4
A rumor started circulating that Wendy was a homewrecker who had stolen Bill from me. One afternoon, as my friend Maya and I were coming back from the restroom, Wendy ran past us, sobbing, her hand clapped over her mouth.
Bill came charging after her, but when he saw me, he lunged, his hands closing around my throat. For a terri- fying second, I thought he was going to kill me. “Tessa Shaw! I thought you wanted to stay away from me! What the hell is this now?”
I choked, struggling for air. Maya frantically tried to push him away. “Are you crazy? We were just in the restr- oom! Let her go, she can’t breathe!”
Her words snapped him out of it. He yanked his hands back, and I collapsed, gasping for air.
“You’re disgusting, Tessa.”
“Tessa, are you okay?”
I crouched on the floor, coughing, tears streaming down my face. Maya wrapped her arms around me, patti- ng my back gently, “It’s okay, Tessa. I don’t know what’s wrong with him and his psycho airlfriend ”
te stranger. He had looked like he genuinely wanted to strangle me.
The boy from my memories was gone. Utterly gone.
Later, a classmate cautiously passed me a phone under the desk.
Someone had posted an anonymous message on the Crestwood Confessions page, accusing Wendy of being the “other woman” who had destroyed my relationship with Bill. A lot of people believed it. The comm-
ents were a firestorm of vicious insults directed at her.
The marks on my neck were already turning a raw, angry red. I decided I would post a clarification on the page as soon as I got home.
I
But I never got the chance. When I walked through the front door, my parents were sitting on the sofa, their faces grim. They were waiting for me.
A knot of dread tightened in my stomach. A glass shattered at my feet.
“What did you do at school to provoke Bill Vance?” my father roared, slamming his hand on the table, his eyes bulging. “Do you have any idea that our company’s entire future depends on our partnership with the Vance Corporation? Are you trying to ruin me? Huh?!”
I stood there, frozen, as my mother’s shrill voice rained down insults, calling me a worthless daughter. My father demanded I go and apologize to Bill immediately.
The sprawling, sterile villa felt like an icebox. I was shivering, cold to my very core.
I don’t remember how the interrogation ended, or how I was dragged over to Bill’s house to apologize.
I wanted to tell him I didn’t write the post, but that I would clear it up.
But when he opened the door and looked down at me, his eyes were glacial. The words died in my
I lowered my head, bowed, and apologized.
throat.
He just gave me a detached glance, leaning against the doorframe. “I don’t want to see you at school again, Tessa Shaw.”
My parents bobbed their heads, fawning and promising he would never have to lay eyes on me again.
I lifted my head mechanically, staring at him. Under the cold, white light of the porch, I couldn’t seem to make out his expression, couldn’t even really see his face anymore.
In that moment, my dignity was crushed, ground into the dust.
It was then I finally realized we were never from the same world. We were never equals. The moon doesn’t lower itself from the sky just because someone on the ground wishes for it. A moon in a well is just a reflect-
ion. It’s all an illusion.
Chisper t
And the kindness the young master had once shown me? It was nothing more than a passing whim of i
privileged boy.
I never should have let myself dream. It was all a mistake, right from the very beginning.
That night, I packed my things while my parents made arrangements to transfer me to a new school.
