Hello everybody! Welcome to 'A Blessing or A Curse?'! This is the last time I'm rewriting this and I really just want to finish this story and give it the worthiness of reading it deserves. I'm really glad that people liked this story so much even when I began writing it so long ago. It's time I gave it an outstanding end, but before I do that, it needs an outstanding beginning. Thank you all to heavens for waiting for this rewriting to happen. This time, I'm not backing out on it. I'm pausing with Golden Gods (Sunstreaker/OC) to complete this story.

Chapter 1: Where The Story Begins

Genealogy reports.

Fantastic.

"Okay Mr. Witwicky, you're up." The history teacher said from his desk at the front of the classroom.

"Wish me luck, sis." Sam said quietly to me, stumbling with his bag over to the classroom's podium that was in front of a green chalkboard.

"Good luck." I whispered boringly, stifling a yawn as I put the back of my hand to my mouth and clenched shut my eyes. When I opened them, I looked up at the white clock with black digits that was just above the green chalkboard.

It was out of order.

Sam started putting out all of our family's heritage gadgets on the brown wooden podium, the gadgets barely fitting on the small amount of usable space on it. "Sorry, I got a lot of stuff." He mumbled.

I sunk back into my chair, watching Sam present his case on the podium. He was nervous and everyone could tell.

Well, at least I finished with my report a long time ago. Got an A+ on it, as usual.

The teacher was holding his head in his hands, elbows on the desk, just trying not to fall asleep. Hopefully the class would end soon.

And who better to ask when it would ring other than the classroom's walking clock?

I turned around and looked to the brunette sitting behind me. "Just how much time until the class ends?" I whispered.

She was talking amiably with someone to her side and when she turned towards me, her smile vanished and was replaced with immediate disdain. "I don't know, you freak."

Not the first time I heard that word, but I was sick of it. "We've been in the same class since forever Mariah, I think it would be nice of you to tell me something normal for once." I returned her disdain.

"Yeah, well maybe if you were normal for once, I would have told you something else." She narrowed her dark brown eyes at me and turned away.

Well, there went nothing.

It wasn't my fault really. I was just born like that.

I turned back around just in time to see the teacher looking again at all the sextants, compasses and goggles our great-great-grandfather used in his expeditions. Those were very old instruments, and while I prided my family's heritage, Sam just wanted to get some money out of them.

How did he ever get Ron to sell them?

After he set up everything he had, including his papers, he started his presentation, looking first at me from the podium. I gave him a wink, letting him know that there was at least one person in the world that would always be there for him. Sam started much like I did. "For my family gene-" And was cut off suddenly, by being hit in the neck by a rubber band.

I turned around, only to find everyone in the class snickering and chuckling and Trent looking around, all too innocent.

Trent was the, by far, most good looking bastard in the school, but by God he was impossible to deal with. His current girlfriend, Mikaela Banes, didn't look too pleased by the motion, but went with it.

Well, what else was to be expected of a bimbo?

"Who did-? Who did that?!" The teacher yelled out, standing up and glaring at the class, trying to find the bad guy. He didn't succeed and resulted in batting a finger at the whole of the class. "People, responsibility." He sat back down, somewhat regaining order over the entire class. I turned back around to sit normally as I faced Sam on the podium. I gave him a nod of confirmation and support. Small motions, but very helpful all the same.

"Okay, um…" Sam started before improvising the continuation. "So for my family genealogy report, I decided to do it on my great-great-grandfather, who was a famous man." He brought his hands together, but he didn't look too bad on the report. He just had to continue and not stop. "Captain Archibald Witwicky, very famous explorer."

You're doing great so far, Sam. Just keep at it.

He reached for the map of the Arctic Circle, just as I had, only weeks ago. Having little to no friends had its upsides, too. You could actually do schoolwork weeks earlier because you didn't have friends to hinder you in the process. But I liked people, a lot. It was just a shame that friends were just beyond my reach, and not for something that was my fault. Again, I was just born with this thing and dubbed a freak.

Perhaps people really weren't supposed to know about it. But I can't change the past.

"In fact, he was one of the first to explore the Arctic Circle, which is a big deal." He said, gesturing towards the yellowish and old map that our grandpa used to navigate himself and his men.

Sam continued to talk about the discoveries of our grandfather and the difficulties of his expedition. What was left now was the instruments he used and I prayed that Sam remembered at least half of the names of the gauges.

"So, that's the story, right?" He made sure everyone got the story, even though they heard it a few weeks ago. Chances are that they forgot all that I was talking about. "And here we have some of the basic instruments and tools used by 19th century seamen."

Of course, the class, being the kinky idiots they are, thought he said 'semen' instead of seamen, and for that reason, laughter erupted once more. I understood the teacher's problems.

The teacher lost all hope with us and simply resolved to raising his round red sign that had 'quiet' written in large white capital letters. It looked much like a traffic STOP sign. The laughter evanesced.

"This here is the quadrant, which you can get for 80 bucks. It's all for sale, by the way." I dug my face in my palms, elbows on the desk. I know we needed to get money to buy ourselves a car, but selling our ancestors' gauges wasn't what I had in mind when Ron said we needed to accumulate 2000 dollars.

It was fairly obvious that his family genealogy report turned into a sale.

"Like the, uh…" He took up an old instrument into his hand and I knew he couldn't remember the name of it.

"Sextant." I whispered inconspicuously.

"The sextant, here." Sam proudly repeated and held it up just a bit higher. "50 dollars for this, this is a bargain." He moved on to the cracked glasses that reminded of Harry Potter all too much. "These are pretty cool." He raised them up. He was embarrassing me and our whole family, not to mention himself. I have no idea how in the world was he supposed to get his 3rd A on this. If he doesn't get it, our car dream goes kaput. "These are my grandfather's glasses. I haven't quite gotten them appraised yet, but they see many cool things."

"Are you going to sell me his liver?"

Ouch.

Sam looked to the teacher, nervosa shaking up his body. He was not expecting the teacher to say that.

"Mr. Witwicky, this isn't show and sell. This is the eleventh grade. I don't think your grandfather would be particularly proud of what you're doing here." Hosner scolded.

"I know, I'm sorry, it's just – you know, it's all going towards my car fund."

Yeah Sam, let everyone know. Just like you did with my secret and ruined my life for good.

He looked at the whole class. "You can tell your folks, it's on eBay. I take , cold hard cash works too, and the compass makes a great gift for Columbus Day!" He took the outdated compass into his hand a raised it for the views.

"Sam!" The teacher warned again.

"Sorry! Um, unfortunately, my great-great-grandfather, the genius that he was, started going blind and crazy, in the psycho world." He said as he lifted up a paper that was more than a century old. "Drawing these strange symbols and babbling on about some giant iceman that he thought he discovered."

Suddenly, the bell rang and all of students, including me, started packing their bags and heading for the door. Thank goodness it rang. "Okay, might be a pop quiz tomorrow, might not!" The teacher said. "Sleep in fear tonight."

Hah, yeah right.

"You want this, right? 50? No? 40, 30?" Sam raised up the glasses once more, trying to sell them to Jacob, the fat kid of the class. Jacob just walked passed him, shaking his head as he got out of the classroom.

"Sam." The teacher scolded once more and I adjusted my backpack as I slung it over my one shoulder.

"Right! Sorry, sorry." He said as most of the class had gone out of the classroom. I walked to the windows and saw our dad's dark green Austin parked out front.

"Dad's waiting for us." I told Sam as he turned to look at me in turn. "I'll wait for you in the car. You better get that A." I said seriously.

"Will do." Sam nervously nodded, walking towards the teacher's desk to discuss his grade.

It wasn't long before I exited my Josh Marshall High School and walked over the green of the grass to dad's old-timer. He was the sole owner of an original 1962 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II in the whole of Nevada. And boy, how he prided that baby.

"Hey dad." I said as I opened the door and moved the passenger seat up front, before finally settling down in the back of the car. I put the backpack to rest on the brown leather seats right beside me.

"Hey kiddo." Dad replied evenly, without even looking back. "So where's your brother?"

"Trying to get an A, I guess." I gave a shrug as I enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face and hands as I comfortably sat in the pure leather seats.

"Right. How was school?" He replied more out of decency than curiosity. Can't blame him, though. After asking the same question for nearly full 11 years, even I would be sick of asking it.

"T'was good." I replied as I closed my eyes and let the sun caress my face with its warmth. How I loved the nice weather.

But my moment of tranquility was short-lived.

"Yes!" I could hear Sam's squeals all the way from the entrance of the school as he excitedly ran over to us. I opened my eyes and tracked his hurried pace. "Yes, yes, yes!" He practically leaped into the car as he threw the backpack into the backseat, effectively hitting my head with it in the process.

"Watch it, moron." I berated.

"So?" Dad said, unobservant as ever. "What grade did you get?" He asked Sam.

"A-, it's an A though." Sam said as he held up the grade paper to dad's face.

"Wait, wait, I can't see."

"A-, see?"

"It's an A." Dad confirmed as I felt a sense of relief from the back of the car. Now we can finally get our first car.

"So we're good, right?" Sam asked.

"You're good." Dad said as he started up the engine of his Austin and started driving.

But he wasn't driving in the direction of our home.

"Dad, where are we going?" I asked as I looked around. "We're not going home."

"No, we're not." Dad said in a sing-along voice, and I immediately knew that there was something up. He was plotting something.

"So where are we going then?" I inquired again.

"I got a little surprise for you, kids."

"What?" Sam asked as dad suddenly turned to the car dealer streets and he turned right when we were in front of the Porsche dealer. "What kind of surprise?"

"Yeah, a little surprise." Dad said, not giving away anything for a moment, as my eyes lingered on the curvy forms of lovely Carreras and Caymans. I loved Porsches, really, and I could even catch a few Cayennes and Audi Q7s in the parking lot for some reason. It wasn't an unknown fact that Audis and Porsches could be sold at the same dealer.

"No. No, no, no!" Sam said excitedly and a bit disbelievingly. "Dad! You gotta be kidding me!"

I could only stare at the curves of the six cylinder sports cars. That's when I heard dad's grotesque, snorting laugh.

We've been had.

I frowned.

"Yeah, I am. You're not getting a Porsche." Dad laughed smugly as he drove further away from the Porsche dealer.

Sam and I turned to glare at him. "You think that's funny?" We said at the same time and then looked at each other. Being fraternal twins did not entail that we said the same things at the same time, but I gave it no further thought as dad just didn't cease to laugh at us.

"Yeah, Nicole, I think it's funny." Dad replied to me mirthfully, steering clear from the lovely Porsche dealership.

"What's wrong with you?" Sam frowned at him as I looked at wherever he was taking us. Right in front of us was a car seller called Bobby Bolivia's. And it held cars that were old-timers and sleepers. Dad couldn't have chosen a worse secondhand car seller if he wanted to.

No, scratch that. He probably could if he wanted to. He probably has already chosen the worst one, for that matter.

Happy New Year 2015 everyone!

Written:

31.12.2014.