Darling Charming: Finally Extraordinary

17. The Ever After Players

There were some kids staring at me.

I'd been heading to Daring's dorm to pick up the Hero Training notes I'd let him borrow earlier this week. I just wanted my notes back, but when I exited the elevator at Daring's floor, they were there. Some wore judgmental expressions, some were checking me out (to which I responded with a fierce eye roll), and some walked the line between the two. I figured it my best option to pretend I didn't notice or didn't care.

Because honestly, I didn't care.

I did care, however, when I started to leave and one of them followed me.

"Hey," a nameless boy said to me.

"Hey?" I glanced at him in the corner of my vision and kept on moving. I didn't recognize him enough to remember his name, but he did seem vaguely familiar- perhaps a friend of Daring's, Dexter's, or Luke's.

"You're that girl Montague talks about all the time. The one he broke up with his girlfriend for," the dude said, casually, as if it was something I should already know. I could then make the assumption that he was one of Luke's acquaintances, mostly in the way he referred to him as "Montague", as if calling him by his given name was too serious. I'd learned enough about Luke since coming to Ever After High to know that.

I stopped walking. "Excuse me, what?" I tried my best to stay calm and keep the emotion from affecting the color of my cheeks or the tone of my voice. It was harder than I thought it would be.

The kid shrugged and nodded, smiling an all-knowing smile.

I decided that it gave me the strong urge to slap him. So far this conversation was already shaping up to be quite the test of my tolerance.

I narrowed my eyes at him, then continued to walk to my brother's dorm. I pretended that it didn't matter to me and that I didn't believe him, when in truth, his words had shaken me. It's understandable that Luke would talk about me all the time, as he's my friend and I seem to have that effect on everyone I meet, but the reason he broke up with Anna? I'm not so sure.

"And why should I believe you?" I added when I noticed the kid was not giving following me around a rest. Clearly, he was expecting more of a reaction out of me. There wasn't one, and there wasn't going to be one.

He shrugged. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

I stopped a moment later as we neared Luke's room. "Good question. Why don't I?" I smiled and winked at the kid, and as I began to change course toward his door, the kid made a beeline back to the elevators where his friends waited. He must've not wanted to be around if I told Luke where I'd gotten my information from, given that I even wanted to confront him on it. I wasn't sure that I wanted to. Or maybe he wanted to report back to his friends that a legendary Charming princess winked at him. I should've, however, gotten the name of this kid who'd just spilled the beans to me.

Luke broke up with Anna.

And that I believed.

There was no reason not to.

It'd only happened the night before, and here this kid had already known. I knew Dallas, Bella, and I were the only ones who knew. So either it was planned in advance, or he'd been contemplating it for a long time.