Rebel Princess

by Lynn Stevens

  I let the tears wash over me, pulling me into a funk I’d never experienced before. My grandmother always taught me it was okay to have a pity party, just keep it to the bare minimum. One hour, that was all she’d give me. If I didn’t get a part I wanted or if I hadn’t gotten the scholarships or whatever, I got one hour to feel sorry for myself.

  After that, I had two choices: move on or fight for what I wanted.

  I cried the entire hour, but when that time was up, I had a decision to make. And it wasn’t hard. After taking a shower to wash away the pity party, I picked up my laptop and emailed Quinn the notes on the shelter. Maybe he would see the truth. Either way, I wasn’t going down without a fight. Then I emailed Madame Gutherie that I wasn’t coming to rehearsal.

  My thoughts drifted back to what Quinn had said a couple days before. There were other outlets for my story on Colin. There were other outlets for this, too.

  I opened another email and sent it to the school’s gossip hotline. Mindy wasn’t a friend per se, but she hated Max when he’d been named editor last year. Like me, Mindy had to fight for everything she had achieved so far. Losing the job to Max, a guy whose Dad’s donations to Camelot were astronomical, hurt. Plus, the first thing he did was cut her popular gossip column to focus on real journalism. Mindy wasn’t one to sit on her hands and do nothing. She started a blog, and it didn’t take long before it was more popular than the newspaper.

  She responded almost immediately. “I’ll run it. Get it to me asap.”

  I opened a Word document and started writing.

  Later that night, after I had hit send on the article, my Twitter feed blew up. My phone started dinging with text messages. Then I got a call from the last person I expected.

  “Hello?” I answered, more than a little hesitant. The prefix was a Camelot number, but I had no idea who would be calling me this late on a Friday night.

  “Miss Paquette, this is Dean Stubbins of the Arts and Sciences department. I wanted to talk to you about your piece in today’s newspaper and what you wrote in that blog. Especially since you had some contradictory statements.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I think I was pretty blunt about that article in the newspaper. I didn’t write it.” I had met Dean Stubbins a couple of times. She was a no-nonsense woman who appreciated honesty and listened, even if she didn’t like what you had to say.

  “So you say, but Max Harold says you did.”

  “Max is lying. I pitched the idea to write a story about the shelter, but I hadn’t gotten very far on it. There was a bigger story I was working on. When I went to Max earlier this week, he killed my bigger story and I quit the paper. I never turned anything in about the shelter.”

  “Why would he give you the byline then?” Dean Stubbins seemed genuinely curious, and I felt like she believed me.

  I exhaled slowly, because this was something you didn’t want to tell the dean of your department. They didn’t care about someone’s love life or anything non-academics, really. “Probably because I quit. And maybe because I’m … I was dating a guy who volunteers there. And I was working on a story about the lacrosse team. I didn’t know Max was in tight with them. And my ex-boyfriend is the team captain.”

  “I see,” Dean Stubbins said on a sigh. “You’re the one who was working on a story about cheating, yes?”

  “Yes.” My heart leaped into my throat. How did she know that? Was she the real reason it was railroaded? Shit.

  “Max told me one of his writers had a hot story on the team but didn’t have any evidence to back it up.” Dean Stubbins’s voice tightened. “Do you have that evidence now?”

  “I did, but Max deleted it.” Even though it’s backed up three different places now. I opened my laptop and emailed Quinn the file. He might not be talking to me at the moment, but it would be in my sent folder just in case.

  “Miss Paquette, I’m not thrilled with the way Max handled this. Nor am I thrilled he put your name on that article — I will change that — but you have to leave the lacrosse team alone, do you understand? That has far-reaching implications that you have no idea about.”

  “People have a right to know.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. Just another bureaucrat telling me to back off. I wasn’t going to now. This called for more drastic measures.

  “No, they don’t. People only think they have the right to know.” Dean Stubbins paused. “For your own benefit, this goes no further. I will have Max issue a redaction—”

  “On the front page.” I really needed Quinn to see it.

  “On the front page as well as an apology for his error. That will be done immediately. However, I want your reassurance that you will not publish anything regarding the lacrosse team on that blog.” Her snotty attitude about Mindy’s blog was too much. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Sure,” I said calmer than I felt, because I was going to push my luck. Big time. “But I would like one more thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think Max should issue a separate apology to the shelter. It’s only fair.” I bit my lip, hoping she’d see the logic in that. “Publicly.”

  “That has already been planned. Now that we are in agreement, I wish you the best of luck in your studies.”

  The line went dead. I smiled as I lowered the phone. Dean Stubbins didn’t want me to print the lacrosse team’s cheating scandal with Mindy. She never said anything about not publishing it with the local paper.

  The game was on, and I was going to finish it once and for all.

  Chapter Ten

  I woke up with a tersely worded email from Madame Gutherie demanding I show at the studio to make up for my missed audition. She was right in one thing. It was totally irresponsible of me to blow it off. She was wrong about everything else. I wasn’t a slacker. I wasn’t a loser (her words, really). And I wasn’t a quitter.

  Instead of getting upset, I forwarded the email to Mindy. She responded quickly, but I simply replied with “no comment” and a winking emoji. I knew she’d run with it. Any good journalist would. Mindy had the makings to be a great one and a great editor.

  One thing was certain: I was done taking shit from anyone. Colin had tried to ruin me. Max had tried to ruin me. Madame Gutherie had tried to make me feel inferior. Quinn had no faith in me. And I was over it all.

  It was time I started doing things my way.

  I showered and dressed in record time, not bothering with makeup or styling my hair. A ponytail would have to do. It was almost eleven when I pushed open the doors to the shelter. The tables were mostly empty. A couple of guys sat at one table, heads down as if they were sleeping. Another sat away from them, warming his hands around a coffee mug. He stared at me, and I shivered. It wasn’t that I felt scared or anything. It was more like he could see through me. Or maybe he was just staring off into space, and I just happened to be in his line of sight. Yeah, I went with that.

  Quinn came out of the kitchen, carrying a large pot. My heart fluttered at just the sight of him. Guilt swelled in my stomach, dampening the flutter. I had nothing to be guilty about, but that didn’t stop the feelings from making me want to hurl. He put the pot on the stove and faced the room. A smile crossed his face when he saw the man who sat alone. Then he followed his gaze to me.

  The flutters returned, shattering the guilt.

  Until Quinn’s smile dropped. He closed his eyes for a moment, then made his way out of the kitchen toward me.

  I wanted to beg for forgiveness, but I didn’t need forgiving. His blank expression said it all. Whatever we had was over; I needed to let it go. He was two steps from me when I broke the silence with an unplanned speech.

  “Before you say a word, you need to listen to me.” I held up my hand when he opened his mouth. “No, don’t! I have to say this. You deserve the truth, and I have given you nothing else. Yes, I wanted to write a story on the shelter for the school paper. No, I hadn’t talked to you about it. I was in research mode first. Once I had the history down, I’d intended to talk t
o you and the director. That’s the truth. I did not write that mess you read.”

  I took a deep breath, waiting, hoping for a glint of understanding. It wasn’t there.

  “If you read Mindy’s Camelot Gossip, then you should know this already. If not, well, you can read the truth on there. You will also see, according to Dean Stubbins, a redaction and apology. Not just for me, but for the shelter, too.”

  Traitorous tears slipped down my cheeks. Quinn hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even nodded.

  “So, I don’t owe you anything, Phillip Quinn. I didn’t do anything to deserve this … judgment you’re passing on me. All I did was fall in love with you. Or I think I was. I don’t know. It sure felt like it. Either way, you made it perfectly clear that we’re done. And … I’m not okay with that. You decided without giving me any chance to defend myself. You took away my choices. In that regard, you’re no better than Colin. He did the same thing during our relationship. So, maybe I am okay with us being over if that’s how you had planned on treating me. I’m not okay with you treating me like a leper, like I didn’t mean anything to you. I’m not okay with you not believing in me. With you not giving me a chance to defend myself.”

  I wiped away the tears covering my cheeks, but I never broke my gaze. And Quinn’s expression never wavered.

  “We weren’t together long, but we were going to be great. More than great, actually.” I shrugged and pursed my lips to keep the sobs at bay. I wanted to do run from the shelter, but I had to finish this for my own sanity. “Now, we won’t find out, will we? I mean, I really wanted to find out. Obviously, more than you.”

  The words hung between us. Still, he remained a motionless statue. This was his chance to apologize, beg for forgiveness, or just kiss me.

  He did none of those things.

  Nodding, more to myself than at him, I turned on my heel and walked out of the shelter with my dignity intact but severely bruised.

  Chapter Eleven

  Delilah swept into our room Sunday night with a triumphant glow. I let the spoon fall into the now empty container of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and waited. She grinned, staring straight at me and ignoring the state of my unkempt self. A pity party was scheduled for the rest of the weekend. The loss of a potentially amazing relationship on top of the loss of everything else had taken its toll. After I left Quinn, I danced myself into exhaustion, then I bought enough Ben & Jerry’s to get me through Sunday night. I’d just finished the final container when Delilah got home.

  “Guess who called me this afternoon?” she said with a huge grin on her face. Before I could open my mouth, she answered her own question. “Dean Franks’ wife. My design won out. She wanted to let me know personally. They’re announcing it tomorrow officially. How cool is that? I couldn’t—” Delilah stopped and squinted at me. “What happened?”

  My life is falling apart. But I didn’t say it. I smiled and waved her on, afraid if I opened my mouth, I’d start crying again.

  “Seriously, Em?” She dropped her bag and purse on the floor and sat beside me. “What’s going on?”

  I put my head on her shoulder. There was no way I could look her in the eye. There was also no way I could blow her off again. She was too persistent.

  “I was only gone two nights,” she added as she put her arm around me. “What could’ve happened in two nights?”

  “Everything,” I whispered. “Everything happened.”

  Then it spilled from my lips like verbal vomit. Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop until she knew every little detail right up until she walked through our suite door. Nothing was left out, not even my determination to change my situation. Which, clearly, I planned on doing once the pity party left the building.

  I didn’t cry, which surprised even me. Delilah listened and squeezed my shoulder, but she didn’t interrupt. She didn’t offer a grunt of agreement or an ‘ah’ of comfort. It was one of the things I loved most about her.

  “Everything is a mess,” I whispered. Recounting the last two days exhausted me.

  “Get over it,” Delilah said in a very unlike Delilah way. “You’ve allowed yourself time to mope. Do what you said you were going to do. This isn’t you, Emerald. Not at all.”

  I curled in on myself. She was right, of course, but that didn’t matter in my gloom of self-despair.

  “Since I’ve known you, people have stepped on you, and you’ve gotten right back up to keep fighting. You’ve never let anyone keep you down.” She let go of my shoulders and took my hands. “But you’ve never stood up for yourself either, and this time you have. Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. The pity party ends now. Not tomorrow, but right this minute.”

  I pulled back and stared at my best friend. Her eyebrows furrowed together, and her lips were pursed so thin they weren’t visible. Delilah, without a smile, wasn’t Delilah.

  “I’m not saying don’t mourn what you’ve lost. You should totally do that. What I am saying is take charge of what you truly want.” She stood and paced in front of me. “I’ve been waiting to say this to you for… literally years. You enjoy dancing. You enjoy being onstage. I get that. But you’ve never loved it like you love journalism. All the roles you have lost over the years, and you never acted like this. You quit the paper, and it’s the end of the world. But you still fought to get the story straight. Whenever you were just in the background dancing, you were satisfied. Don’t you see? You want to dance because you enjoy it. You need to write because you can’t stand the wrongs in the world. Even the cheese click-bait articles make you happier than a pirouette.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Maybe she was right.

  “Look, Emmy, you have to follow your heart. Where does it really lie?”

  Delilah left me alone on the couch. I ran through all of the dance classes my grandmother paid for and the recitals she sat proudly at in the front row. Since I was six, that was all I wanted to do, all I wanted to be. When did that change?

  I opened my laptop and stared at the blank page. Before my pity festival started, I had opened a document to write, but I hadn’t known what I was going to write. I just felt the need to do it.

  The cursor mocked me. My brain shut down. I put my fingers on the keys and just started typing. And I didn’t stop. Freewriting had helped me in the past whenever I needed an idea for an essay or an article. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I discovered how much I liked writing. My school’s newsletter wasn’t much and only updated once a month, but I loved writing about the things going on within its walls. Mr. Tyler had encouraged me to think about journalism as a major. I was set on dance. Camelot offered me a scholarship, and I took it.

  Thirty minutes later, I had a string of unreadable run-on sentences. But the last two sentences were the only ones that mattered.

  I want to uncover the truth and tell the world about it. I want to write.

  There it was in black and white. Delilah was right. This was my true calling.

  “Hey,” I said softly, knowing she was within earshot.

  “Yeah,” she said as she came out of her room.

  I smiled and continued to stare at the screen. “It’s a little too late to change my major.”

  “Meh, you can do it. What’s another semester or two at this point?” She plopped beside me and put her feet on the coffee table.

  “True, but my scholarship is for fine arts.” I fell back against the pillows. “And I can’t write for the school’s paper anymore. Not with Max there and not with Dean Stubbins all up in my business.”

  “Well, you still have an outlet in Mindy’s gossip blog. And a bigger audience, too. I’m sure she’ll take what you can give her.” Delilah leaned forward and grabbed my laptop. “Start with this mess. Make it comprehensible. People need to know it’s okay to doubt their majors, even this late in the game. They also need to know they’re not alone. If Mindy won’t publish it, then start your own blog.”

  “I
still need to tell the truth about the lacrosse team,” I said. “I can’t let it go.”

  “Don’t.” Delilah shrugged. “Write it. Prove it. Those privileged assholes don’t deserve the scholarship money. They’re cheating. Take them down.”

  “What if it gets me kicked out of school?”

  “Then we’ll get an apartment off-campus. You’ll finish your degree online or something.”

  “When did you get to be so practical?”

  Delilah smiled. “I’ve always been this practical. You just never appreciated it before.”

  I laughed and put my head on her shoulder. “I may have to do something illegal.”

  “Just don’t get caught.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday was rough. I checked my phone a million times, or it felt like a million times. Nothing from Quinn. I hadn’t expected it. Not really. But I had hoped for it. Mindy published my piece on Madame Gutherie. I’d stayed up all night writing it. I knew my reception in the studio was not going to be pleasant.

  The rest of the dancers stopped talking the minute I stepped through the door. Some of them stopped moving mid-stretch.

  Claire was the first to open her mouth. “What in the hell were you thinking? Do you want them to shut down the program?”

  “What? No!” I dropped my bag and stood in the center of the floor. “They’re not going to shut down the program. I did it because Madame Gutherie is abusive. She treats every one of us like crap and demands the impossible.”

  “She’s trying to make us better,” Claire countered. She crossed her arms and stood before me as a general of her fictional army.

  “No, she doesn’t.” Ceci stepped around Claire and stopped in front of me. “She makes us anorexic. She makes us brittle. She makes us weak. That’s not better. That’s worse.”