"This is what she had become."
=====
Cleopatra Banks' last week in the small town of New Chelsea is nothing like she would have imagined it, but nothing could have prepared her for the stinging betrayal she's faced with and suddenly the prospect of...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
They won.
I couldn't be happier for them. Buttercup must have stuck to his promise to Ethan. I see it in the way he walks now. People still keep their distance from him and he still keeps his distance from everybody else but there's something different about him that I can't ignore.
A part of me wants to share this moment with him, ask him how he feels about being on the winning team, what it's like to finally have his freedom back and to not have a bad record hanging over his head but I know I can't.
I was too late. After seeing him hugging Valeria I just knew there was no fixing us. Even if at one point he did have feelings for me, I know that's not the case now.
He's moved on from Isabella and from me.
I try to tell myself that it'll be okay and I'll find love again and I'll outgrow this phase but I know that's only a lie. I can never outgrow Ethan, he's etched into my skin and his name has been engraved into my heart. I still want him and not as a friend but as something more than that.
Will it ever stop?
It hurts like hell knowing that I can't have him. You truly never know what you have until it's gone. I should have told him he meant more than a friend, more than a brother when I had the chance but I went and did the exact opposite.
I make an attempt at dragging my thoughts away from him and back into my Biology textbook on the table in the school library where I've been spending all my lunch time and off periods lately. I need to get my head back in the game and focus on these books. I've already failed at love, I don't want to fail the upcoming exams either.
"Ugh, look at her just sitting there studying peacefully. She knows she's going to pass and the rest of us are going to fail and that's why she's so confident," someone whispers. I don't bother checking for who could have said that because it's the eighth time I've heard someone say that today.
"I heard the only reason Valeria decided to pull out of the tournament was because she stole April from her and then she got depressed, that one threatened to make her fail if she didn't participate but still kept April in the end." Okay that one doesn't even make sense and that's the third time I've heard it today.
"No. She got some incriminating stuff on Valeria on that flash drive that could ruin her," someone else whispers and I have to close my Biology textbook at the sound of that. It's the tenth time I've heard that and each time I hear the word flash drive, my head heats up.
I pull out the stupid gold plated device from inside my shirt and observe it keenly.
It's jinxed. From the very moment I decided to put it on I've been cursed. It took Ethan away from me and pushed him into the arms of another woman -okay that just sounds so soap opera-ish -but it did happen, literally.
Point is I don't want it any more. It's helped me take care of my own issues with Thandi and to some extent Valeria's issues too but other than that it's brought nothing but division, chaos, backstabbery and gossip.
