Regardless, I didn’t like monitoring her through Mike’s thoughts. I switched to Jessica’s, watching carefully as the three of them chose which table to sit at. Fortunately, they sat with Jessica’s usual companions, at one of the first tables in the room. Not downwind, just as Alice had promised.

Alice elbowed me. She’s going to look soon. Act human.

I clenched my teeth behind my grin.

“Ease up, Edward,” Emmett said. “Honestly. So you kill one human. That’s hardly the end of the world.”

“You would know,” I murmured.

Emmett laughed. “You’ve got to learn to get over things. Like I do. Eternity is a long time to wallow in guilt.”

Just then, Alice tossed a smaller handful of ice that she’d been hiding into Emmett’s unsuspecting face.

He blinked, surprised, and then grinned in anticipation.

“You asked for it,” he said as he leaned across the table and shook his ice-encrusted hair in her direction. The snow, melting in the warm room, flew out from his hair in a thick shower of half liquid, half ice.

“Ew!” Rose complained as she and Alice recoiled from the deluge.

Alice laughed, and we all joined in. I could see in Alice’s head how she’d orchestrated this perfect moment, and I knew that the girl—I should stop thinking of her that way, as if she were the only girl in the world—that Bella would be watching us laugh and play, looking as happy and human and unrealistically ideal as a Norman Rockwell painting.

Alice kept laughing and held her tray up as a shield. The girl—Bella—must still be staring at us.

… staring at the Cullens again, someone thought, catching my attention.

I looked automatically toward the unintentional call, easily recognizing the voice as my eyes found their destination—I’d been listening to it so much today.

But my eyes slid right past Jessica and focused on the girl’s penetrating gaze.

She looked down quickly, hiding behind her thick hair again.

What was she thinking? The frustration seemed to be getting more acute as time went on, rather than dulling. I tried—uncertain, for I’d never done this before—to probe with my mind at the silence around her. My extra hearing had always come to me naturally, without asking; I’d never had to work at it. But I concentrated now, trying to break through whatever armor surrounded her.

Nothing but silence.

What is it about her? Jessica thought, echoing my own irritation.

“Edward Cullen is staring at you,” she whispered in the Swan girl’s ear, adding a giggle. There was no hint of her jealous annoyance in her tone. Jessica seemed to be skilled at feigning friendship.

I listened, too engrossed, to the girl’s response.

“He doesn’t look angry, does he?” she whispered back.

So she had noticed my wild reaction last week. Of course she had.

The question confused Jessica. I saw my own face in her thoughts as she checked my expression, but I did not meet her glance. I was still concentrating on the girl, trying to hear something. Intent focus didn’t seem to help at all.

“No,” Jess told her, and I knew that she wished she could say yes—how it rankled her, my staring—though there was no trace of that in her voice. “Should he be?”

“I don’t think he likes me,” the girl whispered back, laying her head down on her arm as if she were suddenly tired. I tried to understand the motion, but I could only make guesses. Maybe she was tired.

“The Cullens don’t like anybody,” Jess reassured her. “Well, they don’t notice anybody enough to like them.” They never used to. Her thought was a grumble of complaint. “But he’s still staring at you.”

“Stop looking at him,” the girl said anxiously, lifting her head from her arm to make sure Jessica obeyed the order.

Jessica giggled, but did as she was asked.

The girl did not look away from her table for the rest of the hour. I thought—though, of course, I could not be sure—that this was deliberate. It seemed as though she wanted to look at me. Her body would shift slightly in my direction, her chin would begin to turn, and then she would catch herself, take a deep breath, and stare fixedly at whoever was speaking.

I ignored the other thoughts around the girl for the most part, as they were not, momentarily, about her. Mike Newton was planning a snowball fight in the parking lot after school, not seeming to realize that the snow had already shifted to rain. The flutter of soft flakes against the roof had become the more common patter of raindrops. Could he really not hear the change? It seemed loud to me.

When the lunch period ended, I stayed in my seat. The humans filed out, and I caught myself trying to distinguish the sound of her footsteps from the rest, as if there were something important or unusual about them. How stupid.

My family made no move to leave, either. They waited to see what I would do.

Would I go to class, sit beside the girl, where I could smell the absurdly potent scent of her blood and feel the warmth of her pulse in the air on my skin? Was I strong enough for that? Or had I had enough for one day?

As a family, we’d already discussed this moment from every possible angle. Carlisle disapproved of the risk, but he wouldn’t impose his will on mine. Jasper disapproved nearly as much, but from fear of exposure rather than any concern for humankind. Rosalie only worried about how it would affect her life. Alice saw so many obscure, conflicting futures that her visions were atypically unhelpful. Esme thought I could do no wrong. And Emmett just wanted to compare stories about his own experiences with particularly appealing scents. He pulled Jasper into his reminiscing, though Jasper’s history with self-control was so short and so uneven that he was unable to be sure he’d ever had an analogous struggle. Emmett, on the other hand, remembered two such incidents. His memories of them were not encouraging. But he’d been younger then, not as adept at self-control. Surely, I was stronger than that.

“I… think it’s okay,” Alice said, hesitant. “Your mind is set. I think you’ll make it through the hour.”

But Alice knew well how quickly a mind could change.

“Why push it, Edward?” Jasper asked. Though he didn’t want to feel smug that I was the weak one now, I could hear that he did, just a little. “Go home. Take it slow.”

“What’s the big deal?” Emmett disagreed. “Either he will or he won’t kill her. Might as well get it over with, either way.”

“I don’t want to move yet,” Rosalie complained. “I don’t want to start over. We’re almost out of high school, Emmett. Finally.”

I was evenly torn on the decision. I wanted, wanted badly, to face this head-on rather than running away again. But I didn’t want to push myself too far, either. It had been a mistake last week for Jasper to go so long without hunting; was this just as pointless a mistake?

I didn’t want to uproot my family. None of them would thank me for that.

But I wanted to go to my Biology class. I realized that I wanted to see her face again.

That’s what decided it for me. That curiosity. I was angry with myself for feeling it. Hadn’t I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the silence of the girl’s mind make me unduly interested in her? And yet, here I was, most unduly interested.

I wanted to know what she was thinking. Her mind was closed, but her eyes were very open. Perhaps I could read them instead.

“No, Rose, I think it really will be okay,” Alice said. “It’s… firming up. I’m ninety-three percent sure that nothing bad will happen if he goes to class.” She looked at me, inquisitive, wondering what had changed in my thoughts that made her vision of the future more secure.

Would curiosity be enough to keep Bella Swan alive?

Emmett was right, though—why not get it over with, either way? I would face the temptation head-on.

“Go to class,” I ordered, pushing away from the table. I turned and strode away from them without looking back. I could hear Alice’s worry, Jasper’s censure, Emmett’s approval, and Rosalie’s irritation trailing after me.

I took one last deep breath at the door of the classroom, and then held it in my lungs as I walked into the small, warm space.

I was not late. Mr. Banner was still setting up for today’s lab. The girl sat at my—at our table, her face down again, staring at the folder she was doodling on. I examined the sketch as I approached, interested in even this trivial creation of her mind, but it was meaningless. Just a random scribbling of loops within loops. Perhaps she was not concentrating on the pattern, but thinking of something else?

I pulled my chair back with unnecessary roughness, letting it scrape across the linoleum—humans always felt more comfortable when noise announced someone’s approach.

I knew she heard the sound; she did not look up, but her hand missed a loop in the design she was drawing, making it unbalanced.

Why didn’t she look up? Probably she was frightened. I must be sure to leave her with a different impression this time. Make her think she’d been imagining things before.

“Hello,” I said in the quiet voice I used when I wanted to make humans more comfortable, forming a polite smile with my lips that would not show any teeth.

She looked up then, her wide brown eyes startled and full of silent questions. It was the same expression that had been obstructing my vision for the past week.

As I stared into those oddly deep brown eyes—the color was like milk chocolate, but the clarity was more comparable to strong tea, there was a depth and transparency; near her pupils, there were tiny flecks of agate green and golden caramel—I realized that my hate, the hate I’d imagined this girl somehow deserved for simply existing, had evaporated. Not breathing now, not tasting her scent, I found it hard to believe that anyone so vulnerable could ever be deserving of hatred.

Her cheeks began to flush, and she said nothing.

I kept my eyes on hers, focusing only on their questioning depths, and tried to ignore the appetizing color of her skin. I had enough breath to speak for a while longer without inhaling.

“My name is Edward Cullen,” I said, though she already knew it. It was the polite way to begin. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan.”

She seemed confused—there was that little pucker between her eyes again. It took her half a second longer than it should have to respond.

“How do you know my name?” she demanded, and her voice shook just a little.

I must have truly terrified her, and this made me feel guilty. I laughed gently—it was a sound that I knew made humans more at ease.

“Oh, I think everyone knows your name.” Surely, she must have realized that she’d become the center of attention in this monotonous place. “The whole town’s been waiting for you to arrive.”

She frowned as if this information was unpleasant. I supposed, being shy as she appeared to be, attention would seem like a bad thing to her. Most humans felt the opposite. Though they didn’t want to stand out from the herd, at the same time they craved a spotlight for their individual uniformity.

“No,” she said. “I meant, why did you call me Bella?”

“Do you prefer Isabella?” I asked, perplexed that I couldn’t see where this question was leading. I didn’t understand. She’d made her preference clear many times that first day. Were all humans this incomprehensible without the mental context as a guide? How much I must rely on that extra sense. Would I be completely blind without it?

“No, I like Bella,” she answered, leaning her head slightly to one side. Her expression—if I was reading it correctly—was torn between embarrassment and confusion. “But I think Charlie—I mean my dad—must call me Isabella behind my back. That’s what everyone here seems to know me as.” Her skin darkened one shade pinker.

“Oh,” I said, and quickly looked away from her face.

I’d just realized what her questions meant: I had slipped up—made an error. If I hadn’t been eavesdropping on all the others that first day, then I would have addressed her initially by her full name. She’d noticed the difference.

I felt a pang of unease. It was very quick of her to pick up on my slip. Quite astute, especially for someone who was supposed to be terrified by my proximity.

But I had bigger problems than whatever suspicions about me she might be keeping locked inside her head.

I was out of air. If I were going to speak to her again, I would have to inhale.

It would be hard to avoid speaking. Unfortunately for her, sharing this table made her my lab partner, and we would have to work together today. It would seem odd—and incomprehensibly rude—for me to ignore her while we did the lab. It would make her more suspicious, more afraid.

I leaned as far away from her as I could without moving my seat, twisting my head out into the aisle. I braced myself, locking my muscles in place, and then sucked in one quick chestful of air, breathing through my mouth alone.

Ahh!

It was intensely painful, like swallowing burning coals. Even without smelling her, I could taste her on my tongue. The craving was every bit as strong as that first moment I’d caught her scent last week.

I gritted my teeth and tried to compose myself.

“Get started,” Mr. Banner commanded.

It took every single ounce of self-control I’d achieved in seventy-four years of hard work to turn back to the girl, who was staring down at the table, and smile.

“Ladies first, partner?” I offered.

She looked up at my expression and her face went blank. Was there something off? In her eyes, I saw the reflection of my usual human-friendly composition of features. The facade looked perfect. Was she frightened again? She didn’t speak.

“Or, I could start, if you wish,” I said quietly.

“No,” she said, and her face went from white to red again. “I’ll go ahead.”

I stared at the equipment on the table—the battered microscope, the box of slides—rather than watch the blood wax and wane under her clear skin. I took another quick breath, through my teeth, and winced as the taste scorched the inside of my throat.

“Prophase,” she said after a quick examination. She started to remove the slide, though she’d barely examined it.

“Do you mind if I look?” Instinctively—stupidly, as if I were one of her kind—I reached out to stop her hand from removing the slide. For one second, the heat of her skin burned into mine. It was like an electric pulse—the heat shot through my fingers and up my arm. She yanked her hand out from under mine.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. Needing somewhere to look, I grasped the microscope and stared briefly into the eyepiece. She was right.

“Prophase,” I agreed.

I was still too unsettled to look at her. Breathing as quietly as I could through my gritted teeth and trying to ignore the fiery thirst, I concentrated on the simple assignment, writing the word on the appropriate line on the lab sheet and then switching out the first slide for the next.

What was she thinking now? What had it felt like to her when I had touched her hand? My skin must have been ice-cold—repulsive. No wonder she was so quiet.

I glanced at the slide.

“Anaphase,” I said to myself as I wrote it on the second line.

“May I?” she asked.

I looked up, surprised to see that she was waiting expectantly, one hand half-stretched toward the microscope. She didn’t look afraid. Did she really think I’d gotten the answer wrong?

I couldn’t help but smile at the hopeful expression on her face as I slid the microscope toward her.

She stared into the eyepiece with an eagerness that quickly faded. The corners of her mouth turned down.

“Slide three?” she asked, not looking up from the microscope, but holding out her hand. I dropped the next slide into her palm, keeping my skin far from hers this time. Sitting beside her was like sitting next to a heat lamp. I could feel myself warming slightly to the higher temperature.

She did not look at the slide for long. “Interphase,” she said nonchalantly—perhaps trying a little too hard to sound that way—and pushed the microscope toward me. She did not touch the paper, but waited for me to write the answer. I checked—she was correct again.

We finished this way, speaking one word at a time and never meeting each other’s eyes. We were the only ones done—the others in the class were having a harder time with the lab. Mike Newton seemed to be having trouble concentrating; he was trying to watch Bella and me.

Wish he’d stayed wherever he went, Mike thought, eyeing me sulfurously. Interesting. I hadn’t realized the boy harbored any specific ill will toward me. This was a new development, about as recent as the girl’s arrival, it seemed. Even more interestingly, I found—to my surprise—that the feeling was mutual.

I looked down at the girl again, bemused by the vast range of havoc and upheaval that, despite her ordinary, unthreatening appearance, she was wreaking on my life.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t see what Mike was going on about. She was actually sort of pretty for a human, in an unusual way. Better than being beautiful, her face was… unexpected. Not quite symmetrical—her narrow chin out of balance with her wide cheekbones; extreme in the coloring—the contrast of her light skin and dark hair; and then there were the eyes, too big for her face, brimming over with silent secrets.…

Eyes that were suddenly boring into mine.

I stared back at her, trying to guess even one of those secrets.

“Did you get contacts?” she asked abruptly.

What a strange question. “No.” I almost smiled at the idea of improving my eyesight.

“Oh,” she mumbled. “I thought there was something different about your eyes.”

I felt suddenly colder again as I realized that I was not the only one attempting to ferret out secrets today.

I shrugged, my shoulders stiff, and glared straight ahead to where the teacher was making his rounds.

Of course there was something different about my eyes since the last time she’d stared into them. To prepare myself for today’s ordeal, today’s temptation, I’d spent the entire weekend hunting, satiating my thirst as much as possible, overdoing it, really. I’d glutted myself on the blood of animals, not that it made much difference in the face of the outrageous flavor floating on the air around her. When I’d glared at her last, my eyes had been black with thirst. Now, my body swimming with blood, my eyes were a warm gold—light amber.

Another slip. If I’d seen what she meant with her question, I could have just told her yes.

I’d sat beside humans for two years now at this school, and she was the first to examine me closely enough to note the change in my eye color. The others, while admiring the beauty of my family, tended to look down quickly when we returned their stares. They shied away, blocking the details of our appearances in an instinctive endeavor to keep themselves from understanding. Ignorance was bliss to the human mind.

Why did it have to be this girl who would see too much?

Mr. Banner approached our table. I gratefully inhaled the gush of clean air he brought with him before it could mix with her scent.

“So, Edward,” he said, looking over our answers, “didn’t you think Isabella should get a chance with the microscope?”