Things had gotten very complicated. Mina was on the edge and her nerves were fraying with every passing hour and she was becoming increasingly agitated especially with Edward and Alice sitting right next to her at their lunch table. In all the time that they had been in Forks, they had never sat at any other table however the seating arrangements were slightly different today and Mina knew it was because of her. Alice and the ever delightfully depressed Edward were flanked either side of her and Mina wasn't sure whether they were doing this to protect the humans from her or were her siblings trying to protect her from the humans. Either way Mina didn't know. This day was taking so much out of Mina, she knew the first day of school was going to suck but she didn't think that it would be this bad. Naturally she was a source of fascination because of her unique appearance and Mina had been prepared for that. Buts he never imagined that she would struggle so much with her bloodlust, right now it was like her throat was on fire and crying out for her to quench it's insatiable thirst and there was plenty of sources of replenishment right in front of her. All around Mina were countless beating hearts and with that plenty of blood for her to drink. Mina was finding it hard to concentrate due to the different scents all around her, despite the fact that she had fed only yesterday she was feeling very overwhelmed and every so often her imagine wondered off to how she would attack whoever her eyes drifted onto. She could just see it in her mind, the constant dry ache that she had in her throat for the last fifteen years finally being satisfied once again by the taste of fresh human blood. Right now it was on some blonde girl who had just walked past them and trying to pretend that she hadn't been starting at them. She was pretty, Mina would give her that but the girl's appearance wasn't really the focus of her attention – it was her blood. The sweet swell was drifting around in the air, dangerously tempting Mina to give into her cravings and satisfy the craving that she had been starving for the last fifteen years. One little bite and everything would be better.

"Wilhelmina ."

Blinking a few times to pull herself back to reality Mina moved her gaze away from the blonde girl and over to Edward who said her name at such a high pitch that no human could ever possibly hear it. Another perk of being a vampire she guessed. Don't call me that. Only Esme can call me that and the last time I checked you weren't our mother. Mina thought, knowing full well that Edward could hear her as he couldn't help but hear everything that she was thinking. Normally he tried to give her and the rest of the family privacy and tried to refrain from eavesdropping but when it came to situations like these there was no such thing as privacy given that Edward and Alice were tasked with making sure nothing happened that would jeopardize them all here of all places as there was some treaty in place with some tribe in LaPush. Something about them being allowed to live here as long as they didn't spill any human blood. It was complicated and Mina didn't do complicated, she liked to keep things simple.

"I needed to get your attention, you were getting tempted…" Edward quietly said, thus alerting the rest of the family to that had been going on and if Mina could still blush she was certain that her face would be tomato red right now. This was embarrassing and Mina felt utterly humiliated in front of her family because now this made her feel and look weak. It made her feel inferior as they weren't struggling the way that she was when it came to their bloodlust. No one understood, her family hadn't done the things that Mina had done and spilt the amount of blood that she had. They weren't the ones who took a massive fall off the sober wagon and created a bloodbath in which three innocent people were mauled to death by Mina. That was by far Mina's lowest ever point but this awkward situation that she was currently in was coming in at a close second. Mina didn't know what to say or even where to look. Instead she looked down and fiddled with the food on her tray that was never going to be eaten, it was just there for show to try and make the teenagers of Fork think that the Cullen's were normal.

"Doesn't mean that I was going to do it." Mina snarled in irritation as today had been extremely tiring as she had to put up with Edward and Alice sticking to her side like the three of them were attached to the hip. They were keeping a close proximity in case something happened and Mina was pretty certain that Alice was keeping close tabs on her future and Edward was 'monitoring' her mind. It was intrusive as hell and having her siblings monitor her like this made Mina feel exposed. All her decisions and thoughts were being second guessed and analyzed which was rather demeaning, it was screwing with Mina's head and the fact that her siblings were doing this to her drove Mina insane. This whole thing made her feel like she was some fragile china doll that was moments away from breaking but instead of smashing into a thousand pieces they were worrying about her massacring an entire town. Mina understood why they were being so protective because of what happened last time but she hadn't massacred an entire town, she had killed three people and she regretted what happened very much. But it was fifteen years ago, they need to trust her again. The last thing Mina wanted to do was lose control and hurt someone, most importantly put her family's safety in jeopardy. Mina falling off the wagon all those years ago had more consequences than her taking the lives of three innocent people, it had put them all at risk of exposure. They had all had to leave very quickly, making sure to leave no trace of themselves and but leaving a trail of suspicion in their wake. Mina was pretty sure that Rosalie was still annoyed about it as Minnesota had been one of the nicer places that they had lived.

"We know." Alice replied with a small and encouraging smile and Mina found it hard to be annoyed at her sister given that she knew that there was no malice to Alice's action, she was acting merely out of concern of them all. It was pretty much Alice's job to literally keep an eye out over them all, watch out for anything that might be a threat to them and their way of life. It wasn't a job that Mina would want for herself, which is why she forced herself to give her sister a smile in return. But Mina couldn't be here any longer, she couldn't continue to be here sitting amongst the humans and being tempted by their scent and she couldn't keep sitting here with her siblings, having the all seeing Alice and the all hearing Edward keeping a hawk like watch over and flanking her sides as if she was some fragile china doll that was moments from smashing into a million pieces.

"Then try acting like it!" Mina spat in response, unable to help herself as the words had come out of her mouth before she even knew what she was doing. For Mina, this day was just continually getting worse and at this rate she had no clue where the day would be in another twelve hours. Days like these made being immortal truly a pain in the ass because it wasn't like Mina could just go and sleep it off. Vampires never slept. Her brain never really shut off. It was always on, there was always something going through her mind.

"Mina, you need you calm down." Edward quietly replied, placing one of his hands gently on top of Mina's own and like most people, being told that she needed to calm down only irritated Mina further. She knew that she was on edge, that she was struggling to cope and her emotions were at this time slightly enhanced and she wasn't making anything better for herself. It fact it was making the whole situation worse but Mina really didn't like being told to calm down. But what was

"Don't tell me to calm down like I am some perpetual child throwing some kind of tantrum!" Mina hissed, a loud rumble of thunder quickly following her response and she quickly looked over her shoulder to see if any of the students had taken notice of the seemingly odd weather occurrence. Apparently not, the weather in Forks was so miserable that no one seemed to bat an eyelid to some thunder. They probably took it as a sign that there was going to be a storm later, none of them would ever thing that the thunder was caused by someone in this very room. Someone who wasn't quite normal. Mina need to leave, she needed to remove herself from the situation and that's exactly what she was going to do. Idly pushing her chair back, Mina rose from her rather uncomfortable plastic cafeteria seat and proceeded to pick up her tray of uneaten food and went about disposing of the food. Mina was certain that she had played with the food enough that it no longer resembled anything of substance and no one would bat any eyelid about her odd eating habits.

It was easy enough for Mina to dispose of her lunch but getting out of here was going to be a bit more difficult as Forks was a pretty small town by most standards and the high school reflected that. So people were going to notice if Mina Cullen left during the middle of the school day but Mina would deal with that later, right now she just wanted to get as far away from here as she could and go somewhere where she could be completely alone and without her privacy being invaded. Austria was always nice this time of year…. She was going to get the riot act later, that much Mina knew but she recalled someone telling her that the bad ideas were always the ones that were never tried. The hallways were somewhat sleepy as Mina walked down the hallway, most of the students were back in the cafeteria taking full advantage of the break they had before they were forced back to going to the remainder of their classes. With her backpack slung over one shoulder, Mina almost felt happy as went about exiting the school building but then she came to a stop as she felt too pleased with herself. Where was the anger? Where was the annoyance that she was feeling only minutes earlier? They were seemingly gone and replaced with these feelings of calmness and content. She felt too relaxed, too much at ease with herself and no longer feeling slightly homicidal. Mina wasn't the most emotional person in the world, she wasn't prone to frequent outburst such as Rosalie, she didn't wear her emotions on her sleeve on Alice but she didn't go through the entire spectrum of emotions that quickly without a little intervention on somebody else's part. Someone like Jasper…

Are you kidding me? Look I'm sorry about the thunder, it shouldn't have happened but you know that my emotions and the weather sometimes go hand in hand. But are we really doing this? It's bad enough knowing that you've been in my head all day, Alice is poking about in my future and now you have Jasper toying with my emotions? Would it kill you to cut me a break for five minutes Ed? I'm fine. Mina thought, knowing full well that Edward could hear her as he was unable to help himself most of the time but then there were times when he purposely listened in, times when he was worried that something bad would happen such as Mina massacring a bunch of high school student. Mina felt her calmness waver for a second, briefly replaced with the urge to punch something before the feeling of calmness returned. That confirmed without a doubt what Mina knew and with a heavy sigh she turned around and standing all but ten feet behind her was a familiar set of golden eyes that looked as intense as Mina had always known them to be and honey blonde hair that seemed to fall in soft waves. Jasper Hale. There was no Edward much to Mina's surprise, no doubt he much of through she would fly off the handle even further if he showed up with Jasper.

"Alice says your leaving." Jasper stated, it wasn't even a question it was just a statement and Mina allowed herself to relax a little even without Jasper's help. Now that she was away from the cafeteria and no longer fretting about taking a huge bite of some girls' jugular being and becoming borderline paranoid about Edward and Alice keeping tabs on her, Mina felt back in control of herself for the first time since she had arrived at school this morning. If anyone was going to get how she was feeling, it was going to be Jasper.

"Relax. I just figured with everything that was going on in the cafeteria that it would be best if I left. Ya know? Remove myself from the situation before whatever bad Alice might have seen happens. There's no need to worry, it's not like I'm leaving the state. I'm just heading home… " Mina replied in a light tone of voice, trying to brush off the whole thing with a casual shrug of her shoulders but the rather stern look in Jasper's eyes told her, he didn't quite believe her. Why should he? Mina wasn't exactly being a hundred percent honest here. Plus Jasper pretty much had a hundred percent faith in Alice's visions if she told him that Mina was leaving then Jasper wouldn't question it. So there was no way that Jasper was going to believe that Mina was just leaving to go home. He saw straight through that lie. "Okay, I wasn't being truthful… There was a brief thought of leaving the state but I'm not going to do it. The last thing I want to do is upset Esme and besides, I've done nothing wrong in the slightest that warrants me pulling a Houdini act."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't need a meeting Jazz, just having a bad day." Mina stated with a small scoff, allowing herself to smile at the mention of the word 'meeting'. That was her and Jasper's thing, something that only the two of them shared. Whenever one of them or at times both of them were struggling with their control over their thirst and feeling overwhelmed they would go off and have a talk about it. A 'meeting' as they described it as Mina and Jasper were the ones who had the biggest difficulties dealing with their vegetarian diets. They were addicts in a sense, so they were in their very own Alcoholics Anonymous group although it wasn't quite anonymous and alcohol wasn't their problems. But they did have an addiction that was sort of similar to alcoholism and they were both trying to stay sober and they figured they would help each other out. Hence their 'AA' meetings. They all struggled with the blood thing, well except maybe Carlisle but for Mina as well as Jasper, it was a lot harder as they weren't like the others in their family, who had spent most of their years as a vampire surviving for the most part on animal blood. For most of their lives as vampires both Mina and Jasper had drunk human blood, awakening as newborns each of them had spent decades after decades drinking human blood and as such the adjustment to animal blood after drinking human blood for so long was difficult. Mina's had been on the animal only diet for about fifty years now just like Jasper and even then she had taken a couple of stumbled. Her last being fifteen years ago which was a real big mess.

"They mean well, you know that right?" Jasper asked and Mina dumbly nodded her head as she felt her emotions slowly and rather subtly become less relaxed and content, reverting back to her previously angry and confused state. Although her mood was now in a rather more controlled state. Mina knew what her brother was doing, Jasper was trying not to dull out her own feelings with more positives for the sake of keeping her calm. He was letting her deal with her emotions in rather small and controlled amount. Mina appreciated what Jasper was doing, she appreciated the trust.

"Of course, but you know that their efforts to help just end up being plain irritating at times and today is one of those days. I was having a bad morning already but now I just feel like I'm suffocating. I couldn't move without either of them by my side, both of them right next to me in every class watching my every move… Can we swap places? You can be a junior again and spend your days with Edward and Alice whilst I can be a senior for once? I would much rather have Rose and Emmett baby me all day as it's a lot more tolerable. You should have seen me in class Jazz, I was forcing myself to think in Bulgarian and polish. I was swapping between the two but I wasn't that successful. So how about it? Care to trade lives?" Mina responded, once again forcing herself to smile for the sake of making it seem like that she was okay. Although why Mina bothered was beyond her as Jasper could always see beyond that, he always knew what she was feeling no matter what stupid expression she plastered on her face because he could feel it. Jasper's gift of feeling emotions and being able to manipulate emotions was perhaps the one gift that Mina wished she could have.

"Afraid not Mina." Jasper quipped and Mina rolled her eyes in mild amusement, knowing this to be true even before she had even asked the question.

"It's been fifteen years Jazz, I feel like I still have to prove myself and earn everyone's trust again after what happened… I know what I did and to this day I am still sorry for what happened, I never meant to lose control and I know I have to live with that guilt and that's fine with me. But when I see Alice and Edward keeping a watchful eye over me, all these feelings rush up to the surface. I know they are only trying to help, my heart knows that but my head thinks another thing completely. In my head, it's like they haven't forgiven me for what I did and they are just waiting for me to screw up again because I'm this massive screw up. I am trying though Jazz, I really am… I've not had a drop of human blood since that day, I won't lie and say that I don't have cravings but I'm dealing with them as best as I can. Before you say anything, I know it's crazy. I know that nobody blames me for what happened, Carlisle has pretty much drilled that into my head but it's just how I feel. My neurosis only seems to get worse the older I get." Mina woefully allowed herself to admit, knowing that everything that she said to Jasper would remain between the two of them.

"Mina you don't have to feel like you have to justify anything to me, you know I understand better than most. But if the worst were to happen, just know that you will always be completely forgiven even though there is nothing for you to ever be sorry for." Jasper replied and Mina allowed herself to smile. Whilst she wasn't exactly proud to be in the vampires version of alcoholics anonymous, she was grateful that she wasn't alone. That she had Jasper to talk, that she could tell him anything about what she was feeling and her cravings as he wouldn't judge because he had similar cravings too. No matter how bad Mina could sometimes feel about her struggles, she could always count on Jasper to remind her that she wasn't alone in this and give her a pep talk that somehow made her not feel like a complete failure. At least if she killed someone she would have someone to hang out with who would not make a big deal out of it.

"I should probably head off if I want to make a clean break out of here, if I'm not careful someone will probably spot me and word will get to Carlisle at the hospital before I make it home. You know how word travels at the speed of light here in in Forks!" Mina joked, feeling the need to lighten the mood ever so much as this conversation hadn't exactly been filled with rainbows and unicorns. But Jasper didn't laugh, he was just looking at Mina with this sad look in his eyes. However it wasn't sympathy or pity, it was something else but Mina couldn't quite decipher it. But then again emotions weren't her thing, they were Jaspers. Mina just pissed around with the weather.

"I'll see you at home Wilhelmina."

Another statement instead of a question. Mina could afford to laugh as Jasper wasn't even entertaining the notion of her skipping town anymore. Today may have been as close to hell as Mina had known in a fair while but it was nice to see that immortality hadn't completely ruined every aspect of her life. Mina had spent most of her life running, it used to be the only thing that she knew but not anymore. Mina wouldn't run, even though things were hard right now for the first time in a long time she wasn't alone anymore, she had met the people who she had unknowingly searching for a long time. Things weren't always easy, Mina wasn't an easy person and her siblings had a tendency to drive her mad but despite everything that had happened today, what had happened fifteen years ago, Mina wouldn't leave. As she had found the people she didn't know she had been looking for and even through the hard times, she still thought of her adopted family as the most precious things in her life and Mina would press on for them. She wouldn't be scared by any danger, even if it was the danger that she posed to them attempting to live as close to a normal life as a vampire could. She would fight the battles that she knew she would win, walk away when she was struggling. She would be good.