We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me. The boy from English, Eric, waved at me from across the room. I'll beat him up or something later I can't come off as weak they smell fear.
It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention. They didn't look anything alike. Of the two boys, one was big - muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. The other was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. I recognized them as Emmet and jasper. The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. She couldnt compete with my Fleur though.The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black,cropped short and pointing in every direction. Then there was the last one the one I had swapped for it was Yui from arifureta I had traded her with Edward she was small and had long blonde hair and looked adorable yep I had made the right choice. I made sure that she still had the mind reading the only thing she had going for her in arifureta was speed casting that's junk here.
And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.
But all this is not why I couldn't look away.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It reminded me of Fleur in a way but also not I got the hint that my body was screaming at me danger and it felt like my chains were wanting to just pop out and protect me. these were fuck mothering vampires and they could eat me not the pussy ones from the Harry Potter world scared of garlic and shit. no natural human hunters finely crafted people predators.
They were all looking away - away from each other, away from the otherstudents, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray -unopened soda, unbitten apple - and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer's step, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought possible what a waste of food poor starving kids in Africa would love for that food. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging. I'd have them do that 10 cents a day thing for hungry kids later the bastards."Who are they?" I asked the girl from my Spanish class, whose name I'd forgotten.
As she looked up to see who I meant - though already knowing, probably, from my tone - suddenly the little blonde looked at her, the edward replacement the youngest, perhaps. she looked at my neighbor for just a fraction of a second, and then her dark eyes flickered to mine. I felt a wave of mental pressure over my occulmency shields but acted like I didn't notice no one could get into my mind and I had payed 10k shop points to buy bellas shield ability when I remembered it was great for mental protection I wanted that shit. my mind will be fortified against everything.
she looked away quickly. In that brief flash of a glance, her face held nothing of interest - it was as if she had called her name, and she had looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer. Damn mind readers.
My neighbor giggled in embarrassment, looking at the table."That's Amanda and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife." She said this under her breath. Oh? she got renamed as Amanda well I guess that's better and more normal than Yui it would stick out too much here. I glanced sideways at the beautiful girl, who was looking at her tray now,picking a bagel to pieces with long, pale fingers. her mouth was moving very quickly, her perfect lips barely opening. The other three still looked away, and yet I felt she was speaking quietly to them. I was preparing for the cliche bullshit back story I would love to just mess with Amanda by saying insane things I knew she was eavesdropping but I didn't want to get eaten i might be able to escape with my chains and kingdom but that would blow my plots and normal cover.
Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here - small town names? I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.
"They are... very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.
"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though - Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically. But, if I was being honest, I had to admit that even in Phoenix, it would cause gossip.
"Which ones are the Cullens?" I asked. "They don't look related..."
"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are brother and sister, twins - the blondes - and they're foster children."
"They look a little old for foster children."
"They are now, Jasper and Rosalie are both eighteen, but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt or something like that."
"That's really kind of nice - for them to take care of all those kids like that, when they're so young and everything."
"I guess so," Jessica admitted reluctantly, and I got the impression that she didn't like the doctor and his wife for some reason. With the glances she was throwing at their adopted children, I would presume the reason was jealousy. "I think that Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, though," she added, as if that lessened their kindness.
Throughout all this conversation, my eyes flickered again and again to the table where the strange family sat. They continued to look at the walls and not eat.
"Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked.
"No," she said in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to a new arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in her expression. I felt pressure on my shields slide right off the occulmency and my cloak working wonders As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that her glance held some kind of unmet expectation. like she really wanted to read my mind wow sometimes girls are so nosey I mean next she will want my phone password jeez. we aren't even dating yet. "Which one is the girl with the blonde hair?" I asked. I peeked at her from the corner of my eye, and she was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today - she had a slightly frustrated expression it was like she was a voyeur. I looked down again, man she really wants in my shield I just felt wave after wave on my mind sliding off like a slippery bar of soap no grip.
"That's Amanda. she's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. she doesn't date. Apparently none of the boys here are good-looking enough for her." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered if she took it as me turning her down.I bit my lip to hide my smile. Then I glanced at her again. her face was turned away, but I thought her cheek appeared lifted, as if she were smiling, too. eaves dropper.