Broken Glass Slipper.
Chapter One: Awakening
It was her doctor that told me. He said that she was running, and running fast. He mentioned that it was a driver that had swerved to keep from hitting an abandoned dog, and she was running blindly toward it in the black sweatshirt.
My eyes had instantaneously whipped to her blood stained sweatshirt on the table next to her little army-esque cot. And it felt like a stab in the heart.
I had given it to her a few weeks before I broke it off.
"She was crying heavily, it must have been why she couldn't see the lights. It wasn't her fault," Dr. Clubs sighed, shaking her brunette hair around. The long pony tail it had hung high and tightly in was now lopsided from the immense care she had tried to save her from dying.
My eyes once again shifted to her broken form, and I cringed mentally.
"It's all my fault," I heard her mom blubber in the corner, being comforted by her other children. They were shaking their heads, just trying to keep Mrs. Cinders from throwing her self down on the floor and committing some act of harm to her own body. "I had worked her too hard! I shouldn't have- This wouldn't have- She should have-"
The helpless victim of the situation was lying stiffly on the bed, needles poking in and out of her arm, a bloody scratch on her cheek, traveling down and reaching her neck, traveling dangerously close to her throat. I traced the cut with my eyes, praying it wouldn't kill her.
"I'm sorry to say, but there's not really much I can do," Dr. Clubs sighed angrily. "She's got to pull through."
"Thank you doctor," her step sister rang out, "I will just take poor little mom home." You could have almost mistaken her for sympathetic if you didn't know her that well. "We'll be back, little sister." Out of no where, a tear ran down Nat's cheek, and another pang of guilt ran through my heart. Natalie had meant it. She really had meant it. I couldn't believe it.
"No, NO!" I heard Mrs. Cinders yelling as Reilly and Natalie pulled her away from the scene.
I wondered if this was somehow karma for the rest of us, if we deserved this in some sick, twisted way. We had all wronged her, and we had all made her like more unbearable then anyone could really take. And now our one payback from fate had slapped us coldly in the face, and she was intertwined with it. She shouldn't have been involved in our reality check. It wasn't fair! She didn't deserve this anymore!
A monitor with a green screen told me that she was alive, if just for another second. The doctor explained that it would only speed up if she started to stir, and if it slowed down, we were in trouble.
Was fate playing with that too? Was it going to slow it down and make us tip off the edge, or speed up then slow down again? Was this some sort of mind game that was falling upon us like rain from a parched sky?
"You want some time alone?" my thoughts were interrupted by Dr. Clubs.
I nodded slowly, just once. My eyes hadn't really left the bloody sweatshirt. I heard the door clicked shut. I could only smile grimly when I remember the way she had received that. It was really a miracle she found my sweatshirt in that pile of stolen clothes being returned to the kids at school. So miraculous, I let her keep it. It was vicuna, and my family owned the plant mill, so when she heard she could keep it, her smile broke out into the biggest smile I had ever seen in my life. I couldn't believe how radiant someone who lived like her could actually be.
I think that's when I realized that she was beautiful.
Not that I hadn't realized it before. It was now just really, really evident. I couldn't believe that someone in her position of step-slave to her brother and sister was so sweet to the world, and didn't hold too much a grudge to the rest of the world.
And how, even though she was forced to do so many chores to earn her tuition at Castle Academy, she still wrote so brilliantly, I couldn't push the poems out of my head for days. I remembered a particular phrase.
Fairytales turn into nightmares
As you've turned into mine
Into a mirror of them all
With heat and twisted frames
It shattered long ago
A cascade from Heaven to Hell
That you've left me with
Dare me to dream
Because I'm scared to scream
For all these secrets held inside
I don't remember how she came up with it, but I remember finding it in her notebook a long time ago. It was the first poem I had read of hers. But this one had stuck with me the best; it was etched soundly in my mind.
I had wanted to know her secrets.
My eyes slid from the jacket to the plastic seat next to her bed.
It took all my energy to push myself closer to her, closer to her beauty, closer to her intelligence, closer to her lifeless expression.
I took a seat next to her, and let out my breath slowly.
"Come back to me, Ella Cinders," I whispered.
And the monitor stayed at the same slow steady beat that it had always been at.