Will the Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up (10 page)

****

Much to my relief, Mrs. Riley let me sing the entire song in my audition, and Ally said she seemed to sit up with some interest a few bars into the number. Truthfully, though, I didn’t pay much attention to Mrs. Riley or Mr. Horowitz while I was on stage. Tim sat with Ally and Brady a few rows behind the teachers, and I was able to pretend I was performing just for him. I ignored my brother’s scowl and paid little attention to Ally mouthing the words and dancing in her seat. I focused on Tim’s encouraging smile and pretended he was the only one in the audience.

“Thank you, Bianca,” Mrs. Riley said as I finished. “I’m looking forward to seeing your monologue on Friday.”

I nodded and scrambled off the stage to get my sheet music from Mrs. Donnelley, the music director, as Mrs. Riley called Kyle Mitchell for his turn.

“Bianca!” Ally squealed as I met them outside the auditorium. “She invited you to Friday’s auditions! She all but said you’re getting called back next week!”

“Well done, kiddo,” Brady said as Tim picked me up and twirled me around.

“You did great!” he declared proudly, setting me back onto my feet. “And I loved your little dance, too.”

I felt my cheeks grow warm, and my brother rolled his eyes.

“Good job, baby,” I heard Dante say. I jumped away from Tim as I spun around and saw my boyfriend exiting the building and coming toward us.

I froze for a second before I rushed to him, a bright smile on my face. He was scowling when I threw my arms around him.

“I didn’t think you were going to stay and watch!” I exclaimed, planting a kiss on his cheek. “You said this really wasn’t your thing.”

“You said it was really important to you, so I changed my mind and came back,” he said. He put a possessive arm around me as we strode back to where my brother and friends were waiting. “I wanted to hear you sing that song for me, but I guess you changed your mind, too.” He didn’t look or sound too pleased.

“I was nervous,” I explained.

“Dude! You made it!” Tim greeted him. “Did you see her? Wasn’t she amazing?” He winked at me. “I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

“Not from where I was sitting.” Dante tightened his hold on me, and I flinched. Brady noticed and took my hand to pull me away from him.

“What’s your deal, man?” Tim asked.

“Stay away from my girlfriend,” Dante replied, puffing out his chest.

Ally and I glanced at each other, our eyes wide with panic.

Brady pulled me behind him and poked my boyfriend in the shoulder. “No,
you
stay away from my sister.”

I stepped between them. “Brady, it’s okay,” I said in an attempt to placate my brother. I turned to Dante. “Look, Tim was only trying to help me when you weren’t here. I needed the support, okay?”

“Then you should have told me.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Um, I did, remember? But you didn’t want to stick around. You said it wasn’t ‘your thing,’” I added, making quotation marks with my fingers.

“Don’t try to blame this on me,” he said, glaring at me.

“Who’s doing any blaming?” I threw my hands above my head. “You’re totally freaking out for, like, no reason, and I’m just telling you what happened.”

“
That
is reason enough to freak out,” he practically screeched, pointing at Tim.

I let out a weary sigh. “Dante, this is getting really old.”

His eyes shifted as he looked at each of us. Finally, he focused on Tim and said, “Back off.”

Tim snickered, as if he was facing a small child throwing a tantrum. “I’m not the one who needs to back off, man.” He leaned forward and got really close to Dante’s face. “She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

I saw Dante’s hands clench, so I grabbed my brother’s arm. “Come on, Brady,” I said before he and Tim were tempted to beat my boyfriend into a bloody mess. “I still have a ton of homework to do.” I led my brother away from the auditorium and called over my shoulder, “I’ll call you later, Dante.”

“No, you won’t,” Brady said. He grabbed hold of my locket and ripped it off my neck before he threw it at Dante.

“Brady!” I screamed, grabbing the back of my neck. I rushed forward to retrieve my necklace, but my brother blocked me.

He stood in front of Dante. “I meant what I said,” he told him between gritted teeth. “Stay away from my sister.” He turned to a wide-eyed Ally. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll give you a ride home.”

Brady grabbed my elbow and ushered Ally and me to his car. I glanced back and saw Tim and Dante still squaring off.

“You sure picked a winner,” he mumbled as he started the car.

I folded my arms across my chest. “I can handle him.”

“Clearly not.”

“I had it under control!”

“That,” Brady said, pointing out his window, “is not under control. You’re in way over your head.”

“He wouldn’t stand a chance,” Ally scoffed from the back seat. “Against you and Tim, I mean.”

“He’s not worth it,” he said dismissively as he drove off the school grounds. He glanced at me. “You need to break up with him. I don’t want you around that guy anymore.”

“That makes all of us.”

“Ally!” I cried, looking over my shoulder.

“What? You know we can’t stand him.”

“You used to like him.”

“That was before he got all weirdly possessive.”

Brady swore under his breath. “Bianca, when none of your friends like the guy, that’s like a huge red flag waving in your face. What do you even see in him?”

I stared silently out the window while my brother raged.

The truth was that I really didn’t know what I saw in Dante anymore. He was a different person than the guy who took me to his grandmother’s house and held my hand as we watched herons on the lake. I didn’t see him as a lonely little boy who felt unloved anymore. I saw him as a demanding and needlessly jealous control freak. And, yeah, Ally was right: he was possessive, too. Sure, he was cute, but even his looks were losing their appeal as his domineering tendencies started to freak me out.

Talia had made me promise I wouldn’t let Dante change me, but it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. I felt like a part of me was suffocating whenever he was around.

I unconsciously rubbed my cheek where he had slapped me a couple of weeks ago and blinked to hold back tears as I realized I was scared of him. It felt wrong. I mean, girls shouldn’t be afraid of their boyfriends, and yet I was admittedly freaked out. A stubborn tear escaped my lashes. I hurried to brush it away, but not before my brother noticed.

Brady inhaled sharply, and I knew he was seething. We drove in silence through Ally’s neighborhood. She mumbled her thanks and scrambled out of the car when we arrived at her house, and I cowered in my seat the rest of the way home.

“You’re done,” he said. “I’m serious. I don’t want you with that guy anymore.”

“I told you I can handle him,” I snapped.

Brady snorted. “No, you can’t. And you’re obviously delusional if you really think you can.” He glanced at me. “It’s only a matter of time before he does something to hurt you.”

I bit my lip and stared at my hands in my lap.

“You’re breaking up with him,” he decided. “Do you understand me?”

I nodded, but I cringed inside.

My brother was right. I had to break up with Dante, but how?

With our mom’s perplexed approval, Brady and I traded phones when we got home that evening. I begged him not to tell Mom and Dad about Dante’s behavior, and, to my surprise, he agreed.

I locked myself up in my room and sent a group message to Talia, Ally, Finn, and Jake to let them know I was using Brady’s number, and Ally and I spent several hours explaining the events following my audition to our friends.

At school the next morning, Talia threw her arms around me the moment she saw me. She, Ally, and Finn were waiting at Brady’s parking spot when we arrived. “Are you okay?”

I hugged her tightly, so thankful to have my friend back. “You can say it,” I said when she peered into my face.

“I can, but I won’t.” She frowned. “And it’s not like I’ve really been a good friend to you, either.”

“I should have listened to you.”

“Yes! I’ll agree with that.”

Finn cleared his throat. “So, you guys are good now, right? I don’t have to pick sides anymore?”

We both glanced at him as Ally punched him in the arm.

“Dork,” she said.

“Let’s not fight anymore, okay?” I asked Talia.

“Yes, please don’t,” Finn said, rubbing the spot where Ally hit him. “I can’t take all this drama.”

“This is all because of your psychopath boyfriend.”

“
Ex-
boyfriend,” Brady corrected her.

Talia smiled up at him before she held my shoulders. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

My brother looked at his phone. “This guy’s a piece of work,” he said, holding it up. “He’s already texted you, like, thirty times just this morning, plus another twenty or so last night.”

“He’s a piece of something, all right,” Talia muttered.

I shook my head. I knew I had to face him at some point, but a part of me was hoping I could avoid Dante indefinitely.

Life had been so much easier before he’d noticed my existence.

Brady had told a bunch of his friends about last night’s confrontation, too, and he had someone escorting me to every class to make sure Dante didn’t come near me. “One of my friends will walk with you between classes,” he had said on our way to school that morning. “Don’t go anywhere by yourself. Do you understand me?”

“It’s not like there’s a serial killer on the loose, Brady,” I replied.

He froze me with a penetrating glare. “I’m not joking.”

And he wasn’t. He’d even recruited his girlfriend, Kira. She walked with me from my geometry class to my English class.

“Brady told me what happened,” she said as we navigated our way through the crowded hallway. “How are you?”

“Um, okay, I guess.”

She nodded, and we continued in silence.

I really liked Kira, and it was so easy to see why Brady was madly in love with her. It wasn’t only because she was beautiful, though she certainly was. She was also smart, driven, and had a heart of gold.

“I’m a little freaked out,” I confessed at last.

“Yeah, I’m sure you are,” she said as we approached my class. “Brady said this guy’s your first boyfriend?” When I nodded, she put a delicate hand on my forearm. “No one should be treated like this, Bianca,” she said. “He doesn’t have the right to control you. No one does.”

I nodded again, and she pulled me in close for a hug before I ducked into the room.

Brady met me after English class and took me to European History, where I joined Jake and Talia. It felt really strange, like I had bodyguards monitoring my every action. I almost told Brady to stop being so overprotective, but I saw Dante lurking beside some lockers and thought better of it.

“I want you to go to basketball tryouts after school,” he told me as we walked. “Tim and I told Liam and Coach that we’d help them out.”

“But Ally’s mom can give me a ride home,” I protested.

“I’d rather keep an eye on you. Mom’s got that book club meeting today, and I don’t want you at home alone where that jerk can find you.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “I’ll be fine. I don’t know why you don’t trust me.”

We arrived at the classroom. My brother took me by the shoulders and forced me to look up at him. He looked annoyed, like he always seems to when I’m around, but there was something else in his expression. Could it have been fear? “It’s not you I don’t trust,” he insisted.

I bit my lip and nodded. “Fine.”

“Good.” He released my shoulders and started heading to his own class.

“You know, you’re just as controlling as he is!” I shouted after him.

Brady paused and looked over his shoulder at me. “Maybe,” he said, “but that’s because Mom and Dad would kill me if anything happened to you.”

****

“I have to post something about this soon,” Ally said when she put down her tray and slid into the seat facing me at lunch. “People are asking me what’s going on with you and Dante, and I have to repeat the story over and over. It’d be so much easier if I could just direct them to my blog.”

“People are asking already?” Talia asked, incredulous. “It hasn’t even been a day!”

“Well, I guess it’s sort of obvious that they haven’t been together between every period today,” she said to Talia. “I mean, they’ve kind of been inseparable since Homecoming.” Ally looked around. “Where are the guys?”

“Jake and Finn are holed up in some Robotics Club thing.” Talia nibbled on a carrot stick and smiled. “And Zack is furious that Jake canceled their lunch rehearsal.”

“You seem eerily pleased about that.”

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Zack’s convinced the world revolves around him. I told Jake if it revolved around him, the world would be spinning out of control.”

My friends laughed, but I was still stuck on Ally’s initial statement. I couldn’t believe people were talking about Dante and me. “Who’s asking about me?” I asked her. I started to panic. “What are you telling them?”

I’d sworn my friends to secrecy about the events of the Halloween party, and I had begged Ally not to blog about what happened at auditions. It was one thing to feel like a giant fool in front of my brother and my friends. I had no desire to let the entire world know of my naiveté.

“I said that you’ve broken up with Dante, and he’s not taking it well,” she replied soothingly. “I mean, that’s true, isn’t it?” she asked after a short pause.

“More or less,” Talia answered for me.

“Well, except for my breaking up with him,” I said.

“What?” my friends said in unison.

“I haven’t exactly done it,” I said. “Break up with him, I mean.” When they stared at me with wide eyes, I explained, “No one is giving me a chance to! Dante tried to talk after homeroom, and Ryan Summerlin almost knocked him over to keep him out of my way.”

Talia glanced at Ally and shrugged. “She’s got a point. I mean, the longer he’s convinced this is all her brother’s doing, the more he’s going to see himself as a tragic Romeo to her Juliet.”

I shuddered at the thought of that. “Did Jake and Finn factor any of this in when they were planning their little social experiment?” I asked, frustrated. “Because this idea of theirs didn’t only get me a twenty-dollar tiara, you know.”

“No one could have predicted that he’d dump Zoe and pursue you,” Ally said.

“Talia did,” I replied, glancing at her.

She frowned as she looked at me. “And I told you that I really wish I wasn’t right about that.” She paused. “And about other things.”

“I know,” I said, feeling a bit defeated. “And I wish I listened to you. Both times.”

“Brady!” Ally yelled suddenly. I turned and saw my brother heading our way with Tim in tow. “Listen,” she said when they arrived at our table, “you need to let her talk to Dante. Just long enough to tell him it’s over.”

“No way,” he replied, shaking his head. “Do it in an email.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, looking up at him. “I can’t send him a break-up email!”

“Why not?”

“She’s right, man,” Tim said, putting his hand on Brady’s shoulder. “I don’t like it, either, but this kid isn’t going to believe it until he hears it straight from her.”

The two of them kind of stared at each other for a few moments before my brother finally relented.

“Fine,” he said, handing me his phone.

As I suspected, Brady had completely wiped out all my settings and cleared my contacts list, but he’d kept the string of obsessive text messages Dante had sent. I thought he’d been joking earlier when he said Dante had sent at least fifty messages, but I was so wrong. There were a lot of texts, all ranging from apologetic to irate, and each sounding progressively desperate as I scrolled through them.

Need 2 talk
was the oldest one.

Was out of line. M sorry
was time-stamped late last night.

Pls 4giv me. Miss u
arrived before I even woke up.

And he sent the most recent one,
STOP IGNORING ME!!!
, during homeroom.

I was so glad Brady had thought to change phones with me. Seeing all of Dante’s messages like that was really creepy.

I shuddered as I held the phone, unable to think beyond the last message he’d sent. “What do I say?” I whispered to Talia.

“Here.” She took the phone from me, tapped out a message, and handed it back to me to review.

Nothing 2 talk about. WE ARE DONE
, it read.

I nodded and pressed
send
.

“Finished?” Brady asked as I returned the phone to him.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a bit better. I wasn’t sure if a break-up text was any better than a break-up email, but at least everyone was satisfied I’d told Dante it was over.

“What in the world?” my brother exclaimed, looking at his phone. As soon as he pocketed it, it had buzzed with a message.

Ally’s eyes lit up. “Is it from Dante? What did he say?”

“This kid doesn’t know when to stop,” he muttered. I took the phone from his outstretched hand and read the message.

Hav 2 talk. After school? Pls. So sorry.

“I can talk to him before try-outs,” I suggested.

“No,” Brady and Talia said at the same time.

“Oh, come on.” I fixed my brother with a wide-eyed stare. “I don’t want to prolong this any more than you do.”

“If he wants to talk to her, let him talk,” Tim said. I smiled at him, grateful for his support, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were scanning the cafeteria, as though he was looking for someone.

Brady started to say something in protest, but he finally nodded. “Fine, but, Tim, you’re going with her. I don’t want this guy to try anything.”

Tim agreed, and I tapped out a response on my brother’s phone:
Watching bball. Can talk a lil b4
. “Done,” I said to Brady.

”I swear, the next time I see this kid, I’ll probably knock his teeth in.”

“That wouldn’t be a terrible thing,” Talia mused.

“He’d better hope I don’t run into him off campus.” Brady glared at me. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, sis.”