One

Bella French turned the page of her book, completely and utterly riveted by the story unfolding on the pages before her. As she let the printed words paint a vivid picture in her mind, she finds herself in a 14th-century castle in Ireland.

She is being courted by a marquess, dressed in a fancy gown as she twirls around a big ballroom.. Bella could almost imagine it. A big, strong man in his dressy clothes. He is so breathtakingly handsome with his perfect face and his flawless manners. She is almost falling in love with him.

“You know if you keep your nose buried in books, people are going to think that you are weird.” Comes a voice from above her.

“I don't care what people have to say about me, so..” She tells him, going back to her book.

“You need to stop living in a fantasy world!” He says, right before he snatches the book from her hand.

“Give it back to me, Gus!” Bella tells him quietly, reaching for the book which he dangles over her head. She is sitting on the floor, with her knees drawn up to her chest and he is looming over her. She stands no chance of reaching the book like this but still, she reaches.

“Please.” She adds, trying a different approach with him.

“Why do you always have to be reading? Don't you ever get tired of all the words? It doesn't even have pictures in it.” Gus tells her, flipping through the book.

He lost her place in the book, which is something that she truly hates. The book has nearly six hundred pages and she would have to comb through them to find where she was at. That made her angry and loosened her tongue.

“Of course, it doesn't have pictures. Some of us that can actually read past a second-grade level actually enjoy the words and do not need pictures to tell the story. It requires being able to read.. I am sure that a neanderthal like you would have no idea what that it is like.” She snaps at him, pushing to her feet angrily.

As he is staring at her slack-jawed because of her insult, she snatches the book from his hand and clutches it tightly to her chest. “I would thank you not to touch my stuff again.”

“Dude, you talk so weird!” He comments with a shake of his head.

“Then please keep away from me. I am weird and I own it. I would hate for that affliction to rub off on the quarterback and the team captain. You might become weird too and lose your status as King of the school.” Bella tells him, turning away to gather her things.

Now that her blissful solitude has been ruined, she has no reason to stay here any longer. Besides, she has to get to class anyways. But as she bends down to pick up her bag, his hand catches her arm, halting her.

“Every king needs a queen and I have chosen you. Would you like to go to the homecoming dance with me this weekend?” He asks her and she shakes her head before he is even done speaking.

“No.”

“Bella..” Gus says, stopping here. “You have been here for almost a month and you have no friends. I just want to be your friend.”

Judging by all the lustful looks he shoots her throughout the day and how his gaze always seems to wander down to her chest if they happen to talk for longer than three minutes, she truly doubts that friendship is all that he wants from her.

“I don't really want friends. I want to ride out the rest of my senior year in peace and then I want to get the hell out of this town.” Bella says. She moves past him, wanting to get to class and to end this conversation.

He moves his body in front of her, blocking her way. “Bella- You can have no friends while still letting me-”

“What will it take to get you to leave me alone?” Bella eventually cries out, after trying once more to get around him only to have him block her path again.

“A date.” He says quickly. “To the dance. One evening of you getting to know me and I will leave you alone if that is what you really want. But I hope to change your mind.”

“I highly doubt that you will, but whatever. Do you promise to leave me alone- completely alone – after that? If I agree to this...”

“I promise to leave you alone if that is what you want after our date. But once you have been out with a real man-”

“Okay, you are starting to sound a little rape-ish, so you need to dial that back,” Bella tells him, with a roll of her eyes.

Although the very last thing that she wants to do is go on a date with him, the most annoying oaf that she has ever had the misfortune to meet, if it gets him to leave her alone, then it might be worth considering. So consider it she does.

And she comes up with a sinister little plan of her own.

Bella vows to make him so incredibly miserable on their date that he will not want to even lay eyes on her again, let alone speak to her. Suddenly finding something to smile about, she feels a grin splitting her face.

“You know what, Gus? I think I will go to the dance with you.”

“You are agreeing to go on a date with me?” Gus asks, smart enough to seem like he can barely believe the sudden change of heart that she had.

“Yep. Just this once, though. Afterward, you have to keep your promise that you will leave me alone.” Bella reminds him of the deal that he offered her and he nods.

“Okay.”

“Fine.” She walks away from him, with her bag and book clutched to her.

“I will pick you up at five o'clock on Saturday!” Gus calls out to her.

“I won't be ready until six!”

“How was school today?”

Bella looks up at her father as he comes into the room, holding a blood-stained white rag to his hand. “Dad, what did you do? Did you cut yourself? Is it deep?” Bella drops her book and jumps to her feet, startling the small dog sleeping in her lap. She rushes over to the sink to check his wound.

“Aw, it's nothing. Barely a scratch.” Maury tells her, pulling his hand back.

“Yeah, your 'scratches' usually require stitches. Let me see it.” Bella tells him, holding her hand out palm up and waiting for him to give her his hand. “I will see for myself it is 'just a scratch'.”

With a sigh, Maury hands her his hand and she unwraps it. He has a long bloody gash in between his thumb and pointer finger that jags across his palm. “Geez, Dad.”

“It is not at all as bad as it looks.” He says with a shrug. He watches her as she dips down below the sink and pulls out the first aid kit. She knows him so well, that she has them tucked away throughout the house.

Shutting the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, she opens the first aid box and digs around through it. Her tiny black-coated schipperke dances around her feet in excitement, thinking that he is getting a treat.

"Go lay down, Spook."

The dog moves over to the couch and lays down on the floor. Bella pulls out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, antiseptic ointment, gauze, and tape from the kit. Bella cleans the wound thoroughly and looks at him.

“It could probably do with a stitch or two, but it isn't necessary. I can clean it well, glue it and wrap it.” Bella tells him and he nods.

“I trust you, baby girl.”

So she does just that. Maury watches her and mentions, “So you never answered my question, how was school?”

“School was school. I learned some stuff, I read some stuff. Got asked on a date. I accepted. Typical day.” Bella says, wrapping the roll of gauze around his hand. She spreads his fingers to get a better wrapping, then secures it with the tape.

“Woah, wait a second. You agreed to go on a date? With an actual boy?” Maury asked, looking surprised.

“No, I agreed to go with a horse.” She says sarcastically. Although it would be more fitting to call him a donkey because Gus is a complete jackass.

“Wow. Horse, boy, girl.. doesn't matter. I am impressed either way.” He says, moving away from the counter as she cleans up the mess. “So, when is this date?”

“Saturday night. We are going to the school dance.”

“What?!” Maury gives her an incredulous look. “A date and a dance? What happened to my antisocial daughter who hates social gatherings and said that high school dances are for people who need to make memories of 'the good times' to get them through the rest of their mediocre lives?”

“I stand by that,” Bella tells him, with a shrug. “I just- I can't explain it. But don't think that this suddenly means I am going to join the homecoming court or be named prom queen. This is a one-time deal and then I will never socialize with kids from my school again.”

“Never say never,” Maury says and she grunts.

“Oh, I am saying never.”

Maury chuckles before he kisses her on the top of her head and heads back out to his workshop. He has turned their two-car garage into his own private workshop where he spends almost all of his time. He is a scientist, who has worked on projects all of her life but over the last year, he has been more obsessed than usual. She figures that he must be working on something huge.

She blames that obsession for the reason that he suddenly packed them up and moved them away from the only home that she has ever known. The house that she grew up in. The one that reminded her of her mother.

He moved them to this weird, small town that she hates. The people are strange. They have these weird legends that they live by. Like the woods behind her house. They call it the 'Forbidden Forest' like it is a freaking Harry Potter book. No one goes in them.

The trees behind her house stretch on for miles and miles, a line of trees as far as the eye can see. But people say that there is a mansion, somewhere through the perpetual darkness and the spooky trees. The people around the town also claim that it is haunted. That a monster lives in those woods and he kills anyone that goes in them.

She personally thinks that the town is full of kooks and crazies, but what does she know? Maybe there is some serial killer living in the trees behind her house. That would be the icing on the cake.

While Bella is already in the kitchen, she decides to go ahead and make supper. Since it is turning cold outside, she wants something warm and hearty. Getting out vegetables, she decides to make vegetable soup. She can make a big pot of it and they can eat the leftovers for a few days.

After she has the meal cooked and she has eaten a bowl, she puts the rest away, save for the bowl she makes for her father. She makes him a grilled cheese and a glass of tea, then carries the food on a tray to him. She places it on the small table outside the door that leads to the garage, knocks a pattern on the door and then walks away, with Spook at her heels.

She spends the rest of her night in her room, reading her book, with Spook cuddled up to her in bed. She absently strokes his fur as she gets lost in the scenes unfolding on the page. But as she puts her book away, she thinks about what she is going to wear to the dance on Saturday.

As much as she tries to hide it, she is still as girl and she sometimes acts like one. Like right now as she worries about what to wear on a date that she does not even want to go on to a dance that she does not even want to go to.

Bella has a few dresses in the back of her closet, but she has not worn them in forever. They probably don't even fit her any longer. But she refuses to go and buy a dress, just to go on a date that she does not even want to go on. She will not give Gus the satisfaction. 

She will have to make do with something from her closet or she will go in a pair of jeans. If Gus does not like that then he can leave her at home and she can spend the evening reading Evelina by Fanny Burney or The Professor by Charlotte Brontë.

Bella doesn't care.

She just wants to get the night over with.

But she secretly hopes that she has a dress to wear.