I dialled Sally Anne's number later that night after dinner while the whole family was occupied in front of the television watching Better Homes and Gardens.

"Hello?" Sally Anne's voice whispered.

"Sally Anne?" I said. 

"Oh, hey, Lavinia!" Sally Anne exclaimed. "So...see any mysterious boys named Keith lately?"

I gulped. Of course she had heard the rumours and of course she believed them. And for the first time, the rumours were true.

I chose my next words carefully. "Listen Sally – "

"Lav, please tell me it's not true. Fran says she saw him with her own eyes and you have been disappearing a lot lately..." Sally Anne sounded like she was desperately holding on and I was slipping from her fingertips as her closest friend. I sure missed Sally Anne. But I had to lie to her, no matter what.

"Keith is my...cousin, who is staying with us for a week. He's from...Scotland, and I was just showing him around our town for the last couple of days.'

Boy, was I good at this fibbing business. The lies just rolled off my tongue!

"Oh, OK, that makes a bit more sense now," Sally Anne replied, satisfied with the false information I had just thrown at her. "I guess you'll just have to explain that to Ollie tomorrow night so he won't die of jealousy on his birthday."

"Yeah, of course," I said. Now I definitely had to come, no matter what. But I still needed a gift, and a plan to sneak out of the house. "Wait, what time is it?"

"If you were at school, you would've known everything about the party," Sally Anne said. "Like how it's going to be the biggest one of the year because it'll have alcohol and all the cool kids are coming, from all over town!"

"Wow, that's pretty extreme," I commented. "So what time?"

"It starts at 7:30p.m." Sally Anne informed me. "It's not going to be like any of his earlier parties because it's his funky fifteenth and his parents are letting him have the whole house to himself."

"It's going to be a crazy night, then," I remarked.

"Oh, yeah, definitely. So if you don't come tomorrow, Ollie will hate you forever," Sally Anne told me. "And you better give him a really good present, or wear the sexiest clothes to make up for the way you've made him feel over the last two days."

"But-"

"No pressure," Sally Anne said sweetly. "Bye."

"No, don't hang up the-"

Beep.

"Phone," I sighed and put down the phone just as Mum marched into my bedroom.

"You're also banned from using the phone from now on," Mum said sternly, taking away the phone. I sighed again. Guess it's all up to me to figure out how I was going to get to the party and what I was going to wear and bring. If only I had never met Keith...

🌺🌺🌺

I was in the middle of a swirling wave of ball gowns and glittering lights and swelling violins. Everyone had a dance partner except for me. I was wearing the golden silk dress from the very first time I met my "prince." On my hands I wore the most beautiful pearl-white satin gloves, but one of them slipped off and disappeared onto the floor at the feet of someone.

My gaze slowly drifted upwards until I connected eyes with my beloved prince Keith. He smiled, leaned down and picked up the fallen glove before taking my hand and enclosing it around the glove. He then gently kissed the back of my hand and led me into the stream of bodies waltzing continuously to the music. We joined the flow and Keith didn't take his eyes off me the entire time.

Then, in the midst of an intense moment, I was suddenly separated from Keith and carried away with the swarm of people. A clammy hand snatched mine and spun me around. I cried out as Ollie leaned forward for a kiss...but I immediately slapped him with the fallen glove and escaped through a gap in the crowd.

I clutched my skirt and kicked off my slippers as I ran though the long dark corridors of the castle, moonlight pouring from the tall glass windows. I reached the courtyard where two oddly familiar ladies stood with their backs to me by the fountain. They turned and I gasped.

Francesca and Sally Anne were linking arms and wearing matching pale pink glittery ball gowns, their hair scraped back by tiny diamond tiaras. They both had the same expression of disgust and hatred.

"Your prince doesn't want you anymore, Lavinia," Francesca told me in a snobby voice.

"Yeah. He prefers me and my sister to a piece of filth like you," Sally Anne added in a stuck up spoilt princess voice.

"Sally Anne..." I faltered.

"Go live with your crazy great aunt Zelda because you don't belong here," Fran snarled.

"Nobody wants you," Sally Anne said. "And nobody loves you."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

That's when Keith emerged from the shadows, scowled at me, then locked lips with Francesca while Sally Anne cackled loudly, grabbed my shoulders and shoved me into the fountain.

🌺🌺🌺

The mauve light of dawn was blurred through tears as I scrambled out of bed and opened the window for fresh air. I felt trapped and confused in a daze of limbo between my dreams and reality. Aunt Zelda had warned me about this, and I wasn't going to succumb to the false information I was receiving from the deepest parts of my mind.

My memory came back as I inhaled the jasmines from the back garden and rubbed my eyes. Now I definitely didn't know which world was better – my dreams or real life. They were both as bad as each other.

It was still 6am and I wasn't sleepy, so I decided to go up to the attic and sit up on the roof, watching the sun rise majestically over the town. It was dark and dusty and extremely cold in the attic, as usual. I squirmed through the window and hoisted myself up, but it had apparently rained overnight, therefore the ledge was slippery and my heel slid off so I was dangling off my house from my fingertips. Oh, dear.

I peeked down and realised it was pretty high up for a single storey house, but that was because of the attic. I couldn't call my mum or dad because they would ask what the hell I was thinking and say "you're not even allowed to climb the roof anymore since the incident" where I broke a couple of roof tiles.

I shut my eyes and got ready to swing my legs up and hopefully use my bare feet to guide me up the bricks until I could safely slither through the attic window, but now it looked smaller so I had more chance of getting stuck.

My fingertips were starting to slip from sweat and my arms tingled with the lack of blood circulation and I knew if I didn't swing now I would certainly die.

The sound of a skateboard on pavement made my heart leap and disturbed me at the same time in the middle of swinging my legs and my fingers chose to betray me at the exact moment as my arms almost dropped off. Before I knew it, I was falling, with only gravity to save me, but gravity was the whole reason falling, so right after that, I died.

Well, at least it felt like I was dead, but obviously I was barely alive from the fall. I'd landed on my back and knocked my head on a flower pot while also managing to destroy the flowers in the pot, which were fragrant white roses with thorns that tore my flesh up but were also my mother's prized possession. Not that she was a gardener or anything – she just liked the way they smelled.

Pain was all I felt, pain all over my body. I groaned and lay still for a few moments, letting the agony seep into me and my brain just melt into butter.