Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

I faced my reflection confidently for the first time since I could remember. I wasn’t really beautiful but then I wasn’t really ugly, somewhere in between. Somewhere higher than I thought I’d ever be, flying far above what had been my yesterday face.

It was more that I felt better than that I looked better but that couldn’t diminish my growing smile or the excited jump in my stomach. For once I didn’t want to shy away from the reflective surface or grimace at the noticeable differences between me and whatever pretty girl happened to be next to me. The mirror wasn’t my enemy today. I had better things to be angry at and more important things to fight. The girl smiling back at me didn’t seem like such a threat when I had the entire world watching me; in fact she felt more like an ally.

I placed my hands under the hot tap and let the warm water cover my palms.

The bathroom door swung inwards and someone’s high heels trotted against the ceramic floors. I didn’t look up. There was no need to look up. I was focused on drying my hands so I could return to class, and eventually return to Vaughn. Every step I took seemed to be just one more closer to him and one further away from what my life had once been. I never wanted to return to being that girl who shied away from mirrors and dragged her feet everyday with no hope of tomorrow being any better. Even if my happiness was tinged with fear, it was happiness nonetheless.

The heels stopped to my right, just in my line of vision. They were high and black, a thick block heel supporting a thin pale foot. I knew from the shoes alone what girl they belonged to and I felt the old dull panic at being alone with someone like her settle into my gut. It was instinctual. Something all girls adopted if they weren’t at the top of the hierarchy of high school, something which made them wary of the spiteful trash which could spew from pretty girls’ mouths.

“Oh,” her perfectly glossed lips parted when I finally looked back up, meeting her cool green eyes in the mirror. “You’re Alice, yes?”

She said it with an art only years of lying could give her, one I had too, only hers was conniving. Her lies were spiteful. They were to hurt and manipulate all the girls and boys she surrounded herself with and all the others who wanted to surround her. We hadn’t been in the same Math class for three years without me learning a few things about her.

Of course, I would have assumed that Cassidy Blockwood didn’t know my name if it hadn’t been for the way I’d felt her hateful eyes on me for the past few months. She knew. She knew more about me than I knew about her. She knew that I had Vaughn and that she wanted Vaughn and that therefore made me a target.

“Yes,” I said quickly, smiling a tight lipped smile and turning for the door.

“Don’t leave yet Alice; come do your make up with me?”

I struggled with myself, trying to hold back the disgusted look my entire body was yearning to throw. The worst part was that most girls would simply jump for joy at being asked by Cassidy to do their make up together. It was some kind of honour. As if sprinkling some blush on your cheeks alongside a bitchy girl was a blessing.

“No thanks. I really have to get back to class.”

“Oh but I insist Alice. I’ll even let you borrow my magic mascara.”

Her magic mascara? I shivered at how sickly her words were and how false her tone was. I almost expected her to pull out a razor sharp nail file and attack me with it at any moment. The girl was known to be persuasive when she wanted to be.

And I gave her exactly what she wanted by remaining in the bathroom. I didn’t approach her, out of both fear and pride, but I was rooted by the surrealism of the situation. Did Cassidy Blockwood really just say I could borrow her magic mascara?

“So tell me how you did it Alice?”

I turned my head to look at her properly then, compelled by my confusion at her words. I was expecting a shrug of her shoulders, the moment when she’d realise I wasn’t popular enough for her. The ushering of her hands telling me she wanted me to leave and her previous offer had long since been withdrawn. But instead she stood watching me carefully with her designer jeans and high, black heels.

“Did what?” I frowned.

“Vaughn Hart was unattainable for years, ten years to be exact, the entire time I’ve been going to school with him. He had that one girlfriend a few years back but she was the most popular girl in our grade before she moved out of state so it was understandable. Vaughn Hart is our school’s God and it’s only fitting if he’s dating the school’s Goddess.”

My frown deepened at this girl, teasing a strip of black hair between her sharp nails and chewing out her words as if they were painful. Vaughn Hart. This was about Vaughn Hart. Of course it was about Vaughn Hart. I had something she wanted and that didn’t settle well with her.

“He chose not to be a walking cliché,” I quipped “maybe he realised the people who worshipped him wanted nothing but his popularity.”

Cassidy made a humming noise in the back of her throat as if she were contemplating my answer. She wasn’t though. Her cat green eyes held a mocking shine, laughing at how pathetic I looked and sounded. Who wouldn’t want to be the school’s King?

“I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than just that Alice. I mean, he could have any girl he wanted; he could always have had any girl he wanted. This isn’t just a normal boy we’re talking about here but the Vaughn Hart,” her tongue rolled over the name like it was a prayer.

I had underestimated his title around high school and I had underestimated how much Cassidy liked him. It was practically radiating off of her. I was surprised she didn’t reek of it, of her desire for him.

I couldn’t compare to Cassidy in looks. She was a dark haired beauty – and she knew it – as did the entire boy population, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to tell her where she could shove it. Vaughn had chosen me over her for a reason, as much as that pained her. And she wasn’t going to bully me away from him.

“I’m pretty sure the last time I looked Vaughn was just a guy. He likes to kiss and watch stupid TV and skip out on homework just like the next boy.”

I wasn’t going to tell her that he was more special than she had any idea – as far as she should be concerned he was the epitome of normal. A gorgeous, normal guy.

“Maybe to you he is,” she slipped and let a small smirk free “but to me he’ll always be special.”

“Why? Because he was the only guy who didn’t fall down in front of you and offer to kiss your feet?”

“He deserves a lot better than you,” she retorted.

“And I guess you’re the perfect girl for him,” I scoffed. She wasn’t his type at all. If I knew anything about Vaughn it was that he hated nasty, fake girls. Cassidy was the perfect example of nasty and fake.

“Just how did you do it? How did you trick him into being with you?” She narrowed her eyes and evaluated me coldly, all pretend civility gone. This was her raw and open, the little bratty girl who hadn’t got what she wanted.

“I didn’t ask for him to like me Cassidy. I didn’t trick him or trap him, if anyone was doing the following it was Vaughn. But he means more to me than you could ever understand and he’s so much more than just your shallow high school God. He didn’t fall for you and that obviously makes you mad but, quite honestly, you need to get over it because he’s my boyfriend and you’ve got no right to judge us.”

“He’s barely your boyfriend. I heard you were just a fling that guilted him into sticking around.”

“And I heard that you were the whore who slept with half the football team just because your college boyfriend dumped you,” I spat. “For another girl no less.”

Cassidy took a step back as if I had physically slapped her, her heel landing in a small puddle a dripping tap had left. My hands moved to my chest to feel a pounding heart hammering against my rib cage. I hadn’t meant for her to make me angry. She was nothing, a nobody, and yet she’d caused me to lose it for a few seconds. It was displaced emotions. It was my buried fury at everything else making me so hot tempered at Cassidy.

“Don’t think for a moment that he really loves you, Alice,” Cassidy evened herself out again. “He told Katerina that he loved her too before he broke her heart and forced her to move out of the state.”

I rolled my eyes and turned my body to face the door once more, not willing to listen to any more of her vicious lies. I wasn’t the one whose name was scrawled all over the bathroom cubicle doors, marked over and over again with the word whore and slut. I wasn’t the girl she should be targeting and I certainly wasn’t a girl who was going to let her bulldoze me into giving her Vaughn.

“Ask him about her; ask him about what happened to Katerina. Hear it from him yourself and see if you still believe him when he tells you that he loves you. She wasn’t irreplaceable and neither are you.”

I set my jaw firmly as I yanked open the door, steaming out into the empty hallway. I was so angry that I could barely control my shaking hands. I was angry at Cassidy for being so cruel. I was angry at Vaughn for never telling me about Katerina. And I was furious at myself for letting a bitchy girl get to me, letting her instil doubt between us.

It didn’t stop me, though, from skipping out on the rest of History and ploughing through the crowds at lunch to find Vaughn. He grinned when he saw me and placed a chaste kiss on my forehead. He seemed happier since we’d talked about the possibility of a heart donation, and he’d agreed to seriously consider one. I was happier too, although his health was always a plaguing thought never too far from the centre of my mind.

I shouldn’t have said anything about my conversation with Cassidy and I certainly shouldn’t have asked him outright. It was the old, scared Alice feeling her insecurities creep back from the shadows. It was me wondering who’d been before and why’d she’d moved so far away.

“Vaughn,” I sighed and looked at him straight with glassy eyes. We were outside in the warm air, his motorcycle just a few metres away. “Who’s Katerina?”