Finding Cinderella

Chapter Three

“Let’s go!” I tell Chunk for the fifth time.

She grabs her backpack and groans, then stands up and pushes her chair in. “What’s your freakin’ deal, Daniel? You’re never in a hurry to get to school.” She downs the rest of her orange juice. I’m standing at the door where I’ve been standing for five minutes, ready to leave. I hold open the front door and follow her outside.

Once we’re in the car I don’t even wait for her to shut her door before I’m putting it in reverse.

“Seriously, why are you in such a hurry?” she asks.

“I’m not in a hurry,” I say defensively. “You were just being really slow.”

The last thing she needs to know is how utterly pathetic I am. So pathetic I’ve been awake for two hours now, waiting until we could leave. I probably won’t even see Six until lunch if we don’t have classes together, so I really don’t know why I’m in a hurry.

I didn’t think about that. I hope we do have classes together.

“How was your date last night?” Chunk asks as she puts on her seatbelt.

“Good,” I say.

“Did you kiss her?”

“Yep.”

“Do you like her?”

“Yep.”

“What’s her name?”

“Six.”

“No, really. What’s her name?”

“Six.”

“No, not whatever nickname you gave her. What does everyone else call her?”

I roll my head and look at her. “Six. They call her Six.”

Chunk scrunches up her nose. “Weird.”

“It fits her.”

“Do you love her?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want to?”

“Ye—”

Whoa.

Hold up.

Do I want to?

I don’t know. Maybe. Yes? Shit. I don’t know. How screwed up is it that I broke up with a girl two days ago and I’m already contemplating the possibility of loving someone else?

Well, technically, I don’t think I really loved Val. I sort of thoughtI did on occasion, but I think if a person is really, truly in love then it has to be unconditional. How I felt about Val was definitely not unconditional. I had conditions for every single feeling I had about her. Hell, the only reason I ever asked her out in the first place is that for about fifteen seconds, I thought she was Cinderella.

After that experience in the closet last year, that mystery girl was all I could think about. I looked for her everywhere, even though I had no idea what she looked like. I was pretty sure she had blonde hair, but it was dark, so I could have been wrong. I listened to every single girl’s voice I walked past to see if they sounded like her. The problem was, they all sounded like her. It’s hard to memorize a voice when you don’t have a face to back it up with, so I would always find small things that reminded me of her in every girl I spoke to.

With Val, I actually convinced myself she was Cinderella. I was walking past her in the hallway one afternoon on my way to history class. I’d seen her in the past but never paid much attention because she seemed a little high-maintenance for me. I accidentally bumped her shoulder when I passed her because my head was turned and I was talking to someone else. She called out after me,