Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(51)

“Thanks, CeCe,” he said. He pulled his headphones on over his ears. “See you.” He walked away and I mumbled as he headed down the sidewalk, in the opposite direction.

I replayed our entire conversation on the walk home. I wished I could erase it from my mind. My heart flooded with humiliation. How could I have imagined those words were targeted for me? Things like that didn’t happen to me. They happened to Bryn. Beautiful people. Or even okay-looking people. But my problem was not a lack of beauty—it was an excess of ugly.

I opened my texting app and typed a message to no one:

Free, I am found in you

Fool, I am lost in us

Then I hit cancel.

I dialed my mom’s cell phone and she answered on the first ring.

“Mom?” My voice came out shaky. If our voices detected signs of distress, mine probably fit somewhere in the near fatality zone.

“CeCe? Are you alright?” she asked.

I thought about the range of answers.

“Do you mean emotionally, physically, mentally, metaphorically, or literally?”

“CeCe.”

I skipped right to the point. “Mom, can you get me another appointment with Dr. Harper?”

A second of silence ticked by.

“Who?” my mom asked.

“The plastic surgeon?” I reminded her.

“Is this about your scar?” She said the word scar like it was a distant memory. Not something that impacted my life, that I had to live with every fucking day. Not something that defined me.

“Yes,” I said. I tried to keep my voice steady. Professional. As if this was a business transaction. “At my last appointment, Dr. Harper said there was a plastic surgeon in Chicago who could help me.”

“CeCe, you haven’t brought your scar up in years.”

I squeezed my fingers tighter around the phone.

“Well I’m bringing it up now.”

“I thought—”

“You were wrong.” I bit my lips together. “I’m not you, Mom. I’m not as tough as you think I am.” I felt myself breaking.

“You want to go through with the surgery?” Her voice came out quiet.

“Yes. Now. This fall. Tomorrow.”

“CeCe, Dr. Harper is probably scheduled out for a year.”

My eyes brimmed with tears. A year would be too late. It sounded like a lifetime.

“I can’t wait a year, Mom!” I choked back a sob. “I’ve waited forever for someone to notice me and now I thought he did, I thought maybe this guy was different, that there might be such a thing as having chemistry, deeper than the physical attraction. I thought he was the one who could see past all this.”

I was really crying now. Tears rushed down my cheeks, hot and salty. I ducked down between two trees and leaned against the side of a campus building.

“I don’t want to look like a monster anymore,” I said.

“Cecelia.” My mom hadn’t called me by my real name since I was a kid. Since before the accident. I sunk to the ground and felt ashamed for letting something, someone, get me so unraveled.

“Remember what your dad always says? Anyone who is worthy of you won’t notice the scar. Because he’ll be too busy being amazed by you.”

I guffawed into the phone.

“You have to say that. You’re my mom.”

“Look at all the friends you have. Look at all your accomplishments. You’ve been team captain for three years. People respect you, they look up to you. You’re a leader. You can’t even top you.”

She was always doing this. Always trying to paint over every chipped surface of our lives.

“Mom, I need you to stop saying that right now. I need you to let me be weak for a second. Let me be break. I can’t be strong all the time. It’s exhausting.”

I wanted her to realize that it wasn’t weak to be real, that sometimes the hardest things to talk about were the most important conversations to have. For years I had built a dam in my mind to hold my feelings back, until someone recently knocked it down. I learned there was a relief in letting go, in allowing yourself to break. It allowed for something stronger to flood in.

I wiped my eyes and rested my forehead on my knee, tired and exhausted. My heart felt like it had taken its first flight, only to crash on hard cement.

“You like this boy?” she asked.

I nodded reluctantly. “Yes.”

“Did he say something? Did he hurt you?”

“No. No, he’s wonderful. He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He just—” I paused and took a breath. “He made it clear he doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

“What’s his name?” she asked, her voice haughty, as if she was going to track him down and give him a piece of the Edmonds mind.

I opened up my mouth to answer her, but I stalled. The idiocy of my crush screamed at me. My parents followed all the Edgelake sports, our entire town did. The Edgelake football program was a breeding ground for college rosters. I’m sure my parents knew that Emmett was being recruited by UW-Madison. Rumors were already spreading that he had been offered a position. The team would be a perfect fit for his playing style.

How stupid would it sound to say Emmett Brady? To admit I’d fallen for the campus celebrity. And what a surprise, he likes the aspiring supermodel. It’s amazing the blaring signs life hands you that you fail to see when you’re too busy daydreaming.