Edward Cullen wasn't in school on Tuesday, my second day at Forks High, the day after he glared murderously at me for the entire hour of Biology from a distance of about six inches from my face. His absence pissed me off more than it should have, since he was a boy I had not even spoken a single word to yet, and I should have been relieved not to have to sit through another such uncomfortable, terrifying hour.
All through Biology, I stared at the empty seat to my right, glaring at the space he would have taken up next to me, and imagined what I would have said to him.
By the time I walked out of the gym and into the parking lot to head home, I had worked myself into a frenzy. He was clearly an asshole, and as rich and beautiful and self-important as he clearly was, I doubted anyone had ever let him know just how much he sucked.
I saw them, then, standing next to an obscenely large silver Jeep waiting for the parking lot to clear so they didn't have to fight through a traffic jam, all four of them beautiful and pale and bruised around the eyes. Their clothing was crisp and new and pricey, and their skin was completely unmarred. The girls were huddled together under an umbrella and the boys looked completely unaffected by the cold slushy sleet that fell from the sky and soaked through their clothing.
I stalked to my truck – really, slid my ungainly way across the slick pavement – and fought to get the door open. With a huff, I threw my bag and then myself into the driver's seat and glared at them through my rearview mirror. Overcome with annoyance and rage, I dug into my bag and pulled out a sheet of paper and the first pen my cold, fumbling hands could find.
In bright red ink, I scratched three words into the sheet of white, then traced and retraced and retraced them again until my frazzled, enraged state of mind was clear in the lettering. Honestly, I just thought the act of writing my frustration would make me feel better. Maybe when I got home I would burn the paper for some symbolic catharsis or something. Then I made the mistake of looking in the mirror again.
They were looking in my direction. It could have been a coincidence, but I just knew it wasn't. They were looking at me because of him. Because he had told them about me. About how, for whatever reason, he hated me and seemed to want to rip me limb from limb.
Before I could reason with myself, I threw my door open again, slammed it right into the boy getting into the car next to me, who looked horribly offended when I only slammed the door shut again and walked, as quickly and haughtily as I dared, across the row.
They watched me approach with trepidation, suspicion, and surprise. I stopped and held out the paper in the general direction of the two girls.
"Give this to your psycho brother for me, please," I said through gritted teeth.
There was a brief pause before one of them – in my anger, I couldn't even process which of the two beautiful girls it was – reached out and took it primly from my hand, just the tips of her fingers touching the edge folded paper.
I turned on my heel and stalked properly away, forgetting myself and my surroundings until I lost my balance about three feet from the back of my truck.
"Shit!" I screamed as my legs flew out from under me and my butt hit the pavement hard.
It knocked the wind out of me, and my face burned. Everyone was looking at me now, not just Edward Cullen's siblings. I was sure I looked like a crazy person as I struggled to regain my feet on the slick pavement not all that unlike Bambi on ice.
"Are you okay?" The little one whose name I thought I remembered Jessica saying was Alice asked, bending down in front of me so that her face was only a few inches from mine. "Here, let me help you."
"I'm fine," I insisted, but she wrapped her gloved hands around each of my forearms and yanked me, surprisingly firmly, to my feet. Trying, and clearly failing, for dignity, I tugged the hem of my jacket down and sighed. "Thank you."
She didn't let go of me until I made it back to my door, and I didn't fight her because I knew if I did I would either lose to her strong grip or to gravity. I swallowed my pride and thanked her again, not looking her in the eye as I climbed back behind the wheel. She was already gone by the time my truck roared to life, already back with the others, all of them still watching me. I backed out of my spot very cautiously. The last thing I wanted was to wreck my truck in front of them now when they obviously already thought I had lost my mind. I stared straight ahead, determinedly not glancing at them, as I drove away.
"What is it, Rose?" Emmett asked, leaning over and peering at the paper curiously as soon as the odd little awkward, angry human was gone. "What does it say?"
"Should we wait and see if he comes back? Give it to him to look at?" Jasper asked, but he was staring at the small square of paper too. Her scent, stronger and more alluring than most of the others around them, still lingered on the paper Rosalie grasped gingerly.
"Open it," Alice urged. "He'll be back on Sunday, and everything will be fine. He's not going to kill her."
"Should we even give it to him at all?" Rosalie wondered with a small scowl. Why did he need to know that the human girl was so affected by him?
"He'll see that it happened," Jasper reasoned. He was tempted to play with Rosalie's mood, make her feel more at ease with playing along, but she always got so angry with him when she realized that he had affected her emotions. "We have to."
"He's right, babe," Emmett said, and pulled her into his side. "Open it."
Rosalie sighed and unfolded the paper and held it out flat in the middle of the curious little circle they formed around it.
There, in large red letters, looking quite like someone absolutely insane had scratched them into the paper, were the words:
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Emmett's laugh roared out of him, startling the humans nearest him.
"I like her!" he declared loudly. Edward could stand to be called out on his bullshit a little more often.
Jasper shook his head with a smirk, and the laugh tinkled out of Alice. Even Rosalie smiled a little as her eyes traced the crazed letters. Maybe not all humans were boring and worthless.
I saw a post on tumblr that was a Venn diagram with three circles containing one word each: what, the, fuck. And it said that Bella should give this note to Edward after that first moment in Biology.
I thought it was really funny, so I went ahead and wrote it. I did this really quickly and I didn't really edit it before I posted it, so I hope you like it lol.
