“Come on, Mia. Give me something.”
“I…well…it was like a dream, but then?—“
“What then?”
“It was nice and then morning and reality came, and the tabloids happened, and I think I shouted at her that I hate her and I slapped her face.”
I need to vanish.
“You what?!” Bella is ready to jump up by now.
“She slapped me first. Before. But I completely lost it. The headlines—everything. I am going to lose my job over this, I know it. Look at Preston, he’s so closed up, no way he’ll go full nuclear on me.”
Preston is the head teacher at my school and a deeply faithful man who strongly supports women to be full-time mothers and caretakers.
“Anyway,” I say as I shudder from the mere thought, “Victoria was a real bitch.
“Huh,” Bella says. “What did she do?”
“Called me a child throwing a tantrum, and stuff like that.”
“And were you?”
“I—Bells! You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am. Always will. But I need the full story.”
I shake my head as a weak smile appears on my face, as I realise that Bella played me, so I spill all the tea.
And I do tell her.
While talking helps, the distance also tells me that I really behaved like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Victoria tried to help, and I exploded.
Well, she told me nothing would come of it with the thumb thing, so she lied, but in the end, it wasn't her fault.
Victoria was right, I was operating on madness. My chest clenches the moment I think back on the situation in the closet.
Bella laughs when I tell her the tale of me standing in underwear in a closet, screaming at Victoria Fitzroy.
“You did not,” she says.
“Oh, I did,” I say and a displaced laugh surfaces. I have to hide my face.
Bella pats my thigh.
“We all do some things we’d rather like to forget here and there,” she says, “Let me tell you that as the master of disaster.”
We sit there in silence. I pet Pebbles, and we both stare at the purring cat on my arm.
“You should call your mother,” Bella says finally. “I think she called me seven hundred times.”
“I bet. But I can’t.”
“Why?”
I pull the broken phone from my pocket. “Threw it onto the ground when I saw all the notifications on there, display broke, can’t use it anymore.”
“You’re an idiot,” she says.
