Copyright © 2017 by Lauren Campbell
All Rights Reserved.
Without restricting the rights reserved under copyright, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored, scanned, photocopied, recorded, or distributed in any manner via any method, whether electronically or manually, unless given written permission from the author, other than brief quotations for the purpose of writing reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, mention of actual places, name brands, and all other content within this book are fictional or used in a fictitious manner as a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, events, or anything else is coincidental.
Any band names, television shows, song lyrics, etc. are property of their copyright owners, and were used fictitiously.
ASIN: B01NAOO939
ISBN-13: 978-1542716918
ISBN-10: 1542716918
Editor – Madison Seidler
Proofreader – Chelsea Kuhel
Cover Designer – Murphy Rae of Indie Solutions
Interior Formatting – Elaine York, Allusion Graphics, LLC/Publishing & Book Formatting
Chapter 1: Ivy
Chapter 2: Ivy
Chapter 3: Ivy
Chapter 4: Ivy
Chapter 5: Emily
Chapter 6: Emily
Chapter 7: Emily
Chapter 8: Ivy
Chapter 9: Emily
Chapter 10: Emily
Chapter 11: Ivy
Chapter 12: Emily
Chapter 13: Ivy
Chapter 14: Brooks
Chapter 15: Emily
Chapter 16: Emily
Chapter 17: Emily
Chapter 18: Ivy
Chapter 19: Emily
Chapter 20: Brooks
Chapter 21: Ivy
Chapter 22: Emily
Chapter 23: Emily
Chapter 24: Emily
Chapter 25: Emily
Chapter 26: Brooks
Chapter 27: Emily
Chapter 28: Brooks
Chapter 29: Emily
Chapter 30: Ivy
Chapter 31: Emily
Chapter 32: Emily
Chapter 33: Emily
Chapter 34: Brooks
Chapter 35: Ivy
Chapter 36: Emily
Chapter 37: Emily
Chapter 38: Ivy
Chapter 39: Brooks
Chapter 40: Emily
Chapter 41: Ivy
Chapter 42: Brooks
Chapter 43: Emily
Chapter 44: Emily
Chapter 45: Emily
Chapter 46: Brooks
Chapter 47: Eliza
Chapter 48: Emily
Chapter 49: Emily
Chapter 50: Brooks
Chapter 51: Emily
Chapter 52: Emily
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Connect with Lauren Campbell
For my mom, who has only read Pippi Longstocking and The Boxcar Children, and who now has to read this book. Happy birthday.
Also, for my sons, who can’t read this book until they’re grown up (which will be terribly sad). I love you always.
March 6, 2015
For the last ten years, I’ve vowed that this moment wouldn’t bother me, but it does. I hunch over the breakfast table in my dated kitchen and clench my fists, my fingernails digging into my palms. The chattering of my teeth like a tap dance in my head as I’m plunged into a sea of self-pity, tears warming my cheeks, streaking down my face and soaking the keys of my laptop. He’s engaged. Brooks Jansen, the most beautiful man in the world—my ex—has proposed to Eliza James.
My eyes scan the announcement over and over again. Acid climbs the back of my throat, eliciting a gag. I almost vomit on my laptop, but I fight it. Swallow it repeatedly until the urge flees from my throat. There Brooks and the bitch stand, in front of some Ferris wheel on a beach with their toes in the water, embracing one another, the bitch sticking out her left hand to show off an obnoxiously large rock to match her obnoxiously large smile. And Brooks looks happy. Really fucking happy. That should have been me in his arms.
I scream and sling the laptop off the table, delighting in the cracking of the LCD screen—the cracking of their love—as it slaps against the seventies tile. I stand, my apartment a blur of pathetic seclusion and loneliness. Kicking over my chair, I allow my feet to drag me to the bathroom. Looking at my reflection, I recoil as I wipe my runny, repulsive nose. Cry harder over the stupid line in the middle that makes it look like a miniature butt, and sigh at my too-thin lips. I poke hopelessly at my mushy belly before swinging my arm fat back and forth and wondering what might have been.
But I give the ugly girl in the mirror a nod of encouragement and wipe away my tears. The engagement makes things more difficult, but I won’t let it get in my way. I’m rich now, and money changes people. I’ll let it change me, and then I’ll change them. I’m going to destroy Eliza, and I’m going to fuck them up.
And then … I’ll take back what’s mine.
I know what people would think if they could read my innermost thoughts. They’d say I’m crazy. A lunatic holding onto the past, magnifying its importance in my mind. Letting it run my life. But they’d be wrong. My parents always taught me that you follow through on your promises. You keep them no matter what. And Brooks, well … he hasn’t kept his. He told me that last day before moving to France that one day he’d marry me. He said it, so essentially it’s a promise. Brooks made me happy, and I made him happy. But obviously Brooks was afflicted with the same problem that plagues so many these days: always looking for the next best thing. If it weren’t for that bitch, Eliza, who’s to say where Brooks and I would be now? I’m fully aware that I’m not exactly pleasant to look at, but is that really all that matters? What about heart? Don’t people care about what’s on the inside anymore? Because on the inside, I’m motherfucking Angelina Jolie compared to the self-absorbed twat he’s with.
But, on paper, I’m as undesirable as my outsides. I’m now twenty-seven years old, which is damn old for a woman to still be unmarried and without children. I might as well nail a sign over my vagina that says CLOSED FOR BUSINESS. If Brooks just hadn’t become so shallow, we could have had a few kids by now, and I wouldn’t be sitting here in my rundown apartment with no marriage and no babies. I don’t judge the assholes who wouldn’t give me a chance after Brooks moved away. Screw them. I know I was never going to be Marilyn Monroe. I know I was never going to be beautiful. I was a perfectly average plain Jane, and I was just fine with that. Brooks was fine with that. But the torment I endured as a side effect of Eliza’s carelessness forever changed the course of my life. Though Brooks is not innocent, either. He got to know my heart. He got to know the real me. Fell in love with me. And then he just threw us away, all because I’d changed on the outside. It’s no better than a man leaving his wife after she becomes disabled, which is overwhelmingly, statistically true. Ugly should be a disability, too, because true ugliness affects a person’s entire life. At least, it has mine.
Brooks and I could have had a magical love story with no snags along the way. Now, being with her will end up to be the biggest mistake of his life, because we’re still going to get our happy ending, and I’m going to help him keep his promise, but I’m going to have to fuck him up to make that happen. If I had friends, they’d probably ask why I even want him at this point, but I liken Brooks to a pearl in an oyster. The pearl is his goodness, the Brooks I used to know, and the oyster is Eliza—the material and superficial bullshit of this world, enslaving that pearly goodness. If I can simply pry open that shell, he can be good again. I just kno
w it. He loved me before I was ugly, and he’ll love me after I’m not ugly anymore, and I have over three hundred days to get this shit done.
April 8, 2015
It’s been a little more than a month now since I found out about Brooks’s wedding and cried like a baby. I’ve been working out like a madwoman with a personal trainer for the last thirty-two days in a neighboring town. I’ve also starved myself, subsisting on peanut butter, apples, eggs, and water. I’m so hungry I feel like I could swallow Eliza whole. That would be an easy way to get rid of her, except I’m no cannibal. I’ve lost twelve pounds already, but I don’t see much in regard to changes. My trainer says not to worry, that I’m losing fat, and that once I get to my goal weight and build muscle I’ll have a rockin’ body. But that rockin’ bod seems a billion workouts away, because I must lose another thirty, at least, to reach my goal.
I met with an aesthetic dentist last week. He told me to call him Dr. D, because his last name is some smorgasbord of letters that everyone always mispronounces. My parents couldn’t afford braces, so today he’s going to get me all fixed up with a combination of veneers and a couple of dental implants. He said I’m a great candidate for both and that my crooked golden-yellows are high on the list of the worst he’s ever seen. I have to write a check for forty-two thousand dollars, which is twice what my dad made in a year working at J. Stewart Private School, but it’s worth it. Now isn’t the time to pinch pennies.
Dr. D put me under, but I’m awake now. I think I remember mumbling something about Brooks or bacon, or maybe a combination of Brooks naked and making bacon. I’m suddenly aware of the cotton balls in my mouth that are becoming wet and heavy. I’m numb. My tongue won’t form the sounds necessary to ask someone to scratch the itch on my neck, and my uvula is a whale suspended over the ocean of spit pooling in my throat. I’ve just had three of my fucking teeth ripped out and new ones screwed into my head, and other ones glued on, and I paid someone to do this to me! Maybe my medication needs tweaking, because I think most people just go for some whitening and six-month braces.
I’m so confused, my mind Jell-O. I want to fuck Brooks up, but I also want to love him, and I don’t know what I want more. Regardless of how mushy my brain is, though, I know for sure I want to annihilate Eliza.
The anesthesia has fully worn off now, so I don’t feel so clouded. I know I’m on the right path. Doing the right thing.
Dr. D holds out a small mirror. “You have a beautiful smile now, Ivy.” His breath is Listerine-fresh. “Just look at your beautiful new teeth.”
I take the mirror. Draw my lips back. Almost cry, but I don’t, because I’m even uglier when I cry. I’ve never seen better teeth, and I can’t believe they’re in my mouth. But at the same time they’re almost too nice, and I wonder if they look like Chiclets gum. “They’re amazing,” I say. The mirror momentarily drops to my lap, and I turn to him. “But you don’t think they’re too big for my mouth, do you?”
He chuckles. “Definitely not. They’re perfect. You’re just used to your old too-small teeth.”
He squeezes my shoulder, leaving me alone with the mirror. Alone with my teeth. I make the decision to trust him. He’s the pro, and he gets paid the big bucks. My mouth curls into a forced smile again, and my finger drags across their snow-white perfection. I click them together and slide my tongue across them. Ponder what it’ll feel like with another tongue in my mouth.
April 23, 2015
These bitches littering Dr. Rain’s office are Barbies in every shade of blonde. I want to flip off one in particular. She stares at me. Licks her thumb before flicking a page of her Elle. My head turns to meet her gaze before she looks away. Repeat. I know I need a lot of work. That’s why I’m here. But underneath all that war paint on her face and the hair dye and the coconut tits and expensive clothes and her shoddy rhinoplasty that I hope isn’t Dr. Rain’s work, I’m sure she’s just average, so fuck her. I give a final smile the next time she looks, showcasing my enviable teeth—thank you, Dr. D—and she goes back to looking at her magazine.
The door to the hall swings open. A silver-haired nurse with too much Botox steps into the lobby. “Ms. Hobbs?”
I follow her brisk stride to a patient room at the back. She rummages through one of the cabinets and hands me a large napkin-looking thing. Says to take off my clothes and slip it on.
“Naked?” I ask.
“Yes, naked. Leave the gown open in the front.” She disappears back into the hall before I can ask any more questions.
Reluctantly, I pull off my baggy clothes and hold up the gown that is really a napkin. I stare at it before sticking my arms through the holes and pulling it closed. I’m still getting situated on the exam table when there’s a knock on the door. I don’t know why he knocked because I didn’t have time to reply before he stepped inside.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Rain.” His voice is freshly churned butter, and his face wears an inviting smile, but he doesn’t abandon his pen and clipboard to shake my hand. He’s classically handsome—a real-life James Dean. His unbeatable portfolio with a side of eye-candy make him worth the drive to Nashville. A win-win. Good thing he’s in plastic surgery and not gynecology, because he’s too hot to be teasing women with his hands in their pussies.
Heat washes over my cheeks. I shift on the table, then pull the gown even tighter. “Hi.”
The clipboard is finally put down after he looks over whatever notes it holds. “So it looks like you’re interested in getting multiple procedures done, but you’re just unsure as to what you would like. Is that correct?”
Pulling the napkin dress so tight that I worry it might rip, I frown. “Well … I know that I need rhinoplasty,” I say, my eyes coming to rest on my hands as I pick nervously at a hangnail. “And I definitely want to have my breasts done and get liposuction on my legs, hips, and stomach.”
It’s such an odd thing, driving three hours and paying someone to inspect your flaws. He sits down on his wheeled chair and glides over to me, embarrassingly close. His skin is smooth like a baby’s. Pores nearly invisible. A hint of fried chicken lingers on his breath, despite obviously having sucked a mint. I wince as he reaches out to run his fingers along my nose, but I detect no distaste, so my shoulders start to relax. I blow out a slow, quiet breath as I begin to accept that this is all necessary and that Dr. Rain obviously enjoys taking flawed things and making them flawless.
“Okay.” He sucks his teeth. “Well, on examination, you definitely need an osteotomy,” he says. His hand lifts to my chin, tilting it so that he has a view up my nose that I’m hoping doesn’t contain boogers. “How old were you when this happened?”
“Barely thirteen.” My reply dissolves into a whisper.
“What caused this?” he asks.
I draw in a sharp breath, nearly gasping at the memory. “I … I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s okay.”
“Understandable. Parents didn’t have insurance?”
“No.” My jaw slackens as I recall the painful memory of my parents telling me they couldn’t afford the surgeon’s fee—of telling me I’d have to live with my nose until they saved up the money.
“Well, essentially we will break the nose on purpose so that we can reset it to its proper anatomical position prior to injury. Depending on what you’re looking for, you could also benefit from a little narrowing and refining of the nasal tip. It’s a little larger than average with a somewhat prominent bifid tip, which probably worsened in puberty due to the injury weakening the supporting nasal structures.”
“Bifid tip?”
“That’s what most people call the vertical line that begins at the tip of your nose.”
Oh. The butt line. “Can that be corrected with the surgery?”
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” he repeats.
“How different will I look? Will people recognize me?”
“Well, it’s difficult to say until the procedure is completed. Most rhinoplasty candidates don’t desire drastic res
ults. Most simply need a little straightening of the bridge or hump removal or some cartilage removed from the tip. Yours could benefit from multiple techniques, however. If you choose to only repair the break, you will still get a significant improvement as it is quite severe and disfiguring. If we also do the tip refinement coupled with correction of the cleft, I believe you will see a very nice result. Some people can look quite different. Given the severity of your injury, it could be dramatic.”
His words are comforting, but I know it’ll take more than some weight loss and a different nose to get Brooks back—to compete with Eliza. “What else can I do in addition to the rhinoplasty? I have to be b—” I halt abruptly, embarrassed and wondering if I ever really could be beautiful. “I have to be pretty.”
Dr. Rain flushes, his face strawberry jam. “Well, Ms. Hobbs—”
“Just tell me what we can do,” I interrupt. “How can you help me?”
He regards me curiously. Clears his throat and looks over my face. Studies it. “Well, to be frank, you could use improvement in most areas. Perhaps most important would be blepharoplasty in conjunction with a brow lift to give the appearance of larger, more open eyes as they’re slightly hooded. Beautiful shade of blue, though.”
My eyes. Hooded. I knew there was something I didn’t like about them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. But Brooks always loved them. “What about my lips? They’ve always been thin, but I feel like they’ve gotten thinner over the years.”
“That’s common as you age. You would definitely see a nice result from injections, and they do have permanent fillers, but I recommend an upper lip lift as well. The procedure shortens the space between the lip and nose, which I believe you’d benefit from. It’s very simple. We just remove a small strip of skin under the nose, but it can improve one’s attractiveness and the resting position of the upper lip.”
“Okay,” I nod. “What else?”
“Ms. Hobbs, we can’t do all of these procedures in one surgery. I hope you’re aware of that.”
The Evolution of Ivy: Poison Page 1