Unfortunately in the edit, my original preamble was lost.
A few years ago I was reading a lot of fanfiction while breastfeeding (because entertainment opportunities are limited at 4 in the morning when everyone else is asleep). At that time there was a story with a similar name and premise. I only got to read the first couple of chapters of that story and I've no idea of the author's name but this is my version of the story. I would like to acknowledge the unknown author.
Also, I'm obviously not Stephanie Meyer in disguise. I'm too cynical for one thing.
I know how to make myself invisible.
No, I'm not a superhero or anything. I'm just a teenage girl and of course, people can actually see me if I'm in their way or something but I know very well how to keep out of everyone's way, so that nobody does.
I spent most of my childhood in Phoenix and being invisible worked really well for me there. My mother was very young when she had me and she's always been quite a flamboyant personality – I mean as long as I've known her. The more she wore home made tie dye T shirts and talked about her chakras to the other parents, the more I asked her to buy my shirts and jeans from the Gap and refused to listen to her discussions of overseas sweatshops and the damage that the cotton crop does to the environment. In the bright sunshine, I covered my pale skin in dark grey henleys and navy hoodies and I managed to achieve a level of acceptability that was like being invisible. I had a group of friends to do things with but I wasn't the most popular or the most stupid or the cleverest or anything. I was the most average. Living with my mother, I thought this was an achievement.
It did mean that I didn't have any chance of being asked for a date and I did feel a slight touch of envy when we got old enough for a couple of the girls in my group to be asked. But truthfully, I didn't actually like any of the guys they dated anyway and I was self-aware enough to realize that I just wanted the dream and the status without the inconvenience of actually having to be with the guy. My mother, Renee, told me that there was lots of time in my life for boys later and with her history of having an unwanted pregnancy and an early marriage which quickly became a disaster, I thought that for once, she probably knew what she was talking about. This history was also certainly why my mother insisted that I start taking the pill when I was sixteen. I guess, despite everything, she didn't trust me not to have a streak of rebellion, just like her.
As I said, this was all working well for me until suddenly, everything changed. My mother, who had been in and out of a string of romances none of which had worked out happily for various reasons which she spent considerable time consulting astrology tables about, (really, it would have been a combination of incompatibility, poverty and being a single mother), met somebody she liked. Even more surprisingly he actually turned out to be a decent guy who genuinely liked her for herself, including her wacky 90s New Age beliefs and her weird ways. More surprisingly still, she actually ditched some of her stranger outfits and started trying to fit in herself. This was the first time I discovered that love really can work miracles.
The guy, whose name was Phil, asked her to marry him about a year ago and she was so happy, it practically rolled off her. I was happy for her too, I mean, despite it all, I loved her. She always tried to do her best for me, even if my arrival had created a complicated life for her and prevented her from going to college and I couldn't really be too upset that she embarrassed me every time she showed up at school. Phil was a truly nice guy. Actually, if I'm being completely honest, I thought he was a little dumb but you can't be too picky about your stepfather. He was gainfully employed, which was a bonus, not remotely sleazy which was a big plus and reasonable looking, hardly bald at all.
The only downside was that he played baseball in the minor leagues and so was always on the move. Even though Renee never admitted it, I could see that long term, this was going to be an issue. During the year I spent trying to help Renee organize her wedding (don't ask, at one point, we all had to get passports because she was determined to have it on the beach in Rio, or possibly the Bahamas; fortunately I managed to convince her that the local gardens was a better option if she really wanted to get back to nature) I came to the conclusion that the best present I could give my mother was to remove myself from the scene so that she could be free to enjoy her second marriage. After all, after stuffing up her first, it was the least I thought I could do.
I always had another option, and that was to go and live with my Dad. When I was younger I would go and spend holidays with him, where he lived in the tiny town of Forks in Washington State, a few hours drive from Seattle. He was kind but taciturn and I can't honestly say that I got to know him all that well during those visits. He still lived in the house that he had shared with mom and for some reason he had never picked up again. I thought this was strange really; he wasn't bad looking despite the droopy moustache, he had a steady job as the local police chief and his only hobby was fishing which was much better than gambling, for example. I remember asking Renee once when I was about fifteen if my dad was secretly gay, because it is the obvious explanation after all, but Renee just snorted and said she didn't think so. She spent some time after that talking about the difficulties of small town life but it turned into a long justification of her reasons for leaving, which I had heard at least a thousand times (if not quite so long-windedly) so I tuned out. I stopped going to Dad's place for visits after that, thinking that maybe my visits were cramping his style and that if I weren't showing up regularly, he would ask some nice gay guy to move in with him. I continued to talk to him on the phone, trying to find out if his status had changed but it didn't much to my disappointment and he continued to go on weekend fishing trips with some of his friends from the reservation when he wasn't working as the local police chief. The term police chief was pretty amusing as I think there was only one other permanent police officer and a couple of others who worked part-time. He seemed happy enough whenever I spoke to him, and when I tentatively suggested that I might come and stay with him for my last year of high school, I didn't notice any suggestion that he was cursing under his breath and thinking that he would have to abandon the wild gay sex he'd been having all over the house. I have to conclude that my dad just isn't that interested in relationships.
Maybe that's where I get it from.
So, that's how I find myself in Forks, WA, being invisible among the pouring rain and the overcast skies. I have to say that being invisible is not working out so well for me here. Somehow, my clothes in various shades of grey don't feel comforting and protective, they make me feel at risk of fading away into the rain. I try wearing bright red and pink camisoles underneath but they can't be seen and they don't seem to help.
On my first day at school, I was the centre of attention and I have to say, I hated it. I felt like everyone was looking at me, everywhere I went. Boys were looking at me speculatively and I caught at least three obviously trying to work out the size of my boobs. Girls were looking at me as well, trying to size up the extent of the competition. I blushed when anyone spoke directly to me, blushed when I heard anyone talking about me and blushed when I caught anyone looking at me. In other words, I spent my whole time looking like a tomato.
I found a friend in my Spanish class, a gentle quiet girl, just like the ones I was friends with in Arizona and I'm afraid I clung to her like a lifeline. She was good natured enough to take me around with her and I soon made up a routine consisting of the lunchroom, the school paper office and the library when everything else failed. After the first month, people stopped being so obviously interested in me, especially as I showed no signs of being remotely interesting, and I was able to fade into the background a bit, and reduce the blushes to only about four or five a day. I started to feel more comfortable about life.
The exception to this was biology. On my first day, I was walked to biology by Mike Newton, who was trying to be nice to me, I think, but the end result was a serious of awkward questions like "Where do you live?" (why the hell did he want to know that straight away, was he a postcode snob? How pointless would that be in Forks?). I blushed and stammered and could hardly put two words together or look my companion in the eye so I was incredibly relieved when we reached the classroom and I introduced myself to the teacher. Mr Banner (what was this, the Incredible Hulk?) directed me to sit at a bench at the back of the room with only one occupant and I scuttled away with my bag, acutely aware that everyone was watching me, and that they all clearly saw me stumble on the handle of someone's backpack about halfway down. I clung to the bench as if it were a sanctuary, put my bag on the desk and pulled out the stool. As I went to sit down, I felt recovered enough to glance at my bench companion for the first time, to meet the regard of the most gorgeous pair of green eyes with little flecks of amber that I ever recall having come across either seen or imagined. Unfortunately, in the next second I realized that the eyes were actually practically snapping with annoyance bordering on a sort of suppressed fury, if the threatening frown and pursed, perfectly pink lips were any indication. I stood, irresolute, holding the stool awkwardly, afraid to sit down next to the completely gorgeous but apparently irrationally angry guy. Apart from his gorgeous eyes, I slowly realized that he had a generally handsome face, if it weren't looking quite so outraged, topped off with a mop of artfully tousled bronze hair. I don't ever remember being so struck with someone's appearance on first meeting them ever before.
Any romantic fantasies I might have hatched were immediately squashed by him leaning forward and hissing "Look, I sit by myself because I need to work hard in this class if I'm going to get into premed in an Ivy League school so don't try and chat to me or anything because I need to concentrate. I hope you aren't as stupid as you look" he finished and just like that, I was back in the real world where I am mostly invisible and I just remembered why I prefer it that way. The gorgeous but extraordinarily rude guy gave me a last glare and then switched his focus to stare absorbedly at the teacher, presumably concentrating hard as he had suggested. I, on the other hand was subsequently unable to pay attention to more than half of it, I was so absorbed in stealing glances at the spectacular profile of the guy next to me. Fortunately, the half that I did catch made it clear that I had already covered this topic pretty thoroughly in Phoenix at the end of last year.
After the lesson, I had Spanish class where I met Angela. That first day, I followed her to lunch and she led me to a table with lots of the other girls, like Jessica, a petite girl with dark blonde hair and her good friend Lauren and Tanya and Irina and a number of others whose names I still struggle over. As I sat, nibbling an apple and listening to the conversations, I couldn't help noticing my lab partner walk into the lunchroom and settle at a table with two couples.
My preoccupation must have been obvious but I was so lost in my own head, I was unable to tell. Jessica worked it out without any difficulty and half way through lunch she suddenly asked "Why are you staring at Edward Cullen, Bella?" I blushed over my blush and replied haltingly that I had to sit next to him in Biology and that he hadn't been very nice. An unpleasant expression crossed the girl's face but she converted it to a superior smile and said "Edward Cullen doesn't date anybody ever and I wouldn't even bother trying. He's never asked anyone out, never shown any interest in any of the girls. He's clearly gorgeous but he's never even kissed a girl, so the only conclusion is that he must be gay". "I've kissed him" said a much more blonde girl from further down the table. "Oh, get over it," replied Jessica rudely "You were both only 14, Tanya. Since then, nothing." "Tanya put him off women for life" said another girl slyly and they all laughed at the heavily made up blonde's discomfort. "I've heard that Edward picked up at baseball finals last year" another one spoke up. "Yes, but do you have any details?" Jessica asked quickly. One by one the others offered the information that they had which amounted to rumours heard second hand that his best friend Emmett had interrupted Edward and another girl in an intimate situation at a baseball finals party in Seattle. "How intimate?" asked Jessica immediately "Clothes off or on?" After much further discussion it emerged that the others didn't have any more details. "Anyway, Bella," said Jessica returning to me with a suddenness that made me jump in case she noticed that I had fallen back into staring at him again "Edward is a lost cause. Forget it."
I asked Angela about his lunch companions who were just as startlingly attractive as Edward (now that I knew his name). I found out that the girl with the short dark hair was actually his twin sister and the slight blonde guy was Jasper, both her boyfriend and Edward's best friend. Emmett was the dark haired beefy guy across the table, obviously another of Edward's friends from the baseball story and the statuesque blonde was his girlfriend, Rosalie, a 'total bitch' according to Jessica who took over the descriptions from Angela's much more gentle comments.
For just a moment, there was a hush in the food hall, apart from us, and our continuing discussion of Edward and his sexuality, his appearance, his family, his grades and almost anything else about him. Edward looked up and glared and I couldn't help the feeling that it was mostly directed at me. Jessica, half-turned her head and gave him what was presumably intended to be an alluring smile and he quickly turned back to his companions and Emmett's booming laughter. Jessica flushed a little (a slight rose, nothing like one of my bright red blushes) and the conversation lagged and was redirected towards something that had been posted on the class Facebook page. Angela accepted my group friend request (she had administrator rights luckily) and the others told me that anything that happens in the Forks senior class appears on the page and that everyone was part of the group. I made a mental note that I would be able to pm Edward through the group and then gave a mental groan that I had even thought that.
His nasty speech in that first lesson was obviously meant to make me uncomfortable and keep me away but in fact it had the opposite effect. He had asked me not to talk to him, which was frankly a bit of a relief because I can't ever remember comfortably making small talk with a gorgeous guy and I wouldn't have a clue what to say. Now I could relax in peace and quiet and lose myself in occasional fantasies.
Actually, if the fantasies were only occasional, that would have been fine but over the few weeks since then the fantasies have threatened to overtake my reality. I really don't know what's wrong with me. Whenever I sit next to him, it's like I have a special sense just for being aware of how he sits and moves and sighs and breathes. I swear I can feel him breathing! It's ridiculous and intrusive and if it weren't for the fact that I've covered this Biology Unit before, I'd be in deep trouble because it absolutely wrecks my concentration. I find that thoughts of him intrude on other things that I'm doing at least twenty times a day. I try really hard to think of something else and next thing I'm picturing him walking into the lunch room or thinking about something he said in biology, like how he correctly answered the question about phloem (and looked so beautiful while he did).
Over time, our relationship has improved to the point where I would say that he pretty much ignores me unless he has to work with me, which is an improvement, I suppose. I certainly haven't had any repetition of the threatening whispers. He's distantly polite and when we have to work together, such as when we have to share a set of slides, he's pleasant enough. He hasn't said anything unrelated to the subject yet and neither have I.
It's pathetic really.