In My Shoes | The Music Freaks AU | A Jailey Fanfiction

Chapter 31 - The Other Side

I would sneak out of the cabin with four other girls each night, and we'd all go meet up with a hot group of boys our age at the edge of the forest. They snuck alcohol and drugs and made out with each other. After a few nights of being called lame for not participating, I finally joined in on the festivities and woke up with a pounding headache, chapped lips, and a horrible hangover nearly every morning.

I didn't care about how it was affecting my mental state, though. It was so exhilarating to finally be paid any attention, and I decided that I didn't want to be Sabrina anymore. I decided that I wanted to be Hailey. 

And the only way to do that was to get rid of her. 

For good.

When I returned to school that fall, I was another person. New clothes, new personality, new looks. I began dying my hair different colors because one of the girls at Camp Evergreen had, and I thought it was cool. When I asked my mom, she just shrugged and poured herself another glass of wine. I took that as a yes.

I was crazy jealous when I saw Hailey for the first time that school year, with Adam's arms wrapped around her, while all our friends surrounded her, talking animately about their summers. I'd realized that I had a small crush on Adam, and he seemed to barely acknowledge my existence. At the time, I was completely blinded by jealousy, and by the first period, I had already begun shit-talking Hailey.

There were eleven total people in our friendship group, and one at a time, I got each of them to turn against her. I started with the girls. Girls are easier to manipulate because their emotions tend to be stronger than boys. Or at least, society allows girls to show their feelings more outwardly than boys do. Besides, I'd need other people to back me up before I started on the boys. They didn't want drama, and that was exactly what I intended to create.

After I had the majority of the girls fooled by my lies, I moved on to the guys. I hadn't got Daisy to betray Hailey, but I didn't expect to. Daisy is too good for that. Besides, she'd been friends with Hailey for a longer time. All I wanted was for most of the people in our group to stand with me. I didn't need everyone, just the people that mattered.

After months of backstabbing, manipulating, gaslighting, and lying, Adam began to turn on her. He only did after all the guys began pressuring him to believe me. As his friends said, "Bros before hoes". 

Hailey tried talking to me several times about what I'd been saying behind her back, but I would just call her crazy and walk away. It was shitty, but my stupid, ignorant, conceited brain told me that it was the right thing to do. I told myself that she deserved it when she never ever should have had to go through what I did and said to her. 

Everyone in the group acted like nothing was different, including Adam who kept dating her, but Hailey knew. I could tell she knew. She's always hated confrontation, so she kept quiet. 

Slowly, I began to blur the lines of friendship with Adam. He'd sleepover, and one night we...did...well had...umm..." the devil's tango", and nothing was ever the same after that. Hailey knew what he was doing. She never said it, and Adam used to sneer and tell me about how Hailey asked him to not sleep over alone with me. We would call her a crazy, jealous, psycho girlfriend and laugh about it. It wasn't funny and I get sick just thinking about it.

Then there was the night of the party at Julian's house. Julian is one of Adam's close friends, and he invited nearly everyone at school besides Hailey. By this point in the year, the rumors surrounding Hailey were so bad that nearly everybody disliked her. 

I remember thinking I had so much power, and that I was so smart and so invincible. I hadn't ever had power over anything in my life, so I ignored Hailey's obvious pain. I thought it somehow made me "cool".