"H-how do you know my name?" I stammered ungracefully.
He laughed a soft, enchanting, graceful laugh.
"Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."
I grimaced. I knew it was something like that.
"No," I persisted stupidly. "I meant, why did you call me Bella?"
He seemed confused. "Do you prefer Isabella?"
"No, I like Bella," I assured him. "But I think Chuck—I mean Charlie—I mean, my dad—must call me Isabella behind my back; he must have referred to me that way back when I lived in Phoenix. That's what everyone here seems to know me as," I tried to explain, feeling like an utter moron.
"Oh." He let it drop. I looked away awkwardly.
Thankfully, Mr. Banner56 started class at that exact moment. I tried to concentrate as he explained the lab we would be doing today.
• The slides in the box were out of order.
• Working as lab partners with our neighbors sitting next to us, we had to separate
the slides of onion root tip cells into the phases of mitosis they represented
and label them accordingly.
• We weren't supposed to use our book-documents.
• In twenty minutes, he would be coming around to see who had it right.
Not only had I done this already in Biology III, I thought to myself, but I had also done it in Biology II. I sighed. At least I hadn't already done it in Biology I.
"Get started," he commanded.
"Ladies first, partner?" Fredward asked. I looked up to see him smiling a crooked smile so beautiful that I could only stare at him like an idiot; first of all, because he was so beautiful, and second because there was something so peculiar about it. Something about it that made it unlike any smile I had ever seen before in my entire life, something that made me forgive how crooked it was.
"Or I could start, if you wish." The smile faded. He was obviously wondering if I was mentally competent; I was.
56. HULK OUT!!