My Lovely Angel

Angel Romney was new to La Push about five years ago. She had been adopted by a nice elderly couple in their late 60’s. She was about 11 then, and even though she was still a child, she tried not to get in the way of her ‘parents’. In her mind they were old and fragile and deserving of thanks for adopting her.

Angel had never stayed with a family too long before the Romney’s. They took care of her like they would with their actual children, and Angel didn’t mind calling them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’, although they looked more of a ‘grandma’ and ‘grandpa’.

But now, in Angel’s 16th year she laid in her bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, while her parents made her a special birthday breakfast. Angel dreamt a sweet dream of her, dancing in a field of lilies and daisies. The wind was blowing softly at the meadow, making her light auburn hair rush around her head every few moments, blocking her seemingly black eyes and getting trapped between her two small, pink lips.

“Angel,” Carroll, her mother, spoke as she opened the teenagers’ door.

Angel stirred and opened her eyes, being greeted with the sight of her white haired, elderly mother.

“Hello,” she spoke, her voice husky and thick in her throat.

“Happy birthday, my sweet Angel.” Angel sat up and rubbed her eyes, smudging the eyeliner and mascara she failed to wash off the night before. “Breakfast is waiting for you downstairs.” Her mother closed the door, letting Angel get dressed.

Angel didn’t have much variety in her clothes. She always wore jeans, a tee shirt, and a sweatshirt. But that was something almost everyone living the Olympic Peninsula wore, having it be the rainiest, coldest place on the continental US.

She pulled a light blue shirt over her small frame and pushed her legs into jeans that fit her snug around the hips. The soft cotton shirt paired with the black jeans left a little of her stomach exposed jut below her belly button. She shrugged as she looked in the mirror and slid her arms into a warm, white hoodie that she decided to leave unzipped. Angel let her hair fall in its natural wave around her shoulders, chest, and back as she hoisted up her black backpack that she carried everywhere with her at school. La Push High School did not have lockers, meaning the students had to carry all their books to every class.

Angel walked down the stairs of the tiny house and into the small kitchen where there was just enough room for a stove, a fridge, a microwave, and a small four person table. And at that table laid three pancakes, ice cream with chocolate jimmies, and white milk, matching the complexion of Angel’s skin.

She smiled at the elderly couple, her white teeth gleaming. “Thank you!” She sat down at her place at the table and dug in to the food that awaited her. Angel had always been a skinny girl with a huge appetite. Her real mother, and every other generation before that, had always been tall with small features. Angel wasn’t an exception. She stood tall at 5 feet 7 inches, skinny, and just barely curvy enough to tell she had gone through puberty.

“You need to head off to school, little girl,” her father, Marcus, laughed as he watched his adolescent daughter stuff her face with pancakes.

Angel laughed and nodded, taking one last drink of her milk before kissing both her parents on the cheeks. “Love you!” she said, walking slowly towards the kitchen’s doorway. “I’m going over Dolly’s house after school, ‘kay?”

Marcus smiled and shooed her off. “Go, have fun. Happy birthday!” he said before Angel slammed the door.

Dolly wasn’t her real name—Angel just liked calling her friend that. Her real name was Tatiana, and she was a born and raised on the reservation, along with her parents, and theirs. She looked like most people on the reservation, tan-ish skin, dark hair and eyes to match. But to Angel, there was something different. The way Tatiana was obsessed with fashion, and how her hair and makeup looked so professional; Tatiana was like a walking, talking, beautiful Indian Barbie.

“Happy birthday!” Dolly said, engulfing her best friend in a hug when she saw her in the school’s parking lot.

“Hey,” Angel laughed, her eyes crinkling with the smile she wore under her hood. She grabbed her friends’ arm and more or less dragged her into the school that was heated, but still had a slight chill.

Once inside, Angel found herself face-to-back with the three boys that seemed to love making her life as bad as it could.

Jacob Black, Embry Call, and Quil Ateara didn’t like being mean to Angel; it was just something they did when they were bored. And the fact that she were so easy to tease just made it easier. They thought it was fun and they didn’t care what happened to Angel because they really didn’t care about her. She was just their play thing.

But in Angel’s eyes, it was much more than that. They always interrupted her when talking to her crush’s, scaring them off with their size and how they pretended to be her boyfriend; they always ragged on her, making her self esteem go lower and lower. She never really thought that she fit in, because she was white, and everyone else on the reservation seemed to be Indian. And Angel didn’t mind that, but she sometimes felt like that was the reason Dolly was her only friend.

“Tatiana,” Quil said, winking at the girl whose cheeks flushed pink. Quil knew about Tatiana’s crush on him, using it to his advantage when he felt like bullying Angel.

“Oh, God,” Jacob laughed as Embry stood, leaning against the locker, not looking too well. “Angie, have I told you today that you are too skinny? Look, Quil, I can see her fucking bones.” He poked Angel’s shoulder and she grimaced.

“Shut the fuck up,” she demanded. “Don’t you have anything better to do than criticize us?”

Quil looked at Tatiana before shrugging. “Were not doing anything to Tatiana…only you.”

She glared at the three of them, even though Embry looked as if he would faint any minute.

Just as the two started walking off Quil called out to Angel again; “Hey, Angie, I forgot to bring paper today. Can I use your arm?” Angel clenched her fists before speeding up her pace, ignoring the laughing boys behind her.

“You guys are so immature,” Embry mumbled to his friends. “And kind of unfair, Jake. Bella is just as, if not more, white as Angel. You never say anything about it her.”

“Bells,” Jacob said smiling, “is different from Angel. Angel small and annoying. Bella is beautiful and shy, and the way she looks at me—” Embry stopped his friend before her could go on.

“You have got to be fucking crazy if you are calling Angel ugly,” he pointed out. “All you could talk about in freshman year was how beautiful Angel is. And dude, she is. Way more than Bella, or any other girl you’d find here,” he said, storming away from his friends and out the door of the High School as he suddenly felt a tremor of heat travel down his back.

“What the fuck?” Quil muttered as Jake stood confused. “He’s on his period man. Let’s get to class.”

Outside of school, in the woods, a lone wolf cried out.