This Beauty That I'm Faking [Chapter I]

Chapter One

“Love your dress, honey,” Bella remarks, walking around me and observing my new dress. “It has a fantastic fit. Your little boyfriend will agree with me on this one.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Bella,” I roll my eyes. “And he will never be. Where’s my eyeliner?”
“Underneath the bed. But you’re right. Because you already have a sweetheart,” her lips curve into a wicked smile, caressing my cheek with her long, bony fingers.
I slap her hand away, irritated. “Thomas is not my lover either, Bella, he’s yours.”
Bella laughs at that bold statement, her pale face twisted into a mocking grin. I wince when I notice how sharp her teeth are and immediately look away. Those razor-sharp white teeth will continue to haunt me and give me nightmares when I’m wide awake, until the day that I die... and who knows how far away death is...
“Oh, you poor, sweet, child!” she exclaims, creeping up behind me and snaking her arms around my waist, whispering into my ear, her icy breath frosting my lobe. “You’re so oblivious, Petra.”
“I’m going to kill you, Bella,” I vow through gritted teeth, writhing my body away from her grip with an inexistent fear that I might wither away under her spine-chilling touch that has the overwhelming power to make my blood run backwards in my veins. “Mark my words, motherfucker.”
“Harsh,” she hisses, smirking. “That’s what they all say. But for some reason, I just always seem to beat them to the punch.”
“You’ll regret underestimating me,” I fume, picking up my bag and turning off the lights of my room. “I’ll make sure you regret the day you ever stepped into the world.”
“Funny you should say that. It’s because of you that I’m even here in the first place,” she shrugs, leaning against the wall. “I think we both know who’s dominating here, Petra. If I were you, I’d do something smart, not stupid. Oh, but wait. I am you!”
“Shut up!” I fire at her, my voice leaking venom. I hate her; I hate living this life that feeds on my anger yet I hate being handcuffed to this vampire who’s draining this life out of me. “Just be patient, Bella, one day I’ll be just me and you’ll be sucked into oblivion!”
“Whatever you say, babes,” she sighs, as I stride out the front door. “I’ll see later, same time, same place! Have a wonderful day at school!” she bids me farewell as I drown out her shrill, shrieking laughter with the loud slam of the huge, creaky wooden door that seemed to have jumped off its hinges as I did so.

Take a deep breath, Petra, my conscience advises me. I obey, closing my eyes and breathing in the crisp, clear autumn breeze. So many people hate this beautiful season. Too melancholic, they say. Cold and depressing.
For me, the way all the leaves transform from green to all these magical fiery colors... each different shade of brown... red... orange... yellow... so unique, making each tree stripped naked seem like dancing tribal men, burning bright an eternal sunset flame... makes me proud to be born in this breathtaking scene. Come on, how can you not be swept off your feet as you patrol the streets with the light, fresh chill of the wind is lifting up leaves, twirling and swirling around you, your hair flying everywhere, like some kind of ritual that sends a sense of purity and freedom spreading through your whole body, dissolving every inch of sanity and insanity from your mind, just for a fracture of a second?
I open my eyes, and all of my problems come crashing back down again. I heave a sigh, and make my way to Elena Lee Rush Academy, early as usual, to meet up with my best friends, I keep telling myself, but deep down I know that the real reason behind it is just so I don’t have to spend another second with Beauty the beast, Bella.
The Lee Rush Village is pretty small, hidden from the city, where every single inhabitant knows each other: and everything about each other. Or so they think. Surprises happen, and it turns out that your neighbor is actually a werewolf. Well, maybe not to that extent, but it is a pretty strange little town.
“Good morning, Mr. Kendall!” I wave at the old guy at the end of my street. Mr. Kendall is this cool, awesome old dude who, I think has lung cancer or kidney cancer or something like that, but he’s extremely interesting, and leaves his house every morning at around the same time that I do, to go hunting in the forest. Oh, and he’s also the illegal drug supply for the teenagers stuck in this village.
There are practically no kids in this God forsaken village: all of them to Elena, which is basically the only school here, but the academic level is so high that most of us end up in Ivy League anyway. There are not many young adults, either, save some teachers, and most of them are all at least forty. A lot of people have cottages here, though, because the village is the kind of place where you can take a break from the world, and just chill, breathe in the fresh, pollution-less air, the crystal clear river that runs like a ribbon cutting through the heart of the town, and the peaceful, nuts-and-berries-strewn forests surrounding the town, home of animals and plants that city people can only see on postcards, with, if you go in deep enough without getting lost, an extraordinary waterfall that glitters like diamonds had been sprinkled across the surface, in the few sunrays that managed to penetrate through the roof of leaves overhead.
But the wonder of the village, something that you just cannot experience through the lens of any camera, is the almighty cave beyond the curtain of the rushing water, where it is impossible not to be able to imagine Mother Nature herself residing there. It’s a sacred place, and it took my best friends and me months to be able to dig up the courage to swim into that cave.
It’s my place to get away from the world, like the Lee Rush village for city people. That cave is the only real sanctuary I have in this world, behind the near transparent sheet of the waterfall.

“Yay! Petra!” Nathora runs up to me, smothering me with big hugs. “Oh my God! Your dress!”
“Hey, Nattypoo,” I smile. “Tom gave me some money to buy it. Don’t I just look supa schmexay in it?”
“No, you look horrible in it, that’s why I plan on borrowing it one day and never giving it back, that’s why I’m spazzing over it like a love struck puppy,” she snarls sarcastically.
I giggle. I’ve known Nathora for only about eight months, but she’s my best friend in the whole entire world. She’s really the only person I’ve got in this life... if you can even call it a life. Having lost my mother at birth, and my father thirteen years later...

I’m not sure if you know what it’s like to have a flaming spear plunged right into your chest: probably not, but just imagine the feeling. The pain, as it attacks and slowly breaks through, like ice-cold hands, ripping apart and straight through your skin and flesh, fat and muscle, until it stabs you fully in the heart and lungs, and a scream rises up your throat like vomit, then after that, darkness just shrouds over you, the cloud of death has you in a never-ending chokehold, it’s clogging your throat and blocking your circulation, and bit by bit your feel the last drop of life running out, every feeling, all the control, the struggle to keep awake slipping through your fingers, a fan of smoke.
That’s what it feels like to lose a parent.
But what I felt was much worse: a more amplified kind of shock and horror, and pain that shatters every inch of your champagne-glass fragile humanity into shreds and devours it.
My father died a horrible, tormenting death that not even the Zodiac killer deserves. His death also left me in a black magma of doubt and confusion, wondering what the flying fuck could he have done for the mafia to do that to him, to leave him for his teenage daughter’s eyes to be raped like that, scarred for life like that, for her to be driven to the point where the sight of her father’s corpse – if you can even call it that after what they did to him – to rob her of all innocence and melt it, dissolve it with the scorching licks of a world of horror.
I cannot describe, and will not put into words the last I saw of the man who raised me with all the love a parent can offer to his daughter.
His death – no, not the death itself, by the way he died – also resulted in Bella.

“Where’s Quinnipoo?” I frown, asking Nathora.
Quinnipoo – or should I saw Quinn Ortiz Howard – is our best guy friend in the whole village. He’d only just moved here in the beginning of this sophomore year: and it hasn’t even been a month that we’ve known each other. It feels like it’s been years.
They are the only two people, save Tom, in the whole village, who I can confide secrets too. I have trust issues. After the death of my father, the only warning I told myself to learn from that was trust nobody but yourself.
I’m a very careful person. I have a way to doing a lot of things that I never leave any trails, no evidence to be stumbled upon. I just never seem to overlook anything. I never get caught red-handed and guilty. Ever. Selecting the ones who can be in my inner circle? I had to be extra careful, too.
Only Nathora knows about the truth about my father. That says a lot, considering the fact that I’ve only known her for less than a year. Not the whole truth, because I will never ever be able to confess that to anybody apart from Tom, and that’s only because he’s going through something very similar to what I am. And that part of the story, nobody knows about.
Quinn and everybody else in the village, if not the whole world, save the NYPD and FBI, and some others here and there, think that my father passed away in a car crash. Sometimes I wish I could think that too, so I can wash away all the mental images of the state he was in when I breached the security at the crime scene. Even Nathora doesn’t know what she looks like. That is something I will never share with her, because nobody deserves to hear such a gut-tightening description.
“He should be here right about n-”
Suddenly, something falls against the back of our legs, and we spin around. It’s Quinn, who grins at us stupidly from where he was lying, his stomach, on the ground.
“May I ask why you are on the floor?” I raise my eyebrows, laughing lightly, offering him a hand, and pulling him up.
“You didn’t happen to try to pounce on us and fail miserably, did you?” Nathora narrows her light brown eyes at him.
“Of course not,” Quinn denies, avoiding our gazes.
I burst out laughing. “Aww, poor baby.”
“I tripped, okay?” he pouts, and we both envelop him in a hug.
Okay, so there’s something you should now about us: we’re the group that’s labeled ‘emo’ by the whole entire school, because of how we dress [a pretty surprising amount of black], and the music we listen to. Actually, the only reason why everybody knows us is because we’re the only people who look like we belong in a clique. Funny, how country kids get excited because of little things like this. Not that we care what people ever think of us.
Oh, and get used to the hugging. There will be a lot more to come, as hugging has become the equivalent of breathing for the three of us.
If there’s a positive side of my life, the only answer will be my friends. It’s only way I can live a little bit, they flourish me with a feeling of freedom to at least do something that normal kids do in their lives.
But they can never know who I really am…
Because if they ever do…
I’d have to kill them.