A/N: This is an apology fic for my shitter than shit updating. I am so devoid of any desire to write lately I am actually starting to feel anxious about it. I am 10% from finishing BS, but it's just... blah. I don't know what's going on. I mean, I think I should have it finished by the end of this year. One chapter to go and an epi. But, idk...
This crazy little piece of crack is something I wrote in 2010. I found it in an old USB not long ago and laughed my ass off. Not because it's funny, but because I'm clearly insane. It was a complete and utter mess because apparently I was illiterate a decade ago, so I fixed it up and was then stumped on what to do with it. Then, I figured it'd be my way of waving a white flag. It's 8 chapter long. I'll post them all at once. Read and have fun. Nothing serious in it at all.
I really am sorry for my epic failure of an updating record.
This will not be beta'd. I'm not going to bother Kim with anything right now. StarryEyedWriter preread, so thanks, doll.
Twilight AF
Chapter 1
I'm going to Hell, and my mother's smiling.
I mean, she's loading my ass on a plane to Hickville Central to live with my father and she's actually happy about it.
The reason she's doing this, mind you, is for the latest dude she's fucking.
To her credit, she actually married this one, but I mean, I have to question whether she feels any guilt for putting her interests above her own child's, because her conscience appears clearer than the Arizona skyline she's also abandoning for her new man.
Man? He's five years older than I am.
Renee—she told me when I was twelve to call her by her first name because apparently we look more like sisters and why confuse people?—told the neighbors I was 'pining for my father', so yeah, deep down she knows it's a shit thing to do, but hey, Phil's a great lover, apparently.
I know this in intimate detail. Not because the walls are thin in our house—they are—but because Renee likes to confess her sexual exploits to me. Preferably over breakfast while I contemplate drowning myself in my cereal. Her reasoning is I was born thirty-five, as if that's some kind of justification for lumping me with really fucking inappropriate shit. She tells all her friends that, too.
No wonder all the boys shun me like I've got three tits. Plain as a raison cookie with the mental capacity of a middle-aged woman. Yeah, I'm sure that must really turn on your average seventeen year old guy.
My life is complete shit, but it's not like I even had one to begin with.
Hey, there's always a bright side, and the bright side is at least my father won't divulge awkward as fuck details about his sex life. Who am I kidding, the man probably remained celibate after my mother and I hauled ass back to civilization.
I wonder whether he knows he dodged a bullet. I love my mother and all that, but fucking hell, the woman's a shit excuse for a parent. I mean, to recap, she's dumping me in hillbilly hell with a smile on her face.
To be honest, I won't the miss blistering sunburn on my non-existent cleavage that comes with living in Phoenix. Or the heat rash. Or sweating myself to sleep because my mother's too fucking stingy to run the air-conditioning. On the other hand, rain makes my hair frizz. Not to mention depresses the fuck out of me.
I told my mother I'm a Pluviophile out of some kind of twisted sense of obligation. Or maybe it was denial. She laughed, because even she doesn't believe that, and then she traded my summer clothes for raincoats at Goodwill.
If this shit doesn't get my bony ass into Heaven nothing will.
"Bella," Mother of the Century says to me one last time before I board the plane. "You don't have to do this."
She wants me to ease her conscience, we both know it, but with my future in bum-fuck Forks now laid out before me, I've run out of petty white lies.
"I'll live," is what I go with, because apparently co-habiting among bushy boomers in excessive rain won't kill you. That remains to be seen.
Apparently we look alike, my mother and I. We don't. Doesn't stop her from telling everyone, though. The truth? I am the spit out of my father's mouth. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown second-hand parka... My mother has blonde hair, blue eyes, and is almost forty.
I'm pretty certain all this is some kind of early midlife crisis. Other mothers get a boob job and lie about their age on Tinder. Mine marries a loser half her age, and when she can no longer pass me off as her sibling without me publically outing her, she mails me to my old man's house in the sticks.
"Tell Charlie I said hi," she outright bullshits.
She doesn't hate my father per se, but she puts the blame squarely on him for making her a single parent. She calls him Chuckie behind his back, because she's really good at projecting her asshole behavior into others. Apparently he also wasn't a very good lover, and therefore, she had no choice but escape under the cover of darkness while he was on nightshift.
"Sure..." I speak in monotone hoping my mother will get the hint that I'm really fucking unimpressed with all this.
She doesn't.
"You can come home whenever you want," she adds as some kind of disclaimer, because, yeah, that shit aint happening. She sold the house to fund her latest husband's delusions, and I have no intention of becoming a kombi van groupie in the event I come down with meningococcal and get homesick.
She's convinced her quasi-alcoholic boy toy is on the verge of hitting the Major Leagues, so who the hell needs something stable like a roof over your head? On a side note, the woman's just as delusional.
"'Kay," I answer, my tone becoming even duller. I think about rolling my eyes, but she's still my mother and ...well, I do it constantly. She pretends not to notice.
"Okay, kiss kiss." She kisses the air four inches from my cheeks, making a big show of loudly smacking her lips. Then she reapplies her lipstick as though I smudged it, which pretty much sums her up.
. . .
The plane doesn't crash and burn on its way to Washington State much to my chagrin. I really fucking hate that word. My mother uses it constantly in every damn sentence thinking she's Edgar Allen Poe. Apparently it rubbed off on me.
It's probably a good thing Renee shoved me tits-first out of the nest.
My father greets me at the airport, stiff upper lip stiffer than his 'stache. He literally puts product in it. He's fucking proud of it, too, but it's not like he has a lot else going on to get excited about. Oh wait, I almost forgot; he likes to fish. He tells me all about it on the hour-long journey back to 1885 while I seriously consider throwing myself out of the moving police cruiser.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, I'm going to get dropped off at school every day in this thing. How the hell did I forget? It sure as hell would've factored in when I made the decision to martyr myself.
"Hey, I found a really good car for you, Bells. Cheap as chips." He decides to twist the knife, while simultaneously reading my mind, as I pale in my seat. The man needs to seriously work on his tact and learn to sugarcoat shit better.
"Oh great..." I reply, somehow pulling off sincerity, because sans location, my father is the better parent by a mile. On paper, at least. "What kind of..." Okay, I don't want to sound like an ungrateful asshole, so I shut up and convince myself that maybe the car he has waiting for me isn't mortification personified for anyone under the age of fifty.
My father goes off on a tangent about his BFF fishing bro who's now crippled and doesn't require the need for his truck anymore. The further he rambles the more obvious it becomes that it's an excuse to avoid eye-contact. My father's on the shy side and will often look at your forehead when talking to you like he has a wandering eye, but right now the man's shying away from me looking complicit.
"Okay, just lay it on me," I sigh in resignation. "What year, model, make..."
I was going to use what little money I hid from Renee to buy new clothes, but looks like that idea is out the window.
At the back of my tortured mind I hear my father utter something that sounds horrifyingly close to the "1960s" while I'm convinced I'm about to get car sick.
At my last school, a car older than you was enough to make you a social outcast. Looks like I'm about to become social leprosy. I Googled Forks High School. Some of the seniors have neck beards, so hey, it might turn out to be a positive.
"Thanks, Dad," I choke out, hastily winding down the passenger-side window to inhale back the bile, because said truck from the sixties is all mine! Bought and paid for courtesy of the Welcome to Hell fund he hastily scraped together.
My father doesn't get sarcasm, like at all, and breaks into a broad grin, quite pleased with himself. "Well now, you're welcome."
He then precedes on another tangent; about trees.
I pretend to sleep for the rest of the way home.
. . .
"We're home, Bells!" My father booms as frigid air blasts me in the face like a bullhorn.
"Mother of fu—"
He pulled the cruiser to a stop beside a monstrosity of human innovation that looks like it could take out half the population of Forks with a single backfire.
"Aint she a beauty?" Exiting the car, he stands beside a truck that I'm positive I've seen on an episode of The Waltons.
"She's a beauty alright," I say in daze, pulling myself from the cruiser as I quickly calculate unsuspecting ways to get rid of it. There's no way I can damage this thing enough to be a right-off, and I doubt anyone would be willing to steal it in the likely event I leave the keys in the ignition with the doors unlocked, so the only alternative I have is to suck it up harder than the old man's lip hair and plaster a grin to my face. "Love it, Dad! Let's take her for a spin!"
He blushes, because the man really is adorable in a pitiful, has-terrible-taste-in-women kind of way. "How 'bout we get you unpacked first?" he suggests, wrapping an enthusiastic arm around my shoulder pleased as punch that I'm psyched as fuck about my new truck.
Charlie still lives in the marital home he once shared with Renee and me. It's older than the faded relic in the drive, and looks straight out of Good Housekeeping circa 1955. Hey, the man's neat. Thank fuck. It means I won't have to do it. Cleaning, cooking—just being domestic in general—was always too much of a commitment for my mother. In the beginning she used to bribe me to do it, and then reneged on the bribe. Later on, it just naturally fell to me when it became apparent I hate living slovenly.
I'm like the old man in that respect.
Without a word we head to my bedroom on the top floor. It's still the same as it was the last time my mother sent me here over Christmas break so she could have some me time. The wood-veneer furniture rival's my new truck in age but appears just as durable.
When I was eight, Charlie won a computer in the Fork's Pub door raffle. I remember how chuffed with himself he was. I was too, let's be honest. He evidently gifted it to me because it's presently sitting on the desk in keeping with the new theme of my life: dinosaurs.
He stapled the Ethernet cable to the wall and then painted over it in a shade of blue that doesn't quite match the walls. The quilt is kitsch as fuck purple and the curtains are canary yellow. It's a good things I'm colorblind.
I'm not.
One of the best things about Charlie is he gets on with his shit and I get on with mine. He leaves me to it to unpack and wallow in the throes of self-pity. I think about crying, but the rain does enough of that shit without me.
My hair is already five inches taller.
. . .
God help me, the old man never got over Renee.
He has pictures of her everywhere. They got married in Vegas—something my mother conveniently forgot to mention. The photo sits over the brick fireplace as though some kind of centerpiece to the living room. Charlie wore a Hawaiian shirt and white slacks; Renee had a large, wilting daisy chain around her permed hair. I stare at it, mouth agape and afflicted by acute cringe while wondering how and when I wiped it from my memory. I'm sure I never noticed it before now. Then I catch sight of the one in the dining room. It's as equally large, but bouffant-looking of the two of them taken in an eerily eighties soft lens focus. Charlie's 'stache was down to his chin, and my mother wore a red turtle neck and a seventies fro, but that can't be right. I decide it must have been the humidity, push it from my thoughts, and stumble disoriented into the small kitchen for dinner.
Charlie threw a couple of frozen meals in the microwave. Neither of us mention the photos. I pretend I didn't notice and he pretends he doesn't notice me feigning oblivion. He talks about the weather and the son of his BFF—coincidentally, the first boy I ever let cop a feel. He then clears his throat in an innuendo I don't catch. Or maybe I do, but my sensibilities cannot handle my father matching me up with a local boy right now. At least not until the initial shock over moving here subsides at least, because Jacob was hot.
Hopefully he still is, and didn't mature weirdly like I did.
Charlie's gone by the time I wake up the next morning, and thank god for small mercies. Before I went to bed I wrote a list of topics to prevent the further unpleasantness of finding myself in another forty-seven awkward breaks in conversation with him. I ran out of ideas after eight and then laughed myself to sleep.
. . .
Forks High school is nothing like the modern brick institution that was my old school. It looks like a nursing home. Or maybe a women's prison sans the barbed wire. There's about a dozen blocks marked A-L joined together with covered walkways.
As expected John-boy Walton—my nick-name for my truck—backfires upon entry into the parking lot, alerting everyone within a ten mile radius. Though considering the engine is louder than a rocket launcher, I'm fairly certain my arrival was not unexpected.
Aside from the fact my mode of transportation breaks the sound barrier, it's obvious Forks doesn't get a lot of new students who aren't otherwise born here.
I'm gawked at—unashamedly—as I hide behind my high-rising hair and haul ass to the front office.
It's fucking cold, but the office is warm. And neon. There's also a fuckton of fake plants adorning the room, which for reasons unknown, almost makes me want to go into hysterics. A women behind the desk who looks like she's either unaware the eighties is over, or is trying to bring them back judging by her bright orange semi-frizz, looks up and flashes me a welcoming smile like she's rehearsed it all week.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm Isabella Swan. I hate my name, by the way, so call me Bella," I say for pretenses only, because this woman, like the entire town, knows exactly who I am.
I can only imagine how riveting this place is if they're all getting their tits in a freeze about my mopey ass showing up. Charlie confessed it the night before, fully expecting me to be as excited over it as I was John-boy Walton. I almost choked to death on the home brand ice-cream we ate for dessert.
"Of course, darl," office admin lady replies, giving me a less-than-subtle once over as she pulls a bunch of papers out from the stack of them in front of her. She loses a fake nail in the process. It hits me square in the forehead while she curses under her breath.
It's a moment we both pretend never happened, before she pulls a highlighter out from her crimped curlicues, and starts randomly circling shit and drawing arrows on the photo-copied aerial plan of the school.
"Math is here, Science block, here; English, here..."
I tune her out and smile till my cheeks ache while simultaneously scoping the joint for the fire exit.
"Be sure to give this slip to each teacher and return it at the end of the day," she adds, handing me an anti-truancy booklet, or some shit. Fucked if I know...
"I surely will," I say with overly feigned enthusiasm before turning and heading back to John-boy with the full intention of hyperventilating.
Inside the cab it's blessedly warm despite the fact it smells like cigarettes and sex. I turn on the radio, and while some country singer bemoans about her husband jerking off to a floosy at the bank—in my defense, it's the only radio station that works—I attempt to commit my school schedule to memory lest I be forced to ask for directions and unwittingly find myself befriended.
Students notice me taking refuge in John-boy and peer curiously inside. I pretend to tie the laces of my snow boots until the first bell signals. It's starting to rain, again; meanwhile, my hair is channeling Diana Ross.
First class of the day is English. I sneak through the door ten paces behind the last person to enter and hand the anti-truancy slip to the teacher; a string-bean of a man with male pattern baldness.
"I am Mr. Mason, and you are?" he asks as if he didn't in fact just read it.
"Bella Swan," I mutter, eyes fused to the linoleum.
"Very good. Find a spare seat." He doesn't direct me to sit next to one of the locals and for that I'm grateful.
I find an empty seat at the back of the room while the entire class strains their necks to blatantly ogle me.
It's somewhat reassuring to know that this town is only six months in the past and not a century and a half. I've already read all the required reading. I fake it when the teacher asks, so I don't come across as a blowhard. The entire room continues to stare nonetheless; I convince myself it's because I forgot to take off my parka with the rest of them and not because I'm currently breaking into hives.
The bell rings, signaling the end of class. I exit and pretend I can't hear everyone whispering about me, when I find myself in the shadow of a tall dude who evidently has never heard of a thing called dry shampoo. Or Retin-A cream.
"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" Lame as fuck question under the circumstances because who the hell else would I be?
"I go by Bella," I correct him sticking my schedule an inch from my face in the hopes he'll take the hint.
He doesn't.
"Where's your next class?" he continues to pester me.
Turning the paper around I shove it to his nose instead.
"Oh, it's on my way. I'll walk you," he offers, waving my schedule out of his face and smiling broadly at me.
I only sigh, slump my shoulders, and follow behind.
"My name's Eric," he provides me with his name when he obviously gave up waiting for me to ask for it.
"That's nice." I pull my hood over my head to block out all the gawkers not-so-conspicuously leering close by to eavesdrop on this banal as fuck conversation.
"So you're from Phoenix, huh?"
I sigh a second time wondering why he's asking me shit he already knows the answer to. "Apparently."
Apparently is my favorite word. It allows me to be a sarcastic asshole on the sly. I use it constantly.
"What's it like there?"
"Bone dry."
"So, sunny?"
"Apparently."
"So, like, how come you aren't tanned?"
"I have Solar Urticaria."
"...Huh?" His expression turns blank, and I sigh a third time. I suspect I'm going to be doing a lot of that today.
He leads me around the cafeteria where I give him the slip and make my way to my Government class hiding amongst a bunch of seniors.
By third period I apparently made a new friend. Her name's Jessica, and either humidity doesn't agree with her hair either, or this entire town never got the memo that perms went out of fashion forty years ago. She talks a mile a minute and somewhere between pauses to take a breath she invites me to sit with her at lunch.
Lunch takes place after period four, and linking her elbow around mine she drags me to the cafeteria.
The tall boy with acne, whose name has already slipped my mind, is sitting at her table as well. He waves manically to me while my groan fails to remain beneath my breath.
Jessica introduces me to everyone. I make a half-assed effort to feign enthusiasm and bite into my apple. To their credit, they diligently attempt to keep me involved in their conversation, while my eyes wander the room to avoid it.
That's when I notice the only five people in the school who appear to give less fucks about me than my mother. They're sitting at a table, in the shadows in the far corner of the room, not eating, not talking; not looking at each other. Not even moving, really...
Naturally assuming they're Special Ed, I turn back to my apparent new friends when I immediately pause and glance over my shoulder to get a second look.
There's something ...odd about them. Like they're from the Village of the Damned. They're all the same, but not the same. They're all pale like they've been in solitary confinement for the last decade, and they all look more depressed than how I woke up this morning. A dark-haired, big guy catches my attention first. Maybe because he looks thirty-five; the same way the teenagers from Grease look forty. Siding up to him sits Claudia Schiffer who has a resting bitch face that passes all realms of homicidal. Opposite is a wiry-looking girl who has a buzz-cut-plus-four-weeks hairdo. Her eyes keep fliting around the room sporadically and she appears on the verge on laugher.
Weird. Whatever...
A tall blond dude is holding her hand in a strange protective, almost fearful, way. To be honest, going by his expression, he looks like he's on the verge of having an explosive bowel movement. Last is a guy; a red-head/not red-head, with sex hair and a Burberry jacket. I want to say it's fake, but they honestly don't look like the sort of people who wear knock-offs.
I wonder who he's just boned. Then I remember Jessica talking about Lauren Mallory, the Fork's bike, apparently. I hastily glance around to locate her. She's chatting to another blonde and munching on her tray of fries, not looking the least bit shagged by the resident hottie.
Because, I mean, the guy is seriously fucking hot!
They all are. Creepily hot, in fact.
They must be exchange students from that obscure place in Russia you hear about on the internet where everyone looks like supermodels.
"Who are they?" I ask no one in particular, jutting out my chin in their general direction.
A girl from one of my classes answers, her voice turning several decibels higher. "Oh, they're the Cullens!"
That's when sex-hair glances up and looks at her. And then at me. So fleetingly and full of boredom it makes my back somewhat straighten.
Okay, he's hot. Hot guys are jerks—moving on.
But ...fucking Christ he's not just hot he's...something else entirely. That shit can't be normal.
"Are they from Russia?" I ask as the girl who inserted herself into my deliberations starts giggling.
"Huh?" She laughs so loudly it makes me involuntarily cringe, but the weirdos don't appear to notice. Pretty sure Claudia Schiffer rolls her eyes, though. "No. They're foster kids. Dr. and Mrs. Cullen fosters them. Rosalie is the blonde, Alice is the little one with dark hair. Emmett is the big guy, Edward is the tall one with red hair, and the other blond guy is Rosalie's brother, Jasper. He looks like he's about to puke, right?"
Jesus, their names are as outdated as the office admin lady's haircut. I expected the locals to have names similar to theirs, not the five supermodels from Russia. Okay, sex-hair is wearing designer labels, and rich people do tend to have old, family names.
Of course. Make sense.
"So, what's wrong with them?" I ask as I continue to gauge them closely, albeit discreetly. Sex hair is muttering something to the others who all appear to be ignoring him while they stare vacantly at the walls.
It's low-key creeping me out, to be frank.
"Nothing..." Her voice trails off as if she knows exactly what I mean even if she's not prepared to voice it.
"Come on, they're all ...freakishly gorgeous." My voice strangles over that word. I don't like giving assholes compliments, but it's an obvious fact. They are.
"Right?" Jessica inserts herself this time, louder than what's-her-face. "And you know they're all going out with each other?"
"Pretty sure they can hear you, Jessica," I point out the obvious drolly, but together? As in fucking each other? The creep-factor is definitely setting in. "So...this Dr. and Mrs..." I've forgotten their names, but Jessica quickly reminds me, alerting sex-hair again. He's scowling this time. At me. It must make his eyes bleed to look at something so hideous. Asshole. "Does Dr. Cullen, like, scout for potential models in his spare time?"
Jessica laughs like a hyena. "I think his wife is barren—"I almost choke on my apple because sex hair definitely heard that time, "and so they decided to foster. They just moved here from Alaska."
Okay, well that explains why they're so deathly pale, apparently.
Sex hair looks up for a third time. At me. Only this time he appears ...curious, and maybe a little demanding. I find myself staring back, giving him the universally understood "what's your fucking problem?" look.
He tears his eyes from mine and mutters again, looking agitated.
"Okay, the boy who doesn't own a hair brush—that's Edward, did you say?"
"Yeah, that's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course. But don't waste your time. He doesn't date." Jessica's tone suggest she thinks I'm about to put the moves on him, as if I could ever be so delusional. There's a bitter edge to it, too, as if she actually has and was consequently turned down.
"Is he gay?" I ask simply, biting back my smirk, and I swear to god sex-hair's expression briefly mirrors mine.
"No. He just thinks he's too good for all the girls here." Yep, that's rejection in a nutshell. Poor Jessica.
I disguise my snicker behind a cough and take another bite of my apple.
"So, why aren't they eating?" I ask another obvious question, because not one of them has so much as breathed on their tray of food.
Jessica shrugs a begrudging shoulder. "How should I know?"
That's when the girl with the buzz cut gets up from the table and practically skips across the room, but not before shoving her untouched lunch into the trash. I watch her leave, more than a fuckton unnerved.
These people are fucking weird!
Jessica obviously doesn't want to rehash getting turned down by sex-hair, and beginning to feel spooked, I drop the subject. What's-her-face engages me in conversation again; her name's Angela. She's actually kind of decent, and doesn't rub me the way Jessica does.
Speaking of Jessica, we have the last two classes of the day together; Biology and Gym.
Sex-hair is in my Bio class during period five, sitting at a lab table by himself. This is where the teacher, Mr. Banner, directs me. I'm not going to lie; the idea of sitting beside him appeals to me more than I'd ever admit, and I'm curious to find out whether his voice oozes sex as much as his hair.
"Hey—"
Before the greeting can pass my lips, he immediately turns rigid and sort of seizes in his stool before hastily clamping his hand over his mouth.
I observe him for a moment, slightly taken aback. I'm starting to think the reason he didn't eat at lunch is because he has the stomach flu, and I could potentially be about to witness puke. "...Are you okay?"
He kind of harrumphs and then wheezes. Then he glares at me. Like, he literally turns his black-as-night eyes to me and glares.
"Whatever..." I mumble to myself with a scoff before dropping my books to the table and sitting down.
With a full-bodied shudder, he leans away from me, and not subtly, either. He literally shifts his body into a thirty degree angle, looking like he's holding his breath.
Reciprocating him, I drag my stool as loudly and pointedly away from him as possible, because fuck you, pretty boy. Still, I take a discreet whiff of my hair, and then even discretely downstairs, because it'd be just my luck that the devil's waterfall started flowing a week early. Today of all days.
Nope. I smell fine. Sex-hair definitely has gastro.
The teacher starts his lesson about cellular anatomy, and while jotting down the odd note, I attempt to ignore the sociopath beside me. He doesn't make it easy. He continues to have weird, periodic spasms which then make him glare at me with even more intent as if my very presence was the cause of it.
After twenty minutes of it, I'm officially done. Glancing over my shoulder, I locate Jessica at the back of her room, beside the guy with squinty eyes from her lunch table.
"Hey, Jessica!" I whisper loudly.
I successfully grab her attention. She turns to me, her brows shooting up in question.
"Swap seats?"
She's up and out of her chair in and instant with a stupid grin on her face, and while the teacher's back is turned to us, we hastily trade tables.
Her partner appears quite pleased with the situation. He starts leering at me, as if he believes he's the reason behind it.
"Cullen upset you or something?" He sounds amused by it, and then an odd thought occurs to me. Maybe sex-hair has autism and he doesn't understand social cues. In which case, I have probably just made him feel really stupid.
I glance over at him, and that assface has righted himself and is now sitting with semi-perfect ease beside Jessica. He's not engaging with her, but he sure as hell isn't having fits in her presence either.
"What's his fucking problem!?" I snap a little too loudly, but decide to let it go. Guys that hot are usually more narcissistic than my mother, and fuck knows I don't need any more dysfunction in my life.
Squinty eyes ignores my question and then asks the dumbest one of the century, "Aren't you Isabella Swan?"
"Apparently," I sigh, continuing to simmer with resentment as I low-key side-eye sex hair. It's somewhat satisfying to know he's reacting to Jessica as if she were a wart, but he's definitely not having weird as fuck episodes, either.
"Huh?"
I groan; it's audible and more in regards to sex hair, so I don't feel too bad about it. "It's just Bella."
"I'm Mike," he adds, when again, I don't ask.
I make the decision to focus on him squarely, and that's when I realize the situation I've put myself in. I know Mike's kind; he's the generic-looking guy who thinks he's hot simply because every other guy around him is hideous, and who takes even the slightest glance in his direction as a come-on.
"That's nice," I say stiffly already regretting my hasty actions. Sex hair might be a psychopath but he's not an obviously needy, perpetually horny, probably closet-pervert like the boy next to me.
Jesus, he's gelled his hair like it's 1992...
"Do you need any help finding your next class?" Squinty eyes continues to overly oblige himself.
I open my mouth to reply when the bell for the end of fifth period signals and sex hair bolts for the exit like his undies are on fire. Or maybe he really does have to puke and I'm just paranoid and anti-social like Renee often accuses me of being.
He's got a nice ass, but he moves just as disturbingly as the one with the buzz cut.
I'm beginning to think Charlie spiked the milk with valium this morning before he left for work.
"I have Gym. I know where it is," I say, my eyes fixed to the entry. For whatever reason I half expect sex hair to duck his head around the doorway and continue to glare at me, but he's definitely yeeted to the toilets.
"That's my next class, too," Mike announces thrilled as fuck, while I legit consider calling it now and retreating back to John-boy in defeat.
I walk to class cursing my mother only semi beneath my breath, while Mike drones on and on about how he's from California, yada, yada, yada... He's also in my English class because luck does not favor the unwanted spawn of the newly remarried.
Could be worse; sex hair could be in more of my classes too, but he isn't.
"So, you're not into Cullen, are you?" squinty eyes asks after almost following me into the girl's locker room.
"Who?" I ask, genuinely stumped there for a moment. For a moment... "Um, no—screw that!"
Wrong answer, and it pleases Mike greatly. Much to my chagrin.
"I mean, apparently. He's pretty hot, so hey, you never know," I quickly recover as Mike pulls out all stops to hide his pout.
"Oh..."
"Okay, yeah, I have to get dressed..." I tilt my head with more than enough suggestion behind it, and catching my drift, he turns and fucks off. "Why is my life so shit...?" I mutter aloud to myself.
"Don't worry, Edward hates all the girls," Jessica chimes in right on fucking cue, pleased as punch that sex hair apparently dislikes me as much as her.
"Yeah, the guy's a serial killer, and nil interest," I reply sarcastically, but just the thought of the freakishly good-looking bastard is enough to grate on my last nerve.
Jessica utters out her hyena laugh again and skips merrily onto the volley ball court set up in the middle of the gym. I accidentally-on-purpose whack the ball into her face more than once until I'm red-carded by Coach Clapp and am sent to sit it out in the bleachers.
I wile away the rest of the hour wishing secret death upon sex hair, while thinking up inventive ways to insult him in preparation for tomorrow's Bio class. There's no fucking way I'm sitting next to closet perv again any time soon.
The final bell for the day rings, and collecting my shit, I make haste to the office to return my anti-truancy forms so I can be done with this atrocious day once and for all.
Sex hair apparently beat me to it and is presently arguing with the admin office lady—about transferring into another fifth period Bio class!
Mother of fucking WHAT?
I stand stock-still with my back pressed to wall and listen to him low-key heavy her in a sociopathic seductive voice—that is decidedly sans a Russian accent—about changing fifth period, while leaning slightly toward her, his fist clenched like he's contemplating socking her one if she continues refusing.
Okay, this can't be about me. At least that's what I tell myself, but it's my fucking class he's desperate to get out of. The same class where he acted like the smell of my shampoo gave him a brain aneurysm.
The door to the office opens, the arctic wind sneaks through, chilling my already frigid bones in the process and apparently alerts sex hair to my presence. He does that weird spasm shit again and methodically glances over his shoulder. His eyes, still all pupil like he's high on meth, set on me with a glare that while intimidating as fuck—I'm not going to lie—outright pisses me off.
"Take a photo, psycho!" I snap, past patience with this ghastly beautiful freak of a guy who is evidently overcome with widespread outrage over the thought of being stuck in the same class as vanilla as fuck me.
And Jessica, too, but let's be frank, I really can't fault him on that.
"Never mind then," he turns back to the admin lady—who looked like she was on the verge of telling me off—and unleashes the type of attitude on her that would usually make most teachers' eyes bug out of their heads. "I can see it's impossible. Thanks for your help."
Okay, the guy pulls off sarcasm well. I'm almost envious, but then he whizzes past me like I'm not even in the room. He's freakishly fast, and he smells...off. I mean, he smells abnormal. Most guys smell like cheap aftershave, sweat and sex, but sex hair smells like... Like Windex.
"That wasn't a very nice thing you said to Mr. Cullen, dear," Office admin lady reproaches me, breaking me from my deliberations in the process.
"He has been glaring at me all damn afternoon like I caused one of his perfectly groomed eyebrow hairs to fall out of place!" I snap back, my back arching indignantly, because I am not the one who victimized that beautiful fucker.
"Oh, did you say something to upset him?" she enquires because apparently on the spectrum of looks, those on the top never instigate shit or treat the bottom dwellers like crap, so obviously it had to be my ugly ass's fault he's an elitist dickface.
"You mean, when I said 'hey'?" I reply drolly just as her eye brow twitches and fails to raise on its own, but expelling a loud, resigned breath, I let it go and shove my anti-truancy paperwork back at her. "Here. All signed off as per request."
"Oh, okay," she purses her lips and it's obviously she wants to call me an asshole, but probably remembers who my father is. "Well, aside from your quarrel with Edward, did you have a nice first day?"
"No," I say truthfully because she really doesn't give a shit either way and why lie? Then without waiting for her to reply, I spin on my heel, shove open the double entry doors and leave the room.
John-boy is the last car remaining in the parking lot, looking alone and depressed like the social outcast I evidently am. I get in, gun the engine, jump ten feet out of my skin when it backfires, and laugh hysterically all the way home.
I really fucking hate my mother.