The Cinderella Society (2 page)

Relief bubbled up, followed by a depressing sigh. After nine moves in sixteen years (thanks to my dad’s environmental-consulting assignments) this was the worst case of new-kiditis yet. Most people thought being a cheerleader made you an automatic insider, but no. I only skirted the edges of popularity by association. I’d spent most of my existence so close to the in crowd I could smell their designer perfume, but I had never once crossed the threshold of acceptance. It was like living with your face pressed against the window, your breath steaming up the glass, while the world twirled on without you. If I didn’t love cheering so much, I’d walk away from that window and never look back.

I’d built houses for Habitat for Humanity, ladled out scoops of chili at soup kitchens, and taken countless pictures of abandoned animals to put on local adoption Web sites. I was the quintessential Volunteer Girl. Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of karmic payback for being a decent person?

My already sagging spirits were dangerously close to zeroing out when I heard the voice that made me swoon even on the worst day. I looked up, waiting for Ryan to turn the corner into the alcove across from mine.

“No way, man,” Dale Boone was saying as he and my future husband came into view. “I heard Frau Gardner’s
given out the same German exam three years in a row. That’s the only way Mike could’ve aced it. His sister had the Frau last year.”

“The vocab killed me,” Ryan said. He shook his head, spun the combo, and opened his locker. “She didn’t pick anything from the first eight chapters.”

I watched Ryan’s dark hair flick out from under his Braves hat. So silky, so dreamy, so perfect for running your fingers through. My yummy Ryan Steele. If only he knew my name.

Or at least knew me as something other than his sister’s archenemy.

Ryan and Dale continued their German commiseration, and I let myself drink in the sight of him. Tall and muscular, with the chiseled jaw of Jake Gyllenhaal. Toss in major sweetness (even to the geeks and nerds) and good old-fashioned Southern charm, and he was 100 percent fantasy-worthy. The kind of guy who made me wish I were five-eight, blonde, and leggy, not five-three with a baby face, freckles, and a dull brown mop for hair.

The fantasies rolled free in my mind. If only Lexy weren’t bent on destroying my best shot at belonging here. If only the cheerleaders had tried to get to know me before Lexy got her claws into them. If only Ryan knew I existed.

If only I could break out of my crushing social jail. Then my life would be perfect.

Ryan tossed his things into his Nike duffel, and as quickly as he’d arrived, he was on his way out. Out of school, out of my life, for an entire summer. I wondered if the world would swallow me whole from Ryan withdrawal.

And then, it happened. Just as Ryan turned toward the main hall and a clean getaway, he looked across into our alcove.

I froze. How could anyone’s eyes be so mesmerizing? Even from twenty feet away, they made my breath hitch.

In one of the most shocking turns of events since I’d moved—and that was saying something—Ryan’s face broke into a dazzling smile when he saw me. He lifted a hand in a half wave and called out a baritone “Have a good summer” that nearly melted me into a puddle.

O. M. G
.

Long, excruciating months of new-kid-ness were wiped away in a glorious instant. Despite all of Lexy’s slander, the eternal optimist in me still held out hope that someone—
anyone
—would recognize I wasn’t a complete waste of oxygen. And for it to be Ryan? My heart morphed into a thousand butterflies, fluttering joyfully in my chest.

His grin was contagious, and my answering smile was so huge it made my cheeks ache. I waved back, butterflies soaring in formation. “You too, Ryan!”

Just as a male voice behind me shouted, “Back atcha, dude!”

The butterflies were flying in chaos as I choked down bile. Had he noticed? Had anyone else? Where was an invisibility cloak when you needed one?

But alas, Ryan looked at me. Actually
looked
at me, I mean, and now I could see the difference. He gave me a faintly apologetic smile before exchanging good-byes with another guy and heading off toward Jock Hall with his posse at his back and a crowd of admirers parting like the Red Sea.

At which point all the butterflies fainted.

The only saving grace was that someone shouted a party invite to the lip-attached couple, so I took advantage of their momentary pause for air and lunged for my locker. I nudged their intertwined bodies out of the way and quickly spun the
combination, thanking everything holy that this was the last time I’d ever have to fight with the metal beast. I turned the knob, crossed my fingers and blew on them for good luck, and pulled up on the latch.

Nothing.

Now, I’m not someone who goes around damaging school property. I’m pretty much the poster child for good girls. But at that point, I had so many emotions clawing their way to the surface that I had no problem whatsoever taking it out on the piece-of-crap locker from hell. If Satan existed, surely he, Lexy, and my locker were in cahoots.

With the halls rapidly clearing out, I showed the contraption no mercy. I gave it a kick, a yank, and a kick-yank combination. Pulled while kicking three times in the bottom corner to jar it loose, which sometimes worked. Not loud enough to call attention to myself, I hoped. Just loud enough to shake it out of Sticksville. Not that it did.

I glanced around to make sure everyone wasn’t staring at the dipcrap soon-to-be junior who couldn’t open her own locker. Thankfully, everyone was otherwise occupied. My invisibility had belatedly returned, a single bright spot in my otherwise hideous day. On top of being tortured by She Who Must Not Be Named, the last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself while I clanged around with my locker like Neanderthal Jane.

I gave my locker one more swift thump with the side of my foot, which caused it to pop open and nearly bounce off my head. I cursed under my breath—words that would
not
make Coach Trent happy—and threw everything into my well-worn
CHEERLEADING IS LIFE
bag as fast as humanly possible. Folders, pens, the eye pencil I’d lost two weeks before—all went tumbling into the bag. With a firm slam and a barely
restrained desire to flip off an inanimate object, I kissed my sophomore year good-bye.

*   *   *

The last day of school is always cause for celebration. That was true in my case too, though not for the usual reasons. Instead of looking forward to a summer of lying by the pool, hanging with friends, and ogling cute guys in board shorts, I was destined for a summer filled with work, work, and—did I mention?—more work. Working at Celestial Gifts with Nan, helping Mom get the nursery ready for the twins, volunteering. Cheerleading camp was a bonus, but this summer was all about keeping me busy while I maintained a low profile.

When you get off on the wrong foot at a new school, the best strategy is usually to go underground for a while until some new drama grabs everyone’s attention. That was Master Plan à la Jess for the summer. Then I’d slide back into the mainstream come fall and hope I could fly under Lexy’s radar for a while. Goal number one was to find somewhere—anywhere—I might fit in. Thanks to Lexy, that wouldn’t be with the cheerleaders.

I pushed open the doors to the main drive and took a deep breath despite the oppressive late-May Georgia heat. My stomach loosened its knots as the end to my horrific year came into view. The relief lasted all of seven seconds, until the engine of the bus at the end of the line roared to life. I looked up in time to see the first in the long line of buses start to pull away.

My bus? Second in line.

I weighed my options in that split second and decided walking the mile and a half home was infinitely preferable to sprinting around the bend inhaling bus fumes and flailing my
arms in hopes of getting the bus driver to stop. A few miles of exercise was way better than being known as the freak girl who steals cheerleading spots and can’t tell time.

To put the kibosh on my afternoon thirst, I decided to grab a pop for the road. Or soda, I corrected myself, since that’s what people called it here. One more entry on my “Things to Remember to Fit In” list. I spun around to head back into the building and walked right smack into a very broad chest.

Literally.
Smack
. Into a very broad
male
chest.

It wasn’t even one of those cute “oopsie” kind of bumps, where you both sort of laugh and do a little shuffle to the side. It was the major “oomph” variety, where you smack really hard and your breath rushes out sounding like a defective tuba.

I looked up, dread crawling over me as I recognized the Cool Water scent of my beloved. My waking nightmare was confirmed when my eyes met the gorgeous silvery-blue ones of the Adonis otherwise known as Ryan. Strike two against the Ryan-Steele-plus-Jess-Parker-equals-happily-ever-after equation.

“Sorry,” he said in that sexy Southern drawl. “I didn’t know this part of the sidewalk was taken.”

His voice was smelling salts for the butterfly brigade, and they started a new freak-out dance in honor of my latest disgrace.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I was just, um …”

But Ryan had already sidestepped me at the urging of his bleached-blonde arm candy of the week. “Come on, Ryan,” Fake Blondie nagged in her nasal, big-breasted way.

Yep, I know. Catty am I.

“We have to get to the lake before everyone else,” she
whined. “I need a shady spot or I’ll freckle.”

My nose twitched in defense. Good thing my freckles were limited to that region instead of all over like my neighbor Mrs. Cleavis, or I’d have been battling a full-body convulsion.

I watched them as they rounded the bend into the upperclassmen’s parking lot. The irony that the first words Ryan spoke to me (actual words, not the imaginary, misdirected kind) were due to yet another social gaffe on my part was not lost on me. Why I couldn’t have a crush on a guy my own age and in my own social stratum—that is to say, bottom-feeders—was beyond me. The older brother of the founder of the We Hate Jess the Spot Stealer Club was my least promising choice yet.

Besides, I was practically a walking, talking stereotype: the cheerleader drooling over the quarterback. Except I wasn’t popular. At least it wasn’t a total cliché.

Not that it mattered, anyway. The heart wants what it wants. I knew that from experience.

And I couldn’t seem to break my losing streak of crushing on unattainable guys. My heart currently wanted a certain hot quarterback with a movie-star face and delicious muscular chest to shower attention and kisses on me. If that wasn’t possible, I’d settle for him knowing me as something other than his sister’s nemesis. Or, dare to dream, that my name was not, in fact, That New Girl.

As standards go, those probably needed a little work.

I unzipped the bag over my shoulder and dug for my wallet, determined to get out of Dodge. I groped around but couldn’t find it in the clutter, so I swung the bag forward and held it open to peer inside.

The push from behind—more like a blind-side whack—
sent me flying. My bag upended and hit the ground with a thud, scattering papers, personal junk, and the last few scraps of my pride across the sidewalk.

My first grab was for the envelope with my cheerleading camp itinerary. Thank God for quick reflexes, or I’d have lost two fingers by the heel of a very vampy sandal. Lexy’s foot came down solidly on the envelope and did a quick but meaningful heel grind on my cherished paperwork.

Lexy and her gang walked on without so much as a backward glance but made sure to kick and shred as much of my stuff as possible as they walked through the mess. Things had begun to roll down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, and I double-timed it to grab them before they got run over. I snatched up a roll of mints and an assortment of gel pens, barely catching the lip gloss that was heading straight for the main drive.

I scooped up bits and pieces as I worked my way back to the scene of the crime. And there, shuffling papers into a neat pile, was the only person at MSH who’d ever been nice to me. (Aside from Mr. Norman, who I’m not counting for obvious reasons.) Heather Clark wasn’t outwardly nicey-nice—I mean, we didn’t bud or anything—but at least she didn’t treat me like a social leper. Because she was one too.

As much as I appreciated the help, it really stinks when the only people who don’t snub you are the ones who are snubbed themselves. Once you make nice, you align with them and become one of them. I’ve never understood why, but that’s how high-school politics work.

I grabbed the last of my stuff and shoved it into my bag as Heather handed me her tidy little stack. “I didn’t look at it,” she said by way of greeting.

“You didn’t miss anything.” I looked at her and she
seemed more, I don’t know,
open
than usual. Like she was waiting for me to say something else.

The few people still milling around were watching me with amusement, my stomach was in borderline vomit mode from the latest Ryan run-in, and there was Heather looking like it was a friends-forever bonding moment. Sixteen years of living in new-kid limbo, eight weeks of Lexy-induced suffering, and two embarrassing interludes with Ryan in less than five minutes all came crashing down on me at once.

I snapped.

Not on the outside, like a public meltdown that would fuel the grapevine for weeks, but on the inside, where it really counted. Everything I’d tried so hard to do to fit in one more time was reduced to a moment of pity help by a fellow outcast. Lexy was pure evil and yet surrounded by friends—or at least “friends”—and I was the loser
du jour
. Again.

Fate had a sick sense of humor.

I didn’t want to connect with Heather. I didn’t want her help or her pity or her bonding moment. I just wanted to go home and pretend tenth grade had never happened.

And I hated that I felt that way about someone who’d never been anything but nice to me.

I stared at the ground, feeling like a horrible excuse for a human. “Thanks.” I nudged a stray stone with my shoe, exhaling slowly to tamp down the wave of guilt. “For helping and stuff. You didn’t have to.”