Two years had passed since Spinel found out the truth about Kimber and who she actually was in relation to her. By this time, Spinel had been going steady with Hudson, doing a lot of drugs with him and his friends, and she had dropped out of school entirely. Jeremy was absolutely beside himself now. His only surviving relative was throwing her life away for the sake of some temporary thrills, and she didn't even care. Of course, him revealing the truth about himself and Kimber to her didn't exactly help in that matter. Spinel had also completely cut Chloe and Indiana out of her life, having ultimately severed ties with them after she'd dropped out of Eleanor Roosevelt High. Chloe and Indiana could only helplessly watch as they slowly lost their former friend to the dark side.

In the end, Spinel didn't really care what anybody thought of her hanging out with people like Hudson Evans. If they couldn't handle her at her best, then they sure as hell wouldn't be able to handle her at her worst. And so she went on with her life, and everybody else went on with theirs.

That would soon change. One night, during the fall of 2014, Spinel was attending a party at Hudson's house along with his friends, his brothers, and his cousins. Songs from the likes of Beyoncé and Maroon 5 blasted from speakers placed throughout the house, with party guests dancing along to the beats of the music. She'd never really attended anything like this before. The closest thing she'd experienced prior had been at least a couple sleepovers, but those had been at her house and that was it. She roamed throughout Hudson's house, still starstruck by the fact that he even trusted her enough to let her come here.

"Damn, girl!" exclaimed a girl about Spinel's age. "You seriously never been to a party before?"

Spinel just shook her head. "I mean, I've never been to this kind of party before. This is all still new to me."

The girl laughed. "Oh, honey! You're going to experience a whole lot more now that school ain't holdin' you back anymore!" She whistled over at Hudson. "Hey, cuz!"

Hudson walked over with an amused smirk. "Yeah, what's goin' on, Aaliyah?"

"Your girl Spinel's never been to this kind of party before."

Hudson still held that smirk. "Yeah, so?"

"Why don't we show what kind of party this really is?"

Hudson seemed intrigued. "Ah... okay. Hey, Spinel, you ever had alcohol before?"

Spinel just shook her head. "No, why?"

Aaliyah snickered for a bit before composing herself. "Well, why don't my cuz and I show you how great it can be?"

"Gee, I don't know..." Spinel was a little nervous at the idea. "Why don't I show you my Betty Boop impression instead?"

"C'mon, Spinel," Hudson pleaded with his girlfriend. "If you try some alcohol, then I promise to let you ride my pony later."

Spinel perked up now, seeming to take Hudson's offer literally. "Oh, okay!"

"Alright, let me go get a bottle real quick." Hudson disappeared into the kitchen and then came back with a bottle of Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge soon after. "Here we go. Okay, Spinel, I dare you to drink this entire bottle of Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge! Do you agree?"

Spinel vigorously nodded her head.

Hudson laughed up a storm. "Well, I'll be damned." He handed Spinel the bottle of Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge. "Drink up, bitch!"

Spinel took him up on his offer and started downing the entire bottle of Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge. As she did this, everybody else attending the party started chanting her name. She never felt so alive before, especially not at this very moment. She loved all this attention Hudson and Aaliyah and their friends were giving her. She'd been craving it ever since she severed ties with Chloe and Indiana. As much as she missed the two girls (who, by now, were high school juniors), what they'd done to her was just unforgivable. She needed to forget about them and move on with her life. After a while, Spinel eventually managed to consume every ounce liquid from the bottle of Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge. Everyone cheered as she started hobbling around, the alcohol in the French liqueur already starting to take effect on her body.

"Alright!" Aaliyah yelled out in support. "Go, Spinel!"

Spinel took a good look around her surroundings despite her drunken state. She could see the smiles on everyone's faces. She could see them showing their approval for what she'd done. She could see in them a sense of acceptance that she'd longed for since ditching Chloe and Indiana. Admittedly, that was mostly her fault, but she didn't know what else she could do.

"Did, did I win?" Spinel asked while slurring her words.

Aaliyah chuckled in amusement. "You sure did."

Spinel beamed up. "Alright, what do I win?"

"You get to drive around in my car, and by my car, I mean my grandma's car!"

"Really?" Spinel tilted her head at her boyfriend's cousin. "But I don't even have a driver's license yet."

"So? That don't matter here." Aaliyah handed Spinel the keys to her car. "Go on, give it a try."

Spinel looked up at her. "You really sure about this?"

Aaliyah smiled at her. "Course I'm sure about this. What are you waiting for? Go drive my car already!"

Spinel beamed up again. "Okay!"

With that, Spinel ran off and got into the driver's seat of Aaliyah's car. The car itself was a red 1990 Chevrolet Corvette, which had been dented up a few times within the past decade or so. Aaliyah could only smirk and watch as Spinel struggled to insert the key in the ignition.

"Uh, Aaliyah?" one of Aaliyah's gal pals asked uncertainly.

"Yeah, what up, Wilmarie?" Aaliyah asked back.

"You sure it was a good idea letting Spinel drive your grandma's car? I mean, she's drunk."

Aaliyah could only muster up a shrug. "Whatever. It's not my problem anyways." She grinned after seeing Spinel finally put the key in the ignition and turn it. "Besides, it seems she's finally got it figured out."

Wilmarie let out a disappointed sigh. "Aight, if you say so..."

Spinel screamed in glee as she drove away on Aaliyah's Chevrolet Corvette. Even if she didn't have any alcohol in her system, it was pretty evident from the way she was driving that she had little to no experience in this. She constantly confused the gas and brake pedals for each other so she was constantly stopping and starting, which meant she came close to giving herself whiplash a few times. Once she sorta got the hang of it, though, Spinel drove the fucker like she was playing Mario Kart 64 on her old Nintendo 64 again. She laughed and laughed while driving her boyfriend's cousin's car without a care in the world. Soon, she was zooming through the streets at about 70 miles per hour. She started singing an acapella version of "Birthday" by Katy Perry, one of her favorite songs in the whole wide world. She was so occupied with singing that song that she didn't even notice that someone had stopped in front of the car, and she ran them over.

"Oh my God!" an onlooker screamed. "Someone call 911! Call 911 now!"

Spinel couldn't seem to hear them or anybody else yelling out for help. She just drove like nothing had even happened, still drunk off the Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge Hudson had dared her to down. All of a sudden, she swerved the car on a sharp turn and she collided with the front of a random house.

Within hours, both Spinel and her father had been rushed to the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital, which was located on 462 First Avenue in the Kips Bay neighborhood. The emergency personnel were quick to attend to the father and daughter's injuries, making sure both got the best care available. Spinel was forced to stay overnight to ensure that she was in stable condition. Meanwhile, the doctors did everything they could to save Spinel's father, but it was to no avail. His injuries from being run over by the 1990 Chevrolet Corvette were too severe. On November 8th, 2014, at approximately 6:45 PM, Jeremy Wayne Reynolds died from his injuries.


She'd only had to serve twelve years for vehicular manslaughter, and then that was it. Aside from the upside-down heart that had been carved onto her chest by a cellmate during her sentence, Spinel didn't have any bad memories of being a prison inmate whatsoever. If anything, prison time did more good for her than bad; in particular, it seemed to have curbed her eating disorder at the right moment overnight. She still had a long recovery ahead of her, but for now, she was at a healthy weight and utilizing healthy eating habits and that was all that mattered. Off she went to the halfway house to begin the process for re-entering society. She couldn't wait to get through the whole rehabilitation process and then start life anew. Of course, that could take weeks or months or possibly even years, so the best she could do was be patient and do as the faculty members told her. At least she had something to look forward to once the rehabilitation process ended. If only she'd known...

One night, Spinel and her roommates were gathered around the TV in their room. They were eager to watch the latest episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and nothing was going to stop them. Once the episode started, all eyes were glued to the TV. Tonight's guests, as it turned out, were none other than the Diamonds... and then some other guy. He looked to be about sixteen years old, and he was admittedly a pretty handsome dude. He had tan skin, dark curly hair, dark eyes, and a round cherub-like face; and he was wearing a pink and white letterman jacket over a light blue shirt with a yellow star on it.

"Hey, who's that?" Spinel curiously asked one of her roommates while pointing to the sixteen-year-old boy.

"Oh, you don't know?" the roommate asked back, genuinely surprised. "That's Steven Universe! He's been quite the popular activist among the Gen Z and Gen Alpha folks. He's especially been popular on TikTok."

"Okay... but why is he with the Diamonds?"

The roommate just shrugged. "I don't know. I've never read up on celebrity tabloids too closely. Hell, I'm not sure how he would even know them."

Spinel nodded, still confused on what the heck was going on. "Okay, I was just wondering, that's all."

Spinel and her roommates just went back to fixating on the TV screen. They listened intently as the founder Whitney Diamond (who, by now, was eighty-four years old) began to spin a yarn about how Steven had contributed so much to changing Diamond Bright Records' image and helping the company to cement a good reputation among people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. Whitney also went on about how she hoped other music companies would follow in her company's footsteps and the music industry would therefore change for the better. She sat between her twin daughters Goldie and Maya, both of whom were nodding and giving their two cents about what their mother had been saying as she was telling the story.

"That sounds amazing!" Jimmy Kimmel exclaimed in response to Whitney's story.

"I know, right?" Whitney's face seemed to beam up as she spoke. "And I have my grandson here to thank for making the music world a better place. He's just so compassionate and empathetic, and-"

Spinel stopped listening at that point. Okay, wait a goddamn minute. This Steven Universe kid was her grandson? How? Goldie and Maya had both been child-free for decades, John had only had that one daughter Sapphire before he died from brain cancer, and Petunia... well, Petunia had been dead for twenty years at this point. Or had she? Spinel had to look again at the screen. The curly hair, the dark eyes, the smile, the somewhat angelic face... they all reminded her of Petunia. But wait... how the hell could Petunia be dead for twenty years but also have a sixteen-year-old son? It didn't make any sense. Maybe this was actually Kimber's son, which would make him her half-brother, but that didn't make sense either.

Spinel hopped up from the floor.

"Hey, what are you doing?" the other roommate asked curiously.

"I gotta look something up, Rhiannon," Spinel replied quickly.

"Okay." Rhiannon gave a thumbs up. "Let me know if you find anything."

Without skipping a beat, Spinel got on the computer to figure out what the deal was with this Steven Universe guy. She fired up the Mozilla Firefox browser, fired up Google, typed Steven Universe's name into the search engine; and just like that, she was met with a long list of articles regarding him and his association with Petunia. Meanwhile, the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" episode was still playing out on TV.

"I don't want anyone to put me on a pedestal for doing the right thing," Steven said in response to a question Jimmy Kimmel had asked. "And I sure as hell don't need any more billions of dollars in my bank account. The world doesn't need billionaires. I couldn't imagine spending that much money in a lifetime. In fact, I'm not even going to be staying in California for much longer. I'm heading back home to Beach City later tonight."

"Well, that's too bad," Jimmy Kimmel said. "I would have loved for you to stay just a bit longer. Still, at least it's nice to hear about how much you care for artists and the impact they leave on others. Hopefully, this won't be the last we've heard of you."

Around that time, Spinel had already looked through all the articles she'd been able to bring up with her Google search. They broke her. She tried controlling her sobs to no avail. She shrieked out while tears flowed profusely down her face.

"Oh my God, Spinel!" Rhiannon exclaimed as she rushed over to Spinel's side. "Are you okay?"

Spinel continued crying. "N-No... I read those articles..."

"Okay, what about them?"

More tears flowed from Spinel's eyes. "I-It turns out that, that Petunia Diamond was actually Rose Curtis... she'd been cyberbullying herself this whole time..."

Rhiannon looked at her roommate, utterly confused by this revelation. "What?" She turned to look at her other roommate. "Willow, did you know about this? I know you said you didn't read up on celebrity tabloids too closely, but I wanted to ask anyway."

Willow also initially seemed confused until a figurative light-bulb lit up above her. "Oh yeah, I think I remember now. After it was reported that Petunia had killed herself, there was a conspiracy theory going around for years afterwards that she'd faked it so she could start a new life elsewhere. People thought it was ridiculous until about two years ago when Steven Universe came forward and said that he was her son with Greg Universe. People thought he was doing it for clout until he took a DNA test and confirmed that Petunia had indeed been his mother. I still can't believe that even happened."

So that was it, then. Petunia was Rose, and Rose was Petunia. Petunia had faked killing herself in front of several witnesses. Rose Curtis, the woman who supposedly cyberbullied her and drove her to suicide, never existed. Petunia had pretended to kill herself so she could jump ship to Delaware with Pearl and some other friends and start over as Rose Curtis. Petunia lived for another four years after her supposed death, her actual death only coming about around the time Steven was born sixteen years ago. Wait, if that wasn't Petunia killing herself that night, then... then that must have been Kimber who did it! Of course... now it all made sense. The last journal entry Kimber ever wrote had said that she was dying from cervical cancer that had spread all over her body. Plus, she said she wanted to die on her own terms instead of letting the cancer kill her. Now it all made sense. Spinel fell out of her chair in shock and collapsed onto the floor, the realization proving too much for her brain to handle. A full three minutes of stunned silence passed.

"Spinel?" Willow asked out of concern. "Are you alright?"

Spinel's full body trembled with more sobs, this time being of the silent kind. Willow got down on her knees and hugged Spinel tightly.

"I-It's not fair, Willow..." Spinel clutched her chest and sobbed harder. "It's just not fucking fair! Why did Kimber have to leave me all alone?! I just want her to come back..." She sobbed even harder. "I'd do anything to have her back..."

It was hard not to feel bad for Spinel. The one spark of hope that she had had in years... it had burned out as she let the realization that Kimber was never coming back consume her.

"It's going to be alright, Spinel," Willow assured her. "You've still got a brand new life to look forward to. I'm sure that Kimber would've appreciated you making an effort to move on without her. So would your dad, grandma, aunts, and uncles."

"Fuck Daddy," Spinel just said coldly.

"Well, still," Rhiannon chimed in. "We hope you can do something to make them proud."

"Oh, I'll make them proud, alright..." Spinel muttered ominously.

Willow smiled hopefully at her. "That's the spirit."

At that moment, gears started turning in Spinel's head. White-hot anger flowed through her veins. She resented Petunia for ultimately being responsible for the death of everyone around her. She had a score to settle with her. She wanted her to pay. However, there was just one problem... Petunia had already been dead for years. If Spinel was going to get her revenge, then she'd have to get it on Steven; not just him, but Petunia's friends as well. Yes, Steven would be the one to answer for what his mother had done. Spinel was going to see to it that he felt the same exact pain she had felt for years. She knew what to do.

Later during the morning twilight, Spinel began snatching up some change and paper money from Willow's purse. She didn't give a damn if she was robbing one of her roommates right now. She had somewhere she needed to be. She pilfered through the leather purse as quietly and quickly as possible and then, without even saying a word, snuck out the window to find a bus stop somewhere nearby. It took her a while, but she found one eventually. Spinel just sat on the bench for a while and could only watch as a Greyhound bus lurched its way in front of her. She slowly climbed up the steps and came face-to-face with an elderly woman who happened to be the bus operator.

"Where to, dear?" the bus operator asked nicely.

"Beach City, Delaware, please," Spinel just replied.

The bus operator just nodded at Spinel, not even questioning what her motive for going there might have been. "Alright, that'll be five dollars and thirty cents, please."

Spinel handed her the money, right down to the exact change. Without so much as a second thought, Spinel boarded the bus to Beach City, not seeming to give a damn about much else besides getting her revenge on Steven.