Geekward Shuffle Challenge

Pen Name: ze yellow dahlia

Link to FFnet Profile: www . fanfiction . net / u / 2178565 / zeyellowdahlia

Song Title: "Linger," The Cranberries.

Story Title: Equations of the Heart

Rating: T

Words: 7,152

Disclaimer: Not mine. I don't own Cranberries lyrics, or anything Twi.

Summary: "Because… everything about you is irrational, Bella." – Numbers, diagrams, graphs – you can have all the data you'd like, but, sometimes, it doesn't always add up the way you'd expect.

To my wonderful, lovely, beta/pre-read dolls, winterstale and stella luna sky, you're both adorable. Thank you so much. Everyone else, go read their stories. stella's Bare is to die for, and winterstale's 1982 is phenomenal.

Enjoy Numberward.

The summer before my planned sophomore year at Forks High had been stormy waters compared to a relatively harmless sea of the past. Renee was restless, and that meant a flight in to visit Aunt Tanya while she settled her divorce from my subdued father. I can't say that I was shocked when ma decided to set up her tepee in the dry heat of the Arizona sun. She had always liked the way it tanned her to a crisp, but it dried me out and put me in a funk.

I missed the green. Sun was my kryptonite, and I was the only pale face among thousands with leather skin, begging for melanoma and bathing in baby oil.

The first day of sophomore year had been like swallowing cold medicine. It was necessary, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth after I shuddered it all the way down. There were four times as many students in my class than my entire school back home. Before, everything was personal, but Phoenix was filled with fake. I blended in like the wallflower I now was, denying my mother's genes of charisma and fight.

I was defeated by the temperature, left for dead until Alice rescued me from drowning in vitamin D. Alice Cullen was my sister united under the adage of sunscreen saving lives and a banishing a future of wrinkles. We met on the second day over a shared bottle of SPF 95 in front of the lobby. To our surprise, we were bound by the same chemistry class and a passion for freckle-prevention. From that point on it was a picture of small, high school perfection. I loved her something fierce. She was a different type of wild than I was, but still saucy 'til the end.

If Alice was a mint julep, burning with a pinch of sugar, I was a chocolate martini, sweetly exotic yet strong, but we were both alcoholic all the same.

She took me under her wing, and I took her under mine. We traded our life stories, and it made us closer for it. Alice was an artist, taking bolts of fabric and turning them into something Versace would be proud of with an edge Betsey could look down on with admiration. She loved a boy who didn't know she existed, but wasn't ready to give up yet. I was the musician without a desire for company. I played the black guitar and crooned out classic rock and silly favorites in my spare time, knowing I would never get big, but hoping despite it all.

We spent every superfluous second together that we could manage that year. We survived the drama of penetrating gossip, and the ignorance of the opposite sex. She got her happy ending with the southern boy by the mid of May, just in time for the new trending summer to take us again in her steamy arms of unscheduled bliss. It had been a hard fought battle on both ends of Alice and Jasper's spectrum, but I had stood by, nursing her wounds when his rejection stung, and basking in the luminescence of their love when all went well. They deserved each other.

That summer before my junior year was one of the best and worse of my life. I had met my match, and lost him in the same second.

It was a stifling and balmy July afternoon as I waited for Alice at the airport. My mother was off with her new flame, while I had only just returned from visiting her old embers, who were poised with a knife and flint whenever she was ready to come strike them back to into living. I wanted to tell dad to move on, but I didn't know if he could remember how. It made me wary of my future. I might have been gregarious like my mother, but I loved like Charlie. Once was for all it took for him, and no more, no less. It was a scary thought.

Four o'clock was coming for me, and I was growing impatient, a new crop in my proverbial garden of unattractive traits. Alice valued punctuality, but Jasper was able to cajole her into forgetting the time, and sometimes her name. I was about to pull out my telephone, but a lustrous grey car pulled into the pick-up lane in front of my forest suitcase, a reminder for me of a small, blue house in a tiny town. A tall boy stepped out, gangly and thin. His movements were awkward in a white, short-sleeved undershirt tucked snugly into his corduroy pants, but he walked up to me at a hasty pace and looked at me straight.

Behind his coke bottle glasses, were eyes of green, bringing me home. The scruff on his cheeks was light, but his hair was a fro of curls, red but not.

He was the John to my Yoko at a first glance, and I knew why Charlie could never go back.

"Isabella Swan? With twelve letters total? Twelve, not bad, not bad. I'm Edward. Alice's brother."

My mind had been frazzled when he introduced himself as the long-lost brother from the Swedish boarding school that I was all but sure was made up. I gulped down my newfound nervousness, felt the scarlet fall onto the apples of my face, and answered him back with as much gall as I could muster, taking more and more after my father by the passing second. "Call me Bella, Edward."

His smile swung wide, smooth, pearly whites with no snaggles. "Ah, cut off an 'l,' and it'll be four. Four letters. Two is the square root of four. Four is my favorite number because it is the only number whose square root added or multiplied to or by itself makes the identical sum and product. To make it even more special, two is a prime number. Also, you can only reach four by adding prime numbers. If Alice didn't tell you, I love numbers. But, five is prime. Five works fine."

And so my love affair with Alice's brother, the would-be numerologist, began in an airport pick-up lane.

That day he drove me home, giving me reasons for numbers, for names and words that tied together, and obscure facts about ratios and what not. Numerology was his law. He tried to explain it to me, but I was past comprehending complex thoughts on my limited break from the local high school.

I was infatuated with everything about him, from his unorthodox persona, reminiscent of Lennon's ways, to the obsession with prime, rational, and imaginary. Edward had spoke with fervor about his numbers, but then his voice fried my soul when he struck up a tune in tandem with the radio, husky and sinful and something I needed.

"I play the piano," he had cut in, "because it has eighty-eighty keys. I like multiples of eleven because it comes from a prime. The cube root of eight is two, which is, of course, another prime number…"

He shattered me again when he told me that. My mind ran to a duet that had me hot, and more than bothered, soft new age with filthy lyrics to boot, with the even number of words he wanted in each verse. He had me wrapped around his finger, and he hadn't a clue. The numbers were endearing, a slight quirk in his brain that made for interesting conversation and fascinating discoveries. I had never met someone so immersed within something so… trivial, yet extremely extensive.

The car ride had ended too soon for my tastes, and I realized I hadn't said a word. Our talk was all him, giving me explanations for the formulas behind the way tires moved over finite land. We were at Alice's, and the twenty-minute drive had been turned into hardly less than three. I felt like I had just grown gills. I was the fish on dry land, gasping for a breath of him that I couldn't seem to hold without his help. I had been turned upside down and back again. This was the drought in my riverbed, and I think this was what I needed. Everything he was dug a shovel down, searching for the hidden stream to give me something to gulp down.

Our time came and left all too soon, but he had hit down so far that it bruised me to the bone.

Over the next couple of weeks, I got to know who this Rain Man was. Edward was brilliant. He had been spending the past year studying in Sweden, continuing for as long as the math program allowed. Edward's forte was numbers. He could divide and multiple disgustingly large digits mentally, understand the most confusing of algebra and geometry, and grasp the most impossible of concepts. This year, he would be at a private school, preparing for college. Harvard and the other Ivies had already hounded him with full scholarships that were not so hidden and riding in the wings. His future was only waiting to start.

He made me feel inadequate because we were so obviously on different planets. I wasn't stupid, but I wasn't on his level, either. My A's were splotched with more B's than he had seen in his entire life. Street smarts versus book smarts, and I would take to the streets any day. The classroom wasn't where the most important lessons were learned. But, Edward was learned on a library. We were of different calibers, but that was a thought I liked to push back into the recesses.

I was a permanent fixture around the Cullen house since my unofficial adoption last year, and that was something Edward needed time getting use to.

I had been getting my customary glass of Carlisle's iced tea, when he had found me opening the refrigerator and made candid comments to hide his discomfort, but I let Renee shine through and winked at his stuttering self. It was on rare occasions like this that I was the one with the upper hand, but he liked to play his eighty-eight keys into wee hours of the night. I lived for the sleepovers. When Alice was snoring on her pillow, sleeping soundly, I would creep down and hear him play, singing along as he went in a rich, deep bass, feeding my unholy fascination.

We had built a bit of a friendship, laying the tripod of sticks and kindling for what would someday hopefully be a roaring fire as soon as we lit the match, and gradually added larger and larger pieces of wood. It wasn't superficial, but it only went a centimeter below the skin. I knew strange things about him that others would scoff at. His obsession for all movies named after numbers, for instance – Edward loved movies with numbers within the titles: 8 Mile, 13 – although he had yet to see it –, 28 Days, Ocean's 11, Ocean's 12, and Ocean's 13. As a child, his favorite cartoon was Speed Racer because of the Mach 5, and he dreamed of solving crime with arithmetic and algorithms, like NUMB3RS, of which he was a zealous fan.

His interests were light years away from mine, and sometimes it made me think. I liked dirty comedy, Dane Cook, and raunchy HBO. Sex in the City was never left unwatched. He liked a solid plot with somewhere to go. The things I did made no sense at all. I ate frigid pizza for breakfast, and drank bottled mocha light fraps in the middle of the night when the insomnia chased me out of my bed. I didn't brush my hair, and forgot to put in my sparkly retainer, a well-practiced bedtime ritual. He was rather clean cut, or so he thought.

He said I was queer in natural fibers and a love for organic, but I was raised by a hippie who couldn't remember to stock the fridge and a silent sheriff who drank Great Lakes. He mocked my white ink tattoo and called me Marilyn for the stud above my lip.

In truth, Edward was grungier than he knew, but I didn't mind. It was never a matter of cleanliness, but he dressed like an old man in pants with belts, and high socks with his Sperry's. Alice cried whenever she took in his sight, but he refused to bend, set in his ways like handprints in ancient cement. He didn't wear shorts often, but preferred corduroy pants instead. He wore the same white undershirts that were too thin, and not meant to be tucked in. He was in need of a hardy meal, and was beanpole thin. Sweden was famous for its chocolate, but only Edward would deny it, claiming that there was too much cocoa to sugar, and the piece was far from symmetrical.

He was an odd one, but I adored him for it. It was plain as day and more imminent that the setting of the sun over the sand dunes in the Arizona sky.

We flirted without shame in his strange talk of numbers and what not. We disagreed on so many things, but ended the riff with something nice. We didn't get mad, or hold grudges when the teasing was unkind. We reveled in our shared time, growing ever closer with each of the long days.

Alice, Edward, and I had been secluding ourselves in the kitchen as we waited for Jasper to complete our quartet. My number nerd of sorts was pointing at my glass and carton of chocolate milk, telling me how many different cows had contributed to the contents of the twelve-sided container, and where the design had come from. I watched with a smile, not caring what was being said, only enjoying his enthusiasm for something absurd, and arguing when he stated that less chocolate made for a tastier concoction.

"Edward, you're ridiculous. How can you not like it with more chocolate? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" I contested in mocking anger, playful and cool.

His hands latched onto his strands of red, but not, in obvious distress. "You don't understand! You need a certain ratio between the milk and the chocolate, Bella! If you put too much syrup in, it's off balance!"

I snickered a bit, and he exhaled in a huff, changing his train of talk. "Never mind, never mind. Have you ever thought about the Pythagorean theorem? It's fascinating, isn't it? That one thing squared, plus another squared, equals the third squared. I think it's amazing. Look, c'mere, c'mere. I'll draw you a picture. It's amazing when you look at it on paper. So simple, but so genius." His eyes were lit, and I couldn't refuse. I inched closer, sucked in by the tornado of thoughts and his Irish Spring scent.

Alice chimed in with a request as I drew nearer, severing my ties. "Actually, Bella and I need to talk." I glared at her, attempting to set fire to her peasant skirt with my ineffectual mind. This had become somewhat of a frequent occurrence. My savant would want to tether me to his world by extending the rope, and she would pull me back in, my unwanted anchor on the high seas, saving me from uncertainty, but prohibiting me from swimming to shore in a welcome risk I was dying to take.

I made Edward promise that he would explain to me when we came back, and he nodded from the table, using his pocket ruler to make precise grids on a yellow napkin. Following Alice into her room, I let myself fume, knowing I would forgive her sooner than I should. She entered and bounced on her feather top, locking me in a stare down taken straight from the wild, wild West.

She fired her rounds without delay, lightning fast. "If you could get by trying not to lie, things wouldn't be so confused."

"Who said I'm lying?" I shot back, already knowing that her presage of my feelings was correct. She was hurt I hadn't confided with each detail until now, but could understand that it was her brother that changed the circumstances. "I'm sure I'm not being rude, but it's just your attitude about this, Alice."

"I don't want you to hurt him. He's too different. I don't want him to hurt you either. I refuse to chose sides." she murmured into her lap, soft and concerned and unlike herself as she traced the blue paisley of the cotton with her smallest phalange.

I sat on the mattress, sinking into the mighty squish, fiddling with the hemp bracelet on my wrist, and biting my lip. I conceded and let the damn break. At this point, I thought, hoped, that nothing could go wrong, not by the unveiling alone.

"I'm in so deep, Al."

Edward never did show me his Pythagorean drawing. Alice and I had sorted things out that day, figuring out what was really processing through my insane cranium. She was a Jane of all trades when it came to taking me apart and putting me back together. She took each part of what I felt, and helped me understand just what it was. She wanted what was best for both of us, without having to stand in the middle of a crossfire where she would undoubtedly lose us both. In the end, she told me what I already knew, and we ran with it.

The middle of August had found us in a slump. We had swam until we pruned. The fireworks of the fourth had come and gone in a haze of booms of sound and bursts of light that made for the most visceral of performances. We had watched movie upon movie, agreeing that some movies got better every time, while some got worse. Our engine of ideas was running on empty, and what we needed was a muse to refill our tank. The time of break was coming to an end, and we wanted to make the most of it.

We were a solid group of four, Alice, Jasper, Edward, and I. When I first learned that Edward was a grade above Alice and I, I wasn't surprised in the slightest. But, what did have me in a tizzy was that he preferred us, the second string juniors, to his senior friends who ruled over demesnes of academia. Not that I had any qualms about his presence; it was enjoyed, regardless.

Naturally, Alice was the one to shake us from our monotony, saving us once again with her feel good ways and distaste for routine with an idea we had all agreed upon.

We were going to the amusement park.

Edward was excited to measure the angles of the roller coasters. Alice was excited to show off her original designs. Jasper was excited to spend time with Alice, and say hello to his cousin Peter who was an employee at the park. I was excited for the rush. My head was stuck in a fog of sugary sweet thoughts of a gingered boy. The notions were putting holes in my mind where he would float through and scramble my brain more often than I should allow. Adrenaline was all I needed, and I couldn't wait.

Jasper was the general, and he ran a tight ship. He was the driver, and had jurisdiction over us all. We were leaving at ten before nine to ensure we had the maximum amount of time at the park if it was to open at ten. A thunderstorm was on the distant forecast, and there was no harm in solid contingency plans.

Nine ended up being earlier than I thought, and I was out like a light. My flip had been switched, so I sat tight and let myself gain two more hours in Neverland.

I woke up sometime later, stiff, a bit foggy, aching, and in need of something to thaw myself out. It felt like someone was tickling me. I tried to stretch my arms above my head, but something was holding me down. Alice's laugh was a pealing of anarchical bells as she hosted a wily smile from the front seat that I couldn't see, but could hear in her voice. Edward was my sole companion of the backseat, so he must have had hold of my arm. He wasn't letting go, and I didn't understand why.

"Edward, what the hell, man? Let go of my arm," I mumbled, still half sleeping, and only one eighth awake, closing my lids once again.

"Shhh, go back to sleep, Bella," he laughed, and I did as he said, falling back into a world of dreaming as if I had jumped headfirst.

The second time I was jolted, I made it for good. I stretched like a cat, feline and twisting until I felt better. Alice and Jasper were navigating from the front, fighting over directions and oblivious to my awakening. Edward was watching me, smug and relaxed, as he sat twirling a black Sharpie around his piano hands.

"Are we," I broke to yawn, "there yet?" I asked, unsure of how long I had been out colder than Siberia in winter.

"We'll be there soon," he said, breathing mischief with every word. "But, in the mean time, you might want to check out your hand. There's something on it."

"There's nothing on my h–"

There was something, something on both my legs, and my arms, and my collarbone.

Numbers.

Numbers wrapping around my ankles, continuing until the limit of my light denim shorts, kissing my skin and find a way to jump to my hand, spiraling up my arm, crossing the valley of my collarbone lurking above my tank top, falling down my other arm, picking at the hem of blue, and ending on my ankle once more. My temper blazed, a solar flare on the surface of the sun. I was furious.

"Edward, what the fuck were you thinking! I'm not a piece of paper! Is this even an actual number? Oh my God, you ass!"

He nodded in a silent confirmation with escaped laughter, and added, "Twenty-two sevenths," not even fearful for his life one bit.

I was going to lunge, but seventh grade math reared its ugly head. Something he said was actually registering. "Pi? But, why pi?"

"Because… everything about you is irrational, Bella."

The air had gotten thick. His voice took a new timbre. Numbers lay forgotten as we shifted our conversation to something uncharted. "Is irrational…bad?" I asked timidly, afraid of his answer because it was the truth. I was irrational, and he was logical. He preferred reason and numbers, while I preferred to sit outside the school playing music and saying that it felt right.

He watched the History Channel while I poked fun at the narrator's voice. I consumed too much coffee while he stuck with chamomile tea. His favorite color was blue, and mine was orange, polar opposites on the color wheel, and in real life as well.

He took a trembling breath wrought with implications that I could only try to deduce the actual meaning from. "Recently, it's been my favorite kind of number. But, pi more specifically than simply irrational. Pi goes on for infinity, never repeating, always prime and special and unpredictable. Truthfully, it's quite the phenomenon."

I sighed and let the warmth swell inside my heart, pleased but also perturbed.

"Edward, that's great, but people are going to think I'm crazy with numbers all over me."

And so they did. People gave me their best stares, but it made me feel better that they were looking at the way he had marked me, the only way knew how. It was ludicrous, and didn't hold the same sentiment for him, but it soothed me. It was his brand of something else, and it made me play a toothy smile that added to the large pile of utter insanity sitting in the corner, the pink elephant that no one wanted to address.

The day had started hotter than Hades's lair. My lone fishtailed braid stuck salty against my numbered shoulder with rogue wisps curling into ringlets on my neck. I had looked at Edward and grinned. Today was most definitely not the day for corduroy. We traversed the park as a pair. Alice and Jasper had split for the Space Mountain impostor right out of the gate, claiming that they wanted to beat the lines.

It was the afternoon of extravagant delight.

Lunch was caught in pieces of cotton candy during the wait for a ride. Lemon ices chilled our throats as we scurried from one end of the park to another. We were living off of sunlight and frozen chocolate bars, revelry and merriment feeding into one. Edward had marveled at the engineered brilliance, and I had awed over the teeming heights.

"Look at all this, Bella!" he had said, "Isn't it amazing? Think of all the different formulas they must've used to come up with the plans, and putting it together – oh my gosh! Can you even think about how much time it would have taken?"

However, a quarter after one had fought off the mother of blueness in a battle over the sky, and a quarter to two danced in with the herald of the storm waiting to unleash her legion of the nimbleus.

By three, the rampant tempest had hooked us in her web, but he grabbed my hand and told me to walk as fast as I could.

It came down in sheets, buckets, and splats. My numbers were bleeding black ink, the rain was hard, fast, and unforgiving. The water had found us at the top of the park, ready to ride and anxious for fun. We were fumbling now, laughing, holding hands in a warm grasp that somehow kept us steady, and if it didn't, at least we would fall together.

I wanted to run, but he told me no, citing a fact in response in a shout over the rain. "Ah, Bella! You're not supposed to run! When you run, your body exposes more of your chest to the sky, and the rain! You're supposed to walk, quickly. That way, it'll only get your shoulders! I'll draw you a picture when we get in the car!"

"Edward, I don't really think it matters at this point!" We were drenched either way, sopping and trying our best to find our vehicle.

Suddenly, he halted, jerking me back. "Screw it," he mumbled, and pulled me into a run that did no good at all.

I tried to tell him to stop before it was too late, but it was to no avail. "Edward, wait, wait, wait! Bad idea! Abort, abort!"

I slid against the slick concrete. Mr. Taylor's shoes had no traction. I was wet-thighed in surrender, and so was he. I had pulled him down with me and into our imminent demise as expected. My luck held true when we landed in a rather large puddle that may have had a fish or two swimming within it.

I laid my head back, wet and cold and pelted with rain, and closed my eyes in more than a smidgen of pain.

"I will admit… bad idea."

I gawked at him, with splattered glasses and curly head soaked from violent clouds. "No, really, Edward? I was thinking that one could win you a Nobel Peace prize or something."

A huge belly laugh rose from his mouth, shaking his thin ribs. "This isn't funny. My numbers are leaking all over me. My head hurts, too. Stop laughing!"

When he calmed, he apologized, and it was sincere. "I'm sorry about your head, Bella, and your numbers, too. I'm sorry about your numbers."

"S'okay, Eddie, but next time I won't be so forgiving." I grumbled, and massaged the knot on the back of my head. "It really hurt, you know."

He angled towards me, and replaced his nimble hands where my stubby ones use to be, rubbing softly and using great care. "I never meant to cause any pain," he said with an air of something undistinguishable.

"It's fine." I sighed and shut my eyes to hide from the rain. We laid in the puddle a little longer, with his hands in my hair and surrounded by aqua until his motions stilled.

"Don't open your eyes. Be very still," he whispered into my ear, warm in contrast, and causing a shiver. The anticipation was there, and I knew what he was going to do before I think he knew himself. I felt the same breath on my face, close to my lips, but too far away…

And then it was there, heated and perfect, and everything a kiss should be from a month of skirting around.

We made out like two stereotypical teenagers until the clouds ceased their torrent.

His lips were chapped from the sun of the day we had, but it felt right no matter what. His flesh was cotton candy and lemon ice and frozen Mars bars. It wasn't rushed, but exactly like Edward, sweet and precise.

I was sure Alice would have my head taken off with her homemade guillotine in a heated display, but I couldn't bring myself to care about Alice or the schedule. With the stopping of the rain, we finally stood, glanced at each other, and blushed on both sides. He mumbled something about the automobile without eye contact, and I nodded and followed, wholeheartedly confused.

We didn't hold hands. We didn't laugh. We ignored instead. I was upset, and hurting more now than from a simple head contusion.

The two weeks until junior year's official kick off were the clouds after the storm, calm but lacking the passion they once held. We hadn't talked since the frosty goodbye at the end of the car ride. Alice said to give him time, but I didn't want to give him time. I wanted him to snap back to the way he was before it all went awry. I wanted to him to cut out the tumor in his thought process that denied me time and time again. I ambushed his door whenever Alice welcomed me over and tried to catch him in the corner at family dinners. He was always polite, but refusing to let me in.

Honest conversation had been missing in action, cleared away by a kiss under the stormy sky. Alice made a point to seclude us into my house where we would watch more HBO until Jasper happened and took the only thing I had left. So, I got a companion to have something of my own. Her name was Mauve, and she was my pet cactus.

Talking to Mauve was cathartic, but it only reminded of how irrational I really was, a fact that Edward had not faulted to point out.

Another two weeks went by. The start of a new year, a new change, was more significant that I had hoped. It was a month without him that I had gone, and it wore me down thin. Classes that were meant to be enjoyed passed me by like highway cars versus the old truck stuck in the ditch, broken down and unable to be fixed. It was a Friday night, and it was a night for Mauve and I alone.

She needed some fertilizer, and I needed some comfort food, so I grabbed the keys to my mom's Jeep and set off for the supermarket.

I walked into the store, making my way to the row filled with sweets, and they were standing there, looking at the candy isle, with his hand in hers. My heart split into thousands of pieces, the puzzle without a box strewn for him to step on with his stupid high socks and Sperry's and coke bottle classes. But, examining him closer he had on Calvin Klein, and strange rectangle classes instead of the circular ones he always wore. She was beautiful, short and pale, blonde and blue-eyed. He laughed, and so did she. He was so different now.

I broke.

I ducked and hid in the next row, living shallow breaths that didn't fill. I had landed in front of the cards: sympathy cards that seemed to fit all to well, funny birthday wishes that should have made me feel better, and joyous love cards that did nothing but submerge me in lemon juice. It stung at me like vicious bees. He had not only found someone, but he had changed for her. He wasn't even him anymore.

I did what I knew how to do in times of crisis, and called Alice.

She found me on the floor with red-rimmed eyes, but didn't pity me because she had been where I was now. She led me to the car, and took my keys. We took the direct route to my house. After the ride, she ushered me inside, telling me to sit on the couch because it wasn't going to be pretty.

She sat on the pillow to my right and told me the whole story that I didn't want to hear. "Her name is Senna. She goes to our school. She's a senior. He's her boyfriend."

It came like a wrecking ball, and I was speechless for a minute. "What am I supposed to say, Alice? Who is this mysterious blonde girl who is Jude Law's ex- fiancé with the same name, only shorter? So, Edward, why were you holding her hand? Can you make her not so beautiful? It'd make me feel better, but, this is the way we stand? Seriously. Seriously?"

"Well, maybe not quite like that…"

Alice laughed, and I did too, unhappy and sardonic. What began as a giggle turned into something large, a guffawing that made my stomach ache. I laughed a laugh stronger than diamonds that led me to tears. Tears that sprung a wide-cracked disaster that flooded to cleanse plagued me for hours until my well had emptied.

I had made it through the weeks that came. I wasn't happy, and I wasn't sad. I was only there, accepting something I didn't want to. They were everywhere, at Alice's, at school, at the movies, everywhere I went. We were introduced formally. She was a polite little debutante who was born in England, but grew up in Phoenix. They never had frowns, never fought, and it was made known to me that she was a serious candidate for valedictorian. She was everything that I wasn't, and it burned.

She made him so happy.

I was trying to cope, but, then, homecoming struck. Alice made me get a dress and come with her and Jasper, claiming I could dance him away with someone else I didn't know. We did the dinner, took the pictures, got gussied up, and tried to enjoy it. My dress was purple, cotton, and flowers, with my hair a braided crown, half up, half down. The decorations were tacky wands and wizards. The theme was Harry Potter, and nothing short of a spell was going to fix this night.

I supposed it hadn't been as terrible as what my preconceived notions had set for standards, but still awful, nonetheless. The punch was spiked with something rancid. The dancing was vulgar. The people were only a nuisance in my melancholy book.

That was when I saw them, in his funny white tuxedo and bowtie, and her shiny black dress.

My legs were in motion before I could tell them to stop. They planted themselves in front of the pair. Word vomit couldn't be helped. I had no bucket to catch it before it hit him in one stand of projectile, and I asked him to come talk with me. He gave me an "okay," and her a quick kiss that I tried my best to ignore. There was a gazebo to the right of the doors, and I made for it with him in my wake. Once we were there, he sat down, and I stayed standing.

"Do you love her?" I asked, my heart pounding like a voodoo drum as I was led to slaughter.

He stuttered in a daze, red-cheeked and wide-eyed, an innocence that I didn't buy. "I, I – how would one define love? It's something that's always been lost on me. I feel strongly for her, if that's what you're asking."

I put it in terms he could understand, and would never forget before I decided to leave. "Love is the square root of negative sixteen, 4i. It's what you know the number four is – prime, and unique, and the best. But, there's a twist. It's everything you think it is, but you have the i. Love is imaginary. It's not something you can see. It's abstract, indefinable, and shouldn't exist. Yet, it does. Against all odds, it's there, waiting to be factored into a grander equation than the one it came from. That, that is what love is."

I left him there, on a gazebo bench in the dark, while I walked the three miles home in my gladiator's like I was an actor in a melodrama, running away from the villain once again, my tears hidden by the cover of night.

Not a half hour after I was home, there was a knock on the door, and I suspected Alice, but I was wrong. He was at my door with tussled bowtie and a pained look. "Bella, please, I –"

He pulled the key out of my sensitive grenade, and I exploded.

"You know, I'm such a fool for you! Was it, this, our what – quasi relationship, just a game for you? Another math problem, perhaps? Bella plus summer equals a fling, huh? Edward, if you're done, just, do you have to – do you have to let it linger?" my voice was raw and harsh and cracking like a tree ready to fall in the forest after being hacked at by the blunt axe, repeatedly.

The blunt axe had hacked me at time after time. My circulation was cut, failing arteries and collapsed lungs all coming from the clawing laceration in my chest. Every time she was there in thought or action, his blade would delve deeper under my skin.

When he made himself scare, it took its toll on me. When he was around, the hurt was identical. He was holding me captive in one way or the other, and I wanted more than anything for the ability to flee. He was a cavity in my heart, rotting holes that I couldn't fill without a complete drilling in for a full root canal. It was insane, but before, I wanted him in any way that I could, even if it was going to ruin me, bit by bit of tarnished plaque piling up on my walls. Before, I had wanted something over nothing, even if all he could give me was to dip me in plaster and use me as a bookend.

Now, my priorities were in order. I had to take care of myself instead of being blown away like dandelion seeds over something that would never grow.

"Bella…but you always really knew that I just want to be with you. It's only that… I can't. Not right now."

I swore. I swore I would be true if it came to this, but I was wrong about our beginning. I was wrong before, and I could be now. "And, honey, so did you. You knew it even better than I did. But, that doesn't change anything, does it? I guess you could say that it doesn't add up. There's no solution. No points to put on the graph. This isn't the place where you can solve for a variable, and everything will fall into place, Edward.

"You can't solve me."

He motioned to speak, but I was done. I closed the door, and went to join my pet cactus Mauve in front of the window, filling my head with nothing but overpriced makeup on QVC, while I cried my eyes dry in front of Tahitian Baked Body Frosting and Golden Wonderwands with Lipgloss Duos. Before I went to bed, I called Charlie and made a plea, hoping he would hear me out.

The answering machine rang clear with it's own message in a bottle on Saturday morning, finally finding me after being lost in the waves, and with my swimming onto the wrong shore. Five words had been waiting for me, and they were all I needed to hear.

"Come home, Bell. Let's talk."

I bought a ticket online, and sent Alice a text to let her know I was taking off, praying she wouldn't connect the dots. I was in the midst of packing my bags when Alice burst through my door in a mad rush. "Put the sweater down, Bella." she wheezed, out of breath and crazed with a messed up coif in waves, still wet and smelling of verbena.

My voice was thick and choppy, but I choked out what I had to. "Her name is Senna, and I can't hate her. I can't hate someone who makes him so happy."

"You can, and you will! Where are you, Bella Swan? You're family, too. Get out your brass knuckles. We're going in for blood! This is not the same girl who tattooed her ribs, and got a Monroe on the same day at the very illegal, and extremely underage tattoo shop with me!" she screeched in dissidence, bringing up the memory of the physical pain so preferable to the one that only had one cure.

"It's tearing me apart. It's ruining everything. I can't, Alice. I can't."

She hugged me after that when I cried, helped me fit everything in my forest suitcase that I was bringing to Forks, and made me love her a little more for not asking any other questions besides if I wanted any Ben and Jerry's or not.

I slept in a fitful mess, but walking down the stairs on that Sunday morning, something caught my eye. There was a card taped to my front door that I couldn't miss if I was blind. I trudged further, already exhausted, and waiting for Renee to get up and take me to the airport. I unlocked the deadbolt, and pulled the paper off without stepping outside like the lazy girl I knew that I was.

Graph paper.

With tremors in my hands, I unfolded the rectangle, a perfect square crafted by one set of hands that I knew were well-versed in symmetry and lines.

[ (e)2 + (b)2 = (4i)2 ] x ∞

I knew what it was, but I didn't know why. It would have to wait. I had a plane to catch.

Oh, walking in the rain keeps you drier? All true, my friends. Mythbusters never lies. Nimbleus is another name for storm clouds, for those who were curious.

Can I say that I hate word requirements? Yes, there will be a follow up after the contest ends. They need closure. I adore Numberward too much to leave him on the brink of declaring his love through algebra. Alert me, or the story, or don't, and forget about it.

Hate to say that Numberward reminds me of myself. I squee every time I remember that my birth month is the square root of the day. I also memorized 121 digits of pi for freshman year. We only had to do 100, but I liked palindromes, so... My name is now on a plaque. Laugh at me.

Laugh and vote at the same time, though.