The Princess Pages: A Girl Like Cinderella

Song Thirty Four

BOY-GIRL FRIENDSHIPS DO EXIST, YOU CYNICAL DOPES.

White. 

That was all Lucy's half-lidded blue eyes managed to see when she came to.

She could smell medicine and the fruity scent of apples and bananas and oranges, and the unmistakable waft of ink and paper, which made her dry lips tug up in a strained smile.

"Thank God. You're awake." 

The black haired girl swiveled her head to the right, and found herself staring into a pair of soft brown eyes looking at her with deep concern.

Surveying her surroundings through tired eyes, Lucy confirmed that she was in the campus infirmary: Empty white beds, a cabinet full of medicine bottles, and gory posters of sick patients were hung on the white walls.

Lucy cringed inwardly, her stomach nettled by the display. 

"What do you remember?" the 17-year old with sandy brown hair and a red The Flash shirt thrown over a purple long-sleeved tee inquired,his arm reaching out for the dark blue ice pack on the bedside table and proffering it to the brunette sitting on the white bed.

Nonplussed,Lucy took the plastic sac from him and pressed it gently on the crown of her head, and she immediately winced as the freezing coldness seeped through the thin material, the chilliness invading her scalp, which felt sore and bruised.

"What the.. is that a bump?" Lucy put more exertion on her head, and she moaned in pain.

"Easy, Luce," Carter Jackson reprimanded, grabbing his best friend's wrist and lifting the ice pack away from her injury.

Her bluebell eyes darted an agonized glance at her longtime friend. "Cart, what happened?"

The brown-haired boy eased closer to her, pulling his tall brown stool towards her bed.

"You really can't recall?" he prompted in an apprehensive tone.

A lurch of foreboding formed in Lucy's chest. Her face felt bare, and she only noticed her thick black-rimmed eyeglasses perched idly on the bedside table.

Carter followed her gaze and gingerly picked up the pair of spectacles, handing them over to the black-haired teen.

"Do you want the bomb-version or gradual version?" he asked, while she fixed her square-rimmed glasses over her face,pushing the stems behind her ears.

"Bomb-version," Lucy answered. "Just get it over with, Cart." She groaned and slumped the back of her head onto her squishy pillows, her eyes locked on the white ceiling.

"You threw up in PE," Carter said without ceremony.

Lucy's heart hammered in her chest.

"All over the floor," he added, voice devoid of humor. "Some of it landed on Natasha's shoes."

She fastened her eyes shut,soaked in mortification. "Did she swear revenge on me?"

"A couple of curses, then she hurled a few volleyballs in your direction."

That explained the soreness in her scalp. It hurt like hell. "What else?" she asked meekly.

Carter sat his elbows on her bed, lacing his fingers in front of him, resting his joined hands against his forehead.

"Before you vomited, you were already staggering from the other attacks. The opposing team was ambushing rubber balls at you like a machine gun. It's as though you were everyone's main target."

So that also solves the conundrum of why her arms, legs, and sides were aching as if she had been bearing the weight of bricks up a steep mountain.