❝she was the girl, who bit the horizon, who peeled the stars from the sky and put them on her tongue, the girl who was hungry for the universe, who craved magic and saw the broken boy for who he truly was- a broken boy.❞
Beca...
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Chapter 40
Life Is Anything But A Dream
Jem
"Okay, everybody calm down!" Ellis was the first to immobilize, breaking out of the inertia, moving everybody back to where they were. She kept shooing them away from Effy and me, trying to disperse the crowd back into whatever they were doing. The music blasted back on again, some sappy love song by Adele or something, but the atmosphere felt gaudy and choppy as if it was once a beautiful piece of mosaic glass but it had shattered, sending pieces flying, and Ellis was displaying it with jagged cracks on the surface.
There were murmurs and whispers- of course. People shot furtive, surreptitious looks that weren't all subtle, hoping to see the connection between Ellis and me, wondering if it was actually true. I heard a snapshot from a girl, "I thought they hated each other?" Confusion mired the people as Ellis was attempting to maintain chaos. A blood vessel swelled as they stared and assumed, like we were celebrities on a front page, ready to be judged and inspected by the world. Fucking people didn't know a damn thing, even if it hit them hard and reckless up the ass.
"You two are dating?" squeaked Effy, suddenly losing her glamour cool. She looked totally effeminate and aloof, untouchable and unclaimable in that dress. Her Katniss Everdeen red dress accentuated every curve, making it almost impossible to tear your eyes away. Almost everybody's jaw hit the floor when we arrived, with Effy's arm entangled around mine. But now she seemed lost, confused, with those puppy-dog brown eyes recoiling in hurt.
"Yeah," I said resolutely, stepping away from Effy. Effy swallowed- and a flash of anger seemed to appear across her face.
"Wait, you two have been dating this whole time?"
Ellis bit her lip- for once at the loss of words.
"Yes," I said for her. "Ellis told me to go out with you because- well, she wanted you to have a good time."
Effy's nose flared and- it seemed that she was more likely to be the Girl On Fire than Jennifer Lawrence. "I didn't need you to feel sorry for me."
Ellis blinked as if she had been slapped by those harsh words. "What? No, Effy, I was just trying-"
"I am not charity," Effy gritted her teeth, clenching her fists, The crown on her head became lopsided, dangling dangerously off her head as she lifted a finger and jabbed it at Ellis. "I'm not just some poor little girl who needed to be donated a date."
"Effy-"
But Effy didn't want to hear it. "I'm so done with you."
Effy strode off before Ellis could say anything else, heels stomping away angrily off into the distance. Ellis's shoulders drooped and there was a tight restrained look of sadness because she didn't really understand why Effy was so mad about it. Though Ellis had asked everybody to fend off and mind their own business, there was a collective throng of people pitching glances over, crowding us. I shoved them out of the way as I moved her to a more remote spot, muttering something between a "go away" and a "fuck off", though I wasn't quite sure how it came out. I hoped to God that it sounded like the latter.
