Cinderella
Bad things happening to good people, it’s so cliché, but, more’s the pity, so true. Unfortunately, people don’t always get what they deserve. Good people never seem to get the shining rewards of which they should be assured.
I’m not talking about myself, of course. I’m not a good person. Far from it. I’m talking about Ellen.
I never knew Ellen well. No one did, really. She was quiet, a good student, but the kind who seemed to fear the attentions of others, though how true that really was I guess I’ll never know. I don’t think she had any friends. She wasn’t particularly approachable. Even when she turned up with her arm in a cast, I don’t think anyone asked what had happened.
Ellen never stood out the way so many girls in high school try to. She always wore clothes I once heard described as “frumpy.” She had glasses. The only jewelry I ever saw on her was a plain gold ring on a chain around her neck, I don’t think she ever took it off. I couldn’t tell you what she did with her hair. It’s funny, the things you remember…
Anyway, I was friends with Ellen’s sisters – stepsisters, actually, and I’m not sure ‘friends’ is the right word. We were part if the same clique, the ‘popular’ girls, always the first to wear trendy new styles, always surrounded by deluded worshiping admirers, always making fun of people like Ellen. We never knew her worth. Maybe we would have stopped if she had spoken up in her own defense, but she suffered in silence; truthfully, she probably knew it wouldn’t make any difference.
I have two lasting images of Ellen. The first is how I usually saw her, bent over a piece of paper, drawing, the ring on its over-long chain swinging a scarce inch above her desk. The second – well, I’ll come to that.
It was once of those days, you know what I mean, the normal ones that seem so ordinary as to be almost dull then – bam! – they change everything forever.
Well, maybe it wasn’t boring to start out with. Actually, it was pretty exciting.
It was May, senior year in high school. The day of our senior prom. No one spoke of anything else all day. Our talk was strictly hair, clothes, makeup, nails, and – the all-important – dates. It’s not like we had any new information to share, but we felt it important to discuss everything just in case.
Our group got ready together, we got our nails and hair done at an expensive salon, then went to Ellen’s house to dress and do make-up. Ellen wasn’t included, of course, it was her step-sisters our gang revolved around.
I remember Ellen running around doing chores for her step-mother, and helping us get ready, like a ladies’ maid in a period movie. I thought it strange, at the time, that she wasn’t getting herself ready, but it was a passing thought. I didn’t really consider her important enough to waste time thinking about.
Then the screaming started, as it always seemed to in that house. Ellen’s stepmother had a very shrill voice.
“Ignore them,” one of Ellen’s stepsisters told us breezily. “The little idiot actually wants to go to prom! Says she has to meet someone. Can you imagine that thing with a date?”
We all laughed, almost automatically, and returned to our primping.
We shared a limo to the dance hall, where we met our dates and received corsages and compliments.
Inside was a dream. Nothing unexpected, since I’d been on the Prom Committee, and I’d gone to the Junior Prom the previous year, but a dream nonetheless.
A dream that would shatter into a nightmare.
It was late, close to eleven, when the girl appeared. There were gasps of awe: she was beautiful. No one recognized her. Her dress was gorgeous, all white silk with a full, flowing skirt. For some reason, it reminded me rather strongly of a wedding gown.
The hottest guy, our Prom King, who every girl had been trying to get a dance with all night, bounded up to her as if he had been waiting. He led her out to dance.
As the vision moved past me, I saw her necklace: a chain with a plain gold ring.
For the next hour, the Prom King stayed at her side, dancing with her. She was so graceful. Everyone kept sneaking glances at the couple, wondering who she was. No one seemed to recognize the bespectacled honor student in this elegant creature. Strange, how different a girl can make herself look by changing her clothes and wearing contacts.
It was almost midnight by the time Ellen’s stepsisters realized who she was. As one, they started shrieking at her, telling her she wasn’t allowed to be there, and when they told Mother, Ellen would get worse than another broken arm. They attacked her, tearing at her hair and clothes, ripping the beautiful gown.
It finally hit me, slow as I was, that Ellen was being abused by her stepfamily, physically as well as verbally. Somehow, impossible as it may seem, I had never connected anything. Two and two had always equaled three, and it hit me hard that it was actually four.
But then everything vanished from my mind.
Ellen had a gun.
I still have no idea where it came from.
Everyone drew back from her. Her dress was in tatters, her hair straggled down her back, yanked free of its delicate twist. Her eyes were mad.
I will never forget that image of her.
“This was my mother’s dress,” she hissed into the dead silence. “My father loved her, and he loved me. Your mother killed him for that, and now you’ve killed me.”
No one even dared breathe.
It didn’t seem real.
“I’m sorry,” she said to our Prom King, the one person who wasn’t visibly shrinking away from her. Then she turned back to her stepsisters. “I hope you’re happy,” she told them. “Goodbye.”
The gunshot shattered the stillness, and the dream.
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