Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.
Roswell: Re-Imagined
Written by Horatio Jaxx
Chapter 22: The Reluctant Prima Donna
Isabel Evans was a slender and shapely five-foot ten-inch-tall blonde. And she was easily perceived to be one of the prettiest girls at Roswell High School. Her quiet manner and scornful glances towards others made most students believe that she did not like them. The truth was that she never wanted to be too close to anyone. She feared the secret that she guarded about herself would be discerned in any close personal relationship.
Life began for Isabel the day she was adopted by Phillip and Diane Evans. Prior to that event she could only recall vague images, lights, shadows of people moving about her, the sound of children in the background and a vague image of a woman's face. All of this existed as some abstract collage in the back of her mind. Her fixed memory of people, places and things that she was familiar with began with Phillip and Diane. Specific recollections of any person, place or event prior to her adoption was oddly missing.
Phillip and Diane were told at the time of the adoption that Max and Isabel were orphaned children from Eastern Europe, and that was the reason behind their hauntingly quiet stares. In reality, their human lives began two weeks earlier and everything they saw, felt, tasted and heard was new to them. Had it not been for the dreams that Isabel and Max were piecing together by the age of five, they might have easily believed that Phillip and Diane were their biological parents.
Isabel and Max were seven when they approached their parents with the question, "are we adopted?" Phillip and Diane were not overly shocked by that. They had, by then, grown accustomed to the very bright intellects that their two adoptees possessed. When they first brought them home, Phillip and Diane considered the possibility that they might retain memories of their birth parents, but within a few short months after the adoption it became clear to them that they were the only parents that Max and Isabel knew. Phillip and Diane embraced the opportunity to fill that void in their lives unencumbered by an adoption being a divide between them and their children. Despite that wish, they told Max and Isabel the truth when they were asked by their children, and they watched them assimilate the information as casually as if it was a bedtime story.
Isabel adored her parents and they adored her. All her memories regarding Phillip and Diane reinforced her feeling of being loved and protected by them. From nearly the first day of their union, Isabel basked in the warmth of their affection. Home was wherever they were, and she was thrilled to be their little girl. She gave no weight or thought to the fact that she was adopted. She had no other memories of her life to compare Phillip and Diane against. She was completely happy to be where she was, and she had no desire to be anywhere else.
At eight years of age, Isabel and Max began to realize that they were different from other people. They thought nothing of that at the time, and the difference felt like a normal extension of who they were. They did feel a need to hide their difference from others, but even in that it was more a reflex action than a thought of deception. Their preoccupations during this time were of little difference to any other eight-year-old. Having fun while they learned about their world was what they did each morning when they got up. And when it came to learning, they were far more adept at that than their peers. Over the next several years, they lived their lives with no notice of their extraordinary talents.
It was at the age of twelve when their difference became a wonder and then a worry for them. They gradually became cognizant of the enormity of the variation between them and everyone else. Because of that awareness, Isabel began to entertain thoughts that someone outside of the family might separate her from her parents. It was at this time that a need to blend in with the other children became a matter of importance for Isabel and Max. An indifference for these extraordinary talents was no longer enough. They had reached the awareness that they had to hide all traces of it. Who or what she was or where she came from did not matter to Isabel. Holding on to the life she had was the most important thing to her and being separated from her parents was not an option.
Blending in with the amalgamation of children at school and in the neighborhood had been an easy enough task to effect during Isabel and Max's preteen years. They freely associated with other children without regard for any differences between them. They had only to join into their playground games to blend in. Starting around the age of thirteen the varied intellects and interests of their peers began to complicate that practice of hiding within the whole. As the children around Isabel and Max started dividing into separate associations based upon social, political, philosophical and economical divides, they found themselves increasingly being forced to bond with a particular group. For Isabel, bonding with anyone outside of her family was something she preferred not to do. Maintaining a reclusive deportment was an easier solution to that problem. That was the demeanor that Max and Michael chose, but they had each other to socialize with. Isabel had no one of her own sex to share her isolation with. On top of that, she found the façade of being aloof diametrically opposed to who she was. It did not take her long to find an acceptable solution to that problem. She allowed herself to be drawn into a clique of friends that maintained a shallow and impersonal relationship with one-another.
Sara Lange, Allison Frazier and Emilie Porter were three attractive young ladies, of Isabel's age, who associated exclusively among themselves. Isabel turned down several requests that she join their quorum before finally relenting to the invite. She was at first reluctant to be part of such a close-knit group, but that resistance dissolved away when she learned how disconnected they were with each other. Isabel determined, after a couple of weeks of trial, that she could easily hide within this circle of the purely superficial. There were no secrets given in confidence. There were no confessionals required for acceptance. The whole of their relationships was based around their physical appearance and most especially their attire.
Of the three of them Sara Lange was the only one who was on a par with Isabel in aesthetics but being extremely attractive was not the link that held them together. What they had most in common, and what was the nexus of their association, was the lifestyle they enjoyed, compliments of their well-to-do parents. That, above all else, was the requirement necessary for admittance within their group. Isabel gave no importance to the frivolous nature of their society. She was too busy being happy about having a society to hide within. That happiness frequently exposed itself in smiles and flippant retorts directed at anyone who crossed her path.
It was around the start of Isabel's sophomore year of high school when her superficial existence lost all its appeal for her. Her need to be close to someone and to share a sincere bond of friendship had been suppressed to near the straining point. There were several students within Roswell High School that she would have enjoyed being in just that kind of relationship with. Not least of among these were Liz Evans and Maria De Luca. She envied them their close camaraderie and resented them for making her feel unlikeable. The more she wanted what they had the angrier she got at the rest of the world. From her sophomore year forward, Isabel was seemingly in a perpetual foul mood. She scowled at everyone and rarely had anything nice to say. For many she had a reputation for being a bitch. Only to Max and Michael was she thought of as the reluctant prima donna.