Page 50 of The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back

"What?" she gasped in a deadly whisper. I could barely hear her. "Why not?"

"I don't know. I just don't want to go to Wellesley."

"Is it your father? Is he making you go to UCLA?"

I had to head that one off at the pass. "No, I'm not going to UCLA."

Her eyes narrowed at me. "Is this because of some stupid boy?"

"He's not…." I immediately stopped, but it was too late. Pearl had trapped me. Her face lit up with an angry smirk.

"Who is he?"

"No one. I don't have a boyfriend."

She turned away from me and started tapping on her keyboard. My stomach dropped. Whatever she was up to, it wouldn't be good.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking your Facebook page."

I didn't want to have her as a Facebook friend, but my dad had insisted. He thought it might give us a chance to interact more. Which up to this point, it clearly hadn't. I felt very grateful that there was no way for her to check my history to see whose pages I had visited. I didn't need her to know that I went to Jake's page several times a day. I wasn't cyberstalking him. I was just very, very interested in what he was doing online.

And as I thought of Jake, I remembered too late the post he had put on my wall.

"Jake Kingston?" It felt so surreal to hear my mother say his name. Like I had these two different worlds that suddenly collided and blew up into a million pieces. She looked at my face and apparently my new resolution to stop hiding worked a little too well.

I think she clicked on his profile and went to his page. She stayed silent for several minutes, and I contemplated hanging up on her and running out the door. But she would call my dad and make this into a bigger deal than it was.

"Is he why you look that way?"

"What way?" I asked defensively.

"Like a prostitute."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I had never even kissed a guy, and my mom thought I looked like a hooker.

Weren't moms supposed to lie to you? To tell you how pretty you were even if you looked like garbage? Weren't they supposed to build you up and think everything you did was wonderful?

"I'm going to a dance, Pearl."

Apparently, tonight the part of evil girl trying to wreck my life would not be played by Mercedes Bentley, but by her understudy. My mother.

She made a clicking noise. The one that signaled that I had reached a new level of shaming her. "This is not a boy who would want a girl like you. He would want only one thing from you. Don't waste your future on him."

My choices for my college and future literally had nothing to do with Jake. And as I sat there, I realized that I would never convince her of that fact. That I would never be good enough for her. That I would never, ever make her happy.

That made me sadder than I had been in a very long time.

"How much is my father paying you to talk to me?" It was a question I had always wanted to ask, and now there didn't seem to be any reason not to.

"What?" Pearl said.

"You heard me. How much?"

She confirmed my suspicions when she didn't deny it. She sat in front of me not because of concern, but for cash. Not only would I never be enough for her, she would never change. Despite all my hoping and wishing she was never going to magically turn into someone who loved or cared about me. I think all she felt for me was resentment. That she was forced to spend time with me. That I wasn't someone she could brag about to her snobby friends.

I couldn't ask her what I wanted to ask her. I wanted to ask if she'd ever loved me. I didn't ask because I already knew the answer. She might lie. She might not. Either way, I didn't want to hear what she had to say.

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