Chapter 39: You Give Every Evil Person a Run for Their Money 

Evil as a term is very subjective: Sometimes, we see people through a blanket of our love for that particular person so that we shun every single lie that spouts through their mouths, whereas a person who we see with wicked eyes has their wrongdoings under constant scrutiny. Sometimes the most blatant of untruths are shrouded, and evil shines as something that isn't obvious. It's the hidden truths that hurt the most. It's the betrayal that actually ends up stinging in the end.

~Starlight24

"Are you sure I should leave you alone? Cady's a sociopathic bitch," Deeds pointed out, her hands still tight around my wheelchair, turning her knuckles white.

I nodded and gulped lightly. "I feel like I need to handle this on my own. Thanks, though," I said, gratefully. She smiled at me.

"Anytime, weirdo. Call me up if she hurts you, okay?" she said, concern in her wide brown eyes.

"Duh," I said. "And also, who cares about the fact that my arms and legs are plastered up? I can still take that skanky chick DOWN."

Deeds laughed, but it sounded obviously strained. "Just... don't underestimate her, okay? She's crazy, and there's absolutely no telling what she'll do next. She tried to kill you. Just... make sure you aren't with her alone or something. She might murder you and make it look like a tragic accident."

I turned to her and grinned. "Well, if she does kill me, then imagine I had a will and take my electronics," I joked, and Deeds gave me a deadpanned glare. "Sheesh, I'm just kidding," I said, raising my hands (well, trying to raise my hands because they kind of hurt) in surrender.

"Wanna know why I didn't laugh?" Deeds asked, sounding perky all of a sudden.

"Why?" I asked, raising a single eyebrow.

"Because you're not funny," she said, offering me a glare, her voice dropping to a monotone. I laughed at her.

"Okay, okay," I said, shoving her lightly with my not-so-injured left hand. My fractured index finger was better now, but I wasn't going to jinx it. "Now go!" I exclaimed.

She rolled her eyes and rang the doorbell, before running back to her red convertible and taking off, not before blowing me a flying kiss on her way out.

Deeds was the best friend I could have asked for.

A middle-aged, snobbish looking lady opened the door, squinting at me and scrunching her nose with unrecognition passing through her features. 

"Do I know you?" she barked, spittle flying out of her thin lips and onto my face. I winced slightly. What was up with me meeting strange mothers?

"Um, no," I said, shrugging. "I'm Cady's... friend, Day," I said, cautious.

"Oh, that pond scum," she muttered.

I raised my eyebrow. "Um, okay?"

She smiled at me, a sickly, thin-lipped expression that looked more like a sneer. "Trust me, stay away from her. She's a crazy lunatic."

Well, she didn't need to tell me that. I already knew a tad bit too well.

"Jeanine!" yelled a voice, and I flinched as I recognized Cady's sickly sweet yet bitter tone. It was like palm candy coated bitter gourd. "Who is it and what are you telling him or her?"

"It's some Day girl!" this woman, Jeanine, hollered back as Cady stepped in front of me, looking surprisingly decent in a pair of high waisted, white washed jeans and a black crop top with her hair in a tight, high ponytail. "And I was just telling her to steer clear from you."

Cady's eyebrows shot up, and an expression of hurt crossed her face. "Jeanine, stop trying to ruin my life, okay?" she whispered, her eyes beginning to water. She quickly wiped it away though, and I didn't know whether I'd imagined it or not.

"No need for me to do that," Jeanine sneered, her ugly face contorting further. "You ruin your own life for yourself. Thank goodness that father of yours decided it would be good to ship you off to that prep school in Paris."

I widened my eyes at this. Prep school in Paris? "What prep school?" I asked, cocking my head to the side.

"Well," began Cady, shooting an evil look at Jeanine. "My father decided to ship me off to a fashion school in France because a certain woman in this house poisoned his mind," she spat, glaring at Jeanine with utter and complete loathing.

"You are a psycho," Jeanine said, rolling her eyes. "I don't know what your mother did wrong with you, to be honest. I bet your father is glad he found me to take up that bitch's place."

Oh, so Jeanine was Cady's stepmother. This was like Cinderella 2.0, except Cinderella wasn't a psychotic, life ruining bitch.

Or at least, that's not what the Disney version said. You can't be too sure about anything in life, though.

"Don't," Cady said, wiggling a bony finger in front of Jeanine's face, her eyes scarily enormous. "Talk about my mother like that. Even better, don't talk about her at all."

Jeanine rolled her eyes. "Your bark is worse than your bite. I'll help you take this delusional female that claims she's a friend of yours up to your room, and I'll leave the wheelchair down here. Come here, honey," she said, hoisting me up from the wheelchair.

She was surprisingly strong, and I was having very mixed feelings towards this woman. For one, she was a horrible lady but on the other hand, she hated Cady.

She took me to Cady's sickly yellow room with pink cushions and mismatched colored quotes on the wall. She then placed me on a pink, pillowed love seat which was actually pretty comfortable, so I wasn't complaining. I shot her a grateful smile. "Thank you for helping me up," I said, grinning.

She didn't return the smile. "You are a naïve, gullible little girl, I hope you know that," she spat, before storming out of the room.

"UGH!" yelled Cady after she left. "I hate that woman so much!"

I didn't sympathize with her.

Do you hate that woman as much as I hate you?

"What happened?" I asked. Hey, I was curious.

"Jeanine is my stepmother, in case you didn't realize," she said, dryly. "She hates me because I tried to make her life miserable when she first arrived."

"You have a stepmother?" I asked, feeling bad for her.

"Yeah, not everyone has a perfect life. Dysfunctional families exist, you know," she snapped. Then suddenly, she calmed herself down. "Sorry, I'm just kind of pissed. She hates me a lot because of what I did. Truth be told, I just gave her what she deserved."

"Aw," I said, widening my eyes with pseudo sympathy. "Kind of what you did to Starlight via Miss X?"

"Exactly!" she exclaimed. Haha, gotcha. Her eyes widened as she realized what she'd just blurted. "Oh."

Her whole face shifted into an evil, nasty look that I was genuinely scared of. My insides twisted up. Jeanine was right, Cady was wrecked in the head.

"Why?" I asked, a crashing feeling of hurt falling on me. In my head, hoping against hope, I'd been imagining scenarios where Cady wasn't Miss. X. That Miss. X would be some random dork who sat at the front desk and chewed on the ends of her pencil and wore her bedroom slippers to school.

That Miss. X, the so called 'wannabe writer' wasn't Cady.

"How long have you known?" she asked, and instead of remorse, I was surprised to find... pride in her tone, as if she was pleased with the hell she'd put me through.

"Since I confronted Nat this morning, and I kind of had a revelation," I admitted, feelings tears bite the ends of my eyes. I felt so pathetic this way, and completely vulnerable because this girl had completely thrown me around with her harsh words.

"Oh, that's cool," she said, still sneering. "You completely deserved every bit of it, by the way. All that, and more."

You know, sometimes people get pissed off when they confront someone who hotly denies whatever they're saying. The kind of people that shake their heads furiously and act hurt that the other person could have even imagined they'd do something like that. However, having someone look so positively gleeful after they knew you'd cracked the code was a hundred times worse. It showed that they were actually smug about something they shouldn't be pleased about.

"Aren't you even a bit remorseful?" I asked, hating how weak I sounded with my wavering voice and choked up tone.

Cady sniggered. "Why on Earth would I feel remorse? You are a bitch. Most people think so, to be perfectly honest. You have this whole 'I'm the perfect girl' look that you carry around like a shawl. You've got the perfect blue eyes and blonde hair like a typical cheerleader. You have the grades. You have Deirdre Lacey, resident Queen Bee, wrapped around your little finger. You have most of the freaking school wrapped around your finger. Worst of all... you have Dylan wrapped around your finger and you don't even know it!"

Oh my god. If one more girl was going to get back at me because Dylan was attracted to me, I was going to scream.

"This is about Dylan Daniels!?" I shrieked. "What happened to sisters before misters? What happened to our crazy friendship? I thought you actually liked me!"

Cady scoffed. "Please, we all know you thought I was a slut to begin with," she said, and I bit my lip in response, because this was perfectly true. "All along, I was trying desperately to get noticed, so I wore skimpy clothes. You just waltzed into the school and fell down on your face a million times, tried to use the whole 'I'm a little innocent puppy and I'm lost' look, and everyone bought it. Everyone was so freaking stupid, they fell for your dumb little act."

My mouth fell open. "What about the smoothie!? You tried to kill me, Cady!"

Cady shrugged like it was no big deal. "One less bitch on this planet would make the world a better place, you know," she said, still smirking victoriously.

This hurt like hell. I can't believe she wasn't at least apologetic. She was actually gloating about trying to murder, bully and practically wreck me.

"I hate you," I whispered.

Cady shrugged. "I don't care, honestly. I'm going to be out of this snooty neighborhood and into freaking Paris. I won't care less about you losers when I'm there. So, I might as well do something I won't care about, right?"

I could feel my whole body burning up with rage. I wanted to bash her face into a wall and watch her scream. What was wrong with her? Why did so many people hate me!?

"Why me?" I finally whispered, feeling my whole body sag.

"Wait... Deirdre didn't tell you?" Cady asked, laughing loudly.

"Tell me what?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows furrow.

"Oh, wow," Cady said, laughing harder now. "Some best friend you've got there, Day," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

If Deeds had let me down too, I was booking myself the first train back to our old country house.

"What happened?" I snapped.

"Well, Dylan never liked me. He kissed me that night at the party because Deirdre begged him to. Jase had told her that he'd only believe she liked him if she did anything for him. She agreed. He told her to break up with her boyfriend in the most awful way... by making him cheat on her in a staged performance. Don't you think it was too dramatic how Deirdre forgave him so fast? That's because he agreed because they were friends, and he didn't like her anyway. He's practically in love with you, and he wanted to wrench Jase away from you just as much as Deirdre wanted to. Ta-da."

I felt bile rise up to my throat. Why on Earth did this happen to me? I actually kind of liked Jase (ish) back then, and yet Deirdre had been so fast to try and get him to go away from me? Would she have done the same thing as Cady or Nat if I'd ended up dating Jase for real?

And what about Dylan!? Why had I never noticed he'd liked me?

"So you hated me because of Dylan," I said, weakly. "Good job, Cady. You give every evil person a run for their money."

Cady smirked again, and I wanted to slap that expression off her face. "Whatever, Winters. I got my revenge. Now why don't I help you get your pretty little ass out of my house now, huh?"

I gritted my teeth as she (surprisingly) helped me down the stairs, accidently stepping on my feet as she did. Then, she opened the door, and to my horror, it was raining heavily. She then shoved me out, and I landed straight into a puddle outside, falling on my fractured arm with the metal rod in it, screaming in utter and complete pain.

"My wheelchair," I hacked out, and she offered me a look of mock-sympathy.

"Aw, I guess we forgot that," she said, pouting. "Poor you. I hope you drown in life too, just like how you are now, you pathetic loser," she hissed, before slamming the door in my face.

I couldn't believe it. I'd lost someone I'd thought was my best friend. Was I really that gullible to fall for people's traps like that? Was I really that hated a person? Who else fostered hate for me?

I took out my phone as the rain plastered my hair to my face and began to soak my casts. I winced at the undesirable and cringe-worthy feeling of water seeping down my shirt and into my casts, and I felt my fingers go numb.

I tried calling Deirdre, but I was interrupted by a beep from my phone.

NO SIGNAL.

A guttural cry escaped my lips and I began trudging through the mud, my shattered legs unable to move, so I was practically slithering through the wet, squelchy grass.

Oh, my pathetic life.

Thankfully, I'd tied a black hoodie across my waist and I took it out and threw it over myself, partially shielding myself. What had I done to deserve all of this? Constant clumsiness, my immune-deficiency... Oh my god, I was going to get seriously ill because of this.

For a good five minutes, I managed to pull myself to the sidewalk, but I couldn't do it anymore, so I collapsed and began crying, the rain merging in with my salty tears.

I was broken beyond repair. I had tried so hard to be a happy, carefree girl, but all of that had come crashing down upon my head like a dam.

"Hey, are you okay?" asked a voice. It sounded vaguely familiar. I didn't bother looking up, and I buried my face deeper into my leggings.

"No," I whispered, crying heavily now. "No, not at all," I continued, before breaking down further.

I felt the person sit down next to me and place an unsteady arm around my shoulders. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I sniffed loudly. I guess ranting to a stranger wouldn't be too bad. "You'll get bored," I said, my voice still muffled and stuffy.

"No, I'm a good listener," the voice said, slowly stroking my back. It wasn't in a creepy manner, more like a comforting gesture.

"Okay," I said, my voice cracking a bit. "Well, I warned you. So basically, I'm new around here and I realized that my whole school life was built upon a lie. My enemy tried to kill me, my boyfriend cheated on me with my enemy, my best friend tried to murder me and now I realized that even the people I trust hate me. And on top of this all, my crush, who happens to be this jerk of a next-door-neighbor—"

"Wait a second," the voice said, cutting me off. "Day?"

My breath caught in my throat. I looked up, praying that my guess was wrong.

"Oh, hey, Dylan," I whispered, weakly.

"Oh, my god," he hissed, picking me up bridal style. "Day, I'm taking you home right now."

I began crying harder as I buried my face deeper into his chest. "Where's your car?" I asked, my teeth beginning to chatter.

"I didn't bring it," he said, sounding embarrassed. "I kind of got caught in the rain," he said, pulling me closer to his body. The contact broke my already shattering emotional range further.

He then proceeded to sit down again on the pavement, before removing his semi-soaked shirt over me like a towel.

I widened my eyes as he picked me up again, the water now pouring onto his bare chest. "What?" I croaked, not having the strength to protest.

"You're cold, and you've got a deficiency," he said, before kissing my forehead gently. I shivered slightly, and in around five minutes of him jogging, we reached my house.

He then placed me down, stretching. I tried to avert my eyes from his muscles rippling across his toned chest, but I obviously failed epically.

"Thank you," I whispered, and he smiled at me, genuinely.

"So... are we cool now?" he asked, sounding weary.

"Well, I'm really cold right now," I joked, lamely. Then, like a tidal wave, I remembered what Dylan had said to me before.

"I can't act like everything is normal between us when clearly, it's not," he had said, even after I'd apologized over a million times.

"Um, okay," he said, laughing lightly, before sitting down beside me on the front door porch and tucking a wet strand of hair away from my face. He then stared deep into my eyes, and I felt like I was drowning in his. He then began to lean forward, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. Suddenly, another image flashed in my head.

Popcorned: 3) I like you.

Suddenly, I jerked back, and a surprise and shock look flashed across Dylan's soaked features, showing how crushed he much have been.

"I'm sorry, I can't do this," I said, shaking my head, feeling weird and light headed because of this little encounter we'd both shared.

"What?" he snapped, getting up, his whole chest dripping with water.

"I can't act like everything is normal between us when clearly, it's not," I said, biting down on my lip hard as I quoted him.

A look of utter and complete betrayal and hurt crossed his features. "Fine, keep pushing everyone out, including the people you have around you. Soon enough, there will be no one left, Snowflake." His eyes widened as he realized how he'd casually used my pet name he'd made for me. "Soon, there will be no one left, Winters," he corrected, before getting up, ringing the doorbell and running across to his own house.

I was too emotionally drained to say anything, but still, I called out. "Dylan!" I coughed out, unsure of whether I was crying or not because it was raining so hard.

He turned, his jaw set but his eyes soft. "Yeah?" he asked, trying to sound angry but kind of failing.

"Um..." I began, trying to figure out why I'd called him. "I still have your shirt."

Suddenly, his whole posture crumpled and he turned his knob open. "Keep it as a reminder of what we'll never have," he whispered, before walking into his house.

I heard a wail escape my lips, and my mom opened the door just that second, her eyes growing scarily wide. "DAY!" she screamed, before scooping me up and placing me on the sofa.

"Hi, Mom," I wheezed out, before I began crying harder than I had before. Today had broken me from different sides and I couldn't take it.

"Honey, what happened?" she cried, touching my soaked cast and cutting it off. My hand and legs beneath were deathly pale, wrinkled and numb.

"I..." I began, before I started crying again. "I don't know!" I said, feeling too shattered to even think coherently. "I hate this world!" I said, wailing loudly.

"Um..." she said, wiping my eyes. "Will you be up for one last surprise? I hate to spring it upon you with you in this state," she whispered, pushing my hair out of my eyes.

"Hit me with it," I whispered, not knowing whether I had the stability to handle more but curious anyway. "I'll be the judge of how big of a surprise it is."

Mom took a deep breath and looked at me with her steely blue eyes.

"Max is awake."

Those were the last words I heard before I passed out cold on the sofa. 

A/N:

GIF of Cady Hunt ^^

It's quite sad how I actually like Gigi in real life tho. Bad casting on my part but she looks exactly like how I'd imagined Cady to look!

Kayyy, I hope this was a more concrete chapter compared to the previous one. I apologize again, I hate writing fillers just as much (if not more) as you guys hate reading them.

Also, before you get mad at Day for not hearing Dylan out, think of it from her perspective. She's already in a crappy mood because of the Cady incident, and on top of that, when she TRIES to talk to Dylan, he shuns her out. So she's not going to always be the one vying for his attention if he doesn't forgive her, right?

GUYS I'M SO EXCITED FOR THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS.

I'M VERY, VERY, VERY EXCITED.

Obviously, as I mentioned above in my last line, MAX IS AWAKE. HE'S ALIVE GUYS.

So basically the teaser for the next chapter: Max and Day. I won't give you any more details.

And the one right after that?

Well... a special somebody is going to be revealed... THAT'S RIGHT! POPCORNED IS GOING TO BE REVEALED!

Who all are excited for that? It's the next-to-next chapter :P

Don't forget to click the little orange star and also, comment on the lines you liked or even disliked =)

Also, please promote! It means a lot to me, always.

You're welcome for the huge-ass chapter. I feel bad for the crap I presented you with last time tbh xD

Song of the Day: Rotten to the Core from Disney's Descendants

^^ Actually a really good movie. Cast- Dove Cameron, Cameron Boyce, Sofia Carson and Booboo Stewert

This chapter is dedicated to vanillalilacs because I didn't know she'd been reading my book and it turns out she's my senior at school! xD

*Sings It's a Small World in the corner like the awkward person that I am*

KAYYYY

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Love you all,

~Lexiiiiiiiiiiiii