that she would not see straight through my act as she often did.

"Fine, the Worry Rock's shutting up. But as soon as one of you feel it's not working out, you tell me, okay?"

Quinn chuckled and said "Sure, mom." while I just nodded with that dirty smile still etched to my face.

I was getting cramps.

"Promise?"

"We promise, mom." we said in unison, collectively rolling our eyes at her.

Once again silence crept into the car and smothered all words with it's uncomfortableness.

All words except my blunt brother's.

"You know, living with Charlie and some other guy might be a really good thing. For me, anyway. I've been really concerned about how living in a house with only women for my entire life has affected my psyche. Seriously! Last week Titanic was on the telly, and I wept through through that hot Schmuck's death scene. Maybe I have some surpressed emotional problems I should deal with?"

Laughter filled the car and took up as much room as it possibly could, evacuating the awkward silence and all it's uncomfortableness.

"Quinn! Bells! It's good to see you two. Geez, you're huge Quinn!" he said in awe, giving us a one-armed hug each. "How's Renee?"

"Mom's great!" Quinn said, grinning down at Charlie. My brother, who'd been quite short most of his life, had grown a full head above Charlie since we last saw him the summer before. "Sweet to see you too, dad!" We weren't allowed to call him Charlie to his face.

"Hi, dad." I said, with an awkward smile. He smiled back whilst giving me another hug, and took my bag for me. I thanked him.

"Hey!" a voice called from behind us. We turned around to face a lanky, black haired boy. He was probably fourteen, or fifteen. His skin was a shade of dark russet, and there was a boyish cuteness about him.

Charlie patted the boy on the back and said "Guys, this is Jacob. I told you about him, right?"

We nodded. "Yeah sure."

"'Sup, Jacob?" Quinn said, walking up to him and shaking his hand enthusiastically. "Wow, this'll be like we're brothers or something, right? How old are you?"

"Fifteen." Jacob seemed amused by Quinn's enthusiasm.

"Wow!" Quinn said with big eyes "Then you'll be like my little brother. I've always wanted one of those!" he said and ruffled Jacob's pony-tailed hair.

Charlie went off to find our guitarcases.

"Let's go!" Quinn said. With his hands filled with luggage, he went ahead towards the police cruiser.

"This Let's-move-to-Forks thing was an awesome idea!" he called out behind him.

I chuckled as Quinn tripped and dropped everything.

"He's got some charisma, huh?" Jacob said to me. "So you're Bella, right?"

Quinn swore loudly as his electric dog Stewbert fell onto the sidewalk and lost his batteries.

"Yeah. Nice to meet you." I offered my hand.

He took it.

"Shall we go, then?" Charlie said, walking up to us, a pair of guitarcases in his hands and my bag slung over his shoulder.

"You guys play the guitar?" Jacob asked.

I nodded.

"Cool." he sounded impressed.

He looked around. "Where's the amps?"

"They're acoustic." I told him. "Though Quinn's saving some money for an electric. He'll probably look into getting a job or something."

The three of us had started walking towards the car where Quinn stood waiting impatiently with his mountain of luggage.

Damn his comic book collection.

Charlie, observed us quietly and I could tell he was satisfied with how well we seemed to get along.

"You guys got a skateboard ramp around here?" Quinn asked when we'd reached him.

"Sorry, no." Jacob said, grinning at him. "You skate?"

"No, not really. I just like to roll down them. Defy gravity! For the win!"

I lied down on my bed, notebook and pencil in hand, scribbling down and scratching out words. Disatisfied.

I sighed, and put both of the objects aside. I wasn't going to get anything done tonight. I was too uptight.

Quinn was strumming an unknown melody on the guitar in the room next to mine.

It seemed as if he'd finally run off today's sugarhype.

Charlie would probably get up soon and tell him to keep it down, though.

Me and Jacob flipped a coin on who got to share room with Quinn. Poor Jacob lost and got stuck with Quinn's snoring for an unspecified time.

They got the guest room, since it had more space. And I got the room that had belonged to Quinn and me since we were born.

Not much had changed at all. A desk had been added as the years went by, and on it there was now a computer and a modem, our mother had paid for this so we could mail her as often as possible. Knowing her, she'd probably written us already.

The crib had been replaced by a pair of beds, one which had been moved off to the guest room and left some wallspace that I could lean my guitar against.

I realized I wasn't going to fall asleep for a while, so I started unpacking the few things I hadn't yet.

A few shirts in the closet, a stack of books and CDs by the bed, and my CD-player beside that.

I started going through a pile of pictures my mother had taken a few months back.

Mom and Phil. Phil and Quinn. One of mom's girlfriends. Me, glaring back at the camera. Quinn and one of his friends dressing up in mom's dresses. Me, reading a book by the kitchen table. Mom, with a huge smile on her face. Me and Quinn, playing our guitars in our bedroom.

Me and Quinn were quite different for being twins.

I was very pale for having lived in a place as sunny as Phoenix. Quinn had a healthy-looking tan. We were both brown-haired, though his shade was lighter than mine. People didn't notice that, though, since he had the hobby of coloring his hair in exotic colors with Kool-Aid. His last experiment had turned out green.

Mom forced him to wash it 'til it came out, telling him that Charlie refused having a "moldy-looking person" in his house.

Though he had one of his genious "masterplans" in working progress, apparently something about "accidently" dropping his head in a bowl filled with a random color.

Probably purple, but maybe blue or yellow, depending on his current mood at the day of the oh-so-accidental act.

I grinned and studied the picture closer. Quinn's hair was gray and he wore a pair of bright red pants with a white T-shirt that I'd painted a smiley on.

Me and him had made that shirt a few summer's back. We'd decided to establish a little business of homemade T-shirt's and sold them on the streets. It was with that money we bought our guitars. Though mom helped out a little.

Somehow I fell asleep, while thinking back at that summer, but I did not sleep very well. The rain made me uncomfy.

I woke up that morning to the feeling of something cold and moist pouring into my ear and down my neck.

I opened my tired eyes wide open and met my brother's great, big grin.

He was pouring a glass of water on me, the jerk.

"Quinn!" I groaned, hitting him in the chest.

He laughed at me. "Good morning, sleepyhead!"

"Urgh!" I threw a pillow at him. I did not have a good feeling about this day.

When I came down to the kitchen, I found Quinn and Jacob eating cereal and talking about polar bears for some weird reason. Charlie had already gone off to work.

"A polar bear would totally beat the shit out of a dinosaur!" Quinn said, waving his milky spoon at Jacob and therefore spattering him with milky spots across the face.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, dude." he wept the milk off with the back of his hand, and returned to his own bowls content.

"I have a feeling you still don't agree with me." Quinn said suspiciously, chewing a mouthful of cereal. "Why is that?"

I went to the refrigerator and got myself a glass of orange juice, still listening to their completely random conversation.

"Well," Jacob said "doesn't it really depend on which dinosaur? I mean, a T-Rex would just wipe the floor with that polar bear."

"Nuh-uh!" Quinn said, resembling a young child, as he so often did. "Polar bears are advanced creatures with...special...stuff. Stop laughing at me!"

Jacob had cracked up so hard there was milk coming out of his nose.

"Ew, buggermilk!" Quinn exclaimed. "Seriously, Jacob. You're, like, the dinosaur, and I'm the polar bear."

Jacob coughed. "Does that mean I can rip your head off?"

Quinn stared at him. "No. That means I'm a superior being and you...suck!"

Jacob laughed. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Quinn abandoned his bowl of buggerfree milk and Lucky Charms, walked up to where Jacob was sitting, leaned over Jacob's buggerfull bowl of cereal, and said, with an uncommonly stern look "You better get nicer or somebody's going to face the wrath of Stewbert, the Hellhound.".

This, yet again, cracked Jacob up.

"Bella, your brother's a weirdo."

Since Jacob was just fifteen, he wasn't allowed to drive himself to school, which left just me and Quinn as potential drivers of the old Chevy Charlie had gotten us as a present.

Jacob kept on insisting that he could drive a car, which didn't surprise me since he was building one in our garage.

But living with the town's police chief and driving without a license didn't sound like a really smart idea.

Jacob sighed when he realized we wouldn't budge, but he did wrestle Quinn to the ground so I could run for the driver's seat.

The bell rang. Class had been quite the awkward experience.

Basically, the entire class had tried to imitate the little girl from the Exorcist movie, to stare at me in the back of the classroom.

I shuddered as the mental image of a classroom filled of little greenfaced girls with backward bent heads popped into my own head, with absolutely no permission to do so.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" a tall boy with black hair and skin problems had leaned over the aisle seperating our desks to speak to me.

"Bella," I said, correcting him.

The people closest to us turned around to stare, and the Exorcist vision came back.

"What's your next class?" he asked.

"Um," Glad to concentrate on something else than overrated horrormovies, I opened my bag with a quick movement to remove the schedule from it, accidently ripping it in two pieces. "Oops."

The black haired boy chuckled at me.

I blushed. "Er, sorry." I held the two pieces next to each other, as if they were a whole.

"Government with Jefferson, in building six." I said, nervously.

It felt as if I were drowning in a sea of eyeballs.

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way." he said.

"And I'm Eric, by the way." he added.

I smiled at him and said "Thanks."

I had a few classes with Quinn, which was somewhat relieving, but not very odd since the school was so small.

There were a lot of people talking to me, asking me if I liked Forks, and trying to get to know me.

I sat next to a curly dark haired girl in both Spanish and Trig. She talked a lot and I couldn't remember her name.

She walked me to the cafeteria and we met up with Quinn, apparently Jacob didn't have lunch with us today.

We sat down with her at a table filled with complete strangers whom I assumed were her friends.

Quinn had always had it easier making conversations with people he didn't know, or people in general, so he was keeping himself occupied.

I, on the other hand, had never been as open as my charismatic brother, and simply smalltalked with anyone who spoke to me first. I did not begin any random conversations with lines such as "Hey, how about them alligators in the sewers?" or "Did anybody watch Scooby Doo last night? I was siked!"

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, tuning out the conversation led by my brother and some blonde guy, whilst in the back of my head struggling to remember the curly-haired girl's name, that I saw them.

They were greater oddballs than my brother (which says a lot), and my first instinct told me that I was hallucinating yet again.

They looked dead. Pretty, but still dead.

There were five of them. They all sat around their table, much like mine, only theirs wasn't occupied by passionate chatters.

In fact, their table didn't seem to include any form of human contact. Just five excruciatingly beautiful dead-looking people, staring out into thin air in their five different directions, never acknowledging their five, untouched trays of an almost exaggerated amount of food.

There were three boys and two girls. The first girl looked like a semi-anorexic pixie, and the other one like Photoshop personified.

The boys looked like a bear that had been partially waxed, a blonde emo, and somebody whose hair lives on the Harry Potter side of life, but is still just...really pretty.

And, despite my slightly unattractive mental description of them, they still managed to pull these traits off and look, as I said before, really pretty.

"I see you've noticed the Cullen's." The curly-haired girl said to me, making me snap out of my inner... monologue thing.

"Huh?"

"The weirdos you've been staring at for the past ten minutes, sis." Quinn said, briefly leaving his other conversation "Over there." He pointed towards their table, which the pixie-girl had just left.

I was on the verge of saying "You can see them, too!?", but caught myself as I realized that it seemed as if he could.

That was a good thing. A creepy, but very good thing.

One of the boys had finally stopped staring off into a random direction and was now chuckling at what seemed to be my brother.

Maybe he was a mindreader who read my mind and thought, like me, that Quinn, the lord of queer himself, calling somebody a weirdo is just highly amusing?

Nah, that's just stupid. There's no such thing as mindreaders. He probably just found Quinn's hair funny, or something.

I didn't linger on the fact that Quinn's hair was not much to note today. It was plain old brown. Maybe a bit disheveled, but it wasn't very attention-attracting.

His constant ranting, on the other hand, was.

"The one looking over here is Edward." The curly-haired girl said "And the big one's called Emmet. The other guy is Jasper. The blonde one is Rosalie, and the girl who just left right now is Alice."

Odd names. Kind of old-fashioned. Maybe that's the thing here.

"They are very...pretty." I tried to find a word able to actually describe their appearance, but it was impossible so I just settled for the insult "pretty".

"Yes!" The curly-haired girl exclaimed with a very girly giggle. "Aren't they?"

I now, at last, remembered that her name was Jessica. Which was a pretty common name, we had a few of those back home.

There were no Rosalie's or Jasper's, though. And I had no idea that Emmet was an actual name that you could, you know, call people and stuff.

"They're all together, though." Jessica continued "Emmet and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together."

This sounded like quite the small town scandal, though it was quite understandable. It sounded a bit peculiar.

"Um, they don't look related, though-"

"Oh, they're not." Jessica said, cutting me off. "Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are twins, like you and Quinn. And they're foster children."

"Aren't they a bit old for being foster children?"

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

"That's really nice of them. You know, to care for so many when they're still so young, and stuff."

"I guess so." Jessica said slowly, but I had a feeling she didn't like the Cullens´ very much.

I guess their prettiness bothered her.

"Though I don't think Mrs. Cullen can have any kids."

I don't think I like this girl.

Me and a girl named Angela walked into Biology, Quinn had ran off late to English a few minutes before.

Angela went to sit next to her lab partner, and I was to report myself to the teacher in the front of the classroom.

I couldn't help but notice Edward Cullen, sitting pretty centric in the classroom beside the lone empty seat.

The teacher signed my slip and sent me off to sit next to the boy.

As soon as I sat down, after having tripped, like, twelve times down the aisle on the way there, he instantly shuffled his chair to the very edge of our desk, and sat as far away as physically possible from me, glaring at me as if he was a thirsting man and I was the slushiest Slushie on planet earth, just teasing him with my watery slushiness.

Okay, that's a... common reaction.

I tried to ignore him and focus on Mr. Banner's rambling, but I'd already done the work at my old school, so it was very hard to fake interest.

I wrote down the notes slowly, trying to keep myself busy with the writing process, but I still felt his eyes boring murderously at me.

What the hell is wrong with this guy? Did my clumsiness personally offend him? Don't blame me, dude, it's a handicap. Not my fault.

I turned to look at him and confirm if he was indeed my head off, or if I was just being a paranoid loony, looking for potential murderers.

Nope. Still glaring at me with... is that disgust? Oh, come on! What did I do!? Do I smell bad, or something?

I sniffed at my hair.

No. That can't be it. Unless he hates strawberries, which would make Quinn right about the weirdo part.

Oh, forget that he's looking at you as if he's planning to snap your neck any second now, it's the anti-strawberry part that makes him odd.

Yes, indeed, that was the clincher.

As class went on and on and on and...(you get the point), I continued my inner dialogue with myself as I wrote down notes as slow as humanly possible, and tried to ignore the potential psycho killer's death glares.

And when, at last, the bell rang, the boy was out the door so quick, I again doubted if he truly was there and if I wasn't going crazy yet again.

I was pissed. That prick!

I got accompanied to Gym by a cute boy called Mike, who did not seem to mind my odour or my clumsiness.

In fact, he even seemed to somewhat enjoy my company, and I tried to pretend like I did the same.

I think it worked.

After Gym I met up with Quinn, Jacob and one of his friends Theodore, a Narcoleptic with a hatred for footwear, it seemed.

We walked in a slow pace back to the office to return our slips, chatting about our day. Jacob went to the car to wait for us and Theodore went to pick up his sister from kindergarten.

Randomly discussing if "Theo" would fall asleep at the wheel, or if his nap during French was enough for now, me and Quinn walked into the nicely temperatured office.

That was when I felt anxiety striking me like a kickboxer in the groin.

Edward Cullen stood at the front desk, arguing with the secretary in a low voice.

From what I could hear he wanted to change his Biology Class to another time.

Any other time.

"Oi, Bella! Are you even listening?" Quinn's voice said from a far away land.

Apparently our conversation had steered away from Theo to... something else.

"What?" I asked him, still watching Edward, as he suddenly got stiff at the sound of my name.

I could swear I saw him glance back at me.

"I asked you if you know where my SpongeBob Squarepants undies were." Quinn said. I was pretty sure he was glancing back and forth between Edward and me.

"I don't know. Maybe you left them in Phoenix." I said absentmindedly.

Edward spoke again. "Never mind, then. I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help."

And then he left, glaring very sharp and probably poison-soaked daggers my way.

I stared dumbstruck at the door he'd just went through, walking slowly up to the desk with Quinn who was muttering "I'd never do that to SpongeBob."

"How did your first day go, dears?" the receptionist asked us gently.

"Fantastic!" Quinn smiled at her, while I just mumbled a "Fine", still staring at the door.

As we were walking towards the car in the drizzling rain, Quinn said, in a teasing voice "What was that all about?"

"What was what?" I said, not really wanting to talk about it.

"Oh, I dunno, you ogling some random dude. I didn't think you were one of the vain ones, sister. Say, may the hormones have gotten to you too, at last?"

He smiled broadly at me.

I glared at him.

"Will I have to morph into the evil-overprotective-and-slightly-psychotic-older-brother role?"

"You're not older than me." I said, annoyed.

"Oh, yes I am."

"Minutes don't count."

"Well, isn't that completely illogical?"

Well, yeah, but...

We went into the car, where Jacob was sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for us.

"Nuh-uh!" Quinn said, in his permanently happy voice "Scoot over, Jakey. You're not driving this car in at least a year. Or two. I actually like this car, it's homey."

Jacob muttered incoherently and probably bitterly, but how would I know?

The only thing that was in my head during the entire drive home was, Why did Edward Cullen hate me?

And what's up with all the deadness, anyway?