Before y'all are like, "Asian kids can't have green eyes!", because a few friends of mine in real life DID think that, it IS possible with Half-Asian kids. And since Alejandro has green eyes, I figured why not?
And before jumping to conclusions, all of the OC children featured in this fic are not all siblingless daughters. These are just the first three OCs to be explored more with. There are dudes, too! But those are for later chapters!
Heidi grabbed her biology textbook out of her locker, then slammed the door shut and headed toward the new girl's locker. "Hi, Carmen," she happily greeted her.
Carmen Burromuerto, the newest freshman at Verona High, was a beautiful girl, despite the ugly meaning behind her last name. With her parents' genetics, it would have been impossible for her not to be. Her skin was a light brown, with slightly darker brunette hair tied back in a thick ponytail that went down her back. By her almond eye shape, you could tell one of her parents were Asian, but her eyes were a light green, just like her Hispanic parent's eyes.
She was a tiny girl, not nearly as curvy as her mother had been as a teenager. She also dressed much more modestly than her mother had, wearing mostly cute sweaters and skirts with leggings instead of halter tops and short shorts. However, it was clear from a few of the freshman boys' expressions that she didn't need such clothing to get attention.
Carmen looked up from the mirror in her locker door, then grinned when she saw her new friend. "Hey!" She grabbed her biology book, then slammed the door shut and clutched the book to her chest. "Did you finish the homework?"
As they started walking to class, Heidi's smile disappeared and she sighed. "Yeah, but I don't think I did very well on it. Biology's so not my thing."
Carmen frowned, then suggested, "Maybe you could ask Mr. Torres for help. My parents say they knew him when they were just teenagers!"
"Really?" Carmen nodded and Heidi said, "My dad knows him, too! They haven't talked in forever, but maybe that'll earn me some bonus points with him…"
"Or maybe you should ask that Melanie girl," Carmen suggested as they walked in the classroom, subtly pointing to a brunette girl with dark onyx eyes, who was at her desk busily working on some homework due for the next day in her algebra class. "She seems to be a smartie."
"I don't really talk to her, though. It'd be sorta awkward to ask her for help, after years of not really crossing paths." Heidi sat down next to the desk that Carmen took. "Besides, she's Mr. Torres' daughter. It'd be weird if I asked her before I asked him."
Carmen shrugged, dismissing the idea, since Heidi didn't seem up to it. "I could always help you at my place," the half Latina-half Asian said, trying to hide her proud grin. "I'm pretty good at this kinda stuff myself…"
"Really?" Heidi beamed and exclaimed, "That'd be awesome!" right as the bell rang, so it basically drowned out her 'awesome'. She turned herself around to face Mr. Torres, who was taking his place up at the front of the classroom.
"Good day, class," the tan-skinned man said, utmost seriousness in his tone. "I expect you all did your homework?" He got a few grunts in confirmation, but a few looked down awkwardly, trying to scribble something down on their worksheets to at least get partial credit, since they had either forgotten to do them or were too lazy to do it the other night. As they passed their worksheets, some done better than others, up to the front of the room, a knock could be heard at the door. The boy behind the knock didn't even bother to wait for the teacher to open the door before he stepped inside, his maroon backpack slung over his shoulder.
Heidi raised an eyebrow, since the boy didn't seem familiar to her. Was he a new student?
His sandy blonde hair was messily perfect, in that weird way that only certain guys can pull off with their hair without looking like slobs. He had on navy blue t-shirt and some faded jeans, both of which Heidi guessed came from American Eagle. She was never good at telling which shirts came from where when the name or logo wasn't across the front… And she thought it was weird that they have American Eagles in Canada. They really should have called it Canadian Eagle or something. But there was no time for her mind to drift, because she still wanted to know who he was.
Mr. Torres raised a confused eyebrow. "Can I help you, son?"
"Yeah, I'm new here," the boy explained, holding up his schedule and pointing to a certain section on it. "I'm supposed to be in Bio with some dude named Noah Torres. You him?"
Noah narrowed his eyes a bit and firmly said, "That's Mr. Torres to you."
"Right, right," he said with a calm grin and a nod. "Mr. Torres, it is."
"And who might you be?"
"Thomas Campbell," he told the teacher. "Just moved here from Seattle."
Noah nodded, taking up the last of the homework papers. "I see."
"Isn't he, like, the second new student we've had in the past two weeks?" a scrawny boy with dark black hair and a freckled nose under his sleek black glasses asked, his raspy voice like a knife in most of the students' ears.
Noah looked at him, clearly annoyed by the interruption. "We don't need your commentary every five minutes, Mr. McGrady."
"But I just-"
"Shut up, Felix," Melanie, who usually wasn't so outspoken, snapped, glaring at him with her dark eyes. "My fath- I mean, Mr. Torres is right."
Felix shot her a glare too, but let out a "Gosh!" and mumbled, "She always picks on me!" in irritation.
Noah cleared his throat and continued, "Well, Thomas, I'll give you your paperwork for class later on. Feel free to take a seat. There's one in the second row between Felix and Heidi." He pointed to the desk to Heidi's right. Thomas tossed his backpack at the foot of the desk, then plopped down and casually crossed his arms. As Noah neatly stacked the homework papers on his desk, he went to the whiteboard in the front of the classroom and began the lesson for the day.
As he began his mini-lecture, Thomas took a look around the room, his gray eyes meeting Heidi's brown ones. He offered her a friendly smile, which she slowly offered back. Both turned their attention to the front of the room, trying to keep up with what their super-intelligent teacher was saying.
After Heidi called her dad to tell him where she would be, she got on Carmen's bus and before she knew it, she was in front of her large house. With the elaborate landscape and modern design, it was definitely a beautiful home. Heidi loved her house and would never want to move to another one, but she really, really wanted to check out the inside of that place!
Once the girls stepped in, they were promptly greeted by a maid, who started chattering in Spanish as she took their backpacks. Carmen chattered right back, speaking perfect Spanish. Once the maid scurried off to put their bags away, Carmen led her into the kitchen, which was filled with sheer stainless steel and every fancy kitchen appliance known to man. Carmen began rooting through the fridge and asked, "Would you like anything to drink? We've got water, Coke, Mountain Dew, um…" She pulled out a glass bottle and raised an eyebrow. "Some weird Mexican soda my dad always has shipped to us. He doesn't like me drinking them, because they're expensive, but he'd let you get away with it, since you're a guest and all."
"I'll just have water, please," Heidi said, watching as Carmen pulled out one of the fancy sodas and a Brita pitcher and shut the door. As she sat it down on the marble counter and started rooting around the cabinets for a glass, Heidi mentioned, "I didn't know you speak Spanish."
Carmen nodded, pulling out a tall, thin glass. "Dad's from Spain. He's been teaching me since I was old enough to talk. Mom's Japanese, but Dad knows more Japanese than she does, for some reason." She giggled as she poured water from the pitcher and handed it to Heidi.
"Thanks," Heidi said with a grin, taking a sip. "And thanks for letting me come over."
"No problem! I've been wanting to have a friend over since we moved here!"
"Speaking of which, you guys got unpacked quickly…" The blonde looked around, not seeing a cardboard box in sight. "Didn't you just move here a week ago? And this is a pretty big house, so…"
"Nah, we've been here for almost three weeks," Carmen said, popping the fizzy purple soda open and taking a drink. "My parents let me wait until we were settled in to start school."
Just then, a very handsome Hispanic man, dressed in the sharpest suit money could buy, walked through the front door, calling out, "I'm home!" since he knew his daughter must have been home by then. He sat his briefcase down and headed into the kitchen, where he knew Carmen would probably be.
"Hi, Daddy!" As the man walked into the kitchen, Carmen ran up to him and gave him a big hug.
He smiled, wrapping an arm around her, as well. "Hola, princesa," he warmly greeted, giving her a small kiss on the top of her head. It was then that he finally noticed the unfamiliar girl. "And hola to you too, young lady." He released Carmen and asked, "Who might you be?"
"I'm Heidi, sir." She smiled, sat her cup down and walked over to shake his hand. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Burromuerto."
He grinned, shaking her hand back. "My, what manners! You don't see that much with teens nowadays. But feel free to call me Alejandro. Mr. Burromuerto makes me feel like I'm still at work."
Heidi giggled, then nodded in agreement with his request. As she took another drink of her water, Carmen said, "Dad, you remember when I told you and Mom about her last night, right? And then we talked about Mr. Torres?"
"Noah Torres?" Alejandro nodded. "Yeah, he was in that… thing your mother and I met at." Alejandro and his wife hated talking about Total Drama, mostly because it had humiliated his love out of her mind, with her ever-changing hair, not to mention losing her front tooth and gaining a gold one. But to put it short, Carmen knew nothing about the show and thought her parents met on a plane ride to some unknown location.
"Heidi's dad knows him too! Back when they were teens, like you and Mom!" Carmen exclaimed, taking a sip of her soda.
Alejandro raised an eyebrow at this, then narrowed his eyes once he saw what she was drinking. "Carmen, how many times do I have to tell you not to drink too many of those? You had one yesterday, and we only get six in each pack."
Carmen looked down at the bottle, then up at her father with glistening eyes. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I didn't mean to upset you. I just really wanted one…"
Alejandro's stern glance melted after a few seconds and he sighed. No matter how old she got, he could never stay mad when his little girl looked so guilty and sorry. She had definitely gotten his charm. "It's okay. But no more until we get more, okay?" Carmen nodded, then Alejandro looked at his daughter's new friend and asked, "Heidi, is it? What's your father's name?"
Heidi looked confused, but told him, "Geoff Sanders, sir. Why?"
Alejandro thought for a moment. Geoff Sanders… Could it be Total Drama Geoff Sanders? He had never talked to him much, since he wasn't in Total Drama World Tour. Most of his interaction with him had been biting remarks a few days after World Tour ended. He didn't mind, and he couldn't blame him. Alejandro was the one who tricked his girlfriend into cheating on him on international television, not to mention taking home a million dollars when Bridgette could have very well had a chance without his interference…
"Tell me, is he blonde? Blue eyes?" Heidi nodded and he asked, "Big, goofy grin? Cowboy hat?"
Heidi nodded again. "Sounds exactly like him. Do you know him?"
"I knew him when we were teenagers, yes," he said with a nod, still looking her over. Heidi had the same blonde hair as him, the same cleft in her chin as him, though it was significantly smaller, but she looked nothing like Bridgette. "Is Bridgette your mother's name?"
"No, her name was Candace," Heidi told him, looking more confused than ever.
Was? Thinking he knew what that meant, he decided not to press on the subject anymore and nodded. "All right then. So, you're Geoff's girl?"
She nodded with a small grin. "Yes, that's me! It's so cool that you know my dad! Did you know my mom?"
Alejandro shook his head. "No, unfortunately."
Heidi nodded, then Carmen, who looked impatient from not being a part of the conversation, said, "Dad, we have to do our homework. We'll be upstairs." Carmen tugged on Heidi's hand, trying to drag her toward the staircase across the kitchen and living room.
Heidi waved at Alejandro as she was led to the steps. "Nice meeting you, Mist-" She paused, remembering what he told her about calling him by his last name, then quickly corrected herself, "Alejandro!" Carmen dragged her up the staircase and they were gone before either of them knew it.
The Latino man sat down on a tall bar stool by the island, grabbing the soda bottle that Carmen left behind. He took a drink, then sat it down. He didn't know why, but he wanted to find out more about this Heidi girl and her mother…
A few hours later, Geoff arrived to pick up Heidi. After she thanked Mr. Burromuerto, or rather Alejandro, for having her and said goodbye to Carmen, she ran to her dad's car and they drove off right as a sleek silver car pulled into the empty space that had been next to them. Guess Carmen's mom finally came home, Heidi thought as they pulled out of the very high class neighborhood and onto the highway.
"So, you worked on… Geology?" Geoff asked, sounding like he knew that wasn't right.
"Biology, Dad." Heidi couldn't help but giggle, since he still looked so confused.
"Right, yeah…" He nodded and muttered, "I totally know what that is…"
Heidi smiled a bit, looked out the window at the lit up buildings as they whizzed past them and asked, "Dad? Remember when you told me a while back that you knew Mr. Torres?"
"Noah?" Geoff asked, his memory a bit foggy. "Yeah, he's from the island."
Unlike Carmen, Heidi knew about the island, the action, and the world tour. Actually, a lot of her father's friends were from that TV show… Her dad had only let her watch the first episode of the first season, but that was just to see what he, Uncle Owen, Aunt Izzy, LeShawna, Duncan, and a few of his other friends were like when they were just sixteen. He didn't really want her to see the rest. She never knew why, but respected her father's wishes and didn't try to find the DVDs that he hid.
"Carmen's dad knows him too, but from an airplane… I think he was talking about Total Drama… World Tour, right?" Geoff nodded as they pulled up to a stop light and Heidi continued, "He was being all secretive about it with Carmen, though."
"He probably didn't want Carmen to know about the show. A lot of us don't like talking about it…"
"Aunt Izzy and Uncle Owen don't mind talking about it." The light turned green and they kept driving.
Geoff rolled his eyes and smirked. "That's because all the insanity that show had to offer was their idea of a good time… Did you find out Carmen's dad's name? He probably was in one of the seasons."
"Alejandro." Heidi had thought that was an innocent answer, but the look on her father's face made it clear that there was more meaning behind it than just an average business man. "Are you okay, Dad?"
"Huh?" Geoff stopped glowering, then looked at his daughter as he pulled into their driveway. He shook off the urge to tell her what an awful man he was and mumbled, "Nothing… I knew him… We didn't really talk much."
"Oh…" Heidi grabbed her backpack and stepped out of the car, heading into the house with her father. He didn't sound like he wanted to talk about it, so she let it go. "Soooo, you have dinner yet?"
"No. You?"
"I left right as the cook started making it," Heidi explained, walking down the hall to throw her book bag in her room.
After Heidi was out of earshot, Geoff walked into the kitchen and grumbled to himself angrily, "Guess he's doing well, thanks to the million dollars he cheated everyone out of… The bastard."
"What was that, Daddy?"
Geoff's eyes widened, spinning around to see Heidi had come back and was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "Uh, hey! Nothing…" He wasn't that concerned about the cussing, since Heidi was almost fifteen and had heard plenty of that talk from school, but he certainly hoped she hadn't heard anything about Alejandro scheming his way to the prize money. "Uh, you just wanna heat up a pizza?"
Heidi's confusion melted and she grinned. "Sure!" She flung the freezer door open and rooted around, pulling out a thin box. "Pepperoni?"
"You know it," he said with a small grin, still a bit shaken up. "Uh, can you get started on it? I have to… check up on stuff."
She nodded, turning a few knobs on their oven and pulling the frozen pizza out of the box. As he walked down the hall and into his office, he tried to calm down. "Okay, chill out, Geoff… You stopped dating Bridgette, like, twenty years ago. You still shouldn't be mad at Al…" But he knew it wasn't just that. He tricked Harold, LeShawna, Owen and a handful of his other friends, purely out of selfishness. And he got away with it.
But he can't be that bad now, right? He has a daughter now… But she could easily be a chip off the old block. Heidi had said that she was nice… But her father seemed nice at first, too…
As Alejandro slipped into bed and saw his wife, who was too busy reading a novel to notice him at first, he sighed and asked, "Heather?"
Heather looked up from her book and at her husband with curiosity. "Yes?" Heather truly had changed over the years. She was not nearly as mean as she had been when she was sixteen, since falling in love and becoming a mother had softened her up a bit. Even though she was kinder to her husband and extremely loving toward her only daughter, she still had her My Way Or The Highway attitude, especially when it came to other people. She was the queen of the PTA back in Newfoundland, since she was convinced that her little Carmen was better than all the other moms' children. An old dog can't learn all the new tricks, after all.
"Do you remember Geoff Sanders?"
"Geoff? From Total Drama?" Heather nodded, setting her book in her lap. "Yeah, why?"
Alejandro sat up more, running a hand through his dark hair. It was significantly shorter than it had been when he was a teen, but it stiff had a little scruff to it. "Turns out he has a daughter."
"Really?" Heather asked, shocked. They had lost contact with most of the cast years and years ago, since most of them hated them both and had no desire to stay in touch. "I never knew he and Bridgette had a kid. I at least heard through the grapevine about the others' kids. So Geoff and Bridgette still live around here?"
Alejandro was silent for a moment, then said, "She's not Bridgette's daughter. I asked her about Bridgette and she had no clue who I was talking about. Said her mother's name was Candace or something."
"Candace?" Heather ran a hand through her long black hair, which had taken her years to fully grown back, and she grumbled, "That name sounds familiar…"
"I know, it does to me, too…" He looked to the side, then added, "But whoever she is, she isn't alive."
Heather raised an eyebrow. Sliding the book onto her bedside table, she asked, "She talked about that the first time she met you? Seems like a weird ice breaker…"
Alejandro bit back a smirk and explained, "She didn't flat out say it, but she talked about Candace in the past tense. I wasn't going to just ask if she was dead, but you could tell by how she talked about her."
"Hmm. I always thought Geoff and Bridgette would end up together," Heather mused, slipping into a laying position. "Maybe we should meet up with him…" She honestly felt bad about how she acted toward the other competitors back then. Sure, she wasn't a saint now, but she wasn't a flat out witch like she had been. She kind of wanted to apologize, but hadn't talked to any of them in years, so she had no idea where any of them where, or if they were even still alive. Geoff seemed like the guy who would stay in touch with his old friends, so maybe meeting back up with him would be a good way to start… But there was one other problem, of course. How was she going to apologize? What would she even say? Sorry I kissed your boyfriend and got him voted off in the first season? Sorry I made fun of your frizzy afro that you had no control over in the second season? Sorry I made grinding sausages in the third season nine times as hard because I threw our electric grinder out the plane for no good reason other than my stubbornness?
"Not a bad idea, but… Let's wait, okay? Just so we can think about how to… approach it." Alejandro knew Heather regretted some of the things she did. He, however, regretted nothing. His scheming behavior won him a million dollars and drew him closer to his wife, so why would he? Still, this mystery Candace woman fascinated him, for some reason even he couldn't contemplate.
"Whatever," Heather said with an irritated sigh as she turned off the bedside lamp, enveloping the two in darkness.
Alejandro couldn't help but smirk as he slid down and enjoyed the cool silk sheets more. She really hadn't changed too much…
After finishing all of her homework for the night, not to mention the next few days, Melanie Torres got up from her kitchen table and placed the papers neatly into the backpack hanging on the coat rack by the front door. She ran a hand through her long brunette hair and tugged on her white button up blouse, because even at home she felt the urge to look her best.
She walked back to her father's small home office, where he was grading the papers he had collected that afternoon. "Dad?"
"Yes?" Noah answered, still not looking up from the paper and red pen in front of him.
"When's Mom coming home?"
"She probably won't be back for a few more hours," Noah told her, making a few red marks on the paper in front of him. "Why?"
"I just thought… We'd, y'know… be able to have dinner together… for once," she awkwardly said, looking down at her feet and scuffing the ground with the tip of her shoe.
Noah sided, spinning around in his spiral chair to face his daughter. "Melanie, you know we can't do that often. Your mother's always busy with work, I have papers to grade and I'm still working on my studies for my latest book and…" He sighed, hating to see the frown on her face. "Besides, you're fifteen years old. You're perfectly capable of making your own dinner."
"It's not just that, I…" Melanie shook her head. "Never mind. I'll make a TV dinner or something. Do you want something?"
"No thanks, I'll make something later…" He sat his pen down, right as the phone rang. He got up and walked out the door, patting his daughter on the shoulder as he did. He knew she was upset and wished there was something he could do, but there really wasn't…
Looking crestfallen, Melanie slowly walked into Noah's office, sitting down in his chair. She remembered how she had once played in there when she was little, pretending to be Mommy and throwing papers around here and there and scribbling all over Daddy's important documents with her crayons, even though that wasn't close to what her lawyer mother did. She learned that the hard way when her parents came home to the mess and gave her a long, hard scolding right before they fired her favorite nanny, who had been watching The Price is Right in the living room when she had done that.
Melanie sighed again, looking over at the Newton balls sitting on the corner of the desk. She had always wondered why her father had that, since he had a Bachelor's degree in pretty much every scientific field except physics, but she never bothered to ask. As she pulled the end ball and let it drop, she decided that he bought it because it was cool. Which it was, considering only the last two balls were moving. Melanie was always amazed at what certain things could do.
Resting her arms on the desk, she looked away from the shiny silver balls and looked at the only other thing on the desk that wasn't a stack of papers. It was a framed photo, depicting Melanie and her parents in London, Big Ben in the background. She had been twelve at the time, and it was the last vacation her and her parents had been on. It was right before her father's first book had been published, and the longest she had ever had one-on-one time with her mother and father.
Her mom, Courtney Torres, was a lawyer, and an amazing one at that. So amazing, in fact, that if a woman wanted to sue a restaurant because she spilt their hot coffee on her lap and burnt herself, Courtney would not only put the place out of business, but she'd probably be able to get you the manager's house, kids and pet cockatoo. She'd be lying if she said her mother hadn't managed to pull that off once or twice.
Noah Torres was a high school biology teacher, obviously, but he got most of his income from his writing. He had worked on several scientific studies over the years, condensing his research into a bajillion-page book, one that makes most college students shake in fright when they even think about reading it. But when people did read it, they had to admit that it was very well written and gave a lot of information on the subjects described. That could be why over five hundred thousand copies had been sold of it.
As you could tell, Melanie's parents were successful people. Oh, how Melanie admired them. She always did her best at everything she did, in hopes of becoming just as successful as her mom and dad. They had done so much with their lives, but she knew their accomplishments only came from hard, time-consuming work. She realized that, so she understood when they said they couldn't do things with her. She wasn't a child anymore.
So why did she still feel so sad?
It's not like they didn't love her or anything. She could tell her parents loved her with all their hearts, from the gentle way Courtney caressed her hair every morning as she hugged her before rushing off to work to the warm smile Noah greeted her with when she reentered his classroom after school. Melanie knew her parents weren't the kind of people to display affectionate emotions much, so those small moments meant a lot to her.
Still, those were what she got most of the time. Small moments. Melanie didn't have a huge amount of friends, since she was more withdrawn than most, but the few good friends she had were always telling her about going on shopping sprees with their moms or baseball games with their dads. Courtney wore the same type of clothing everyday, so shopping with her would be no fun, and Noah hated sports, so he'd just complain during a baseball game and then neither of them would have fun. But she'd still like more quality time with them. But work came first, fun came second.
And apparently, Melanie thought, so do I.
