Bella
To say that dinner with Charlie that night was awkward would be a falsehood in the highest sense.
Like, me knowing the he knew that we both knew was painful to say the least.
As predicted, it was pouring the minute I stepped off of the plane, fat, salty raindrops falling in thick sheets that obscured all vision.
We didn't talk.
I mean, like nothing. Not even a greeting when I got off the plane and saw him sitting dejectedly in one of the futuristic looking benches in the baggage collection.
Not even when we were driving and I put my window down, mostly just to get him to tell me, no... it's raining too hard for that. But he didn't say anything. He didn't even turn up the radio when the sound of the rushing wind and pounding thunder made the music almost impossible to hear.
He just looked ahead. Never blinking. Never even seeming to breath. I looked out at the rolling expanses of green hills and healthy trees. No doubt the product of the idiotic amounts of rain. We passed a guy running on the street, battling against the strong winds. I couldn't bring myself to care who it was.
I started to cry a little, the raindrops mixing with my tears so well that I convinced myself that I wasn't crying at all.
I was crying because I screw everything up.
I was crying because I couldn't care enough about how much I fucking screwed things up to actually stop fuckingscrewing things up.
"Your mother told me to set up appointments with the guidance counselor here at school. They're on Thursdays after school. I want you to... I mean I'd like it... if you would um... go. Please. If you want." Charlie mumbled out around a Grilled Cheese sandwich. He had made two, one for each of us and then refridgerated them, heating them up in the microwave when we walked through the door.
The whole patheticness of it almost brought me to tears.
It's so weird how I can think about all this shit, and barely notice that this is like, the first thing he's said to me in at least a year.
Of course, it started with 'your mother'. My father was still infatuated with her, and couldn't even bring himself to admit it. He still had his wedding ring, in the breast pocket of every shirt he wore. I had seen him putting it in there a few years back, and I'm positive he still does it.
"Um. Yeah, I'll go dad." I said, looking up from the beige plate where I was ripping the slightly soggy brown crust into smaller and smaller pieces.
He nodded silently, looking straight ahead and seeming slightly relieved that he had cleared that hurtle safely.
The coffee on the white-ish table cloth looked like Art Garfunkel.
The grease stain on the wall behind the stove looked like Gina Davis.
The girl in the mirror looked like a slut.
I do that a lot. Stare at myself in the mirror... looking for fucking something. I'm not going to lie to you or myself... I'm pretty. But no one's ever told me that. I've heard hot... sexy... fuckable thrown around in casual conversation, but never ever beautiful.
I fell on my twin sized bead, turning my face and burying my nose into the softly worn fabric, breathing in the familiar smell of sleep and being content. I reached blindly for the lamp and was able to flick off the switch.
The room was in darkness for a couple seconds while my eyes adjusted. Eventually I could make out everything from the dim amount of light coming in through the yellowing lace curtains.
It's kind of funny- yet sad at the same time- that you will never truly see nothing... anything, whatever. You'll always see something, your vision will always be plagued by some inconsequential piece of nothingness.
I closed my heavy eyelids and tried to regulate my heavy breathing and tried to console my heavy heart.
Even when you sleep you see the backs of your eyelids.
Edward
SexyFox101: OMFG! Edward! Where were u?!
EdwardC: I was just out, I'm sorry I didn't return your calls.
BJQueen: Lauren! Stop hogging him! Lmao, u cant have all of him!
EdwardC: I'm going to, uh, go to bed.
SexyFox101: I was just thinking about u... I was in the showwer...
EdwardC is offline.
Who is on the internet at 3:00 in the morning? Okay, wait that's kind of a hypocritical comment... who's on the computer at 3:00 in the morning waiting for someone who couldn't be less interested?
I'm not sure when I became such a jerk to everyone, but I can't really bring myself to care.
Jessica and Lauren are considered to be the 'easy lays' at our school. They pine after guys like me, unfortunately, and can't really see when they are risking everything to be liked by basically anyone.
Sometimes I like to dream up what people's futures are going to be like... what kind of jobs they'll have... if they'll be happy or not. Usually they get pretty elaborate, Jessica and Lauren will grow up the same. Trying to please too many people at once, which just pisses more people off, which means they'll end up with the first guy who will marry them. And they'll have kids and get fat and get hit... and then they'll die, young... old, it doesn't matter.
But whenever I lie in bed at night and try to think of how my life is going to end, I see two things. Number one: Day after day of too much lipstick, ticking clocks, dirty looks, and quite whispers. And burning pain and boredom that won't ever go away. No matter how hard I try I'll never be happy. Number Two: The blue sky, the desert earth, stretching out into the eerie infinity. A beautiful never ending nothing.
And then I look at people like Emmett. He's fun and good looking, never sad or angry... always has a nice thing to say. He'll probably marry someone he loves and have a big house with lots of kids that he'll love, and they will adore him. He'll die an old man in his bed with his wife, and then people will eventually forget about him after he's buried and that will be it.
I'll probably end up in some mental hospital.
The clocks scream "THREE FORTY FIVE" in their blinking red lights, they seem to pierce through my retinas and reside uncomfortably in my brain.
I push the heels of my hands into my eyes and rub out the awake, and try to replace it with sleep.
Goddamn, I wish I could just sleep.
Sometimes I'm okay with it, like when I have extra homework to finish... or I have a really good book that I want to finish... but other times I'm praying, just begging for me to shut my eyes and to be lost in the unrealistic and soft dream world of sleep.
To not have to think for once in my life. To just be able to relax and not have my problems gnawing at the back of my neck at all times.
I lay there until morning. Until the sun starts to rise over the bumpy hills and shine through my window, illuminating the room to my tired- but not sleepy- eyes.
"Edward?" I can hear Esme's voice sound through my thick door quietly. She knocks twice for no reason and then opens my door, peering in and smiling at me.
"Hi mom." I say quietly, rising out of my waste of a bed and stumbling over to my bathroom slowly, leaving the door open as I splash water on my face. I watch the way the water splashes onto the marble of my sink, going flat and then expanding, and then dripping slowly into the drain.
Water is probably the most beautiful of all the elements.
"Did you sleep okay honey? I thought I might have heard you up at around four..." Esme hesitated, my sleep issues were something she had always had problems with.
"No, I slept fine." Actually, at four I had rolled out of my bed and crashed on the floor without trying to stop my fall just to break up the schedule of the night.
"Well, that's good. I just wanted to let you know that Rosalie is down stairs... oh, and Alice is there too... but Rosalie just looks very gorgeous today, she's wearing that beautiful top that I like. She is such a pretty girl..." Esme loved Rosalie. And she loved me... what reason was there for us not to be together?
"Yeah. Mom, I have to take a shower." I said, looking up at her though me wet stuck together lashes. I couldn't control the hardness of my voice, I was tired of people always poking and prying their ways into my non exsistant sex life. I didn't have one, I didn't want one right now- especially with Rosalie- and I was fine with it.
"Oh, well... right, have a good shower honey," She smiled at me and hesitantly reached out her hand, lifting a stray lock of my hair from my face and trying to place it in the proper place. It flopped back to were it was. Stubborn as the person that laid underneath it. She smiled once more, but in a more woe begone way and then left, her pink terry cloth robe swishing behind her.
My shower was uneventful.
The cramped ride to school with Rosalie, Alice, Jasper and Emmett was uneventful. Sometimes I think the only thing keeping me from going insane is the beauty of the world I live in.
In Math I watched the rain fall and get caught in the small, perfect little squares of the screen. And then if the wind blew just right than the water would disappear. The little square would be ready again. Ready to host some rain water for a few short minutes.
"Isabella Swan is it? May I ask why you're late? Probably on that hair style no doubt. Go take a seat behind Mr. Cullen," Those two names made me look up. Finally a face was being put to this Isabella Swan that was the topic of so much gossip for so long. Her hair was long and curly and wavy and messy. Her eyes were brown and deep and big and framed with perfect eyelashes and unnecessary black makeup. Her lips were pink and plump and turned down into a bored and annoyed expression.
Isabella Swan was pretty- maybe even beautiful... but that didn't mean anything. All it meant was that she was trouble. She was going to be hated, and she was going to be loved, but no good could come of it.
"Um, this may be hard for you to like, understand... but I'm new here... like how in the world am I supposed to know who this 'Mr. Cullen' is when you won't even afford me a hand wave in his general direction." Isabella grumbled, tapping her shoe on the ground. The whole class looked at her in awe. No one had ever talked to Mr. Berty like that.
He turned from his spot at the front of the room to look at Isabella, his expression hard to read. "I think we may just get along Isabella. He's the one back there, with the hair and the haggard expression. " Mr. Berty did afford Isabella with a general handwave and I hid my face in my hand. Was that what I was known for around here now? Hair and looking like a depression case?
"Thanks sir, I'm sure we will." She saluted him and walked down the isle, ignoring the stares from girls and boys alike. Jealous and lusty respectively.
"Cullen I take it?" She said, when she paused at the desk beside me. I turned my head, but didn't raise it, so her creamy thighs were right in my line of sight. Oh, what I wouldn't give to see a perfect drop of lake water running down that thigh.
"Uh, yeah." I mumbled. Goddamn brilliant. It was kind of weird. Lust. I had never honestly felt it before, and now I'm almost positive that I was.
"You have a first name?" she whispered. I didn't move my eyes from exactly where they were situated, and she slowly sunk into her seat so that her eyes were now level with mine. They were so big and shiny, I could see myself reflected in the perfect crystal clear pools.
"Edward," I said, turning back to my paper, where I was currently filling in all the holes in 'Edward Cullen'.
"Bella, thanks for asking," she mumbled, looking straight ahead at the board, snapping her gum loudly in her mouth. I wanted to see the gum, pink and juicy with her essence, her teeth imprints criss crossed randomly on the shiny surface.
I shook my head, trying to clear all thoughts of her. I tried to erase the beauty part of Bella Swan and focused in on her faults.
She had dark circles under her eyes.
She smelt like cigarette smoke.
Her lips were chapped.
"Are you fucking serious? Is he joking? Is he joking?" Bella whispered, turning to me and derailing my train of though concerned with trying to find an ugly Bella in all the pretty Bella.
"Um, what?" I asked, another brilliant comment. Can I no longer function when beauty is thrust in my face. Beauty is what I live for. Bella isn't beauty. Bella is danger.
"No fucking way. Mr. Whatever-the-fuck is making us read The Catcher in the Fucking Rye. I finished that shit when I was 10. " Bella whined, falling back in her seat and pouting.
I tried to roll my eyes without her seeing, but she did of course and smirked at me, giving me the finger and then proceeding to ignore me the rest of the class.
What a bitch.
AN: I gots tons of ideas, that's why I'm going so fast.
Again, two movie/ tv show references.