Cool Beans Novels & Stories

Hailey May Collins is the school's cool girl; Smart, confident, mysterious, and intimidating. Everything that she does is admired by everybody, even by the way she walks or talks. Everybody worships her. But her cool-girl personality is nothing but a mask to hide her true self - a nervous and paranoid teen who's constantly worried about her social status. But even though she's having a hard time putting on her mask, she would gladly play along until after her senior year. That is until she discovered the secret of the Student Council students, whose real identities are The Pandorgriffs. The most popular girl and boy band of the year. Now, everywhere she goes, they follow her like a stalker. But what’s worse than having famous stalkers? It's when they find out about her secret as well.

My mom tends to speak the truth no matter what the occasion it is. When my boyfriend visits our family, Mom makes small talk with him happily. "Tiffany once contracted HPV when she was in her second year of college. Please don't judge her for that. Haha!" When my friend comes over to hang out with me, Mom leans in to take a closer look at her face. "With those high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, you've got 'short life' written all over your face! I guess only Tiffany is willing to hang out with you." Later on, I finally nailed a job as a governmental employee after putting in hard work for half a year. During the background check, Mom starts running her mouth about the "truth" again. "I think there's something wrong with Tiffany's moral ethics. First of all, she loves lying. Second of all, she's disrespectful to me. If your department does end up hiring her, you've gotta be careful." Undoubtedly, I get disqualified because of her words. That's when I get into a huge fight with Mom. But that woman has the audacity to talk back to me. "All I did was speak the truth about you! The fact that your department doesn't want you means that you lack the capability! Don't ever think that you get to pin the blame on me!" I fall silent at her words. Since Mom loves telling the truth that much, I might as well use the truth to destroy her.

I drag my suitcase out of the airport and walk straight into a massive billboard. "Welcome back, Jennifer Palmer, the great love of Ivan Olsen's life." The entire Internet praises him for having waited faithfully for ten years. A star-struck reporter shoves a microphone in my face and asks, "Ms. Palmer, are you moved that Mr. Olsen has remained celibate for you all this time?" I blink in confusion at her question. "Who's Ivan?"

I'm a privileged only child hailing from the wealthy coastal region. In fact, my family has just received three brand-new apartments from the government after they've bought up our old property for redevelopment. On Christmas Eve, my cousin, Patrick Snyder, brings his girlfriend, Kelsey Randall, back for dinner. She stares at me for a while before gasping in shock. "Hang on, you look really familiar! You must be 69goddess, right? I saw your videos on a porn site before! You really have an amazing figure!" The atmosphere at the dining table goes eerily silent at that moment. My relatives all shoot me disgusted looks simultaneously. Dad is so pissed that he tosses his newly-shelled crab away. Meanwhile, Mom can barely catch her breath after hearing the news. Patrick shields Kelsey from me while looking disdainful. "You bring nothing but shame to the family, Jillian! Don't go around telling others that you know me from now on!" I wipe my hands with a napkin slowly. Then, I shoot a wide smile at the pretentious Kelsey. "Have you forgotten that I'm the one performed the gender-affirming surgery on you, Kelsey?"

For as long as I can remember, my family and I have been living in an underground basement that's completely shut off from the outside world. My parents have told me that the zombie apocalypse is terrorizing the outside world. The air is completely plagued with the zombie virus, and we'll die if we ever leave the basement. In order to save the supplies—which are already dwindling, to begin with—I've starved myself to the point I'm all skin and bones despite being only 18 years old. When I realize that there's only one last can of food left, I leave behind a suicide note. "Mom, Dad, now there's one less mouth to feed. You'll last a few more days." After that, I slit my wrist right away. Once I'm dead, my soul phases through the thick and heavy metal door. Bright sunlight illuminates the entire world. It's a beautiful, peaceful world filled with greenery. I can even hear birds chirping in the distance. Mom, Dad, and a bunch of people are throwing a barbecue party on the lawn. The mouth-watering smell of food being grilled permeates the air. So, it turns out that the zombie apocalypse is just a lie that's designated to trap me inside the fortress. I'm the only one who has died in this sunny, peaceful world.

When my wife, Rebecca Walsh, misses my chemotherapy session for the 99th time, I come across a post on social media. "I won my lover's heart with a kidney. She will surely love me to death, right?" The attached photo shows a couple kissing on a street in Targon. The woman has a small heart-shaped scar on her neck. What a coincidence—it is exactly the same as Rebecca's. The woman who nearly dies for me falls in love with someone else so easily. The comments below are full of encouragement from strangers. "Man, you're so brave. Wishing you everlasting love." "If I were the woman, I would love you to death." I leave a comment too. "I hope you are together until you are in the depths of hell, you cheating pair. As for me, the husband, I will step aside to make way for you." One minute later, the post disappears. It doesn't matter. I post on my own account. I write, "After I spent three years battling cancer, my wife fell in love with the man who's supposed to be the kidney donor." The attached images are our marriage certificate and the same photo of them kissing from earlier.

Eight years ago, my first love, Zyla Garcia, dumped me. Right in front of me, she threw herself into the arms of a rich scion named Brett Salway. She said condescendingly, "Kieran, you asked me to wait for you for three years. But how many three years does a woman have?" I begged her desperately, but she remained unmoved. Brett even ordered someone to pin me to the ground and force me to finish a bottle of red wine before letting me leave. "You should thank me, Kieran. Otherwise, you would never have the chance to drink such expensive wine in your life!" Brett sneers. I watched as they got into a luxury car and drove off. Eight years later, I am one of the most powerful figures in this city—and I run into them again.

Late one night after getting off work, I was scrolling through my company group chat when a colleague shared a piece of news. The headline was horrifying. "Night-Shift Courier Murdered During Delivery, Police Suspect Robbery." I zoomed in on the crime scene photo that had been partially pixelated, and a chill ran straight down my spine. Lying in a pool of blood, the courier who had been hacked to death was unmistakably me. I had scrolled into news of my own death. Almost at the same time, my delivery app began vibrating violently. "Urgent pickup! Destination: Unit 704 Hawthorne Ridge Apartments, Building 7. Time limit: 15 minutes. Penalty for timeout: Death." As I stared at the notification that read "Pickup failed three times", the searing pain of my brutal death surged through my body. So that was it. I had already died three times. When I forced open the half-closed security door of 704 for the fourth time, a thin delivery envelope lay quietly inside. I tore it open. A photograph slipped out. It was a picture of my dismembered body. The timestamp showed tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. On the back was a single line written in fresh blood: "Next time, remember to pick it up on time." At that moment, the red indicator light on the hallway surveillance camera suddenly went dark. I looked up. From the ventilation opening in the exact same spot, a single eye was staring straight at me. The mole at the corner of that eye was identical to mine.

My mother-in-law needed blood when she fell down the stairs and suffered major blood loss. The doctors were worried that the blood bank did not have enough of her blood type, so I called Rebecca Chilton on the phone to get her to hurry to the hospital to help her mother. Fortunately, she arrived on time, and my mother-in-law was saved and was no longer in danger. Before I could relax, I found out another piece of bad news. When Rebecca was not by his side, her severely depressed crush jumped off the building. It happened not long after she left for the hospital. Rebecca was filled with regret and blamed me for everything, so she pushed me off the building as well. When I opened my eyes again, I found out I had been reborn. This time, I decided to respect her choice, but she ended up regretting it instead.

When I was selecting a marriage partner, I saw the chat. [Girl, don’t pick Max Lawrence. He’s a mama’s boy. If you marry him, his mother would make your life miserable.] [Choose Daniel Quinn. He may be an illegitimate son who isn’t valued now, but he’ll rise to power and become the head of the Quinn family.] In my past life, I had trusted those comments and chose Daniel. After we got married, he abused me. I had three miscarriages in a row. By the last miscarriage, I could not take it anymore and ran back home. There, I saw my father’s illegitimate daughter, Pearl Sullivan. She had married Max in my place. With my father’s arm in her hand, she had pointed at me while saying, “Mindy, why do you always make Daniel angry? You’re so immature.” My father looked unhappy. “You’re already married, yet you keep coming back home. Send her back.” They sent me back to the Quinn family. Daniel beat me to death. After I returned to the past, I saw those misleading comments again. I was not going to sit back and accept my fate again.