FAGE 10: Reborn

Title: The Writing Academy

Written for: Cecilia Melton/Ceceprincess1217

Written by: DeJean Smith

Rating: M

Summary/Prompt used: Bella Swan, Lit/Comp teacher to the not-always-receptive-minds of the students of Forks High and an aspiring novelist, earns a place at the coveted Writing Academy, a four-week experience where participants relinquish their senses one-by-one, one-at-a-time to become better writers.

"The things that make you weird as a kid will make you great tomorrow"—James Victore, "How can I be in love with someone and yet I've never seen their face or heard their voice. But it is love, of this I am sure," and image of an English manor house.

In a second-floor classroom, on an unseasonably hot and sunny June day, Bella Swan blew her nose for the fourth time in an hour. She grumbled under her breath about budget cuts and custodial staff that deemed the upper floors less worthy to clean thoroughly as she boxed up another shelf of books. Of course, it could be worse. She could be forced into another dull post-planning session meeting rather than preparing her classroom for the summer break.

The floor cleaner can only be used on the ground floor, Miss Swan. There is no elevator to get it upstairs. You understand, of course.

She understood her sinuses were never going to be fully purged of a year's worth of detritus, pollen, and dust bunnies. Truth be told, she could sympathize with the janitorial crew. They were woefully understaffed, but with the latest and greatest time-saving equipment, i.e.., the Zamboni-like floor cleaner now in use instead of mops and buckets, the floor in her room had not been cleaned since two summers ago when the entire building received a strip and wax. It actually took two whole days before the wear and tear of teenage shoes, backpacks, and spilled coffee concoctions returned the thirty-year-old linoleum to its previous dull haze.

I really should bring a Swiffer in here more often.

Across the room, the aluminum blinds of one window rattled, reminding her that fresh air might be the solution.

"Thank you, Alice," Bella murmured as she stood, dusted off her hands on the back of her jeans, and moved to open the window.

Some classrooms had pets, a mouse or a hissing cockroach or some such beastie in a cage in a corner. Other teachers preferred posters of life affirming quotes, hints to make life easier, or even really bad puns. The anatomy classroom had a skeleton named, oddly appropriately enough, Tibia-deaux. But not Ms. Swan. Her little piece of Forks High housed a bone fide ghost. Or, at least she believed it was a ghost.

Some of the other teachers rationalized the happenings of room 1917, but Bella knew better. No amount of logic was going to prove to her that a box of tissues that was on one side of the room a few seconds ago and would appear right next to her at the appropriate time was not the work of her friendly spook.

No look down the nose, self-righteous maintenance person could prove to her the cold breezes in the room were due to faulty air handlers when the system was regularly maintained and worked properly in every other room in the building. Or that she felt them when the system was off.

And certainly, there wasn't a rational explanation to how sometimes, when she had a particularly bad day or a troublesome student or parent had just unleashed on her or when she pulled chaperone duty for a dance because she was one of the single teachers with obviously nothing else to do on a Friday afternoon, Bella would feel someone give her a pat on the back and some little treat would appear whether it be her favorite chocolates or a small gift card to her favorite local shops.

To Bella, a ghost was the most reasonable actions for what happened in her classroom, and she drew a fair amount of comfort from the idea something outside the realm of normal understanding watched over her. At first, she had hoped it was a gentleman ghost along the lines of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. She had always held a little torch for Rex Harrison, even if he had been a self-righteous ass. As time passed, Bella felt more and more certain that her visitor was female. The icing on the cake was after Curriculum Night, when almost everyone had left, Bella was certain she heard a whispered name.

Alice.

And from that moment on, that was who Bella would refer to whenever strange and unique things happened in her classroom. A few of the teachers smiled indulgently whenever Alice was mentioned. Others pretty much ignored the entire issue, too wrapped up in their own little worlds to pay it any mind. And then there were the precious handful that steadfastly believed Bella was in touch with the other world and were in awe. Fortunately, no one balked at the notion and nominated her for the next bus to institutionalized care.

After raising the blinds, she tugged open the tiny window. Moments later, a gentle, cleansing breeze wafted through the room, and Bella stood, eyes closed, reveling in the sense of peace clear nostrils gave her.

"Knock, knock!"

Bella opened her eyes to see her hallmate, Jessica, standing in the doorway. Her hair was pulled back in a frizzy ponytail, and bits of paper and glitter stuck to her jeans and tee shirt. Bella motioned for the art teacher to enter.

"So, County has finally approved my murals, and I wanted to show you the plan. Each classroom entry will be tailored to the course taught in it." Jessica opened her sketchbook and turned a few pages. "Mr. Molina requested a microscope, cells, a DNA strand, and an onion."

"Anaphase, metaphase …" Bella murmured, remembering her own days in the Biology teacher's classroom and the onion cell lab.

Jessica grinned, pointing to a tiny, gold onion trophy she had incorporated into the design. The prize for finishing the lab first was well-known and unfortunately discontinued after several of the spray-painted onions had been left in students' lockers over the summer.

"Now, for you," she flipped a few pages and gestured toward the pale purple archway that would soon surround her classroom doorway. "I got the quotes you sent me, and I love them, but I need your input on the font we use. And how you want them arranged. Or if you still want both. I've sketched a few ideas."

Bella looked down at the elaborate drawing with its stacks of books, smiling as she recognized the titles were some of her favorites as well as part of the curriculum, a laptop computer alongside paper and pens. Jessica even included a comic strip that Bella often used to appeal to the more graphically-minded students.

Jessica flipped the page to show the first option. Shel Silverstein's Invitation filled the wall on the left side of her doorway while the artwork balanced the image on the right.

"I can flip them if you'd prefer. Text over here, pictures over here."

Bella nodded as she turned the page and her breath caught. Jessica had taken the words and made a panoramic arch over the doorway. This time, the books, laptop, pens, papers, et cetera intertwined around a quote.

The things that make you weird as a kid will make you great tomorrow—James Victore.

Bella giggled as she realized weird was emphasized and would fall right above her nameplate on the door. So, so fitting, she thought. The little girl of divorced parents who spent her formative years shuffling from place to place thanks to a nomadic mother before settling with her father in Forks, Washington, the rainiest place in the continental United States. The child who preferred reading classic literature to watching television or YouTube videos who grew into the young woman who steadfastly believed a ghost inhabited her classroom and spoke to said specter as if it were her best friend in the entire world.

Yes, Bella Swan was weird. And rather proud of that title. She was working on the becoming great, whether it be as the next famous American novelist or encouraging a new generation down that path.

"That one was my favorite," Jessica murmured, motioning toward the image. "It just seemed so apropos for high school."

"I agree." Bella reverently fingered the illustration, falling more and more in love with it.

"Any suggestions? Modifications?"

"None that I can think of. It's really perfect, Jess."

"Well, do you want the text to be print or script?"

"Can any of the kids read script?"

The need to consider this was sad, but true. With the discontinuing of teaching students to write in cursive, many of them lacked the ability to read several of the primary sources Bella used in her class.

"Lauren said the third-grade teachers at her school were lobbying to bring it back. Something about handwriting and memory retention."

Bella nodded. Their mutual friend and former classmate was the AP at Forks Elementary, and as a third-generation educator, she liked to blend old lessons with new techniques.

"Then let's go with script."

Jessica nodded. "Got a font pref?"

Bella thought about the styles of handwriting scripts available. Jessica was extremely talented and could mimic any font thrown at her, but the students that would be filling in her outlines might not be up to the challenge and she voiced her concern.

"I've got a few kids from the res that are coming over to assist with the bigger sections. Seems Jacob has been handing out community service hours to those who aren't exactly walking the straight and narrow. Better than sending them to PA for juvie."

While it was true most of the young men on the nearby reservation wished for a brighter life and to get out of the area, a few lost their way now and again. The new police task force Jacob headed looked for more appropriate ways of avoiding shipping the malcontents off to the detention facility in Port Angeles.

Jacob Black, son of her father's good friend, Billy, was on the elder council for the local Quileute nation and worked diligently toward ending the cycle of poverty and crime. He had pushed his way through high school, community college, and then the police academy, earning a place on her father's team. After presenting a well-designed plan of action, he was assigned to cover the reservation in the hopes having one of their own policing the area would create a more harmonious atmosphere and encourage the younger generation to set their sights higher than dropout status and a welfare state.

"Seth is one of them," Jessica continued.

Bella shook her head. Seth was a talented kid, often placing in the top two in county art competitions, but the lack of a father-figure in his life meant he searched for it in some pretty harsh places. She seemed to remember her father saying Quil and Embry had been arrested again, so it stood to reason the young man would have been with them.

She had a brainstorm and made her way through the piles of boxes to her desk.

"Where did it go?" Bella muttered to herself, flipping through her file folders. "Ah, here it is."

She plucked out her acceptance letter to The Writing Academy and brought it over to Jessica. Bella hesitated for a moment. This letter was personal. She had created a plan of study for the summer and the representative from The Writing Academy had praised her creativity and claimed the idea to be one of the best submitted. Bella had blushed at the approval.

"Think you can do this one?"

Jessica took the paper and glanced over it, whistling under her breath to herself.

"What?"

"This is old school." She held the paper up to the light. "Perfectly straight without guidelines, each letter exactly the same. Every 'a' is the same, every … Wow."

Jessica was having a moment. Whoever wrote this letter was a person after her own heart. Such care and craftsmanship in the lettering, in the placement of the lines, everything from the paper type to the selection of the pen used to write and even the color of ink to create the ideal contrast. The author had a true artist's heart.

"Maybe you can find the font online and—"

Jessica shook her head. "This isn't printed, Bells. Someone wrote this. By hand." She pointed to a period at the end of one of the sentences. "See how the ink blurred just a little?"

Bella gave her friend a look of disbelief. Her own chicken scratch handwriting was legible but until she had taken a few calligraphy classes to improve it, that had not always been the case. She had assumed the author just typed it up and printed it out.

"I know you probably don't understand, but while you love the written word, I have a thing for the how it is written. How something is composed. The attention the creator put into drawing the pieces together." She sighed wistfully as she handed the letter back. "It's probably some hundred and seventeen-year-old gentleman The Writing Academy has on retainer to impress the participants."

Bella nodded. She did understand what Jessica meant. She had countless book boyfriends, creations of an author's mind that she would never meet in real life, but when she read their stories, she fell in love over and over again. It was a true, all-encompassing love, of that she was certain.

That was her primary goal for her time at The Writing Academy—to learn how to create characters that a reader could fall in love with or despise or just create some sort of emotional attachment between reader and character. Once she achieved that, she could learn how to convey those lessons to her students and improve their personal writings and comprehension of what they read. And maybe, just maybe, she could get a three-page paper out of them without the use of the word like. Miracles were known to happen.

"You still excited?"

Jessica's question interrupted Bella's train of thought, and she looked at her friend with confusion.

"The Writing Academy. You still excited or nervous?"

A beaming smile graced Bella's face. "A month to learn how to create better characters through learning how to capture their traits through sensory description and deprivation. What's not to love about that?"

Jessica blinked owlishly. Language Arts had never been her strong suit and the words from her friend's mouth washed over her. She was not uneducated by any stretch of the imagination, she just spoke a completely different language than her friend.

"I have no idea what you just said, but based off of your smile, I'll go with 'yes.'"

"Yes, Jess. I'm excited."

"I want to hear all about it when you get back."

"It's a date."