Ella
The room is stunning. Decorated in rich velvet-toned colors, from the carpet over the solid oakwood floors to the red drapes by the curtained windows, it’s far different from the two-bedroom apartment I share with my mom and sister.
Even if Hannah, my stepmom, isn’t evil and cruel—the long hours she pulls as an ER nurse means she’s never around. Therefore, she never sees the bullshit her daughter, Clarissa, pulls. The stolen clothes. The shredded homework. The—
I cut that thought off as the reminder of what she’d done a week ago rips into me with the gentleness of a tornado. Closing my eyes, the memory of the picture of my dad and mom on their wedding day with the giant-ass rip between the two laying on my pillow when I got home makes my chest ache.
She’d done it because I’d been chosen over her to do a story for the McAlister Gazette—a dumb name for a dumb school newspaper.
It hadn’t mattered to her that I hadn’t even volunteered to do it, that Mrs. Rogers had made the decision at random.
All Rissa had heard was that I’d been chosen over her.
Thus she commenced her weeklong stint of retaliation and taunts.
No plans for the end of summer? No back to school party invites? That’s because you’re a friendless reject.
Mousy little nobody.
No one wants you.
Even as Rissa’s nasty comments slip into my head, I can’t help but smile as the pain in my chest alleviates some. I glance down at the front of my dress as I move farther into the elaborately furnished bedroom. If Rissa could only see me now.
I’d never expected working after school for McAlister High’s theater department—designing and sewing costumes for the school’s performances—would ever give me a chance to shine. If I were truly honest, Rissa’s mean-spirited ridicule had given me the push to do this.
Jacob Colton is one of the kindest men I’ve ever met.
He’s intelligent and confident and everything that someone like me would never be able to have.
Maybe it was Rissa’s cruelty that made me angry enough to steal this dress from the theater department, but it was his smile and those sapphire eyes that make me want him enough to sneak into his family’s annual masquerade ball.
My fingers trail along the upper layer of fabric. Never in my wildest dreams would I ever actually be able to afford a dress like this. After tonight, it’ll go back to the school and hidden in a trunk somewhere amidst all of the other rejected school play ideas and would-be costumes.
Maybe one day, someone—a teacher or student—would find it and pull it out and appreciate all of the hard work I’d put into this gown. For now, though, it’s enough that this is its first and, probably, last foray out into the world.
Behind me, the door creaks open. My heart restarts its thready, pulsing beat against the inside of my rib cage.
I don’t turn to face him, not even when he hits the lights and the room descends into darkness.
The only illumination comes from the moonlight spilling through the gauzy curtains and across the rug over the floorboards and the four-poster bed that dominates the room.
No matter what happens this night, I promise myself, I won’t regret anything. I will be thankful for whatever I’m given.
Even if it’s all a dream in the end.