The boy she notices is nothing special. Just some kid in her class. One of the few students to not make a big fuss when she first arrived, the new student that according to Edward, everyone had on their mind.
He gets bad grades. She sees him examine his results with a surprised frown, so surprised to have failed though he never does well. Somehow his surprise is endearing – she can never shock Edward.
If she was to class him in terms of looks, he was more on the 'Mike Newton' end of the scale than Edward's special brand of inhuman beauty. The boy was just as pale as the rest of the sun-deprived locals of Forks, but with a healthy glow about him and a sparkle in his eye that Bella tells herself she can see in Edward's eyes, knowing she's lying.
He falls asleep in class. She watches him, so infinitely human and vulnerable in his sleep, mouth open and drooling (so imperfect, she can't even imagine Edward drooling), his face sweet and so unlike her boyfriend's that she can't help but stare.
He's clumsy too, just like her, though whenever she falls down she always instantly feels an iron-grip on her arm hauling her back up. The boy just falls down and sprawls on the ground inelegantly. The class always laughs indulgently whenever he falls, because unlike her, he turns it into a joke, laughing along with the others despite his embarrassed, red face.
He eats too much. At lunch, he's always the one going up for seconds and thirds and Bella, sitting at her own, special table with her vampires, looks around and realises she's the only one eating amongst her friends. The beautiful, achingly perfect vampires look fascinated whenever she eats lunch, Rosalie watching without really wanting to, her perfect nose wrinkled in distaste. Bella wipes her mouth, feeling greedy and all too human. The boy sits with his friends and shares his food about the table, laughing.
He excels in gym class, faster than the other students, his face screwed up in concentration as he tries to shoot the basketball through the hoop. Bella sits on the bench, her thigh freezing cold as Edward's leg touches hers, and watches him in the same fascination she knows the vampires watch her with. How can anyone look so alive?
When she wants to remind herself why she has chosen what she has, she thinks of what will happen to the boy. He will fail school. He most likely will struggle to get a job. He will be pushed to the back of life like the rest of the imperfect humans, forgotten or ignored. He will grow up and get older, those thin muscles from gym practice will smooth away into layers of fat. He will lose his hair, his teeth, his sight, his hearing. Getting old means you lose so much.
He will fall in and out of love, he will have children that look just like him, he will get to watch them grow up and become something he can be proud of and he can look back on his life and know it was all worth it.
He will one day close his eyes and never wake up.
Bella will pass any test she takes, because Edward wants her to be well-educated and to have the best in life. She will never get a job, because there's no point. The family she will marry into are wealthy beyond belief; she'll never get home from a hard day at work and smile because she's done a good job. She will be noticed wherever she goes, because she will be beautiful, wealthy and successful. She will stay young, will always look the same, will never change in any obvious, visual way. She will never be fat. She will never put on or lose weight. She won't get bad backs or varicose veins. She is sure this means she won't lose anything.
She will stay in love with her first love, and they will be together forever, like life always promises in the movies but never delivers. Bella is determined she'll get her happy ending. She won't have children. Vampires can't. She can see the fierce longing in Rosalie's eyes and it scares her. There will never be people in the world because of her. She will never pick up a child and hold it close and know it's hers. She'll never look back at her life and be proud, because it won't be a life she'll be living.
She will never die. She will never stop, never rest, never… cease to be.
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It is for these comparisons that she stops to talk to the boy after class that day. She needs to reassure herself that he is nothing special, that she is so much luckier than he is.
His name is Tom, she barely remembers in time as she approaches him.
"Hey, Tom." She says awkwardly, wishing she could just talk to people normally, like the girlfriend of a perfect vampire should be able to. There are so many things she ought to be, and yet isn't.
He looks surprised again, but smiles with the ease of a popular student that she immediately envies.
"Oh, hi, um, Bella?" He says, obviously confused that the remote, silent girl who only talks to the Cullens had deigned to speak with him, "Is something wrong?"
"No, not really. I just… wondered if you wanted to talk." Bella replies, tucking her hair behind her ear.
"We're already talking!" He laughed, putting his school bag back down, clearly sensing he wasn't going to get to go to lunch any time soon.
Bella offers a weak, awkward smile, "This may sound like a weird question but… do you like cooking?"
He raises his eyebrows, but not in the condescending way Edward so often – wait, no, Edward would never look down on her. It wasn't his fault she was so inferior to him in every way.
"I don't know if I like it, but I can cook." He smiles, "But I only really do it to keep my parents alive. Neither of them can cook, and if I cook it means I don't have to choke down a soggy microwavable meal every night."
Bella finds herself smiling in shared mirth for the first time since Jacob. But she didn't want to think about that.
"I know what you mean, Char – my dad, he can't cook at all, I have no idea how he managed to survive without me for so long." Bella laughs, ignoring the little thought in the back of her head that her father had not chosen to be without her, and she shouldn't poke fun at his expense.
But it makes Tom laugh.
To Bella's surprise and discomfort, she and Tom share a long conversation about their parents, their hobbies, lives, favourite books… Until she looks at the clock and realises there's only five minutes left of lunch.
She gabbles an apology and dashes off to the cafeteria, leaving a still smiling Tom behind.
Thoughts are racing through her mind as she runs through the halls. Tom was good at cooking like she was; he liked wrestling and laughed at her fear of blood, he had a little sister he pretended he found annoying but she could tell he really loved her –
The main thought that stuck out in her mind, the one she could not ignore, was that she had never once had a conversation with Edward like that.
She goes into the canteen, flushed and out of breath. She catches Edward's eye and he frowns, his face like thunder. The sight of him nearly erases the memory of Tom from her mind, because he's just so beautiful and perfect and once again she finds herself wondering why he bothers with her.
At home, sometimes, she looks in the mirror, really looks like she's searching for something.
She's kind of pale, but next to the Cullens she looks positively flushed with good health. Her face is a bit thin. Her hair is just straight and normal and she'd never even considered dying it – why hadn't she thought about dying it? Her mouth is bitten to shreds. She has dark circles under her eyes.
If she cried herself to sleep at night sometimes, thinking of how very ugly and stupid she felt, how very, very human, it didn't matter.
All of those imperfections, they'd be gone the moment she turned, started her new life with Edward. She'd be beautiful, perfect, flawless, finally worthy of being his girlfriend – no, if he got his way, his wife.
Wife.
She doesn't feel old enough to be anyone's anything, let alone wife.
Mrs Isabella Cullen.
Forever.
But that's good, because that's what she wants. It's what she dreams about. OK, maybe she never thought she'd be getting married so soon, and maybe there'd always been the dim thought of having kids in the back of her mind, but it didn't matter. It couldn't matter.
She'd be with Edward.
He was annoyed that she'd missed lunch, probably worried that she'd fallen down a hole or into the arms of a passing vampire and finally been eaten. Her unusually sarcastic thought freaked her out – normally the sight of Edward was enough to forget those minor annoyances, like how he thought she was a fragile doll who should be carried around everywhere, never allowed to go somewhere or do something if there was even a hint of danger, and yes, maybe sometimes he could be bit condescending, but it was the kind of condescending her grandparents were, disdainful but fond.
When she compared the Cullens to everyone else, she hated the fact that she fell into the latter category, boring, faceless, just like everyone else. How could a dull girl like her compare with a vampire?
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Tom has a smattering of freckles over his nose like a little kid and chipped front teeth. She finds it oddly endearing.
They sat together in the hall, Bella trying to get over her nausea from seeing a girl with a raging nosebleed – her stomach churned just thinking about it – and he was supposed to be talking to the Principal about his grades.
"So," Tom starts, his wide grin so easy and friendly, "You're dating that Cullen guy."
He seems pleased that he knows something about her.
"Edward," Bella says, savouring the sound of his name as always, "Yeah, I am."
"How'd you meet?"
"We were biology partners. I guess we, uh, hit it off?"
Bella hated that she sounded so uncertain. Yes, when she'd first met Edward he'd been repulsed (or so she thought) by her and she'd been a little creeped out by his reaction, but they'd fallen in love… when he saved her, she thought desperately, that must have been the moment.
But she'd been fascinated by his beauty, his strangeness, his ability to stop trucks with just his hand. They hadn't spoken, not really.
But then they were seeing each other, in love.
When – when did they fall in love? Why did they fall in love?
"Heh, love at first sight, huh?" Tom closes his eyes when he grins, she notices, the skin around his eyes getting all crinkled. Edward's face doesn't change like that, "Wish that'd happen to me."
Her first thought is to tell him how much she loved Edward from the start, but something stops her.
"You want to be in love?" She asks curiously.
"Who doesn't? It's supposed to be kind of awesome, isn't it? Hey, who am I kidding… I probably just want someone to go on dates with." He says good-naturedly, rubbing the back of his head.
But Bella can't help but notice he looks a little lonely.
If it was Edward, she'd touch his knee, maybe try to kiss him if he'd let her, try in her own, insignificant way, to comfort him.
But Tom isn't Edward. He's a nice human boy, but in the end, when compared to a vampire, who really stands a chance?
Something drives her to try anyway.
She shuffles closer to him on the bench, feeling his warmth seep through his sleeve, resisting the urge to lean closer, to put her head on his shoulder and relish that rare warmth she never felt with her perfect Edward.
Maybe it's because Edward isn't there, with his inhuman beauty, his irresistible scent, to muffle her senses, to quieten that little voice of reason in the back of her mind, but she puts an arm around the other boy.
"Love isn't that great." Bella says sadly, so sadly she can feel she's about to cry. Love. That force that made her act so badly, ignoring Charlie and using Jake as a temporary best friend/boyfriend in Edward's absence. She ate, breathed and slept with Edward constantly on her mind and on her lips. She could hear her friends (Jessica, maybe, and Angela) growing bored of her endless praising of Edward's many qualities, but somehow she couldn't stop herself. When Edward had left, she'd been catatonic with grief. She'd sat in her room and watched the world go by. For whatever unhealthy reasons, she could no longer live without Edward.
Who was she before she fell in love?
She was Bella Swan, an oddly clumsy but kind girl, maybe prone to sulking and selfishness, but what teenage girl isn't?
She'd liked reading a lot, and she couldn't go a day without chatting with her mother.
Now, her books lay dusty and unused and she could go weeks without even thinking of Renee.
She was scared.
Who was she now?
Mrs Isabella Cullen was so different from Bella Swan.
Better or worse, what did it matter? She was going to change completely, mousy, clumsy, quiet human Bella was going to disappear and a beautiful lookalike would take her place.
All she knew was that she was going to miss being Bella Swan, warm and alive and real in a way that vampires just weren't. She got monthly cramps and sometimes her skin wasn't that great, but she could feel that exhilarating rush when she ran somewhere, could feel the ache in her feet beginning to recede after a long day, could feel butterflies in her stomach when she felt nervous or scared, felt her stomach drop when she was in a rollercoaster, could feel warm tenderness towards her father Charlie, who'd missed her more than maybe she really deserved, could get papercuts and make Tom laugh by freaking out about the blood, could cry when watching Titanic, could wonder what her kids would like, could stir curry sauce and taste it, could eat pizza whenever she wanted and enjoy the taste, could chat with Jessica about stupid, inane things and still feel entertained, could get irrationally scared of horror movies, could call her mother up for a long chat, could watch videos of herself from just a few years ago and marvel at the change in her, could fall into bed and sleep, could sit next to a boy named Tom and feel the faint stirrings of something she thought she'd left behind in Phoenix.
Tom smiled so sweetly at her that she felt something in her stomach flutter and she thought to herself, maybe living and dying isn't so bad if you've got someone to share it with.
Man, I can't believe I wrote a Twilight fic. I am filled with an irrational urge to cleanse myself with holy water.
I couldn't help it, I just hoped there was something a little bit human stuck in Bella, and that she acted the way she did because of Edward's supernatural influence. I mean, why would his leaving destroy her like it did? I prefer the theory that she genuinely can't help herself and that's why she's so cruel to the people who love her.
You can decide whether she got turned and became Mrs Isabella Swan, or stayed Bella Swan and maybe dated Tom, got some new hobbies, grew up and really lived.
I know Bella was all for getting vamped, but I thought it sounded like a fate worse than death. Seriously, watching your loved ones grow old and die? Yay…
Hope you liked it!