Cracked Chapter 4
Title: Cracked
Fandom: Twilight
Genre: Humor/Parody
Rating: T
Main Pairing: Bella and Edward
LJ Chapter 1, 2, 3
Also on ff.net
Summary: Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." To tell you the truth, I'm not sure where exactly this story is taking me; unlike my other stories, the whole thing isn't prewritten. Hopefully it's still fun, though. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them.
Previously: Bella tricked her father into letting her get a new computer, or thought she did, but Charlie gave her a chore as part of the deal: babysit the Forks PD canine unit bloodhound for the weekend.
From Twilight Chapter 2 and Midnight Sun Chapter 2: “Open Book”
Today was just not going well. At all. Damned Mondays.
First of all, Bella spent the entire weekend looking after Izzy the Drug-Sniffing Wonder-Hound, as ordered by her father. It wouldn’t have been so bad-Izzy was actually well behaved-but after her first full week of school, Bella would have liked the opportunity to go catch a movie in Port Angeles. She wasn’t overly enthused about Mike Newton’s attention, especially since it seemed to incite jealousy in Jessica Stanley, but even so, Bella was sensible of the compliment to herself when Mike asked her out for Saturday. Telling him sorry, I’m dog-sitting not only sounded like an incredibly lame excuse, it made him look like someone kicked his three-legged puppy. Bella wasn’t interested in him, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hurt the poor guy’s feelings. Judging by the look on his face this morning, he wasn’t entirely over the slight.
Another problem with Mondays was…well, the smell.
Unlike most hypersensitive people, Bella didn’t suffer from allergies, or at least nothing that a weekly tablespoon of locally produced honey in the spring and fall wouldn’t curb. She did, however, suffer discomfort when in proximity to strong scents. Izzy’s dog smell grated on the nerves-Mark (Bella thought of him as Deputy Mark, even though technically he was Officer Mark) kept his dog/partner Officer Izzy very clean, but he didn’t normally bathe her in January due to the severe weather. Several walks outside when there were lulls in the rain, a bottle of waterless dog shampoo, and a game of Find Which House Is Baking Special Brownies made the daylight hours bearable, even fun, especially when the game resulted in Charlie getting that gleam in his eyes while his face turned purple right before he put his gun belt back on and excused himself for the evening. That was the first time Bella learned the entertainment value of the police scanner. But the trouble was that Izzy liked Bella and wanted to sleep on a rug in her room. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.
It was hard to fall asleep when her nasal cavity was being assaulted. This did not make for a restful weekend or a very pleasant Monday morning.
In Bella’s experience, the worst smells were usually to do with people. And after a weekend of comparative solitude, Monday meant the sudden shock of several hundred pungent human beings. Most people, in their natural state, smelled of sweat, their own particular combination of hormones, soap from their most recent shower, and varying amounts of laundry soap and deodorant. Bella didn’t exactly like it, but after many years of smelling people in the desert heat, she was used to it. Dollar-store strawberry-scented shampoo was usually enough to drown out the general smell of the masses, but some people (like that bitchy girl, Lauren Mallory) wore lots of fragrance that penetrated her olfactory shield. Bella hated it, but she found she could discern patterns. Some, like Lauren and Consuela the Phoenix Transit Station Prostitute, wore heavy perfume to attract romantic partners. Others, like Tyler the smartass, did it to mask a problem with incurable body odor. Tyler’s cheap cologne clashed with Lauren’s heavy perfume-no matter what Lauren’s intentions, those two would never make any headway as a couple if they didn’t coordinate their scents to create a mutually appealing combination.
Today sucked because of no sleep, because of the lingering dog smell that would surely not come out until Bella’s bedroom was properly aired out, and because the cold weather would not allow for open windows to allow for airing out. Today sucked because it was, apparently, the first snowfall of the year, and all the other kids spent the morning throwing slushballs at each other and expected Bella, who’d never seen snow, never wanted to see snow, to find it charming and amusing to have melting ice trickling down the back of her neck and seeping into her sweater. Today sucked because the administration cranked up the heat in the classrooms, making everyone smell like whatever they had for breakfast, and because of a pop quiz in math that didn’t go well. And most of all, today sucked because, after a week of relative peace, Bella walked into the cafeteria at lunch, looked across the wide room to the table only one group of people ever sat at, and promptly lost her appetite when she realized that she’d be spending her biology hour trying to ignore the sweet stench of Edward Cullen.
It didn’t help matters that he seemed to be staring at her through half of lunch. If anything, that made it harder to resist the bewildering urge to stare right back, but Bella was determined. Edward was an ass to her last week, and while she didn’t want to hold a grudge for the rest of the school year (those tended to blow up in one’s face at the most inopportune times), that didn’t mean she was willing to silently put up with more assholery. Bella strode into Bio, arriving in class before him, confused by the way she simultaneously wished he would slink back to whatever rock he disappeared under and felt glad (or just relieved, maybe) to know he was home.
“Hello.”
The voice was the same one Bella remembered from his persuasive but ultimately fruitless effort to have himself extracted from this class, when he flirted shamelessly with the school secretary like a teenaged man-whore. Bella did not need to look up from her books to know his voice came from the extreme edge of the table, as far away as he could sit without moving his stool into the main aisle. She wondered why he didn’t just ask for a different seat altogether if the idea of sitting with her was so revolting to him, but Bella also knew how this worked. After a lifetime of being forced to sit by whomever an instructor assigned, she knew it would be impolitic to ask to be moved, especially if the reason was ‘my tablemate smells weird.’ Not that she expected the Cullen boy to be considerate of her feelings, but maybe he had concluded that it might be unwise to piss off the police chief’s daughter.
If he had better sense, he would have come to that conclusion much, much sooner.
Hazarding a glance his way, she was momentarily stunned by the smile on his face, the friendly expression. Unfortunately, he didn’t smell any better than he did last week, but he wasn’t making ‘bitch, I will cut you’ faces this time, so she could play nice. “My name is Edward Cullen,” he said politely, managing to speak without having to breathe yet. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan.”
A few snappy comebacks flitted through Bella’s mind. ‘Of course you had a chance to introduce yourself. You just chose to be a punk.’ ‘I don’t care how high your insurance premiums will be, I am not talking Charlie into dismissing your speeding tickets.’ ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ which would please Rabbi Darren if he could see and hear it. Instead, she said, “I see you’ve been talking to your brothers and sisters about me.”
Suddenly flustered, Edward found himself stammering for what felt like the very first time in his long life. “I…what…excuse me?” At the sight of the corner of Bella’s mouth twitching, Edward mentally shook himself to regain his rhythm. Control yourself, Edward, he thought. How does she know that?
“This isn’t a very large school,” Bella replied, her eyes returning to her notebook, where she found a piece of scratch paper and began doodling an eye. She couldn’t draw a full face worth a crap, but thanks to the honing of her mad doodle skills since the sixth grade, Bella could draw an eye like nobody’s business. “I’ve only been here a week, but that’s long enough for me to tell everyone who spoke to me that I prefer Bella over Isabella. Your siblings haven’t spoken to me at all,” and yes, there was just a hint of bitterness about that discernible in her voice, “but they aren’t deaf, so I assume they overheard my preference and told you.”
“Oh,” Edward replied lamely. Clearly this girl had powerful deductive reasoning skills. And even though her logic was not precisely correct, her supposition certainly was: Edward had spoken to his siblings about Bella at length.
“By the way,” she said just as Mr. Banner slipped into the classroom, “I’m still waiting for an apology.”
Mr. Banner called for class to begin immediately, sparing Edward from having to formulate an immediate response. Which was a good thing, since the best he could come up with were raised eyebrows at her direct approach. Unnerved, he turned his attention to other minds that were easier understood.
Bob Banner, biology teacher and closeted hentai fan, hated his job. He disliked teenagers on principle, believed they were all slackers, and that their disinterest and idiocy worsened every year. Even the “smart kids” like Edward, he loathed, because they tended to have a smug attitude, as though just because they understood the textbook after a single reading, or looked up mitosis on Wikipedia, it meant they knew more than a man with an actual, bona fide Bachelor of Science degree. The fact that Edward had graduate degrees in more than one scientific field, including two degrees in medicine, would not have deterred Bob Banner’s dislike one bit, had he known about it. All Bob wanted to do was pack up his erotic cartoon collection, hop into a far nicer car than the beater he owned, and start driving south until he reached Tijuana. Unfortunately, this was the real world, so he was stuck handing out microscope slides to a bunch of pimple-creamed, hormone laden miscreants and hairsprayed airheads, demanding that they demonstrate their understanding of mitosis without the aid of textbooks.
Another day, Edward might have sympathized with Bob about being forced to spend his days cooped up with idiot children (though not the bizarre fixation with animated tentacles). Today, however, Edward was far too busy with his own two-fold agenda. Item One: trying to breathe without killing the appetizing girl next to him. Leaning away from her, he managed to gulp in some air through his mouth rather than his nose. It only helped a little, but at least he got enough air to speak again, which was essential for Item Two: trying to charm Bella into not hating him. He wondered if she really did hate him-a glimpse into the minds of her human companions revealed that she hadn’t been talking about his rude behavior from the previous week. Speaking of which…
“Ladies first, partner?” Edward offered, waving his hand at the microscope and slides.
Bella wanted to be a smartass about it. She wanted to comment on him acquiring manners on his extended vacation, to point out that most people only got two weeks off school for winter break, to assure him that ‘ladies first’ was not an acceptable substitute for ‘sorry for being such a douchebag.’ She wanted to ask him why he didn’t buy his girlfriend some nicer perfume for Christmas, and watch him splutter as she called him out on secretly dating an older woman when everyone in school believed he was just too haughty and uptight to bother with singling anyone out.
She did not want to look up at him and get caught in that uneven smile. Which was exactly what happened. Damn him.
“Or I could start, if you wish.” His smile melted away, thus enabling Bella to think clearly again.
“Slide please.” She adjusted the microscope and slide, bringing the onion root cells into focus. “And that’s not an apology, either. Prophase.”
Edward, still feeling off kilter and not liking it one bit, double-checked her answer before writing it on their lab sheet. He was not in the habit of apologizing to people, with only a single exception: the day he returned from his years of feeding on humans and begged his father’s forgiveness. In every situation since that day, he’d held the moral high ground, whether anyone agreed he actually belonged there or not, and apologized to no one, not even when he was rude or proud or haughty, not even when he knew perfectly well he was hurting someone’s feelings. His attitude did absolutely nothing to endear him to his family, but they let a lot go with him and tended to be more forgiving than he deserved, partly because his gift was an asset to them, and partly because he had good qualities in there somewhere. Edward was polite only when it suited him and too caught up in his own guilt over his gruesome past to bother with remorse for any of what he deemed minor offenses in the present. With this girl staring at him, offended, expectant, and clearly not going anywhere, he realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way he treated people.
“I apologize,” he said, the delivery a little stiff but still sincere.
“Why do I get the feeling,” Bella murmured, removing the first slide, “that hell just froze over?”
Edward only smiled. Wishing to check her work (because he didn’t want a bad grade or anything, even though the occasional bad grade might have made him seem, oh, normal), he reached over to stop her from taking the slide and accidentally touched Bella’s hand. She flinched away immediately, shocked both by the cold skin and the sensation of just having stood in a puddle while sticking a fork in a wall socket. Meanwhile, Edward was comparing the same phenomenon to the time he climbed the needle of the Empire State Building during an electrical storm. That was the day he realized two things: lightning and fire are both made of vampire-killing, super-heated plasma, and his self-preservation instinct was stronger than his depression.
It made him wonder what might be even stronger than the will to live. It made Bella think twice about being so cavalier when saying things like ‘hell froze over.’
“Sorry,” Edward grumbled, setting to the task of examining the slide and confirming Bella’s answer without actually having to look at her, as if that might keep him from smelling her. Scientists had long ago proven that eyes were for seeing and noses for smelling, not vice versa, but that completely slipped his mind.
The pair of them finished their assignment without saying much, each puzzling over what the other was really thinking, though in Edward’s case it was less curiosity or deduction and more like an exercise in futility. Bella, however, had no intention of obsessing unnecessarily and returned to her doodling. Edward peered at the page, curious about even the most trivial creation of her mind. Because he had no life. Even Mr. Banner’s lewd mental pictures of the Simpsons weren’t enough to distract him. Feeling the very eyes she was drawing upon her, Bella looked up from the black irises on her paper…and into a pair of gold ones.
“Did you get contacts?”
“No.” What a random question.
Bella raised a dubious eyebrow, but said, “Oh. I thought there was something different about your eyes.” Why is he lying? It’s not even a plausible cover-up; obviously his eyes are a completely different color. Does he expect people to believe his eyes just change color on their own? Unimpressed and somehow disappointed, she turned away from him and contemplated what kind of woman would ever put up with his nonsense. Meanwhile, Edward had a brief panic attack as he realized not being able to read someone’s mind made successful lying into a thing that required much more effort than he was accustomed to putting forth.
“It’s too bad about the snow, isn’t it?” Edward tried. At her silence, he elaborated, “The rain. It melted the snow.” The weather-perfectly safe topic. All the other humans were on about it. For some reason Edward couldn’t put together even the simplest logic: girl from Arizona + snow in her face this morning = fierce hatred of snow.
“I realize precipitation is necessary for the environment,” Bella said curtly, not looking up. “But on the whole, I prefer the kind that can’t be mashed up and used as projectiles.” Without missing a beat, she added, “And I hope that’s not your idea of chatting me up.” This guy really must not remember how to make headway with a girl. Am I supposed to be swooning because he greeted me and made lame conversation? Damned easy chicks, they ruin it for everyone else.
“It’s…no.” Edward took another breath through his mouth, making Bella wonder why he was such a mouth-breather. Deviated septum, perhaps? “You don’t like the cold, I take it.”
“How astute of you.” His lying about the contact lenses left Bella feeling catty and contentious. “Before you ask, I hate the rain, too.”
“Forks must be a difficult place for you to live, then.” Go back to Arizona, so I won’t have to kill you. Then again, I still might go find you and devour you. I wonder if all the girls in Phoenix smell this delicious…no! Bad! Stop it!
“Not so much difficult as annoying,” Bella answered honestly. It would be far less annoying if the constant rain would spread freshness around and wash away all the other smells immediately instead of enhancing them first. It sure wasn’t doing this boy any favors. If he liked the rain so much, maybe he should go stand in it for a while, since he hadn’t bothered to shower after whatever it was his girlfriend did to him.
“Then what are you doing here?” Edward demanded rudely. Making me hungry, trying my patience…
“Besides minding my own business?” Bella said sharply, tired of conversing with this aromatic boy.
“Yes, besides that,” Edward replied, a little softer but no less curious.
“It’s complicated.” Bella looked away again. Take a freakin’ hint.
“I think I can keep up,” Edward assured her.
“Do you lack even the most basic social skills,” Bella snapped, “or do you just not know how to read a situation?”
Actually, Edward had no idea how to read a situation. He’d been reading minds so long, things like body language and subtle hints were incomprehensible to him-only the most obvious of facial expressions were clear. “I’m just asking.”
“And the fact that I’ve yet to answer tells you nothing?”
Edward cocked an eyebrow. “Burned down the gym in Phoenix?”
Bella cracked an unexpected smile. “Been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns, have you?”
A frown. “How did you know-I mean, tell me why you’d move here if it’s so unpleasant for you.”
With a sigh that set Edward’s throat on fire, Bella simply said, “My mother got remarried.” She didn’t particularly like the knowing look on Edward’s face. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she tried to assure him.
“Your mother wanted to enjoy just being a newlywed,” Edward guessed, eager to satisfy his curiosity so he could move on, “and you were cramping her style.”
Bella shrugged. “Okay, maybe it is what you’re thinking. But she’s not boarding me here like a pet at a kennel while she’s on vacation. I volunteered.”
“Her husband made you uncomfortable until you selflessly opted to run away.” In the span of two seconds, Edward imagined a complete scenario, featuring a verbally abusive older man with a scary Terry O’Quinn routine spouting off about ‘order in the home’ and a lot of other crap from the original version of The Stepfather circa 1987. Mystery solved, Edward decided. I can now kill her. Or at least not feel intrigued enough to stick around in Forks anymore. Anywhere, USA, here I come.
“No, Phil’s fine,” Bella replied, thereby dissolving Edward’s morbid fantasy. “A little young for Renee,” and maybe a little naïve for thinking Renee wouldn’t eventually get bored with him, “but he’s not a bad guy or anything. He travels a lot, and I wanted my mother to be able to go with him.”
“Truck-driver?” Edward guessed, starting in on a whole new set of movie genres. He liked movies; even horror films had the benefit of story resolution often lacking in real life. If he could think of Bella’s life as a film with a beginning, middle, and end, he could tell himself that he was just one of the extras, perhaps a tertiary character. Someone who would not impact the plot. Though he hoped Bella Swan’s life wasn’t a truck-driver slasher film. Spy movies were safer. “Or maybe a federal agent?”
“Circus performer,” Bella deadpanned. “He’s the guy that gets shot out of the cannon.”
It was Edward’s turn to smile. “You don’t see that trick too often anymore.” After a few more careful breaths and a reminder that reality was rarely as neat as a movie, Edward asked again. “So why are you really here?”
Bella found herself willing to answer. She couldn’t have said why, except that she didn’t want this stranger thinking the people she cared about were the terrible human beings he initially presumed they were. “My mother…she’s raised me by herself since I was a baby.” Maybe she didn’t do everything the way Charlie would have done it (indeed, Renee didn’t parent her child the way most reasonable people would have), and Bella could hardly say Renee sacrificed everything she ever wanted, but she did make sacrifices for her daughter instead of just leaving the girl with Charlie while she ran off to do her own thing.
“It’s tough, being a single mom without losing a sense of self,” Bella continued, thinking fondly of Renee’s quirks. “But now I’m too old to need my mommy to hold my hand, so I figured I’d come here and be with my dad so that Renee can have a chance at the happiness and freedom she always wanted.” And also, a little bit, to make sure Renee was used to taking care of herself before Bella went off to college and couldn’t help her anymore, and to see if Renee would learn to handle an adult relationship without Bella there to mediate every time there was a lovers’ spat. Not that anyone else needed to know all that.
Edward really looked at Bella, seeing beyond the plain face for the first time. He had no idea what kind of friendships this human made in the previous week, and it was obvious that she wasn’t saying nearly as much as she was thinking, but he was willing to bet she hadn’t opened up this much to anyone else. “Now you’re unhappy,” he decided.
Bella quirked an eyebrow at him. “I’m irritated with the weather. I’m annoyed by how far away everything is, like movie theaters and book stores and places to practice any religion other than Christianity. And I miss my mother. But I don’t see how that translates to unhappiness.”
“So you’ve been suffering in silence,” Edward confirmed. Okay, now the mystery is solved. Mostly. Is she not a Christian, or was that a comment on the lack of diversity in Forks? Would lack of diversity for diversity’s sake make her sad?
The look Bella gave him at that moment made him feel self-conscious and ridiculous. “Just because I’m not enthused about a few aspects of Forks doesn’t mean I’m some kind of whiny, emo, self-pitying brat who hates everything. This isn’t the most thrilling place I’ve ever lived, but I won’t be here forever.” Unaware of her unintentional judgment stinging Edward’s pride, she turned back to her scratch paper and started drawing a cactus. “Eventually I’ll graduate and go away to college. I’ve got one all picked out, and two back-ups. This is just a stop along the way.”
“A surprisingly healthy attitude,” Edward praised her. One he would do well to adopt, actually, but he didn’t, at least not lately. Like many centenarians, he suffered from a sad lack of maturity half the time, though he did not have the excuse of senility. Just hard-headedness. “Impressive, Bella. You’re much more ambitious than most people.”
Bella glowered, but said nothing. What was he expecting, a vapid, brainless drama queen? Like his skanky girlfriend who seemed to have doused him in Summer’s Eve feminine wash at some point today? Or was he just blowing smoke up Bella’s ass while he laughed at her in his derisive head?
“Have I offended you again, Miss Swan?” My, but this girl is touchy today.
Bella was beginning to see why the Cullens kept to themselves, and why it was better that way: they had no esteem or respect for anyone else. “You sound like you’ve never met anyone who cared or even thought about their own future.” What she didn’t realize was that Edward’s comparison was based on a century of listening to the minds of petty criminals, the homeless, tourists, coffee shop baristas, liberal arts majors…basically the unmotivated dregs of American society. Bella looked around the room at the other students. “They have ambitions, too, if you’d take the time to talk to some of them and find out.”
He almost told her that she was giving everyone far too much credit. It wouldn’t have been true, though. Many of the human students did have ambitions; they just weren’t likely to come to fruition. Edward was a firm believer in attainable goals. Jessica’s desire to lose five pounds before the spring dance was unnecessary, but attainable. Her desire to become a famous actress, starring opposite George Clooney (a surprising choice for someone her age), was not. Angela’s desire to go to college, get a nursing degree, and work in an emergency room was difficult, but it was still attainable. Mike’s desire to have a three-way with two Playboy models was not.
Edward’s desire to get through the rest of this class without killing Bella Swan was probably attainable.
His desire to forget about this girl, even if he moved to the opposite side of the world and lived in a cavern half a mile underground, was not.
He sighed, a human habit he sometimes reverted to when he was too deep in thought. Unfortunately, it expelled the last of his air, and he forgot he was supposed to be breathing through his mouth when he inhaled.
Sweet Jesus, but she smells mouthwatering! Wait a minute…
“Bella,” Edward asked when he had enough control to speak without murdering people or groaning like he was mid-orgasm (where the hell did that come from?), “did you get a dog?”
Bella pressed a hand to her face and shook her head. Fucking Mondays…