When I went back to school on Monday, the whispers and stares were as bad as they’d been on my first day. It was nothing new. I kept my head down as I always did, and prayed things wouldn’t be worse because people blamed me for Jason getting suspended.
So far nothing traumatic had happened, but as I sat down at lunch in my normal seat at a small table in the corner of the cafeteria, a hush fell over the whole room. I’d just noticed the unnatural stillness when I felt someone standing behind me.
Slowly, bracing myself for whatever torture was about to ensue, I turned around to face whoever was behind me. I was shocked to see Juliette standing there. Next to her was a girl I’d seen around school, but who wasn’t in any of my classes. She had violet eyes—obviously colored contacts—and bright red hair with platinum blonde streaks in it. It was a combination I’d never seen before, but it actually suited her very well.
Her hair was twisted up on her head and clipped into place with hair clips made of brightly-colored feathers. Her shoes, backpack, and fingernails were all works of art, the same way her hair was. I imagined she would be something to behold if she weren’t constricted to the limitations of our school uniform.
She was pretty, but not the same gorgeous knockout type that Juliette was. She was wild in a way that demanded respect. She was the kind of girl you couldn’t help but follow down the hall with your eyes. The girl that guys feared, yet secretly wanted at the same time.
And she was smiling down at me.
“Ella, this is Vivian Euling,” Juliette said in a bored voice. “Vivian, my stepsister, Ella.”
I still had no idea what was going on, but I was pretty sure Juliette wasn’t masterminding some vicious scheme, and Vivian was holding out her hand to me, so I took it. As we said hello to one another, Juliette reapplied her lip gloss and said, “My work here is done.” She walked away without another glance.
I turned my eyes back up to Vivian and she gave me another warm smile as she sat down next to me and took a sack lunch from her backpack. “I hope you don’t mind.” I shook my head and Vivian smiled again. “I think Juliette is playing matchmaker with us.”
“She what?”
I turned around and saw Juliette sitting at her normal table with all of the most popular people in school. She was laughing and joking around with them, not paying the slightest attention to me, just like always. You’d never know something out of the ordinary had occurred if it weren’t for the way Anastasia was still gaping at her in shock.
“I have dance with Juliette,” Vivian said. “We’re not friends or anything, so I was surprised when she came up to me this morning and asked if she could introduce us.”
“She did?”
I knew how incredulous I sounded. I could feel my face contorted in confusion, so I wasn’t surprised when Vivian laughed. “She said she thought we would have a lot in common,” she explained while rolling her eyes. “Considering she knows nothing about me, and I doubt she’s made any effort to get to know you, either, even though you’re stepsisters, I can only assume she was pairing one outcast with another.”
That surprised me. Not Juliette’s thinking that being outcasts would make two people automatic friends, but I couldn’t imagine why a girl like Vivian would have no friends. “You don’t strike me as the loner type. You seem so confident and nice, and you’re so pretty.”
“I also was raised by two dads.”
I was still confused. “What does that matter?”
Vivian did a double take.
Figuring she was the type who could take a joke, I smirked. “Massachusetts was the first state to allow same-sex marriages, so, no offense, but that makes you totally old news to me. I hope you weren’t expecting special treatment or anything.”
Vivian’s eyes flashed, surprised, and a wide grin spread across her face. “I like you.”
I laughed, but it died quickly as I glanced around the cafeteria. “Picking on me I understand, considering this is the town where image is everything, but you’d think people would be more open-minded about your situation.”
“You’d think,” Vivian agreed. “I’m sure at Hollywood High I’d fit right in, but at a pretentious private school like this one I’m an easy target. It also doesn’t help that I’m here on scholarship. My dads are humble costume designers. They make enough to afford our two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, but that’s about it.”
Now that made perfect sense. “And the picture becomes even clearer. I was raised by a single mother.”
Vivian rolled her eyes again. “So you’re saying not only are we both social outcasts, we’re both poor, too.”
“Exactly.” I joined her with an eye roll of my own, but then sighed and glanced at Juliette. “It may have been a shallow and judgmental perception, but it was still thoughtful of her to try to help.”
“True.” Vivian followed my gaze to my stepsisters’ table. Juliette was laughing with a girlfriend, while Anastasia was sitting in some guy’s lap—some guy who was decidedly not Jason. “But then, Juliette’s always been the lesser of two evils.”
I nodded in agreement. “Sometimes I think she might not be so bad if she didn’t have her sister poisoning her mind, and a completely clueless mother teaching her what’s truly important in life.”
At Vivian’s questioning look, I said, “Designer clothes and an eight-hundred calorie a day diet.”
Vivian laughed again. “I think Juliette was on to something. You might just be a kindred spirit.”
. . . . .
The ride home from school was a tense one, thanks to the rage bubbling just beneath the surface of Anastasia’s Marc Jacobs Daisy-scented skin. When we got home she stomped inside, slamming the door in Juliette’s face. By the time I managed to climb out of the car and get in the house, the two of them were laying into each other.
“…humiliated us like that!” Anastasia was screaming.
“All I was doing was cleaning up the mess you made. You’re the one who embarrassed us.”
“It’s bad enough we have to be associated with her. Now she’s BFFs with Charity?”
“So what? Let them be freaks together. They aren’t hurting anything.”
“Not hurting anything? What if they start making out in the cafeteria and stuff? We’ll be sisters of the lesbian crippled freak!”
“Um, her name’s Vivian, not Charity,” I said, setting my backpack on the counter as I headed past the two of them into the kitchen.
Juliette rolled her eyes. “People call her that because she’s the school charity case.”
“Nice.” I scoffed. “You know, Anastasia, just because her dads are gay doesn’t mean she is. Even if she were, why should you care? It has nothing to do with you.”
Anastasia glared at me so hard her eyes became bloodshot. “Stay away from me,” she hissed, storming off to her room.
Once we heard the door slam, Juliette shook her head as if disgusted with her sister. “She’ll cool off in a few weeks.”
I stared after her as she headed down into the family room to get started on her homework. It had been such a strange day. I didn’t understand Juliette at all. In the few months I’d lived here, she’d gone from being rude to simply ignoring the fact that I existed, to actually coming to my rescue on Friday. Then, this morning she risked the wrath of her sister to help me find a friend. It was a really sweet thing to do. I couldn’t figure out why she’d done it—especially because, while she wasn’t outright hostile toward me anymore, she clearly still didn’t like me.
After raiding the fridge and not finding anything appetizing, I grabbed a couple of my usual V8 fruit juices and made my way down to the family room. Instead of heading for the desk in the corner, I sat down on the couch and held out one of the drinks to Juliette. “Want one?”
She frowned at me, but warily accepted the juice. “Thanks.”
We did our homework in silence with the TV once again muted on some entertainment news show. Eventually, Juliette sighed. “Some girls have all the luck. Can you imagine being engaged to that perfection?”
Startled from my work, I looked at the TV just in time to see Brian Oliver on the screen, heading into some club with a scantily-clad Kaylee Summers hanging all over him.
There was another dreamy sigh from Juliette. “He has got to be the hottest guy ever to roam the Earth.”
I couldn’t disagree. He was six foot one, had dark hair, milk chocolate eyes, and a body so perfect it hurt to look at it. He was one of those actors who could play either the pretty boy, or the sexy bad boy—depending on how they dressed him up. At the moment, he was sporting a leather jacket and a five o’clock shadow that made you want to defy your parents, jump on the back of his motorcycle, and let him drive you off into the sunset after having had his name tattooed somewhere on your body.
He always smiled as if the world were his oyster, and yet he had that smoldering thing down, too. Countless girls had fallen victim to that gaze. The thing that I liked best about him, though, was how he seemed so sharp. In every interview I’d ever seen him do, he was playful and cocky, but witty. He bantered with those talk-show hosts as if they were the ones in the hot seat. The guy had some major intelligence hiding behind that pretty face.
I matched Juliette’s wistfulness and said, “I’d definitely have his babies if he gave me the chance.” Clearly, I’d spent too much time talking to Cinder lately.
Juliette snorted but stopped laughing when she realized it was me she was joking around with. Things got awkward again fast. We both went back to our work, but this time I couldn’t keep quiet. “Thanks for helping me yesterday in class and for talking to Vivian.”
Juliette shrugged as if she didn’t think it was worth talking about, but I couldn’t let it drop. “Why did you do it?”
Juliette considered not answering my question, but then said, “Mostly because Ana’s being such a jerk. I was mad about having you here too at first, but it’s really not that bad. You stay out of our way and keep a low profile at school. She’s the one making it worse by constantly trying to turn the whole school against you, or at least making them too afraid to be nice to you. I’m sick of the drama. All of our lives would be easier if you weren’t such a freakish loner, and you’d have a lot more friends if Ana would just back off.”
Once again she turned back to her work. I went back to mine too, but after another ten minutes or so I had another question I needed an answer to. “What exactly did I do? Why do you both hate me so much?”
I knew Juliette wouldn’t deny the implication that she hated me. She was a very direct person. Most of the time the stuff she said was shallow, judgmental, or just plain ignorant, but at least she always told you what she really thought. She wasn’t afraid to say what was on her mind, and I had to admire that about her. “Different reasons,” she said. “Ana feels threatened by you.”
“What?” I laughed incredulously. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Not really. First of all, you’re Dad’s real daughter. She’s worried that he’s going to start playing favorites.” After a short pause, she said, “I’d be lying if I weren’t jealous about that, too.”
I was shocked. Juliette and Anastasia were jealous that Rich was my dad? As if that made some kind of difference? It’d never stopped him from loving them more than me before.
“Second, you have scars and you limp, but you’re actually really pretty aside from that. Some of our friends have said as much. Plus, everyone thinks you’re really funny.”
“What? How can people think that? Nobody knows anything about me.”
“When we learned about your blog, Ana told everyone at school about it, trying to show them what a nerd you are.” Juliette smirked. “Her plan totally backfired because everyone loved it. Half of our friends follow you now.”
The kids at school followed my blog? I didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed impossible. Juliette saw the look on my face and shook her head. “You’re not nearly as hated as you think. Yeah, there are a few people who’ve been really mean to you, but everyone else respects you.”
“They respect me?” There was no way she’d get me to believe that.
“You’re tortured at school, but you never let it get to you. You never complain, and you never get anyone in trouble. All anyone could talk about today was how cool it was of you to drop the charges against Jason.
“Plus, you keep to yourself so much that you’re, like, mysterious. People are intrigued by you. They’re starting to like you. Rob Loxley even has a crush on you. That’s why Ana got so mad and made Jason do what he did. She thought Rob was going to ask her to the dance, and instead he asked her if she thought you would go to the dance with him.”
I was shocked. I didn’t see how what she was saying could be possible, but she wouldn’t make up a story like this just to be cruel. Anastasia would, but not Juliette. Juliette was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a liar.
Juliette went back to her homework, giving me the chance to process everything she’d just told me. After a minute she didn’t look up from her work, but she said, “If you want me to give Rob your number, I will. He’s a pretty decent guy. Kind of quiet for my taste, but you guys might hit it off.”
I didn’t respond right away, and Juliette didn’t seem to care if I answered her or not. I didn’t know how to feel about someone having a crush on me. I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship. I couldn’t go outside in short-sleeve shirts, much less have some guy wanting to see me or touch me. A boyfriend couldn’t even hold my hand when I walked because I have to use my cane in my good hand, and I didn’t think I could let someone hold my scarred hand.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered. “I’ll think about it.”
“Whatever.”
That was the end of our conversation until Jennifer called us up for dinner later. Juliette turned off the TV and started to pack up her stuff. I didn’t want to risk annoying her, but as long as she was somewhat talking to me, I needed one last answer.
“Hey, Juliette? I know we’ll never be like actual sisters or anything, but I don’t want to be enemies forever, either. You told me why Anastasia hates me, but what’s your problem with me?”
Juliette stopped shoving books in her backpack and looked at me. All of her usual indifference was gone, and I could see anger in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have a problem with you if you weren’t always so mean to Mom and Dad. They’re good parents. They’ve gone out of their way to do everything they can for you. Dad almost lost his job because he spent so much time in Boston while you were in the hospital. They renovated your room. They give you everything you need. They always do nice things for you, hoping it might make you happy. They try so hard to help you, and you throw it back in their faces all the time.”
Her words iced me over like a bucket of freezing water splashed in my face. Of all the things I could have imagined, I never would have thought she was just being protective of my dad and Jennifer. And the thing is, after she’d said that, I realized that there wasn’t just anger in her eyes, but hurt.
“You treat our parents as bad as Ana treats you,” she said. “Especially Dad, and he doesn’t deserve that. He’s a good man. He may not be my biological father, but he’s my dad. He’s raised me since I was seven years old, and he’s never treated me like I wasn’t his real daughter. He’s loved me like I was his own.”
All the conflicting emotions in me were so confusing. I was shocked, for one thing. I never realized I was acting so horribly. I wasn’t even sure if I really had, or if Juliette was just being defensive and exaggerating. But if I had…I wasn’t that person. I didn’t treat people like that. I’d always considered myself to be kind. I didn’t like being compared to someone like Anastasia.
At the same time, I was also angry. Part of me thought Juliette had no right to think anything at all about my relationship with my father. It was none of her business. But more than anything, I was hurt because she had the relationship with him that I should have had, and she acted as if there were nothing wrong with that.
“That’s not true,” I whispered. “He’s loved you much more than if you were his own child, because I am his child and he didn’t love me at all. Did you know he didn’t even say good-bye to me when he left? I was eight years old. I came home from school one day, and he was just gone. There was no note, no phone call, no anything. I just never saw him again.
“I grew up without any father at all because my dad was out here giving you hugs, and tucking you into bed at night, and loving you like a real daughter instead of me. Talk about having something thrown in your face all the time. How do you think it makes me feel to have to live here and see how happy you all are together? Do you have any idea how much it hurts every time I hear you and Anastasia call him Dad? To know that he loves you—really, truly loves you? I’m his daughter, and he only took me in because he had to.”
I took a breath and put my books back in my backpack. I couldn’t handle this conversation any longer.
“I’m not saying you don’t have a reason to be angry,” Juliette said, “but you asked what my problem is with you, and that’s it. We were happy before you came here. Now my parents fight a lot more, and Ana and I barely speak except to yell at each other. I get that you have problems, and I understand that this sucks for you, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re making everyone in this house miserable. You’re ruining my family.”
I apologized as I shouldered my backpack and stood up. “I’m sorry.” I tried not to sound bitter, because I really was sorry. “If I had any idea how to change that, I would.”
I turned to leave and saw Jennifer standing on the stairs, watching Juliette and me with a stricken expression. From the puffiness of her eyes, I was sure she’d heard that entire conversation. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled again as I made my way past her.