Beauty and a Cheat

Betrayal

I opened my eyes to bright lights shining in my face. I squinted, adjusting to my surroundings. It was a giant, ominous room. There were silver instruments everywhere, twinkling in my blurry vision. I couldn't tell what kind of place this was. I tried to rub my eyes to clear my head, but they were constrained by purple ropes. With a jolt I remembered all that had happened before I went under. Emily had just kidnapped me! Justin! Where was Justin?! And what the heck was going to happen to me? I looked down and saw that my entire body was wrapped up in the purple ropes, chained onto a metal bed, which was extremely uncomfortable. She could have at least thrown me on a soft mattress or something.

I heard a shuffling noise. I looked up and saw someone I didn't recognize in a lab coat in the corner of the room, meddling with a long, scary-looking device that consisted of a bunch of machinery. Because I was desperate, I tried calling out to the person.

"Hey! Um, could you help me out here?" I said casually, flashing a grin. "I'm a little stuck."

The person turned around. He was wearing safety goggles and he had long, dark hair. He appeared frightened at my comment. "No, s-sorry. The boss said you were needed for analytic testing." He dropped whatever he was working on and strode out of the room.

The boss? I almost laughed. So Emily had a bunch of cronies helping her do evil deeds. Well, I didn't have any proof of that, but looking around at all the experiments and chemicals in here, it sure looked like she wasn't one of the good guys.

I sighed. I was so desperate for company. I was starting to miss my parents, which was saying something. Wow, I hadn't even thought of them since the ball. I considered what they would say if they saw me in this state.

"Jade, you brought this down on yourself. Why can't you do anything right?" I said bitterly to myself, mimicking my mother. My voice echoed in the testing room. Before I knew it, my eyes were prickling with hot, fresh tears.

In the eerie humming of the machinery, I suddenly picked up on a voice streaming in, sounding awfully familiar.

"Yes, that'd be great. Oh, and could you get me the vaccination? Otherwise she's going to make a lot of noise." Emily said to someone near the door of the lab. "Heaven knows I don't need more publicity than what he's given me."

I gulped. I tried, even more desperately, to detach myself from the ropes. No such luck. What was going to happen? Was she going to do something illegal to me? 

I heard high heels walk in and looked up. Emily was smirking down at me with a large needle in her hand. 

"No!" I struggled as hard as I could. "How could you?!" I said angrily, glaring up at her, squinting through the blinding light on the ceiling.

Emily snorted. "You stupid girl," she said, shaking her head. "Don't you realize that I never would've found you unless your little boyfriend clued me in?"

I immediately stopped fighting. "Ha!" I laughed. "If you think that's true, you're the stupid one. He never would do that." 

"Are you sure?" Emily asked with innocence. "You hadn't noticed anything, well. . . strange, since you met him?"

"No," I said curtly. "He's bipolar, but I don't see what you mean by strange. That's pretty common." I was so not letting her convince me that Justin was some kind of criminal. 

Emily rolled her eyes. "I wasn't talking about him being bipolar, even though that is a disadvantage for you," she said, shooting me a nasty smile.

A sudden thought occured to me. "You're just jealous because he's with me!" I yelled, abandoning all pretense. It all made sense! She was going to do something to me so she could be his girlfriend. At the grocery store. . . I remembered how flirty she was acting. I raised my eyebrows triumphantly at her.

Emily burst out laughing. "Sweetheart," she said in a mocking voice, if I want a man, I'll get him. And Justin, he's real cute, but he's just a boy. So sorry that you haven't figured that out. Although he does make a good assistant." 

I narrowed my eyes at her. "What are you saying?" I didn't believe for one second what she had just told me. "If you're going to tell me something like that, you better have proof." 

Emily shrugged. "Okay," she said with an evil grin. She stood up and pulled something out of her pocket. At first it looked like a giant wad of cash, but I realized they were letters. My stomach twinged as I remembered Emily's letter to Justin. 

She opened one of the envelopes and read aloud: " 'Dear Em, I found what you've been looking for. It's a young rich girl, and she's the daughter of the mayor. Will she suffice for your experiment? I trust that you're not going to do anything illegal--' " she snorted and continued reading. " 'I'm really happy that we've made contact; I've missed you a lot. I hope we'll be able to hang out soon.' " She stuffed the paper in my face. "His signature is at the bottom."

My eyes widened as I recognized his signature from the magazine I'd seen at the grocery store. Emily laughed at my expression. "Didn't know Lover Boy as well as you thought? Well I imagine a couple days isn't enough time to really get to spend time with someone. . . 

"The other letters are basically from a while ago when we hung out, so they're inconsequential. We've been friends ever since I helped him recover from when his parents died in the factory explosion." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "So," she said, looking down at me, smiling coldly, "he has had my entire trust this whole time. Ever wonder why he's been nervous when there's a mention of me?"

I was speechless. I choked out the only thing that was in my mind. "What're you going to do to me?" 

Emily stuffed the letters away in her lab coat, taking out the vaccination shot again. "Well, as you've figured out, I'm a scientist, and I need a young girl to perform experiments on for my research and inventions. But the thing is, she can't be alive. Goodbye, Jade." And she lowered the killing vaccination shot to my neck.