Prologue

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

September 4

Okay. What the…Okay so Mrs Landrau said that all we have to do is write without stopping for five full minutes and she said not to worry about punctuation because she will not be grading on spelling or punctuation. She says the only thing that we should be doing is writing non-stop and letting the words feel the page. Ack fill the page. Crap. I can’t do this for five minutes. Thank God she is not going to grade this for

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

September 10

Mrs Landrau was truthful when she said that she would not look at the content of our journal only the length of our submission. She said not to stop writing for an entire fifteen minutes. But I don’t know what to write about. How about I hate this class? Hope she don’t doesn’t read this. I hate how this class is a waste of time and space and energy. She is stting there collecting a paycheck and having us just write non-stop and then she is not even going to grade this! How stupid! Well she is going to grade on how long the submission is but not what we write. So basically I can just sit here and write ladi dah ladi dah ladi dah and fill up the entire page. Haha, naw I won’t do that. Then she will fail my ass. Okay how about this. My name is Bella Rose Wyatt and I’m ugly. Mrs Landrau just looked over at me because she saw I just stopped writing. I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m supposed

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

October 2

It’s not that bad. This is my second notebook and I have already filled the first one up front and back. When I looked back at it I was completely amazed that I had so much to say. I always wanted to be a writer. It would be the perfect career for someone that has a mask instead of a face. We have to sit for half the bell, twice a week and write and somehow this is going to make us better journalists. I’m looking at Mrs. Landrau. How in the hell did she get such a lucky job? There is no way that she went to school for this. She is supposed to be teaching us how to become journalists. No, I get that she is not teaching us English but how is this going to teach me to write? I’m just saying. Instead of being a writer maybe I should become a teacher and sit at the head of a class pretending to read some paperwork. Yeah, right. Like I could ever sit in front of a roomful of kids and not totally freak them out. I have to select my career carefully, or maybe not. Who cares? Not me. There is just two more years of school. Next year I will be a senior and everything will be better. Not because I’m a senior but because then I will almost be done with this hellish existence. So anyways wite. Write for twenty-five minutes without stopping. I can write a piece of fanfiction, I can write a story or a poem. I can write about my sorry existence or I can write about my dreams and expectations. I can write about the truth or I can write about a lie. I will write about what I know. I know that my being ugly is a necessity of life. Without ugly you can’t gage beauty. Even if only the most beautiful people survived on earth you would still need to know who was the ugliest of all the beautiful people. I accept my role and have learned that I’m valuable to the make-up of the world; the rich need the poor, the beautiful need the ugly.

They call me Mutant here at school but my name is Bella Rose Wyatt. No one calls me Bella, no one calls me Rose; it’s either Bella Rose or Mutant and I don’t care either way. I just wish that my parents hadn’t had such high hopes by giving me such a pretty name. Maybe if my name was…Beulah or Lou Lou then I wouldn’t feel like such a fake. I could live up to a name like that. The teachers could call roll; “Beulah Wyatt?” and when I raised my hand everyone would expect that name to belong to me

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

January 6

Back to school. I hate being back at school. I can’t wait until next year when I am a senior and then I will be done with those CRAP, this! I had a good winter break. Me and Mom stayed home and didn’t go to the family gathering. She knows I can’t stand it and I don’t care if she says that this is your family and they love you despite your scars. Its not true. She knows it and I know it. My cousin’s look at me like I’m a freak and I heard Aunt Linda say that she doesn’t know how my mother endures. I know what she was talking about. I don’t care. Not anymore. One good thing about school is that I get to look at him. L.T. He is tall. He has to be because he is on the basketball team. No, he IS the basketball team. I like him because he is quiet and doesn’t act like the other guys. He is not always trying to be cool. Cool people don’t have to try. He has a neat afro when everybody else is trying to wear dreads or shave their heads. Look, I’m not shallow, I don’t like him just because he’s handsome I like him because of his eyes. He has these sad eyes that never smile. I just want to be the one to make him smile. He is so popular, why doesn’t he smile?

There are some other cute boys here but I don’t like to think about them and they are not going to think about me. I like my friend Rochelle. She is very pretty even though she wears that quick weave and it sorta looks fake. I mean really! How many black girls have straight Asian hair that goes down their back? But she is pretty. She has chocolate skin and dimples in her cheeks. She is kind of fast but maybe I just think that because I’m never going to be fast. LOL, My momma says fast. We say slut, but I don’t think that of Rochelle. She is cool and just living her life. I’m the opposite of fast. I will be slow. Slooooowwwww. Is there a word in my generation for someone like me that will never be kissed, never have sex, never get chosen by any guy? A loser. A mutant. Rochelle never calls me mutant, just Bella Rose like before I looked like this. She’s always been my friend and not because her mother made her do it. Because sometimes parents do stupid things like think they can control who you are and what you will become. Just because they want it doesn’t mean that it will happen. Just because my mom buys me some cool clothes and does my hair real pretty doesn’t make me cool or pretty. As a matter of fact I take my hair down as soon as I get to school. Why doesn’t she understand that everytime she does stuff to try to make me look beautiful she is only making me the brunt of more jokes?! It’s like sticking a ribbon in a guirella’s hair. Gorilla. Crap, so anyways. Lorenzo looked at me today in class and didn’t give me bug eyes or snort. I hate this, because I think that’s what he should do. I’ll be a senior soon. I’ll miss Mrs. Landrau’s class. I’ll miss writing like this and not having to worry about the answer to a problem or some test. That’s why I’m going to wait until after I graduate, so that I can collect all of the things that I might miss.  I’ll miss pizza but not really. Pizza isn’t a good enough reason to keep living. Music! I will truly miss never hearing another beautiful song. I will miss never reading another good book that will make me laugh or cry. I will miss writing a story that make people see people like me; people who are not the most beautiful. I will miss my Mom because she has already lost so much when she lost my Dad. But my Mom is not happy either…I will miss the fact that I will never ever have sex. I will miss…I guess I will miss thinking. I don’t know

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

January 16

Lorenzo Tate broke his hand and everybody was worried about how it will affect him being able to play ball. He didn’t seem like it was a big deal and he got a lot of attention—mainly from girls. I was happy that he didn’t seem to care about one over the other. That is stupid to be jealous. I’m not really, but. Hmmm, what to write, what to write? If I married a good looking person like Lorenzo our kids would be very pretty because the face I have now would not pass on to them, only my old face and my old face was very pretty. I have pictures all over my walls and when I go to bed at night I like to look at them. It’s the last thing I look at every night and I hope I will dream about before the accident. At school people ask me all of the time what happened to my face but I don’t really say. I mean, they know about the accident but they want the whole story and I don’t give anybody that much. Why should I? If they don’t even care enough to talk to me in the halls or during lunch but then will ask me about the most THE MOST horrible thing that could happen then I don’t feel the need to share. Lorenzo Tate, Bella Rose Tate. I love that name but I don’t want to write his name. Miss Landrau does look at the journal just to see how much we write and I don’t want her seeing his name pop up everywhere. I don’t want her knowing what I want, what I like, what I wish for. That is for me and for me alone. But if God could just let me have him then I would stay.

I don’t want it to seem like my life is based only on what I can’t have, so if I can’t get it then I don’t value it. I have thought this through for many years. I don’t want to think about that or those surgeries. That was a bad time and they want to start it all over again when I turn 18. But that ain’t going to happen. When you graduate Bella, we can start reconstruction because then your face will not go through much significant changes.  A long time ago I thought it would be worth sticking around just to see if I would be pretty again. But ugh…The doctor sat me down and looked me deep in my eyes and he told me the truth.

It hurt but I appreciate it now because now I won’t waste my time wishing to look normal—even if I don’t look like I used to I just want a face and not this mask made of skin but is not me. This is not me. I’M ME. MY FACE IS NOT ME.

I had a dream about that man and that he had never got into his car drunk or maybe he did but we crossed paths by just a few minutes. Anything could have delayed us by the few minutes that it would have taken to change every. Maybe I had to go to the bathroom before we left or I stopped to tie my shoes, I don’t know. Five minutes and he would have hit another car and killed another little girl’s father, and ruined the life of a different family. He wrote me a letter from jail and I read it and cried. I cried because I hated him so much for even asking me to forgive him. Him him him. How he feels, what he wants, his fault. His decisions but it’s me that has to live with the consequences. I want him to suffer. And I don’t care if that is not God-like. I hope that hurt him in jail. My Daddy is gone forever and I’m left looking like a monster but I’m supposed to be the bigger person and forgive?! No and the people that tell me I should then I just want to…I want.I wrote him a letter and told him about everything I felt and then I tore it up. He didn’t even deserve a response. I’ll get a boatload of money when I turn 18. But…I’ll never use it. It’s supposed to pay for the surgeries and to help give me a better life. But I’ll be dead. There. I wrote it. I’ll be dead.

I am almost dead. Dead. My mom said that my father died very fast and didn’t suffer. She said that she was happy for that. This is why I know that it will be okay for me to die. You see I am suffering. It’s just that my death is taking so much longer. If my mom understood then she wouldn’t want this for me. I’m tired. I’m only sixteen and this is

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

February 2

I HATE LORENZO TATE! I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! Nobodyis ever going to love me. Nobody will ever want me. I am nothing, I am less then nothing! Do you think that I don’t know this? I just wanted to I don’t KNOW! But couldn’t I just pretend for a little while? So what is the point of being in the world when I will always be alone? This is all there will ever be. Stand me next to the ugliest, grossiest woman and you know who will get chosen? Not me. Because I went through the windshield. I lost my skin and crushed the bones in my face. My ear had to be reattached! If you harvest skin from my other body parts so that I can have the semblance of a face then the other body parts are now deformed. My back, my legs, my belly. Why did they do this to me?! Was this saving my life? Is this life? I’m not ugly. I am not ugly!!!! I’m just hurt that’s all. It’s going to take more surgery before they can make my face look like something other than a mask. I used to be so pretty. I had a caramel complexion and arched brows and pretty plump lips. My brown eyes were bright and shining and I never knew that I should appreciate what I had because one day I was going to be a monster. I’m not going to ever care about anybody again. I’m never going to want anybody. And I’m not going to wait until I turn 18 because

I’m so tired. Lorenzo is going to think I did it because of him, even if I leave a note saying that I didn’t they will think I did. Everybody at school will take responsibility and maybe in 10 years they will talk about the girl that they used to call mutant and how she had offed herself. They will have regret in their voice when they repeat the story over some social gathering. And they will shake their heads and say, ‘kids are so cruel. If only I had known; If I had just understood.’ Eh. Some want that. Some want to be martyrs. But I don’t. I don’t want my name on your lips! I don’t want you to speculate if it was your actions that pushed me. I don’t want you to take some type of sick pride in your own power, or search for some type of forgiveness for your thoughtlessness. Go to hell! GO TO HELL! I’m not going to do it because of you. I was making plans for this before there was ever a YOU! Before I ever rounded the corner and heard you talking to your friends, before I heard Dominic Shelby say sex ain’t got no face. And then Dennis said that he only cared about what was below the neck. Jorge said Yeah, right. Would you do it with the mutant? I wanted to turn away and not hear the answer just at the same time that I wanted to know what you would say. I wanted the answer to be yes. I wanted somebody to say I don’t care about that, or say that Bella Rose’s face isn’t that bad. We’ve known her since she was a kid. Don’t talk shit about her. They all made gagging noises but you didn’t Lorenzo. You didn’t laugh. You just said that you would if I put a bag over my head.

I learned something about love in that very moment and I swear I’ll never forget it again. Love is not ever going to happen for me—but at least there is the possibility that I might get laid as long as I wear a bag over my head.

Modern Journalism

Bell 4

March 9

My journal disappeared. For two days I couldn’t find it. It was just…I don’t know, the worst feeling in the world. I never meant to write so much about things that I don’t even want to think about. But I suppose they needed to come out because I had buried them so deeply that I didn’t know that it was how I really felt. The thought that someone would have found my journal or taken it and read it and would spread it around…GOD. I thought…I’ll never come back to school. I tore up my bedroom, and I retraced my steps. I looked everywhere and even stayed after school checking the trash cans in each of my classrooms. My journal was gone and I couldn’t sleep. Back at school I rounded every corner expecting to see it pinned to a billboard or something. I even asked Rochelle if she had accidentally taken it. I almost wanted her to have it even though I would have been embarrassed. But she is my friend and the most she would do is knock me in the head for…well my plans for after senior year. No I can’t say it. I can’t say anything ever again. Because I can’t ever take the chance that someone will get there their hands on my inner most thoughts. And then, out of the blue my journal turned up. It was in my locker. But I never put it in my locker. I keep it with me. But it was in my locker. I’m not going to drive myself crazy over it but I’m also done with this scheme that the school has to make me write down everything on my mind. Would Mrs Landrau do something like steal it just to see what I’ve been writing? Would someone actually take it and then give it back? Who would want to know what I’m thinkin?! I’m not putting anymore into writing. Just stories, just unimportant garbage that the rest of these fools are writing! I’m done with this and I’m done with caring. Once upon a time there was an eight year old little girl. Her name was Bella Rose Wyatt and she was beautiful. Her mother didn’t stare into space and wake up in the morning with red rimmed eyes. She had a Dad that loved her. One day they were going out to dinner. Bella Rose Wyatt had a strange urge to go back into the house. I need to use the bathroom. Let me go back into the house for just five more minutes