Page 51 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“Rocky road or mint chocolate chip?” Cordelia’s voice echoing from the stairs ripped me from my thoughts.

I’d been biting my lip so hard it hurt when I opened my mouth. “Mint chocolate!” I left the phone on the nightstand and followed the sound of voices and clanking spoons to the kitchen.

Cordelia and Victor were already at the dinner table. Victor had a bowl with a small dollop of green ice cream in front of him, while Cordelia was pouring rainbow sprinkles over a mountain of rocky road, whipped cream, and gummy bears. That monstrosity looked like it would provide a three-day sugar high.

“I’m sorry for waking you up,” Cordelia said as I took the chair next to her, where anothernormalportion of mint chocolate chip ice cream was set out. “I know that’s not normal. I know I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy unless you’re talking about that ice cream,” I replied. Victor chuckled but Cordelia poked her tongue out at him. He smirked a strangely upside-down grin I hadn’t seen on him before and returned to eating his ice cream. It felt like a way too intimate moment. A little private exchange that wasn’t to be seen by anyone who knew Victor’s usually stoic exterior.

“I think,” I started, then decided to rephrase my thoughts to center Cordelia rather than my perception of her. “Your mother was shot. You were there and you were very young. That kind of trauma rewires your brain. It’s unrealistic for people to expect you to go out much after that in the first place. And it’s unfair of people to expect you to return to what they think of asnormalat all, no matter how much time passes. You don’t need to conform to anyone’s idea of anormallife as long as you find happiness and safety in your way of living.”

“You almost sound like my therapist.” She shoved a huge spoonful of ice cream and sprinkles in her mouth.

I sighed and stared at my ice cream, then decidedfuck itand drowned it in whipped cream, too. “We all have our funky little brain issues to deal with.”

“Funky little brain issues, I like that,” Cordelia said through a held-up hand, not even having swallowed yet. Victor grimaced at her full mouth but didn’t say anything.

“I’ll also take neurospicy.”

“Yeah,” she giggled, “that sounds better than rattling down the whole list of acronyms. ADHD, PTSD, SAD. I’m working on collecting the whole neurospicy alphabet.”

I nodded. “GAD and autistic for me.”

“I had a feeling.”

“Same.”

We smiled at each other over our ice cream bowls. There really was a neurodivergent radar. I didn’t know how to explain it, but you somehow gravitated towards each other. Apparently, some studies showed that neurotypicals thought something was ‘different’ about neurodivergent people within two minutes of meeting them, without being able to put a finger on what it was. Thankfully, that same instinct worked the other way around, too.

“Well, I also want to be a good teacher. And good teachers understand that every person has different needs.”

“I think you’ll be a great teacher.”

“Thank you,” I laughed, “and I think you'll be great at bossing people around from your home.”

“Look, I know my mother’s death was very public. She was shot. I was standing right next to her. That’s the story, right?” Cordelia pushed a red gummy bear around the mountain of whipped cream, but her eyes were on the kitchen window - not that there was anything but pitch-black outside.

“Cordelia,” Victor said in a tone I couldn’t quite place.

She nodded and gave him a small smile before fully turning in her chair, facing me. “She was shot, but the story doesn’t end there. I was grabbed and pulled into a van. The kidnappers apparently thought that killing my mother would make my father realize they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me too if he didn’t hand over the 20 million they demanded as ransom.” She grimaced but didn’t pause long enough for me to ask questions. “I sat tied up in some windowless room for three days, a bottle of water and a cheeseburger to tide me over, before they got me out of there. My father spent those three days negotiating them down to four million. I’m not saying this for you to pity me, but I think you deserve the full truth, considering you are one half of me now.”

“God.” I breathed. I couldn’t even imagine the pain and fear she must have gone through in those three days. No wonder she didn’t want to go back out there. And to think her father could have shortened that time. The Montgomerys were billionaires. With a B. That sixteen-million-difference was nothing at their level of wealth. “Your dad sounds like an ass.”

Cordelia let out a loud cackle. “Oh, he was. Hope he rots in hell.”

Victor let out a vague harumph of agreement while scratching the last bits of ice cream from his bowl.

“I think my dad would have loved you,” I said.

“What was he like before he got sick?”

I didn’t even bother asking how she knew he got sick. I had come to terms with the fact that Cordelia had sleuthed through my life before allowing me into hers. Knowing what she’d been through, I could hardly hold it against her. “He worked at the Sallow candy factory.” I pointed my spoon at her mountain of sugar. “He considered himself Willy Wonka. He didn’t make the candy, but he always said that Willy Wonka had the Oompa Loompas do that anyway. He was in packaging. Or as he put it, he was the one who made sure kids got excited even just holding a bar of chocolate in the candy aisle. He loved the simplicity of it. Candy makes people happy.”

“I bet your house wastheplace to be trick-or-treating on Halloween.” Cordelia added another heaping of rainbow sprinkles to her bowl. God, Dad would have really loved her. He’d have clutched his chest, wheezing with laughter before copying her ice cream composition for himself. Just to try. He’d have stared at it for ten minutes before eating, and he would have spent the next five days dissecting how the colors and textures worked together.

“It was.” I nodded and scooped down some ice cream. I wasn’t religious and didn’t believe in the afterlife or ghosts or anything, but if there was a way for Dad to watch, I really hoped he did. Just because he’d get such a good laugh out of Cordelia’s recipe.

TWENTY-ONE

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