Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, then you would be better off reading some other book. Or not actually, as some tiny dark-haired vampire would tell you, the future isn’t set in stone but changeable, shifting from one path to another along with your decisions, and while the story you’re about to read had no happy beginnings and very few happy things in the middle, it just might have a happy ending.

My name is Orangey Snickers and it is my solemn duty to bring to light the story of Nell Blake as it happened so many years ago. In other words, I am the narrator of this story and I will do my best to transcribe here how the life of Nell Blake changed when she moved to her new foster home in Forks.

Her story is not a very pleasant one : it began, as all unfortunate stories do, with abandonment. Left behind by unknown parents to the care of the American Foster Care System, with only a name, a date of birth, and an already thick mop of blond hair for herself. Her life as it continued after such a disastrous beginning, can only be described as dreadful, melancholy and calamitous, a word which here means “dreadful and melancholy” and I will therefore abstain from reporting it in fear of causing you too much anguish.
Besides, it isn’t the focus of this book where our story begins seventeen years later, on a long wet road leading to Forks, Washington.

“It's terribly lucky that someone accepted to take you in,” the driver was saying. “Given your history. Your caseworker fought against another placement in a group home.”

Through the window, endless green trees and ferns blurred together, all looking rather gloomy under the heavy gray sky. Nell didn’t mind the clouds, nor the rain. After seventeen years living in the state of Washington, an overcast sky hardly seemed worth complaining about. What she did mind was the social worker's persistent attempt at conversation.

“Forks is a small, quiet town. Hopefully, you'll adapt better here. At the very least, the opportunities for another escape will be far reduced. I understand that your new guardian—"

Head resting against the window and dark eyes fixed on the scenery, it was clear that she had no interest in ever answering. Or listening. She blocked the voice coming from the driver’s seat and focused on the gentle beat of the rain against the roof of the car, hoping for this car ride to end soon. Unfortunately, and as it is often the case, what one hopes for almost always never happens.

It seemed the exhaustion would never end. It was only a tiring car ride, a demanding arrival, and a strenuous presentation later that the door closed after the social worker. Unconcerned to remember his name, Nell was glad to see him leave. Half an hour had passed since she arrived in what was supposed to be her new home, for the next month, at least. Not that she would consider it such. Or that she knew what a home was actually like.

Mrs. Trimble (“Call me Christine dear!”) was a middle-age woman with grizzled hair and warm eyes. She appeared nice enough, if nothing else. But in Nell’s experience, kindness didn't necessarily mean safety. The dreadful foster families were never openly cruel. Those had the decency to be upfront about their discourtesy, announcing their colors through sour faces and cold dinners. With such people, Nell knew the moment she stepped foot in their houses that she wouldn't remain long enough to unpack.

But nice families were far more dangerous. It was easy enough to be lured into a false sense of security.
The Clarences up in Bellingham, for example, had been nice. They'd treated Nell as their own, bought her her very first walkman, and had been keen churchgoers. But concealed under appearances lurked a drunken uncle whose fists didn't care where they landed and adults who preferred pretending not to notice the unpleasantness that occurred in front of them.

A nice family, therefore, did not mean “good” or “trustworthy.” It meant “deceptive”. So while Mrs. Trimble spoke about the loveliness of Forks' residents, Nell stood silently in the hallway.

“Alright, alright. Let’s get you settled then!” began her new guardian. “Is that really all you have?” She asked, looking at the duffel bag Nell Blake was holding.

“Obviously. Nothing screams 'foster kid' more than your life fitting in a duffel bag.” Mrs. Trimble —Christine— looked a little taken aback. Nell was used to it. First-timers. They never expected someone with such a gentle face to be blunt, or aggressive. Or in most cases, both.

“Oh well I’m sorry dear. I should have known. This is quite new for me, as you're aware” she explained while leading Nell upstairs. She didn’t like the woman, but still, she felt some pity for Christine Trimble. Having her as a first-time foster parent was certainly bound to be a failure, and a discouragement.

She knew she wasn’t going to be a good first experience, and could only hope that it wouldn’t discourage Mrs. Christine to take other kids in. At least, she hadn’t said any stupid thing along the lines of “I hope we’ll get along very well”.

“And this is your room!" Mrs. Trimble said, opening the last door on the right upstairs. "Bathroom is the door at the end of the hall. I'll be downstairs if you need anything," she added with a smile. "I hope we'll get along well."

Oh, well.

Mrs. Trimble closed the door behind her, leaving Nell in a small room with a window overlooking the garden, and beyond that, the forest. The walls were painted a shade of warm gray-brown, the room left without much decorations. This, Nell was also used to. Standard amongst foster families to have their room welcoming enough but lacking actual personality. Admittedly, she had known worse. This room, while not super spacious, had place enough for a desk and a double-bed, a dresser and what looked like a small bookcase. And a book nook. All in all, not terrible.

Footsteps receded in the stairs as Nell threw her duffel bag on the armchair. It is a strange feeling, to be left alone in a house that is not yours, knowing that you are supposed to be making it so. No matter how many times Nell Blake had to live it, the uneasiness never faltered. It is useless for me to describe how strange Nell felt standing there. If you have ever been in a strange room, in a stranger's home, you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you would have trouble imagining it.

Even so, Nell started feeling much better as she approached the window. Right below it stood a patio shade which looked sturdy enough to support her weight. Not the smartest idea, putting the teenager known to run away in the room with the perfect sneaking out arrangement. Nell, for once, thanked her luck.

But she didn't test it just yet.
____________________________________

The only good thing about Mrs. Trimble, Nell had decided, was her cat.

It was an old, fat, ginger cat with white paws, like gloves. According to its owner, this cat was frightened of its own shadow and never even dared to chase dead leaves in the garden. But it was as nice as it was fearful. To put it simply, this cat was the exact opposite of its new roommate.

Nell had always liked cats better than dogs. Something about their independence resonated more with her than the neediness of dogs. This independence she craved. Especially now, standing in front of Forks High School, thinking about a fat old cat in gloves. Not to be confused with an old fat cat in gloves, which would refer to an old very well-off person wearing gloves.

At this rate, Nell Blake was set on remaining the entire day in front of the school, debating whether she absolutely had to go in, or not. As I am sure all of us have done at one point. Nell, like me, and like some of you, didn't like school. She never had. Nor particularly good in anything, not even making friends, school was more of a tedious task to go through for Nell. A task she did not mind nearly as much as being stuck in Forks.

School meant a day lost. And that was what she truly minded. The loss of valuable research time. Every minute spent in a classroom was a minute not spent discovering how to escape to Seattle, though how she would manage that with no money was still a complete mystery. She, as it was, was definitely not an old fat cat. The idea to ditch was tempting, too tempting, and she even had excuses lined up. "I needed more time to adapt to my new surroundings" was a great one, and adults usually liked it, feeling the need to be understanding. Or she could say "I am a deeply disturbed orphan afraid to meet new kids my own age" which was dramatic enough to stop all questioning.

And Nell was not Mrs. Trimble cat. More fearless than fearful, she turned her back on the school in a split decision, done with her silent debate, and headed straight for the road as fast as she could to avoid any notice. In her haste, however, she neglected the rather important task of checking the road. And heard, a little too late, the sound of tires screeching on the asphalt.

One thing that I have found when learning about Nell Blake’s story is that anything that could go wrong, will go wrong, and when her story becomes too upsetting for me, when it becomes absolutely overwhelming, it is useful to stop for a moment of contemplation with a cup of tea or some other powerful beverage. However, I can sip my tea knowing that Nell absolutely survives this particular incident.

Frozen in shock, Nell blessed her legs for keeping her standing. Around her, clusters of students had turned to look with the sort of eager fascination people usually had for terrible accidents involving strangers. Nell had no such fascination for the morbid, and so, she refused to look at them. Instead, her eyes fixed on the driver who had his own wide open with both hands still gripping the steering wheel. A second passed. Two seconds. And suddenly, the school jolted back to life as students began talking about the near disaster they'd just witnessed. Some even hurried toward her, asking if she was alright.

Obviously she was. The stupid ginger had stopped the car in time through some stroke of luck, a luck that had always seemed to elude Nell Blake up until she set foot in Forks. The Volvo had not even grazed her knees. But luck had another side to it, and though her knees were safe, Nell's chances of ditching school unnoticed weren't.

She didn't need to look to know that everyone and their mother were watching her. Of course, no mothers were actually here watching her, it just meant that not a single person present in front of Forks High School seemed interested in anything besides Nell Blake standing in front of a Volvo. And because she was an unfamiliar face, no doubt they had realized she was the new girl. Nell had known her fair share of towns like Forks, she already knew the fuss over anything and anyone new. Gossip and new faces were the best currency for them, so there was no getting away now. She only stepped out of the road when she saw the driver moving to get out of the car.

With her morning definitely ruined, the last thing she needed was a conversation with the person she was now sure to loathe. Otherwise, she risked becoming "the girl who murdered a high-school boy on her first day" instead of just "the girl who almost died on her first day". The first one, though more memorable, was not the sort of reputation Nell aimed to cultivate just yet.

Walking quickly towards the entrance while ignoring the chatter around her, Nell didn’t pay attention to the “Hey! Hey wait!” coming from behind her until someone was grabbing her arm. “Wow! I can’t believe that just happened, are you okay?” asked a blond boy.

“Do I look dead to you?” she deadpanned, snatching back her arm.

As expected, he started stuttering something along the lines of “Uh, well, no…”

“There you go.”

She didn’t wait for an answer and started walking away, only to be stopped again.

“Wait, wait! I’m Mike Newton, we have first period together, calculus,” he explained as they entered the building. “I've been asked to show you the way to the classroom. Here's your schedule and the plan of the school, by the way.”

He handed her a piece of paper where her schedule was printed.

"I'm kind of supposed to help you get your bearings for your first day…"

If you have the same temperament as Nell, you’ll know exactly how irritating she found this situation. And you too would grow tired of the town even more than you already were.

“Do I look like I need a fucking babysitter,” she snapped.

This didn’t seem to startle the boy as much as her first reaction had.

“No, but—“

Mike was stopped before he could finish by a squealing brunette, which is something that should always fill you with dread.

“Oh. My. God! Did you see what happened in front of the parking lot, Mike? Edward Cullen almost ran over the new girl!”

And as she was finishing her sentence, the unknown girl took notice of who was standing next to her friend.

“OH. MY. GOD. I’m sooo sorry, I hope you’re okay! I’m Jessica, by the way.” She offered Nell a big smile, just a little bit too big to feel genuine.

“What’s the deal with asking if I’m okay? He didn’t even hit me,” Nell said, emphasizing the hit.

Jessica looked at her for a solid two seconds before starting speaking again, not acknowledging what Nell had just said.

“Two new girls in barely a year and both almost got hit in a car accident, that ought to be some sort of record.” She laughed, as if there was anything remotely funny about someone almost dying. The urge to leave this town grew ten times by the time this Jessica resumed her chatter. “Maybe it’s something about Forks. What’s funny is that Bella, the old new girl, is Edward’s girlfriend now.”

From the tone of Jessica's voice, Nell surmised that the girl did not, in fact, find this very funny. As a matter of fact, Nell didn’t either, but that probably had more to do with the fact that she didn’t know who Bella was nor Edward. Apart from the boy that had almost killed her five minutes ago.

“They’ve been back for only a week and this is what happens,” Jessica scoffed before waving them goodbye while going to another classroom.

Against her better judgement, Nell found herself asking, “What did she mean by that?”

Mike rubbed his neck, eyes darting from her face to the floor. Nell wasn’t a nosy person, but if small town gossip was going to be her only entertainment until she could get back to Seattle, she might as well dive in. “Well, the girls know more than I do,” he started. “But the Cullens left for like six months and a week ago Bella ran away to Italy, apparently. When she came back, they came back too. And she’s back together with Edward. It’s a whole thing.”

“Wild,” she commented with a dreary voice.

As you could imagine, she was very much not impressed. And hurried to an empty, lonely seat in the back of the classroom before Mike could even offer to sit with her.

If you’ve experienced going to school, you’ll know how uneventful and boring most mornings are, especially when you have no friend there and little to no interest in learning the difference between x times 2 and x². By the time lunch came, Nell was certain it was the most bored and annoyed she had ever been. The bubbles of chatter erupting around every corner she passed certainly didn't help her relax.

Resentment wasn’t a word strong enough to qualify how she felt about the idiot who almost ran over her that morning. You could feel resentment toward a teacher for assigning more homework over a weekend, or toward a sibling stealing the last piece of cake. What Nell felt was considerably less civilized.

And if anyone asked, it wasn’t her fault in the slightest. Nevermind that she was the one who had come hurtling recklessly into the road. The driver should have been going slower. Or paying more attention. He was driving around a school for God’s sake.

Not particularly hungry, Nell looked around the cafeteria for a place to sit. She ignored Mike’s little wave when she spotted him. She could see Jessica next to him and she judged that one conversation with the girl was enough for a day.

Instead, she settled for a table behind them where a dark-haired girl sat alone. Eyes fixed on her food, she did not look like she was waiting for anyone, nor did she look like she'd enthusiastically make conversation if someone were to sit with her. A blessed introvert. And, in conclusion, the best spot Nell could have asked for in the packed room.

“Waiting for someone?” she asked while sitting down, not bothering to wait for an answer.

The brunette furrowed her brows but before she could say anything, someone else was sitting down at the table.

“You!” Nell hissed at the newcomer.

Now sitting in front of her was the loathed boy from this morning who had almost killed her. Up close, she could see that she'd been wrong calling him ginger. His hair was more bronze than orange, and styled in a perfectly careless sort of way that appeared effortless.

Now, a situation like the one Nell Blake found herself in could easily deteriorate into something dreadful, and I’m warning you, readers, to brace yourself accordingly. Almost killing her was one thing, and on the offences list Nell had started against this guy, it wasn't even at the top. What was worse was all the unwanted attention it had caused, not to mention the ruin of her carefully arranged plan to ditch school. If "carefully arranged" meant "thought and decided at the last second".

To say that she was mad at him was an understatement, like saying a hurricane was "slightly windy". The correct word here was furious.

However, the sentiment evidently wasn’t mutual, if the slight smirk on his face was anything to go by. He looked mostly amused by the entire situation. Which certainly was the best reaction to have and wouldn't guarantee to provoke Nell into considering acts of violence.

“Hey,” he said. “You didn’t leave me a chance to apo—"

His voice was very strange, both soft and rough. Like he was trying to lull her to sleep. Nell was glad to cut it off.

“You fucker!”

At the same time the girl asked quietly, “Wait, you know her?”

To which the redhead —Edward apparently— answered that they’d met briefly.

“I wouldn’t use that word no,” immediately corrected Nell. “You almost ran me over this morning!”

This seemed to change Edward’s attitude towards the new girl. As it would be expected of someone being blamed for an incident that most definitely was only partially their fault, or perhaps even not their fault at all, though Nell would have rather swallowed gravel than consider such a possibility.

“Oh so that was—"

Edward didn’t let the girl (Bella? wondered Nell) finish her sentence.

“You basically threw yourself under the car,” he scoffed. “Even Alice didn’t—"

He stopped abruptly, pressing his lips together.

“Point is, look before crossing the road.”

“Point is, learn to drive fucking slower, idiot,” retorted Nell before leaving the table.

She left the cafeteria with a clenched jaw and her stomach empty.

The last one wasn’t that much of an annoyance. Nell had spent enough days on an empty stomach to know it was survivable, but we can all agree that going to P.E. class on an empty stomach isn’t that much of a good idea. Nell Blake just didn’t care. At that moment, she was more preoccupied with fighting the need to punch a wall.

She never had any kind of expectations when it came to starting school in a new town, but this first day at Forks High School was turning out to be catastrophic. Even by her remarkably low standards. Stupid Edward Cullen would regret it.

She entered and left the locker room ten minutes before everyone else and sat waiting, alone on the bleachers, when she spotted him.

I know I previously said that anything that could go wrong in Nell Blake’s life generally did go wrong, and at this point you may reasonably assume that "him" refers to Edward Cullen himself, which indeed would have been the worst case scenario for Nell. However it isn’t the case. Although, at first, it felt for Nell every bit as bad if it was.

Walking out of the boys' locker room was a brawny dark-haired man. He towered over every other boy, and looked like he could probably lift a refrigerator for fun. And his skin was so pale it bordered on unnatural. Except Nell had seen someone with equally pale skin earlier that day. Her worst suspicions were confirmed when the coach called his name. Emmett Cullen.

So now she was stuck in P.E. with the brother of her newly established enemy. Nell was just pondering if she ought to hate him automatically out of familial association, or only give him a dislike discount when Emmett turned to look at her. She didn't know what she had expected, perhaps hostility or accusation, but it certainly wasn't the smirk he sent her way with a clear glint of amusement in his eyes. He turned back around and so, as he didn't appear interested in blaming her for the near collision, Nell settled on granting him a pass. A small mercy, one Edward Cullen was unlikely to ever receive.

The hour went by quickly, and with an improved mood, Nell set out to find the French classroom.

Exercising had always been an activity she genuinely enjoyed and by the time sixth period started, she was back to only feeling mildly annoyed with the other students. But beware, dear reader. Nell Blake’s story isn’t a pleasant one, and whatever joy she had managed to find in physical exhaustion was about to be once again challenged.

Her short curly hair had been put into a sweaty, messy half-up bun that was already collapsing as she came into the room, going towards Madame Rodel's desk to ask where to sit. French wasn’t a subject she particularly enjoyed, in fact, she had only chosen it over Spanish because of The Aristocats. That had been the only VHS tape available when she was seven and trying to adapt to a new foster home. At the time, clinging emotionally to talking cartoon cats had seemed the best option, which says a lot about her childhood.

“Eleanor Blake, c'est ça?” asked the teacher, not looking up from her notebook.

“Just Nell, yes,” she answered, trying to sound less annoyed than she was.

“Très bien, Eleanor,” began Madame Rodel.

Some people were easy to figure out and it only took Nell this little exchange to know she was going to hate the French teacher.

“This class works in pairs. Fortunately we had an uneven number until now. You can work with Rosalie Hale. Given your previous results in French, you can only benefit from this match. Rosalie is my best student.”

The fifty-something teacher pointed at the back of the classroom where the most beautiful girl Nell had ever seen was sitting.

Fucking thank you for my confidence I guess, Nell thought bitterly.

The blonde barely even looked at her as she sat down next to her, which didn't help. Once Madame Rodel finished giving the instruction for the exercise they were to do, Nell tried to at least engage in some kind of conversation before diving into the pair exercise.

“Hi.”

“Bonjour,” coldly answered Rosalie.

Finally, someone here acted just as annoyed with people as Nell was.

Despite not liking being given a taste of her own medicine, which didn't actually mean that she was being fed some type of medicine she'd have prepared herself, but rather that she was being treated with the same cool indifference she so generously offered others, she decided she could at least appreciate the girl sitting next to her. Rosalie Hale seemed uninterested in impressing anyone, least of all a fellow student. That made her more respectable than everyone else, in Nell's book.

“Quick question, aren’t you like a cousin of the Cullens or is pale and perfect skin common around here?”

In response, Nell only got a glare from Rosalie’s eyes that were the same shade of brown as butterscotch. But they certainly weren’t as sweet as the candy.

“C’est un cours de français ici, pas une salle de rencontre.”

I could translate what Rosalie said to Nell here, but the harsh tone of the girl perfectly conveyed the idea. Nell, while barely understanding a word apart from français, assumed that it wasn’t nice. Academic humiliation aside, the class was going to be long.

The feeling of being back home after a long, horrible day of school is something that could be qualified as “comforting and soothing”. Having a home is a comforting thought, as home means the place where your family is. Finally being back home means finally being back in a safe and warm place. Hopefully, finally being back in a place of love.

Nell had once longed for a home, a long time ago. The closest she'd come to having one hadn't lasted and she could barely remember it. All other attempts to make her part of someone else's home she had sabotaged. And now, petting Rusty while sitting cross-legged on her bed while pretending to do homework, she didn't feel like she was back home. No comfort was drawn from the unfamiliar room in Mrs. Trimble's home. No sense of security. And she intended it to stay that way.

Her homework was going poorly, though it had nothing to do with her well-known academic difficulty and more to do with the fact that her focus was on dreaming up ways to make Edward Cullen's life hell on earth. Getting involved in petty wars against her so-called enemies had gotten her in trouble many times before, but if she was to be stuck in Forks for at least a month, she intended to make the most of it.

Meaning here engaging in being a daily nuisance for the pale-skinned idiot. One had need for good, proper entertainment to survive the dreariness of one's life. Edward Cullen would soon learn that being handsome did not exempt him from vengeance. This, she swore to herself at the same time that she swore she’d sooner fling herself back in front of his car before calling him handsome again. Even though it was most certainly a common thought.

It was impossible not to find his features attractive. His face was flawless, angular, and his brother had the same alluring look. Their faces had the unfair symmetry you only found in the old master's painting or on statues. But where Edward was lanky, Emmett was broad-shouldered. It was irritating for both brothers to look like this, Nell thought. Especially now that one was her nemesis.

Rusty arched his back as he moved to change position, gloved paws kneading the golden yellow comforter. Suddenly, Nell was reminded of an old expression. A cat in gloves catches no mice. The expression, as you might suspect, didn't refer to Mrs. Trimble's lovely cat, but was a warning that you can't obtain what you desire by being cautious. If a cat spent its time worrying about keeping its paws clean and claws away, it would go hungry.

Nell Blake, of course, had never been a cat in gloves. And what she desired most, as of this moment, was to make Edward Cullen rue the day he met her.

She wasn't particularly courageous, though she had been described as reckless once or twice. Nor did she enjoy conflict more than most. But Nell Blake had learned early on that soft creatures were eaten alive, so she'd stopped being pleasant years ago. Her tongue was sharp, her heart distrustful, and the most common adjective adults had been known to declare her to be was "difficult", a word which meant she was often uncooperative, hard to manage and troublesome.

All of this, Edward Cullen would come to find out. A cat in gloves may fail to catch mice, but Nell had taken off her gloves at an early age, and she'd just found a new prey.

Her train of thought was interrupted by a knock at the door. Before Nell could answer, Mrs. Trimble stepped in, a pile of folded clothes in her arms.

“I found some things that might fit you,” she beamed. “Well, they were my son’s but it’s mostly shirts and sweaters”

She put down the clothes on the chair next to the door before fumbling for words.

“Um, we could go over to Port Angeles this weekend," she offered. "Maybe find you new clothes.”

Her grizzled hair was let loose today, Nell noticed. It made her look softer, younger.

“My ex-husband lives there now,” she continued when Nell didn't answer. “He owns a lovely restaurant, we could make a day out of—"

“Listen,” Nell cut her off. "I don’t know what you’re hoping for, but I’m gonna be honest.”

She forced herself to look her guardian in the eyes. Mrs. Trimble seemed to be genuinely nice, but Nell was tough. No matter how hard this was, she had to warn her current guardian of the disappointment she was.

“I don’t need a mom," Nell said flatly. "Not anymore. I don’t want to be adopted or whatever, okay? I turn 18 in less than a month, and then I won’t be your problem anymore.”

Mrs. Trimble who, for the short time Nell had known her, wore her heart on her sleeve, looked impassive.

“So, there’s no need for us to bond.”

The middle-aged woman stood in silence for a moment, and then offered Nell a little smile, so painfully fake Nell all but winced. Mrs. Trimble nodded once before quietly leaving the room. Nell went back to her homework, relieved that dinner had already passed. And if she fell asleep with tears running down her cheeks, she kept it quiet, not wanting to admit that the truly terrible thing was that she only half meant what she said.

But life had taught her that it’s better to leave than to be left. Hell, her life started like that.

Chapter Text

Life is a continuation of battles you choose to either fight or flee, whether it is confessing your latest failure at the calculus test to your parents or fantasizing about murdering your neighbor for mowing their lawn at eight on a Sunday morning. When those battles turn into war, one must rely upon strategies in order to win them. Strategy is a word which here means the careful art of arranging a plan of actions to prevent oneself from losing miserably.

It is a well-known fact that humans have spent much of their time on earth inventing ways to outwit and destroy one another, and thus, many battlefield strategies were born. Ambushes, flanking maneuvers, and feints and the likes. A feint, for example, is not unlike the trick the Greeks played on the Trojans when they pretended to abandon their siege and left behind a gigantic wooden horse, which should have struck the Trojans as suspicious immediately. Oh but do excuse me, I have gotten sidetracked. Yes, strategy mattered very much in war. And Nell had decided she was in one.

See, when Nell Blake decided she disliked someone, she behaved in either of two ways : acting as though the person had ceased to exist entirely, or dedicating herself to making the offender’s existence as miserable as possible in slow and inventive ways. Naturally, this second method was reserved for people who had ruined her day. Or nearly killed her. Which is why, the previous evening, Nell Blake had indeed declared war upon Edward Cullen.

But when it came to strategy, Nell possessed all the subtlety of a falling piano. She did not believe in caution nor patience, her preferred approach being to charge directly into catastrophe, trusting that everyone else would suffer alongside her. Hence why she had been standing outside Forks High School for nearly an hour in the cold gray morning, having arrived before every student, and most teachers, simply to wait for the appearance of a silver Volvo and the infuriating boy who drove it.

Even with a packed parking lot and students coming from everywhere, none of them seemed to pay much attention to Nell standing sentinel. Her eyes were focused, animated with rightful hatred, tracking the approach of the long-awaited car. Face straight, Nell only had to wait another minute before the redheaded boy was out of his car and, finally, glancing at her. She put on her best smile, and didn't wait a second more before flipping him off. His reaction wasn't necessary, and thus, mission accomplished, our newest addition to Forks High School turned her heels and walked inside this sacred place of knowledge.

Now, you may be tempted to think that waking up at dawn and standing in miserable weather for an hour just for the chance to make a rude hand gesture to another human being is not a productive use of one's morning. This is what reasonable people think, but I have told you before, and I would urge you to heed my warnings. This story isn't for reasonable people. They are often happier, to be true, but none of them are nearly as interesting as Nell Blake.

She believed quite firmly that an enemy of the stature of Edward Cullen should never be allowed the comfort of peace. Stature is a word which here doesn't refer to Edward's quite impressive height, but to his importance as an enemy. An enemy who tried to kill you, or, at the very least, ruined your first day, should be acutely aware they were being watched, unforgiven, and that you intended to remain as unpleasant a presence in their life as possible. Which is why, as she walked, still shivering, inside the hall of Forks High School, Nell Blake felt not foolish but triumphant, like a victorious general. If generals fought with offensive gestures rather than cannons.

Content with the first cannon of war, Nell barely felt the boredom she usually did, her morning classes flying by faster than ever. She would need to think of more sophisticated ways to get on Edward Cullen's nerves, but for the time being, simple yet effective gestures would do. Regrettably, she hadn't stayed long enough in the parking lot to get a clear look at the girl getting out of Cullen's car. A glimpse of plain brown hair was all she'd seen, and she thought it safe to wager that it had been the same girl she had sat at lunch with the previous day.
Bella, she thought her name was. Nell knew very little about her nemesis yet, but both Mike and Jessica had mentioned a girlfriend named Bella. She assumed that the plain brunette was, in fact, her. To be fair, the girl wasn’t entirely plain, but dating Edward lost her more points than won in Nell’s point of view. But I am drifting away from the matter at hand again. The important thing was that Nell knew very little about her nemesis indeed, which troubled her because, as she had just heard it in her history class, “know your enemy”.

Naturally, the advice was taken as a personal challenge, as most things were by Nell Blake. If she wanted to make the boy's existence difficult, she would need information. His locker number was a good starting point. His address. Possibly his daily routine and preferred lunch meal. Unfortunately, these were not the sort of details people hand over willingly and without question. Particularly when you ask questions with the intensity of someone planning revenge.

Which was regrettable, because the person Nell had chosen to interrogate looked exactly like someone who would become nervous halfway through the conversation and consider fleeing the state entirely.

“Hey Mike !” Nell cheered, looking as pleased as she could. “Could I eat lunch with you ?”

If any of you were wondering, yes, Nell Blake had many qualms with her plan.

Sitting together in front of her were Mike, Jessica and two other people she did not know yet. A pale blond girl sporting a fashionable bob barely graced her with her cold green stare while her polar opposite, a boy with short kinky black hair and eyes to match, gave her a look as welcoming as his smile. Mike beckoned her to sit next to him, beaming.

Nell didn't fail to notice that he had made room between him and Jessica for her to sit. Putting on her best fake, innocent smile, Nell took the place next to Jessica who looked annoyed by Mike’s behavior. Before Nell could even start her well-rehearsed conversation, which would be more deserving of the title of investigation, the unknown boy started talking.

“Hello and welcome to the table of the coolest people in school, I’m Tyler but do call me later,” he ended with a playful smile.

Suddenly aware of how tiring this lunch was turning out to be, Nell gritted her teeth and smiled at the joke (hopefully that’s all it was) like it was funny. And not something she had heard before. A thousand times. A number which may seem exaggerated, unless you have spent time as a troubled runaway teenage girl. Still, Nell understood that irritation would get her nowhere. One cannot gather valuable intelligence while looking homicidal. If she wanted information, she needed to appear friendly. Or at the very least, approachable. It is best to manage one's expectations.

Unlike the cold girl next to Tyler, who had no care in the world as to how murderous she looked when her head snapped in his direction. Obviously, this behavior had to be normal, as Tyler simply passed an arm around her shoulder.

“Oh come on Lau', don’t be so bitchy,” he looked back at Nell. “That’s Lauren, don’t mind her she doesn’t like people.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Nell answered, loosening her smile. It felt like the best strategy to adopt.

“She does like some people, just not strangers” clarified Jessica. “The last one was Bella, last stranger I mean, but well. We all know how that turned out.”

There seemed to have a little awkward laugh around the table, not a single person taking into account the fact that no, Nell didn’t know how that turned out. But, true to her character, Nell didn’t really long to know either. The mention of Bella did however seem to wake Lauren up.

“So you’re the girl Edward almost ran over yesterday?”

“Seriously,” Nell deadpanned. “Is this going to be the only thing people know me as?”

This was a rhetorical question. Nell knew it was, everyone at the table knew it too, united in the knowledge that small towns like Forks worked on rumours and assumptions. A reputation was made and done in a day, your first impression, though often wrong, was cemented into your identity. Which was precisely why Nell was after Cullen boy. It is difficult to build a reputation for anything, or even better, to remain nameless and unremarked, when one is already known as "the person who almost died on their first day". Granted, he might have done her a small favor, at least people weren't treating her as the troubled fostered kid she was. Give it at least a week.

“Small town perks, baby,” Tyler joked, winking at her. Nell already favored resting-bitch-face-Lauren over him.

“It’s so funny,” Jessica started. From the fake smile on her face, Nell could tell that whatever “it” was, it was anything but funny. Jessica continued, asking Nell “Remember what I told you yesterday, about Bella going through almost the same thing as you did when she arrived?”

Nell nodded.

“Well, Tyler here was the one driving!”

“Could you stop bringing that up, come on Jess!” complained Tyler, losing his smile.

“No one got hurt, fortunately,” added Mike, mostly to Nell.

“I got hit on the head, I was bleeding!” Tyler interrupted, offended.

“Nothing serious,” Lauren continued. Nell definitely liked her now.

“Wow, what a story,” Nell said with as much enthusiasm as she could. “How did Bella get away?”

“She says it’s Edward who pushed her out of the way, her knight in shining armor.” Jessica finished her sentence with an obvious fake laugh. If Nell had some doubts before, she was now certain Jessica either hated one of them or wanted to date Edward. Or Bella. Nell really hoped it was Bella because wanting to date Edward Cullen was now an unredeemable fault in her book. Tough luck for this Bella.

If Nell Blake were a little more honest and a great deal less vindictive, she might have admitted, only to herself and under strict confidentiality, that having a crush on Edward Cullen was not something to be condemned for. After all, as much as she tried not to notice, a case could be made that he was rather handsome and unusually compelling. In a troubling sort of way. "Handsome and compelling" here means the sort of appearance that made you briefly forget the importance of personal safety. Edward Cullen's attractiveness almost felt like a trap, like standing too near a cliff edge and insisting that gravity is probably a myth.

Nell, however, had experienced nothing of the sort. Certainly not a pull. Any implication otherwise would be deeply misleading, and Nell Blake, for all her faults, and she did have them, was at least committed to maintaining a consistent internal narrative.

“I keep hearing about him, what’s up with him?” Nell inquired, ignoring Tyler and Lauren still bickering about the incident. Maybe she kept hearing about him because he almost killed her but patience was running thin, and lunch time as well. Somewhere to her left, someone scoffed.

“No one really knows the Cullens, apart from Bella,” started Jessica. “Edward’s the youngest of three, there's also Emmett and Alice, plus the Hale twins. They’re all eating at the table a little to your left.”

After a few seconds of silence during which Nell cursed Cullen boy for being an introvert, she realized Jessica was waiting for her to look. Great. She obliged by glancing in that direction but didn’t make any effort to see them, even though she spotted Emmett. An argument could be made that he would have been hard to miss. Turning back to Jessica, she gave her a little nod indicating that she had seen them.

“So, obviously, there’s Edward, handsome and mysterious. Honestly, I don't know what he sees in Bella that he didn't see in anyone else before her, but whatever. We've taken to calling him 'the hair'—"

"Mh, you've taken to calling them that," Mike corrected, mouth full.

Jessica glared at him before resuming. “Whatever. I just wonder how long he takes to style it.”

To which Lauren answered, "He probably wakes up at five just for his hair to look exactly like that."

Something in her tone caused Nell to think that this was exactly what Lauren did herself.

"Ha. Highly probable. The short brunette," continued Jessica, "is Alice. She's, uh, she's a little…"

“Weird. So freaking weird. I had chemistry with her in sophomore year. The number of times you'd just catch her staring at the wall as if she was having a seizure,” Lauren explained.

“Bella told me she has PTSD or something,” added Jessica. “The tall burly one is—"

“Emmett,” Nell interrupted.” I know, I have Gym with him.”

“Oh okay, well yeah Emmett. Here’s the thing,” Jessica said, lowering her voice. “It's a little weird and I don’t even know if it’s legal—"

“Legal or not, I don’t judge the guy,” Tyler interrupted, not bothering to keep his voice low like Jessica was. “I’d totally hit that too.”

“Ew. As if you had a chance,” Lauren sneered. Tyler winked at her and tried to kiss her cheek but she pushed him away, the hint of a smile on her face. Meanwhile, Nell was still waiting to know what all of this was about. Was Emmett dating a teacher?

“What is it?” she rightfully queried. Nell Blake wasn’t known for her patience.

Jessica shot a worried eye to the Cullen table and resumed, voice still low. “Well, he’s dating Rosalie Hale.” Tyler's comment made a lot more sense now, but Nell failed to grasp what was so controversial about this Hollywood-worthy couple. Maybe she had been spot on by asking the gorgeous girl if she was related to the Cullens. Maybe she was a cousin. Jessica stopped this train of thought by finally disclosing the truth. “Rosalie Hale is also, like, his sister.”

Nell, who had been, up until now, only half listening to the comments about the siblings as they weren’t her focus, suddenly gave Jessica her full attention. “I’m sorry, what?” She did her best not to yell.

“No, no, no, no, no,” quickly corrected Tyler. “She’s adopted, her and her twin brother.” Nell wasn’t sure if it really made it as alright as Tyler's tone implied.

“Technically they’re all adopted,” Lauren stated.

“Not even technically, they are adopted,” Jessica explained, emphasizing the ‘are’. “Dr. Cullen and his wife adopted them all."

"Not the twins, Rosalie and Jasper Hale," Mike clarified. "They’re fosters. Mrs. Cullen is their aunt, I think. At least, that's what my father said when they moved here.”

Jessica agreed before adding, "I don't know what all of them have been through, but between Alice's PTSD, Jasper looking like he's constantly in pain, and them not ever mingling with us, I guess it's bad."

"Well, they are orphans, adopted and fostered. It's a wonder none of them have ever caused trouble." Mike, oblivious to the chill his contribution had cast at the table, shoved another mouthful of fries in his mouth.

"You don't say," Nell scoffed.

“Mike!" Jessica groaned, "Foot in mouth, we talked about this. Sorry, Nell." Mike had the decency to look up apologetically but Jessica went on, eager to change subjects."We all thought Jasper and Alice were also like, a thing, back when they arrived, but actually—"

Nell tuned out Jessica’s endless chatter. The Cullens, it turned out, weren't biological siblings. She shouldn't have been so dumbfounded by this new information. Apart from their perfect white skin and otherworldly beauty, they really had little resemblance to one another. Still, what astonished her the most was how happy they all seemed. Or rather, their lack of anger.

You must understand that children who grow up in foster care often become experts at recognizing unhappiness. Nell, for instance, could identify disappointment, loneliness and resentment from a single glance. Anger was even easier. Every other kid and teenager she had met throughout the years had a healthy dose of each. Or unhealthy, depending. But happiness, real happiness, was another matter entirely. She had not encountered much of it. Certainly not among children shuffled through the system. Perhaps, she thought bitterly, she had been too angry for too long to notice. Perhaps her own unhappiness had blinded her, tainted her perception of the other kids she had shared homes with.
She resisted the urge to glance toward the Cullens’ table. It is unpleasant, dear reader, to look directly at something you secretly desire. For buried somewhere beneath Nell Blake’s irritation and carefully sharpened hostility was a yearning so dangerous she scarcely allowed herself to name it. A family. Siblings.
Belonging.

The thought had barely had time to form before she strangled it at once. Nell treated hopeful thoughts the way some people treat spiders: swiftly, violently, with no intention of allowing them to linger. She returned immediately to the far safer habit of disliking nice people on principle.

See, I’ve told you before that Nell Blake wasn’t one for defensive strategies in war, but it was only half true. In the war that was her life, Nell Blake had built defenses so elaborate that even she could no longer find the entrance. Her defensive walls were higher than castle ramparts and thicker than prison gates, keeping everyone and everything out in order to stay safe. Disappointment, attachment, kindness, grief, nothing could touch her there. She remained hidden in this Trojan horse, with no intention whatsoever of emerging.

Safer thoughts were planning how she could gloat to Rosalie how she had been right in French. Or half right anyway. She slowly refocused on the conversation going on around her. A conversation she was positive was happening for her to hear.

“…and then she befriended that Jacob Black—"

“Mike I don’t think she’s even listening to you,” Lauren pointed out.

“Sorry,” Nell apologized. “I was busy thinking of ways to steal Rosalie from Emmett.”

The silence at their table emphasized the booming laugh of Emmett a few tables over. On cue, Nell thought.

“Wait. You swing this way ?” Tyler asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t care,” simply stated Nell. “But for Rosalie ? You said so yourself, how could I say no.”

“Amen.”

Everyone turned to Lauren and she only added a little “What ? Who would say no here ?” which made her point clear. Jessica looked like she could have said no, but she chose not to voice it. Instead, she said: “So I was telling you about Bella, since you asked about Edward.”

Refocusing on the task at hand, Nell quickly swallowed. “Yeah, what about her?”

“She arrived last year, back to live with her father, Mr. Swan. He's the police chief, you know," Mike explained. Bella Swan being the daughter of the local police chief was not good for Nell. She'd have to steer clear of her arch nemesis' girlfriend. Unfortunate.

"She and Cullen started dating two months in,” Mike went on. “They broke up in September when the Cullens left, emergency with Dr. Cullen’s family in Nevada—"

“Alaska, Mike, in Alaska. God, it’s like you don’t even listen to me sometimes.” Jessica sighed, picking up the explanation herself. “So yeah they left and then Bella, well…” She trailed off.

“A freaking zombie. She became a zombie,” Lauren revealed. “Barely eating, barely drinking. She didn’t talk to anyone anymore.”

“It was awful. Like, I really tried being there for her but then she went and put herself in danger, putting me in danger too. So you know, I stopped talking to her. She really scared me, I was done with putting up with her,” Jessica rambled. “Like, we’ve all been through a break-up, it’s not the end of the world.”

“Obviously,” Nell sneered. She couldn’t decide if she despised Jessica at this point or completely understood her.

“And then she befriended the guy from the reservation, Jacob,” added Mike.

“Yeah but that’s completely irrelevant, you’re just jealous dude,” teased Tyler. Mike mumbled a few “what, no I’m not no I—" before throwing his apple in Tyler’s face, making everyone laugh. Except for Nell. And Jessica.

“And like I said yesterday, one week ago Bella runs away for the weekend, nobody is sure of where but according to the rumors it was Italy, and she comes back with the Cullens.” Jessica paused, probably for dramatic effect. “Two days later they’re back together. I don’t really talk with her anymore though.”

And, in the exact same tone she had used the previous morning, Nell only replied with one word.

“Wild.”

But although her answer remained the same, her feelings on the matter didn't. As you might suspect, Nell now found Bella incredibly stupid to have let herself become so attached to someone. To develop such strong feelings, to become so hopelessly tied to another person was entirely reckless in Nell's experience. Yet, she couldn't blame Bella Swan completely.

Nell Blake had learned very early from her own life that attachment was dangerous. People left. They disappointed. One moment they existed in your life and the next they existed only in memory, which is quite an unreliable place to keep a person. Because of this, Nell had kept to a simple rule, the simplest really: never become attached to anyone. Leave before you are left.
A child could understand it, provided the child had suffered enough. And Bella had clearly never figured this out. Idiotic, if you asked Nell. Tragic, cried the small child from deep behind castle walls.

The conversation soon changed its focus, Lauren and Jessica discussing their algebra test while Tyler kept teasing Mike about the boy from the reservation. Nell didn’t try to get into any of the two, favoring the safety of her own head.

Objectively, she didn’t learn much about Edward “the hair” Cullen that would help her piss him off. Bella Swan was off-limits, on account of her father. Getting noticed in school was one thing, but she didn't need the police chief on her back. And, though extremely petty, her march into this war she invented for herself the prime example of this pettiness, Nell still had a line she wouldn't cross. Fraud, stealing, identity theft, those were all acceptable. But mocking someone for being adopted? Absolutely not. Certain cruelties required a special sort of ugliness, one she refused to stoop down to.

So, she learned nothing valuable. Only the irritating complication of having to decide if her hatred of Edward would be extended to his adopted siblings. Emmett and Rosalie, for the time being, remained alright with her, but the other two were uncertain territory. Of Alice she knew little and less, and Rosalie's twin's name was already forgotten. Jas-something.

Emmett. Rosalie. Edward. Alice. Perhaps Dr. Cullen and his wife aspired to a house haunted by Victorian ghosts and chose their charges accordingly. Not that Nell was in any position to mock them for it. She'd actually fit right in. The name Eleanor sounded more like it belonged to a character in a nineteenth-century novel dying of tuberculosis than to a particularly angry twenty-first-century teenager.

She might have teased them for their old-ass names, but Nell possessed at least one quality beneath all her hostility and questionable morals. Self-awareness.

Lunch was coming to an end and Nell was almost out of the cafeteria when Mike caught up with her: “Hey, I noticed you came on foot yesterday, and Jessica said you probably don’t have a car, so I was wondering if you needed a ride home?” he asked.

Nell just stared at the blond haired boy who was starting to stutter some other arguments.

“Yeah thanks but no, it’s cloudy but not actually raining so I’ll be fine.” She didn’t bother to hear his answer and left the building, going straight to Gym.

By the time she made it home, she was soaking wet, the rain having decided to start pouring exactly a minute after the end of class. Some days it really did feel as if the universe hated her. Which, given her track record, it probably did. To make matters worse, when Mrs. Trimble had arrived home, fifteen minutes after Nell, she made a fuss over how her new foster kid should take the school bus. Even though she didn’t live that far away from the school. Nell had barely paid attention to her guardian, not bothering when she'd be found dead before taking the school bus. Walking was far more enjoyable than having to suffer a bus ride with freshman and sophomore students.

If you’ve never been on a school bus, I should explain to you why Nell Blake was and always had been reluctant to take the bus to school, apart from the fact that it was a bus going to school. For starters, people while walking and moving all day produce sweat and 15 year-old boys have a hard time grasping the concept of a deodorant. This lack of deodorant enhances the unpleasant smell of sweat, which all human beings produce. And, usually, people in a school bus are human beings. Half of them boys. Do not misunderstand me, girls sweat too, and it also gives off an unpleasant smell, however girls tend to be more informed of the benefits of using deodorant. Or any type of perfume. And how to put on perfume without making it smell like you took an actual bath in it.

All those facts, Nell had regrettably learned a few years ago, led up to the simple conclusion that, at the end of a school day, the smell in a school bus could be described as dreadful, unbearable and entirely unavoidable. And that’s without even mentioning the noise. So, quite obviously, there was no way in hell that she’d ever take the school bus again in her life. Maybe she could use Mike’s friendliness to her advantage, but that was a whole other discussion she needed to have with herself.

At dinner, she granted Mrs. Trimble the same amount of attention she had offered her for the previous two days, which is to say almost none at all. Instead, she occupied herself with far more important matters.
Revenge.

More specifically, revenge against Edward Cullen, who had achieved the remarkable feat of becoming Nell Blake’s nemesis despite barely speaking to her. Nell was currently considering whether she ought to recreate her disastrous first day at school, only this time instead of narrowly avoiding Cullen’s car, she would allow herself to be struck by it and subsequently sue him. She had not yet decided if she was desperate enough for such measures. Still, the possibility of financial compensation did improve the plan considerably.

Money, after all, had a remarkable way of justifying pain. Entire industries depended upon this principle. And Nell Blake found herself very short of it, at the moment, which wouldn't do if she was to get away from dreadful Forks.

Across the table, Mrs. Trimble continued speaking in the determinedly cheerful manner of adults attempting to create a pleasant dinner atmosphere. She was discussing her work at the preschool, describing toddlers and finger painting and some unfortunate incident involving glue, all subjects Nell found profoundly uninteresting. So rather than waiting politely for Mrs. Trimble to finish her sentence, a social norm Nell shunned as any self-respecting troubled foster kid would, she interrupted to ask whether she could leave the table now that she had finished eating.

Mrs. Trimble stopped speaking immediately. Her gaze, warm yet firm, was fixed on Nell. This was a look she had seen a great number of times, from determined guidance counselors, court judges and still hopeful foster parents. Mrs. Trimble belonged to the last category, and Nell already knew what this look suggested, beside patience and misplaced understanding. It, almost without fail, always preceded a serious conversation.

“I won’t give up yet you know,” she started, to Nell's unsurprise. “When I was asked to take in an older teen with a long history of running away from homes and flirting dangerously close to juvie, I accepted that this wouldn't be easy. I know little and less of your entire story. I know I am supposed to give you space, and not push it.”

She took a breath but her voice wasn’t faltering.

“But I’m not an easy person either. And I will try with you until you leave this house,” she emphasized the ‘try’, looking Nell directly in her eyes. “I will try to get to know you, I will care for you, because that's what I signed up to do. You don’t want a mom now and it’s perfectly normal, but I won’t let myself be pushed away. Or disrespected. You can have your space, but you’re not going to get rid of me trying.” She finished her little speech by nodding to Nell, indicating she could go.

With nothing to respond, Nell left the kitchen. This wasn't anything she hadn't heard before, though the honesty of the adults she heard it from ranged from complete sincerity to hollow enthusiasm. Promises were flimsy things. People insisted they would stay right up until the moment they disappeared. And yet.
There was no mistaking the genuineness in Mrs. Trimble's voice. Christine. She seemed sturdier than her initial appraisal of her as a painfully nice middle-aged woman, easily pushed over. As a very wise narrator once said, first impressions were often wrong. Christine Trimble, it seemed, was determined to care about Nell Blake. And perhaps, though Nell would have denied it, deep inside this Trojan horse she had buried herself in, she smiled.

Chapter Text

The trouble with missing things is that they rarely announce their departure. A sock may disappear in the space vacuum of a washing machine, a pen might slip under a pile of scrap paper in an underused drawer, coins and quarters vanish in the infinite crooks and nooks of mundane life. Entire afternoons can go missing without anyone noticing at all.

People, however, ought to be more difficult to lose. One would think a person would leave clues behind, a trail of footprints. But this is not always the case, and if you have opened this chapter hoping for reassurance on the matter, I strongly advise you to close it immediately and take up a more comforting activity, such as staring at wallpaper or counting the number of ceiling cracks in your home.

For on the day Nell Blake discovered teenagers were going missing in Seattle, the world behaved with indifferent rudeness. The cafeteria was as loud as ever, the rain fell in its usual drizzle over the gloom of Forks, and Bella Swan was still trying to engage her in a conversation about the latest news from Forks' police chief.

You might wonder why, of course, Bella Swan would be trying to engage in a conversation with Nell Blake. If you remember correctly, dear reader, Bella is the girlfriend of none other than Edward Cullen, and Edward Cullen is Nell's sworn enemy, by her declaration, after that tragic incident that I should not recount again, lest Nell Blake heard me. So it wouldn't be amiss but to wonder why would Nell be in a situation such as this.

In front of Nell Blake sat Edward Cullen, his cafeteria tray as untouched as her own. Next to Edward, Bella sat growing more uncomfortable by the minute. Because, sitting opposite her and Edward, Nell was unmoving, unblinking, which was already disturbing enough without adding her angry stare directed at Edward. One might have suspected she had spent the morning sharpening daggers. The expression "staring daggers", a phrase which means to look at someone with enough hostility as to suggest violence, may very well have been invented solely for the purpose of describing this moment, as Nell sat across the object of her ire.

Ire, if you are unfamiliar with the term, means anger so terrible that it seems theatrical, as though thunderstorms had decided to become emotions instead of weather. This was particularly appropriate considering that Nell lived in the Olympic Peninsula, where storms thrived from October to March. And indeed, they thrived as well behind Nell's eyes, where the rage of a thousand storms burned, although if you have ever experienced a thousand storms at once, you likely have more pressing concerns than literary comparisons.

The day hadn't started so bad. Her walk to school had been gracefully dry, a rare feat in Forks, so rare that it bordered on suspicious, and her plan of the day to be an unavoidable inconvenience in Edward Cullen's life had seemed easy.

She couldn't organize another collision with his car. Not yet, anyway. But that didn't mean no collision could ever happen. While not particularly skilled in the humanities or science department, physical exercise was her only saving grace, and her aim was respectable. Therefore, one would think that accidentally-on-purpose crashing into a tall boy on her way from one class to another would prove to be an easy feat. One would be wrong, for I must remind you that nothing about Nell Blake's life was easy. And it wouldn't start now.

Of course, the idea wasn't all that inspired, inspired here meaning displaying a creative streak for a given activity, but Nell was short of resources, shorter on patience, and this had been the best she had come up with in such a short term. Besides, everything ought to have gone perfectly. The first collision had been planned carefully, she only had to wait by the front office until Edward arrived and then it was only a matter of waiting for the best moment to launch herself at him. Ideally before he reached class, and in the most perfect world, with enough force to make his face collide with the floor.

And she'd almost made it too, but at the crucial moment, the redheaded boy had stepped out of her firing line. Instead of colliding with Edward Cullen, she had collided with a locker, which had been humiliating enough without the infuriating smirk Edward had given her.

"You should slow down," the asshole had quipped.

And then, as if to taunt her more, he'd drifted gracefully into his classroom while Nell remained behind.

Undeterred, a word which here means "too angry to make reasonable decisions", Nell spent the entirety of calculus nursing a second plan, as well as a bruise blooming across her shoulder. It was becoming quite clear that trying to hurt Edward Cullen exposed her to considerably more damage than almost being hurt by him, but a bruise wouldn't stop her. Nell Blake had known her own fair share of bruises over her life, on account of her warm and agreeable personality.

So she resolved to go after her enemy again with the dreadful determination of a heat-seeking missile. Or a goose. If you have never been chased by a goose, count yourself lucky. Most people think geese are harmless pond birds, but the reality is different, and these people are as wrong as the people who believe adding a hat to a disguise is foolproof. Once a goose has decided to chase you, it does so with horrifying commitment.

This was the energy Nell Blake carried within her.

She knew which classroom he was in, so finding him between the mere five minutes between one class to the next was a simple mission. Her target located, she started her second attempt but, this time, careful not to get him close to lockers, or God forbid, a wall. She calculated her angle, timed her approach only to be, once again, effortlessly dodged at the last minute. It was unnerving, really, how up until the last second, Nell had been certain she would succeed. That was more aggravating than not coming close at all. Not to mention the detour she had taken to follow him which made her late for class as well.

So now, here she sat in the cafeteria, pissed off at his great reflexes.

"So," Bella tried to engage. "You were in Seattle before, right?"

Why would Bella Swan try to engage with Nell was a question for the ages. I could venture that perhaps even the strongest of us could easily break under the tension Nell built, and Bella Swan, who was renowned for her anxious disposition, had caved under the prolonged silence.

The attempt was valiant indeed, although doomed from the start. One thing Nell Blake guarded more selfishly than a dragon guarding its treasure was information about herself. Personal history was so easily used against you, and the less people knew, the less they could pity you. Cruelty Nell had learned to bear, but pity was another matter.

In any case, if she were to ever reveal details about herself, Bella Swan and her abhorrent boyfriend would have been the last people on earth she'd confide in. Nell would sooner have explained herself to a goose, and geese, as we've established, cannot be trusted.

"Is it true they've placed you in Forks because of the rise in teen disappearances there?" she went on when her first question went unanswered.

Edward let his smile slip a little as he turned toward his girlfriend in surprise. Nell, for her part, faltered only briefly in her vengeful glare. She had heard rumors, of course. Back in Seattle, this was almost all people had whispered about. One or two missing teenagers were common, but it seemed as if the situation had been going in a more dire direction. There had even been talk of a possible serial killer. Seattle definitely wasn't safe these days. But to imply that this was why she had been sent to Forks instead of in a group home?

"What?" she found herself asking.

"Oh, uh, it's just something my dad said," Bella stammered. She looked as though she regretted possessing vocal cords. "Sorry. The talk around the station, you know."

Of course that's what it was.

"Right, he's the police chief," Nell sneered. "Scared I'm gonna be a problem?"

Bella flushed red under Nell's snide look, and Edward straightened up, definitely less amused now that her attention had shifted toward Bella. This detail was swiftly filed away inside Nell's carefully curated folder entitled Edward Cullen: what makes him tick. Threat to himself he could apparently withstand, but any slight attack on the Swan girl and nothing was funny anymore.

"No, no," Bella tried to assure her. "He doesn't think that."

Nell raised her eyebrows mockingly, unconvinced. Her attempt was laughable. Bella Swan ought to learn to become a better liar, Nell thought. Police Chief Swan had probably warned his daughter not to get involved with the new kid from Seattle, a teenager from the foster care system was almost certainly bad news after all. Especially for a cop. The whole thing was absurd, what difference was there between Nell Blake and Edward Cullen? For all intents and purposes, he had also been in the system at one point. He too had to have been unwanted once, unclaimed. Passed from one uncertain future to another.

Edward smirked then, and Nell could have sworn she had seen his lips move, but the motion had been so fast she might as well have imagined it.

"Liar," she said to Bella. "Of course he does."

Nell leaned on the table, lowering her voice into a fake confidential tone, a specific tone people usually employed when they were about to say something deliberately cruel.

"Tell me," she continued. "Did daddy warn you too about your boyfriend? Or is Edward Cullen the right sort of kid out of the system?"

Did adoption absolve him from the judging voices? Did it make him good? Those questions hung heavily beneath her words, unvoiced.

Now Bella Swan looked genuinely uncomfortable, but a flicker of anger was rising behind her dark eyes. Beside her, Edward's smirk had returned, but without all the amusement. Without it, his expression no longer looked like a taunt, but like a threat. Before Bella could answer, or before Nell could tempt fate even further and march toward disaster, Edward glanced at another table. For a fraction of a second, his expression turned amused again.

Nell followed his gaze to a couple of tables away where sat the rest of the Cullens. There was something eerie about their positions, like figures in a wax museum. And there, her eyes met Emmett's who was already watching her openly.

And suddenly Nell hated herself for asking the question at all, because she already knew the answer. There it was. The difference between her and Edward Cullen sat only a few feet away. Edward wasn't simply tolerated, his time in Forks wasn't temporary and no case worker was waiting to hear about him. Edward had a family, loving parents. He seemed well-adjusted. Enough to even have a girlfriend.

The jealousy struck Nell with vicious force, and for one dreadful moment something close to self-hatred threatened to surface. She turned it to rage, and stood up with no warning. Anger, unlike sadness, could be weaponized, and if there was one thing Nell never missed, it was an opportunity.

Emmett was the only one already looking at her, though a second before she stood, Alice Cullen snapped her head in her direction, lips quickly moving. Rosalie, seated so close to Emmett she practically occupied the same chair, barely reacted. She merely readjusted one golden curl over her shoulder and managed to intensify her natural air of superiority. Next to Alice, Rosalie's twin straightened abruptly, rigid. He didn't even look like he was breathing. They all did a wonderful job of acting like they hadn't been staring at her, Nell's delusions whispered. Behind her, she heard Bella.

"Oh shit."

Nell ignored her like she ignored the hush falling through the cafeteria as she approached the Cullens table. Teenagers had the bothersome habit of ceasing all activity if they suspected something embarrassing was about to happen to somebody else. The Cullens, however, didn't seem to be normal teenagers because they remained perfectly calm as she marched toward their table. In a few strides she reached them, and immediately proceeded to forget why she'd come.

Maintaining righteous anger when standing close to one Cullen was manageable, but close to four of them was proving to be a difficult task. Nell already knew Rosalie was the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. Emmett, too, had already been classified as handsome. Edward was… fine, she supposed, though his personality remained a severe drawback.

So, of course, she should have known that the other two would be beautiful as well. Up-close, Alice looked unreal, all big eyes and elegantly sharp features. She looked like what a woodland fairy would look like, Nell supposed. Maybe she should abstain from giving her her name. Beside Alice, the last brother's face was turned away from Nell, hidden behind honey blond hair almost as beautiful as his twin sister. Nell had the sudden urge to run away from them, as if some sixth sense sensed danger.

She stood there in terrible silence, anger slipping from her grasp like a wet bar of soap. It took a few seconds of clinging tooth and nail to it before she managed to retrieve enough indignation to speak.

"Do you want something?" she demanded.

Alice blinked at her.

"I'm sorry?"

Her voice was clear and musical, which suited her infuriatingly well. Nell wouldn't be swayed.

"Well, seeing as you were all staring at me," she accused. "I thought maybe there was a reason."

"No one was looking at you," Rosalie scoffed. She didn't even bother turning fully toward Nell as she spoke, her gaze drifting somewhere in Nell's general vicinity instead, which was far more insulting than if she'd spit on her. Still, Rosalie sounded disdainful rather than dishonest, as far as Nell could tell. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing, it wouldn't be her first time turning harmless curiosity into personal attack. Maybe they hadn't all been looking at her at all until she'd launched herself out of her chair like an escaped psychiatrist patient.

Unfortunately, it was now too late to retreat. Not with dignity.

"Well, he was," she said, pointing accusingly at Emmett. His smile was genuine, his gold eyes glinting with amusement. There was something about how open he seemed, as if he had never held a grudge for more than five minutes in his life.

"My mistake," he apologized.

The exasperating thing was that Nell actually believed him. Emmett Cullen seemed incapable of lying, a genuine person through and through. And she had already granted him a pass, which meant she had to accept his apology with a stiff nod.

"Great. And quit your staring," she warned. "I only have one problem at the moment, and frankly, I don't want to add another four."

Emmett barked out a laugh at that, slinging one arm around Rosalie's shoulders. He was about to answer when another voice cut him off.

"Maybe the four will add themselves."

The voice was raspy yet soft, with only the faintest trace of a southern accent. Anger reignited, Nell eyes snapped toward the third brother —the one she had forgotten the name of— prepared to begin a second war. Then she met his eyes, and every coherent thought abandoned her without notice.

Jasper.

That was the name.

It came back to her the way dreams do hours after waking. Jasper Hale possessed the same otherworldly beauty of his siblings, but where Rosalie's felt sharp and Alice's strange, Jasper's mesmerized. His gaze was steady, piercing, almost challenging. But at the corner of his mouth rested a barely perceptible smirk. If she didn't snap out of it, Nell would keep on standing there gawking like a Victorian man spotting an exposed ankle. Which would mean making even more of a fool of herself than she already had.

Gathering her thoughts and dignity, which didn't amount to much right now, Nell decided against attempting a retort. She settled for a scoff, and left as briskly as possible without technically running.

Halfway across the cafeteria, she remembered her abandoned lunch beside Edward and Bella. Not wanting a repeat of her first day where spite had been her only fuel during P.E., she doubled back toward their table, grabbed her apple, and promptly fled the cafeteria.

The flicker of annoyance she'd seen on Edward's face before leaving comforted her a little. It had only lasted a second before vanishing, but Nell had caught it, treasured it, and filed it away in another folder, this time titled, Things that bring me joy. Lunch hadn't been a total failure, at the very least, not if she had managed to inconvenience Cullen emotionally.

Once again, Nell found herself sitting alone on the bleachers outside the gym, waiting for class to begin and mentally reviewing the catastrophe that had been lunch. She took a bite of her apple, conducting a mental investigation of the Cullens.

Now that she was away from their attention and dangerously captivating looks, more details came back to her. Growing up with very little, she had become an expert in noticing expensive things. Nell had admired pretty, valuable, shiny things ever since she had slipped an old classmate's baptism bracelet into her pocket after swimming practice. That had been the first theft of her career. At first, she'd only stolen out of envy, a nasty emotion but all the same understandable, but as time went on, stealing out of envy turned into stealing out of spite, which is even nastier. A valued Furbie, a brand-new Tamagotchi, countless action figures, and slowly, jewelry, lunch money, sentimental trinkets as well. Nell was gifted with deft hands and an innocent smile, a dangerous combination, and as long as she was certain nobody would suspect her, her treasure pile would grow. Not that she ever placed any emotional value in it, most of it ended up abandoned beneath floorboards, in forgotten corners of in-between homes and group homes.

And as a teenager, that skill became practical. Nell learned how to recognize quality, how to steal it, and where to sell it afterward.

This was why she instantly recognized that despite attempting to dress like everyone else, the Cullens' clothes were very nice things. The materials hadn't looked cheap, Rosalie's jewelry looked designer. Nell would have bet all she had, had she had anything to bet, that their clothes were high-fashion. And the Volvo that Edward drove should have been a tell, it stood out amidst the much older cars of the other students. It took a second of Nell wondering how rich their parents were, and whether the state-issued money provided for the twins was only unnecessary pocket money, before remembering a crucial detail. Mike and Jessica had called their father Doctor Cullen. By the looks of it, the answer to how rich they were was turning out to be filthy.

It was unfair, Nell decided. Nobody could have money, beauty and love. Generally, anyone hoarding all three inspired in her an irrational resentment, but the fact that her newfound enemy, Edward Cullen, had all of them was intolerable.

And useful. If the Cullens were indeed filthy rich, perhaps getting run over by Edward's car wouldn't have been such a terrible outcome after all. The amount of money she could get just by threatening a lawsuit was considerable. This was food for thought. She even briefly wondered how difficult it would be to rob them. Forks was one of the dullest towns in the dozens of dull towns she'd known, maybe the Cullens trusted their neighbors enough not to install alarms. Though, trusting disposition and wealth did not mix well.

Tired, Nell wondered why couldn't she have been placed with the Cullens, back when she had still been sweet. Thankfully, Coach Capp's whistle drew her out of this dangerous line of thought.

Gym was going as well as it could, Nell throwing herself into the dodgeball practice with alarming enthusiasm, something that usually happens when one starts accumulating enough anger to qualify as a natural resource. Every serve was struck as though the ball had either insulted her or turned into Edward Cullen's face. On the other team, Emmett moved around with ease, although Nell would have expected someone built like a professional wrestler to enjoy physical activity more enthusiastically. Emmett's muscles were impressive, strained beneath his shirt, but he looked more frustrated than happy on the court, as if he was being forced to participate in a hostage situation.

With no care for her musings, the game grew more heated, though the coach liked to call it spirited. Nell found it cathartic, a word which here means "using sports to process emotions instead of seeking therapy". It was Emmett's turn to serve, and if Nell had been less observant, she might not have noticed Emmett actually holding back his strength. His arm had tightened strangely, and even though she expected the ball not to even make it to her team's side, it cracked through the air with a sound like a gunshot. Perfectly aimed at Nell.

Emmett grinned as she hit it back with all the strength she had, directly toward his head. He caught it. The game continued, Emmett and Nell's teammates growing increasingly bored as the ball flew back and forth between the two, each throw harder than the last. Nell kept waiting to see Emmett use his full strength, but he never did, no matter how viciously she threw the ball, and by the time Gym class was over, her hands throbbed painfully while she wondered if the full extent of Emmett Cullen's strength was a mystery best left unsolved.

She was making her way towards the locker room, sore and considerably less irritated than before, when Emmett appeared beside her.

"Nice throw," he grinned. He wasn't even sweating.

"Thanks," Nell answered, slightly suspicious.

Emmett got closer then, and every instinct in Nell told her to run. Human instincts are fascinating things. They are ancient alarms buried deep inside the body, only manifesting when danger approaches, even when the conscious mind has not yet caught up. Unfortunately, people ignore them all the time.

"Aim for the car," Emmett started. "Or the hair. Best way to get to him."

With that, he turned back towards the boys' locker room, grin still in place. This was unsettling. Certainly, Nell ought to have questioned why her body had reacted with such primal terror the second Emmett Cullen had gotten too close, a wiser person might have. But instead, like many people confronted with both fear and opportunity, Nell brushed aside the first to focus on the second. She knew little and less of the siblings' relationship, but she didn't care to know why Emmett had decided to help her annoy his brother. She had no intention of questioning her luck, the mere fact that he offered information felt providential. And now, with her confidence renewed, she decided to give her plan of the day one last chance. One last attempt.

It is best I do not recount to you, dear reader, how French class went. There are certain scenes in life so lamentable that to describe them in full would be an act of cruelty. Also, I hope you cannot imagine how Nell felt sitting sweaty there next to immaculate Rosalie Hale, who had probably never sweated once in her life. Nell was not vain, nor particularly self-conscious, but every passing minute next to her French deskmate made her more painfully aware of the frizz in her hair, the stickiness of her palms, and her dismal inadequacy in French. If you do understand such a feeling, dear reader, then all I can say is that I am sorry. Still, I can reassure you with this: we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is an expression which indicates that a long period of difficulty is nearing an end. It is the feeling Bella Swan must have felt, stumbling through the narrow streets of Volterra believing her love lost, only to see Edward standing in the shadows still. It is the feeling one might feel when after a long and miserable stretch of darkness, one finally begins to sense that relief actually exists.

Such moments are not easily forgotten for they remind us that even the bleakest of tunnels do occasionally end, although not before making us suffer quite a bit first.

The light at the end of the tunnel, for Nell, looked less like a light and more like the sight of Edward Cullen trapped between his girlfriend and his sister with nowhere to escape as she approached him at full speed. This was fortunate because a charging Nell was very much like a charging goose: difficult to reason with and likely to cause property damage, even more so now that this was her third attempt. Nell, as any self-respecting academic disaster would, had not enrolled in elective classes, motivated by the hope of having a potential free period at the end of the day. Free periods, as you might know if you have ever been to school, are as treasured to students as an oasis is to people stranded in deserts.

This meant Nell had slightly more time to track down her target after French. And so she stalked Edward Cullen through the halls, several paces behind him, weaving through the crowded hallway while waiting for the perfect opportunity for collision to arise. And it did. As Bella said something, she slowed and Alice moved to his other side, and there he stood, cornered. Energized, Nell finally, blessedly, surged forward and collided with Edward Cullen. It felt more like colliding with a stone wall than with a human being, but Nell refused to acknowledge this. Edward looked down at her with clear annoyance.

"Sorry," she said brightly. Her grin was so broad it bordered on terrifying. Edward's golden eyes narrowed and Nell chose to exit the scene before he could get a word in. It was deeply satisfying.

Still riding the high of her victory, Nell even accepted Mike Newton's offer to drive her home, though somewhat reluctantly. Mike didn't feel like the type of person to enjoy a silent drive, but she had learned her lesson the previous day and had no desire to ruin her excellent mood by arriving home soaked to the bone. So she waited for Mike in the parking lot, where, as her luck would have it, were also the Cullens.

Edward seemed to be kissing Bella goodbye while the others waited for him. Nell found her attention wandering, despite her best efforts, toward Jasper Hale. He stood stiffer than the rest of them, though he appeared amused by whatever Emmett was saying to him. Each time her eyes returned to him, time itself seemed to slow. His honey-blond hair fell in waves around his face, softening his sharp features, his smile was crooked in a way that made each one he gave appear teasing. Nell had to almost physically fight herself to stop staring. So much so that she nearly thanked Edward when he stepped beside Jasper, obscuring her line of sight.

Eyes flickering toward the school exit, willing Newton to finally appear, Nell lasted approximately a minute before the urge to glance at the Cullens overwhelmed her. They had not moved yet, however, Edward was now watching her curiously. This was new. Nell had already catalogued several Edward Cullen Expressions, the apologetic look, the amused look, the irritated look, and worst of them all, the infuriatingly teasing look. But this one was different, like he was trying to figure something out about her. Which, as you can imagine, is the worst look Nell liked to be at the end of. She flipped him off for good measure, as she noticed Mike coming up to her.

"Still on your Edward-vengeance crusade," Mike Newton said in lieu of greetings.

"He's pale and he has the eyes of a freak," she shot, eyes still fixed firmly on Edward. "He looks like a Willy Wonka of the most boring food ever. A Willy Wonka of soja."

Mike laughed. That was expected. Emmett laughed, a booming sound that echoed in the parking lot.

Her will crumbling, she turned again to where the Cullens stood. Jasper was laughing as well. The timing was exact enough to feel deliberate, though, of course, they were standing too far away to have actually heard her. But Nell liked her own version of reality, where the most attractive Cullen (technically, Hale) found her funny.

"A Willy Wonka of soja," Mike repeated, still laughing. "Good one!"

It was clear he shared her opinion of Edward Cullen. There was evidently no love lost between Newton and Cullen. She pondered if maybe he could be an ally as she climbed in his car. Every reckless war benefited from at least one accomplice. Then again, Mike Newton had the temperament of a golden retriever, loyal, but ultimately too good for evil.

"Okay. I gotta ask," Mike started, breaking the silence Nell enjoyed. "What is it about him?"

Nell immediately misunderstood the question. Her thoughts had been drifting toward Jasper Hale again, and she sat in horror, wondering if somehow Mike had caught on her fascination. Naturally, he couldn't be trusted with this information. Even if he turned out to be potentially useful against Cullen, usefulness and trustworthiness were very different qualities. For instance, poison was useful, countless historical figures could tell you this. Fire was useful. A particularly knowledgeable low-life was useful. None of these were to be trusted. Likewise, many trustworthy things were not necessarily useful. And a decent person like Mike Newton, though admirable, was less practical in dangerous situations than someone morally questionable.

"Huh?" is all she managed to answer.

"It's just weird," he continued. "I mean, nobody cared about the Cullens before Bella showed up."

At this, Nell turned to look at him, genuinely astonished. And more than a little doubtful. Mike glanced her way and almost smiled at her reaction.

"I'm serious," he insisted. "Everybody just sort of…" He waved one hand vaguely through the air. "Ignored them."

"Ignored them?" Nell repeated. Her traitorous mind supplied an image of Jasper Hale leaning lazily against his car with that crooked smile on his face. "That's impossible."

"No, really." Mike sounded increasingly confident. "People noticed they were hot, obviously. We're not blind. But nobody talked to them much."

Nell frowned. In a town like Forks, it was reasonable to wonder if this divide had been caused by the Cullens' intimidating looks or by the narrow-mindedness and prejudice folks had against any newcomers, especially from the foster system. Although that would be doing them a disservice, no one at school had been actually weird to Nell yet.

"They do seem to keep to themselves," Nell conceded.

"And everyone kept away from them too," Mike added. Something in his tone hinted at some deeper meaning. Nell remembered the way her body had instinctively tensed when Emmett had gotten closer to her, and she remembered how once she had reached their table at lunch, something lurking beneath their beauty had troubled her.

"I get what you mean, yeah."

"Which is why," Mike exclaimed, "it's weird that you're drawn to Cullen like Bella was."

Nell almost choked on the spot.

"Newton," she threatened, voice cold and eyes colder. "You take that back." Mike blinked. "I'm not drawn to Cullen," she scowled through gritted teeth. "I want him to spend the next several few weeks in misery for what he did on my first day."

Nell turned back toward the road only once Newton had looked away again, suddenly seeming concerned enough to reconsider the wisdom of allowing her in his car.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, sure," he spluttered before recovering. "Doesn't change the fact, though. Your stunt at lunch was…"

He gave a low whistle, leaving his sentence unfinished. Good to know that most of the student body of Forks High School had been impressed by her daring approach of the Cullens. At least that might earn her some respect. To Mike, she just shrugged. The Cullens were hardly the most frightening people she had ever met.

Mike dropped Nell off with a quick smile and the unmistakable expression of someone that was secretly vowing to never drive her home again. She climbed out of his car with a big smile, and hoped against hope that Christine was still at work as she entered the house, door slamming behind her.

"Nell? Is that you?" called a voice from the dining room.

So much for hope. Christine's face appeared as Nell kicked off her shoes. Her arms were overflowing with papers, envelopes, sticky notes, and assorted scraps.

"Well, hello," she greeted with a small smile. Nell nodded in response. "Just putting some order in my mess."

Christine waved a handful of papers, returning to her task in the dining room.

"How was your day?" she asked as Nell wandered into the kitchen in search of food.

"Fine." The fridge was full but Nell quickly located the apple slices she'd left this morning.

"Fine-fine or terrible-fine?" came from the door opened on the dining room.

"Did they teach you that in foster parent training?" Nell scoffed, grabbing a jar of peanut butter and a knife.

"No. Preschool," Christine replied in the same maddening cheerful tone. "Toddlers can be surprisingly passive-agressive."

Nell let out a reluctant snort on her way to the stairs. There was something unnerving about speaking to someone you could not see. It made the conversation feel safer, as though Christine's concern could not fully reach her from another room. It made her want to be more honest. It was the same feeling one might get lying back in their therapist's office, eyes fixed upon the ceiling. Like your words were spoken into the void. At the dinner table, under direct eye contact and sympathy, Nell often felt like she might choke on her food and her feelings if she talked, but not here. She paused at the bottom of the staircase.

"Fine-fine, I guess," she said quietly. "Wet. I got a ride back."

Inside the dining room came the rustling of papers and, somehow, the sound of Christine smiling.

"Oh, with who?"

"Mike Newton."

"Oh the Newton kid! He's sweet," Christine chatted. "The Newtons moved in, let me see… Oh, what was it, five, seven years ago, I think. They own Newton's Olympic Outfitters downtown."

Nell hummed around a bite of apple. She really couldn't care less about the Newtons if they were the local conspiracy-believers or hunted cryptids for sport. But at least, Mike's friendliness toward newcomers made slightly more sense now, if he had once been in their position. He probably remembered what it felt like to arrive in a town where everyone already knew everyone else's business. She wondered if his apparent resentment of the Cullens had started after some failed attempts at friendship. This theory, of course, relied upon the assumption that Mike had had the nerve to actually go talk to them.

The thought sparked an idea in Nell's mind, and before she could backtrack, the words were out of her mouth.

"Do you know the Cullens?"

Dear reader, you'll recall that when one is conducting a war, every scrap of information becomes valuable, even if obtaining it requires a lunch time spent next to Jessica Stanley or continuing a conversation while balancing a schoolbag, a knife, peanut butter, and several apple slices at the foot of a staircase.

"Of course I do! Mrs. Cullen often offers to help out at the preschool," Christine said enthusiastically. "Mostly for events and holidays. She's quite compassionate."

Her tone warmed noticeably as she spoke.

"She and her husband are quite young," she continued. "He's the chief doctor at Forks Hospital, and she's a stay-at-home mom, I believe."

The admiration in her voice was unmistakable, and Nell wondered whether the Cullens had inspired Christine to become a foster parent in the first place.

"Their kids go to school with you, don't they?"

Another non-committal hum, a noise designed specifically to reveal absolutely nothing, was the only answer Nell gave. Christine reappeared in the doorway carrying a stack of paper. Surprisingly, she didn't press further. She seemed to sense this was all she was going to get out of Nell today.

"Dinner will be ready at six-thirty," she simply said with a smile before disappearing once more into the chaos of the dining room.

Blessedly, said dinner was a quiet affair, which is a phrase meaning that neither Nell nor Christine attempted to sustain a conversation over mashed potatoes. The only sounds in the room were the occasional clatter of cutlery and the television in the background. From her seat, Nell caught fragments of a news report out of Seattle of yet another violent attack the night before. The police suspected possible gang activity and urged citizens to remain alert and exercise caution. This was followed by a report of a missing teenage boy whose worried parents pleaded for information.

"I'm glad you aren't there anymore," Christine commented absentmindedly.

Nell didn't answer. Her back was to the TV and she fought with all she had not to look over her shoulder. She wondered if she might recognize one of the faces flashing onscreen. She did not think she wanted to know. Instead, she thought about Bella's comment at lunch, and the social worker's cheerful remark during the drive to Forks. In ordinary circumstances, a teenager like Nell, a frequent runaway one month away from aging out of the foster system, should have been moved into a group home,preferably a strict one. That was what usually happened, yet, here she was, in a quiet little town, surrounded by trees. It felt suspicious as Nell doubted that her caseworker had suddenly developed hopes for her. Optimism, after all, is not generally inspired by repeated disappearances and police involvement.

In situations so uncertain, dear reader, it is often wise to take a step back and examine matters carefully, as you would with suspicious mushrooms or unstable ladders. Because to wonder how dire the situation in Seattle had become for Nell Blake to be sent to Forks would be to open Pandora's box. Pandora, as you may know, was the first human woman in Greek mythology. Created by Hephaestus following Zeus' command, Pandora eventually went on to open this infamous box, although some translations and scholars argue it was a jar, and subsequently released all the evils of humankind into the world. To open Pandora's box means to uncover horrors previously hidden away, which is exactly what Nell was trying to avoid.

She couldn't truly lie to herself. Something was very wrong in Seattle, and it seemed the people targeted were the sort society often overlooks, or looks down on: young people, lonely people, expendable people. The kind whose disappearances became statistics before they become tragedies.

Later that evening, Nell attempted to distract herself with French homework, though the rain tapping steadily against her bedroom window made it near impossible. Outside, a pale moon glimmered weakly through the fog. For the first time since her arrival, Nell felt grateful for the roof over her head. She did not miss sleeping wherever she and her friend could find shelter, be it bus stations, abandoned buildings or cramped apartments full of strangers, cigarette smoke, and sleazy men.

Now, there are many kinds of missing. There is the pleasant sort, where you miss a test you hadn't studied for. There is the ordinary sort, where you are missing a sock or a pen. You can miss a plane, miss a train or miss an opportunity, though Nell Blake would know little about the latter. If something (or someone) goes missing, you search for it. If you are missing money, you elaborate dubious plans to get some.

But when you miss someone, there is nowhere sensible to look and no proper way to wait. The person still exists somewhere else in the world, one can hope, yet their absence is still felt in the empty space they leave behind. Nell didn't have many people to miss. She had missed her parents for a long time, then she had missed her first foster family. And now, listening to the rain, she found herself missing the person waiting for her in Seattle.

Chapter Text

Red is an unfortunate color. Through no fault of its own, of course, I doubt a color ever had an opinion on how we perceive it, but the fact remains. It is unfortunate not because it is ugly, on the contrary, red is often beautiful. Roses are red, rubies are red, blood is red. In all its shades, red fascinates. No, it is unfortunate because it is the color of warnings. Stop signs are red, emergency buttons are red, and the faces of people who have just said something they regret are red, be it faint or bright. If this story were a color, reader, it would undoubtedly be red. For warnings, for blood, and most of all, for the color Nell sees most of the time.

To see red is an expression used to describe rage. When we say someone sees red, we mean that their perception has become so wrapped by their anger that a red curtain has fallen over their eyes, edges are blurred and consequences are damned. The red paints over restraint, reason, leaving behind nothing but fury. People who experience this phenomenon often insist they were "not thinking clearly".

This was how Nell felt after a week of desperately trying to be hit by Edward's car.

It was, surprisingly, harder than it looked to get run over. You would assume it to be the easiest thing in the world, given how many reports of it were found in the news, and, for Nell, easiest still, Edward Cullen having already proved a certain aptitude for the crime. But his reflexes behind a wheel were as sharp as they were in the hallways. After the fourth failure, Nell had started considering walking into open traffic and hoping for the worst. Nothing had worked, not even slipping behind his car and waiting for him to back up, her leg be damned. Cullen had seen her every time, had anticipated and evaded her schemes.

At least, she thought, she might have just created Forks' most cautious driver. She clung onto the hope that Cullen had fallen to paranoia and lived in constant fear of seeing her running into traffic.

Indeed, red had covered Nell's eyes. But it wasn't the only thing it could cover.

The silver surface gleamed faintly beneath the gray afternoon sky as Nell crouched and pried open the stolen can of paint. The drama department wouldn't miss it, surely, just as Study Hall wasn't missing her, hopefully. Armed with a battered paintbrush, Nell showed no hesitation. The first splash spread beautifully across the hood, the second spread across her sleeve, half of the third spread on the asphalt. A spill which she tried to smear as best as she could, staining more than her hands in the process. Nell was a skilled thief and an adequate liar, not a talented artist. Her work was messy, and not even artfully so, but artistry was not the point. The only thing that mattered was transforming the silver of Edward's car into red. And not get caught. Of course, if Nell Blake wasn't going to get caught, this wouldn't be her story.

As she rounded the front of the car, paintbrush in hand and eager to continue her brand-new passion for painting, she came face-to-face with none other than Jasper Hale, who had apparently been standing here long enough to witness the entire crime.

You might reasonably think this situation to be quite bleak. A week ago, Nell Blake certainly would have. But the strangest thing had been happening over the course of this week.

Last Friday, as Nell had approached the school carrying a backpack full of glue, Alice Cullen had appeared before her and told her: "It's going to rain this afternoon." before gracefully skipping away. The apparition in itself had been unsettling, even without the impromptu weather forecast, which had differed from the actual forecast that had predicted only clouds. Unsettling because not only did Alice Cullen preferred materializing next to people instead of walking up to them, but she also delivered weather updates with the energy of someone announcing a surprise birthday party. Still, Nell had decided that unsettling was probably the only state Alice knew, and so she had gone on with her terrible plan, an adjective which here means "absolutely atrocious". By the end of the afternoon, the glue on the windshield of Edward's car had been washed away, along with the few scraps of Nell's coat where she had ended up stuck. She had missed first period.

On Monday, as she was filling Edward's locker with discarded hair clippings, a project which had been well-worth the trip to a hair salon, Emmett had walked past her, noticed the whole operation, and grinned before moving on. No reports had been made, no attempt to stop her. And then, no earlier than last period, even Rosalie had passed her a note with an extensive list of French insults Nell could hurl at Edward, though the gesture had been more of a curse than a blessing, taking into account Nell's butchery of the French language, the sentiment was touching all the same.

One by one, each Cullen sibling had had a small part in her absurd war so far. All except one. Jasper Hale had remained resolutely uninvolved which suited Nell because if half her time was spent waging war against Edward Cullen, the other half was spent waging war against herself not to think of Jasper Hale as the hotter one. Regrettably, it was the second conflict she struggled with, making a deliberate effort not to look for him in hallways, not to glance at him in the cafeteria. And now, here he was. Staring at the red paint on her hands and sleeves, smirking unimpressed.

"You are covered in paint," Jasper pointed out. As far as greetings went, she'd known worse.

"Aren't your observational skills sharp?" she said, with much more derision than someone still crouching beside a vandalized car and splattered head-to-toe in red paint ought to have.

Jasper was undeterred, if anything his smirk intensified. "This is Edward's car."

Nell didn't even bother to reply. Instead, she raised her eyebrows at him and got off the ground with as much grace as she could. Jasper's eyes drifted to the paint on her knees, on the car and on the ground.

"You made a mess," he said, with a smile. Usually, this smile would have roused Nell's temper, but she barely felt her anger stirring beneath the surface. Besides, Jasper wasn't wrong, she had made a mess, as was her habit.

"You don't say," she muttered, failing to sound as cutting as she would have liked.

Jasper let this go unanswered, leaving the silence to settle between them. He stood a few feet away from Nell, far away enough that had it been anyone else she would have been offended by the distance. But with Jasper, it felt oddly natural that he shouldn't be closer. Nell clutched the half empty can of paint in her hand.

"This one might actually get a rise out of him," Jasper said after a moment, eyes locking back onto Nell. "Congratulations."

The sudden burst of satisfaction Nell felt wasn't expected. And it wasn't welcomed either. Validation was something she had stopped looking for long ago, somewhere in between finding a gifted drawing in the trash and receiving her own weeks-lost teddy bear for her birthday. Still, despite all of her warning signals flaring, Jasper's words felt nice.

"Mhm. Think fast," she shot at the same time she threw the can of paint at Jasper. The can flew directly for Jasper's head but he caught it effortlessly, with almost no paint spilled, only a drop she could see on the sleeve of his jacket. How he managed it remained a mystery, and entirely unfair but Nell had no time to get suspicious, Jasper already raising an eyebrow, a gesture which definitely asked several questions regarding her sanity. She answered all of them with a smile. "You're an accomplice," she informed him while nodding at the evidence now resting in his hand, "and a suspect. Now, you'll excuse me, I have a crime scene to flee."

She winked and bolted out of the parking lot.

The further away Nell got from the school, the less foggy her thoughts became. About five minutes into her walk, she came to realize how strangely unusual her behavior with Jasper had been. There had been no righteous anger, no retort so sharp it could bite, her usual bitterness withdrawned. Naturally, Nell attempted to rationalize this anomaly. Jasper Hale was simply a less irritating person to be around than the rest of the population. He seemed to possess a calmness, a steadiness about him that had seeped through her own anger, and now that she had spoken to him properly, she found it easier to demystify him. Easier to ignore his easy charm. Unfortunately, dear reader, nothing is ever as easy as it seems. The strange pull remained, though duller than before. How could it not be? The Cullens were inhumanly beautiful. At times, they felt more like a weird hallucination her mind had fantasized to deal with the boredom of Forks than like real teenagers she went to school with.

Their meddling, however, suited her. For reasons she did not understand, all of them seemed supportive of her endeavor, though she wondered if Jasper Hale would be the first not to. After all, most of Nell's acts of war (pranks, really, but do not let Nell Blake here me report them as such) had been quite harmless. Painting the car, however, was another matter entirely, that was playing with fire, which does not imply that Nell Blake had suddenly developed the skills of a fire-eater, though Nell could easily be pictured breathing flames for cash. This expression means that she was doing things that were likely to cause disasters later on. Especially since the Cullens had money. People with that sort of money weren't known for their restraint when it came to sue someone over an annoyance, and having an expensive car repainted qualified as such. Nell doubted that he looked smug would be considered a valid legal defense. Which was why despite her initial embarrassment at being caught by Jasper Hale, she had also felt relief at the opportunity to get someone else involved. Although, Nell was not foolish enough to believe that involving Jasper Hale would be protection enough if matters became serious.

Nell Blake might not be scholarly inclined, but still, she was familiar with the concept of circumstantial evidence. If you are not, I shall do my best to attempt an explanation, although I will try to be brief, legal terminology rarely improves one's afternoon. A circumstantial evidence is an indirect evidence that does not, on its own, prove something, but suggests that it does. In other words, to connect the circumstantial evidence to a crime, one has to fill in the blanks by using deduction and logic. For example, a suspect's DNA being found on a crime scene is circumstantial evidence. Here, Nell's fingerprints all over the can of paint, paintbrush and even car would be circumstantial evidence. And, most incriminating of all, everyone at school being witnesses of her one-sided conflict with the owner of the silver-red Volvo.

One might say being engaged in a one-sided war such as this could be considered as bullying. Which is a line Nell was used to toy with. It would be lying to claim Nell Blake had never been accused of bullying before, as you can imagine. Though she never picked at the weakest link in the social hierarchy and her actions rarely benefited her own social status, Nell's consistent insistence on going after any perceived slights had, on occasions, cost her a visit to a guidance counselor or two. One teacher had called her driven. Another had recommended therapy.

It was nothing short of a miracle that Edward Cullen had not yet reported her. The Cullens didn't blend in much, it was true, and their social status seemed to exist outside the normal ecosystem of teenage popularity. Perhaps this was why none of them seemed too bothered with her campaign. Even Edward was only mildly annoyed, at worst. That did not help with Nell's temper.

Going after Bella Swan had been considered, early on, though as tempting as it had been, Nell knew that this one came with a very serious complication, on account of Chief Swan. Police chiefs, as it stands, have the very inconvenient habit of taking crimes personally, even more so when they involve their daughters, and Nell had not yet been ready to escalate to police investigations. This didn't stop her from trying to engage Lauren Mallory's help, the cold, pale blonde girl she had met on her second day. Lauren wasn't a particularly nice girl, and she didn't even try to hide her hostility toward Bella Swan. This had painted her as the best candidate for an alliance, even without considering that so far, Lauren was the only person out of Mike's friend group that Nell tolerated for more than fifteen consecutive minutes.

Mike was aggravating. Tyler was unbearable. Jessica was the worst gossip Nell had ever met. As for the others, Nell had only met them briefly, they usually sat with Bella and Edward, joined occasionally by Alice Cullen.

So, to Lauren she had turned. And by Lauren she had been refused. "Cullen is one thing," she'd said haughtily. "Bella is another." The venom with which she had spat the name reached a level of animosity Nell could only aspire to reach against Edward Cullen. "He's looked downright murderous a few times last year, when it came to her. Mike was convinced Cullen was planning to kill him." And that had been the end of that. A pity. Because Nell had a lot of thoughts and none of them good about Bella Swan. Someone idiotic enough to have placed so much trust and love into another the only thing that had been left for her to do once he'd gone was waste away. Someone idiotic enough to fall in love. With Edward Cullen, of all people.

So Nell was trapped into this dance against, in her opinion, the worst Cullen. A dance she had trapped herself in, if I might add. Nell hadn't grown bored of it yet. On the contrary, finding new ways to be a nuisance had become a sort of intellectual challenge for her. But with no retaliation in sight, the game would soon lose its appeal, there was only so much metaphorical cannonballs Nell could fire at Edward Cullen before his evident lack of suffering turned dull. Though not before she figured him out. Nell had begun to notice a troubling pattern, sometime around her attempt to add a healthy dose of cough syrup in his Pepsi and her attempt to dart in front of his car at an intersection where she'd remained hidden behind a wall. Her plans kept being thwarted, no matter how carefully thought out they had been. Edward Cullen always seemed to know where she was about to come from, what she had tampered with, and even, sometimes, what she was planning to do. The first few times, she blamed coincidence, but after a humiliating attempt involving fishing lines (stolen out of the neighbors' shed) and a suspicious amount of marbles (traded with second-graders for an alarming amount of lunch money), Nell had started to take precautions.

Nell's latest victories had only been for pranks she'd avoided thinking about around school, not until the last moment. Excuse me, her acts of war. It was ridiculous, she knew, no rational person believed their nemesis to be mind-readers, but she persisted in keeping her mind free of war plans when Cullen was around. The wild theory itself was absurd, impossible, and Nell was sure that should she dig around, she'd find a much more down-to-earth explanation, like suspiciously good intuition. As you and I know, Nell Blake would only end up thoroughly disappointed and deeply concerned by the truth.

In any case, now that she reached the looping road on which Christine Trimble lived, Nell could finally start planning her next attack. After today's stunt, she needed to scale things back, go back to plausible deniability territory. As exhilarating as it was, the car was a bit much. SSubtler warfare with less evidence would make do for some time. Unfortunately, that required a deeper understanding of Edward, and aside from Bella, Nell's Edward Cullen: what makes him tick folder remained frustratingly empty. He was a wall of impassibility, nothing seemed to get to him, and if Emmett hadn't given her suggestions last Wednesday, Nell would never have had even one hint as to what would be worth targeting.

Family, of course, could be a target. The quickest way to hurt an enemy was through the people they cared about. But Nell was reluctant to make the siblings collateral damage in her war, against her better judgment, most of them were already partially in her good graces now, especially Emmett and his borderline encouragement of her criminal behavior. Maybe she should start to look outside of the siblings.

It's with her mind focused on the mysterious Dr. Cullen that Nell arrived home. Christine's car was, blessedly, still absent. This made Nell feel marginally more at ease once inside. Empty houses are safer for someone unaccustomed to permanence, an empty house is a house void of questions. Fingers still stained with paint, she wandered inside the living-room where Rusty was lounging on the couch. She pet him, feeling ill-at-ease in this space. She had barely spent any time in the living-room since she'd arrived, the room feeling much too Christine's, with warm, colorful blankets folded neatly over furniture and framed photographs of family and friends. Nell's own room was slowly growing on her, but the rest of the house remained too strange, like a place she was simply a visitor into. Just a guest. With one last scratch behind Rusty's ears, Nell left the cat to his nap and disappeared upstairs.

___________________________________

Cullen's car still had some red on it. From the sidewalk, Nell snickered as she spotted it despite the early morning frog. Outside his car, Edward didn't snicker. As he passed Nell in the parking lot, his usual composure was broken by flashes of irritation, more clearly than she had even seen it before. This was glorious. Nell was certain he would call her out, or threaten legal action, but nothing. He walked on, mouth firmly set shut.

Across the parking lot, standing beside a bright red BMW, Nell caught Jasper Hale looking at her. His twin sister was getting out of the driver's seat but Nell barely noticed her, her attention entirely on Jasper. He gave her a small, secretive smirk, the kind of smirk exchanged between co-conspirators. Or people who had witnessed an embarrassing event and had agreed not to speak of it. It was a smile of secrets shared. The realization sent a strange thrill through her. Jasper Hale hadn't talked. And for one peculiar moment, it felt as though she and Jasper were the only people in the parking lot, linked together by some private joke. In a way, Nell thought, they were, if the joke consisted of vandalism and possible legal consequences. She smirked back before turning away, ignoring the strange warmth curling unpleasantly in her chest.

The morning dragged on as its usual miserable pace, made even slower in the absence of schemes. Nell Blake figured a couple days of respite were what the war needed. A moment of peace, however brief, would serve her more now than another relentless attempt, especially as she was avoiding a possible convocation to a police station. This, Nell decided, was the calm before the storm.

If you are not familiar with the expression, it refers to the peaceful, quiet moments one experiences before an argument or a long and tumultuous activity. Parents hosting a child's birthday party know the feeling well. Sailors too, as they once used the phrase to describe the eerie stillness that settled over the ocean before it grew violent. Everything grows unnaturally quiet, the world holding its breath. Nell suspected she was holding hers too.

The calm before the storm was, to Nell, that single minute of silence she enjoyed after sitting down at Mike Newton's lunch table, before, inevitably, the cavalry came down. Cavalry, dear reader, refers historically to soldiers who fought on horseback, charging into battle with swords, lances, maces, battle axes and all sorts of other fun weapons. In Forks High School, the cavalry announced itself through the clatter of cafeteria trays and the chatter of Jessica Stanley, first arrived, usually with fresh new gossip. She was followed loudly by Tyler Crowley, usually boasting about, and close behind him, Lauren Mallory.

Nell had just started on the terrible rice served today when Jessica descended upon the table mid-sentence, Lauren by her side.

"—and then she actually cried, I swear to God—"

As predicted, Tyler followed, sitting next to Nell and covering Jessica's voice.

"Nell! Just the girl I was dreaming about." He winked. "So, how're the pranks coming along?" Before she could take offense at the use of pranks, which she found deeply inaccurate, Tyler added, "Made Cullen cry today?"

She decided to overlook the insulting pranks, aware that she would look like the sort of person strangers avoid sitting beside on buses if she decided to launch into a rant on the difference between what pranks achieved, and what she was trying to achieve, which she considered to be psychological warfare.

"Not yet, but I'm not losing hope."

Tyler smiled and asked again: "And the pranks? Going well?"

"Mhm, I don't know," she droned, barely enunciating. "Still no detention though."

"Lucky you," Tyler said as he nudged her playfully, eyes full of mirth.

It was only then that Nell noticed Jessica had stopped her chattering. Her fingers were drumming an erratic beat on the table as she followed closely what they were saying. Her face reflected plainly what she was waiting for: gossip. Finally breaking, she leaned forward. "Okay, so, Nell, did you do it?"

"Do what?" Nell asked in return, genuinely confused.

"Cullen's car," Lauren clarified.

Of course. Everyone would have seen it. Nell had almost forgotten that. "What happened to his car?" she asked with all the innocence she could muster.

Immediately, Mike reacted. "See!" he exclaimed turning to Tyler. "I told you, that was too—"

"Nah," Tyler interrupted carelessly, eyes fixed on Nell. "You're looking way too casual."

Evidently, the subject of her possible involvement in the defacing of Edward Cullen's car had been broached by the pair already. The misplaced trust in Nell's innocence Mike had was almost touching, if it wasn't so naive. On the other hand, Tyler was certain she was responsible. He was right, of course, but admitting guilt was frowned upon in Nell's belief system, so she merely frowned impatiently. "Seriously, what happened to Cullen's car?" she asked again.

Jessica straightened in her seat, eager, with a look of someone finally being handed a microphone.

"So, I actually got to the parking lot late, yesterday," Jessica started. Nell resolved to give her the same attention a toddler's parent would give their child as they embarked upon the recounting of a story. "Conner wanted to talk after class so he held me back—"

"Not the point," Lauren cut flatly.

"Anyway," Jessica continued after a cold look to Lauren,"I get to the parking lot and I see Edward fuming, Emmett and Bella laughing—"

"Seriously, Jess!" Lauren interrupted again.

"I'm painting a picture!" Jessica snapped.

The phrase painting a picture, which I am sure you know, can refer to not only one's act of smearing paint onto a canvas, but also to the immersive descriptions one might make of something. If your friend tells you about a gloomy manor lost in the woods and surrounded by ravens, they are painting a picture even though no actual paint is involved. If someone steals red paint to redecorate a sad grey car, they are painting a picture with actual paint.

"Someone painted Cullen's car red," Tyler revealed, earning himself an outraged noise from Jessica who started complaining about no one letting her speak.

Mike immediately corrected Tyler, "Vandalized, really," as Tyler continued his revelation with "There was paint everywhere!".

"Man," Nell sighed. "I wish I could have seen his face." This much was true, at least, the disappointment tainting her amused expression needed no acting.

"Because you did it!" Tyler insisted.

"Tyler," Nell began in a tone usually reserved for small children who had a hard time understanding something. "If I had done it, do you really think I'd have missed the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of my labour?"

Mike swung up his arms in a self-congratulatory way. "See! I told you!" His victorious smile turned into a wince as he realized what he'd just implied. "Uh," he added weakly, "sorry Nell."

She shrugged unaffected. Better they believed in Mike's misguided faith in her than Tyler's accurate suspicions anyway. All of them were aware that Nell cared more about witnessing Edward Cullen's suffering firsthand, which worked in her favour. "And no one knows who did it?" she asked, hammering her innocence.

"Actually, Jasper Hale did," Lauren declared. "Though no one really believes it." She snorted dismissively, making it quite clear that she wasn't the exception. Nell nearly choked.

"So," Jessica jumped in before she could be stopped, "I didn't see him, but—" A collective groan of Jessica echoed around the table. "Let me speak!" she hissed indignantly. "I didn't see him but Angela did. She said Jasper was leaning against the car, twirling a paintbrush when Edward got there, and then he smirked at him." Nell enjoyed the picture Jessica was painting. "Apparently, he didn't have paint on him, that's why people are doubtful."

"Yeah, given the state of the car, whoever did it had to have been covered in the stuff," Tyler laughed. Nell was suddenly glad she had made her exit when she had, if only so that Tyler couldn't be proven right.

"Well." Nell fought back a smile. "Maybe I should thank Hale, then."

It was a terrible thing for Nell to feel grateful. Actually grateful. It sat strangely inside her, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. But Jasper Hale had more than helped her, he had actively participated in her scheme. He had lied, paintbrush in hand. The knowledge that, of all people, Jasper Hale had lied for her sent a thrill through her heart.

As Nell tried arguing with her quite traitorous mind that Jasper Hale had either lied out of some other motivation against his adoptive brother or to some nefarious end, like blackmail, her eyes wandered to the Cullens table. Eyes are remarkably disobedient things, you'll notice, they never seem to listen to us when we tell ourselves not to look at something. Edward and Bella sat there, together as usual, along with Alice, Jasper, Angela Weber and her boyfriend, Eric Yorkie. Over the last week, Nell had noticed an odd pattern: whenever Bella and her friends sat with Edward and his siblings, Emmett and Rosalie disappeared from the table. The reason eluded her, but Rosalie's distaste for anyone that wasn't Emmett was her first lead. That, or Emmett frightened people too much. It often seemed that Nell was the only one unafraid to approach him or go toe to toe with him during Gym.

Luckily, no one was looking her way, and Nell, as one is prone to do when unnoticed, stared shamelessly. Jasper still had his signature half-smile pulling at the corner of his lips, but something about him felt different than he had been in the parking lot. There was tension in him now. He was listening to the conversation Alice was having with Angela and Eric, but his back was straight, stiff, and his arms rested firmly on the table, unmoving. It was eerie, the way his body contradicted the air of nonchalance his expression conveyed. Alarm bells rang in Nell's mind as she started wondering what Jasper Hale had gone through to make him hold himself together so tightly, like a rope taut so tight it could snap at any moment. She didn't care. Why should she care?

So Nell focused her attention to a safer target. Opposite Jasper sat Edward. Up until she had shifted her attention to him, Edward had been glaring at Jasper, but now that she had done so, his expression changed. The glare vanished and left place to a teasing smile. Edward leaned toward Bella and said something that Nell could only guess at. Whatever it was, the reaction was immediate. Alice interrupted herself mid-conversation and scowled at Edward, in what seemed to be a scold. Jasper lost his smirk and the tension coiled through his body finally reached his face. Bella, for her part, blinked at Edward confused, before turning her eyes to Nell. Who immediately averted them, snapping her head so quickly she almost gave herself whiplash. And, as anyone caught staring, she devoted her full and undivided attention back to Jessica who was recounting second by second her interaction with Conner the previous afternoon.

Study hall arrived blessedly after two excruciatingly normal hours and the fiasco that was lunch. Although "fiasco" is hardly accurate to describe the terribly mundane situation of being caught staring at people. Nell Blake, as you may have noticed by now, had a taste for the dramatics. After all, her life up until her arrival in Forks had been so dreadful that it could have rivaled Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre, in Nell's perfectly objective opinion.

She sat in her usual corner of the study hall classroom, a corner overlooked by other students, more hidden than any other seat. The supervising teacher didn't take attendance, and as long as they remained quiet enough, students were free to do whatever they wished to. Some slept, some studied, some exchanged whispers. This could easily have been Nell Blake's favorite period if it weren't so boring. No one bothered her in her forgotten corner where she tucked herself away as she tried to make sense of her English homework. Not until a shadow moved at the edge of her vision and, in a situation weirdly similar to the one that had occurred in the parking lot at the same time the day before, Nell looked up to find herself face-to-face with Jasper Hale.

Only this time, he seemed unsure. Gone was the easy, cocky attitude he had had catching her red-handed (and red-sleeved). His eyes met hers briefly before darting away. Nell couldn't tell if he was reconsidering his sitting choice or making sure no witnesses saw him get to her before he committed some kind of crime. Anticipation started to crawl up her spine with anxiety, already bracing herself for a confrontation about his involvement in her crime. Maybe his smile in the morning had only been there to lull her into a false safety. Nothing was more terrifying than the thought that Nell Blake was not the only person knowledgeable in warfare in this school.

Before Nell could completely spiral, a word which here means "to tumble uncontrollably downward through terrible thoughts", Jasper turned back to her, resolved, and came to sit next to her. At what appeared to be a reasonable distance, though Nell couldn't quite make sense of why she thought someone seeking her out only to sit two seats away from her to be reasonable. Her anxiety receded, and her stubbornness returned. Nell gave Jasper a blank look before pointedly focusing on her homework again. She would not start this conversation.

"No arts and crafts today?" Jasper asked, breaking the silence.

Nell didn't turn to look at him, frozen in place, trying to make sense of the situation. Her pencil hovered uselessly over her homework and she wondered if Jasper Hale ever started conversations with normal greetings like "hello" or if obvious statements were his favored type of openings.

"Not yet," she answered, eyes fixed on her worksheet,"I might be thinking glitter next, though."

Next to her, Jasper stifled a quiet laugh. That made her look. He was closer than he had been the previous day, near enough for his breathtaking beauty to dazzle. Not that Nell Blake was. Dazzled. Mercifully, Jasper wasn't looking at her, his own copy of The Catcher in the Rye opened before him.

"Hair or car?" he asked, glancing back at her. Through the haze his gaze dragged her in, Nell furrowed her brows trying to make sense of the question. "The pointers Emmett gave you," Jasper clarified.

Oh, she thought, he knows about that. As familiar as anger was to Nell, suspicion clouded her mind.

"Why would I trust you?" she questioned.

"I took the fall for the paint," Jasper reminded, sounding almost puzzled that her trust was not yet won.

Anyone else would have granted their trust to Jasper Hale. Anyone else is a very uninteresting character. It would be easy for Nell to demand further proof. In fact, she wanted to. More gestures, maybe a sacrifice or two, make him earn his trustworthiness. Easy, but unwise.

"I have no idea what you could possibly be referring to," Nell countered instead, eyes mischievous.

Jasper didn't laugh this time, but his smile widened slightly and he dipped his head in concession, never breaking eye contact. His eyes were the color of honey held up in the sunlight, and like honey, they trapped you in. However much Nell willed it, she was unable to detach herself from the stare. Honey against chestnut. The moment stretched, making seconds feel like minutes. And then, Jasper looked back down at his assignment and finally, Nell could breathe again. Slowly recovering, Nell mirrored his position and got to her own studies again.

As much as the assignment confused her, frustration never rose. In this blessed silence, Nell was relaxed. You and I, dear reader, are painfully aware of the rarity of the feeling in Nell Blake, and thus you will understand my own suspicions against this sudden contentment. Nell, for once, was not suspicious, her usual need to bite subdued. Jasper Hale and Nell Blake remained side by side in silence for quite some time, each attempting (or pretending) to study, although Jasper's homework had drifted away from him, across the shared space between them. It now rested close to Nell, seemingly forgotten by its owner. Close enough for her to read and draw inspiration for her own copy. It was a testament to the calm she felt that Nell didn't see the drifted worksheet as an insult. Usually, she would have bristled at the implication she needed help. But the peace was overwhelming Nell who had not felt like this in a long time. Not since…

The memories threatened to surface, and more dreadful yet, to spill. For one terrible second, Nell felt the temptation to talk about her. There are certain thoughts we train ourselves not to touch, we keep them carefully locked away in forgotten corners of our minds, like old boxes of souvenirs waiting to be picked up again from their place in the back of the top shelf of your grandparents' closets. We avoid those the same way we avoid touching hot stoves. I could not give you an example, for I myself have buried my box so deep I fear I will never find my way back to it again.

Nell thought her own thoughts buried deep enough, but the pain was too recent, too raw. Echoes of an old fight escaped her control, flashes of old pains. And, as soldiers duck at loud noises and burn victims flinch away from flames, Nell Blake flees from vulnerability. She bolted out of the classroom without a single word, her books and unfinished homework held precariously in her arms. Behind her, Jasper remained seated, his head tilted to the side while he narrowed his eyes at the pace Nell had just been, likely befuddled by her sudden escape. Nell was already halfway out of the school when she noticed that the top sheet in her pile was covered in a neat scroll. A neat, elegant, cursive handwriting that was nothing like her own hen scratches. Jasper's homework.

Her footsteps stopped. She stood alone in the middle of the hallway, annoyed. For once, Nell Blake was annoyed with herself. Her eyes drifted from the foreign sheet in her hand to the way she just came from. Usually, she wouldn't have cared at all that she'd stolen some piece of homework. She never would have felt the need to give it back. Yet, here she stood, lost amidst lockers. Yes, Jasper's paper had drifted to her side of the table suspiciously, and yes, Nell strongly suspected him of having done it on purpose, probably aware that if he had offered help outright he would have been rejected. Forcefully. But suspicion was not certainty, and so his homework sat there stolen and not borrowed.

Nell willed herself to move toward the exit, going slower than ever. She should keep it. This was the easiest solution. It wasn't like she wasn't prone to theft. Except now, she didn't want to, something akin gratefulness had lodged itself next to Jasper Hale in her mind, and she didn't want him to have to redo his paper all over again. Which meant she had two options, both unpleasant. Either she waited until the next morning to give it back, which meant approaching him willingly, probably in front of people, and have them all theorize as to how exactly Nell had ended up with Jasper Hale's homework. Or she could run back to study hall and return it now, which was somehow worse. One is often reluctant to go back to a room they just dramatically escaped from.

So Nell exited Forks High School into the damp afternoon with Jasper Hale's elegant handwriting pressed against her chest, irritation and desperation mixing in an unpleasant dance beneath her skin. Worst yet, they weren't the only feelings lurking. Another one she refused to acknowledge. If Jasper Hale had truly left his homework drift to her on purpose, it meant he had noticed she was struggling. And Nell Blake did not know what to do with being noticed so gently.

"And here I thought I finally had had a day without your disturbance."

The bell had rung for the last time of the day. Nell Blake should have already been halfway home. Instead, she'd chosen to expose herself to the aggravating, grating noise that was Edward Cullen's voice. She did not look away from the exit where students were pouring out, ignoring her enemy stubbornly. Even as she waited by his car. She knew she was getting weird looks, not that they touched her.

"What do you want Eleanor?" Edward asked again.

Keeping her temper under control after hearing her full name was a challenge, but Nell was determined not to let him get to her. Finally, Jasper Hale appeared alongside Alice Cullen. They were deep into a conversation, barely acknowledging their surroundings, but when Jasper finally saw Nell near their car, he didn't look surprised. With his attention on her, Nell left Edward where he was standing, walking to meet Jasper and Alice. Without a word, she handed him his homework.

"Thanks," she said under her breath, half hoping he wouldn't hear.

She didn't wait for an answer.

Mind still reeling on her memories, guilt and regret churning under her skin, Nell walked home faster than ever. The drizzle that had fallen steadily all day turned to actual rain around her. But no matter how hard she tried, memories are difficult to run away from, and the human mind is not so different from a rebellious child told not to do something. Despite her best efforts, Nell thought of June. Her best friend had not answered a single message since Nell left her in the cold of a December night. Not one text, not one phone call. It had been easy to justify the silence with anger at first, but after four months of it, it became harder to do so. And worry has a way to worm itself into our very bones. Nell didn't know if June was ignoring her, had changed her number, had lost her phone, or worse still… Endless possibilities had been dreamt up with no resolution.

And so, on a whim, Nell texted Ellie. The one contact she had avoided like the plague for months, and even before that. June's girlfriend. This was a terrible decision Nell took no time to think through. All of her reasons not to text Ellie she had clung on for months vanished as her fingers moved across the keypad.

hey. u heard from june? js wanna know she's ok. ttyl

The message sent immediately. And regret hit Nell half a second later. "What is wrong with me," she muttered as she shoved the phone back into her backpack, pushing open the door to Christine's home. Inside, Rusty greeted her with a loud "meow", which probably meant "Good afternoon, Eleanor, would you be so kind as to feed me. I am quite starved". Nell ran upstairs, throwing her backpack in a corner of her room (though not before checking if her just sent message had had an answer), and climbed back down to see after the cat.

Her room was avoided for the remaining of the evening, up until Nell had to go up again after dinner. On her bed where she had abandoned it, her phone flashed with the telltale signs of an unopened voicemail.

Red is an unfortunate color. It is the color Nell's phone chose to indicate a missed call. It is the color still tainting Forks High School parking lot. And, perhaps worst of all, it is what red reminded Nell of. It reminded her of afternoons spent sitting on a carpet talking about Tom Welling. It reminded her of fries shared and Coca-Cola bottles spilled in fast-foods. It reminded her of going to sleep in bus stations huddling for warmth.

Red was both love and anger, in equal part. Red was the color of June's hair.