I have never considered fate to be beneficial. I’ve heard that it takes the lives of those you love; that it brings something or someone into your life that you’d would rather live without. But I’ve never heard fate referred to something miraculous—and neither have the people I’ve been around or come to know. Fate brought my biological mother to misery—to the point where she had to leave me—but destiny gave me a father, whom I love with all my heart.
Jonathan Vela, my father, was the one who found me. It was a rainy day as he described it. Lightening painted the sky, and thunder roared throughout all of Sacramento—California, nonetheless—when he heard the sound of a nine-month old baby’s cries. Hurrying out onto his doorstep, he knelt down to check out the small box lying on his lamp-lit porch, and there, according to him, he had found the most beautiful baby girl, lying in a dusty, old, cardboard box, wrapped in several knitted blankets. She had sprouting blond ringlets and luscious golden-brown eyes that were completely breathtaking to behold, almost hypnotic. He picked up the ivory-skinned child and carried him into the house, into the kitchen. That was when his wife, Kedra, saw the little angel, and dropping the glass bowl to the floor, she gasped at the sight of the baby’s beauty. Glass shattered on the floor, she moved closer toward her husband, barely able to mutter the words on her mind.
“Who is this?” she murmured, exasperated. She took her into her own arms, cradling her softly.
Jonathan was just as in shock. “I don’t know…I found her.” Trying to contain himself, he added in a barely audible whisper. “She’s beautiful.”
“Can we keep her?” Kedra sounded like a child finding a stray puppy. After only moments of consideration, he agreed, on the one condition that he could name her. He chose the name Isabella—Isabella Juliette. Isabella, after his little sister who died during infancy; and Juliette, after—who else?—Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet;. How do I know all of this?
Because I am her. Yes, my name is Isabella Juliette Vela—or rather it was—and this is my story, one that I’d never forget. Even being twenty-three years old, the memories are as crystal-clear, and as I walk in the cool, autumn air, hand in hand with my true love, I can’t help, but replay the images in my head. How we met…the miraculous way we fell for each other…the good and the bad moments…the happy and the sad. They are all important. Because when all sewn together, something unbelievably real changed the lives of two completely different people and changed them both into something completely unimaginable.
That’s me, I thought as I watched a couple of girls, gorged in black clothing and heavily, dark mascara passed by the shop window. They all had numerous piercings, unnatural colored streaks, torn black jeans, ugly scarred wrists. And as bad as it sounded now, I was one of them no matter how I presented myself. I was going through it all…the pain…the misery…the blood…the feeling of being so unwanted. I hated it.
It’d all started during my senior year at Sacramento High when a certain incident—or rather, a someone—had changed my life. I had been a freshman during the time. Only a few days later, I had decided that I wanted to be like them, hoping I could find someone I could relate to, but found none. That didn’t mean I stopped hanging around them. Because I didn’t. Eventually, I morphed into one of them: I had dropped my real name and went by “Jade”—My best friend, Aster, had come up with it; I had a single platinum streak dyed into my long, flow, black hair; my ears were pierced to a maximum; my make-up made me look as though I hadn’t slept in weeks or a sinister raccoon; I didn’t own a pair of jeans without tears in them; and the only pair of shoes I owned that we’re boots were my black flip-flops that would usually be kept in the closet for months without being touched at all. As for the cutting, that was rare. Though I did it every once in a while to make sure the scars were evident, I wasn’t completely stupid to the point where I realized it hurt. A lot.
I was miserable, and though my appearance changed, in ways, I was still the same girl—well, almost. I wasn’t one of those people who drank or did drugs or whatever, and I most certainly had no interest in bullying people. I still followed my curfew, got good grades in school, and all that junk—not that I let any of my “friends” know that—but I still didn’t volunteer myself into the lime light. I didn’t join any extra-curricular or participate in any school fundraisers or whatever other people outside of school. I didn’t have a cent to my name. When people heard “Juliette Hale” they’d replay by saying, “Who?” and move on with their lives.
Honestly I didn’t have much in common with my friends except for one thing. We all just wanted to be alone, to not have to deal with everything else going on around. We didn’t care if a popular and a nobody got together; we didn’t care if the most famous celebrity couple broke up; we didn’t care about anything, but ourselves and our problems.
No one really understood why I had become this way, granted, the adoption. My childhood had been completely normal. My parents hadn’t divorced; we weren’t poor—actually, we were somewhat on the wealthy side; I wasn’t abused…nothing had been abnormal—except for the person I had become.
I wasn’t proud of it, but at the same time, I wasn’t exactly ashamed of it—to the point where I wasn’t about to trade it in for the whole preppy attitude everyone else expected. Unwillingly though, in during the end of my junior year, I gave my parents the satisfaction of raising a normal teenage girl—or at least it appeared that way. Sure, I traded in the black attire and make-up at home, but as soon as I got to school, I’d go back to my regular routines.
Absolutely no one cared about me, and in turn, I didn’t care about them either…
“So what do you think?”
My eyes fluttered open as I returned to reality. I was at a bridal shop with my brother’s fiancée, Loretta, searching for a Maid-of-Honor’s dress for me. Unwillingly, I had let her talk me into it, and for the past three hours, she had been dressing me up like a Barbie-doll. I very much disliked shopping with her—or rather, shopping in general.
I studied myself in the full-length, three-fold mirror. It actually didn’t look all that bad; in fact, I liked this one. It was pretty much a replica of the dress Miley Cyrus wore to the 2010 Grammy’s except for the fact that it wasn’t as showy—it came down to my knees, too—and it was a perfect shade of purple. I fiddled at the sleeves as my brother, James, walked up behind me, placing a cold hand on my shoulder.
“You’re beautiful,” he pointed out. And with the way he said it—I could almost consider it, “exasperatedly”—I knew he meant it. He swept one of my long black ebony curls in place before whispering in my ear, “You know, considering how breathtaking you’re going to look, I might not be able to keep my eyes on Lori.”
I blushed, pushing him away. I peeked over at Loretta. Luckily she hadn’t heard; she was too busy chatting away with the dressmaker. I turned to face him again, my cheeks still flushed.
He brushed his fingertips along my cheeks. “I haven’t seen that in a while.” I blushed more furiously. “I’m going to have a hard time when it’s your time to walk down the aisle. You’re going to be the most beautiful bride ever.”
“And what am I, pray tell?” Loretta grinned, rejoining the conversation. James immediately took her hand, and I knew our conversation had come to an end.
After slipping off the dress and giving it over to the cashier, my mind kept slipping back off to James and Lori. They were like nothing I had ever seen before. The way they had come to love each other was completely unexpected at first. James and I had always shared a passion for writing, and over the years, we had written a few “novels” together. One was published. Anyways, it had been about two people running into each other at a coffee shop and soon after that they got to know each other, and blah, blah, blah—you know how all of those cheesy stories go. Well, you see, my brother in his few years of writing had actually become rather well-known, and one day, during a book-signing at a coffee shop, he met Loretta. They hit it off, and just like the story we had written, they lived happily-ever-after. They didn’t have any complications whatsoever. They were perfect for each other, and I envied that.
And at that second, in the cool, December, California breeze, the memories flooded back into the present, and I found myself lost in my own little Wonderland.
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