Wingless And Beautiful
?EPISODE 16 ?
I would be joking if I said that the months of my life had
been perfect. That everything was peachy, filled with smile
and laughter, with an abundance of blessings and love.
Sure, the nightmares didn’t come often since the day I met
Hunter. But I lived each day in pain… a different kind of pain
from what my mother and stepfather had left me.
Another first. My first heartbreak.
Surviving was a struggle for me. It was he..ll for Meredith
too. She was the one who had to live with me while I tried to
deal with a broken heart.
And she had to be the one to take care of the bills with the small pay she received from the
small-time jobs she got over the next year.
The day Hunter left, I listened to his voice message over
and over. Just memorizing the sound of his voice.
As I lay down in bed at nights, I imagined him lying down beside me, saying those words to me.
I wanted to be angry at him… shout at him and tell him
how unfair he was. He made me fall in love with him, and
then he would just leave?
He didn’t even have a cellphone
when I met him, so I wouldn’t know how to call him, talk to
him, assure myself that he would come back to me.
But I knew, too, that because he fell in love with me, he
found the courage and motivation to undergo an operation he should have taken a long time ago. Because of me, he wanted to be better, he wanted to be whole again.
I just needed to trust and believe that someday, we will see each other again.
We moved to a smaller house because Meredith couldn’t
afford the rent on our old house anymore. And she figured it would be safer for me because it was a bit closer to my school.
I went back to Leighton High a month after Hunter left. I
tried to live among the humans again. And it hit me that for
the past year, I had been living in a limbo. I got so scared of my own nightmares, I forgot that there were scarier things in real life.
The first day of school, the silence was deafening as I
walked the corridor to my locker. Everybody was looking at me.
They could not believe I had the guts, the courage and
the face to go back to school. I could almost hear their
thoughts. And they weren’t all pretty.
At first, I didn’t mind that they stayed away from me.
Sure, they could look past my scars. I kept them well-hidden
under my mass of brown hair.
But I could not hide the fact
that more than a year ago, my name was all over the
papers with the headline, “Mother Kills Insane Stepfather for Torturing Teenage Daughter and then Commits Sui¢ide.”
I stepped right out of a h©rror novel. And these beautiful, spoiled, rich kids could not believe the fact that I share the same campus with them. I was a stain in the
spotless reputation of the school known for educating the
town’s golden boys and girls.
During the first days, they were civil, polite even. But
one week after, their thoughts were getting louder. Like they
really wanted me to hear them.
Scarface.
Scary witch.
Hideous.
Mon$ter.
She shouldn’t have been allowed to go back to this school.
There were some who didn’t think bad about me at all.
Instead, they felt pity. And I wasn’t sure I wanted their
thoughts either.
I would never want to be treated with pity or be given special treatment just because of what happened to me. I just want to be normal… invisible even.
“Don’t mind them,” a voice said beside me as I was
taking my things out from my locker one day.
I looked to my right and found a girl with dark blond hair
and beautiful blue eyes stare back at me. I thought she was
joking, pretending to be nice to get to my good side and
then prepping me for a nasty prank later. But as I stare back at her, her smile seemed genuine and her eyes looked
warm.
“I’m Denise Wesley,” she said, extending her hand to
mine.
I haven’t seen her before. She must be new this year. I
reluctantly shook her hand.
“Allison Harley,” I said in a quiet voice.
“I know. You’re all these people talk about,” she said,
smiling at me apologetically.
“Well, whatever you heard about me, they’re probably
true. And if in doubt, you can always Google me. I’m sure
I’m on the news archive,” I said dryly.
She stared back at me for a moment and then she
laughed. “I have Chemistry next. What’s your next class?”
I stared back at her trying to figure out what was wrong
with her.
Sure, there must be something. Because why else
would she talk nicely to me? Like she genuinely wanted to
be my friend.
“You’re… not on the school paper, are you?” I asked.
She gave me a confused look. “I couldn’t write to save
my life, but why do you ask?”
I shoved a book back inside my locker and took out my
Chemistry book. “I can’t think of a reason why you would
want to talk to the school freak.”
“You’re the school freak?” she asked me with a wide-
eyed expression. “I thought it was Queen Bee over there,”
she said, pointing at Chelsea Braxton, the school’s most
outgoing, most all-over-the-place girl.
“She is the absolute opposite of me. She thinks
everybody likes her,” I said.
Denise grinned. “Exactly. She thinks that.” She shook
her head. “I hate her. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.”
“Really?”
Denise shrugged. “She’s not pretty. She’s all makeup,
fancy clothes and expensive bags. She can’t even tell
preposition apart from proposition. Yet she acts like she’s so smart. And those Jimmy Choo pumps she’s wearing?” she
asked and smirked. “Knock-offs. And yet she acts like she’s
all-authentic.”
I stared at her blankly, not really sure why she was
saying these to me.
“Her best friend? Candy Wilson? Pretty girl, huh. But
that head of hers? Empty.
Chelsea keeps her because she
feels beautiful when Candy is around. Like… birds of the
same feather flocking together. Yeah, right!”
“Why… why are you telling me this?” I asked.
Denise smiled. “To tell you that something is always
wrong with somebody everywhere. Sometimes, people put
you down to distract others from noticing their own
imperfections.
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