Chapter Text
My name is Avery Langdon. I’m seventeen years young, a freshly introduced senior at Forks High, and my new goal in life is to befriend at least some of the Cullen kids by any goddamn means necessary.
Obviously, things didn’t start out in this particular way.
I’ve spent most of my high school years hopping across Washington state, a fact that I’ve come to grimly accept as I learned to live out of three luggage bags. First it was with my mom in Walla Walla, but then she had to sell her house and didn’t have the money or room for another person in her tiny temporary apartment. Then it was with my uncle near Ellensburg: I spent an uncomfortable two years with him, closing out junior year with the finality of the realization that I could no longer tolerate his general creepiness and the stench of cigarette smoke that constantly permeated his home. So now I was here in Forks of Clallam County, all unpacked and settled into the attic room of my tottering, golden-hearted grandmother who was happy to have me while I finished my senior year.
I had learned to make a home within myself. No matter where I went, I went with myself , so I became my own comfort zone. My dishwater blonde hair became my roof, and my long, well-padded and pale freckled limbs became my walls. A warm and heavy jacket, a good book, and maybe a cup of coffee was all I needed to smile and think to myself yup, this is home alright. I sat enveloped in my friend’s old bomber jacket at my grandma’s slightly uneven kitchen table, filling out the last forms and transfer documents on my pride and joy, my big clunky Sony VAIO laptop. The air smelled like old lace and stale loose-leaf tea, and I told myself that it smelled like home now.
Chill out girl, I thought to myself as I stood in front of the steps leading out of the Forks High parking lot and up to the main building, they’re first day jitters. Everybody gets them . At least I wasn’t dropping in in the middle of the year, like when I was a sophomore. Now it was September eighth, and the crowds of scattered teens around me were practically buzzing with excitement under the cold grey skies. I stopped to double-check the schedule I had printed out and neurotically stared at since yesterday: trigonometry, nutritional science, a free period (thank you senior perks!), lunch, AP American history, American sign language, and finally photography as my free arts elective. It was going to be a pretty easy year.
A sandy-haired boy perched on the retaining wall and talking to his friends did a double take when he saw me, slapping his friend on the chest to get him to stop talking before hopping down and hurrying over. “Hey. I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?”
I smiled automatically. It was my policy at this point: yeah, people came and went, and I had a track record of making friends only to lose them when I moved. But that wasn’t an excuse to not leave every person a bit happier and a bit friendlier than you found them. A kind word could change someone’s entire world. It had changed mine in freshman year. “Bingo.” I said, a hand on my backpack strap. I stuck out a hand to shake. “Avery. Nice to meet you.”
“Uh, Mike.” The guy said, blinking a little in surprise at my forwardness. He grinned and shook my hand. “Mike Newton.” He glanced back at his rowdy group of male friends, who had ceased their conversation to stare at me with looks of surprise and intrigue, like I was a brand new car model that had just debuted. “If you want, I can show you around. You know, walk you to your classes. Make sure you don’t get lost.”
“That’d be great, Mike. Let’s hit the trail, huh?” I shot him a singular finger gun and started taking the rain-slick steps two at a time. My newfound friend paused to process, and then he was scrambling to catch up with me like an eager labrador.
My first day went as well as could be expected, a whirlwind of unfamiliar hallways and classrooms and dozens upon dozens of students with big curious eyes. I introduced myself to everyone I met, faces blurring and names jumbling up in the back of my mind to be sorted out later. Mike Newton was waiting for me outside of every class, smiling like a well-trained puppy, and by second period he was joined in that endeavor by an emo-haired gangly boy named Eric.
“So where are you from, like originally?” Jessica Stanley asked me. She had been hovering near me like a hawk for ages, smiling disarmingly every time I looked her way. I got the sense that she was more of a social strategist than anything.
I closed my locker after shoving my trigonometry textbook into the unreasonably small storage space and exhaled, trying to get used to the three people who had been hovering around me all day. They’re just excited to see a new face , I reminded myself, they don’t mean any harm by it . I turned and we all started walking to lunch. “Southern Washington, actually. So I’d say I basically count as a local already, right?”
Mike laughed and Jessica immediately laughed as well, side-eyeing him as we swung through the food bar with our plastic trays, loading them with all sorts of mediocre foods: wet canned corn, pale iceberg lettuce, handfuls of baby carrots, and cardboard-cradled sloppy joes that looked like they had been reheated more than a dozen times.
I basically got herded towards a table in the middle of the cafeteria, and immediately shook hands with another girl who was already there, who introduced herself as Angela. I liked her by default: she was a bit mousy and looked like someone had sucked the self-confidence out of her, but she perked up as soon as she saw my smile.
“I wish I could school hop, too.” Eric said, interlacing his fingers and resting his chin on them as everyone around the table dug into their food. “It would be better than staying here for all four years.”
“Trust me, it’s not as cool as it sounds.” I told him through a mouthful of sloppy joe. “And filling out the paperwork to transfer your grades and classes? That’s a real bitch. We’re talking six hours of scanning and uploading.”
“Oh my god, that does sound awful.” Angela piped up. “Do you have someone who helps you with that?” I quickly fell into conversation with her about the joys of being a transfer student and all the wonderful constant packing and unpacking it entailed. Angela was nice. Given time, I was sure she could have been a good friend. It sucked that I was probably only going to stay in Forks until I graduated.
“Heads up, here they come.” Mike got my attention by bopping his shoulder with mine, and I looked up to follow his gaze across the cafeteria. The gazes of a good quarter of the cafeteria, it seemed. One of the walls of the eating space was composed entirely of floor-to-ceiling glass panels, with a door in the middle that led to the outdoor rec space and, a little further down, the parking lot.
And coming through that door were five beautiful, pale, stunning teenagers who I was immediately sure were actually police drug-bust plants, because there was no way they weren’t all actually twenty years old and college graduates. They floated through the cafeteria like it was a runway, keeping entirely to themselves and saying hello to nobody. They made no eye-contact and settled down into an empty table in the far corner like a flock of elegant tropical birds, murmuring amongst themselves.
“Ugh, you guys, stop staring.” Angela said, the first to turn back around and go back to her lunch.
“Who are they?” I asked in shock.
Jessica looked like a cat that had gotten the canaray when she heard the tone of my voice, and I could practically feel the gossip she was about to lay down radiating off of her. “Those are the Cullens .” She said in a lower, more conspiratorial voice, throwing a final glance over her shoulder at the five strangers. “The little one is Alice, and the tall sad one is her brother Edward. The blonde supermodel is Rosalie: she’s Jasper’s twin, the one who looks like his toes just got run over by a shopping cart. And the big one in the grey hoodie is Emmett.”
And the mention of Emmett’s name Angela sighed and rested her chin on her palm. Mike scoffed. “What?” Angela said shyly. “I can’t help that I like them big.”
“They’re total freaks. They moved down from Alaska a year ago and haven’t talked to anyone. ” Eric continued Jessica’s detailed dishing, leaning over towards me. “And they’re adopted, right? So they’re legally brothers and sisters. But according to what we’ve heard, they’re all dating one another. All of them. Like some big freaky incestuous relationship.”
Right as he said that, Emmett draped an arm around Rosalie’s shoulders, bringing her in for a kiss on the cheek. My eyes widened in surprise. Out of all the dumb rumors to circulate in high school, please don’t let this one be true , I thought to myself. Edward, who was slouched miserably on the edge of the bench, smiled to himself.
“Oh come on, Eric. We all know that’s a stupid rumor. And I don’t know why you guys even bother talking about them.” Mike said, crossing his arms and settling deeper into his seat. He looked a bit jealous at having my attention diverted away from the table of his friends. “It’s not like they even acknowledge that anyone else in this school exists. I mean, they might as well be in their own little world.” He popped a piece of broccoli into his mouth to punctuate his point.
“Yeah, it kinda sucks.” Jessica deflated, poking at her food with a spork. “They all have sticks up their butts. They probably think they’re better than us just because their dad is loaded.”
“You’re just mad that Edward didn’t ask you to the winter dance last year.” Eric teased. When Jessica stiffened like she had been shocked, a ripple of laughter spread across our table.
“So they don’t have any friends, huh?” I mused, mostly to myself. I idly pushed kernels of corn back and forth across my tray with my spork as I stared across the glittering linoleum of the crowded cafeteria at the five Cullens, the cogs in my head turning. A gaggle of siblings, all freshly uprooted from their old lives and tossed into a new one…
I was unceremoniously thrown back into memories of my freshman year. My mom had promised me that moving school districts would be fun. An adventure, she said. She told me I’d make new friends in no time. But being plunked down in the middle of a year at a brand new high school you knew nobody at was anything but fun. It petrified me. Every person was a stranger, every classroom was full of prying eyes, and I hated it. So I kept to myself, giving other students the cold shoulder, deciding that making friends with nobody was better than having to suffer through the pain of bonding only to lose them again. What was the point? I was better off alone, I was sure of it.
And then I met Simone Ford. Simone was all sunny smiles and bright cheer: she basically bullied me into a friendship, never taking no for an answer when I defensively told her to fuck off. Unlike everybody else, she saw through my façade. And she taught me that I wasn’t antisocial, or a loner; I was just scared. But having a friendship with her, even if it was only a few months long, had been worth all the sadness of leaving her, ten times over. She gave her favorite cozy bomber jacket.
And now, sitting hundreds of miles away from her, I nuzzled into the plush insides of that same bomber jacket and remembered how just being fucking nice to people was so much better than not having anything at all. I looked over at the Cullens and suddenly instead of five pillars of beautiful marble I saw five copies of myself, refusing to take the risk of putting myself out there, content to relegate myself to mediocrity to save myself the potential pain of socialization.
Well, I wasn’t just going to leave them like that.
In the middle of lunch on a cloudy early autumn day, I decided that I was going to befriend as many Cullen kids as I could, or at the very least make them smile. Because I had been in their shoes before. Those shoes sucked. Get ready guys, I thought to myself as I stared at the lot of them from between Angela and Jessica’s seated forms, I’m gonna friendship you so hard you’ll feel like you’re in a goddamn coca-cola commercial .
Edward murmured something to Alice and she burst into tinkling laughter that danced through the room like bells.