Four

"Arabella Jacks?"

"Present!" I raised my hand and straightened my binder. I heard the door click open, and as my gaze drifted upward to the visitor, I opened my notebook and grabbed my pencil.

"Sorry to interrupt." The principal had stepped into the room. With him were three strikingly beautiful students. "We've got some new students this quarter. Please make them feel welcome." He smiled and then handed a file of papers.

"Very well. Go ahead and find seats." smiled kindly to the three new students. "Class, this is Rosalie Halen, Emmett Cullen, and Edward Cullen."

My eyes followed in order of their stance, ending with the one named Edward- and instantly I was stuck with a flabbergasted feeling.

He's so just asjdfklsjheoaha. Sweet baby Jesus.

"Now I will have you three books in just a moment. As for the rest of the class, please begin your essays of Shakespeare's 'Midsummer's Night Dream' I expect the rough draft by the end of the hour." continued, and the new kids moved forward and took seats across the room.

I placed my pencil slowly on the paper, and watched the bronze haired boy as he took his seat beside me. "Hello." I whispered, flashing a small smile. "My name's Arabella."

"Edward." He whispered back, keeping his eyes to the desk.

What a nice name. Very prince-like.

"Well Edward, would you like to borrow my book? I've already finished the essay." When he shook his head I just sighed lightly and began scribbling the Cinquain poem for extra credit. "Well if you need it... it's here." I mumbled lightly, doubting he could even hear me.

You're just annoying him. Chill out.

After the poem was finished, I had drawn a scene at the bottom depicting Lysander's betrayal to Hermia. When the hour was finally over, I stood, walking over to the three new kids, and smiling. "Hi. I've already introduced myself to Edward, but I just wanted to say hi to you two, my names Arabella, if you guys need anything just ask! I'm happy to help, and I wanted to be the first to officially welcome you to Forks High! You're going to enjoy the next four years in these halls... well I hope." I quickly, and quite literally, bit my tongue to stop myself from the rambling I had already begun down.

Wow I'm so stupid. I thought, they probably already heard all of this and now I'm just that weird girl who said something. Stupid. I sighed and looked at them with a smile.

"Well thank you Arabella." The other boy said with a smile. "I'm Emmett, and this is Rose."

"Oh I love the picture!" Rose said as her eyes found my open notebook.

"Thanks... I'm kinda big into English, so I like to do the extra credit work. always posts what the extra credit requirements are in the corner of the white board." I smiled as I then ripped the page along its perforated edge, saving myself from any annoying paper poop, and dropping it into my hour's homework bin.

"That's awesome." Rose smiled, then grabbed Emmett and Edward's arms. "We've got to get to our next class, but I hope we'll get to talk later!"

"Absolutely!" I felt like duh an idiot, they were welcoming but probably because they had to be. I walked from the room with my hair creating a red tinted veil between my face and the hallway. Slowly I pushed it back and walked to my locker, jiggling the lock aggravatingly until I heard a voice behind me.

"Do you need help with that?" I spun around and saw a girl with a brunette pixie cut and an awkward blonde boy.

"Oh! Uhh yeah thanks." I stepped back awkwardly and told her my combination, with a few quick spins and a sure pull she popped it open. "It must have been caught."

"Must have." She said with a grin before side stepping two lockers and jiggling it open. I rifled through my locker looking for my science book aggravatingly, eventually sliding my foot onto the bottom and hoisting myself up to look in the top of my locker. My eye caught it and I reached forward, losing my grip and falling backwards, fear raked through my body until my back crashed into a cold hand, my own hands still reaching out for the locker like I was mid fall.

"Be careful." The awkward blonde boy said with a clenched jaw.

"Oh. Thanks." I said sheepishly, righting myself and turning to look at both the students beside me. "I'm Arabella by the way. I don't think we've met."

"Oh! I'm Alice and this is Jasper!" The brunette with the great fashion sense hopped forward. "It's nice to meet you Arabella." She grinned an amazingly bright smile and grabbed Jasper's hand.

"It's nice to meet you!" I clutched my book to my chest and twitched my fingers reflexively around the softened edges of my journal that I both wrote and drew all over in. "Um, welcome to Forks High!" I took a quick guess that they were new, because I had personally met every person in the school. It was the perks of having a father on the police force and a dog on the K-9 unit.

"Oh thank you!" Alice said happily, and pulled herself close to Jasper, wrapping her arm around his and holding onto his bicep. "We have to get class but I hope to see you again!" She pulled Jasper away and I felt so embarrassed and ashamed, knowing I had probably annoyed them, but then an overwhelming feeling of confidence washed over me, but drowned just as quickly as it came. Quickly I rushed to my class, falling into my seat and seeing no sign of the new kids. I sighed inwardly and opened my science book, the notes from the previous day fluttering down along with the pages of the book. I eyed my red pen and began to doodle along the edges, just tiny doodles, nothing all too large, just something to fill the empty margins.

As each class passed my fear of embarrassment ebbed away slowly and I found myself entering the lunch room with hope to offer them a seat at my lunch table, maybe I could introduce Alice and Jasper to Emmett, Rosalie, and Edward. Excitedly I entered the line to the salad bar, smiling at the lunch lady who was refilling the sunflower seeds. "Looks delicious today." I grinned, holding the foam plate in my hand gingerly.

"Yeah. Whatever." She rolled her eyes and walked away, Carol was always such a bitch.

After I got my small salad as my stomach rumbled, I sat down at an empty table. My friend Gaia slammed her food down and flopped into the seat beside me. "Carol is a bitch." She said as she ripped open the top of her orange juice.

"Yeah. Fuck Carol." I laughed, nibbling on my lettuce apprehensively.

"She told me I wasn't allowed to have tomato soup!" Gaia slammed her hand on the table. "I HAD TO GET CHICKEN NOODLE!"

"Uhmm... Gi, you're allergic to tomatoes... and you threw up your own blood last time you had it." I put my fork down after eating only half the lettuce leaf.

"That's besides the point! She could have let me eat it and enjoy the rest of what my life has. If it was my time to go then it was my time to go!" Gaia burst out in a fit of laughter, holding her stomach as she did so.

"You're such a loser Gaia." I chuckled, shaking my head. Taking a sip of water I glanced around. "Have you seen the new kids?"

"Oh yeah! That Alice Cullen girl and Jasper Halen are in my second class." She said, slurping a noodle up in her mouth quickly. When I heard their names I felt instantly stupid. It wasn't some huge coincidence that they all started the same day, a Wednesday no less, they must all already know each other. "Oh there they are now." She mumbled, a bit of broth rolling down her chin and making me feel sick. I spun around and saw all five of them enter the cafeteria and look over the land. Catching Alice's eye, I beckoned her over.

"Hey come sit with us!" I spoke happily, waving them over and pushing my salad away, ignoring the growling and emptiness in my stomach.

Sure enough Alice began to drag them over, and they all took seats around the table, each one varying levels of mystery. "Arabella- right?" Emmet said with a dashing smile.

"Oh! Yeah! You can call me Ari though, everyone does. And this is Gaia, but everyone just calls her Gi." I sipped the drink in front of me and smiled.

"I really love your name." Rosalie said, pushing her blonde locks aside and whispering something that sounded just as a buzz of noise to Emmett beside her.

Her name is so much prettier. Mine isn't even super original.

"Oh! Thank you." I spoke awkwardly and capped the drink. "So What brings y'all to the cloudiest and rainiest place in America?" Very few people actually ever moved here, they only ever moved away. I studied each of them. They all were so flawless, each looked at the room like they had nothing left to see, but everything to experience.

It was Edward who spoke up, his eyes had been flicking between Gaia and I before they settled on me. "Our adoptive father is the newest family doctor at the hospital."

Damn what a gene pool- wish I could relate.

"That's awesome, my dad is a police officer in town, and Gaia's mom is the fire chief." I turned to look at Gaia, who was shoveling chicken and noodles into her mouth.

"Yeah!" She swallowed hard and smiled, putting her spork down and picking up her stuff. "Hey, Ari, I gotta go. Yearbook emergency. I guess all of the senior quotes re-arranged themselves and every time they fix it and save it, it defaults back into the page with the wrong quotes."

"Oh my god!" I sat up a little, staring at her. One of the last things the yearbook needed was a mob of angry seniors.

"Yeah- Uhmm just stop by after school, I still need those drawings too by the way. That way we can make sure it stays formatted properly." She smiled apologetically as she threw the bag over her shoulder and pulled out her phone. "It was nice to meet you- I'll be in touch with all of you soon." She ran off, emptying her tray and throwing it to the cart where the dirty ones were placed.

"She'll be in touch with us?" Emmett said with a laugh, looking at me for answers.

"Yeah, Gi is a one woman power house. We're freshman and she's already the student council president, editor and chief of the yearbook and the school news, and teaches the fire safety classes at the elementary once a week." I laughed, pulling my red hair around to one shoulder. "She means she's going to talk to each of you for a 'get to know me' in the newsletter, and so she can possibly recommend extra curricula around the school."

I bet they would all get the best ones. I just get the "keep being you" bullshit.

"That's really cool." Emmet responded with a smile. "What-" he was cut off by the sound of Edward coughing. Edward mumbled something quickly under his breath and Emmet seemed to almost have understood.

"What?" I asked, now genuinely curious.

"What is something you would recommend around here?" He said happily.

"Oh my friend Jake and I always go to Lapush beach and surf, Jake lives on the reservation." I explained excitedly. "It's honestly one of-"

I was cut off when Jessica walked over. "I'm sorry, is she bothering you?" Shrinking down I just desperately wanted to disappear. "Sorry she's such a spaz."

"What?" Edward looked up suddenly, his eyes fierce. Tears welled in my eyes and I cast them downward.

She's right. I'm awful. I'm too weird. Why do I even try?

"Yeah she totally is depressed for attention." She snorted and moved closer to Edward. "You could do better."

What is she even talking about? I'm just trying to be friendly. I just want to be nice. What have I ever done to her?

"Leave." Rosalie said with a growl. "Now." Emmet grabbed her arm and whispered into her hair as I hid behind mine.

I wasn't sure what happened next but Jessica was gone and Edward was sighing. "Don't listen to her. She's more insecure than you could imagine."

"No, it's fine. I'm fine." I lied. I felt like I had been broken in half, but I pulled the tears back and blinked them away, looking up and pushing my hair behind my ear, grabbing my drink quickly and taking a large swig. "Nothing I haven't heard from Jessica." I shrugged and began fiddling with the edges of my jacket. "She's usually way meaner honestly." I mumbled, hoping they wouldn't hear me.

"She's just jealous." Jasper spoke up, giving a quick, quirky smile. He had the faintest of accents that reminded me of an old Western movie.

I snorted and crossed my arms. "I highly doubt that. She's got Mike fawning over her like crazy." With a quick motion I plucked a single cucumber slice from my plate and took a small bite. My stomach rumbled quietly and Rosalie looked up.

"I'm so sorry if we are keeping you from eating!" She pushed my plate towards me slowly but I pushed back reluctantly.

"I'm not hungry." I smiled.

I'm starving.

The lunch period went on, eventually ending with me getting to know the family in front of me better. On my way to my next class Edward caught up to me. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Yeah I'm good, why wouldn't I be?"

"Just what Jessica said back there. It was just..." he sighed heavily. "You're not a spaz." He added humor to the words, but there was something deeper. Almost like he knew every word from Jessica's mouth affected me.

"Well thanks." I laughed, flipping my hair behind me as it tickled my face. His eye caught something, drifting to my upper arm.

Oh my god he's noticing I'm a peasant and not worth standing near him. Shit. Act normal!

"What's that scar from?" He pointed to the jagged and thick scar just above my elbow.

"Oh I fell out of the big tree by the police station when I was little, and broke my arm really badly." I laughed and smiled with triumph. "But I climbed it again a few days after I got my cast and succeeded. I could see half the town from where I got. It was amazing, I was higher than you could imagine."

"Haha, I bet your mom wasn't too happy about that." He joked as we pushed our way around the corner.

Oh fuckery of the highest. When did that happen... wait... shit... Bella was gone already. Shit.

"Um, actually my mom had already died. Car accident." Casting my eyes downward I chewed my lip nervously.

"Oh, I... I'm so sorry for your loss."

"It's fine, it was a long time ago and I had Jake... the same car accident killed his mom too." I held my books tighter, feeling that pit in my stomach filled with sorrow. "Let's change the subject. It's getting too sad." A smile popped forward onto my face.

I'll be damned if I cry in front of him.

"Oh okay!" Edward laughed at this point. "Wait, what's your next class?" He said as he neared a door.

"This one. American history isn't my favorite, I like the world better but I just have to wait I guess." I said with a shrug.

"American history is a lot more detailed than you would think. You just have to look past the common core stuff." He said as he held open the door for me.

Such a gentleman, why can't they all be made like this.

"Well thank you." I ducked under his arm, not like it took much ducking, being short has its perks. Once in the room I turned to look at him. "I'll warn you right now, don't sit next to Collin. He's gonna cheat off you even if you get worse grades than him. Chronic cheater that man."

In more ways than one... assbut.

"Noted." Edward chuckled. He walked over to the teacher, and I slid into my seat in the back of the room. Pulling out my notebook I began drawing distractedly. I looked up when movement caught my eye. The empty seat next to me had been filled by Edward. There was only one empty seat in this class, I realized, and it was the one next to mine. "Well I'm not next to Collin." Edward joked and thumbed through his history book.

There is a god.

"We're covering Spanish influenza and its effect on America right now." I smiled, opening my own book. "Chapter seven."

"Oh... really?" He asked, surprised.

"Yeah, is huge into the economic facts of history." I said with a smile and laugh.

Eww that laugh was awful. Like Satan himself just crawled out my throat. Shook.

"Well then." He laughed and opened his book to the page, pulling out his paper and pen and began writing. His writing was the actual embodiment of beauty. I looked at my own chicken scratch and crinkle my nose.

Once the class was done Edward and I parted ways, eventually I had stepped into the yearbook room, smiling at Angela as she stepped from the dark room holding newly developed photos. "Hey. I heard Jessica gave you a hard time... I'm sorry... if I had been there she wouldn't have said anything."

"No it's fine Angela, you were dealing with the emergency just as much as Gaia was." I smiled and glanced at the photos. "Those are really good."

"Thanks! I can't wait to see them with your sketches formatted behind them!" She excitedly walked over to the table and began to sort them into piles of what pages and sections they belonged to. Once I found Gaia at her desk, I took in the look of it. She had a larger desk, and it was littered with pictures, and reprinted pages of the seniors and their quotes.

"I don't understand Ari." Gaia said when she saw me. "It's fixed on the computer but when I print it it's jumbled again." She rubbed her temples and started at the page.

"Use it to your advantage then."

"What an advantage. It's a mess. They are never going to let a freshman have power again, let alone me." She groaned and took a drink from a Starbucks coffee bottle.

"Here let me see." I grabbed a paper and pen, and sketched rough boxes and made squiggles where words would be. "Do this then." I slid the paper to her and she took it in.

"Oh my god. Ari, that's ingenious!" She stood quickly and scrambled over to the group who was working on the senior pages. I heard her explain it and turned around to me. "You just saved the yearbook. I'm going to put a front page dedication to you in the newspaper tomorrow. 'Hometown hero turns school savior!' Yeah that'll work." She laughed and hugged me tightly, she was half a head taller than me, but it wasn't awkward at all.

"You really don't have to." I said, smiling at her, only now could I take in the full effect of how much stress this had caused her. Her deep brown hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, a pencil shoved into it, and her shrug's sleeves were shoved above her elbows, where eczema sat red and irritated and brought forth by stress. "Here's the drawings." I said as I pulled a folder filled with 205 different drawings. "I threw in a couple alternates, and you can rearrange them however you think they fit best. Oh!" I pulled out another paper filled with little boxes with intricate designs. "And for borders you can use this!" I smiled happily and zipped my bag back up.

"Thank you so much!" She handed the drawings off to Jessica who smiled excitedly and started thumbing through them to figure out what would go best where. "You want to hang out after I'm finished here? Shouldn't be much longer."

"Actually Jake and I are going to LaPush to surf. The swell is supposed to be amazing." I smiled and began to pull my hair up in the bun it would remain in.

"Okay! Well you and me are on tomorrow night- I want to watch a movie and eat some popcorn!"

"Deal." I smiled and left the room, heading home on my bicycle and ditching my school clothes for my swimsuit and surf shirt, and putting jeans and a jacket over it. Leaving my stuff all over my bed I slid my phone into my pocket, grabbed my board and my bag to shove my clothes in, and off I went. I dialed my dad's number, leaving a message for him of where I was going and when I would be home. I poured food into Maddie's bowl so she could eat as soon as she got home, and I snagged some water for myself.

I was outside the moment Jake and Billy pulled up, throwing my board in the back and climbing up into the truck. "Hey loser." I said with a grin, staring at Jake. "When you gonna cut your hair? Them locks gonna be longer than mine." I said in a nasally voice, mocking one of the elderly we had ran into when we went to the movies last week.

"Ari, you're crazy." Jake said with a laugh as Billy chuckled, taking off. "Dad is going to drop us off at the Clearwater's house, he has tribe stuff to do so we are going to have to walk to the beach."

"Okay!" I said happily, looking out the window as the scene I had known and loved my entire life flew by. By the time we reached the Clearwater's we had Billy laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Lady Gaga's poker face came on, and the combination of Jake and I screaming the lyrics at the top of our lungs in funny voices was too much to handle.

"Okay don't be too late kiddos." Billy said as he was helped into the house by Harry Clearwater. I stopped to wave at the ten year old Clearwater boy named Seth who was watching through the window excitedly.

"We won't, I already called my dad too." I smiled and pulled my bag on my shoulders and grabbed my board. "When are you, Charlie, and my dad getting together for game night again?"

"I'm not sure, but I hope it's soon, they just have their hands full in the sheriff's station." He called me before the door shut.

"Did you year Riley Biers got arrested for loitering?" Jake asked, looking at me with a smile, he knew I used to have a huge crush on Riley when we were younger, I had always looked up to him in awe and glory.

"Wait, he got arrested for it!?"

"Well he had a joint and a beer bottle in his hand but yeah, the initial thing was loitering." Jake laughed and I shoved him a little.

"I'll race you to the beach." I said, jumping suddenly and smiling.

"Oh you're on!" Suddenly we were in a full out run, laughing and screaming.

I won. I got to the beach three paces ahead of Jake, both of us panting, we crashed onto the ground and began to pull off our outer clothes, the swimsuits underneath. "Hey how about next week we do a bit of cliff jumping?" I asked with a smile, Jake and I had a strange relationship, we were like brother and sister, but we also were best friends. He and I constantly challenged and pushed each other.

"Sure!" He said, jumping up and grabbing both our boards. I was busy shoving our clothes into my bag, so Jake carried them to the edge of the water. "Ready!?"

"HELL YEAH!" I went running and grabbed the leash at the end of my board, putting it around my ankle and into the water we went. It was bone chilling cold, but I didn't care, the further in we went the more my board would float and hold me from the churning icy waters. Soon Jake and I were catching waves left and right, whooping and making jokes.

"CAN'T READ MY- CAN'T READ MY- P-P-POKER FACE!" I yelled at the top of my lungs and laughed as I went down the wave. Suddenly I got caught in a rogue wave and all I had to do was scream for Jake before I was under the water, my lungs burnt, I felt my board swing up and hit my back, and the next thing I knew the water was red, my leg stung and my vision was fading.