Cinder & Ella

by Kelly Oram

“My years in Boston were a bunch of painful memories,” Dad said. “Jennifer and the girls were so happy to have me in their lives. It felt so nice to be needed and loved for a change that I just decided it was best if I started over with my life. Your mother hadn’t wanted me to be a part of your life even when we were married. There was no way she was going to let me be a part of it after the divorce. I know it was wrong, but after that, it was so easy for me to leave and put the two of you behind me. I’m sorry, Ella. I made a mistake. I made a lot of mistakes. It’s too late to take any of them back, but I want to make them up to you, so tell me how I can do that. What do you need from me?”

  I took a deep breath. If we were being honest with each other, then there was only one thing I needed from him. “I need you to let me go.”

  Dad’s face pulled into a frown, and Dr. Parish started taking notes again. “Can you explain what you mean, Ella?” she asked.

  “I mean I need my freedom. When I’m ready to leave here, release me from my dad’s custody. I’m an adult, but I’m not allowed to make my own decisions. Instead, someone who is practically a stranger to me is making them for me. I know he’s trying his best, but what might be best for him and his family isn’t necessarily what’s best for me. I need people to trust me.”

  Dr. Parish encouraged me with a smile to go on, but she nodded toward my dad. She already knew how I felt. She wanted me to say this to him.

  My dad didn’t look away when I met his gaze. He even tried to mirror Dr. Parish’s encouraging smile, but I could see that this was hard for him. I saw his disappointment.

  “I’m trying to get better,” I told him, “but being with your family is holding me back. I feel like I can’t breathe in your house. I feel like an outsider, an intruder. I feel like I’m only causing you all trouble, and that I’m not wanted there.”

  “Ella, of course it’s been an adjustment, but I do want you.”

  “You do,” I agreed. “But does Anastasia? Does Jennifer?”

  Dad looked startled when I said Jennifer’s name, and he turned to his wife. She didn’t automatically say yes, and it stunned my dad. “I’m trying,” she promised me. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I think you’re a wonderful girl. I just wasn’t expecting…it’s been so hard on my girls…” She reached for the tissues. The box was going to be gone before the hour session was up. “I’m sorry, Ella. I never meant to make you feel unwelcome.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I understand. I do. Honestly, I don’t blame you. None of us asked for this to happen. That’s why I think it would be best if I moved out. Vivian said I could come stay with her until I find my own place, and Juliette has mentioned rooming together next year if I’m allowed to leave your house for college.”

  “Honey…”

  I looked at my dad again and tried to give him an encouraging smile of my own. “If you really want to build a relationship with me, that’s great. Let’s get to know one another. Let’s go to dinner sometimes or the movies. Let’s talk. But please don’t do to me what Mama did to you. Don’t trap me. Don’t force me to be part of a family that, let’s face it, isn’t mine. If you want me to love you, then don’t make me resent you.”

  Everyone was quiet for a minute. Even Dr. Parish’s ever-scribbling pen was still. Then my dad let out a breath so big I watched his body deflate with it. “Are you sure that’s really what you need?” he asked.

  I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t need to. I knew. “Yes. It’s what I need. It’s what Ana needs, too.”

  I held my breath and let it out when I saw my father’s decision in his eyes. “All right. Let’s just focus on getting you better while you’re here, and when you’re ready to leave, we’ll work something out. Is it too much to ask to let me help you come up with a plan? I’d feel more comfortable if you’d let me at least be a part of the decision-making process.”

  I felt a huge weight lift off my chest. This time when I smiled for my dad, I felt it reach my eyes. “I think that sounds like a reasonable compromise.”

  I’d always done my best to hate my appointments with Dr. Parish, but I had a smile on my face today. After an entire month, I was facing Dr. Parish for my last session in the rehab center. I was being released this afternoon.

  “The smile looks nice on you, Ella,” Dr. Parish said when I sat down across from her.

  The comment made me smile wider. “It feels nice.”

  Dr. Parish matched my grin. “You’re excited, then? No anxiety about leaving the center?”

  I’d be lying if I said no, so I didn’t. I’d learned over the last four weeks that I got a lot further with Dr. Parish when I didn’t fight her. Her questions and thoughts were never meant as accusations. She really did want to help me, but she couldn’t when I would never be completely honest with her about how I felt.

  It took being honest with my dad for me to learn that. After our first therapy session together, something shifted between us. He and I still have a long way to go, and it hasn’t been easy, but we’re cooperating now to try and make things work. It’s changed our entire relationship.

  I was working with Dr. Parish, too, and making progress. A lot of progress. I’m a stronger person now than I was.

  “Of course I’m nervous about having to go back out into the real world. My accident, my scars, losing my mother, and my shaky relationship with my father are all still there. I know it’s going to be harder to deal with them once I leave, but I think I’m able to face those things now. I’m ready to face them.”

  For once, Dr. Parish’s pen didn’t move after I spoke. Instead, she smiled again. “And you’re sure you want to leave your father’s house? You can’t run from your problems, Ella, I know you know that. I just want to make sure that moving in with Vivian isn’t an attempt to escape a hard situation.”

  I pulled my shoulders back and met her eyes. “It’s not.” I was sure of myself. “I’m not running from anything; I’m running to something. You said I need a support system. Vivian and her dads want to be that for me. I want to be there, and they’re excited for me to come. I’m not running from my dad or his family; I’m just giving each of us our much-needed space.”

  Dr. Parish gave me a look that I had to roll my eyes at. “Okay, maybe I’m running from Anastasia a little, but I’m still going to have counseling sessions with my dad, and Juliette is one of my closest friends. I’m still going to be a part of their family. I’ve agreed to stay through Christmas, and I’m going to meet my relatives. My grandparents and my uncle and his family are coming to LA for the holidays so that we can get to know one another.”

  Dr. Parish’s face brightened. “That’s good. I think that will be a very good thing for you.” She took a moment to appraise me and then set her notepad down and sat back in her chair. “Well, Ella, it sounds like you’ve got a pretty good support system built and a solid plan—at least for the immediate future.”

  “I do. I promise, I am ready.”

  “I believe you are. There’s just one last issue I want to address today.”

  I cringed. Whenever she said that, it was never happy news.

  “Let’s talk about Brian.” My heart sank. “That is a problem you’re still running from.”

  I didn’t try to deny it. I was running as far and as fast as I could from Brian. I hadn’t spoken to him since FantasyCon. After my father dropped me off here, he’d gone on a deleting rampage. My Facebook, e-mail, instant messenger, Twitter, and even my PO box for my blog were all gone. I couldn’t bear to let him delete my blog, so he’d left it up, but he’d deleted all the horrible comments and changed the settings to not allow any future comments. He’d even changed my cell phone number because he’d been worried about the kids at school leaking it as a cruel prank.

  Juliette told me he’d gone to the school and spoken to the entire student body in an assembly, explaining what would happen to anyone who decided to leak my identity to the media. He’d brought one of his good friends from the FBI to explain how
they would be able to find out who did it if it happened, and what kind of legal action would be taken. Knowing how Big-Bad-Prosecuting-Attorney-Scary my dad can be, he probably had half the school peeing in their pants.

  So far, my identity had not been leaked.

  Whether he’d intended to or not, my father had made it so that Brian had no way to ever contact me again. I still knew Brian’s e-mail, phone number, and IM screen name, so I could find him if I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure that was the best idea.

  “Have you figured out what you plan to do about him yet?” Dr. Parish asked. “Are you planning to get in touch with him?”

  My heart hurt just thinking about him. How would I ever be able to keep up a friendship with him? “I don’t think I can.”

  “He is your closest friend, Ella, and the strongest link in your new support system. You need him.”

  “But now that I’ve met him in person, I don’t think I can go back to the relationship we had before.”

  “So don’t,” Dr. Parish said simply. “Let it evolve.”

  “But I can’t have a real relationship with him.”

  Dr. Parish frowned for the first time all day. I couldn’t complain, though; we’d never made it this far into a session without a frown before. “You can have a relationship with him. You’re just afraid to.”

  “Is it so wrong to want to protect myself? Brian warned me that his world would hurt me, and he was right. I was with him for an hour, and look at what happened. I became the nation’s biggest laughingstock. People hated me so much that Brian had to lie about our relationship in order to salvage his career. He had to pretend I meant nothing to him—that he didn’t even know me. That’s not going to change. I don’t want to ruin his career any more than I want to have to hear how ugly and pathetic people think I am for the rest of my life.”

  Dr. Parish pursed her lips together as she thought. Eventually, she sighed. “No, you’re right. That would be a very unhealthy and stressful situation for you. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if your relationship with Brian could be a positive thing? What if you could be good for his image instead of bad for it? Would you consider it then?”

  I snorted, which caused Dr. Parish to frown at me again. “Fine,” I groaned. “If by some miracle people accepted me and I could be with Brian, then I would forgive him in an instant and I’d run straight into his arms and never let him go.”

  “The fame wouldn’t bother you?”

  I snorted again. “Are you kidding? It would be a nightmare. I would hate it. But I would find a way to cope with it because Brian would be worth it.” I scoffed and added, “That’s assuming he would even still want me, which he probably doesn’t. He saw my scars, found out the truth about me, and then I was the one who couldn’t accept him for who he was. I was the one who ran away. I can’t even blame him for letting his managers make up that story about me. I mean, it was just like with his engagement to Kaylee—I rejected him, so he didn’t have a good enough reason to say no.”

  I got another no-nonsense look from Dr. Parish. “Do you honestly believe that? That he wouldn’t love you anymore because you got scared after going through a very traumatic ordeal the first time you guys met? Do you really believe he didn’t understand that you were overwhelmed?”

  In truth, I didn’t know what I believed. But I was afraid of that enough that I was too scared to call him. I completely freaked out on him. He asked me to give him a chance, and I told him I could never be a part of his life. He probably hated me now.

  I was beginning to think that Dr. Parish was a bit of a mind reader, because she always saw right through me. This moment was no exception. She sighed and stood up. “Will you come with me, Ella?”

  I was a little surprised when she walked to the door and opened it for me. We’d only been talking for fifteen minutes and she never let me out of a session early. “Where are we going?”

  “There’s something that I think you need to see. We’ve kept you away from all media this month, and after today you won’t be able to hide from it anymore. I think it’s best you get a heads up about what you’re going to be facing before you leave the center.”

  I swallowed down some chunks that tried to come up from my stomach. I knew it was going to be bad, but if it was bad enough that Dr. Parish wanted to show it to me before I left, that meant it was bad enough that she was worried it might cause me to relapse.

  I didn’t want to do this, but she was right. Better to get it out of the way now. I followed her out of the small visitor’s room we used for our sessions and down the hallway toward the recreation room. When we got there, I was shocked to see the room packed full of everyone I cared about—my dad, Jennifer, Juliette, Rob, Vivian, both of her dads, and even the rest of my rehabilitation team.

  I nearly cried. My dad and Jennifer had come weekly for our counseling sessions, and Vivian and her fathers had been allowed to visit me once with my dad when we discussed the possibility of me staying with them. But other than that, I hadn’t seen any of them in a month.

  I glanced up at Dr. Parish with a questioning look, and her frown turned back into a smile. “They’re your support system, Ella. They wanted to be here for you through this.”

  Great. This was going to be worse than I thought. I pushed back my anxiety because if I lost it before I even saw anything, Dr. Parish was likely to send me back to my room and lock me in for another few weeks.

  We walked into the room and Juliette was the first to see me. She pounced like a crazed kitten, squealing and crying and hugging and laughing until Cody pulled her off me, claiming she was going to break me.

  First, there was a round of hugs and catching up. We talked, we laughed, we cried. Daniel tried to make me do a few stretches—to which I told him he could take his stretches and shove them someplace very inappropriate until my next PT session—and then, finally, we sat down in front of the television and Dr. Parish pulled up a DVR menu.

  As I sat down on the couch I could sense everyone’s anticipation, but it didn’t match my own. There was an undercurrent of excitement in the room that I couldn’t explain. “What’s going on?” I asked, unable to help the nerves that were starting to flutter in my stomach like a net full of butterflies. “What kind of video is this?”

  Juliette flashed me a cryptic smile as she claimed the spot on the couch next to me. “You’ll see.”

  Vivian beat Rob to the open space on the other side of me, but she pulled her feet up underneath her so that Rob could sit on the floor next to me with his back against the couch. He sat next to my legs and draped his arm up over my lap while Vivian and Juliette both rested their heads on my shoulders.

  I smiled at my three closest friends’ obvious needs to touch me. They were as comforted to have me back as I was to have them. After everything that had happened, the four of us had formed a special bond. We were as close as friends could be, and I knew we would be for the rest of our lives. It seemed like a miracle that I could have my father back and luck out with two amazing friends, and the very best stepsister anyone could ever ask for.

  My good mood evaporated when Dr. Parish searched through the DVR menu on the TV and selected a prerecorded episode of a primetime talk show with popular comedian Kenneth Long. The summary read: special guest Brian Oliver. The second I saw his name, my heart began to pound and my breath became shallow.

  Dr. Parish gave me one last supportive smile and then hit PLAY. Immediately, Brian’s beautiful face came up on the screen. It was the first I’d seen of him since FantasyCon, and I was filled with so much more emotion than I’d expected. My heart literally throbbed with longing.

  I must have started trembling or something because Vivian squeezed my arm and said, “It’s okay.” Juliette followed her, saying, “Trust us.” Even Rob squeezed my leg and smiled up at me, asking me in his usual quiet way to just go with it.

  I took a deep breath and held it as I watched Brian walk onto the stage and shake Kenneth Long’s hand. After wai
ting out the screams of the audience, they fell into easy discussion about Brian’s upcoming movie, The Druid Prince.

  Watching this interview tore at my heart. I couldn’t figure out why everyone was so determined to put me through this torture until the conversation turned to me. “I hear you demanded to play the role of Cinder as soon as the movie was announced,” Kenneth said to Brian.

  Not one to ever act humbly, Brian raised his chin and puffed out his chest. “You bet I did. I was born to play that role. Cinder is one of my all-time favorite characters.”

  “So it’s true that you’re the book’s biggest fan?”

  Brian’s attention faded out for a moment. His smile turned sad and distant. “I think there’s only one other person who loves the book more than I do.”

  The way Kenneth jumped on the statement, I was sure that he’d been instructed not to bring up the subject of me. But since Brian opened the can of worms first, it was fair game. “Would this be the fan that you met last month at FantasyCon? The one whose wish was a kiss from Brian Oliver?”

  My throat went dry, but I felt Rob’s hand give my leg another reassuring squeeze.

  Brian pulled himself out of his own head and forced a smile. “That’s exactly who I meant. Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about her for a minute. Is it all right if I set the story straight?”

  Brian had obviously veered off script. A shocked Kenneth Long fumbled his reply. “Uh…o-of course! I think the viewers would love to know what really happened. We’re all very curious after seeing that kiss, and then hearing of your breakup with Kaylee and the abrupt replacement of your management team. It was quite the scandal, Brian—even for you.”

  No matter how much I didn’t want it to, my heart responded to the news. “Breakup? What breakup? He’s not with Kaylee anymore?”

  Both Vivian and Juliette shushed me and pointed at the TV.

  “Just watch!”

  On screen, Brian pulled out his beloved phone and handed it to Kenneth.

  Kenneth held it up. “Can we get this put up on the screen?”