Here's your update Becca. Instead of reading Of Mice and Men, I'm doing this. So when I'm failing English for the rest of the week, know that it's your fault, okay?
Reality
Summary: When her life is torn apart, who can teach Vanessa Hart to be Renesemee Cullen again? Who can bring her back to reality?
Chapter One
She was beautiful. She held her head high and her books close to her chest. She looked disdainfully on her peers, freshmen and seniors alike, and stopped to talk to no one. She tossed her hair, so black it was almost purple, over her shoulder, revealing her beautiful face, her full lips, perfect nose, and the eyes that belonged not to her but to her family. They sparkled with a malice only she could possess, but she stole them from the world for an instant as her eyelids performed the task they were required to, in order for her to be called human. She took one slow, deliberate breath, the air flowing into her lungs through her parted lips and back out through her nostrils. Not even her purse dared to swing as she walked quickly down the hall, silently demanding her personal space. She clung to the books in her arms as if she was hiding something behind them, which she might have been. She clung to them almost as tightly as she clung to the illusion that she was Vanessa Hart.
The rain battered the roof of the school and lashed the windows furiously, and she cringed. She screwed up her face as if in pain. Her eyes closed and her nose wrinkled, but the expression was short-lived. She shook her head to clear it and kept walking. The halls began to empty and soon, she was the only one left. Her mouth curled into a smile, a stranger on her lips. She turned swiftly and gracefully on her heel and stalked down the hall in the opposite direction. She ducked into a classroom at the exact second the long high-pitched wine of the bell announced that classes had begun. She always timed her stride perfectly so that she arrived on the bell, when she would be free of the obligation to socialize.
As the roar of overlapping conversations died down to a dull babble, she silently organized herself. Her teacher began class and she tuned out. The academics involved with school were effortless for her, had always been effortless. The relationships involved with school, on the other hand, were hard for her, had always been hard. While others stood around between classes chatting with their friends or publicly demonstrating their contempt for school rules by making out with their boyfriend/girlfriend, she would prowl the halls until it was time to make her appearance. While others gathered at a movie or the mall on weekends or after school, she would sit alone in the woods beside the river, singing, reading, drawing, or writing – expressing herself in the only way she could. Tears never flowed over anything after she left her home in Forks. Laughter never graced her lips. Smiles only presented themselves when she was alone, and frowns were never truly there. The conversations teachers attempted to have with her were always one-sided, and their threats of a call home were empty because the phone number she had given them as her home phone really belonged to the cell phone she never answered, and the signature she had provided on the forms was a fake one. Nobody knew what to do with her. She received straight A+'s on every report card, so they could not expel her on the basis that she did not speak. She made their school look good, and they would never reject that.
Though taxes paid for her education, she of course had a job in order to support herself. Clothing was really the only reason she had for money because she lived off the forest animals' blood, truly earning her Cullen eyes. She always thirsted, but the desire was never half as intense as the rest of her family's had been. She was, after all, only half vampire. The animals she lived off of were attracted to her. Everything about her drew them in. she had no need to chase them, no need to scare them. They would come to her and she would touch them and calm them down through her thoughts, with her gift. She would use her powers to assure them that they would be fine with her. She knew it was wrong and she knew it was ugly and she hated herself for doing it, but it was what she had to do to survive on her meager salary that she spent only on dark clothing.
Her thoughts always turned to feeding during class, but she never feared that her subconscious would succumb to the desire for her classmates' blood. She was stronger than that and she knew it.
"Vanessa?" her teachers nasally voice disrupted her thoughts of blood, and she looked up, making her eyes look as heavy and tired and bored as she could. "Did you hear me?" he asked, knowing full well the most he would get from her would be a nod or head shake. She shrugged. "We will be having an oral exam," he repeated, his eyes boring into hers. "It will count as seventy percent of your grade."
Fuck. She thought. There goes my grade point average.
When the bell rang, the trip to her next class was the same as all the others: silent, hasty, haughty, and long. In that class too, she received news that she would be forced to take an oral exam, counting as most of her grade.
They think they've finally found a way to get me to talk. She thought. Well, they're wrong. I'm not going to talk. I don't care about my grades.
But even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it was a lie. The only thing she had there was her intelligence. She couldn't lose that. She would take the exams, and she would ace them, and she would say nothing more than the bare minimum, and she would never speak again after the exams, and her life would continue as it had been going for years. Nothing would change.
When the day of both exams arrived, she was ready. She arrived at the bell, as usual, and when her teacher's nasally voice called her name first, as she knew it would, she stood, her eyes flaming with steely determination, ready for any question he could give her.
"What are the themes of the Gettysburg Address?"
"The United States being a unified country, the magnificence of loyalty to the Union, and the gallantry of those who fought to preserve it," she stated matter-of-factly.
Her voice was like a breath of wind through tiny wind chimes on a windless summer day; soft, musical, cool, and totally unexpected. There was a note of finality clearly present in it, and she didn't seem uncomfortable in the least. No one knew how to respond. The small "I'm Vanessa Hart" hadn't given anyone enough time to decide what her voice sounded like, so it was like no one had heard her speak at all. The pure sound of it drove the rest of the class to utter silence, something no teacher had ever been able to accomplish.
The rest of the exam passed easily for her, but left the rest of the class virtually unable to maintain an intelligent thought.
Her second exam passed much the same way, and to her amusement, she received whopping 100's on both.
When she returned to the river that day, she put on her most comfortable pair of black baggy-ass sweatpants and a sapphire blue sweatshirt that she could swim in. She washed and combed her knotty black hair and brushed it all to the right, tying it into a loose ponytail. Instead of remaining at the river as she usually did, she sought out a popular restaurant. She deserved a little reward after her courage and good grades. She didn't care that she was dressed like an attractive slob. She didn't care that half her school would be in or somewhere near the restaurant. She didn't even really care that she would have to speak to order the food she wanted. She hadn't had human food in ages and she was really looking forward to her dinner.
When she arrived at the restaurant, she scanned the place appraisingly. It wasn't even close to fancy, thank God. It wasn't a bar and it wasn't a club, and she thought she could handle it. Tables were low to the ground and surrounded by bean bag chairs. Couches lined the walls; Native American looking that reminded her of Jacob and his friends and La Push. Waiters and waitresses moseyed around casually, like they weren't in any rush to bring people their food, but none of the customers seemed upset with them. Most of the customers were, in fact, students at her school. Many of them even, were in one of the two classes that had heard one of her oral exams. But she didn't pay any mind to them as she strolled up to the counter, where there was an intimidating biker guy, to whom she dictated her order: T-bone steak, medium rare, with a side of onion rings and a diet coke.
"Comin' right up," the man replied.
"Um, sorry, but where do I sit?" she asked, feeling rather stupid and out of the loop.
He chuckled. "Why, anywhere your heart desires," he told her. He was smiling. He didn't mind her stupidity or her unawareness of how things worked in his restaurant. He seemed genuine and friendly and willing to answer any stupid little question that popped into her head. So she wasn't afraid to ask another one.
"How will I get my food?"
He smiled warmly at her, which she found odd coming from a biker. "You give me your name and when your food's done, I'll call your name and you'll come get it."
"Oh," she said. "I'm Vanessa."
"Well, Vanessa, have a seat anywhere." He smiled again and she found herself – uncharacteristically – smiling back. She left the counter then, and found a seat on an empty couch.
As she looked around the cozy establishment again, she noticed that most of the kids there were dressed exactly like her – in sweats. Then she noticed that someone was staring at her, someone very close to her and very familiar to her, someone who sat next to her in history class.
"Renesemee," he breathed. "Renesemee Cullen."
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