American Girl: Can't I Just Be Chloe?

Zoe laughed when she heard the truth. “You’re in love with Frankie! How cliché is that? You are, after all, his best friend. Every teenage girl in the world is in love with him anyway. He is the lone single Jonas boy. I hope you realize that you are going to have a lot of competition when it comes to Frankie. Drop/Slap has made him as popular as his brothers, which really does hurt your chances. Imagine if Frankie were to drop by with a GIRLFRIEND. How would you feel about her kissing the boy you fell in love with so long ago?”

“I’d be pissed,” I told Zoe with a heavy sigh. “I mean, from the moment I realized that I was in love with my best friend, I could not really bring myself to tell him how much I loved him.” I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes as I spoke of this, knowing that there was a chance that I’d never be able to get Frankie. To a tee, Can’t Have You described that situation perfectly, one that I hoped to prevent from happening altogether. “Zoe, I can’t let that happen. I don’t ever want Frankie to date anyone other than me.”

“Then you must tell Frankie the truth,” Zoe said.

“I still can’t do that, Zoe. I truly do love Frankie, but I can’t bring myself to tell him how I feel. The fact is that I’m afraid of the rejection and I know it. Nick and Kevin have already tried to convince me to tell Frankie the truth, but I can’t bring myself to do so. I may be in love with Frankie, but I’m scared to death of what my best friend would think when he heard that I fell in love with him two years ago, after knowing him for five years.”

“You’ve already lost him then,” Zoe said.

“Lost who?” Joe asked, coming in.

I glanced over at Zoe, mouthing to her that she was not to reveal a single word of this to Joe. She nodded and turned to Joe. “It’s nothing, Joe. Now, what would you like from me?”

“I need you to watch over Kiwi and Quinn for me,” Joe said. “I’m on my way out. Nick wished to see me for something, something he wants me to hear about right this minute.”

Zoe nodded. “Sure, Joe.”

Within moments, Joe left and I let out a sigh of relief. I was glad to know that Joe had gone and I didn’t have to worry about him finding out my secret. Kyra came in though with Quinn following just behind, meaning that I couldn’t exactly talk to Zoe about what was going on without telling Kyra as well. “Hey, Chloe. When did you stop by?”

“Ten minutes ago,” I said.

“Any reason?” she asked.

“To see how you were doing?” I answered. “Having a husband like Joe is not really a very good thing. You know how immature Joe can be. You are, after all, the one that married him.”

Kyra laughed. “True. I remember Betsy’s birthday party six years ago. Unbeknownst to Joe, I was at that party, disguised. It took nearly three weeks for Joe to realize the truth, that I was attending the party, disguised as the one thing Joe would never suspect.”

“Wasn’t it Cinderella?” I asked.

“You remember!” Kyra exclaimed.

I nodded. “Of course. I was there.”

“You were?” she asked.

“Yeah. Of course, you didn’t see me. I was with Frankie the entire time. Well, not exactly,” I said, remembering the party in question. It was a party that I wasn’t even sure that I would be attending since I had been gone since Frankie’s tenth birthday, but Dad convinced Mom to let me come back to see my best friend. Ultimately, I was at that party even if Kyra didn’t know I was at the time. Only Betsy and the Jonas family knew I was there.

Dressed up in a munchkin costume that Frankie asked me to wear due to this being a Wizard of Oz/Cinderella themed party, I knocked on the door. Betsy and the Jonas boys were expecting me and I was not about to disappoint. For my best friend especially, was I going to do this. Nothing in the world was going to keep me from doing this, not my mother and her campaign or my father and his constant working. Betsy opened the door. “Hey, Chloe. Frankie’s in the dining room. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk to our Tin Man. His little flying monkeys are throwing things and I don’t think that Prince Charming and the Cowardly Lion appreciate it very much,” Betsy said as she left in her pink gingham dress.

I rolled my eyes as Betsy went to find who I assumed to be Kevin, the boy who lost his heart when Amanda died. Amanda had been gone for nearly a year and Kevin was still not over her death. I’d heard from Frankie that everyone, especially Betsy, had tried to convince Kevin that he needed to get over his wife’s death. Unfortunately, she had no luck in doing so. Kevin was still upset and it seemed as if nothing was going to help her. I sighed and walked over to my best friend. “Hey, Tank. So, what’s the deal with this party?”

“We’re trying to get Joe his Cinderella. I’m sure that you remember meeting Kyra. Kevin told me that you showed up on my birthday and that you met her there,” Frankie said.

I nodded. “Yeah, why?”

“That’s who it is. Everyone but Joe knows that Kyra is coming to this party. So, if you see him, don’t tell Prince Charming that his Cinderella is coming out here to see him,” Frankie said.

“Sure,” I said.

When I saw that Kyra had walked in, looking completely different from when I last saw her—possibly to disguise herself from Joe—and went straight over to Joe after talking with Betsy. From where I sat with Frankie, I could see them talking about what they wanted in life. Joe seemed to be in the mood to talk of Kyra with who he assumed to a stranger. I found that extremely funny and wanted to laugh hysterically. I was in hysterics by the time Frankie went in to talk with Kyra. Joe came in as they were talking. “Hey, Chloe.”

I regained my composure and said hi to Joe. “So, who’s your Cinderella? You’ve spent the entire night with her. What is so special about her that you feel that you must spend your entire night with her?” I was trying to find out if he knew who was behind the mask. If he said no, then things would be okay. However, if Joe mentioned something of Kyra being here at the party, everything that Betsy and the others have been trying to do would all be for naught.

Joe shrugged. “For some reason, that girl, Amethyst, seems so familiar. I feel like I can talk to her about anything. I’m not really sure why though. Now, I’ve got to get back over there.”

Frankie was back at my side as Joe went back over to Kyra. Within a few moments, Joe led Kyra out to the backyard to talk while Frankie pulled me. “Come on, Chloe. Let’s go see what the others are doing. Plus, I need to go tell Betsy something anyway.

I nodded. “Okay.”

Kyra laughed when I told her this. “So that’s what Joe was doing while I was talking to Frankie. But, he said I seemed familiar, huh? How did it take nearly three weeks then, for Joe to realize that I dropped my iPod at the party and that I wasn’t in Massachusetts?”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “Joe’s dense, remember?”

“Oh yeah!” we all laughed.

I took a look at Kyra’s stomach and wondered what the deal was with that. Surely she should have known what was going on. “So, what’s the gender of the baby?” I asked Kyra.

“Joe will have a daughter,” Kyra replied.

My eyes widened when I heard that. The Jonas family was not really known for its girls. They were known for their boys; Denise had four boys, Amanda had two before dying, Kyra had Quinn. Why I felt sure that Selena was going to give Nick a son as well. Plus, whoever married Frankie would give him a son as well. “Her name?” I asked Kyra curiously.

“Ask Quinn,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because Joe and I agreed that it should be Quinn who decides the name since it is his younger sister. My only stipulation,” Kyra said, “is that it must not be Dana. That was my half-sister’s name.”

“What about the you-know-which name?” I asked.

Kyra shook her head. “Quinn wouldn’t pick that.”

“What’s the name you want for your sister?” Zoe asked Quinn.

He grinned. “I like Cinderella.”

Yes he would, I thought. Kyra’s jaw dropped and my eyes widened. We both knew the problem with that name. It was Kyra’s step-mother’s nickname for her, a name she hated. That was why she dressed up as Cinderella at Betsy’s party six years ago. Joe would never suspect that the girl he loved would dress up as Cinderella for a Halloween party when he knew how much she hated it. Kyra and I looked at each. “No!” we each yelled. “Not Cinderella!”

“Why not?” Quinn asked.

“Because of Mommy’s past,” Kyra said.

“What about it?”

Kyra groaned. “Quinn, there’s a reason that you’ve never met my parents. That’s because both of them are dead. My mother died when I was six, but I never realized that until I was seventeen when her body turned up in the Atlantic. As for my father, he was given a drug overdose by my cruel, heartless step-mother, a woman I wanted to get away from. My life was terrible; my step-mother treated me like crap and my father, up until his death, ignored me. My aunt tried to do everything she could to help me, but she was often prevented by Gloria. For my seventeenth birthday, Aunt Anna got me tickets to a Jonas Brothers concert. Dana had to come, but still; it gave me at least one good night. That’s actually how I met your father. A concert. Dana was called up to be sung to and she insisted that I be sung to as well. Joe fell in love with me that night and has loved me ever since.

“The thing was that Gloria always kept me from enjoying my life. I came back late from the concert that night and was grounded. I was treated like Cinderella for the next month. Then, a few days before your father’s twenty-first birthday, I was asked to come to that concert and surprise him; Joe had been talking about me constantly and could not get me off his mind. So, I came. Unfortunately, my father died that same night and I lost the will to speak. I was silent for nearly three months. But, anyway, after my father died, Gloria kept me in Massachusetts, away from everyone who loved me. I was able to get away, but that was only because my father’s parents wanted Gloria kept away from me.

“I spent a month out here with my aunt, all the while spending time with Betsy and the Jonas Brothers. On October 18th though, I said my goodbyes to Joe as he believed that I was flying back to Massachusetts, back to my evil step-mother. That simply was not the case and I went to Betsy’s seventeenth birthday party the next day as Cinderella. Your father was clueless and I went back to Massachusetts—when my mother’s body was found—with Joe completely unaware of the truth. Finally, on Uncle Kevin’s birthday—after plenty of hints—was your father able to realize the truth. He then proposed to me and we were married before the beginning of the year. When I got pregnant with you, I told your father that any name dealing with Cinderella was off-limits.”

Quinn nodded. “Oh. Well, how about Ella?”

Kyra shrugged. “I suppose.”

As they were talking about all of this, I slipped out of Joe’s. All this talk of family and relationships was annoying me. It made me think of Frankie and how much I loved him. I couldn’t tell Frankie what was going on. So, I had to leave. Leaving now was best so that I could prevent myself from wanting to tell Frankie how much I truly did love him.