Chapter Six: Miss Beautiful
791 Words
Front view, side view, back view — however you looked at Princess Zimsome, the resemblance to her father's foreign blood was impossible to miss. It made people stop and stare, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Even the Americans on campus, spoiled for choice when it came to beauty, seemed to find something in her that outdid anything homegrown — and it wasn't only her face. She was sharp, too, the kind of sharp that made the compliments come even faster.
You're beautiful. Pretty. Cute. Gorgeous. She heard some version of it every single day, and every single day she answered with the same thing: a small, practiced smile and nothing else.
"Guys, later," she said, cutting through her friends' chatter as she headed toward her next class.
"Later?" Abby echoed.
"Yeah. As usual." She didn't slow down. "Let's drink at the bar."
"Haha! I got it," Cleai called after her.
It was the same thing, almost every night — Princess drowning herself in liquor like it was a second major. She'd come home too drunk to change out of her uniform, drop straight onto her bed, and sleep like the dead. People always said alcohol made life easier to swallow. She was starting to think they weren't wrong.
"Yes, Dada," she said one afternoon, changing into house clothes as Sanje's voice carried from the hallway.
"Someone dropped this off for you." Sanje held out an envelope.
Princess opened it, and the words Invitation to Hollywood leapt out at her before she could stop her own face from reacting.
Sanje saw it anyway.
"I don't want you becoming some actress." Her voice sharpened instantly. "Focus on your studies. I want you to be like me — a businesswoman. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Dada." Princess said it easily enough, though what Sanje didn't know — not yet — was that she'd already been working as a model on the side, right up until the day they discovered it and shut it down for her.
"Take this," Sanje said instead, holding out a small sachet.
Princess looked at what was in her hand and understood, in the space of one breath, exactly what it was and exactly what she was being asked to do with it.
"I can do whatever you want, Dada," she said anyway.
This was what her life had become, ever since Sanje sent her to study in America. Whatever Sanje wanted, Princess gave — even when giving it cost her something she couldn't name out loud.
The next morning, she woke up with her skull splitting, the noise of the dorm hallway outside somehow unbearable.
"Ouch." She pressed a hand to her head, still lying flat. "Good thing it's Saturday tomorrow."
Her phone rang before she could even close her eyes again.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Ate. Kumusta ka na diyan? We miss you so much," Prince said on the other end.
"Miss you too. I'm always fine — don't worry about me. How are you?"
"I'm okay. Me and Nanay Sioning, and — oh, thank you, Ate, for the money you sent us."
"You're welcome. As long as you keep studying hard. Use it for school." Someone knocked on her door. "Ahmm — I'll call you later, okay? Bye."
"Cess. Come outside," Sanje's voice called from the hallway.
She came home early that night — for once, hadn't had a single drink, though she wasn't sure if that was her own willpower or something Hardin had said that stuck with her longer than she'd expected. She took the shortcut through the back of the mansion straight to her room and lay down, but sleep wouldn't come. Something in the house felt wrong tonight.
Bang! Bang!
Gunfire, somewhere outside.
Tok! Tok! Tok!
She sat up. "Who's that?"
"Cess. Come here."
"Yes, Dada." Her heart was already pounding harder than it had any business doing.
Earlier that same week, back at school, she'd been late again — worn down from modeling shoots she still wasn't supposed to be taking, though somehow her grades hadn't slipped, not once.
"You're late, Miss Beautiful." Hardin dropped into the seat beside her — Filipino-American, raised in Manila but schooling in the States now, because that was what his parents wanted for him.
"Hardin, I'm a hardworking person, so I—"
"Yeah, I know. But you look stressed. Give yourself a break sometimes."
"Of course I do. Hanging out with friends, having fun with them, and—"
"And drowning yourself in alcohol." His voice dropped, the teasing gone out of it.
"That's not good for you. I mean it — I'm actually concerned."
"Thanks for your concern. Go back to your seat now."
"Alright." He stood, unhurried. "Just remember — I'm always here."
- Writer
