Fourteen/Sixteen
Isabella heard the door slamming from the deck in the back garden. She winced as it rattled, the latest victim to a young man's fury. It was an unusually sunny day and she sat on the wicker patio furniture, working on her algebra homework.
Isabella felt horribly disproportionate. She stretched sweater season well past May to conceal her boobs, which she thought were too big for her. Her neck had grown absurdly long. Both her hands and feet were child-like and tiny. Burdened by her proportions. She wore oversized cardigans year-round. It wasn't much of a problem for most of the year in rainy Washington.
Her pert little nose, smattered with two or three freckles, gave her a strikingly delicate air. Isabella's cheekbones were sharp and pronounced. Next to her tiny, upturned nose, her eyes were huge. They made her look like an owl.
She wasn't ugly, really.
Daddy, and an assortment of people that couldn't say otherwise, claimed Isabella was gorgeous. They weren't entirely batshit crazy. Even at the worst of puberty, Isabella's face had remained clear; she had not sprouted a single pimple. As her stepmother liked to point out, accosting even unsuspecting strangers, Isabella had doe-like, dark brown eyes, framed by thick dark lashes. Mahogany brown, her hair fell to the small of her back in thick waves. As her stepmother constantly bemoaned, she had a habit of chewing on both her hair, her nails and wooden pencils.
She chewed on one like a beaver at the sound of the slamming door.
Even from her perch, yards away from the slamming door, she knew exactly who it was. His fury was audible; she could visualize him perfectly, tugging at his hair. Sometimes, if the luxurious red locks were particularly stiff, they looked like a devil's horns. He huffed virulently as if he had run a long distance. Isabella could imagine his chest rising and falling with every violent breath. Edward.
She bit back the impulse to groan.
Edward and his father had moved to Washington just a year earlier, relocating from Chicago. Their expectation was that the grief would stay behind. Instead, it had followed them and festered, like an infected open wound. Carlisle had faded; he went through the motions but seemed to constantly miss the bigger picture. He lived as passively as a living ghost, incapable of staying flesh for his remaining boy. Esme Swan, née Masen, had stepped in for her late sister, Elizabeth.
Esme was the only mother Isabella Swan had ever known. Charlie and Esme had met and married when Isabella was barely five. For that reason, Edward had just been like a particularly annoying, pesky distant cousin – a person Isabella was forced to deal with on occasional Christmases, when the Cullens flew up to Washington. Edward had poured ice cubes down Isabella's back at the wedding rehearsal. He'd used her dolls to play catch with Charlie's old retriever, Bailey, leading to an army of amputee Barbies that reminded Bella of the closing scene in Toy Story.
Now, both Edward and Isabella were half-orphaned creatures, thrust upon a surrogate Mom that did the best she could. Bella had been subjected to all sorts of horrible things with Edward – from funerals to ruinously tragic holidays, by way of joint appointments at the dental hygienist – and felt decreasingly sympathetic with every occasion. Besides, he completely ignored her at school or treated her as if she were stupid. Two things Isabella resented deeply.
Whereas Bella had never grieved her mother, Edward did. He was viciously mean to Esme; Bella had lost count of the many times he'd made her cry – directly or indirectly. A shitstorm of trouble followed Edward everywhere: drug consumption, punches, broken bones, fights, stitches, callous sex with older girls, sharing nudes callously. The sympathy Bella had felt the previous year had been uprooted by Edward's relentless selfishness. His grief was dark, turbulent and particularly destructive.
Ignoring the tornado headed her way, Bella focused on the equation before her. She stuck out the tip of her tongue would stick out in sheer concentration.
The back door was shoved open dramatically. Fuck.
"Oh, eh… Hi," Edward said.
Bella peered up at him, rolled her eyes, and returned to her equation.
"You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"
Bella looked up at him as if he'd gone completely insane. Against her better judgement, she looked up. He had pulled out a Marlboro from the inside lining of his jacket, along with a lighter. It was lined with black-and-white skulls.
"Don't light up in here. It's disgusting," she said tartly, wrinkling her nose.
He mumbled grumpily under his breath.
"That lighter is really hardcore," she deadpanned. "Score."
"Fuck you," he replied playfully. Bella watched with mild amazement as the corner of his mouth turned up. He grinned at her crookedly. Against her better judgement, she understood why … Kate Denali, if her memory served her correctly… was willing to look past the enormous ego and ugly personality. Something about that grin made her go weak at the knees, but she wasn't subjected to it often.
Isabella turned back to her homework, continuing to FOIL the crap out of her equation. She bristled heard Edward shuffle around the deck, felt him peer over her shoulder. Unlike most of the boys her age, he didn't stink like the men's aisle at Wal-Mart. "That's wrong," he said. Even then, there was a kind of cocky nonchalance to his every sentence.
"No, it's not," Bella said defensively.
"Yeah, it is. The answer is 32a squared."
Bella squinted down at her notebook as if expecting the answer to leap off the page. She leafed quickly through her notes, while Edward watched with cocky amusement. To her great devastation, Edward was right. Bella had wondered about his grades and his academic prowess in general. Esme had taken them out to pizza and a movie at the end of last year's term to celebrate their good grades, which Bella had taken to mean Edward had simply passed. Apparently, she was wrong.
Irritably, Bella erased her answer and jotted the right thing down.
"Why are you here this early?" she asked him irritably. "I thought you were with Kate Denali."
Edward had three bedrooms: one at the Swan's; another, at his grandfather's; and a third, at his father's. Carlisle was almost never home, which meant that Edward had turned it into a bachelor pad of sorts.
He raised his eyebrows. "You know about me and Kate Denali?"
"Edward, Mrs. Wu at the dry cleaner's knows about you and Kate Denali," Bella said.
Edward laughed. Bella hadn't heard him laugh in a long time, and she found herself smiling involuntarily at the rich sound.
"She asked me about it, too," Bella said dryly, lips threatening a smile. "Ed-wad seeing blonde chee-leader."
Edward's belly laugh deepened, and Bella couldn't help but giggle, too.
"Yeah, well, you tell Mrs. Wu she's wrong," Edward said eventually, his laughter dying down. His mood darkened at the edges.
"Oh," Bella said delicately. She glanced down at the informational pop up on her textbook, suddenly fascinated by the history of the FOIL Method.
"Aren't you going to ask me why?" Edward half-challenged her, folding his arms across his chest. He settled deep into the porch swing and glared at her almost defiantly. He was surprised Bella didn't seem rabidly interested.
"I don't want details," Bella said testily. "I think it's disgusting that you slept with her sister."
"Fuck Tanya," Edward said immediately, though his eyes sparkled with that genuine amusement again.
"That did seem to be your motto," Bella said without thinking, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Edward burst out laughing. Underneath her little hand, her lips turned up and she bit her lip to keep from giggling. Again, Edward laughed. Bella found this Edward oddly endearing. In the past year, he only cackled in a cruel kind of way – usually to mock someone in the middle of a screaming match. He had a nice smile, and an even nicer laugh.
"How do you know I slept with Tanya?" he asked her amusedly, without the slightest trace of hostility.
"Mrs. Wu."
The two of them burst out laughing.
"No, I…" Bella bit her lip, then said in a low voice, as if afraid the squirrels would overhear. "I see lots of… things" – at this, she turned a bright shade of red - "but I really don't want to pry."
Edward cocked his head to the side, as if seeing her for the very first time. His expression was soft. "You're more mature than all those noisy bitches put together."
Bella eyed him disgustedly. "You shouldn't call them bitches," she said. "Even if they are dumb enough to sleep with you."
Despite himself, Edward laughed again. "Doesn't give them the right to ask noisy fucking questions," he said darkly. "They think that just because they can see things, or think they know things, that they have a right to ask."
Bella could almost see the darkness crawling into his eyes, vanquishing that light that she'd found so endearing a minute ago.
"You wouldn't know what that's like," Edward finished darkly, turning away as if looking a million miles into the horizon.
Bella snorted. "I don't know what that's like? Edward, you've gone out in public with me. That missionary outside Costco this weekend that decided to diagnose me on the spot, and it was just last week," she finished with a giggle and a wry smile.
Edward actually burst out laughing after remembering. She'd said she was hit by a blimp.
"And it is a pretty personal story," Bella continued thoughtfully. "You know it, right?"
Edward nodded thoughtfully, eyeing her so intensely she almost blushed. "Yeah, I know it. And I guess you know all of mine, too."
Bella rolled her eyes. "Even things I'd rather not know," she said in a playful deadpan. "Like how you've basically transmitted HPV to every cheerleader in Washington state."
Edward had the decency to look mildly ashamed, but then his lips curled up. "Those bitches wish -"
Bella grabbed a nearby throw pillow and tossed it at his head. "You're disgusting, Edward."
He grinned crookedly at her, his expression soft. He grabbed the throw pillow between his hands. Despite herself, she grinned back.
"Can I do my homework here with you?" he asked her.
"Are you going to blow cigarette smoke up my ass?" she asked, and then surprised she'd voice the thought out loud, clapped her hand against her mouth.
Edward laughed again.
"I like the uninhibited you," he said, again, eyeing her with that intense softness. "And no. I might check your homework for you. There's like 10 mistakes on that shit."
Fifteen/Seventeen
May
Three taps on her window alerted her; she rubbed at her eyes and peered into the window. Edward was leaning against the ledge, like Peter Pan's evil older brother. He looked a little disheveled, a tie thrown around his neck. The buttons in his white dress shirt were undone at the collar and the sleeves. The veins of his forearms strained. There was a bottle of something that looked suspiciously like rum in his hand. Even in her sleep deprived state, Bella's stomach summersaulted. Was that what it was like to feel attracted to someone?
The first time he had snuck into her bedroom, Bella had almost screamed. Shushing her, he'd snuck in with long, agile legs. He had leaned on the poster of her bed, a bottle of something in his hand. I just needed to talk to someone, he had said. Bella had just listened, hugged her legs to her chest and paid enraptured attention. She had listened every night since – when sleep eluded him, when he fought with his Dad, when he came home late after curfew.
It was the crack of dawn – that indefinite space between Prom Night and the Morning After. The rest of the Forks under-twenty one crew was out, becoming belligerently drunk with every passing minute. She felt so silly and dorky in Snoopy Pajamas. Bella Swan had been sitting in bed, curled up under a blanket, a tear slipping at the painful poignancy of the The Kite Runner. Edward Cullen, a hero, had gone to prom with a senior cheerleader – Victoria Hunter. Bella imagined him walking into the Gym, decorated in Under the Sea themes, to loud cheers and envious stares. A part of her felt dumb – she had wanted to be there with him so badly, even as the thought of it made her blush. What would she have been doing there, literally incapable of putting one foot in front of the other?
Despite herself, she sat up in bed and turned on the light. The sight of him made her smile involuntarily. As the light lit up his face, Bella could see that crooked grin spread across his face, those soft features. He took the light as an invitation to step in; expertly, he pushed the window open and snuck into her bed. Edward walked up to her and kissed her forehead. He smelled like marihuana, alcohol, and cigarette smoke.
"You're home early," she said teasingly, sitting up. Last year, he had stared in a Greek Drama featuring the Denali sisters; Tanya had won the prize and attended Prom with Edward fucking Cullen, quarterback extraordinaire. Edward had returned home at 7:00 AM to be accosted by his worried Aunt – eyes puffy and bloodshot, grinning like a canary-catching cat.
"Those fucknuts were getting on my nerves," he muttered testily. "And the Gym smells like fucking cheese, I shit you not. Like sweat and cheese. No amount of Glade would ever get rid of that fucking stench."
Despite herself, Bella laughed. "You reek, too, you know," she said, flapping her hand. "Sit downwind from me."
"Smart-ass," he said with a chuckle.
They sat in silence for a moment. "I'd much rather hang out here with you," he told her as if it were an errant thought. Bella's heart fluttered. She eyed him peculiarly, ever vigilant of her growing status as his friend.
That afternoon in the porch had marked a Before and After. He had returned every subsequent afternoon, just to hang out. Asked her questions about their classmates and found her answers fucking funny. It wasn't unusual for him to sneak into her bedroom at night; he did often. Their conversation several months earlier had been a turning point. They had dissected their shared dislike of the crew of Forks High's characters. The days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months, and their rivalry, to friendship – their proximity, to trust.
"We're not going to hang out," she said with a playful eyeroll. "It's… four AM, Edward."
He sighed. Almost as if about to crawl over her body, he crawled towards the headboard. As if snatching it away, he grabbed her copy of The Kite Runner. He flipped it open, studying it like an animal might study a foreign object, holding it in different angles. He flopped down himself on the headboard next to her.
"What's this about?" he asked.
Bella couldn't help the wonder in her voice. "It's lovely," she said earnestly. "I think it's the loveliest book I've ever read."
She expected him to mock her. Instead, he peeked up at her from underneath thick golden eyelashes, his expression soft, almost pained.
"Yeah?" he asked her tenderly. "What is it about?"
"I – I didn't know any of this, but apparently, there is a minority in Afghanistan," she began softly, sneaking further into the covers. His weight pinned the covers down. She watched with muted wonder as his eyes began to drift closed, fluttering. His breathing was light. "The story is about two little boys, one in the Hazara minority…"
When he fell asleep, she didn't have the heart to wake him. She snuggled deeper under the covers and turned off the light.
Fifteen/Seventeen
Bella was surprised to find Edward sitting in front of her locker the very Monday after Prom. Edward didn't acknowledge her often in school - and Bella wasn't sure if he ignored her the way he might a sister, or out of embarassment. Weird, weird, Bella Swan.
He was wearing those reading glasses that made him look…oddly sexy. He had rolled his sleeves up his forearms, and it made him look even cuter. Embarrassed by her own thought, she blushed and lowered her gaze as she approached her locker and its new invader. He fixed her with a mossy, green stare as she approached.
Bella wore a warm gray cashmere turtleneck underneath a navy peacoat, coupled with a square-patterned skirt. Two little pearl earnings adorned her earlobes. She's so pretty, Edward thought. Wordlessly, she nudged him away from the locker.
Edward's gaze fell to her feet. She was wearing a pair of suede ankle-boots — not what she needed, he knew. "Shouldn't you be using those other shoes to walk?" he asked, puzzled.
Bella snorted. "I think calling what I do walking is a bit of a stretch," she pointed out acidly, trying to inch closer to her locker.
"You put one foot in front of the other and get places. That's good enough for me."
The comment hurt.
"Is it?" Isabella demanded abruptly, surprised at her own outburst.
Stupidly, his mouth fell open. "What? Why?" His voice was high-pitched.
She shook her head and grabbed her Chemistry textbook, placing it on her lap. "Never mind. I'll eh…" She sighed, exasperated. "I'm having lunch with Eric."
Edward groaned. Whereas Isabella had been ostracized for an obvious reason - a fact that made Edward sick with remorse and fury- Eric was ostracized for being weird. He was ugly as all fuck. His skin was shiny all over, pox-marked with bad acne. He grew a tiny little beard that reminded Edward of pubes. Edward had seen him use all ten fingers to dismember his sandwich, eating with the nervous anxiety of a famished dog. Frankly, he wanted that fucker as far away from Bella as possible.
"Fuck that freak," Edward said. "You shouldn't go anywhere near him."
Bella slammed her locker door. "You're such an asshole," she muttered under her breath.
For the first time in a while, Edward was thankful she couldn't easily see his grimace. Watching her, Edward resolved he'd never ignore her at school again.