Some say getting out of The Friend Zone is hard. Well, try getting out of The Sister Zone.
Vanessa Hayes-Wong has been best friends with Oliver Morrison for five years, one month, and fourteen days. Just as she starts to realize her feelings for him...
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—Present Day—
"Ol? Are you okay?" I wave a hand in front of his face. "Do you need to go to a hospital? I can call an ambulance right—"
"What?" Dread widens his eyes, and he lets out a nervous laugh. "No, no, no. Why would I need an ambulance? I just remember something important, that's all."
"Well, what do you remember?" I cock my head to the side.
"Right after the Slushie incident, I received a letter from BlueEyedCupid too."
Every muscle I have in my body tenses in an instant. "How come you never told me about that?"
"I forgot about it," he replies with a nonchalant shrug.
I settle my hands on my hips, my mouth set in a hard line. "How come you forgot about something as insane and important as that?"
He scratches the back of his neck, an embarrassed smile crawling across his face. "Nina said I have this condition called—never mind. What I'm trying to say is—"
I gasp in horror and slap a hand over my mouth. Does he have one of those awful degenerative brain disorders? "You're not sick, are—"
"What I'm saying is, I thought one of those psychopathic girls who Slushied you must've been the one who sent me the letter, but . . ." He stares at the note in his hand for a moment, the lines between his eyebrows deepening. "Now I'm not so sure."
Keeping my annoyance in check, I focus on the more important matter. "Who gave you the letter?"
"Blake. He worked in the mailroom back then, remember?"
The Gossip King, huh? Could he be the person behind this?
Blake isn't the smartest person in the studio.Scratch that. He's even dumber than Ollie. That's why I find it hard to believe that he's planned such an elaborate scheme. Plus, he's not racist, or at least I think he isn't.
Nevertheless, after hearing the conversation he had with the three evil princesses last week, I'd be lying if I say I'm not the least bit suspicious.
"But there's something different about the letters you're getting and the one I got," Ollie says.
"What is it?"
"See this?" He points at the last word of the first line of the message. "Whoever sent this spells peasant correctly. The one who sent the note to me two years ago wrote pheasant—with an h."
I snort out a laugh. That sounds like something Blake would do.
"Yeah, I know." Ollie huffs a chuckle. "That was why I thought one of those girls wrote it. Also, at that time, they just mentioned an ugly pheasant, not an ugly yellow peasant."
"That's weird."
Something nags at my brain.Yet before I can figure out what is bothering me, Ollie points at the last line of the message."And the signature. The person who mailed the letter to me also misspelled it. Wrote apostrophe-t-i-l."
