by Donna Cooner
At midnight, Cinderella ran away from the ball, leaving behind her glass slipper. The doors swing slowly closed behind me, shutting out the sound of the party, and I realize I’ve lost something far more important than a shoe.
I’ve lost my best friend.
MIDNIGHT
Chapter Nineteen
Out in the hall, I take a couple of deep breaths, stumbling toward the junior lockers. I just need to think for a minute. The music from the dance fades away into a dull thumping in the background. I dodge a couple of giggling freshmen dragging each other back the way I just came, toward the music and the fun.
Two figures stand close to each other down by the water fountain. I blink rapidly, my mind starting to focus. Something about them is familiar. The girl is tiny. Gigi. She’s wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She’s obviously not dressed for the ball. And the boy who’s standing oh-so- close to her . . . is Jackson. Their hands touch. I hear a slight buzzing in my head.
My mind is scrambled, my stomach in knots. I can’t look away. God. How did this happen? When did this happen? Jackson reaches his hand around behind Gigi’s neck and brings his lips down to hers. It’s so easy. So natural. Like he’s done it a million times before.
My heart feels like it’s been wrapped in barbed wire and pushed deep inside me. I’m bleeding inside, fighting for every breath. It’s supposed to be me.
Gigi pulls back, laughing. She reaches up and brushes the hair from his eyes. Her fingers linger and then trace the line of his chin. Like I should be doing. Like I’ve dreamed of so many, many times. My stomach churns.
Her mouth moves, and Jackson laughs, his eyes never leaving her face. He leans in to murmur something in her hair. I can almost feel his breath on her neck. Almost. They both laugh. He pulls away, and she punches his arm playfully. It’s like she hit me solidly in the stomach. I cover my mouth with my hand to try and hold in the hurt.
“You’ll never be skinny enough for him.” Skinny’s voice fills my mind. She’s back with a vengeance. In my ear. Hissing.
“Nothing is ever enough. You know that now, right?”
Jackson leans back in toward Gigi. He’s going to kiss her again, and I’m standing there like I’m watching some kind of movie. I back away into the lockers behind me, trying to get away from seeing what’s coming. The clang of the metal star tles them, and they jerk away from each other.
“Ever?” Jackson turns to see me standing there, but the surprise on his face is quickly replaced by guilt. “What the . . . ,” Jackson says. He clears his throat.
I turn and walk blindly away from them. I’m fighting for every breath and it’s not fair. Nothing matters now. Not the weight loss. Not the acting. Not the audition.
“Wait,” Jackson calls. “I’ll catch up with you inside,” I hear him tell Gigi.
I can’t walk away fast enough in these stupid high heels, and he catches up with me before I can turn the corner.
“Ever, please don’t go. Let me explain,” he says, touching my arm. “It was rude to be with Gigi when I came with you. I’m sorry.”
“What do you have to do to make him love you?”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Say I’m dreaming. Say I’m crazy. Tell me how I can change things.” I realize I’m shouting. I take a deep, shaky breath, and my voice drops to a whisper. “How can I change me . . . any more?”
He closes his eyes for a minute, rubbing his fists against the closed lids. Then opens them. “It’s not you.” He says the thing everyone says when they break someone’s heart.
“Of course it’s you.” Skinny’s voice is gloating in my ear.
Jackson shakes his head. “It was Whitney. She likes you, and she wanted you to have a chance to go to the ball.” His voice trails off as his eyes meet mine. “She thought you deserved to have a good time.”
“He only feels pity for you. They all do.”
Shame washes over me.
“Whitney doesn’t like me. She just wanted a fix-up project and you’re the perfect accessory.” I smile bitterly.
“This thing with Gigi . . . it all just happened. I’d already asked you and I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. . . .” He gestures toward the gym door. “. . . Or make Whitney mad.”
Jackson is a coward. “Please leave,” I whisper. “Please just leave.”
He walks toward the open gym doors and the music. I stand there watching him leave and know I should be doing something. Walking away. Something.
“Wait,” he says, turning back to face me. “Why did you stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Liking me.”
“Why do you think that?” I ask, confused.
“We were friends. More than friends. You kissed me. Then every thing stopped.” He shrugs with embarrassment. “I just wondered what happened. You started looking at me like . . . you hated me.”
“He’s lying. He’s the one who stopped liking you. Remember?”
“Just like the look you’re giving me.” He points at my face. “Like you can’t stand anything about me.”
I didn’t hate him. Far from it. I hated the voice I heard in my head. Skinny’s voice. But Skinny was the one who told me the truth, right?
“I never stopped liking you,” I say quietly.
“Then why did you stop calling? Why did you stop coming over?”
“Because you’re fat and ugly. Nobody likes someone like you.”
I try to focus. Skinny’s voice is talking over Jackson’s. I can’t listen to them both at the same time. They are saying different things. One of them is lying. But which one?
“I tried to talk to you a couple of times. But it was like you couldn’t hear me,” Jackson says.
“And now you like Gigi,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, looking me directly in the eyes. “I do. I’m sorry.”
Don’tcrydon’tcrydon’tcry. I look down at the tips of my fancy pointed black shoes, blinking frantically. No glass slippers, just a glass heart shattering into a million slivers of regret. This isn’t the way the fairy tale is supposed to end. Everyone knows that.
“Alone. Alone. Alone,” Skinny chants in my ear.
Jackson puts a hand on my shoulder, and I look up. I search his face for the boy I walked with through the snow, but he’s gone. He’s been gone for a very long time. Maybe he never even existed. Prince Charming is just a character in a childish fairy tale of my own making.
His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. The chanting is so loud. I concentrate. Focus.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jackson asks me again.
“Sure,” I say, because what does it matter if I say something different?
“Gigi and I never meant to hurt you.”
“Oh, brother! Like that’s supposed to make you feel better?” Skinny yells in my right ear. I wince, and Jackson frowns down at me.
“I should go,” he says. I nod, and he leaves me standing alone in the empty hallway. All my plans. Gone. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I walk away down the hall, my head feeling disconnected from my body. The music and laughter from the party inside the gym seems far away, like a television left on in a different room.
Chapter Twenty
I stagger through an open door. It’s the theater. The place where I’m supposed to have my biggest triumph. I stumble down one of the side aisles toward the front of the stage, sinking into one of the seats in the first row. The lights are all on, but I’m in the dark.
I should laugh, really. It’s funny, right? Jackson liked me all along, and I threw it away. I screwed every thing up by myself.
And then I went and did all this, thinking I could win him back. The surgery. The new clothes and hair. The drama class. Everything. For what?
“You are still fat and ugly. None of it mattered. You don’t matter.” Skinny is here, too, and she isn’t whispering. Her voice echoes through the empty auditorium.
“You will always be alone. Your father has Ch
arlotte. Your mother is gone. There is no one for you.”
It was never about Jackson. I was in love with a memory, so unreal and fleeting it doesn’t even matter anymore. The truth slashes into my mind. It is about me . . . and Skinny. I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Skinny is haunting me like a ghost, chasing after me like a shadow. She won’t quit saying her horrible words, her lips to my ear.
“Stop.” My voice is shaking, the tears flowing freely from the edges of my eyes. I’m standing on a cliff, the rest of the world beneath me. I’m broken and I’m never going to heal. I cry until my throat is empty.
Skinny is waiting just offstage. Behind the curtain. I feel her. I hear her breathing there in shallow little horrible rasps. She’s farther away, but her voice is even stronger. Unmistakable. She’s no longer tiny and fluttering around to whisper in my ear. Solid and life-sized, she’s standing just behind that stage curtain. A shiver of fear runs up the nape of my neck.
“If only you were skinny like Gigi. Then he would love you,” Skinny hisses from offstage. “But you will never look like her.” Her whispers crawl around inside my dress. I swallow, hard.
The truth is I could have had everything. I lost Rat to Briella, and I ruined things with Jackson. It wasn’t about Gigi. I did it. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. Skinny has it all wrong, but she’s not listening.
“You’re a hippo. A fat cow. An elephant!”
She’s yelling now so loudly I can’t hear anything else. I clap my hands over my ears and lower my head to my knees. Shutting my eyes tightly, I breathe carefully in and out, in and out. For a moment, all I can hear is my own breathing. Like I’m underwater. Or already buried deep underground. Six feet under.
“Stop it,” I whisper, but she refuses to listen.
“Fat. Huge. Ugly. Hideous. Pitiful. Alone,” she chants.
I open my eyes and stand, facing the darkness waiting there in the shadows of the stage.
“Shut up,” I say louder, but my words come out through gritted teeth. My hands are clenched tightly at my sides. It’s now or never.
“Come out here where I can see you.” My voice is stronger now as I wipe the tears away from my cheeks with the back of one hand. She can’t stay in the dark anymore. It’s time we came face-to-face.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Skinny chants softly.
“I want to see who . . . what . . . you are.” I walk up to the front of the stage, waiting. My pulse jumps wildly in my throat.
“You don’t need to see me. Just listen.” Skinny’s voice comes from the shadows. “You’re a big, gigantic whale. Listen. . . .”
Wait. Something huge and powerful stirs in my brain. Like an elephant charging out of the jungle. Everything is changing except for Skinny. She’s been my one constant — the nagging fairy godmother whose voice led me down this path.
“Elephants don’t back down,” I say, “and I’m not afraid to see you.” Slowly, with my thoughts, I pull her out into the light and onto the stage. And I see her.
Finally.
My mouth falls open in surprise. She doesn’t look like some cool, goth Tinker Bell. She is me. But not me. I blink to clear my eyes, but the image doesn’t focus. It’s like looking into one of those warped mirrors in a fun house. Her mouth is slack, no sign of emotion. Her eyes stay fixed on the floor. I put my hand out into the space in front of me and she ripples away like touched water. She still doesn’t look up at me, her eyes hidden beneath lowered lids, but the shadowy figure mirrors my movement.
“Your arms are so fat they shake when you point to something,” Skinny says, but it is a soft voice that twists away into the air. I can barely hear it.
“You aren’t looking at me,” I say, and she starts to blur even more, her edges spinning away into the dark space of the stage.
“How do you even know what I look like?”
She is silent.
“Look at me!” I command her. “Tell me what you see.”
Slowly, she raises her head, and the monster steps out of the closet. Her eyes are opaque and milky white with no life behind them. I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Skinny is blind.
“You lie!” I choke on the words. The realization makes my head spin. Skinny bases every thing on appearance, all her horrible whispers, but the truth is, she can’t see anything at all.
“You lie,” she mimics back to me in a singsong voice, but she keeps crumbling away, breaking into pieces. I can see through her to the other side. She is nothing.
“Stop it. Stop. STOP! ” I yell at the disintegrating creature in front of me. “It’s your turn to listen to me. I’m done believing what you say. I’m so much more than what you’ve made me.”
“You made me,” she echoes. Her voice is shaky, confused, but for once I hear the truth. If I made her, then I can change her . . . me. There’s a crack there. I have to push harder. I’ve been the one feeding Skinny all along, but now it’s time for me to make the choice. Her or the rest of my life?
“I am a good person. I can sing beautifully,” I say carefully. “I am . . . pretty.”
“Well, you are thinner than you were.” Her voice sounds hesitant.
That’s right. I can change. What. She. Says.
“I am pretty. Say it.” I point at her with a shaking finger.
“You look okay in the dress.”
“No, I look pretty. Say it.”
But she can’t say anything because, just like that, the fading image in front of me flickers and vanishes. It’s time for the princess to say good-bye to her fairy godmother. Skinny isn’t standing on center stage, or sitting on my shoulder, or talking in my ear. Skinny only exists inside my own head. She is part me that is big and proud. And a singer part of me that people would love to hear. And a daughter part of me that misses her mother and loves her father. And maybe, there’s a friend part of me, too.
I need to talk to Briella.
Chapter Twenty-One
How was the dance?”
My dad is waiting up when I get home, sitting in a chair with his reading glasses on, but there’s no book in sight. “You’re home early.”
“The limo driver gave me a ride. Whitney’s dad paid him for the whole night, so he was just waiting around,” I say.
Dad’s eyebrows rise in question. I’m not ready to talk about it just yet, so I change the subject. “Any weird criminal news? I could use a smile right about now.”
“Walter Johnson crashed the La-Z-Boy chair he converted into a motorized vehicle — complete with stereo and cupholders — into a car outside Lurlene’s Lounge.”
“He really got it to move?”
“Oh, definitely,” Dad says. “It was powered by a lawn mower motor and had a steering wheel, headlights, and even an antenna.”
“Impressive.” I kick the high heels off and lean over to rub one aching bare foot.
Dad continues, “Walter’s not arguing the fact he was ‘extremely drunk,’ he just wants his La-Z-Boy back.”
“Well, he did go to a lot of trouble.” I finally smile.
“Ahhh. There it is. That looks better,” Dad says and pats the chair beside him. “Come sit down and tell me all about it.”
“The dance was okay,” I say.
“That doesn’t sound too wonderful. What happened, peanut?”
“Oh, Dad.” I squeeze into the big, overstuffed chair beside him, and he puts his arm around me. “Things just didn’t turn out the way I thought they would.”
He pulls me in a little tighter but doesn’t ask for any more explanation. After a few minutes he says, “When one door closes, another one opens.”
I laugh. “That’s what Mom used to always say.”
He smiles and pats my shoulder. “She’d be so proud of you. You know that, right?”
“I hope so.” We sit there, both remembering. “Sometimes I just wish I could see her, and I want her to look happy. Not like she looked the last time I saw her,” I say, before I have time to
think. The sadness washes over his face, and I’m sorry the minute that long-unspoken wish comes out of my mouth.
“You always made us both so, so happy,” he says, blinking rapidly from behind his reading glasses. “And that’s always what we wanted for you . . . happiness.”
“I know, Dad,” I say, patting his leg. “Don’t worry. I’ll get there.”
I rest my head on his shoulder, and we sit like that for a while, not talking. His arm feels good.
“That dance must have been a real dud for everyone. Briella’s home early, too.” Dad finally breaks the silence.
“She’s home?” I ask, surprised, and he nods. “I need to talk to her.” I struggle to get out of the deep chair, but I lean back over to kiss Dad on the forehead.
“Night, peanut,” he says.
I don’t go straight upstairs. I need a moment to think about what I want to say to Briella. Maybe a glass of water will buy me the time I need to figure it out.
When I enter the kitchen, Charlotte is sitting alone at the table drinking a steaming cup of coffee.
She glances up at me. “Want me to make you something?” she asks.
“No,” I say, getting a glass down out of the cabinet. I glance over at her while I’m filling it up with water from the front of the fridge. She stares straight ahead, sipping the coffee silently.
“Everything okay?” I ask, sitting down in the chair across the table from her.
She sniffs loudly. “I’m just being silly,” she says. “She’s fine, you know.”
I nod like I know what’s she’s talking about, but when she glances across at my face she must realize I’m confused.
“I miss Lindsey. She called tonight from school,” Charlotte says, putting her lipstick-stained mug down on the table. “She said she might stay on campus over the summer. Take some summer classes.”
“Summer’s a long time away. You never know. Things can change.”
“She’s so busy with every thing. She might even get a part-time job.”
