Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight... Obviously. I do however own a very cute, plastic penguin... Ha-ha.
CHAPTER 1, ROSALIE'S POV
The dirty, ex-white walls hadn't changed at all during the hour I'd been staring at them. The chair I sat on was if possible even more uncomfortable than it had been a while ago. I was surprised that it hadn't split into small parts yet. I wouldn't miss it if it would do so. Muddy, hard wood was hardly anything to miss.
I sighed, because I knew that I had to start getting ready. Missing the bus was not something I liked to do.
Dried pieces of dirt fell of my skin as I stood up. That reminded me again why I wouldn't miss the ugly chair if it broke. Nevertheless, then I wouldn't have anything to sit on, except for the dirty thing Conny and Laila called a mattress. My substitute for a bed, since they didn't afford to buy me or my brother beds. I had never complained, but I suspected that they found the mattresses in the dump.
I randomly pulled up some clothes from the floor. Underwear, blue baggy jeans and a long sleeved black shirt that I was pretty sure belonged to my brother... Bingo! That would be OK as my outfit for the day. It probably didn't look cool –these were the times when I wanted to have a mirror-, though I always dressed like this. There was no other choice for me.
After I got dressed, I quickly put some make-up on. I had grown used to the smoky eyes I always made that I didn't need a mirror to do that. I put up my long, blonde hair in a ponytail. Taking one last breath, I threw my empty school bag over my shoulder –prop, so I wouldn't seem too odd- and opened the door.
I glanced back one time, glanced back to the small room that was supposed to be my and my brother's bedroom. It was more of a mess than usual. As messy as a room similar to a jail cell, only having an area of seven square meters (I didn't know exactly) and only containing three furniture, could look. The furniture was my mattress, my brother's mattress, and the ugly chair.
The whole room looked as if it had suffered from an explosion that had put a thick layer or ashes, dirt and dust on everything. I completely loathed it. That didn't change anything though.
I closed the door and walked down the small hallway to the kitchen. The only was to leave the house was through the kitchen and then the 'front door'. The house my brother, our foster parents and me lived in was very small. It contained two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. The dust covered all of the rooms in thick sheets. It was gross.
Already before I walked into the kitchen, I heard angry voices. It wasn't a rare thing that Conny and Laila (our "lovely foster parents") had a fight. They were stupid enough to remain married even though they hated each other. Both of them were sitting at the kitchen table, which only had two chairs. They were eating a piece of old bread. I recognized it as the food my brother had stolen for us a few days ago.
"What time is it?" I interrupted their fight.
Conny snorted. "Late, so leave before I kick your filthy ass out!"
Conny was the ruder one of them. He was about forty years and treated me like trash after I refused to fuck him. He was bald; fat; and if that wasn't enough, disgusting. Especially disgusting was the smell of sweat that surrounded him.
Laila, who was sitting next to him, was not much nicer. Her favorite hobbies were fighting, writing, and then fighting a bit more. "I'm saying this the fucking last time, Conny! We're killing Martha instead," She growled.
Conny disagreed (Geez, how surprising). "No, we're shooting her in a few weeks!"
For someone who didn't know them, it sounded like they were planning a crime. That wasn't what they were doing at all. They were authors – terribly bad authors, I could add. I once read one of their stories. After that, I couldn't sleep for weeks. Even my brother could write better than that, and he had never went to High School.
I decided not to stick around and see how they would kill Martha. Instead, I slammed the front door and jogged towards the bus station.
I didn't have a jacket and the days only got colder. Most days in Seattle and Forks were cold, but it became worse on the autumn. I'd have to beg my brother to fix one for me – Conny and Laila would obviously not buy me one.
It took a while to run to the bus station, even though I was racing forward quicker now. The bad, dangerous neighborhood we lived in had a reputation bad enough to make sure that no bus ever stopped there. That meant that I had to walk about twenty minutes, in the creepy backyards of ruined houses, until I reached the closest station where the bus stopped.
People had ranked Seattle as the third city with most crimes in Washington. (A/N: I don't know if this is true or not, but let's just say that it is, okay?). I lived in the worst part of it, and honestly, I doubted that there could be much worse things on Earth. If such cruelty could exist... I wouldn't want to continue living.
There were many times I didn't want to live...
The only thing that made me stay alive was my brother. And he had to face the consequences of life or death every day. Ironic, wasn't it? No.
When I finally reached the bus station, I saw that the bus wasn't there yet. I'd have to wait a while. I tried and failed not to think about my brother. He often appeared in my thoughts. The problem was that whenever I though of him, I though about facts of him, which lead me to memories I didn't want to be reminded of.
His name: Jasper Whitlock. Age: Nineteen years. Birthday: The ninth of December – the same day our mother died. Other things I knew about him: He looked dangerous with his dirt blonde hair and muscles, and his dark eyes that once used to be blue.
He hadn't gone to High School, but had a higher IQ than most of the people in Forks. He was the fourth in command in the largest, most dangerous gang in Seattle. Trust me; there were many gangs there. He had to do awful things to earn us enough money to keep us alive.
Oh crap and rotten cucumbers... That explained why I didn't like to think of him. It brought along too many guilty feelings. Lucky for me, the bus came and stopped at the station. As I walked past the ex-con bus driver, he glared at me, as always. Some things just never changed.
The bus was dirty and looked like it was on a verge of a breakdown. Even though I no longer was in the worst part of Seattle, this part wasn't a piece of cake either. Only three people were sitting on the bus except me.
I had to look forward to a forty-minute bus ride until I reached my school, Forks High School. It was a normal school; somewhere in-between fancy and ugly. I didn't go to a school in Seattle, because I didn't want anybody to find out about... Well, things with my brother. And that we only had a budget of twenty dollars per day – when Jasper had been successful. I wasn't ashamed of it (not much, at least) but I knew that people would treat me differently. I'd be nothing more than a piece of trash in their eyes, which was one step worse than the nobody they thought I was now.
I was not popular in Forks High. The students all treated me like a freak – I've freaked out in class a few times, and I had not wanted to date the school "hottie", Tyler Crowley, when he asked me out.
A few stops later, Jessica Stanley, Angela Weber and Mike Newton walked on the bus. They sat a few rows in front of me, and they didn't notice me. They were the so-called "popular persons" whom "everybody" wanted to hang out with. Personally, I thought that they were ridiculously false and bitchy. That didn't stop me from eavesdropping on them though. Ha-ha, I noticed that judgmental look you would give me if you were in this story. Hey, I had nothing better to do!
"I'm so excited about the Cullen's!" Jessica squeaked. Her false voice, loud giggles and the way she kept throwing her hear back was just a few of her 'false rich girl qualities'. It felt as if she had tried to be the new Barbie. Key word: Tried.
"I wonder if they will be nice," the quieter Angela said.
"Of course, they'll be! Lauren saw the new boys, and apparently, they're really hot. We definitely have to score a date with them." Jessica glanced at Mike, obviously trying to make him jealous.
Who does it matter to that four new students are going to attend the school? They would be just like the rest of them: rich and addicted to gossip. Even I knew things about the Cullen's, and I almost never listened to gossip. Their names were Edward, Alice, Emmett, and was it... Beth? Whatever. One of the new doctors in the Forks hospital had adopted them when they lived in... Whatever.
"The weird thing is that all of them are so hot!" Jessica sighed, once again jealous.
I rolled my eyes and pretended to sleep during the rest of the bus ride. I could compare listening to Jessica with an extremely slow suicide. EXTREMELY slow and boring. The bus stopped a while later and the driver announced that we were at Forks High.
I was the last one to walk off the bus – I always was; it was one of my daily routines since the first day I went to school without my brother. I loved routines, and honestly, how could anyone not like them? Routines kept life nice and easy. They kept me out of the spotlight, out of reach from curious questions.
I walked over to my locker, pulling out random books as I looked at my schedule. Just great, go ahead and ruin my day, I muttered too low for anyone to hear. My first class for the day was Home Economics, which I called Homecs.
Before you think that I was overreacting, let me just say that you never had Homecs with Ms Fitzburg. She wasn't the only terrible teacher at Forks High (the math teachers hobby was to give detentions and the history teachers got all her info from Wikipedia). However, I thought that Ms Fitzburg was the most ridiculous.
She had split up the seating charges so that the boys sat in the front of the classroom, where she could show off her way-too-low-cut-cleavage. Meanwhile she gave the girls death stares. She probably thought that she was hot or something. Hmmpf. In reality, she was in her mid-forties and had acne all over her tits. I tried not to look, but she honestly didn't know that clothes weren't made to show off her boobs as if she was naked. On the other hand, maybe she didn't care. That option was even more disgusting.
I didn't bother to hide my annoyance as I marched to the Homecs classroom. Not only did I have a terrible lesson I had to attend, I also heard how all the students giggled behind my back. That wasn't anything new, but they usually weren't so obvious about it.
Hanna Wider and her boyfriend whispered and pointed at me, and they looked away when I glared at them. Josephine and Rachel openly stared at me. Jessica mumbled freak when I walked past her. Seriously, where did they get all the newfound attention on me? I wore the same clothes as usual; my emo-makeup looked like it always did; and I had not gotten in a fight or anything like that. I hadn't done anything that wasn't in my routines.
I sighed and did my best to ignore it, even though it was harder than usual. Shouldn't they be whispering about their new, shiny toys –the Cullen's? It was when I walked into building four I saw Lauren Mallory. I did not want her to see me. If I knew her right, she had probably spread some rumor about me which made people gossip about me. Lovely?… Hell no.
I had a complicated past with her. The story started with her acting like a bitch and it ended with her acting like a bitch. Somewhere in between that, she found out some of my secrets – such as that I had a brother- and had tried to seduce Jasper. She was the biggest whore I knew.
Each time she noticed me, she said some mean comment which made people gossip about me. Today, I really wanted to avoid her, since there was already too much attention on me. That was why I rushed into the Homecs classroom as if my life depended on it.
However, I shouldn't have looked down to the floor in my hurry to escape her. Suddenly I crashed into something that felt like a brick wall but must've been a person. A guy type of person.
"FUCK!" I swore under my breath. A sore head was not one of the things I needed. At all. My head spun and I tried to re-gain control of my sight but it was too complicated.
Who the fuck spent so much time on his muscles that crashing into him made me dizzy?
Well, except Jasper and his gang, who all needed those kinds of muscles to survive? I doubted that any of the rich kids in Forks High was in a gang or anything similar.
"Aww, are you falling for me already?" A smooth voice, which I didn't recognize at all, said.
What the hell was that?
