Cinderelliot

I stood roughly four and a half feet off the ground, dressed in desperately tight jeans, drowning in the drizzle of rain. The black of my jeans and boring slip on trainers contrasted wildly with the bright t-shirt. It was a purple colour which was bright without being neon, completed with a dinosaur that looked like it was hand drawn on. I mussed up my hair so it sat perfectly, all of it cut in short mini layers that radiated out from a point on the back of my head and finished brushing over one side of my face. I was waiting outside of my school for my promised lift home, which was twenty minutes late. I swore lightly, and turned to start walking home.

The sky was dark and overcast, thunder rumbling in the distance and the rain became steadily heavier until I couldn't see past my hair. "Why didn't I take the lift I was actually going to get?" I muttered, hefting my backpack further up my shoulder as I decided against taking my iPod out - it would only get damaged with the rain anyway. I concentrated on walking faster to a beat in my head, drumming my fingers on my jeans and humming quietly. The walk was long and miserable, the only people who passed him were people with cars, and no-one seemed open to giving a soaking teenager a lift home. Sighing, I turned to my bag, and searched through it for something to distract me from the rain. Triumphantly I removed my purple beanie hat, one of the plain ones which flopped backwards that my best friend Sarah called "sock hats". "Suck that, rain," I said a little too loudly. There was a shuffling noise, and I turned to see a bewildered old lady hobbling into her house with wide eyes.

Laughing, I ran the next block and launched myself into making it home before I died of the cold. Fifteen minutes later, I shoved himself through the front door of my house, shaking off most of the water. "Elliot!" The unearthly shriek came from my stepmother, "You're forty minutes late, and the girls said you weren't there when they went to pick you up. You ungrateful brat, I told you I needed you home quickly so I could go out tonight!" Olivia Barker, the forty-something year old who made my life more difficult than it needed to be on an hourly basis. She married my father when I was twelve and, along with her dimple cheeked daughters, reaped in the benefits when he died two years later. He left me to fend for myself as she began to use me as an unpaid maid. I'm only thankful she didn't go through with making me wear the maid outfit Jessica, her eldest, suggested. "Well, youare gay, aren't you?" “It doesn’t work like that.” Sometimes she makes me want to claw my eyes out with her ignorance.

I grunted a reply to her shrieked grievances, and took the proffered list of chores with a grimace before escaping up into my bedroom on the third floor. The loft had been split into two halves when I turned seven, and one half had been converted into my bedroom by a couple of friendly, bearded workmen that I still remember. They'd left me a message on the bottom corner of the wall behind my door that was still there, "enjoy your new room Elliot", that I'd refused to paint over when we redid the room later on. The room was quite big, and the only reason my stepsisters hadn't claimed it for themselves was the bat in the other half of the loft which screeched every night. It was pretty terrifying, and I'd screamed along with it every night for the first few weeks in my new room until I began to become immune. Now, I called him Alfred and had conversations with him when I was bored.

I changed out of my good clothes, and began on my first task for the day: vacuuming. I began at the bottom of the house, and slowly worked my way round the house, dusting as I went to kill number three at the same time. My stepsisters, Jessica and Madison ruined my pattern with their yells as they ran through the house, almost knocking me over in the process. "Oh my gosh!" Jessica called, "Mum, we were invited!" I know what this is about, anyone who goes to high school in our suburb would know what this was about. The local hottie, Lucas Scott, has a famous party every year. Well, I'm sure he has other parties too, but this one is illustrious. Everyone comes, people from other schools and circles and it's basically the biggest party of the year, besides the prom. Possibly including the prom.

I’d been crushing on him since the beginning of high school. He looked perfect with tanned skin and dark features to match. He was well known throughout the school for his easy going personality and brilliant basketball skills. Half the student body was in love with him, and it was rumoured a few teachers were too.

Everyone went, but the elite got emails telling them where and when, and the message was passed on through word of mouth. I don’t understand what was so great about the invite, they were going to go anyway. It’s probably a girl thing, I bet. I was half thinking about going too, this year he was making it a masked party for the hell of it, and I wanted to have a chance to stun everyone with my skills with macaroni and glitter. I’d actually taken fashion as a standard grade, and I knew how to work a sewing machine alright - straight lines were not my forte.

“When is it?” I asked, hopefully they were feeling bad about leaving me to walk home in the rain and would give me the right time. Last year I was too late to get in, and walked home in fancy dress and nearly died when my sorry picture was put up in the school slideshow of memorable moments.

Madison scoffed at me, and held the paper out of sight. “Like we’d tell you, Cinderelliot.” They’d come up with the nickname after the Selena Gomez Cinderella movie, and now I had to answer to that monstrosity. “You wouldn’t get in, remember last year? Your friend and you are too low on the food chain.” With that, she spun and flounced out of the room to go and chase down her Mum.

Her sister paused for a second, and knocked over the coffee cup on the table, spilling freezing coffee across the table. It dripped to the cream carpet, and I resigned myself to half an hour of scrubbing the stain until it faded out of sight. The stain took longer because I was distracted for a while when Sarah texted me, and it seeped in deeper into the carpet. “Crap,” I muttered, and attacked the floor with the cleaning foam.

Eventually, when the list was finished and dinner was cooking in the oven, I sat in my room and called Sarah as I’d promised. “Sarah?” She answered just as I was going to hang up on her, breathless and yelling something about loosing her phone. “The party. Do you think I should go?”

There was a pause at her end of the phone as she shuffled something and switched the phone from ear to ear. “Do you want to?” she asked, grumbling under her breath about Maths homework and extra Physics. “Dude, have you got my calculator?”

I rummaged through my bag while I answered, “Yeah, but. It’s his party. I’ll never be allowed within fifteen feet of his street, never mind him. I have your calculator, do you have my wallet?” It was that, or I’d lost it. “No, wait, it’s here. Do you think I’d get in since it’s a mask party? I heard from Jessica that everyone was going in masks, but she was worried her’s would end up being a dorky Halloween mask from three years ago. Olivia promised to buy her a new one, then there was demands for Madison to get a new dress.”

“Let me guess, they’ve managed to get new outfits for the party. I’ll come over now for the calculator, James isn’t going to let me borrow his again after I smashed his old one.” Sarah said, as her front door slammed behind her with a familiar groan. “I’ll cycle over in five minutes, just chuck it out your window when I get there, okay? I’ve got to get back. I’m technically grounded.”

She hung up on me in typical Sarah fashion, but it was only minutes before she was yelling at my bedroom window. I opened it, and dangled her calculator out the window temptingly as I spoke. “Come on, to party or not to party?” She growled in frustration, and glared up at me with a black stare.

“Sure, whatever. If you want to go, then go. But Lucas Scott isn’t going to fall in love with you in one night, especially if you hide in a corner with your mask and a coke. I bet he’s poker straight anyway.” Sarah glared up at me, hand out expectantly for her calculator. I let go of it gently, and plopped it onto the bush in front of her with eyes screwed shut and fingers crossed.

“I’ll do the Maths homework for you tonight, and you can copy at lunch.” With a “thanks” flung over her shoulder, Sarah raced off, narrowly avoiding a group of kids on the pavement outside my neighbour’s house.

The rest of the night was ridiculously boring, but my mask was basically finished by one in the morning. All that I needed to do was nick some beads and sequins from the fabric store at school, and decorate it before the party. I slumped into an exhausted sleep and woke up late for school. Flinging on fresh clothes, I ran out of the house and called Sarah for a lift. “Sarah! “ I called with a relief filled voice as she pulled up, “Thanks! Mrs. Fuller was going to kill me if I was late again. And I can’t do detention tonight.”

“Come on idiot,” she replied, her car roaring to life as she sped down the street. “Have you got my Maths homework?”