clarity I saved my self-esteem.
It also helped that because of the curse I knew I was pretty. So she could suck on that one.
“I’m not easy,” I replied stubbornly. Because I wasn’t.
In return she cackled at me. Honestly, she cackled.
“Please, everyone knows what a skank you are,” she rolled her eyes in the mirror at me and headed for the hand dryer.
“They’re wrong. I’m not a skank.” This was the most I had ever stuck up for myself since being sent away and I didn’t even really know why I was trying. She was welcome to believe whatever she wanted about me. In fact, Nix preferred the rumors even if we were ordered to hold on to our virginity until he could line up a worthy buyer.
“That’s not what Sam Evans told everyone the night of that party,” she countered bravely.
That was enough to snap any calm resolve that remained. “You need to stop with that,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about Sam, so stop using him to make up your points. Sam loved me. Loved me.” Well, not me. Sam fell in love with the curse, but Amber didn’t need to know that. “So stop putting words in his mouth when it’s so unfair that he can’t defend himself.”
“And look where that got him? Paralyzed and brain dead. Nobody could love you now, not after what you did to him. Now you’re nothing but a used up hag,” she turned on me with biting cruelty, her eyes burning orbs of hatred. “You’re the reason he’s not here to defend himself!”
And she had cut right to the most vulnerable vein.
My breath stuttered in my lungs as I tried to suck in enough oxygen to remain level headed. Hot tears pricked at the backs of my eyes and I wanted to curl up into myself and die, or at least weep. I repeated to myself that she didn’t matter, that she didn’t matter to me. I was stronger than this.
But I wasn’t. And all of the broken, shattered pieces of me came crashing down in a suffocating deluge of weakness.
The bathroom door opened and laughing girls walked in completely unaware of the impending mental breakdown I was just seconds away from. I couldn’t even look up to see who the happy girls were, my eyes were focused on the dirty drain and broken porcelain sink I needed to hold me up. My knuckles turned as white as the sink basin as I gripped on for my life.
“Ivy, what’s wrong?”
Kenna.
She was exactly the last person I wanted to witness this tragic side of me.
“Amber, why does she look like she’s about to burst into tears?” Kenna demanded of my attacker. A soft hand rested on my shoulder as if to comfort me and surprisingly it did. I lifted my eyes to meet Amber’s ashamed gaze in the mirror. She quickly fixed her expression to innocence and shrugged one shoulder casually.
“What did you say to her?” Kenna ground out and then thought better of rehashing Amber’s accusations. “You know what? Nevermind. You’re a bitch. You’ve always been one and that isn’t going to change. It drives you crazy Chase is happy with Ivy, but jealousy is an ugly color on you. Just leave her alone, Amber. She doesn’t need your drama and neither do I.”
Amber struggled to swallow against Kenna’s tirade. I watched her throat work to finish the action, while her eyes glossed over with tears. She silently turned around, tugged at her shirt to make sure it was in place and then left the bathroom. I didn’t have any trouble believing Kenna’s words had hit home.
I realized slowly how popular Kenna was. It wasn’t that before I left I was oblivious to her social status, but while I had my own agenda, popularity never really mattered to me. Besides Kenna seemed like one of the nicest girls ever, in the history of girls. She tried to befriend me for God sakes. Or at least she put up with me.
And now she was sticking up for me. The whole scenario felt surreal.
Nobody should be sticking up for me. I was the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. I had one agenda and one only and it was completely selfish. But in the last three days more people had come to my aid than I thought existed in my life.
I wasn’t alone. Not by a long shot.
But now what was I supposed to do with that realization? Besides my