Trust Me. I'm Lying - (SLOWLY EDITING)

As Bad Ideas Go: Chapter 12

"No one can hate you with more intensity than someone who used to love you."

—Hylla (Heroes of Olympus: The Blood of Olympus)

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CHAPTER TWELVE:

As Bad As Ideas Go:

My mom always says that some minutes can last hours—you can be alive in one minute and dead the next. Our course of life can change in a few seconds.

I had never noticed how right she was until that moment.

I'm not sure how long we stared at each other. My head was throbbing and spinning so bad I wondered if I would faint and hit my head hard enough against the frozen ground to be knocked off a couple of days until all of this nightmare was over.

It had to be a nightmare. Carson could not be the boy staring back at me. He couldn't be the guy who made me laugh and sing and wake up with a smile on my face every day. He couldn't be the one telling me how interesting and beautiful I was not a few minutes ago.

Keyword: minutes.

"Bells?" Carson asked.

"Yes?" My voice sounded so small it was pathetic. It felt like talking over a wad of cotton balls stuck in my throat. I'd always hated the feeling when you have to speak in a clear voice when all you wanted to do was break down.

Hell knew that's what I wanted to do.

"Stupid, fat, ugly Ryan. Nobody likes you."

They came like slaps in the face. Painful slaps that brought me back to my reality, of all the things Carson Samuels had said and done.

No, of course, it couldn't be him.

It just couldn't.

"Isabelle? Bells?"

"Why are you alive?"

No—

"Did someone leave your cage open?"

No.

"Any similarity between you and a human is purely coincidental."

My head was spinning now. I'd never felt dizzier in my life. I began to get short of breath, and my knees felt wobbly. I could feel the dryness I knew all too well to be associated with tears, the empty feeling in my stomach. The same feeling as that afternoon I'd found the answer to the letter.

"Ryan."

For some reason, I had been looking down, but I raised my head when Carson said that. The look of utmost surprise on his face was gone, his eyes hard. It was the look he'd given me ever since we had known each other, quickly betrayed but quickly welcomed back.

Carson had always been the kind of person who was only capable of radiating two things: superiority as if he ruled the world, and no one was worthy enough of looking at him in the eyes. But also bitterness, and that's why he treated me the way he did.

My mind screamed the reason for the latter.

But he wasn't showing either of those things. He looked lost. As if he couldn't believe it either, any less than I could.

"What are you doing here?"

"Nerd"

"Bells is my nickname," I whispered. I was surprised that my voice shook ever so slightly, but not broken down as I expected. "Another name for Isabelle."