A/N: This is my first attempt at writing fanfic. I'm not an expert in anything so don't get all technical on me. Be gentle. I'm like a scared animal.
Prologue
My name is Bella Swan and I am a freak. I'm not the sort of freak who walks around in the rain in their underwear, talking to an imaginary friend named Ernie. I don't walk around in a trench coat flashing my privates. I've never even caught myself talking to inanimate objects. I'm a natural freak. Born on a rainy day in September in the small town of Forks, Washington, I possessed my freakishness at birth. It wasn't a choice but a gift, I've been told. A gift that I should cherish because it means I'm different from all the normal freaks. It makes sense to start at the beginning.
Where was I? Oh yeah…rainy day…blah blah blah…September…blah blah blah…cherish. My mother had wanted a girl. She was ecstatic. My father wanted a boy but I can tell from the pictures that it hadn't really mattered. He'd make me wade through mud and hook a worm whether I had a wiener or not. I was six pounds and ten ounces of pink chubby rolls.
Everything went according to plan, as far as 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' was concerned, after arriving home from the hospital with me. I ate. I made poop. I slept. Then one day out of the blue, I got angry. The cause for the anger isn't significant to the story; the repercussions of my tantrum is the important part. The minute the angry little wail left my mouth, all hell broke loose. Glass broke. Things flew. Renee screamed and took me away from the big bad ghosts that had suddenly inhabited the Swan home. However the ghosts followed her and became much more violent, as her precious pink chubby baby became even angrier.
Looking back, if they ever do, I'm sure my parents would laugh about those days. The horrified looks on their faces as they watched a crack glide fluidly down the full length mirror in their bedroom. The way Charlie cringed when the red throw pillow from the couch hit him across the face, as he took cover. The possibilities that circled in their minds as to what was causing the strange occurrences that continued to happen as I got less chubby and less pink, were limited. The unexplained phenomenon that chased Renee to Phoenix with myself in tow.
When objects in the rental home, smack dab in the desert, seemed to become alive as I screamed for Tapioca pudding, Renee took a long hard look at the pink chubby girl sitting in front of her. I was nine months old.
Luckily, for Renee, I was a happy baby. Nothing visible happened when a toothy grin was spread across my puffy cheeks, but everyone felt the lightness in the air even if they didn't realize it. I was easily satisfied. I was convinced that an angry frown wasn't a good look for me, unless I needed something and then I grew to know that I got it very quickly.
Afraid for her sanity, Renee kept me quiet. When I reached school age, she was thrilled to send me away each day. I didn't understand that her shaky fingers or the deep blue bags under her eyes were because of me. I wasn't aware. I had no clue.
Then I turned eight and I met Gabriel Denicola. Gabriel Denicola was a bastard for a nine year old. He flipped over lunch trays, he pulled large amounts of underwear up and into butt cracks, and caused many noses to bleed. His freckles and red hair abstracted his pale face and blue eyes, turning him into a facsimile of Satan, himself. I despised this boy, just from watching him torment and taunt my fellow classmates. But until he sneered and focused his beady little eyes on my best friend, Kazi Gildarey, I hadn't realized that it was possible to feel hatred.
We were seated in the cafeteria, and Kazi was talking about her ninth birthday party. The only friend she had was me, as she was mine. While discussing which one was scarier, Freddy or Jason, a shadow fell upon us like Doomsday. He called Kazi a "toilet seat licker" and made slurping sounds to prove his point. To make a long story short, the janitor that night got overtime. Underneath the table, I stomped my foot and it caused a still sort of earth quake. Food flew through the air like an edible ballet, covering everyone (including Kazi and I). Trays hit walls. A plastic fork twirled through the air, and caught Gabriel Denicola square in the right eyeball.
When I realized that I had something to do with the catastrophe in the school cafeteria, I went straight to my Mom. She was half-clad in her purple fuzzy nightgown and shih-Tzu house slippers when I shuffled up to her later that day. It was her daily attire, and it was starting to smell along with becoming meddled with tiny cigarette burns. She sucked on her cigarette, and the end of it burned like fire. I focused on the red end of it and imagined it vanishing. I tried desperately to put it out with my mind. I even stomped my foot as I glared at the end of the white stick so firmly attached between my mother's lips. Eventually, she noticed me staring at her.
"What?" Her voice was full of a hopelessness that I had yet to imagine. It took much later on to realize that I was the cause of her lack of inspiration and chain smoking.
"Mom, I was wondering if I was normal?" My voice sounded squeaky and weak but I knew she heard me. She stopped mid-chug from the familiar bottle, and glared at me. That whiskey bottle was the Robin to her Batman. Her eyes became more round than I had seen in a long time and she sat up a little on her recliner.
"What happened?" she groaned. Though out the years her voice had went from sweet and strong to hoarse and grumbling. At only thirty-one, she appears so old in my mind as I think back on her.
I stuttered, trying to come up with the words. She would think I was crazy. "I got really mad today at someone and…" I trailed off.
Her eyes grew even bigger. "What happened?" The cigarette in between her lips was bouncing, making smoke float to the ceiling in a disheveled swirl.
"Things…things happened."
She stared at me for a few beats but didn't ask me to elaborate. I'm glad she didn't because I didn't know how to say the rest without being committed.
Six months later, she disappeared. I haven't seen her since. Her case is sitting cold in the Phoenix Police Department.
I was sent to live with my Dad, Charlie, in Forks. It was more than the usual awkwardness of first periods and "bullet with your name on it" speeches for first dates. The fact was that there were no first dates. I became quick friends with Alice, who was in a similar situation as I was. Her Father and Mother were divorced, and he was living in California somewhere. She saw him once a month, and it tore her apart on the inside but put on a tough façade on the outside. I felt guilty because I loved her more than my own parents.
As I grew older and more hormonal, my gift grew as well. I started to easily predict when it would happen but I had no sense of control. Alice became aware, and wasn't completely freaked out. We tried practice sessions, where I would try to break a glass with pure concentration but it never worked.
As I grew older, my Dad's shifts became longer. We were two people sharing a house. Room mates who barely spoke. It wasn't all his fault, even though in my mind at the time, he was to blame. I didn't try any harder than he did. We were both counting the days until I graduated so that eight months out of the year, I wouldn't be his problem anymore.
So, I graduated and continued my education at UW in Seattle. I was able to use meditation, and breathing techniques to ward off unexpected attacks. People cutting me off in traffic. Stepping in dog crap. Tripping over my own feet. I controlled my mind into thinking that these things didn't matter. I had to make my brain believe that cleaning Schnauzer poop out of the cracks of my shoes was a happy thing. I'd smile but feel the tension in my muscles, begging to be released. As I focused on school, and controlling my emotions I became an introvert. I went from dorm to class room to library to dorm every day. Not much could happen if I stuck to the same route, and the same routine.
In between Lamaze breathing and finding a happy place, I was dragged out of my dorm room by a tiny little hand that belonged to Alice Brandon. It was rare, but I did occupy the corner of a Frat party every now and then. I would always leave early, feigning a headache or period cramps. Alice would just roll her eyes, and continue to mingle. Then I had a bad experience with a Frat boy and I was no longer dragged to the parties.
Life changed when Alice met Jasper.
After meeting Jazz, Alice became more preoccupied with doing other things. These other things I had to hear about often made me secretly jealous that I was too much of a freak to have someone of my own to do them with. I became obsessed with different hobbies, most of them of the senior citizen variety. I knitted. I made pottery. I bought a tiny little keyboard at the thrift store that I tried to teach myself to play. If it was possible, I became even more of a outsider.
Then my junior year, I was playing tic-tac-toe with myself when a gust of air hit me from the table on my right. I glanced over and there sat Rosalie Hale, Bond girl. She eyed me speculatively and I went back to my x's and o's, getting secretly bummed that I could never beat myself. A spit ball flew my way and hit me on my cheek, followed by some snickering males. I flicked it off and took some deep breaths, imagining the whales that I saw when Alice and I went out on a boat in the Pacific one day the previous summer. They glided through the water, seemingly light as a feather; graceful and unbothered by the demands of the world. The fact that people were scum because they littered the beautiful oceans with garbage, nor the trouble of the Ozone Layer did not pass through their tiny little brains. I wanted to be a whale.
"Men are total shits." Her tone was matter-of-fact, and I couldn't ever imagine arguing with her.
I grunted in agreement and looked at her carefully.
"Testosterone kills brain cells," I replied.
She returned a grunt. That's how I became friends with Rosalie Hale. I found out later that she had been sent by Jasper to look out for me. There was a big argument about it. There were screams and pointing fingers and hugs. All the good ingredients of a fight with friends.
I majored in Elementary Education and received my teaching certificate. There's no way teeny tiny little kids could piss me off, right? Sure. Right.
There are times when I eye a trench coat and imagine being the kind of freak that had a choice. Making that decision for myself to wander around wearing only that. But there's no sense in humoring that course of thought because I didn't have that luxury. It's been years that I have labeled myself; not only freak but a Psychokinetic Weirdo.