Disclaimer: Twilight is not my property.
Song for this one is School Day by Chuck Berry. I think the 1969 version is the best one.
The next few chapters or so all involve Bella's first day.
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Chapter Six:
In Which Charlie Threatens Handcuffs and Bella Is Abducted by a Cave Man
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Charlie stood in front of me with his cop-face on. "Bella, I don't want to do this, but if you don't get out that door…" He swallowed audibly. "I am going to have to handcuff you and drive you to school in the cruiser."
I stared at Charlie in shock. He was serious. Going to school on the first day with orange streaks across my face seemed like an extreme form of hatred—especially from Charlie.
I gave him a flat look. "Charlie, it looks like the headless horseman lobbed a pumpkin at my face."
He didn't say anything. He just stared at me, unwavering, and he'd definitely noticed that I'd called him Charlie and not dad. He hated when I did that. Also, Charlie wasn't into much besides fishing and being a cop and sports and cards and more fishing. There was the definite possibility that he had no idea what the pumpkin-throwing headless horsemen was…
I decided to try a new tactic. "Moreover, I have a broken hand." I held my bandaged arm dramatically aloft, as evidence.
Charlie's face didn't change, and I realized that this was probably protocol for him. Crying would not get you out of traffic ticket with my dad. He spoke in a stern voice, "Bells, it is your first day of school. Those marks are going to last for two weeks at least. You are not going to miss two weeks of school. It's your junior year."
"No," I countered.
Charlie shook the handcuffs in front of my face.
I groaned. Unlike my mother, Charlie's force of will was ironclad. He was as easily stubborn as I was—maybe even more so. Thus, I decided to think logically. If I drove myself, I could at least hide for a little while, but if Charlie drove me… there was no escaping attention when you got dropped off at school in a police cruiser. "Fine." I huffed, not looking at him.
Charlie gave a sigh of relief and then gave me a crinkly-eyed smile. The smile had no effect. "Don't worry, Bella, the kids are nice here in Forks."
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. It would appear that my father was perfectly at ease with sacrificing his daughter to the harpies and snakes of teenage hell. I wanted to beat my head against the wall. Well, so much for "starting over."
Charlie left for work, and I stared at my battered reflection in the bathroom mirror. I picked up the bottle of peroxide, and poured some into a cotton ball. It seemed to help, slightly—but there was no getting over this immediately. As a final step, I pulled out the new bottle of foundation I'd picked up from the twenty-four hour drug store yesterday. I'd never really owned much makeup besides lip gloss and mascara before, but I was willing to brave all paths this morning.
I smeared it on, but there was no helping it. The foundation did almost nothing.
There was no fixing this.
Death by mortification, here I come.
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I kept my face ducked down as I drove the truck into the school parking lot. Ordinarily, I felt nothing short of devotion to my rusty, retro-cool hunk of junk, but as the engine sputtered and kicked, I muttered a slew of insults because the noises drew the attention of the early arrivals. I ducked my head even lower, so that my eyes barely peeked over the steering well. Driving forward, I frantically searched the row of buildings until I saw the one labeled "Front office."
I kicked the gas and shot forward, flying ahead, but at the last minute a small shape appeared in front of me.
I slammed on the brakes. The truck groaned in dismay at the rough treatment. The small shape was a girl. She was staring at me in shock. Short, thin, with pretty features, and impeccably dressed, she looked exactly like the sort of Ms. In-Crowd who would love to give me hell. I kicked the truck into reverse, and with a skill that surprised my own self, I slid the truck into an open parking spot. Without looking back, I flung open my door and darted into the front office, breathing heavily.
I marched directly up to a red-haired woman, sitting behind a long pea-green Formica countertop that divided the room.
She gawked at my face.
Lovely. I had a feeling that I was going to get a lot of this today. "Bella Swan?" I said hopefully.
Behind me, I heard a door open.
"Oh, Chief Swan's daughter. I'm Ms. Cope. Yes, yes… I have your schedule…" her voice trailed off. She was unabashedly examining the orange streaks on my face, probably trying to figure out if I had some chronic skin ailment.
Someone behind me cleared their throat.
My body froze, and I did not turn. Instead, I pulled the sides of my hair forward, so that it fanned around my face.
"Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Cullen?" Ms. Cope asked the person standing behind me. She slid a folder to me across the countertop.
A deep voice spoke up behind me. "I just need to talk to the new girl."
Ms. Cope didn't look up. "That's fine, dear. She's got all her forms, so why don't you help show her to her first class?"
"My pleasure," the voice answered coldly.
A chill shot down my spine.
The phone rang, and Ms. Cope marched over to answer it.
"You know," the voice spoke. "It's rude to almost run someone over and then just run away."
My shoulders stiffened. I took a deep breath and turned slowly.
A behemoth of a teenage boy was towering over me. He looked angry.
But then he saw the orange streaks.
He lost the intensity in his expression and curiously cocked his head to the side. "Why do you have orange stuff on your face?"
I was terrified. The words sputtered out almost as a question, "War dance?"
Clearly, of all the words to escape from my mouth, the ones I'd had spoken were not the ones he had expected. His face broke into a remarkably teddy bear-like grin. There were dimples and everything. "War dance? What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. He looked like he was about to laugh, but then his brow furrowed as he looked at the dark streaks across my face, "Did someone hurt you?"
"Uh, no. Actually, I tried to hurt him." I held up my bandaged wrist.
He looked very confused. "Who'd you hurt?"
"Jacob."
"Who's Jacob?"
"He's my friend from La Push."
"He's Quileute?" the boy surmised.
"Yeah?"
"You punched him?" He pointed to my wrist. He looked like he was trying to hold back a smile.
I nodded. "Well, I tried anyway."
The boy burst into ear-splitting laughter. He turned to Ms. Cope, who was looking at him disapprovingly. "She," he proclaimed to the elder matron, "punched an indian!" And then he was hooting over his own joke, grasping onto the counter to hold himself steady while he laughed.
Ms. Cope shook her head in amusement, more at the boy's mirth than at his supposed joke.
He turned back to me, another question on his face. "But how did you get the orange stuff on your face?"
"He painted my face—but it didn't wash off," I explained miserably.
"Why'd he paint your face in the first place?"
"He was trying to pep me up for school today. It's my first day. It was supposed to be funny."
The Cullen boy laughed again. Apparently, he thought it was funny.
"Can't you, like, cover it up or something?"
"I tried to, but it didn't work," I explained.
He tilted his head to the side and bit the side of his cheek as if he was thinking hard on something. "Is that why you almost ran over my sister? You were trying to hide your face?"
I blinked once and then looked down ashamedly.
"Eh, don't worry about it too much," Emmett reassured. "She's so short. She's hard to spot most of the time."
I looked up and stared at him in disbelief.
He laughed again. "I'm Emmett Cullen by the way." He held out his hand.
"Bella Swan," I mumbled.
He beamed down at me.
I had the funniest feeling that I'd made a new friend.
"Bella, I think I know how to fix this for you."
I looked up at him hopefully.
A mischievous gleam crept into his eyes. "Just trust me and all that, eh, warrior princess?"
The next thing I knew, my new compadre, Emmett, had scooped me up and flung me over his shoulder, causing the air to rush out of my lungs with a yelp. Leaving behind a wide-eyed Ms. Cope, Emmett pushed open the glass front door of the office and ran out, whooping as he ran with me across the parking lot.
Don't look up, Bella. Don't look up. Eyes closed. If you do, you'll see the people staring and then, you'll vomit on Emmett.
The next thing I know I was dropped onto a bench. The world was spinning.
I heard a bitter, feminine voice yelling. "Are you a caveman, Emmett? You were sent to exact an apology, not abduct her."
"But she punched an Indian," he proclaimed, as if this somehow explained everything.
I looked up, my vision more or less in line with gravity now.
Two exceptionally beautiful girls were staring at me. One of them was the little dark-haired girl that I had almost run over. The other was a blond-haired, blue-eyed image of perfection, and she was giving me a death stare. I instinctively shrank back.
But they both gasped when they saw my face.
The blond turned on Emmett. "What did you do to her?" she demanded ferociously.
He cowered in her shadow. "Chill, Rosie. I didn't do anything. I told you. Bella, here, punched an indian!" The last part was proclaimed with evident delight.
The small, elf-like one was carefully examining my face. "What happened to your skin?"
"My friend thought it would be funny to paint my face, but it didn't wash off afterwards."
She took on a very businesslike expression. "Do you know what type of makeup was used?"
I sighed sadly. "I only found out after. He used henna."
Both she and 'Rosie' collectively gasped. They both crowded next to me, running their fingers along my cheeks. My features froze at the contact. I stopped breathing. I wasn't used to having strangers so close to me.
"Normal foundation wouldn't work," Rose declared, scrutinizing my right cheek.
"We'd need a liquid-powder combination—something really thick."
They both turned to each other at the same time. "Theater makeup."
Once again, I was being dragged to an unknown location. Emmett was left behind, staring open-mouthed at the sporadic burst of female energy. The little one, who I now understood to be called Alice, had a terrible amount of strength for one so small. At the end of our journey into a building and down a flight of steps and along a hall, she shoved me into metal chair with a mustard-colored seat cushion. I barely had a chance to look around the room when thick creamy sticks were being dragged across my cheeks and daubed onto my face.
"Grab the mime paint—this is ten shades too dark. She's very fair."
"It needs to be dark to cover it up," Rosalie argued.
"Not that dark. We can still cover the brightest spots up with a bit of blush."
I heard a murmur of consent. I closed my eyes. I felt various creams and ointments being layered on and smeared across my skin.
"Bella, you can look now."
I opened my eyes and stared into a large mirror square mirror surrounded on the top and sides by round white lights.
I gently touched my cheek. I smiled at the two girls, "They're gone!"
They both smiled back at me.
I turned back to the mirror. I wasn't used to wearing any makeup, let alone the leather layer that seemed to quilt my skin now, yet, the makeup covered the marks perfectly, and it actually managed to look somewhat natural—more natural than the regular makeup on some girls I had seen. It still felt very odd. I squished up my face at my reflection.
"Oh, don't do that!" Alice exclaimed. "You'll get lines, since it's so thick."
I nodded, and then I looked down at my hands. "I really can't thank you guys enough. You did this for me—even after I almost…" I made a sheepish gesture toward Alice.
"Oh, Bella!" She waved her hand dismissively at me. "All is forgiven. I cannot believe that you came to school with the henna marks, though. I would have barred the door and refused to leave the house."
Rosalie nodded fervently in agreement.
"I tried, but my dad's a cop. He threatened handcuffs and the police cruiser."
They gasped.
"Men just don't understand," Alice sighed knowingly. "Well, all is well that ends well, and because of the henna marks, you met us." She smiled hugely at this.
I shyly smiled back. I still couldn't believe these two girls were being so nice to me.
"What's your first class, Bella?" Rosalie asked.
I grabbed my schedule out of my bag, but Alice snatched it from me. "You have English with me!" she exclaimed excitedly.
With that, she grabbed my hand and dragged me to my first class, promising with a call over her shoulder to see Rosalie at lunch.
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