Page 33 of The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back

"Oh!" she said. I pulled back so fast I worried I might get whiplash. "Oh!" she said again, looking totally confused and embarrassed. "I came to let you out."

"Thanks," Jake said smoothly, getting to his feet. I stood up too, worried about my ability to stay upright. I leaned against the counter behind me for stability. I tried to catch my breath, and gulped several times just to get enough fresh air. I noticed my hands were shaking, and so I hid them inside the sleeves of Jake's jacket.

"The staff in the front office said we have to go. We were supposed to be done half an hour ago," Ella explained. "Maybe we can do it tomorrow morning before school?"

"Sure," Jake replied. He didn't seem weird or awkward or anything. I knew I'd never be able to contribute to this conversation because all I kept thinking wasoh my Buddha, Jake Kingston almost kissed me! Kissed me!

"I'll see you guys tomorrow then," Jake said as he picked his backpack up off the floor, slinging it over one shoulder.

Ella said goodbye. I stood there like a French mime.

"Hey, before I forget, Mercedes gave this to me." Jake opened his bag and pulled out my sketchbook.

My freaking sketchbook.

"I thought you'd probably like to have it back."

The earlier panic attack had absolutely nothing on the full-fledged hysteria I now felt. My head started to spin and I saw little stars in my peripheral vision. I couldn't catch my breath.

My sketchbook full of Jake Kingston pictures. Jake had my sketchbook! I had never felt so completely humiliated and mortified in my entire life.

He was holding it out to me and I finally realized how much time had passed and that I was making everything worse, so I took it from him. I held it against my chest, wrapping my arms around it, using it like a shield. As if it could protect me from what had just happened.

Maybe he hadn't looked inside, I thought frantically. Maybe he recognized it from our poker game and was just being kind and wanted to return it to me.

"Your pictures are really good. I still think you should show them to your parents."

Okay, so he had possibly already looked at the pictures. But maybe he wouldn't say anything to me even if he had looked inside. Maybe we could just go on like none of this had happened and pretend like I wasn't a completely psycho stalker. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

All the maybes went poof when he said, "I don't think you got my nose right, though." He was teasing me. I could hear it in his voice. I closed my eyes the way I did when I was a kid and I imagined that if I couldn't see anyone else, they couldn't see me either. I wanted to disappear.

Utter, total, shattering humiliation.

My stomach churned with anxiety. I could only imagine what he thought of me. Too many horrifying scenarios ran through my mind. He just stood there, like he expected me to say something. Maybe he wanted me to explain myself. But in what reality could I say, "The thing is, Jake, that I'm in love with you and have been since we were nine years old and all this time I've spent with you has made me fall even more madly in love with you and so I draw lots of pictures of you because you're beautiful and fun to draw and now I hope you'll be cool about all this and that I didn't scare you off or freak you out by drawing my secret pictures of you and we can go to the masquerade ball together and live happily ever after. What do you say?"

"So, we have to get going. Mattie's dad is expecting us at home." I had never loved Ella more than I did in that moment. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out into the hallway.

I heard Jake say, "Later."

I kept my head down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Ella steered me into the nearest girl's bathroom.

"What just happened? Why was Jake talking about getting his nose right?"

"The pictures," was all I could say. Ella looked at my sketchbook and quickly figured out that her answers would be there. She tried to pull it out of my hands, but I had a full-on death grip.

"Tilly, let it go. Let me see."

I shook my head. Ella started prying my fingers off, one at a time, and got the sketchbook free.

She opened it and gasped. She quickly flipped through the pictures until she got to the end of the Jake section.

"Oh, Tilly." The sympathy in her eyes and voice was almost more than I could handle. I leaned against the bathroom wall, and slid against it until I landed with a loud thump on the dirty floor. I didn't even care. I put my head in my hands. I was getting a killer stress headache. My throat ached with unshed tears.

I thought of all the embarrassing things that had happened to me over the years. Freshman year my shoes slipped in the courtyard and I landed flat on my butt in front of a hundred people. In eighth grade I really had to pee and didn't quite make it to the bathroom. In sixth grade I accidentally and loudly passed gas in the middle of a test, when the room was dead silent. I had a long history of humiliating experiences, but every single one of them paled in comparison to the way I felt now.

"You have to see the bright side of this. I don't think he cared."

I looked up at her, but my eyes were so watery that I couldn't see her. I had to blink several times to clear them up.

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