“Who was she? Cinderella?” I asked.
She walked over to her desk and flipped her Mac open. Her desktop image was of some ruins in a jungle in South America, she wants to head there first. I jumped up, grabbed a chair and pulled it in next to her. I watched her fingers type fast and then the screen lit up with images of fairytale books. She clicked the Wikipedia link and it opened.
“She was poor and basically a slave to her wicked stepmother who forced her to work day and night doing menial tasks like a maid.” She squinted as she read the screen, “At night she would curl up on the floor by the fire in her small cold room to stay warm. She would often arise covered in cinders, giving rise to the mocking nickname Cinderella." Maria turned and looked at me. “So maybe the girl that kissed you isn’t who you expect her to be.”
“Well, I need to find out. And you’re going to help me.” I reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I need to know who she is.”
*Chapter 3 (Maria)
Mike left after about ten minutes of Grand Theft. I could sense he was totally distracted though, so was I. Our fingers were moving over the controls, pressing buttons, our eyes glued to a screen, but our brains were elsewhere. We played in silence, as if we were both on some strange autopilot setting. Side-by-side our shoulders bumping from time to time and both thinking about the same thing... just, I'm the only one who knows it.
It’s awkward. No, perhaps awkward isn’t the right word, because I want to scream, pull my hair out or beat him over the head with the controls. Beat myself over the head perhaps for being such an idiot. I regret it. Not all of it, just the part that has reduced me to a confused, puddle of nervous, cuticle nibbling hormones. I was actually relieved when he left. I’m never relieved when he leaves.
A strange mixture of emotions was flooding me, I’m not even sure I could name them. It’s as if all the human emotions that have ever existed have been thrown into a blender and turned on. Whizzed around at high speed until all that’s left is a thick, sloshy goo of ugly stuff. And don’t get me started on my thoughts, because right now they were having their ownvery loud argument in my head. It’s hard to listen to all my screaming thoughts, and absolutely impossible to grab onto one that actually makes any sense. I tried to silence them by flicking through Netflix, nothing. I tried to distract myself by stealing a virtual car, nothing. So I climbed into bed, pulled the duvet over my head and purposefully plunge myself into darkness.
But the darkness only made it worse…
F R I E N D Z O N E D
It’s all I could see when I closed my eyes. It’s as if the word was blinking down at me from a giant wall of cosmic graffiti. It’s as if the bloody word was mocking me for my stupidity. After a while, and a few deep breaths, it finally stops blinking at me but that’s when the memories of the kiss come flooding back…
The delicious closeness and the feeling of his hands. His lips, his smell his…I sigh, I’m such a goner. Total. There’s no hope for me now. No hope for the poor sucker Maria Glover.
I think I only fell asleep that night at about one in the morning. I must have tossed and turned for hours thinking about it all, especially about the part where I was meant to help Mike find this mystery kisser that he was now supposedly in love with. I couldn’t help but feel like I was somehow a character trapped in the electronic pages of a cheesy coming-of-age YA book, or maybe even a movie.
Tomboy next-door falls in love with best friend jock boy and kisses him in the dark, only to be roped into helping him track down the mystery girl of his dreams.
It all sounded so ridiculous, it sounded like it should have a big movie soundtrack. It’s that stupid moment at the end of the film where the girl takes off her glasses, walks downstairs towards the guy in her prom dress and he realizes that he loves her. They stare into each others eyes lovingly but you know that they'll probably break up in a couple of months when they both go to different colleges or he meets someone hotter than her or--
Crap! What the F had I done? The part of me that was regretting the kiss was getting louder and louder by the second, but not loud enough to drown out the sounds of my sister and her friends coming home.
They’re clearing trying to creep though the house, since curfew was over an hour ago. Mckenzie's always pushed the limits, but never seems to get into trouble. I’m convinced her big blue eyes and perfect smile hold some kind of magical powers. She seems to flash them at our parents and get absolutely everything she wants. I’ve never really figured out how she does it, but she seems blessed with almost occult-ish manipulation skills. She once got the school geek to do her math homework for a whole semester, in return she said hello to him at school and even walked with him in the hall from time to time. Poor guy, I think he’s still nursing a broken, probably safe to say destroyed heart that will probably never heal and
