Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

((Trigger Warnings Listed at End of Chapter))

I spent the whole first week of class toying over why exactly the Cullens were the way they were. In the classes we had together, Edward spent half of his time staring at me and the other half of the time being a smart ass. I figured out pretty quickly that he was at the top of the class, and not only that, but he and all his weird siblings seemed to think they were better than everyone else.

At least, they didn't talk to anyone else. They never ate the school lunch. And they seemed to be exempt from gym classes. I was sure I heard Jessica say they were all in our grade. It didn't make sense to me. How did five kids like that end up with a rich doctor as a father, one who was apparently alright with them all dating each other. All except for Edward who watched over me with a shrewd impression every time I was near.

I hesitated to mention any of this to Charlie, whom I was sure knew something about it. He had a variety of friends in town and out of town that came over to visit him and chat whenever they got the chance. Billy Black came over another time in the week, this time without Jacob.

The two of them sat in the kitchen together discussing football, the news, or whatever else caught their attention. I supposed that was just what having adult friends was like, but I wasn't used to seeing two people act so plainly with each other. Renee always had to be on her feet. She never stood still for a minute and always had plans for the weekend.

Her friendships were short lived and passionate. She would find someone and within the day proclaim the other woman to be her new best friend forever. By the end of about three month, it would be over and she would pretend that woman had never existed at all. Charlie, however, was a slow and steady sort. I was astonished to find him in the driveway one night when I came home from school. He was talking to a friend, one I didn't recognize, but I was sure I'd get to know them all soon enough. Charlie knew people, the same people he'd known for years and there was hardly anyone new to meet here.

So I just assumed Charlie knew the Cullens. He had to be friends with their father or their mother. I even thought I'd come home to find someone in the kitchen talking to Charlie whom he would introduce as a Cullen. For the first week of school, I didn't ask.

But Edward was still...weird. I didn't have another way to put it. He unsettled me down to my very bones. The look in his eye that never seemed to blink and his closed, quiet expressions. I just bore it. Jessica and Angela didn't have anything helpful to say. They both thought he was kind of handsome in his own way, and I suppose he could have been if not for every interaction we'd had.

By Friday I was suspicious enough. I wanted to know why he was so disgusted with me and why I never seemed to see his siblings away from each other. In Biology, sat next to him in the moody light that drifted in through the window, I sat with my phone under the lab table as I listened to Mr. Molina discuss the animal kingdom structure.

I'd been texting Jacob whenever I got the chance. Besides Jessica and Angela, he was the only person I ever really talked to here. Other students had seemed interested in me at first like a kid might be interested in an animal in the zoo, cramped up behind thick glass, but they got over it quickly. Maybe it was just the excitement of having a new kid after eleven years of knowing the same people day in and day out at school. They'd quickly decided, like Edward maybe, that I wasn't worth the time.

So I had Jessica and Angela and Jacob which I figured was all I really needed.

"Come to the rez this weekend?" Jacob texted me.

I grinned down at the text happy to finally have something to do. This town was slow, much slower than Phoenix. Maybe it was the bad roads and the rain, but nothing had happened in my first week here to make me think that anything ever happened here at all. Maybe that was too quick an assumption, but at least I had something to do this weekend.