Cinder & Ella

by Kelly Oram

  My heart sank. I should have known I wouldn’t be allowed to do something as normal as go to college. I reached for my earbuds again. My opinion clearly wasn’t needed in this conversation, and whatever scheme they came up with, I was sure I’d need Katy to cheer me up.

  “What if he got engaged?”

  I dropped my phone before the music had a chance to play. “Excuse me?” I gaped in horror at my publicist and waited for the idea to be laughed out of the room, but no one objected. “You can’t be serious. Engaged?”

  “Actually, it’s brilliant!” Joseph said. “This nation lives for a great romance. It satisfies the teeny boppers and it shows the world that Brian Oliver is growing up. That he’s ready to settle down from his bad-boy ways and start taking life seriously.”

  I tried not to take offense to that. I’d always been serious about my career. I’d been working since I was a kid, and never had a chance to be a normal teenager because I’d been too busy taking life seriously.

  “I’m too young.”

  “It’s more romantic that way, and no one will blame you when you break it off later.”

  “Who the hell do you suggest I get engaged to? Am I just supposed to go pluck some random girl off the street and give her a ring?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  The whole room went silent. Kaylee was texting on her phone and didn’t look up to meet anyone’s gaze, but she shrugged, knowing that she had the whole room’s attention. “This is my first movie. I could use the publicity.”

  Fighting back my gag reflex, I cringed. If ever genetics had let down the human race, it was in the creation of Kaylee Summers. She was like those chocolate bunnies they sell at Easter—delicious on the outside, completely hollow on the inside, and too much of her was bound to make you sick to your stomach. It was bad enough I had to play nice with her at work. No way in hell could I keep up the pretense off set.

  “I love it!” Joseph declared.

  “Genius!” Gary agreed.

  Even my father smiled enthusiastically and said, “It’s perfect.”

  “Hell no! If I have to get engaged, it’s Katy Perry or no one.”

  Kaylee looked up from her phone long enough to laugh. “You wish.”

  “The only one dreaming here, babe, is you.”

  Anger flashed in Kaylee’s eyes, but her smile turned predatory. “What’s the matter, baby? We hooked up once before, and I don’t remember you having any complaints then. Come on, do this with me. We could have some fun with it.”

  I shuddered. “No way.”

  Several people in the room sighed, and again it was left up to Lisa to coax me back into compliance. “Brian, think about it,” she urged. “A real-life romance between the two of you would generate millions in free publicity. Your fans would eat it up. It would be great for the film, and your career.”

  “A real-life romance with her?” I repeated. “I think you’re overestimating my acting abilities, Lisa.”

  That wiped the smug smile off Kaylee’s face. “Asshole.”

  I returned the sentiment without shame. “Bitch.”

  “Man up, Brian,” my dad interrupted. “This isn’t just about you. We all need this. This is my first dive into more serious films. If my lead actor could earn an Academy Award nomination, I could get any kind of job I wanted after this and not just action flicks.”

  “It’s not like it has to be real,” Gary added. “And it won’t last forever. Just a couple of months being seen together in public, and then after the movie releases you guys can break it off. No harm done. You could get engaged fairly quickly and just tell people you dated in secret during the filming. Secret love affairs are exciting. The world will go crazy over it.”

  Looking around the room, I felt the need to punch something. There was no way I was getting out of this meeting a single man. Kaylee smirked at the defeat in my eyes. “I’ll make us a reservation somewhere nice. Oh, and my ring better be platinum and at least three karats.”

  The only woman on my rehabilitation team was my psychological therapist, but even she was still young and attractive. Her being a girl was really for the best, though, because I was actually required to put together coherent sentences in our sessions, and that seems pretty impossible for me to do around Delicious Daniel.

  Dr. Parish started with the inquisition before I’d even settled myself into the big leather wingback chair in her office. “How was your week, Ella? Any progress to report?”

  I loved the chair, but I hated my weekly therapy sessions. They were awkward at best and I always left them feeling awful. “I finally caught up on all the episodes I missed of Once Upon A Time.” That was the only progress I could think of. It was basically the only thing I’d done all week.

  “You know I was talking about your family.”

  “Those people are not my family.”

  Dr. Parish smiled at me. “I understand why you feel that way. However, they are your family and you need to accept that. You need to find a way to build a relationship with them.”

  “I can’t build a relationship with people who don’t like me and don’t want me around. The only time I ever talk to the twins is when they call me to make sure I’m hiding in my room before they bring their friends home, and they tell me they’ll text me when it’s safe for me to come out.”

  The thing about Dr. Parish is that she never loses her cool. I know that she must get frustrated, but somehow she always looks and sounds genuinely sympathetic. “I’m sure you’re misinterpreting their intentions. Perhaps when they call to tell you they’re bringing friends home, it’s their way of trying to include you.”

  I snorted at this. Dr. Parish is a smart woman, but she has way too much optimism. “Anastasia’s exact words when she called me yesterday were ‘Hey, Stepfreak, I’m bringing some of my friends home, and they all have this, like, really bad fear of dogs, so make sure you lock yourself in your room this evening. I’ll text you when it’s safe to come out.’ Call me pessimistic, but I don’t think I misinterpreted that.”

  Dr. Parish’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

  “The best part about it,” I continued on, “was all the laughter in the background. She was with her friends when she called to tell me this. She waited until she had an audience on purpose.”

  “Did you talk to your parents about your stepsister’s behavior?”

  Again, I laughed without humor. “She’s said worse to my face with both my dad and Jennifer standing right there. They always just force these nervous laughs like ‘Oh, how sweet, the girls are joking around with each other.’ They never say anything. They’re in total denial. They give those girls whatever they want and let them do whatever they want. Juliette at least has the decency to just pretend I don’t exist if I stay out of her way, but Ana is a vicious, rotten, spoiled princess. I wouldn’t be friends with her even if she did give me the chance. She’s not the kind of person who is healthy for anyone to be friends with. She’s a quintessential Mean Girl—like the kind they make movies about.”

  Dr. Parish sighed. She set down her pen that she’s always taking notes with during our sessions and took her glasses off to rub at her eyes. Obviously tired of going around in circles, she changed the subject. “Let’s talk more about your attempted suicide.”

  I groaned, but I still tugged at the sleeves of my shirt. I had scars all over my body, but the ones on my wrists were different. Those scars were my own fault. That moment in my life was a decision I truly regretted. Something I was ashamed of. “That was a mistake,” I whispered. “I wasn’t even that serious.”

  “I’ve read the reports, Ella, and I’ve seen a number of attempted suicide cases. Had you had more than a steak knife available to you, you’d have succeeded. You almost did. You weren’t messing around.”

  “Fine, maybe I was serious about it, then, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. That was a really bad time for me, but I’ve gotten a lot better.”

  Dr. Parish didn’t believe me.


  “I can walk again! I’m learning how to write with my bad hand again! The doctors in Boston told me that wasn’t supposed to be possible. Do you think I would have worked so hard and put myself through so much more pain trying to accomplish those things if I still thought about ending my own life? I got overwhelmed after my accident and lost my head for a while, but I’m not suicidal anymore! Why won’t anyone believe me?”

  Dr. Parish got up from her desk and walked a box of tissues to me. After I grudgingly took one, she sat down on the other chair next to mine. “I do believe you, Ella,” she said. “You have a lot of roadwork ahead of you still, but I know you’ve come a long way from that dark place. What you don’t understand is that until your life is a lot more stable, it would be very easy for you to find yourself back there. At least living in your father’s home, whether you feel comfortable yet or not, there is someone looking after you who loves you and has your best interests in mind.”

  That made me so angry I started to shake. “You think that man loves me? You think he has my best interests in mind? He doesn’t even know me! The other day he enrolled me in the same school his daughters go to. It’s this fancy private school like you see on TV shows about rich kids with messed up lives.”

  “It’s probably a great school, Ella.”

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right one for me. He took me to see the place when he registered me, and I felt like I’d gone to some alien planet. I grew up going to a public school in inner city Boston. We had metal detectors, not a sushi bar. I am not going to fit in there. I’m not even going to know how to interact with the kids there. We’ll have nothing in common. Everyone there will be just like Anastasia and Juliette. Plus, we have to wear uniforms—short skirts and polo T-shirts! It’s going to be hell for me.”

  When Dr. Parish sighed, I tried to defend myself in a way that didn’t just sound as if I was whining. “Public school would be a lot more familiar to me. It would be a lot more diverse. I would be able to wear whatever I wanted so I wouldn’t have to always have my scars on display like some kind of freak show. I would be able to blend in more. Plus, there might even be a few other kids on a five-year plan there. You think kids go to a school like Beverly Hills Prep Academy and get held back? As if I don’t have enough to deal with already, I’m going to be a full year older than all the other seniors. Plus, I already have an arch enemy who doesn’t want me to go there and has promised to make my life hell if I get in her way.”

  I waited for Dr. Parish to tell me I was misinterpreting Anastasia’s threats again, but she didn’t. She went back to her desk and started taking more notes. “Have you voiced any of these concerns with your father?”

  I gave her another humorless laugh. “I had a massive panic attack when I saw the place. I understand why you don’t want me to do homeschool, so I asked if he would at least send me to public school. I gave him all the reasons I just gave you. I told him I thought it would help me adjust better if I was on more familiar ground and less anxious. I begged him. And do you know what he did? He laughed at me! I was in the middle of a legitimate panic attack. I was begging for his understanding. I was in tears, and he laughed. He told me I was being ridiculous and that I was going to love it there. He told me no daughter of his was going to go to public school when he could provide them with a better education.”

  As was pretty common during my therapy sessions, I started crying again and had to get another tissue. “The man can’t have my best interests at heart, because he has no clue what my best interests are. He doesn’t know a thing about me, or what I need. He’s just a snob who’s now stuck with a freakish girl from a part of his past he tried to bury. I’m his deep, dark, disgraceful secret. He’s more concerned about saving face with his friends than he is with me.”

  I blew my nose and got my tears under control. Once I could talk again in a rational manner, I said, “Look, I know you’re trying to help me and all, but the fact is my dad’s house is just not a healthy environment. It’s awkward and stressful, and it’s only making everything that much harder for me. My whole rehabilitation process would be so much easier if I could just move out on my own.”

  Dr. Parish sat there for a minute, silently contemplating what I said. “If you could leave on your own,” she finally asked, “where would you go? Back to Boston?”

  Finally, a topic that wasn’t depressing. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I lost my spot at Boston U, and all my friends have moved on. Things wouldn’t be the same if I tried to go back, so I’d probably pick somewhere else.”

  “So where would you go?” Dr. Parish asked again. “What would you do with your life?”

  “First, I’d finish high school in some online program. If I did that, I could start now and be done in a couple of months instead of having to repeat my entire senior year. Then, I’d still go to college. I know I want to study journalism. I guess I’d just have to decide where I wanted to go. I could go anywhere now, but I want to be an entertainment writer/reviewer, so it’d probably be here or New York. Probably New York because I’m partial to the East Coast.”

  I knew I’d said the wrong thing when Dr. Parish’s eyes narrowed. “You would leave, just like that? Go off to some college all by yourself in some town where you didn’t know anybody? Had no friends?”

  “Lots of kids do that.” I kicked myself for sounding defensive. I knew that would work against me, but I couldn’t help it. I hated how people were always pointing out that I had no one left.

  “Lots of kids aren’t recovering from such a traumatic experience as you, and even then, most of those kids have a strong support system back home.”

  I scoffed. “And you think I have that here? You think my dad and his family are a support system?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said simply.

  I was shocked by her answer. Everyone I’d met since the moment I woke up from my accident had tried to push my dad and his family on me as if the fact that my father and I shared the same blood meant that we were all going to automatically love each other and be insta-BFFs.

  “Perhaps you’re right that living with your father and his family isn’t the best thing for you,” she said slowly.

  My heart perked up at this tiny ray of hope, but I tried to squash it. There had to be a catch somewhere. She wasn’t going to sign off on my mental health, which is what I needed if I wanted to be free of my dad’s supervision and living on my own.

  Dr. Parish put her notepad down and leaned back in her chair. “Ella, I know you see me as your prison warden, but I hope you understand that I really do want what’s best for you. It’s my job to help you figure out what that is, and help you get to a place mentally where you can accomplish it. I want to see you succeed. I want to be able to sign your release papers for you, but you have to prove to me that you’re ready for that.”

  So, she wasn’t going to get me out of my father’s house. My hope was appropriately extinguished. “What does that mean?” I grumbled.

  “It means that if getting you a place of your own is really what’s best for you, then that’s what we’re going to work toward. But I’m not going to let you do that until you can prove to me you won’t be completely alone. I don’t believe you’re ready to be by yourself. I think that would put you in danger of falling into another severe depression. You need friends. You need a solid support system. If you don’t believe your family will be that for you, then find others. Make some friends. Join a support group. Try to get back in touch with some of your old friends in Boston. Even if they have moved on and you don’t live near them, you still need people you can talk to. If you can build yourself a real support system, Ella, then I’ll take you apartment shopping myself.”

  Dr. Parish’s promise stuck with me through the rest of the day. I needed a support system, and there was only one place I could think to start.

  Brian

  I tugged on the collar of my shirt as I pulled up to the restaurant. Of course Kaylee picke
d The Ivy for our first “date.” It was only one of the most well-known celebrity haunts in Los Angeles. Photographers camped out front on the sidewalk every night of the week, and tonight was no exception. The flashes started going off when we were still half a block away because the paparazzi all recognized my car. They were going to freak out when they realized I was dining with Kaylee Summers tonight.

  “You ready to do this, baby?” Kaylee taunted from the passenger seat.

  My stomach churned. Kaylee had been a little too eager for this whole charade from the get go. She’d thrown herself at me when we first met and I made the mistake of bringing her home. It only took me a couple of days to realize how stupid that had been. She couldn’t seem to understand that one night of fun to get the tension out of the way when filming was just that—one night of fun. It took me weeks to convince her I wasn’t interested in anything more, and I’d had to parade dozens of other girls in front of her to get her to understand.

  I glanced at her again. She covered her lips in some glossy stuff and then laughed. “You look like you’ve been asked to carry out a prison sentence.”

  I almost smiled. That statement was amazingly accurate.

  “I don’t know why you’re being so grumpy about this. Most men would kill to be in a relationship with me.”

  Even if Kaylee weren’t a conniving, high maintenance, self-centered bitch that was dumber than a goldfish, I wouldn’t date her for real. I didn’t date anyone—at least not more than once. “I don’t do relationships.”

  “Why not? I think they’re fun.”

  In order to be in an actual relationship, one was required to use their heart, and my heart didn’t work anymore. It hadn’t for over eight months now, but I wasn’t about to explain that to Kaylee. “I just don’t.”