The Cinderella Society (29 page)

Ryan and I had our heads together as Tina Price and her linebacker boyfriend, Steve Ogden, bickered over whether to split a pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza or a calzone. “They were coming here anyway, so I thought it would be fun,” Ryan said as he looked at our shared menu.

If the bickering was wearing on him, Ryan showed no signs of it. But sharing our evening with a chief Wicked and her Villain boyfriend was giving me a monster headache.

“So, Jess,” Tina said in her most syrupy voice, “you’re looking very
Playboy
tonight. Is that for our benefit or Ryan’s?”

Steve eyed me like I was a cream puff and he had a sweet tooth. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t mind if she shows it off. As long as she doesn’t share.” Ryan slid his arm around me and raised his eyebrows in question. “Unless that’s a tempting idea?”

I glared at his disgusting remark as Steve and Tina cracked up. Steve made a couple of rude comments about girls who show it off, which Tina punched him for (though I think she secretly liked that particular association with Paris Hilton), and Ryan laughed like Steve was the funniest thing since Adam Sandler.

I gave a silent prayer of thanks when the food finally arrived, because talking took a backseat to eating. Though I didn’t say
backseat
out loud or it would’ve set off a whole slew of new innuendos.

By the time we made it back to the car, I was fuming. Not once had Ryan made a genuine comment to me. Not once had he defended me against Steve’s degrading jokes about the female body. And not once had he bothered to tell me why he’d ruined our date by inviting along my enemy’s bud and her wretched boyfriend.

“Hey, Jess,” Steve called from the backseat as I buckled in up front. “There’s plenty of room back here if you and Tina want to make a Steve sandwich.”

Puke, anyone?
“Not if you were the last sandwich on earth.”

He couldn’t hear me, of course, because Tina was smacking him again. “As if I’d let her within three feet of me.”

“You’re within three feet now,” he snarked.

“Suddenly you’re the Math King? What a joke.”

“Last I checked, it wasn’t my brain you were hot for, so what does it matter?”

The rage welled up inside me, giving me a glimpse into a scary ulcer/denture future of my own, until I couldn’t take it anymore. “WILL. YOU. SHUT. UP!”

My yell reverberated off the windows for several seconds.

Tina looked at Ryan. “What’s up with the Bitch Queen?”

I spun to face her. “You”—I pointed—“have the nastiest mouth of any female on the planet. It makes me ashamed of my gender. And
you”
—I whirled on Steve—“are the most loathsome creature ever to walk upright. If you mention my clothing or my body again, I’m gonna knee you where you’ll never forget it.”

I turned on Ryan. “You and me. Outside.
Now.”

I stared him down until he opened the door. My phone was in my hand now, fingers itching to dial Sarah Jane for a ride home.

“This won’t take long,” he tossed to the backseat gang. “I just need to take care of something.”

You better believe it, pal
.

I waited until we were out of earshot before I lit into him. “If you didn’t want to go out with me, why didn’t you just say so? You couldn’t be man enough to tell me you don’t like me anymore, so you decided to go the Lexy route and torture me for the evening?”

“Leave my sister out of this.”

“Oh, yes, let’s leave your precious baby sister out of this. Heaven forbid we drag her into something sordid and nasty.”
Bitter sarcasm ran thick in my blood. “Are you blind? That’s where she
lives
, Ryan. And obviously, you’re no better.”

I wanted my words to hurt him. I wanted him to feel the pain I felt so he’d finally break down the wall and come at me full force. Until he let go, there was no way I’d ever get through to him.

But the guns never locked and loaded. Instead of looking furious, he had the nerve to look relieved. “I guess I’m no saint after all,” he said, absurdly pleased with himself.

“Old news. Neither am I.”

He skimmed my body with his eyes in a way that should’ve given me goose bumps but only made me feel cheap. “That much is obvious.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s that outfit supposed to mean?”

“What are you, the fashion police? My—” I looked down at my sex-kitten ensemble, and for the first time all night, I saw how ridiculous I looked.

And I hated it.

I hated that I’d tried to be like girls I didn’t even respect. Hated that Ryan could make me feel cheap when he had the capacity to make me feel so special. Hated myself for not being strong enough—or important enough—to break through his defenses.

My anger fizzled out as quickly as it had spiked. “Why? Just answer me that, Ryan. Why are you pushing me away?”

“I’m just showing you the other side of Ryan Steele. Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to let you in? Well, congratulations, Jess. You’re in. How do you like the scenery?”

“Don’t give me that crap. I’ve twisted myself into a pretzel to fit into your life, but it’s never enough. Why is that? What do I have to do to be enough for you?”

“Let me be myself. And while you’re at it, try being yourself too. If you even know who that is anymore.”

“Don’t make this all my problem.” Frustration burned holes in my stomach. “You’re the one who didn’t have the guts to tell me our little fling was over. I don’t even know why.”

“Because you have me on a pedestal.”

“Are we back to that again?”

“You
do
, Jess. You’re as bad as everyone else.” He clenched his fists. “You wanna know why I was mad about that article? Because I’m not a hero. Heroes don’t kill their mothers.”

If someone had smacked me with a newspaper, I couldn’t have been more stunned. “How can you even say that?”

He looked at me for a long time, then stared at the neon restaurant sign. “Do you know why she was in the car that day? Where she was going?” His voice sounded flat, lifeless. “To pick me up from football practice because I was grounded from the car. I’d been out partying with friends.” He flicked his eyes toward the Escape.
“Those
friends. I’d missed curfew again. No car for two weeks, which meant my mom was on chauffeur duty.”

“Ryan.” I reached for his hand. “You have to know it’s not your fault. What happened was—”

“An accident, yeah.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, out of reach. “I heard all that from the police. But try telling that to my dad, who hasn’t said five words since he checked out after my mom’s funeral. The accident wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been such a screwup in the first place.”

The walls had finally come down, but I hadn’t been prepared for so much collateral damage. Ryan was broken
inside. Why couldn’t he let me help him put the pieces back together?

“So you painted yourself the villain and played that role. I get that. But it’s not really you.”

“Oh, yeah? Look at Lexy. She blamed herself for the accident for months. Closed herself off from everyone. When she finally broke down and tried to talk to me about it, I couldn’t deal. So I cut her off, told her to quit whining and live with it, even though I knew it was
my
fault, not hers. But I never told her that. I just let her seal all the blame up inside because I was a coward. She was never the same after that.”

The Wickeds had seen their opportunity and seized it. Lexy broken and battered was the perfect target to steal from the legacy of the Cindys.

“It was a mistake, Ryan. No one expects you to be perfect. You’d just lost your mom.”

“So did Cassie, but she didn’t fall apart.”

Because she had the Cindys
. “What happened then, it’s in the past. You’ve done so much to be proud of since then.” I caught myself before I mentioned the Fun Zone. “You work so hard, but you don’t let yourself enjoy the rewards. You let the bad stuff in but block the good. All it does is give you a warped perception of who you are.”

“It was warped already.”

I wanted to shake some sense into him. Instead, I struggled to keep my cool and understand. To channel Sarah Jane’s infinite patience while my heart was breaking. “I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I lived through what you did. But being on the outside, I can tell you it wasn’t your fault. It
wasn’t
. A thousand things had to fall into place for that accident to happen, Ryan, only one of which had anything to do with you.” I resisted the urge to touch him. “You’re entitled to feel
however you do about it. All I’m saying is that if you can’t shake feeling responsible, don’t live your life as an apology. Live it as a tribute. Don’t you think she’d want that?”

“Being a failure is a pretty pathetic way to pay tribute.”

“That’s not what you are.”

“How do you know? You don’t even know who
you
are anymore.” He glanced at my outfit again, distaste evident. “That’s not the Jess Parker I ran into at the bottom of the stairs that day. And it’s definitely not the girl from the lake. It’s like you have this picture of how things are supposed to be, but it’s all an illusion.”

“That’s not true.” Was it?

“Of course it is. You’re pretending to be something you’re not because you think that’s how you’re supposed to be. And you want me to pretend along with you.” Ryan took a step back. The beginning of good-bye. “I can’t play that game anymore, Jess. Not with you.”

My cell phone chimed as another couple passed us, calling out a hi to Ryan. But not to me, of course.

Always on the outside
.

I glanced down at the phone in my hand, reading through a blur of tears. A text message from Heather lit up the display.

911 … test at school … HELP

The couple went on their merry way, and I looked back up at Ryan.

He crossed his arms. “Don’t let our discussion interfere with your busy social life. We’re done here anyway.”

I hesitated, torn by desperately wanting to help two people. Paige’s words rang in my head:
You can’t fight other
people’s battles for them
. Especially when they didn’t want to be saved.

“I’ll never be enough for you, will I?” I said. “If I won’t support your villain act, you’ll never really let me inside your world.”

“This is what ‘in’ looks like. Stay or go, it’s up to you.”

I went.

*   *   *

“Are you sure this is where you need to be?”

I had to give Sarah Jane credit. She’d come and picked me up from the restaurant and taken me to school without batting an eyelash. Even though I knew she was still upset about the security breach. She did a double take at my getup but never said a word except to ask if I was okay and did I want to talk about it. Yes, and no.

“There’s something I need to do,” I said. “I’ll find a way home.”

“I’ll wait.” She pulled into the side lot and turned to me. “If this is about Lexy—”

“It’s about me. I’m tired of not doing the right thing. I need to prove I’m ready to be the new leader.”

“There’s nothing to prove. We wouldn’t have voted you—”

“Then I need to prove it to myself.” I unbuckled my seat belt. “It’s
my
mission, Sarah Jane. If you trusted me enough to give it to me, trust me enough to finish it. Letting Heather down isn’t an option. This is what a real leader would do.”

I thought about Heather calling me a role model. If I wanted to save the Reggies, they needed to know there were people as strong as the Wickeds who were out there fighting the good fight. Even if they could never know how massive that fight really was.

“I don’t want to see you hurt in the process. It’s too important …” Sarah Jane’s voice faded away, and I watched her take a slow breath. “There’s so much more at stake than you realize, Jess. This is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle.”

“But it’s the piece that matters now. What good is a plan to defeat the Wickeds a year or two from now if it leaves a trail of destruction in its wake? If I don’t stand up to the Wickeds and show the Reggies there’s another kind of power—the
good
kind of power—then what are we really fighting for?”

She looked on the verge of tears. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Enough to know I can handle it.” I softened a little at the fear in her eyes. “If I’m outnumbered, I’ll call for reinforcements.”

She bit her lower lip, then pulled me into a quick hug. “Go be Crusader Girl.”

*   *   *

The doors to the school were locked, and I didn’t see any cars in the student parking lots. I made a slow trek around the school, making sure to stay close to the building for cover.

I’d made it almost the whole way around when I saw movement near the football field. I ducked behind the wall of the teachers’ lounge and watched the snack bar behind the bleachers. Heather was there, sitting on the ground under the boarded-up counter. From the jerky movement of her shoulders, I knew she was crying.

I stepped out of my hiding spot as two figures emerged from the tree line in back of school. Lexy and Morgan had come to make good on their promise.

They crossed the field quickly and yanked Heather around the side of the stand. I moved around the building to keep
them in view, just in time to see Morgan knock Heather’s purse to the ground and Lexy shove a furious finger in her face.

Oh, no, you didn’t
.

I covered the distance as fast as my stupid sex-kitten heels would take me, wishing I’d worn my butt-kicking boots instead.

Heather’s sobs came through loud and clear as I closed in on the scene. “Problem, ladies?” I asked, my voice strong and all business.

“What are
you
doing here? Stay out of this, Thief.”

“Just out for an evening stroll.” I moved between them to put a shoulder in front of Heather. “Looks like I’m just in time for the rumble.”

Morgan snorted. “Puh-lease. We’re so scared.”

“Back off, Lexy,” I said, ignoring her sidekick. “If you have a problem, you go through me.”