Saving Cinderella

Chapter One

Eight A.M. The birds weren’t even awake this early, except for the single little sparrow outside the window that taunted Keaton’s cat, Zuni. That bird had guts. He’d shown up fifteen minutes ago, stood directly in front of Zuni’s face and chirped long enough to turn the cat mental. Under normal circumstances, Keaton might have been bitter at the less than ideal wake up call, but watching Zuni paw and jump at the window with more energy than he’d ever expended in his life was hilarious. 

He shoved his covers to the side and opened the door so Zuni could escape the bird that was hell-bent on destroying him. Keaton had decided the night before that skateboarding or surfing would be part of his not so distant future, so now was as good a time as any. Their tour had ended and they were settled in a new place; he was ready to at least try and return to some kind of normal.  

He took an extra hot shower, selected jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie and jotted a quick note to Wes that he deposited on the kitchen counter. He grabbed a breakfast bar to go, decided to buy coffee rather than make it and shut the door behind him as quietly as he could.  

Coffee was an absolute staple, so he skated to a shop that was halfway between the boardwalk and the skate park and grabbed a large cup to go. The skate park was desolate so early in the morning; a virtual ghost town with the exception of a father and his young kid and a couple of teenagers who looked so rough, Keaton doubted they’d been to sleep from the night before. 

A set of bleachers flanked either side of the park and he balanced his coffee cup on the edge of one, took his hoodie off and set his board on the ground before planting his foot on the deck. 

He started slow but eventually glided on the board with ease, flying across the asphalt up and down ramps. The wind bit at his skin and as he sliced through it effortlessly, he couldn’t help but feel like he was flying. Gravity was not so much a necessity as it was a challenge and he was usually game.  

He rounded a corner and nearly kissed pavement, not because he was moving too swift or too sharp but because a girl caught his eye. She’d taken up residence on the bleachers, her focus fixed intently on him. Her elbows rested on exposed knees that peeked out from an old school kilt, and she held her face in her hands. 

He couldn’t see her clearly from where he was but he doubted she was hard to look at. She moved down, two rows to be precise, in order to sit next to a girl that had joined her. 

This was his lucky day. 

He gave them a smile and kept going. When he spun his board back around, two girls had morphed into five and the one with the kilt was armed with her phone.

“It’s Keaton, right?” she yelled. 

He skated to the bleachers, tipping the board up and catching the end in his hand. “Yes,” he said. “Hi.” 

The kilt-wearing girl beamed. “Weren’t you just on tour?” 

“Yeah. We haven’t been back for very long at all. Less than a week.” 

A blond girl with a streak of purple in her hair stood. “Glad to be home?” 

“Always.”  He retrieved his hoodie and clutched it under his arm. 

As he spoke to them, he spotted a group of girls from his peripherals approaching from his left. The girl with purple waved them over, while the kilt-wearer pointed to his right. “There’s Macy. I told you she’d come,” she spoke to one of her friends, “She’s like—obsessed with him.” 

Wait. Obsessed? Him?  Shit. He didn’t think he’d need security to go to the skate-park. He looked side to side. There were easily twenty girls approaching, probably double that. He was outnumbered. His stomach turned.  It was said that the number one predictor of the future was the past. Keaton knew that this could turn from innocent and simple admiration to full out war in the blink of an eye. He’d seen it countless times. Girls pushing, hair pulling, clawing each other’s eyes out just for a piece of him.