welcome to wonderland

Mike doesn't try to sit with Bella anymore. She only had to get up and walk away twice. Now he sits with some other friends in another corner of the cafeteria and doesn't bother her. She can sit with Angela and Angela's boyfriend and Jessica and Jessica's current boyfriend and sometimes Eric and sometimes Lauren.

"So," Jessica says. "Bella, did you know Delaney came to school in a dress?"

"Oh?" Bella says. "I wonder if he made it himself."

Jessica looks rather stunned that Bella could miss the point by so wide a margin.

[You came to school in a dress, huh?] Bella inquires.

some people are this impressive without magic, but how?

It has been six weeks since Bella sent out her applications and it is now the end of March. She has been on the soccer team since that time, winning the one game they've had against the team from the Quileute reservation, and has introduced Charlie to her flute (he's nonplussed but proud), and has been keeping straight A's in everything.

She has received four rejections (Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton). The other schools are still quiet on the subject of applicant Bella Swan. Except Stanford.

Stanford thinks she is interesting, and would like to interview her in person, when would be convenient for her?

Hmm.

[Hey Alice. If anybody asks you, would you mind telling them you bought me a motorcycle?]

She can drive herself to the airport.

here goes

Bella schedules an appointment at Stanford. She breezes through sixteen hours of motorcycle class, mostly by demonstrating that the instructor is redundant and wouldn't he rather teach her exotic motorcycle tricks and then just mark her as passing the course? She plays in a soccer game against a Port Angeles high school and wins. She starts driving her bike to school, and she names it Tegu after a lizard of similar coloring, because it needed a name.

On Friday evening she's due to fly out, crash in a Stanford grad student's house overnight, interview on Saturday, and fly home that evening. She bikes for the airport, black leather gold-studded saddlebags over Tegu's back wheel carrying her luggage.