My Pale Skin

Chapter Two: Another Day

Tears fell down my face, my chocolate brown eyes turning puffy and red. I quickly dabbed at them with my sleeve, the soft, white fabric soaking them up generously. It was only natural to wear white today - right now, the weather in Phoenix was 74 degrees, despite the fact that it was almost December. In this heat wave, I would wear white to a funeral.

I quickly pulled out my cell and checked the time; I had about five minutes left to get to class. Placing a bookmark into the book I was currently reading - 'Sense and Sensibility' from my collection of Jane Austen works - I got up out of the purple library beanbag I was lounging in and bade a farewell to the librarian, who's name I couldn't quite remember.

I walked across the long, empty hallway from the library to my Advanced Biology classroom, the yellow walls, coloured the way they were to distract children from the prison-bar exterior of the building, littered with posters for the end-of-semester dance.

The hallways were silent and empty. Everyone must have still been in the cafeteria, luckily for me. I didn't want anyone to see me like this, especially since I was still unaware of how I looked. I quickly ducked into the bathroom to assess my appearance. I mean, I had just spent lunch crying in the library over a well-written book, so I was pretty sure I didn't look my best — not that I cared. I just… didn't want them to think they had made me cry again.

'They' being the same people who had been making me cry for years.

I was perfectly happy in my own pale skin when I was five years old and living in Riverside. My mother looked just like me, only prettier and with shorter hair. She was perfectly beautiful to me, and to her boyfriend at the time, Jonathan. Jon was kind, but he was still really only a rebound from Charlie.

When I was six, Renee found a job offer in Phoenix as a schoolteacher, so we moved there. I don't think she liked Riverside very much.

Phoenix was… different, to say the least. Everyone here was different. Not like in Riverside.

Riverside was such a small town, only just larger than Forks where I'd been born. We would chat with the cashiers at the corner store. We had picnics with our neighbours on nice spring days. We lived in a little, wooden cottage in a lovely, small neighbourhood.

Phoenix was large. Busy. There was hardly a chance that I would know anyone at a grocery store, much less the cashier. I couldn't tell you our neighbours' names.

And then there were the people who's names I wish I didn't know.

It was fine for a while — I could handle the words. I was very mature for my age, as my mother wasn't the most responsible, and I had learned to do most things myself. But when things started escalating, I wasn't sure how much more I could handle.

I stood in front of the sink and looked into the mirror.

The girl in the reflection was deathly pale and sickly thin. Her hair was dull and a dark mahogany colour, and under her emotionless eyes resided deep, purple bags. Her lips were thin, chipped, and bare. Her baggy clothes hung loosely on her thin, bruised body, hiding the fact that her ribs were visible through her skin, but there was no masking how her cheekbones jutted out of her skinny face. She looked dead. She looked like… a vampire.

I sighed. Turning on the tap, I ran my hands under the water and splashed my face. I grabbed some of the organic paper towel from the dispenser and wiped off the water, looking into the mirror again to gauge the changes.

Better. Still bad, but better. The tear stains were less apparent, the bags were subtler, and the red irritation that sat on my cheeks after using the scratchy paper towel made them look somewhat healthy — at least now they had some colour.

"Get it together, Bella." I said to myself, my voice, raspy from crying, echoing through the empty stalls. I cringed at the noise.

The bathroom was completely empty. Was everyone still in the cafeteria? Usually this place was swarming with barbies checking their face-paint.

My stomach groaned, having missed lunch and all, and I groaned along with it. Suddenly, I remembered why everyone was in the cafeteria — it was taco Tuesday, and Barbara, the lunch lady, made some mean tacos. Oh well, it wasn't like I was actually going to eat. I hadn't eaten a full meal in days.

As the shrill sound of the bell rang through the halls, I groaned again and slid down the wall onto the bathroom floor, clutching my stomach — well, trying to clutch my stomach. I ran my hand along it through my shirt, feeling the fabric curve around my ribcage, and shivered. I didn't want to be like this.

I sighed. If I didn't leave now, I would be late for class, no matter how unpunctual the teacher was.

I caved and slipped out of the bathroom, heading for the Bio lab — I wasn't about to be late to Biology because of my impending hunger stroke. Luckily for me, it wasn't too far away from the bathrooms. I think that was because the Chem lab was right beside the Bio lab. I'd heard of many instances of spilling harmful chemicals during my time in high school, and so far it only the first semester of my junior year.

Arriving to class just before my teacher, I quickly sat in an empty seat at the back of the classroom and winced as a weak growl sounded from my stomach.

Since Mr. Montgomery — or Chemicals, as we liked to call him — was late to class again, the room was filled with mindless chatter. I pretty much tuned it all out, at least until I heard my own name mentioned. Well, not my own name, but something that I'd pretty much gotten used to being called — it.

"It's still crying over what happened this morning! Pathetic…"

"Look at it! Its face is all blotchy…"

"Bags under its eyes…"

"Bruises on its arm…"

"It's so white…"

I rested my cheek on my arm, pressing my palms onto my ears to block them out. The talking became buzzing, but I still made out one word, albeit completely unintentionally.

"Vampire…"

I closed my eyes. Vampire… that was what they called me. Because of my pale skin… and my dark hair… and the bags under my eyes… and my colourless lips… and the baggy white clothes I wore, not just because of the heat, but also to distract from my paleness and skinniness.

Luckily for me, Mr. Chemicals chose then to walk — um, run — into the classroom, throwing open the door with his free arm —the one that wasn't hugging a box labeled 'whitefish blastula slides' to his chest. Sometimes he really did act as if he'd inhaled too many chemicals, hence his unflattering nickname.

"Sorry… I'm… late," he said, catching his breath in between each word. "I was… at… a fish's… funeral."

I gave him a weird look, as I'm sure everyone else was doing. He sucked in a lungful of air before beginning to speak again.

"Today, as you can see, I have a box full of slides. Now, these slides are out of order. Your task is to separate them into the phases of mitosis they represent and label them accordingly. Will one lab partner please come up and get the materials while the other sets up their microscope?"

My lab partner, Crystal and I silently agreed on our tasks, so she quickly got up out of her seat to get the materials. Crystal was a sweet girl, never judging me for my appearance. Not once did she partake in this whole vampire fiasco.

Crystal… I didn't want to be her friend. Not because I didn't like her, definitely not — she was the sweetest. I just didn't want her to go through what I was going through. And, as selfish as this sounds, I didn't want it to be because of me. I didn't need that on my conscience on top of everything else.

Plugging in the microscope, I peeked through the eyepiece and turned on the light. After a quick check to make sure everything was in place, I set it aside and waited for Crystal to come back.

That didn't take long. When she got back with the materials, we started the lab. It wasn't hard, so even with us chatting the entire time, we were the first to finish. For Advanced Biology, these people really didn't care all that much.

"So," Crystal began, turning to me after jotting down the identification. "About what happened this morning—"

"Metaphase."

She paused and scribbled my answer onto the checking sheet, her impatience only worsening her messy scrawl.

"As I was saying, did what Jessica said—" she paused again when I shoved the microscope towards her and handed her a slide.

"We should really get this done before class is over," I said, taking the pencil in my hand, awaiting her response. She frowned, but took the microscope and clipped in the slide.

"We have an hour," she said. "And we're closest to done."

I just shrugged. I knew I was being harsh to Crystal, but it was better for her if we weren't friends. Even so, she was the best friend I had — that was what I was afraid of.

"Bella," she said softly, shocking me slightly — it was the first time I had heard someone, apart from Renée, call me that all year. To the teachers, I was either 'Isabella' or 'Miss Swan' — neither of which were appealing to me — and to my classmates I was just… invisible, unless they were throwing me into walls, hence the bruises on my arms, or stealing my gym clothes from my shoe locker.

However, to Crystal, I was Bella.

I was her friend.

"Please, don't listen to her. Jessica's a witch," she said, bringing her eye to the lens and turning the adjustment knob. "I think it's prophase. Wanna check?"

"Anaphase," I said after a short glance. "Nice try." She crossed out 'prophase' and replaced it with my answer.

Jessica Walker: blonde, blue-eyed, tan, sporty — pretty much every city girl stereotype mixed into one person. Unluckily for me, though, she wasn't a made up character — just fake like a barbie doll. I was sure she'd never even stepped foot outside of Phoenix, and it wasn't because of money issues — her family was loaded. Her dad was part of some big-shot family business or something.

Crystal was right — Jess was a witch. An absolute witch. And what exactly had she done to me that morning?

Mom had just dropped me off in the parking lot. Yes, I was old enough to drive — seventeen — and I had my license, but mom was going to meet her boyfriend, Phil later that day, so she needed the car.

I had arrived a few minutes early, so I was sitting at a table in the cafeteria and working on some extra credit, as I needed to keep up my grades for the International Studies program in Europe I was applying for. Crystal was sitting in a corner working on a large canvas; I'd seen some of her artwork, and it was all lovely.

No one else was in the cafeteria, so it was really quiet. At least it was, until Jessica walked in with a group of girls, all wearing similar clothing — or lack of, to be precise — and giggling obnoxiously. They all gathered around a table not too far from me, but far enough that I couldn't hear what they were saying.

They hadn't acknowledged me or Crystal yet, luckily for us. From where I was sitting, I could see them whispering to each other — well, more like Jessica was whispering and they were listening. Every now and then, they would glance over at me and burst into a fit of giggles, at least until Jessica shushed them and regained their full attention — which, with hindsight, I'm sure wasn't much.

After rolling my eyes, I had ignored them completely. By then, I'd completed my extra credit and was working on my application to my school's International Studies program.

It was then, as I was contemplating the course selection form, that I had felt something irregularly shaped hit me on the back of the head and then fall into my lap. I'd known what it was without looking at it, though — those girls must have gotten really good at making them, considering how many times they had hit me before. That number was quite large, which is how I knew what the object was: a paper airplane. The worst part? I had also known exactly what it would say, yet I read it anyway.

"I wish you'd killed yourself three years ago when you found her suicide note. Maybe then I wouldn't have to look at your hideous face right now."