Page 31 of Merciless Prince
KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.
I screamed and stumbled backward. Panic sucked the air from my lungs and blurred my vision, scrambling the room around me as my knees buckled. I dropped to the tiled floor, shaking and whimpering.
When I finally looked up again, the words on the mirror were gone and the whole surface was fogged up like nothing was ever there.
Oh, god…
A fresh set of tears flooded my eyes, and I let out a quaking sob and curled into a ball.
I was officially losing my mind.
9
Shay
“You can’t hide forever, babe,”Cori said. Her voice sounded a little crackly from the less-than-stellar cell reception in Bellingham township. “I’ve told you a million times, it really wasn’tthatbad.”
I sagged on the sofa and sighed. “It was. Trust me. Yesterday I went to the bodega around the corner to get some milk, and everyone there stared at me like I was radioactive. They all knew it was me.”
I didn’t imagine it out of sheer paranoia. Everyone in the bodega—except the owner who didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything except his cat—had stared at me when I walked past them or giggled and whispered to their friends. I was the current laughingstock of the TV gossip world.
Usually, New Yorkers minded their own business and couldn’t care less about who they saw on the streets or in the stores. An A-list celebrity could walk into a Starbucks and no one would even give them a second look. Hell, I could probably even wander around in a bright orange chipmunk suit without attracting a single glance.
This was different. Over the last week, people had openly stared at me or laughed in my direction every single time I worked up the courage to leave the apartment. There were a ton of memes and nasty posts about me on Twitter, too. I ended up deleting the app off my phone three days ago after seeing a particularly heinous thread where several hundred people discussed how the only viable acting-related career option for me was porn.
Cori sighed. “Okay, well, some people are assholes. But honestly, I think a lot of people didn’t even notice what happened.”
“You’re joking, right?” I said, raising a brow.
“No. I mean, when I was watching it, I thought it was intentionally bad. Like one of those cringey ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of skits.”
I groaned. “That actually makes me feel worse.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just meant that it really wasn’t as catastrophic as you and all the internet jerk-offs are making it out to be. I actually thought you recovered really well towards the end. It was just the start that was weird and clunky. And the middle, I guess.” She paused for a few seconds. “Okay, I’m wording this all really badly and making you feel worse, so I’ll stop. But you really need to come back to Bellingham. You’ve missed every class this week and our professors are starting to ask about it. I’ve been covering for you and saying you have the flu, but everyone knows it’s not true.”
I closed my eyes and sank lower on the sofa. “I can’t face it yet.”
“Shay, comeon! You worked so hard to get into Bellingham! You can’t throw it away because of one stupid TV fuck-up.”
“I know. I just…” I trailed off and sighed. “I know I’m a total laughingstock to everyone in our classes. Every time I think about going back, I want to curl up in a ball and die of embarrassment.”
“No one is laughing at you. Everyone knows you were given the wrong script and that the showrunners insisted on you appearing on the episode without going to the rehearsals. Our Methods professor actually used it as an example of why rehearsals are so important.”
I let out a dry laugh. “So I’m a cautionary tale now.”
Cori was silent for a moment. “Shay… I mean this in the nicest possible way, and I’m saying it because I’m your best friend,” she finally said. “You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve been crying and moaning about this for a week now. If you don’t drive us all crazy, you’ll driveyourselfcrazy.”
Irritation flared in my chest. “I humiliated myself in front of four million people,” I snapped. “If you did that, I bet you’d feel sorry for yourself too.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I totallywould, and I’d fully expect you to talk some sense into me and stop me from doing it, because at some point after bad shit happens, you need to drag yourself out of the dirt, dust yourself off, and keep going. And it’s a lot easier to do that when you haven’t alienated all your friends.”
I exhaled deeply. “Okay. I guess you’re right,” I said in a grudging tone. “I’ll try.”
“Think about it this way,” Cori said in a lighter tone. “Four million people is like, 1.2 percent of the US population. So only one in every hundred people who see you on the street is even going to recognize you from SNS.”
I raised my brows. “Hm. That actually makes me feel a little better.”
“Good. Now go on Twitter and look up your name.”
