Not Another Cinderella Story

Chapter 10 - The Evil Queen prevails

~ With her mother standing by, the older one took the shoe into her bedroom to try it on. ~

Peyton was starting to regret his decision to interview the girls in the school to find his mystery girl. Like, seriously regretting it.

For one, he was pretty sure he'd seen some of these girls yesterday. They thought that if they put on different clothes and guessed different totally random charms that they'd miraculously guess correctly and get to go on a date with him.

Also, his mystery girl had still failed to show up.

"Lighten up, Peyton." Duncan said. "She's bound to show up eventually."

Peyton sighed. "Maybe."

"Look on the bright side." He put an arm around Peyton's shoulders. "No one can resist a pop star."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Peyton whispered under his breath.

He'd had his fair share of girls (and boys) willing to do anything for him. One time, a girl gave him a burn book of every celebrity that had ever dissed him, claiming to want to murder them all for him.

Of course the police had gotten involved, and it turned out that she had been a crazy fan. A crazy fan who had a couple actual mental disorders that could've driven her to actually murder those people, or at least try, if he wanted her to.

It sometimes scared him what lengths people would go to for recognition from other people.

"Oh, Peyton!"

Oh no.

Evelyn rounded the corner and put on her biggest paparazzi smile as soon as she saw him. He'd been avoiding her as much as possible, he didn't need her trying to change his mind about the contest.

"Hi, Evelyn," Peyton forced a smile.

She looked around at all the girls waiting in line to tell him that they were his girl and shooed them away. "Oh, you girls can go now. Peyton's already found his mystery girl." A couple actually left, but the rest were confused.

"No I haven't. What do you mean, Evelyn?" Peyton said slowly. Maybe she was going a little mental.

She showed her sparkling white teeth my way and giggled. "Why, me of course!"

He resisted the urge to scoff. After all, he had promised to himself that he would give all the girls a fighting chance, even if that meant having Evelyn embarrass herself in front of the whole school.

"Then what are the four charms on the bracelet you dropped when you ran away from me at the dance?"

There was no way that she could know the charms. He was just going to go back to interviewing random girls and she would go back to using her connections to-

"A music note, the letter E, a Teddy Bear, and a heart."

He was in shock, so was Duncan, who he'd told all four charms in case someone came up to him with the correct answer. Was she really his mystery girl?

Peyton coughed to hide his amazement. "That's correct."

She smiled. "Duh. I just can't believe that it took me so long to tell you!"

Then she practically tackled him with a hug. Evelyn Queen was not the type of girl to hug people, so this was kind of a surprise. Peyton remembered her as a heartless monster, not a carefree teen.

"Wow," he pulled away from the hug, "you just seemed so different at the dance."

She actually blushed. "Yeah, it's been, like, so long since we really talked to each other. You were gone for a couple years, I'm a totally different person. That's why I ran, I didn't think that you'd believe that it was actually me under that mask."