CHAPTER FIVE
bella

By the time lunch drew to a close, Bella's gaze was skittish, drifting often to the cafeteria's double doors, her leg bouncing a nervous rhythm beneath the table. Every few heartbeats, her eyes flitted toward the hallway, then snapped back to her untouched tray. She didn't seem to hear the stream of chatter from Jessica and the others, conversations looping back again and again to the Cullens like moths trapped in the same glass jar.

"I heard they all live together out in the woods," Jessica was saying, her voice high and pleased with itself. "Can you imagine? No neighbors. No rules."

Bella didn't answer. Her eyes darted to the hallway again.

I watched her from the corner of my eye. She looked like a creature cornered, not terrified, but alert. Ready to bolt. Whether she was waiting for the Cullens to appear again or simply desperate to escape the pointless chatter, I couldn't say. But when her gaze snagged briefly on mine, I stood, smooth and quiet.

"Biology?" I offered.

Bella blinked, surprised, and then nodded quickly. "Yeah. Mr. Banner."

"Come on, then. I'll show you before the others notice we're gone."

She rose beside me, grateful, and we slipped into the corridor without much notice, though Mike's grin followed us, wide and hopeful. He seemed like the sort who expected rewards for politeness.

The hall was thick with students moving like schools of fish, chaotic and vaguely organised. We stepped through the side doors, and the rain welcomed us again with its usual lack of ceremony. A fine mist kissed the air, light enough not to soak but persistent enough to turn breath visible. Bella hunched instinctively, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Don't like rain?" I asked.

She gave me a crooked smile. "No. It's... wet."

"Usually is."

That drew a laugh, one of the first real ones I'd heard from her since arriving in Forks. Her face flushed, like she'd surprised herself by enjoying something.

"I like the sun," she said. "I miss the heat."

"I don't," I said honestly. "The heat lies. Makes everything feel brighter than it is."

She looked at me, curious, but didn't ask.

We hurried across the grass, silence growing between us gently. I preferred her company to the others'. Bella had a softness to her, not fragile but quiet, like something hidden behind drawn curtains.

Unlike most people, she didn't need noise to feel real.

I, on the other hand, had no idea how to act real. Not today. Not while I was fighting the sense that something, someone, was about to look too closely.

There were vampires at this school.

That knowledge had settled in me like silt, murky and heavy. The truth of it sat beneath my ribs like a stone, heavy and unyielding. I'd known from the moment I smelled them- too clean, too sharp. Like iron and ice and age. It clouded everything. I'd hidden for years, sculpting my invisibility like art. My scent, my presence, even the weight of my thoughts, muted. But now they were here. Their kind. Elegant and lethal. And if they sensed what I was, I'd have to disappear again. Strip my name, burn my trail, begin from nothing.

Again.

But something had drawn me to Forks. I hadn't come here by accident.

I didn't want to run.

Not yet.

"Banner doesn't make you introduce yourself," I offered as we stepped into the classroom. "He's mostly harmless."

Bella looked visibly relieved, her shoulders sinking an inch lower. I pointed her toward the teacher, then moved wordlessly to my seat at the back, slipping in with a practised stillness. I'd been here long enough now that no one noticed how precisely I moved, how little I disturbed the air.

The room filled fast. Bella stood awkwardly beside Mr. Banner's desk, holding a battered textbook while trying not to meet anyone's eye. The only seat left was beside Edward Cullen.

He was already sitting.

Still as a statue. Too still.

As Bella walked past him, I felt it- the shift in temperature. Like someone opening a cellar door from below.

Edward stared. Not at her face, but through her. Cold. Controlled. Devastating. It was a look honed over decades, maybe centuries. A look meant to repel.

Bella faltered. She tripped, catching herself with a soft curse, cheeks burning as laughter trickled from Jessica's direction. I glared at her. Predictable.

Edward didn't react. Didn't blink.

Bella slid into her seat, curling into herself.

I watched Edward, trying not to let my fingers twitch.

His shoulders were tense, jaw clenched like a man in pain. He pressed a hand to his mouth. Not casually. As if holding something back.

Her blood.

Or maybe- maybe it wasn't her.

Was it me?

I was different. Even to vampires. My scent wasn't the cloying sweetness of human blood, or the steely sharpness of the Cullens' scent. I was something else, like ash on water. Something not meant to last.

What if it was repulsive to him? What if every second he sat there, he was holding back a snarl, not at Bella, but at me?

I exhaled slowly. Forced myself to blink.

Mike leaned close. "Check out Cullen," he whispered, amused. "Dude looks like he's about to throw up."

"Yeah," I murmured. "Or something."

Bella leaned subtly away from Edward, her hands clasped on the table like she was afraid they might betray her. I watched her inhale cautiously, as if checking herself for some unseen offence.

Jessica tilted her head. "What's his problem?"

"No idea," I said. But my eyes were fixed on Edward.

After class, Bella, Mike, and I walked to the gym together. Mike tried to tease her about Edward, but Bella shrugged, brushing it off with a smile too forced to be convincing.

In PE, they made us play volleyball. I hated gym. It always felt like lying. My body moved too precisely, too fast. I could hold back, but never enough. So I offered to sit out once Bella tripped over her own shoelaces for the third time.

"You'll break something," I told her.

She didn't argue.

We sat on the edge of the court while the others smacked balls and shouted and laughed. Bella watched them with the dull interest of someone watching fish in a tank. I didn't mind the silence.

Afterward, Bella ducked into the office to hand in a note. I waited by the front steps, rain tapering off, mist rising from the wet asphalt in curls. The sky hung low and heavy, the color of unpolished pewter.

The flower pots lining the sidewalk were waterlogged, blooms sagging like drunken heads. I leaned against my car, arms folded.

I didn't know how Bella got to school. I hadn't asked. But my car was close enough for her to see me. That felt... safer.

Two minutes passed.

Then they emerged.

The Cullens moved in unison, their steps fluid, as if they were walking through a dance only they knew. Four of them today. Edward wasn't with them.

They were beautiful, of course. Cold and perfect. Skin like marble, eyes that shimmered with a false warmth. Their presence bent the space around them, students parted instinctively, giving them room.

As they passed, their scent curled through the air: earth and metal, salt and wind. It was ancient and sterile, something carved from the bones of the world.

It wasn't unpleasant.

In fact, there was a strange comfort in it. Like recognizing something you had forgotten you missed.

Had I been alone too long?

I shook the thought away.

Then...

Alice Cullen looked at me.

It was not a glance. Not a passing flicker of curiosity.

Her head turned, slow as smoke. Her gaze met mine, direct and unsettlingly calm. Her eyes, amber and unreal, fixed on me like she was remembering me, not seeing me for the first time.

I froze.

There was no surprise in her expression. Just interest. A slight lift of one eyebrow, like punctuation at the end of a question I couldn't hear.

She held my gaze for two seconds. Maybe less.

Then she turned her head, graceful and smooth, as though it had never happened. Her chin lifted. Her shoulders squared. She followed her siblings to the car without hesitation.

But I stood there, skin humming.

She had seen me.

And not just in the way most people did, where their eyes slipped off after a second, like oil on glass. No. Alice had noticed me. Registered me. Her gaze hadn't slid. It had landed.

That had not happened in a very long time.

I stood still for a long while after their car pulled away, heart soundless in my chest, breath held like a page between chapters.

I didn't know what I was anymore. Not exactly. But I had always known how to be unseen.

And now, somehow, impossibly...

I wasn't.