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.