For my loving and supporting boyfriend,
Who has been with me and helping me in my writing.
Love doesn't sit there like a rock.
It has to be made like bread;
Remade all the time
… Made new
Le Guin~
Part One
Isabella Marie Swan…
Chapter One.
Fate Finds Ways.
I Won't Brag Or Anything, but if you saw me from behind, you'd probably think I was perfect. I'm tall yet short, with a ballerina's long legs and longish neck. My hair is naturally a dark chocolate brown, the kind that curls and straightens in command and reaches mid back. While my pale face couldn't launch a thousand ships, it has the power to make any stranger do a whip around just to get a second look. Trust me, this mix of curiosity and revolution is nothing Hera, wife a Zeus, was ever encountered. Please don't get me wrong; I've got all the requisite parts-and in all the right numbers, too: one nose, one plump-filled mouth, two brown, walnut-shaped eyes, and twenty-two teeth that add up to a very pretty smile. But who will notice a beautiful smile when you have a scar across your left cheek? That's exactly why I never leave home without my usual geologic strata of moisturizer, sun block, medical concealer, my white foundation, and a nice, cool base of powder.
So what was it the intense gazes, hungry and appraising, I was getting from the new kid in my Advanced Biology class? Without thinking, I discreetly cupped my cheek in my small hand. No matter how cleverly I cover-up my hideous scar, sometimes I felt as conspicuous as one of my town's oddities, say, Mike's overgrown buck teeth who can't speak without spitting. Or Jessica's dog who only had two legs and kinds hops around all the time.
I half expected the new kid to say something. People always did. I'd heard all the comments, too. Good-intentioned or not, every remark made me bristle. If you don't rush up to the grossly over weigh with a "Hey, I know someone who weighs three hundred pounds, too," then why was it acceptable to remark about my scar?
The teacher finished printing her name on the board, Mrs. Melanie Reese. Why do parents do that to their kids: make our names target for teasing? The one advantage of mine-Isabella Marie Swan-was that the translation to Isabella for short was 'beautiful' in Italian so it could pass of as normal. Thank You, Mrs. Internationality, my mother. Anyhow, not one of the seniors in my class (me being the only junior) could appreciate the forced holiday cheeriness of the teacher's name, slumped as they were in various stages of post-lunch catatonia.
To dodge Mrs. Reese's probing gaze, I lifted my romance novel in front of my face and busied myself reading the rest of the book that I had started on yesterday. It was really an old fashioned kind of novel that spoke of an outcast of a girl in love with a handsome and gentlemanly boy. Kind of like me, the girl felt incomplete with her self. Trying to match society standards and forgetting herself and her needs. Whether I would find my gentleman remains a mystery , because just when I come close to learning about the man, the classroom dimmed. Mrs. Reese said, "I'm going to show you…show um, show some Fate maps for you all."
Despite myself, I was mezmorized by these huge pictures of fertilized eggs, so zoomed in, I could practically see the DNA strands waving like Tibetan prayer flags in the wind. Only these weren't imprinted with prayers but instead with prophecies. I wondered, what would mine say? She'll be great at the guitar. Brave in front of crowds. Obsessed with finding her true love, yet perpetually loved. Stricken with wonder lust, but never allowed to go anywhere. (My parents considered Phoenix, five hours away, an exotic locale.)
"Weird, isn't it? Someone's destiny, right there?" Alice murmured to me. She craned forward on her seat, observing and studying the picture in front of her. No one needed any kinds of map to know that Alice had her life already planned out for her. First stop: high school fashion phenomenon; final destination: her own fashion design being worn by everyone.
Me, I just wanted to get away from this drag of a place. That's why I also have got my "fate" planned out. First: finish high school on three years. Escape to a college far, far the hell away as possible. Graduate in record time, and land a lucrative job where I can make so much money no one could tell me what to do, where I could go. So it might not have been my long-life dream, but it was close enough for me. It was a destiny I chose, not my mother.
Just as I've done since I popped my early admission application to Williams College in the mail, ignoring the sour backwash of guilt. I still haven't told my mother, Renee, about my fast-track plan. That our fate maps were diverging us away as soon as the years over and that I couldn't be anymore happier. I couldn't let anything, not even a horrible mother, tether me here.
". . . the genome mapping project will unlock DNA," said Mrs. Reese, her face seemed to just glow with the promise of scientific discovery. "And now I'm going to pair you all up." She said, her smile looked a hundred times bigger than before. I raised my hand, "For what exactly?" She clapped her hands together and said, "A project, Bella." She went about names and pairing with names to the assignment.
Everyone got individual assignments. Now she turned to me and said, "Bella with…" Her eyes scrolling the list of names and smiled. "Jasper. You both will work together. You both will do…" I didn't hear what she said instead I turned to look at the most beautiful senior ever. His messy blond hair and blue eyes, his strong and defined jaw and beautiful smile. I couldn't help but smile back at him, forgetting I didn't even know that name of the assignment we are supposed to do. I sure hop he paid attention to her.