Keira was having at blast. It was great to see Mo’s pub had finally lighten up after the incident. And it all felt right, she thought. The girl was sitting there sipping on her root beer and saw the girl from that other party she had attended, refusing to come up stage.
“Hey!” she called out to the man with the guitar “Tommy! Leave’er alone– what? GOD, NO!”” Keira covered her face with her hands when she was asked to come up stage instead of Zoey “No no no no no no…Please don’t let him do that!”
The entire thing could have been considered a mess, in all honesty. Between the two girls not wanting to get on the stage, and Tommy wanting – no, needing – a performer, Zoey didn’t know what to do. She just shook her head in terror and pushed the guitar away, stepping back and almost tripping up onto the stage. Wrong way, Zo.
“Gotta stop him from doing that to me first,” she said indignantly, straightening herself back up and crossing her arms over herself protectively. The last thing she wanted was a repeat from last time. “Look, I didn’t say ‘yes’, I said ‘maybe’. There’s a big difference between the two.”
I cannot stop breaking things. My hands have shattered more than I care to admit: Everyone I have ever touched has walked away with scars. I am all teeth and claws, sharp and pointed –– a thing like me can never be loved.
Angel still didn’t look up when he heard her response. He tapped his bookmark against his chin, seated in the same position she was sans guitar. “Another quick tip: looking and staring are two different things.” He checked her out with his peripherals before turning his head to fully face her.
“Look at you, the day has just barely started and you’ve already learned two new things. Isn’t that exciting?” You’d think he was genuinely happy for her development had it not been for the deadpan a moment later.
What an arrogant ass-hat, Zoey thought with a heavy roll of her eyes, ignoring his comment and reaching a hand down to play with the strings tunelessly. Where was her self-designated pack when she needed company? Why the hell weren’t they available at a time like this? Oh, right, she remembered, They belong to some of the most influential families on campus and are therefore more likely to be subjected to random meetings whenever and wherever.
“Look here, dickwad. I pay to be educated by professionals, so anything you say is just going to go over my head.” She said, letting herself meet his gaze briefly, adding in a sarcastic smile for effect before turning away again. “Don’t go wasting your breath, now. I hear that’s how you die.”
That is one of the things his parents agreed on, and they rarely agreed on anything, especially with his mother being pro-Angel and his father being pro-get-the-fuck-out-of-my-house. But that’s in the past, he refuses to keep revisiting that, which is why he’s trying to completely immerse himself in this book except…
“Here’s a quick tip,” Angel says, without looking up from his book. “Staring at me will get you nothing but a bloody nose. Stop it.”
But she hadn’t been looking at him. Not on purpose, anyway. Zoey always had to look at something when she was thinking. Call it habit, or mental bliss, but she had been the same way since she was a child. This wasn’t the first time she’d been called out on it. Besides, she was pretty sure that she had been staring past him.
“How do you know if people are staring if you’re not staring yourself?” She said aloud, blinking herself out of her thoughts and looking towards him properly. She had her guitar leaning against the side of her chair and both legs thrown over the arm rest. He wasn’t going to bring her mood down. “Two way road, mister.”
Your back’s against the wall There’s no one home to call You’re forgetting who you are You can’t stop crying It’s part not giving in Part trusting your friends You do it all again and I’m not lying
“I can’t get on that stage.” Zoey shook her head. Her hand was wrapped around the neck of a guitar, and with wide, bright eyes, the look on her face could only be described as panic. She looked back up at her company. “No. No way. I mean, thanks and all that, but nuh-uh.”
Harry shrugged. He didn’t necessarily want to believe that Daisy was going to become a whole different person he didn’t know. He knew people changed, but drastically? All at once? He didn’t like thinking about it… Especially since her changed happened right after the attack. “Yeah…” he said, raising an eyebrow at her, “What’s going on? There some beef between you two?”
Shifting herself a little, Zoey shook her head and looked out across the front lawn. “No, I just don’t trust her right now,” she admitted with a small shake of her head. Was this how people felt with her? Was this what those magazines had been talking about when she’d changed her look all of those years ago? Could be. “’A change that big on a girl like that doesn’t seem right. Not to me, anyway.”
Dear Diary, something odd happened today. Zoey Wilden, self proclaimed rebel in campus, the girl with the ever changing hair, my partner in traumas. She managed to look through the glamour I had set around me, and she broke her way in before I could even blink… Daisy looked the other way and tried to keep a solemn face. Although her brow had furrowed itself together, she looked like a pained statue, an indolent damsel in distress. Daisy refused to let her know.
“There is not another point, I just needed a change” she retorted with a tiresome tone, hoping to shake the dust off and make her believe her lies. Lies Daisy herself was barely starting to see “…People wants to show their own opinions on me, and find reasons for my behaviour, they refuse to understand that maybe, just maybe, I can change without some dreadful happening being the reason for me to”
The wolf would have believed her, but Daisy’s casual behavior was far too casual. The suspicion on Zoey’s face dropped to seriousness, and she raised an eyebrow at Daisy. “Bullshit.” She said, recalling all of those thoughts that had flooded her mind when she had ‘transformed’. Zoey had basically urged herself, and that was why she was the way that she was now, because she had looked a certain way, and that had been the reason why people had chosen to treat her badly. The way she saw it, your style and the way you held yourself reflected how people responded to you. They would treat you a certain way because of how they perceived you, and if you lived up to their expectations, with time, they would stop.
“Look, you’re either doing this for attention, or you’re doing it to prove a fucking point, and you’re just lying to yourself and everyone else around you,” she laughed, completely unable to keep a straight face considering the words that Daisy had just said to her. Could she even hear herself. “Look, I get it. Something big happened to you and you got attacked. It wasn’t ‘cause you were weak or, you know, weedy. Shit happens, but don’t try to play pretend with me when you weren’t the only one there, buttercup. That’s how someone knows you’re lying.”
