Playlist (link to song for every chapter will be on my profile page)

Iron & Wine - "Boy With A Coin"

Boy in the Red Sweater

Chapter 1 :

Gunther, the Red Monster

Note : Change your setting to read this in 1/2 setting through the link in the top right hand corner of your screen. It makes a load of difference.

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I woke up feeling more tired than when I went to bed. My back was sore, series of cramps plagued my stomach, and my head was pounding with a head ache so forceful and throbbing it felt like my eyes would surely pop out of their sockets from the harsh pulses. I sighed, rolling over onto my side. Oh, the woes of being a woman and having a monthly period. At least this was the last day I'd have it for a month. Men were so lucky. So what, they would get accidentally hit in the balls every once in a while. Bleeding your uterus out regularly was much worse and a scheduled wad of pain and discomfort.

When I glanced at my alarm clock realizing that it wasn't it's resounding beeps of desperation that woke me up, I groaned and whisked out of bed, nearly tripping on the way out of my bedroom door. It was already seven o'clock, forty five minutes later than the time I usually rolled out of bed to get ready for school. What made it worse was the stupid decision I'd made to not take a shower before bed. Now I had to rush through a shower and be finished with my morning routine within half an hour.

It was hard to rush through my shower. It soothed my aching muscles and washed away my sweat and grime, making me feel at peace and relaxed. I quickly reprimanded myself when I noticed the time once back in my bedroom, rifling quickly through the mass of clothes in the bottom of my closet, searching for something decent to wear. I had ten minutes to dress, eat, and brush my teeth before I needed to storm out that front door if I wanted to make it to school on time, and early.

And I always arrived precisely fifteen minutes early.

The school library was my safe haven and I spent the first fifteen minutes of my school day by reading silently, clearing my head of all thought and preparing my mind for the mundane tasks the school day would set before me.

I grabbed a banana and a small bottle of Sunny D out of the fridge before I was flying out the door, the front door shutting loudly behind me and my backpack half hanging off my shoulder. I started my truck, jumping at the incredulous roar the infernal contraption emitted and told myself that tomorrow I would finally, for once, not jolt at the sound I listened to and anticipated every day.

I petted Gunther's dash board (that was the name I'd given to my lovely, red truck) and whispered my apology for calling him an infernal contraption. I loved my truck like it was my best friend. Gunther sat through millions of my whiny and incessant complaints about the absurdity of high school drama and my feelings. Alice hated riding in my truck, preferring her cute little Grand Am, but she knew better than to insult Gunther to my face or his cab.

The drive to the small, dismal, and single high school here in Forks was uninteresting. It was a familiar route, one that would be permanently etched in my brain until the day I died. Nothing in this tiny town changed. There was a single grocery store, sporting goods store, two diners, and one coffee shop – not exactly the most upbeat place to raise a hormonally charged teenager. That's what Port Angeles was for; it was my home away from home. When the air felt too strained at home, Alice was almost always up for a quick drive to the nearby town and we would lose ourselves in bookstores, antique shops, and Alice's favorite store in the unkempt mall: Hot Topic.

I quickly peeled my banana and stuffed it down my throat, wishing I could relish it's taste but wanting to keep my schedule at the same time. With one hand on the wheel I swallowed the Sunny D in one gulp, tossing the empty bottle to the floorboard with the other countless containers littering my car.

Oh how I loved Sunny D, but it had to be the tangy original flavor. The other ones just burnt my throat.

I swung my messenger bag ungracefully over my shoulder and hurried across the wet parking lot, slipping once or twice on the unnoticed patches of black ice. I kept my eyes cast downward, watching my feet instead of meeting the nosy gazes my fellow students would undoubtedly be wearing. It was always like that. I was shy and kept to myself so naturally the whole school gossiped about the secluded girl with only one friend. Idiots should find something more productive to keep their minds on. Needless to say, I had every scuff and scratch dented on my sneakers committed to memory from staring at them all day.

Alice was already sitting at our table, the one in the far corner of the library. It was surrounded by tall bookcases and we both saw it as our tiny spot of solitude. It was the one place we could hide out in at school since hall monitors strictly watched the girl's and boy's bathrooms now. Mike Newton was expelled at the beginning of the year for selling and smoking marijuana in the boy's room. He was a complete imbecile when it came to secrecy and it was about time someone finally caught him. But Alice and I still had our 'escape box', as we liked to call it.

When I took my seat up against the wall Alice was wordlessly tracing a series of carvings we'd marked into the wood years back. She did this when she was lost in thought and I knew not to disturb her. I noticed it was the carving of two initials her finger tips were memorizing this time. JW. I sighed, knowing that today would not be a good day for her. She was thinking about Jasper again and that was never a joyous road to travel down. She looked up at me through the canopy of her short cropped hair, her bangs swept over and concealing half of her face.

I pulled my new novel out of my bag and quickly turned to page 45, picking up where I'd left off in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Thriller and mystery books were my new obsession and this one was proving to be worth the whole seven dollars I'd paid for it, for which I was thankful. This library had poor tastes and the only way for me to read was to pick and choose from the bookstores in Port Angeles. I didn't have just a lot of money to throw around and I would be depressed for days if a book I'd trusted to buy by its cover and summary turned out to be a complete let down (Lord of the Flies, for instance.)

Before I knew it the bell was sounding loudly, calling the moody and tired students to their first classes of the day and I smiled and stretched, feeling at ease and relaxed. Reading was the best form of mental therapy for me and it was one of my outlets for stress.

We gave a distinct nod of our heads before parting ways, Alice heading towards Chemistry and me towards Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry. I definitely needed mental stimulation to push through that class and muttered a silent thanks to the authors of old who magnificently wrote my escape from the world.

But even with my mind and body relaxed and soothed it was incredibly difficult for me to focus on the lesson. A sudden spark of inspiration hit me and I scribbled away in my red notebook, working on the poem forming in my head.

Across the fields on the outstretched plain
Pearly white clouds form
Painted on the pure blue landscape of sky
After the passing storm
When looking forward you see the light
Giving off an angelic glow
While behind you lies dark clouds above
Anger in their eyes doth show

The storm clouds rage with shouts of fury
Flashing lights from them shine through
While the pearly white clouds catch the sun's light
Stretched on the bright color of blue
The dark clouds hiss and scream
And let out tears of pain
For it knows it cannot be as beautiful
As the clouds across the plain

The white clouds shine off a rainbow
As an apology to the black clouds
Then suddenly the storm's owner stops its crying
And ceases its loud, painful shouts
The storm gives a bolt of lightning
To sign a pact of forgiveness
Then the two part as friends and leave behind
A light blue sky of emptiness

I smirked, happy with what I'd written and flipped the book closed, clutching it tightly to my chest. I loved my notebooks. They were like my children and I told them my darkest secrets and innermost longings. They held every infinitesimal thought that I deemed worthy to write down.

I would surely die if I ever lost one of my precious notebooks.

With how my morning was already going, what with waking up late, Alice being silent, and being unable to concentrate on anything the teacher was droning on about, I was surprised that something semi-happy came out of my head and onto the page. Usually my thoughts were darker and more brooding. Maybe this was a sign showing me I might actually have a good day today. Maybe.

Unless that bitch Lauren was here today.

I shivered, unable to stop the sudden anger and fear that seeped through my body. If I were to ever kill someone, it would be her. Lauren and her band of friends placed Alice and I at the top of her hit list, having some sort of personal digression against us both, which was probably misplaced.

But I shrugged her off and decided not to let her ruin my day. I yawned through French class, managing to take a few notes, but my mind did a complete one-eighty when I hurried to English, my favorite class of the day.

And it was my favorite for several different reasons. For one, it was the only class I had with Alice. Second, it was the only class where my scribbling endlessly was actually encouraged rather than reprimanded. I loved tackling essays and spurting on about ideas that no one else would ever care to read about for my own simple pleasure and fulfillment. As is expected, I soared in that class, always receiving the highest grades out of the bunch of dunderheads sitting in the chairs around me.

Except for Alice, of course. She loved writing just as much as I did, though art was her true passion. While I whisked my world away through words and fantastical worlds, Alice shunned her environment out with a paint brush and charcoal. We were the perfect ends to artistic development and Alice would often use my work as inspiration and vice versa. We were rubber walls and bounced idea after idea off of each other until we were going mad with imagination, moving our hands as quickly as possible over paper and canvas, unable to produce our thoughts as literal images as fast as we would like to.

I showed Alice my latest poem and she jotted her response on a separate piece of paper.

A bit happy for you, eh? Where's the angst filled child I know and love?

I giggled beside her, grabbing my pen and writing back.

I know, right? I'm taking it as a sign that I'm having a good day, or would that be tempting the wrathful gods of jinx?

I tried not to laugh when I read her reply.

Dear Isabella! What have you done! You've angered the gods greatly! Bow down and offer up songs of endless praise to the all powerful beings above, or they shall smite thee with their holy hands of spiteful hatred!

I chuckled to myself, slipping the note of senseless banter into my notebook to file away once I was home. I was happy to see that Alice's mood improved. She was challenging to be around when her thoughts swirled around the past. A depressed Alice was the worst Alice.

On the way to lunch, Alice whispered something in my ear while we joined the end of the line. "So the gossip of the day is all about the new boy." I rolled my eyes and she popped me on the shoulder. "You know better than to dismiss any event that Lauren and her pompous ass friends find important!"

Ah, Alice. She was one endless sprite of sarcasm, and I loved her all the more for it.

"So where's the new kid and how long will it be before rumors about his bastard child and insanely rich and problematic family start spreading around the entire student body?" I asked with a hint of distaste in my voice. It sounded so harsh but we both knew the words rang true. That was the type of thing Lauren would come up with.

"He's sitting in the corner, in the red sweater, and I've heard people already making fun of him because apparently, he's shy and doesn't talk much."

Of course he was shy. He was in a brand new school with lecherous mounds nothing but flesh, blood, and bone ripping him apart, searching for his secrets so they could hold them against him for the rest of his miserable high school experience. They'd done it to me, Alice, Jasper, and countless others, and Lauren was the center of it all, the queen bee of the school, so to speak.

I turned towards the direction Alice was looking subtlety and took in the boy's appearance.

He was wearing a ghastly looking red sweater. It looked worn and it shrieked age. The fabric looked flushed like it'd been washed a million times. I had some clothes like that; I called them my comfort attire and I had a full drawer in my dresser dedicated to the various assortments of pants, shirts, hoodies, and socks that somehow helped my despairs melt away. Maybe it was like that for him and that sweater was his security blanket, like how my soft soled mid-calf knitted socks were mine.

His hair was an alluring shade of... What should I call it? Dusky red? Bronze? Both of them seemed to fit and it was lengthy, pointing out in a ton of different directions, seemingly untamed and vicious. A small section swooped down in his face, like Alice's bangs, obstructing his eyes and parts of his cheeks and nose. I thought I could see the rims of spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose but I couldn't be sure, he was too far away and his hair was clouding my vision of his face.

I felt a sudden burst of sorrow for the new guy, wishing him all the best, knowing he'd be shoved under the popular kids' microscopes like the rest of us.

We paid for our food and rushed out of the crowded cafeteria, sneaking off to our escape box when the teachers weren't looking. I sighed the moment I stepped through those double doors, reveling in the pure silence ringing through the shelves of books.

"Now this," I said, sweeping my hand in front of me, "is the proper way to dine. In silence and security."

"You don't have to tell me that," Alice huffed, hurrying past me and settling in her seat. "So are you coming over tonight?"

"Sorry, can't," I mumbled through the big bite of apple I'd just inhaled. "Dad insists that we don't spend enough time together and decided that going to a movie with me was the perfect solution to our problem."

She smiled, shaking her head. "Yeah, that sounds like Charlie. Tomorrow then?"

"Yeah. I'll bring my stuff."

"Good. And don't forget my marker."

"Yes, yes," I mumbled, fanning my hand out annoyingly. "I never forget that damn marker."

"Lies. You did once." I watched as she twiddled her fork through the green leaves of her salad. I rolled my eyes but inside my heart panged with the realization that she still hadn't let that go.

"I know, Mary," I said annoyingly, straining the first name she despised and she swiftly flipped me off, not bothering to bring her eyes to mine. "And trust me, I'll never forget again."

"Good."

We nodded gruffly and ate silently but my mood was depleted. Alice was like a sister to me but I thought she'd forgiven me for forgetting that marker. Thankfully she interrupted my thoughts and lifted some of my worry when the bell rang.

"May Elune be with you," she said in a graceful tone.

And I answered in a melodic voice myself. "Goddess watch over you."

And we turned without another word to our afternoon classes.

I trudged the white tiled path to Physics hoping that there wouldn't be a lab but knowing that hope was displaced.. We'd been assigned a lab every Friday for the past six weeks and as we ended the second week of October, everyone's mid-semester thrill ride was marred by the heap of homework every teacher was piling on the seniors. I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the ride but the faculty felt it would be in our best interest to mount as much outside work and research as possible to prepare us for college. I huffed. You didn't have to go to college to be a writer and that's what I planned on doing, so this all felt like a huge waste to me.

I sat down at my table, glancing over at the solitary empty seat in the entire room that left me alone to work on the labs. Everyone paired off at the beginning of the year and I was the odd one left. While the other students cast smirks at me I was basking in the light of the alone time. It was much easier for me to get my work done without a partner to constantly nag at me and tell me how I was doing the work wrong.

And with that thought the boy in the red sweater from lunch sulked in, staring at his feet with a large black backpack strapped tightly to his back. Even the buckle on the front of the straps was clasped shut, the straps cross across his chest making the bag a web around him.

As he walked I noticed that there was a rather large hole in the side of the sweater, towards the bottom hem. It made me think of my favorite pair of sweat pants that had a hole big enough that it literally didn't have a crotch. I loved those pants.

I grabbed my Physics textbook and my red secrecy tablet out of my bag and set them in the exact middle on my side of the table, knowing that the boy would have to sit by me. I was too busy leaning over and searching through the almost endless pocket for my favorite mechanical pencil that I sort of jumped in surprise when I sat back up, not hearing the boy sit down beside me. He walked really damn quietly.

I blushed, hoping that my startled movement hadn't offended him and placed my pencil above my books, clasping my hands in my lap.

I'd noticed his skin was almost deathly pale, nearly translucent, and not unlike my own light skin tone. Only his knuckles and fingers were visible at the cuffs of his sweater, the sleeves a bit too long for his arms.

I focused my thoughts on the boring bald-headed man in the front of the room, informing us that we would have two months to build a miniature catapult structure and passed out sheets of paper explaining the grading criteria.

I groaned and read over the page, not liking what I saw. Building things was not my forte. Maybe Alice could help me. She was good with her hands and liked building models from time to time.

What was I thinking? I had a partner to help me do the work, now. I wondered how smart this boy was. Maybe I should ask him his name so I wouldn't have to keep calling him "boy" in my head. Even if it was in my silent thoughts, it felt rude. I wasn't good at making small talk but something inside me told me to be nice to this quiet boy and let him know that not everyone at this school were nosy bitches.

"Hi," I said lightly, offering my hand awkwardly to him and fighting to overcome my own shyness. "I'm Bella." He simply stared at my outstretched hand and I saw now that he was definitely wearing glasses, square wide-rimmed ones that had an odd color to them. I couldn't tell if they were black, dark green, or dark blue. I couldn't see the color of his eyes, though, and I wondered what color I would find there if he ever looked up at my face.

"I'm Edward," he answered quietly, his voice almost so low that I didn't hear it. It was a whisper. I took my hand back, a little offended that he didn't shake it but decided not to think anything of it. Maybe he didn't like touching people or something.

"Nice to meet you," I continued lamely, trying not to let my tone sound forced. "I guess we're partners, now." Way to state the obvious, Bella. Why don't you say something interesting so you don't sound like such a fucking idiot? He only nodded, keeping his eyes averted and his hands placed flat and firm against the black cool surface of our lab table.

And for the rest of the lecture, he remained still and quiet, so much that it kind of scared me. Was it human to not move even an inch? I kept sneaking glances at him through the curtain of my long brown hair, pretty sure that I wasn't being noticed since his face stared at his open notebook, but he never once picked up his pencil to write down a single note. Was he smart enough that he didn't find the need to write what the teacher was saying or did he have no idea what was going on and didn't know where to start with his note taking?

Thankfully and surprisingly, we weren't assigned an in-class lab and the loud bell sounded. I turned to catch one last glimpse at Edward and maybe give him a departing smile but when I looked, his chair was already tucked back in under the table and he was gone.

I whipped my head back around and watched his black backpack disappear out of sight around the door frame and collapsed back against my chair in amazement.

He really was super shy.

So this was an idea that got out of hand. Tell me if you're interested and I'll see what I can do about furthering this story.

Its not like I'm busy or anything...what with four other stories being updated simultaneously. Lol. My imagination needs to calm down before I have a mental break down.

And the poem written up there about rainbows and storms is mine. Proud of that pretty baby I wrote years and years ago.

Anyway, penny for your thoughts? Or how about a shy glance from my Quietward?

Much love, Starry