From my Bully to CEO

Chapter 9

PAST

SELENE’S POV:

Zoey picked up my call on the second ring. My world could be falling apart but I knew I could always count on her to always be meticulously consistent.

“Oh, my God, finally!” Zoey exclaimed, her face popping onto my screen. Her dark almond eyes shone with mischief, her dark hair pulled into her signature bun at the top of her head. But the excitement flickered out of her face when she saw me.

“Sel, are you crying?”

I sniffled, wiping a stray curl away from my face. Now that I saw myself on the screen, I realized how pathetic I looked. My eyes were puffy and red, mascara smudged streaks of tears dried on my cheek, leaving black lines behind. My nose was red and swollen and my hair was a mess.

“No,” I said, my voice cracking helplessly on the word.

“Aww, baby,” she cooed, eyes softening. “What happened? Who do you want me to hurt? Because you know I’ll fly there and end the assholes who made you cry.”

I huff out a laugh at the fierceness in her voice, suddenly feeling a lot better than I did in the last month of moving to Eastend.

“It’s just me, Zoey,” she said, her throat hoarse from all the crying. “I don’t know how to fit in here.”

“I thought you were doing alright?” Zoey asked, a worried frown between her brows. “What went wrong, babes?”

I curled tighter into myself, hugging a pillow against my chest. “This town is…It’s like Riverdale but richer. It’s ridiculous. Everyone looks like they just walked out of one of those overly posh reality shows. And I… I’m barely surviving. I look so out of place. I hate it, Zo.”

“Don’t!” Zoey warned, her voice soft. “I bet they’re all looking at you and wondering how someone so cool ended up in their tasteless little suburb.”

I laughed, but the sound died as soon as it had formed. “God, no. They look like I’m dirt under their feet.”

“They’re just jealous, Sel,” she said with so much fervour, I almost believed her for a second.

But then I remember Grayson Vexley’s smirk and Maya Saeed’s perfect eyeliner and the way the entire school had gravitated towards them. At how insignificant and helpless I felt sitting on that cafeteria table, shrinking myself further just to escape their torment.

I exhaled, a fresh batch of tears springing to my eyes.

“You’re intelligent and creative and gorgeous and trust me, they’re just jealous,” Zoey said.

How could I explain to her that in LA, those things made me stand out, but here, they made me a target? That the things I once loved about myself were now the exact weapons being used against me? The way I dressed, the books I read, the way I talked. They hated it. Hated me for it.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said instead. It was easier to give in then tell her how I can never belong. How this can never be home.

How the only place - the only people that had felt like home had kicked me out at the signs of the first inconvenience. Something dispensable. The easiest piece to get rid of. One that never made too much noise, someone that always said yes. Never caused too much trouble.

“Your aunt and uncle are absolute pieces of trash,” Zoey said furiously, face contorted in pain as if she wanted to crawl out of the screen and hug me.

I flinched at the words. I hated them too. But hating them felt wrong.

Because I also loved them. God, I loved them.

My aunt had taken me in without hesitation when my parents had died in a car accident. I was only five. I don’t remember my parents. I only saw them through pictures. They live in my head through the stories my aunt and uncle told me.

I have no memories of them. What I do remember is my aunt calling me Sel, my love. Of my uncle buying me chocolates just because I mentioned I was craving something sweet just in passing. Of my aunt tucking me in consistently for twelve years. Of her holding me close when I suffered my first heartbreak by the hands of a boy in middle school with long legs and wild hair. Of my uncle asking me whether I wanted to go and egg his house as revenge.

I remember my aunt soothing me when I got my first period.

That had been home. My uncle and aunt and that little apartment in downtown LA. Zoey had been home and my school had been home.

It has always been the place where I fit in. Until they stopped needing me.

My aunt and uncle never had kids of their own. The doctors told my aunt she was infertile and can never get pregnant. My aunt had told me she was fine with it, that she had me and I was enough. I remember how special that had always made me feel. How loved.

But then, a few months ago, she had gotten pregnant. It was a miracle, the doctors told her. They had been ecstatic. I was so happy for them.

And the reality had sunk in cold and fast, so fast it made me dizzy.

I was just a placeholder. They were keeping me because it was the best they could get. And the moment they realized they could do better - a child all of their own - they realized they didn’t need me anymore.

I smiled. Because what else was I supposed to do?

That’s when my world had started shifting. It started slow. My pocket money being cut in half. A passing comment about how my school was costing too much. Dinner table discussions about how it would be better to convert my room into a nursery since it was bigger and I didn’t need such a big room anymore.

I didn’t know the exact moment I’d gone from family to burden. It had happened too fast. Or maybe I had ignored the signs until they spelled it out for me.

“It’s hard to keep you here, Sel,” my aunt had said, her hands clasped with mine as she sat across from me on the dinner table. “We need to save for the baby. It’s, darling, it’s just temporary, I promise.”

It wasn’t temporary. I knew then and I know now. They wanted me gone. They contacted my grandmother and asked her if she could keep me.

“She’s loaded,” they told me. “She lives in this huge mansion. It has a pool and she has staff who does everything for her. You’ll love it there.”

I smiled. I kept smiling even as I stood on the threshold of my apartment - their apartment - and hugged them goodbye. I smiled as I left twelve years of my life behind because a fetus had been more important than me.

Only when I came to say goodbye to Zoey had that smile faltered. Only then, I cried. Only then, I been given the freedom to grieve the life I was leaving behind. Grieve the love that had never belonged to me.

Zoey had grieved right along with me. Then she handed me a small leather bound notebook, filled with poetries she scribbled right next to me on those weekly nights we spent on her rooftops, gazing up at the stars.

I thought, for a moment, about giving her my own notebook in return. Same make, same size. Red leatherbound, just like hers. I’d filled it at the same time she did, scribbled my chaos in tandem with her poetry. It felt like the right thing to do. Like the only fair exchange.

But then I didn't.

Because she wasn’t the one who was leaving. She would still have school, still have a home, still have all the friends I was forced to leave behind. She’d still had our rooftop and many more occasions to sit there and pen down new thoughts, better words.

‘A piece of my mind,’ she’d said as she thrust the book in my hands. ‘For you to decode when you’re lonely. It’ll feel like I’m right there with you, then.”

The notebook had broken me, stole my remaining will power from me. It was a small action, so intimate in its simplicity but it almost made me turn back. Made me consider running back to my aunt and uncle, made me consider begging them to let me stay.

But I hadn’t. I just clutched the notebook to my chest and left for the airport silently. I hadn’t smiled. But I hadn’t cried either.

Now, I didn’t know how to tell Zoey that I was always lonely. That I'd consumed her almost full notebook in two days. That I’d memorized the tilt of her handwriting, the way her elegant scrawls turned to messy scribbles when her mind got too loud or when an idea had hit her in the middle of our writing session.

And I missed her now. Missed her like a phantom limb. I missed LA. I missed my parents who were, in the end, just my uncle and aunt.

“Sel?” Zoey’s voice brought me back to the present, full blown worry audible now. “Please, you gotta talk to me.”

“They’re not bad people, Zo,” I said, defending them. They deserved that much, at least for those first twelve years. “They’re just going through tough times.”

Zoey scoffed, eyes burning. “Don’t defend them. We both know what they did was unforgivable.”

I sighed. I didn’t say it to her but if they called right now and asked me to come back, told me it was all a big mistake, a nightmare, I’d forgive them without a second’s thought. I’d go crawling back.

“I’m fine, Zo,” I said. It wasn’t true and we both know that. “I’ll be fine.”

“How’s the grandmother?” She asked cautiously.

I shrugged. “She mostly just ignores me. We haven’t talked ever since I came here. It’s just her staff and this obnoxiously huge mansion.”

“God, I’m so sorry,” Zoey sighed, her expression pained. I could understand her helplessness. We were always together to guide each other through tough times and now, neither of us knew how to do this through a screen.

I shrugged once again, arranging my face into something less mopey. I didn’t want her worried for me anymore than she already was.

“Just let me turn eighteen, Sel,” she said suddenly, her spine straightening, her eyes burning with that fierce determination. “I’ll adopt you. Drag your a*s back to LA myself.”

I laughed. A real, full laugh that tore through my despair and echoed around the room.

“You do know I turn eighteen the same time you do, right?” I asked, a smile on my face. “You can’t adopt me.”

“Technically,” Zoey said, leaning forward. I recognized the gleam in her eyes, the one she always got when she was about to enter nerd mode. “I can. The court doesn’t care about the age gap as much as it cares about who’s fit to be a guardian. So yeah. It’s possible. If they think I can give you a better life, they might just let me.”

The hope her words ignited in my chest was painful. The thought of being able to go back home.

“Oh, you’ve researched it,” I teased, a smile on my face. I didn’t want her to see that I already knew the truth. That I was never coming home.

This town - full of cold houses and even colder stares - was all I had now.

“Of course I have,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face like she always did when she was trying not to sound too smug. “I’m serious, Sel.”

She wasn’t. Not really. Zoey just knew random stuff like this. It had nothing to do with me or the situation I was in.

But I allowed myself to look on the bright side of this never ending cloud of despair. I wasn’t unwanted. There was still someone who loved me, who still thought I was worth something more than just a fill in for something they never were allowed to hope for.

And maybe, for now, that was enough.

It has to be, I told myself firmly. Because Eastend and those bullies dressed in fancy clothes demanded that I do my best. And I couldn’t falter now.

“I love you, Zo,” I said, lashes wet with tears I refused to let fall.

Her eyes softened, something like pity flashing in them. I tried not to recoil.

“I love you, too, Sel,” she whispered. “You know you’ve always got me, right?”

“I know.”

And it was enough for me to survive another day. To gear up for another battle I knew I didn’t have any chance of winning.