Not Another Vampire Story

My name is Bella Nickles. Not Isabella. Just Bella. I live in this little town named Forks. You heard of it? Of course you have. Everyone has now. to start things off, I am not a vampire. I like to think myself a logical person in the sense that I don't believe in vampires or werewolves or any of that stuff. Compared to most of the people who live here; and all of the people who moved here, being logical really isn't too big a feat. But when the Twilight books came out and Forks went crazy with excitement, I tried to open my mind to the writer who brought my home into the light. I mean, we were hosting the biggest "love it or hate it" thing to pop up for quite some time. Anyways, it didn't work very well.

I'm sure you can image the insanity that exploded when the Twilight movies came out, filmed (partially) right here. Tourists came. Our economy went up the wazoo. But then... people started to move here. Not normal people. Crazy people. Who think they are in the books. Or movies. Or whatever.

That takes us to one rainy Tuesday morning, the first day of school. My friend Anna picked me up in her white Nova, and we started to make our way to our lockers. We didn't make it very far before:

"Bella!" a blonde girl shrieked, skipping towards us.

I had never seen this girl before in my life.

"Bella, hi! I'm Isabella." Isabella stuck out her hand. "Nice to meet you!"

I didn't shake her hand.

"How do you know my name?"

"Oh silly, everyone knows you. Well I gotta run..." she checked her phone and turned away. "Nice chat though. See you at lunch?"

...Wait, what?

Anna snickered.

"You shut up," I said, grabbing my friend's arm and pulling her to our conjoined lockers. "I don't even look like her."

"You mean Kristen Stewart? You guys have the same color hair." Anna shrugged and popped her gum.

We arrived in Physics with plenty of time before the bell, but the classroom was already packed.

"Welcome back, girls!" Mr. Aarons smiled. I shot him a little wave, and noticed Anna was frozen in her tracks.

"...Bella, look who is in this class, look who's in this class!" she squealed. I looked, and rolled my eyes. It was Nate, her future husband who just didn't know it yet. "Ooh look, there's a seat open at his table. Sorry Bella!" she beelined for the chair, casting Nate a flirty smile before glaring at a nearby blonde as if to say "Back off, he's mine."

I let out an annoyed huff and looked around for a seat for myself. There was only one, next to some new kid. He must have just moved here. I planted my things on the desk, and he looked at me.

Was he wearing gold contacts?

"Hi, Bella. The name's Cullen. Nice to meet you." the boy ran his fingers through his hair and shot me an attempt at a smoldering look.

"Why does everyone know me?" I frowned.

"You're Bella."

Alright then.

Mr. Aarons clapped his hands as the bell rang, and passed out a survey of our summer activities.

"Welcome class! I'm going to take attendance real quick..." he began to read off names. I looked around the room, recognizing Isabella from this morning.

"Taylor Swan?" Isabella rose her hand. "I prefer to go by Isabella," she said. The teacher rose an eyebrow but didn't protest. I shot Anna a glance, she crossed her eyes and shrugged.

Twilight fans are so weird.

"Cullen Trace?" my seat partner rose his hand, giving me another attempt at a smoldering look.

"Oh my god," I snorted. "Are you pretending to be Edward Cullen?" that would explain the gold contacts, the way he wrote his name on that survey... all swirls and fancy script.

Cullen furrowed his brow. "That's not funny, Bella." he didn't talk to me the rest of the hour. That made me smile.

As soon as the bell rang, I was out of my seat. One hour down... four more to go. How many more crazies could there be? A girl bumped into me as she made her way to the door. She jumped back and gasped.

"Oh, Bella...I-I'm s-s-sorry! I didn't m-mean to..." and she literally ran out of the room.

I rose an eyebrow to no one in particular. This was going to be an interesting year.