Monday didn't greet us with an alarm, but with the dull thud of rain hitting the roof—a constant reminder that we were no longer in the desert. I got up before Bella, as usual. My social battery was at a hundred percent after the weekend's isolation, but I knew it would start draining the moment we set foot in the high school.
I dressed with mechanical movements: dark jeans and a gunmetal grey hoodie. Something that would allow me to blend into the shadows of the hallways. When I went downstairs, Bella was already in the kitchen, staring out the window with an expression of pure defeat. She was wearing a bright yellow raincoat with a hood that was a bit too big for her. She looked uncomfortable, as if the plastic garment were a poorly fitted suit of armor screaming to the world: "I don't belong here!"
"You look like a lost canary, Bells," I said in a low tone, trying to lighten her tension as I poured myself some cereal.
"I hate this, Mael. I feel like I'm dressed up as 'city girl who doesn't know what to do with rain,'" she retorted, tugging at the hood. "Everyone is going to laugh."
"No one's going to laugh if they can't see your face. Besides, I'm wearing grey. If we get lost, you'll be the landmark so I can find you."
We left the house shortly after Charlie. The real challenge began when I turned the key in the red Chevy. The engine didn't just start; it roared with a metallic thunder that seemed to shake the house's foundations and wake up every neighbor within three blocks.
"Is it necessary for it to make that much noise?" Bella whispered, sinking into the seat as we pulled out of the driveway.
"It's a metal beast, Bella. It doesn't ask for permission to pass; it simply announces it's coming," I replied, though inside I also felt a pang of discomfort. As an asocial person, I loathed drawing attention, and driving a red "monster" that spat smoke and decibels was the opposite of flying under the radar.
As we drove through the streets of Forks, I felt people's gazes from their porches and cars. We were the new twins, the police chief's kids, and we were arriving in a crimson tank that could be heard from across the county. Bella's anxiety was almost tangible—a nervous vibration filling the cabin.
"Breathe," I told her, gripping the steering wheel tightly as the high school appeared before us, shrouded in mist. "Put on your 'I'm reading a book in my mind' face, and I'll put on my 'don't talk to me or I'll draw you in a compromising situation' face. Together, we're invincible."
I parked the truck in the only free spot I found, surrounded by much more modern and silent cars. The engine gave one last noisy sigh before dying, leaving a sudden silence that felt even heavier.
"Welcome to the Swan show," I murmured, adjusting my backpack and preparing to open the door.
We walked through the main hallway, and I felt in my element: anonymity. I kept a rhythmic pace, exactly half a meter behind Bella's left shoulder, moving with that swimmer-like lightness that makes no noise when stepping. To the rest of the world, Bella was walking alone, wrapped in her yellow raincoat and her evident anxiety.
The Forks High School office smelled exactly as I imagined: damp paper, reheated coffee, and that kind of old heating that dries your throat the moment you cross the threshold.
I stayed half a step behind Bella, letting her be the human shield against the inquisitive gaze of the secretary, Mrs. Cope. My sister was red as a tomato, struggling with the zipper of her yellow raincoat which seemed to have jammed at the most inopportune moment.
"The Swan twins?" the woman asked, with a spark of enthusiasm that made me want to retreat back into the rain.
"Yes," Bella murmured, handing over her papers with trembling fingers. "I'm Isabella... and he's Mael."
Mrs. Cope gave me a maternal smile, which I acknowledged with an almost imperceptible nod. While she rummaged through folders and schedules, I pulled out my pocket sketchbook. My fingers were itching to draw something; the contrast between the messy desks and Bella's rigidity was too tempting.
"Here you go," she said, holding out two maps of the school and a stack of forms to be signed by each teacher. "Don't worry, it's a small building; it's impossible to get lost. And look how lucky! You have almost all your classes together."
"What a joy," I whispered, and Bella shot me a "shut up or I'll kill you" look.
We left the office with the stack of papers in hand. The curious thing—or perhaps the usual in my existence—was Mrs. Cope's farewell.
"Good luck, Isabella! I hope you feel at home," she said with a radiant smile, fixing her eyes exclusively on my sister.
I was right next to her, less than half a meter away, but to the secretary, I was little more than office furniture. It didn't bother me; in fact, anonymity is my favorite superpower. It allows me to dissect the world without the world trying to dissect me.
But the silence didn't last long. As soon as we crossed the threshold into the misty hallway, a boy with dark hair and a hyperactive gaze cut us off. Well, he cut off Bella. He almost collided with me because, again, it seemed I was made of tempered glass.
"Are you Isabella Swan? The new girl, right?" the boy blurted out without taking a breath. Before Bella could process the question, he had already snatched the schedule from her hands. "I'm Eric. Let me see this... Wow! We have Language Arts and History together. I can take you, don't worry, the campus is a maze and with this rain..."
I stopped and crossed my arms, watching the scene. Eric spoke at a speed of three hundred words per minute, moving his hands as if he were swatting away invisible flies. Bella shot me a look for help over Eric's shoulder, her eyes wide, but I only arched an eyebrow.
I got bored after ten seconds. I pulled out my pen and, using the edge of my own schedule as a makeshift canvas, I started to draw.
Eric's angular profile. His mouth open, permanently in "broadcast" mode. A long, disproportionate radio antenna sprouting directly from his crown, with small sound waves coming out of it to indicate he didn't have an off button.
By the time I finished the half-sketch, Eric was still explaining the subtleties of the school's drainage system. I decided that was enough "quality time" for Bella.
"English is in building three, right?" I intervened, stepping forward.
Eric jumped, nearly dropping Bella's papers. He looked at me as if I had just materialized out of thin air through a rift in space-time.
"Uh... yeah. You are...?"
"His brother," I cut in, reclaiming Bella's schedule with a quick movement. "Let's go, Bells. We don't want Mr. Mason thinking we got lost in the first puddle."
The English class was a sanctuary of wooden desks and the smell of dust. Bella sat in the middle of the row, seeking to go unnoticed, and I took the seat directly behind her, creating my usual safety zone.
But the peace lasted only as long as a lightning strike. A boy with carefully messy blonde hair—the kind of guy who looks like a toothpaste commercial—dropped into the empty seat next to Bella. Mike Newton. I knew it because his name was written in large letters on his folder, next to a sticker for some local sports team.
"So, Phoenix, huh?" Mike began, completely ignoring that the teacher was already opening his book. "Must be a huge change. Do you miss the sun? Do you like the rain? What's the high school like there? Is it as big as they say in the movies?"
Bella was huddled in her seat. I could see her shoulders rising inch by inch toward her ears. She was about to collapse under the weight of so many stupid questions. Mike leaned closer to her, invading her personal space with a confidence that gave me a nervous tic in my eye.
"And your parents? Why Forks? It's a strange place to move to, don't you think?" Mike continued, with a lopsided smile intended to be charming.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on Bella's desk. My shadow fell over Mike's notebook, dimming his "charm."
"Did you know," I said in a cold, slow voice that sliced through the air, "that seventy percent of human communication is non-verbal?"
Mike froze. He turned slowly to find me just inches from his face. My expression was one of absolute neutrality—the one I use when I'm deciding whether to draw someone as a hero or a garden gnome.
"That means," I continued, locking my gaze onto his until he blinked, "that if she isn't responding, it's because her body language is screaming at you to be quiet. Please, listen to the silence."
Mike opened his mouth to say something but closed it immediately. He turned strangely red, muttered something about "just trying to be nice," and faced the front of the classroom, stiffer than a lamppost.
Bella exhaled a long sigh, as if she had been holding her breath for ten minutes. She turned slightly and gave me a look of gratitude so deep it almost made me feel bad for being such a jerk. Almost.
"Thanks," she whispered.
"You're welcome," I replied, returning to my drawing. "But if the next one tries to ask you what you had for breakfast, I'm drawing donkey ears on him."
English class ended with the shrill sound of a bell that seemed designed to torture those of us who prefer silence. As soon as Mr. Mason closed his book, the "welcoming committee" activated.
Mike Newton didn't waste a second. He stood up with the agility of a retriever and planted himself in front of Bella's desk before she could put away her first pen.
"Hey, Bella, the History building is a bit far and the path gets slippery with the mud," Mike said, ignoring me completely as if I were a smudge on the wall. "I'll take you; I don't want you getting lost on your first day."
But before Bella could utter a polite refusal, a shadow fell over them. It was Eric, the "Broadcaster," appearing out of nowhere with his invisible radio antenna vibrating at max power.
"I already told her I'd walk her, Newton," Eric intervened, adjusting his glasses with a defiant gesture. "Besides, I pass right by there on my way to Trig."
A tense and strangely comical silence followed. The two boys stared each other down in a sort of low-budget alpha male duel. Mike squared his shoulders; Eric stretched his neck. It looked like they were competing to see who was the most efficient tour guide in Forks. Finally, Mike, with his athlete's advantage and a smile intended to be a winner, stepped forward, gaining the position.
"Relax, Eric. I've got it. See you at lunch," Mike declared.
Eric sighed, defeated, and walked away muttering something about hallway logistics.
Bella looked at me over Mike's shoulder with an expression of absolute silent panic. It was like watching someone being escorted by an overzealous security guard.
"See you later, Bells," I said, adjusting my backpack. "Survive. If you get bored, remember: visualize everyone in fruit hats. It works."
"I hate you, Mael," she whispered, though her nervous smile said "please don't leave me."
I turned and began my way to the Art room. This is where my reality always became... peculiar.
The hallway was a swarm of teenagers: shoving, loud laughter, people shouting from one locker to another. However, for me, the chaos didn't exist. I walked with my steady rhythm, my gaze lost in the light patterns coming through the high windows.
The curious thing was that no one bumped into me. A group of guys came running from the opposite direction, absorbed in their own conversation; just before impact, the formation opened like I was a rock in the middle of a river, and closed back up behind me without even looking at me. A girl searching for something in her backpack backed up suddenly just as I was passing, but her feet stopped millimeters from mine, as if an invisible force had marked the boundary.
I didn't notice. To me, there was simply "space." To the others, I was a blind spot, a void in space-time that their instincts avoided without their brains registering it. It was absolute solitude in the middle of a crowd, a bubble of anonymity that allowed me to cross the school without a single shoulder brushing my grey hoodie.
I reached the Art room long before the rest. The teacher, a man with paint stains in his beard who looked as tired as I did, didn't even look up from his desk when I entered.
I sat in the back, in the darkest corner, where the grey Forks daylight entered most softly. I pulled out my notebook and turned the page from Eric's sketch. I stared at the blank paper for a second.
My fingers began to move on their own. I wasn't drawing Mike, or Mrs. Cope. I started to trace long, cold, elegant lines. A face I hadn't seen yet, but that my subconscious seemed to be anticipating. Features too perfect, too static. As if I were trying to draw the marble before knowing the statue.
"Alright, class," the teacher said, finally noticing the room had filled up (though technically he ignored me). "Today we are going to work on shadow perspective."
"Shadows," I thought, letting the charcoal stain my fingers. "My favorite subject."
The art room was the only place where the air didn't feel heavy. Here, the smell of graphite and turpentine acted as a sedative for my nerves. I settled into my usual corner, preparing my pencils with the precision of a surgeon, ready to lose myself in the paper and forget that it was still raining outside.
But then, the "bubble" of invisibility that always surrounded me seemed to vibrate.
Beside me, at the adjacent easel that I would have sworn was empty a second ago, there she was. She wasn't an ordinary student; she looked like she had been cut out of a gothic fairy tale and pasted into the mediocre reality of Forks. She was small, with short black hair messy in every direction, giving her the air of a restless pixie. Her skin wasn't just pale; it was of a porcelain so pure it almost seemed to emit its own light in the dimness of the room.
I froze, charcoal halfway to the paper.
She wasn't drawing boring still lifes or cloudy landscapes. Her fingers moved with supernatural speed over the pad, tracing fashion designs that seemed to come from another era or another world: coats with asymmetrical cuts, dresses that flowed like stagnant water, and textures I could almost feel just by looking at them.
I felt an electric spark in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't attraction, at least not the common kind; it was pure inspiration. My hand, which had been hesitating before, began to move out of pure instinct.
I forgot the teacher's lesson on the shadows of inanimate objects. My world narrowed down to the angle of her jaw and the strange way she leaned over her work, as if she were listening to a melody no one else heard.
I defined the contour of her face, sharp and delicate. I used the softest graphite to try and mimic that unreal paleness, leaving the white of the paper for the points where the light barely touched her. I drew her eyes—large, deep, dark amber—even though she wasn't looking at me. They had an intensity that reminded me of a wild animal trapped in a small, elegant body.
As I drew her, I noticed something strange. Despite her vibrant energy, she didn't make a single sound. She didn't sigh, she didn't shuffle her chair, she didn't even seem to breathe audibly. It was as if she were there and not there at the same time.
Suddenly, she stopped her pencil.
For an instant, I feared she had caught me, that she was going to call me out for using her as a model without permission. But she didn't look at me. Instead, she tilted her head with a quick, almost bird-like movement, and a small smile—mysterious and knowing—curled her porcelain lips.
She kept drawing her dresses, but I would have sworn the intensity of her aura increased, as if she were purposely posing for me without saying a single word.
I finished the sketch just as the bell announced the end of class. I looked at my notebook: it was the best drawing I had done in years. It captured that "pixie" essence that had fascinated me. When I looked up to try and say something—anything—the easel beside me was already empty.
She was gone as lightly as she had arrived, leaving only the trace of her perfection on my paper and a stinging curiosity in my chest.