My behavior was absurd, I knew. My thinking was absurd! To let someone’s unexplainable and completely unjustified contempt pierce through my mind so intensely and then to be unable of thinking of anything else was ridiculous. During class, I was a world away.

I was back in that dining room, across the long table from that extraordinary person who had shot me such a vile stare.

"Vile" might be too mild a word to describe the intensity of Edward Cullen’s glare. From where I sat, obviously uneasy, his bleak eyes had held me with a violent edge.

It was hate, I was certain.

It wasn’t even distaste.

But hate, hollow and frank.

"Angela?" I scrambled to follow the other girls out the door as the lunch bells rang.

"Yes, Bella?"

"Have you ever met the Cullens?" I deliberately did not specify only Edward Cullen.

"I think once when my little brothers cut their knees playing outside we took them to the hospital and Dr. Cullen attended them but I don’t remember really meeting him." Angela responded as we made our way to the dining hall.

"So you have never seen his wife or their adoptive son?" I pressed, still trying to keep my curiosity as discrete as possible.

Angela shook her head. "I wasn’t aware they had a son. The doctor is supposed to be fairly young."

I merely nodded, still not comprehending. I could tell that Angela did not know much about the doctor’s family, even if I wanted to ask her more. So throughout that day I was only left to ponder over the Cullen boy’s strange behavior. I was pondering this well until the end of the school day when it dawned on me that I probably would never see him again. I couldn’t say the same thing about Dr. Carlisle Cullen, however. I knew all too well how I was prone to sudden accidents involving my immediate presence at the hospital.

I went home, trying to breathe once more and forget that vile face. That vile and extraordinarily gorgeous face- still, not a face that I would particularly want in any of my dreams.

The telephone rang as I ran through the door.

"Swan residence." I said, smiling at Doris who nodded, appreciatively from the staircase. She was carrying an armload of bed sheets downstairs.