BELLA CINDERELLA

Bella cinderella (Get your party on chapter seven)

     Then he leaned in and for a moment, Jewel thought he was either trying to bite her or kiss her. He kissed her.

     It wasn’t what Jewel expected. How was this dude dating or boyfriend material if Jewel didn’t feel a real connection? 

      As it turned out, the kiss wasn’t whatever Marco expected either. Jewel and Marco looked at each other a moment and realised they made better friends.   

     “So you’re not?”

     “What?”

     “A vampire?”

    “Are you kidding? I learned some powerful magic from my nanny but I’m not a sucker! I only came to Venice Beach Hall School because it has a good music program.”

    “Oh.” 

     Jewel could hear Vanity screaming in the distance.

    “You better release her.”

     When Jewel returned to the ball room, Huck and Ruby were laughing and dancing the night away. By then, the adults had moved to the pool party and all the (invited) kids from school had the ballroom to themselves. They were jumping up and down to the beat.

      That’s when Jewel noticed him.

      Riff, the lone guy from Venice Beach Hall, dressed head to toe in black. Illuminated by party lights, he looked way too cool to join in. Jewel wondered why he was even there. He stood next to a guitar in a case and sipped a red drink waiting for the DJ to finish his set.  Then she realised, Riff was the music, the ‘after-DJ’ music. It was close to midnight when he stepped on stage. 

    Riff noticed Jewel from across the room.

    How could he not? Jewel was the girl he’d spoken to once. He tried to smile at her a few times and she’d smiled in return, but he got the feeling she never really noticed him. Jewel was the one girl in school he’d been trying to get close to all week. He could never just walk up to her and tell her the truth.

     It was kind of ridiculous that he couldn’t speak to her easily, but unless he was performing on stage, he was shy. At school, he wore glasses and read a lot and kept to himself.  On stage he could be anything. He stopped being what he was, shy.

     In the future, he wanted to form a band. At the moment he played mostly at birthday parties and weddings but he had dreams, big dreams.   

     It was almost midnight, time for him to play ‘Happy Birthday’ to the spoilt tramp of a stepsister who had gone outside with that equally self-important Marco dude. Riff wanted to play something wild, a song everyone would remember, something by some of the famous bands he listened to; but he knew that would get him thrown out and he wanted to stay close to Jewel. He’d never met anyone like her. He could hear her heart, her blood thumping in her pure veins.

     Meanwhile, all anyone wanted to hear was, ‘Happy Birthday’. Riff’s hearing was more than acute, it was perfect. He found it hard to sing or play an ‘off’ note.

    He put down his drink, walked onstage at midnight and played with abandon.

    Everyone stopped what they were doing to listen. Riff was so good. He made ‘Happy Birthday’ sound like Mozart – if Mozart had composed in the twenty-first century.

    Everyone except Vanity (who was busy trying to remove weeds that kept growing around her shoes) was stunned.   

     As the song ended, all the party guests could hear Vanity and her sisters arguing. 

   “He was ours too…”

   “You never should have monopolized him…”

   “How could we expect any better?”

    “You are our sister and should show some loyalty!”

    “Really? Game on sister!”

    “Game on, then!”

     Vanity had finally managed to remove most of the weeds and started throwing them at Patience who in turn covered Charity with them. The Minchin sisters were physically fighting in the garden and creating ‘quite a scene’. Miranda Minchin tried to stop them until they all bundled into the pool, thrashing hysterically.

    Meanwhile, the film crew from Vamps Gone Wild filmed everything. Miranda would hate the publicity, Jewel realized. Her father was sure to see how badly behaved they all were. Maybe he’d finally come to his senses. Maybe, but Jewel wasn’t holding her breath. She’d miss Venice Beach High when she returned to her real home. But until then, she’d get to see Riff every day. Now that was something worth waking up for.

    The guests began to leave after Patience and Vanity started throwing their rocks and shoes at each other. It wasn’t a sign of appreciation. Some missed and shattered the ball room windows. Then the lights went out because Charity had ripped the wires.   

    “I saw him first!” Patience screamed.

    “The prince is mine; we’re going to prom together!”

    “Are you kidding? He’s totally mine!”

    The voices of the spoilt girls could be heard across Venice Beach as Marco tried desperately to climb over the wall. He wondered how in the world they had come up with the idea that he was a prince? Sure, his family were rich but they’d been trying to buy titles for years – it had never happened.