Page 66 of Becoming Cinderella

“You disobeyed us. You were still seeing Liam after your father and I told you not to. Were you two dating?”

I can’t stop it anymore, and I start to cry. So much for my fight not to until I was safely in my room.

“We weren’t dating. Those articles aren’t true Mom, they’re filled with lies. But Liam believes them.” My body shakes with my sobs as I wrap my arms around myself.

“You lied to us.”

I don’t say anything as I use the counter to support myself and keep crying.

“Carter,” Mom seems at war right now with herself. Like she wants to continue this discussion, talk about the lies I told her and Dad, but also comfort me in my heartbreak.

“I know I let you down and lied by keeping my relationship with Liam a secret from you. You didn’t want me to spend time with him because you thought he would end up hurting me, or exposing me to things you wouldn’t like, but the truth is I’m the one who hurt him. And he didn’t deserve it. He’s one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever known and if you had tried to get to know him, not just the lies that get printed about him, you would have seen he’s the last person to ever hurt me.”

Mom gets up from the table and pulls me into her, the comfort of her hug only makes my tears come faster and harder.

“Please, whatever my punishment is, I won’t fight it. I just really want to be alone right now. Can I please just…” I wipe my now runny nose with my sleeve.

Mom gestures towards the stairs. “Go on up to your room. We can finish talking about this later when your dad gets home.”

I’m not relieved at her words and instead am filled with a sense of dread knowing I’ll have both parents mad at me rather than just one.

In the meantime I take the approved dismissal and run up to my room, leaning up against my door as the tears still freely roll down my cheeks.

I cry until my chest aches, my lungs burn, and my eyes are swollen.

I take a few unsteady deep breaths, willing the tears to stop.

I’m mourning not just a relationship that could have been, but a friendship. I was able to talk to Liam about things I don’t even talk to Penn about. Knowing he now thinks I’m an untrustworthy liar and won’t let me explain myself is just as difficult to stomach.

I want to remember all the times Liam and I laughed. But all I see when I close my eyes is the look of betrayal on his face.

The look I put there.

I’m afraid this is how I’m going to remember Liam. That all the times we grew close together will be shadowed by our last moments. It’s not how I pictured our goodbye. But it’s the goodbye I got and I can’t keep wallowing in my self pity over it. I have no one to blame but myself and crying over this boy, no matter how incredible he is, isn’t going to fix things. It’s not the ideal pep talk to get myself to stop crying, but the tears slowly stop. I’m going to take it as a win for now, even though the feeling that my heart has been ran over a cheese grater several times stays as my painful reminder of today’s events.

I wake up the next morning on my bedroom floor. I’d fallen asleep before my parents could talk to me, something I’m sure they’re not thrilled about. I pick up my phone and immediately I want to turn it off, to ignore all the notifications I keep getting regarding the articles. But I don’t, just in case Liam tries to contact me.

I spend my time getting ready for school debating if I should just delete my Twitter account. I’ve gained even more followers and by now most, if not all, of my Liam related tweets have been discovered. I can’t help but worry that if I delete my account it will cause more articles to write about the fact I deleted it, and I don’t really want to add any fuel to their fire.

Tabloids work like high school, the turnaround for something new to gossip about is hours if not days. At least that’s what I keep telling myself, to just give it some time and the world will forget about it. This is what runs through my mind as I walk into school, only to see a small crowd gathered around my locker. I push myself past a girl from my history class and stop as I stare at my locker.

Someone has taped up a poster of Liam from a photoshoot he did last year. He’s sitting on a backwards bright blue chair in the middle of a tree lined street. It’s one of my favorite photos of Liam, I even made it my phone wallpaper for most of last year.

It would be one thing if that’s all someone taped up, but they have gone through the work to print and cut out several copies of my Liam tweets, placing them all around the poster. I’m frozen in place. I don’t want to react because I’m aware of the phones being held up around me, hoping to capture something worth posting.

Who would do this? Which of my classmates would be so mean and humiliate me further like this? It’s not like I have any high school enemies, at least that I am aware of.

I spot Jared and Penn as they push their way into the circle, their fingers interlaced. I can’t even be excited for them right now though.

“Are you kidding me?” Jared growls, withdrawing his hand from Penn’s as he rips off the poster. “Who did this?” His voice thunders against the hallway chatter. “Parrish, was this you?” He points a finger at a boy in the back.

The crowd begins to diminish, people not wanting to be caught in the crossfires of Jared’s anger. He turns back to my locker and starts to tear down the printed tweets, his chest heaving with his movements.

“Are you okay?” Penn asks quietly as she threads her arm through mine.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I pull free from her and move past Jared to open my locker, hoping they can’t see how much my hands are shaking. The poster on the floor catches my attention and I stare at it. I look into Liam’s photographed eyes that aren’t full of hurt and betrayal.

“Hey,” Jared leans against the locker next to mine.

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