I make myself keep smiling. Fake smile number one thousand and one. From my left, I can feel Parrish’s gaze swing to his dad. A scowl takes over his full, lush mouth, but I tell myself that I’m imagining how pretty he is, even when he’s frowning like that.
“Can I please just go to school today?” Parrish asks, and his father gives him a warning look. “Chas and I have plans this afternoon.” Caz he said. Must be short for Chasm, the guy he mentioned coming over last night. “It’s not like Mia”—and here Parrish pauses, looking me dead in the face to tell me that mistake was intentional—“oops, sorry Dakota. It’s just, we’ve all been hearing about you for years now as Mia. Mia this, Mia that. Say a prayer for Mia, light a candle for Mia.”
“Parrish,” Tess begins, stepping forward, her heels loud on the marble floors, but her inglorious stepson isn’t done with his rant. Instead, he gets up, too, moving so close to me that I can smell him again. I hate that he smells like laundry detergent and clovers with just a hint of citrus, something lemony and fresh.
He spins his milk-free phone around in his tattooed hand as he leans in toward me.
“No, you can’t go outside and ride your bike because Mia. And you can’t spend the night at a friend’s house because Mia. And you can’t live your fucking life because some girl you don’t even know got kidnapped from daycare a million years ago.”
“Parrish, that’s enough!” Tess shouts, her voice harsh and cold and deadly serious.
Without even meaning to, my hand comes up and I crack Parrish across the face. My palm, where it touches him, burns like the sunburst tattoos on the backs of his hands. As soon as he lifts his own hand to his cheek and smirks at me, I know I’ve fallen right into whatever game it is that he’s playing.
“Mia—Dakota,” Tess corrects, stepping between us. She puts her hand on my shoulder, like she thinks I might actually go for Parrish or something. “Parrish was way out of line, no doubt, and I don’t know how you were raised, but we do not resort to physical violence in this house.”
My eyes flick to hers, and I can’t help it, even though I hate these people and I don’t care what they think, and I want to go home … her words hurt. Actually, they cut me like a knife, making my already fragile heart bleed.
“Parrish, get your uniform,” Tess says after a moment, letting out a long sigh as she exchanges a look with Paul. “We’ll drop you off at the academy on the way to breakfast.”
“Are you kidding me?” I whisper, trying not to lose my temper. Maxine calls me a Red Hot—sweet and spicy in a single bite. I really do attempt to be nice and give people the benefit of the doubt, but when I blow up, I fucking lose it. That’s what he wants, I think as Parrish starts to turn away toward the front entry and the curving staircase, triumph clear in his brown gaze. He thinks he’s won, and if I don’t find a way to flip this situation, he’ll be right about that. Choking down my pride, I phrase my next sentence carefully. “Tess—” Not good enough. “Mom,” I start, trying out the word and seeing her eyes widen in surprise. Now that gives Parrish pause, and he flicks his attention back to me with another scowl building on his pretty lips. “You said we were going to breakfast as a family. This is my first official day here, and I …” My courage runs out, and the words just stop, but I think I’ve done enough.
“Oh, you’re right,” Tess says, scrubbing her hands over her face as Henry continues to cling to her leg, Kimber gapes at me, and Paul moves across the room to put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I’m so used to spoiling you, Parrish, but things are different now. You and Chasm can meet up some other time, and I’ve already asked your teachers to email home any missing schoolwork.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Parrish snaps, turning back around with fury blazing in his eyes. “This girl, this stranger, shows up here and all of a sudden, we’re supposed to rewrite our entire lives to fit hers?” The look he gives me cuts bone-deep. “By the way,” he leans in to whisper against my ear before I get a chance to pull back. “Looking at you in the daylight, I lied. You’re a two, not a three.”
My hands clench into fists as I resist the urge to shove him back against the wall. My ears are ringing so loudly that I can barely hear Paul when he barks out a reprimand to his son. Doesn’t have much effect though; Parrish just shrugs his shoulders, turns, and saunters down the hall as he slips in a pair of earbuds.
I act like I have no idea what he just said and keep my lips pressed tightly together. It’s pretty obvious at this point that nobody in this family is on my side. Back home—at my real home—everybody was. And I was on theirs.
Despite being a colossal fucking asshole, Parrish was right about one thing: we are strangers, and I have a feeling we’ll never be anything more than that.
I don’t expect the limousine. I mean, I really don’t expect it. Yes, I knew Tess and Paul were wealthy, but like, I thought they were upper middle-class wealthy, not like celebrity wealthy or tech mogul wealthy. Or maybe the white stretch limo is just a rental, I don’t know.
Either way, back home, when we need to seat eight people in a car, we drive my grandmother’s navy-blue minivan with the green side door. Someone backed into it once at the mall, and so my grandma used her insurance check to have the door replaced, but didn’t bother with a new paint job. She put the rest of the money into Maxine’s college fund instead.
Somehow, I end up sitting next to Parrish, our legs pressed precariously close together as the car climbs the steep hill behind the house, leading away from the water and toward the small town of Medina. It’s a Seattle suburb, on the opposite shore of Lake Washington, and home to gazillionaires like Bezos and Gates.
It’s pretty much one of the last places on earth I want to be right now, especially wearing a t-shirt that literally says Eat the Rich on it. I pick at the shirt with my fingertips as I glance in Parrish’s direction. He’s wearing a hoodie, so I guess I’m okay on the dress code situation. But still … telling absurdly wealthy people that I think their wealth is scraped off the backs of the poor is not a game I want to play today.
“Did you see the reporters?” Amelia asks, turning around to peer out the rear window of the car. “There were hundreds of them!”
I cringe a little, but she isn’t wrong. Once again, there was a horde of reporters just outside the property gates, cameras rolling, flashes exploding against the blacked-out windows. It’s why I scrambled into the back of the car so quickly and ended up sitting next to Parrish. He barely looks at me, staring down at his phone and typing out angry messages that I can’t read because he angles the screen away from me.
Instead, I lean back and stare down at my own phone, pretending like I’m just as engrossed in it as everyone else. Tess stares at me while pretending she’s doing anything but gazing at me in desperation and wonder, but everyone else in that car, they’re absorbed in phone la-la land the same as Parrish.
I find it a little weird, a little cold and impersonal, but I decide to use it to my advantage.
Tell us what’s going on! We miss you!
I smile at Sally’s text, and then frown again as I scroll through the dozens of pictures that Nevaeh’s posted today. She has a terrible habit of chronicling every single thing she consumes—granola bars, cans of soda, yesterday’s pizza leftovers. Mixed into all of that, there’s a selfie of her and Ryan snuggled up in the hallway together. Apparently, he asked her to be his date to the party and she agreed which sort of pisses me off because she knew I had a crush on him. She also knows you’re never coming back, so it doesn’t matter for shit.
I turn my phone off and stare out the window.
If I were ever curious what the first level of Dante’s hell might look like, well, I’ve found it.
“So, Dakota,” Paul says, drawing my attention away from depressing thoughts and over to his chiseled face. He’s clearly had work done, but probably from another surgeon of his caliber. I’ll admit, he has a strong chin and high cheekbones, masculine without loo
king Neanderthal. My eyes flick briefly back in Parrish’s direction as I trace the family resemblance in his face.
He notices me looking and then smirks, tapping something out on his phone that I’m very clearly meant to see.
Get lost, Dakota. I don’t do incest.
Bristling, I turn back to Paul. He’s holding Tess’ hand, their fingers curled together in a way that makes me think they really do love each other. That’s good, I guess, considering their home is as warm as an ice cavern, and their kids … Ben and Amelia seem okay. Henry is just super shy. But Kimber? She’s tucked into the corner beside Tess, her own earbuds blasting something so god-awful that it makes Parrish’s music choices from last night seem appealing.
“Are you excited for the interview?” Paul asks, finishing his question as my mind ping pongs around the limo and the million new things I’m supposed to be taking in and observing. I blink at him in confusion as Tess throws a silent, angry couple-look his way, clearly communicating that he wasn’t supposed to be mentioning any such thing.
“Interview?” I ask, and Tess gives me an apologetic sort of look in response as Henry clings to her like he’s three years old instead of six-going-on-seven. She’s his mother in a way she’ll never be mine—even if I wanted her to be, which I don’t. There’s a gap between us, an emotional chasm that I see she’s desperate to cross, even if she has to build a new bridge, plank by plank. Personally, I’d rather just cut my losses and fly back to New York.
“Well, honey, as you know, we’ve been asked to appear on multiple talk shows—”
“Which I told you I wasn’t interested in,” I respond, feeling panicky. I briefly recognize that Parrish has popped out a single earbud in order to listen in on the conversation. “You said I didn’t have to do any of them.”
The last thing I want is to talk about how it happened, how I found out that I was a ‘missing child’, a kidnapped child, a child who didn’t belong where she felt at home, and a child who doesn’t belong where she’s legally bound to stay.
My mind flashes back to that awful, awful night, the one that changed the entire course of my existence.
It was a Tuesday, and I remember that it was raining like fucking crazy. Sally and Nevaeh were over, and we were all sitting on the couch, peeling off wet soaks and complaining about the weather. Grandma Carmen made us popcorn on the woodstove, and then she and my grandfather disappeared upstairs into their room.
Nevaeh insisted—insisted—we binge watch this new show about unsolved crimes. I wanted to start a new K-drama, and Sally was insisting on a feel-good rom-com. Somehow, Nevaeh got her way (like she always does) and we ended up huddled together, sharing half of a joint that she stole from her brother’s dresser drawer and doing our best to blow smoke out the window.
When episode five came on, talking about Tess Vanguard and her best-selling true crime and thriller novels, I was excited. Before all of this shit happened, my biological mother was my favorite author. But then we started watching, and the pictures of little Mia Patterson began appearing on the screen.
That’s when I started to feel funny, like someone had just scrambled my insides with a whisk, like I was having the worst period cramps known to womankind. Then Grandma Carmen came down to get a glass of water, and I remember turning over my shoulder to ask her something. Whatever it was, I have no idea. The second I saw the look on her face, I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“Can we pull over, please?” I ask, realizing that Tess has been talking to me for some time, and I have literally no idea what she’s saying.
“Pull over?” Paul echoes, exchanging a look with Tess.
“I might throw up,” I whisper, and Kimber makes a sound of disgust from across the limo. Apparently, she, too, has removed an earbud in order to eavesdrop. “I can’t breathe.”
“Alright, alright, stay calm,” Paul says, getting that don’t worry, I’m a doctor tone in his voice. You know the one, where a licensed physician is in the room and they just suddenly know everything there is to know about anything related to the human body, mind, or soul. “Take this.” He passes me an empty ice bucket—I’m guessing it’s used to hold champagne when the limo’s being used for something less depressing than a missing child family breakfast—and encourages me to lean over and put it between my knees. “Just keep your face near the bucket and try to breathe.”
Parrish says nothing, staring down at me like this whole scenario is more an annoyance than anything else. Then he goes back to texting on his phone, and I can’t help it, I throw up.
“Oh my god, gross!” Kimber shouts as I dry heave into the damn thing. I haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, so not much comes up, but it still doesn’t make for a great first impression on my new family. My shiny, beautiful new family with their mansion in one of the richest zip codes in the United States, their horrible sterile box of a house, and their limo filled with hateful people.
My eyes squeeze shut, and I struggle to pull my thoughts together.
“Grandma?” I asked, turning fully around and putting my elbows on the back of the sofa. “Are you okay?”
She stood there for several seconds, just staring at the screen, her eyes telling me she was seeing something that she’d give anything to unsee. Anything. Her soul, her heart. Just to make it go away.
“Go get your grandfather,” she told me, moving around the couch to grab the remote. Her hands shook so badly that it took her three tries to press pause. When she glanced back and realized I hadn’t moved, she snapped at me in a way I’ve never seen before. “Go, Dakota, now!”
I scrambled up from the sofa as Sally and Nevaeh exchanged looks, and raced up the stairs. In my mind, I begged the universe to make everything be okay. I’d thought for a second there that my grandma was having a heart attack or a stroke or something.
Instead, it was a surprise the likes of which none of us would soon forget.
When I open my eyes, I find every member of the Vanguard family staring at me like I’ve sprouted horns. Well, all of them except for Parrish. He’s got his earbuds in again, and is typing on his phone like this is a normal Tuesday, like my roots weren’t just ripped from the soft, fertile earth and left to die in the sun.
“Let’s … not talk about the interview just now,” Tess suggests, grabbing a cold bottle of water from the mini fridge and offering it up to me along with a tin of Altoids. I take the items, trying to see them as positives—she’s just trying to help—versus the negatives that I really believe they are—don’t make a scene, here take these mints so no one will know your weakness.
Sipping the water and popping the mints helps, and I manage to make it to the club without further incident.
There are no reporters there as the building sits on a huge piece of private property, but there might as well be. Every person and their grandmother wants to talk to us, to touch my arm or my hand like they can somehow glean my personality from an unwanted caress. More than one of them laughs at my t-shirt, and an older man with salt and pepper hair calls it cute.
I’ve never hated my life more than I do in that exact moment.
After breakfast, when I’m sure things can’t possibly get any worse, Tess puts her arm around me and smiles.
“Did you enjoy the club?” she asks, and I nod, because what else can I do? To be honest, I hardly remember what it even looked like I was so disoriented. “Good. We come here a lot; it’s a great place to meet people.” She pauses for a moment in thought and then smiles again. “Although there is a dress code. Today, you were the guest of honor, but next time, you’ll want to really look the part.”
I say nothing.
What could I possibly say to that?
My eyes flick to Parrish and the ember in my belly sparks with heat as we glare at each other.
“Parrish was wearing a hoodie,” I manage to choke out, just before I move to climb back into the limo after him.
“Oh, well, official Whitehall academy gear is alway
s welcome.” Tess beams as she gestures for me to get into the car. Even though it means sitting next to my new stepbrother again, I oblige.
“Hope you’re ready,” Parrish tells me when it’s just me and him in the back of the limo. He doesn’t bother to look my way or even acknowledge the fact that my hands are shaking, just keeps scrolling on his damn phone with an inked thumb. “Because it only gets worse from here on out.”
And I hate that he could not have been anymore right about that.
The next day, everyone goes back to work and school like I don’t exist. Even Tess who’s decided to work from home has to sit down and answer some emails from her publisher. Meanwhile, I’m left to wander the cavernous halls of the ice palace by myself, my phone clutched in my hand, desperate for any connection to home.
But my grandparents still won’t respond to my messages. Maxine is busy with a research paper. Sally and Nevaeh are in class. And I’m just … floating. Social media is a nightmare for me right now because everyone knows what happened, and it’s all they want to talk about. So I just wander from room to room for a while, discovering that Kimber leaves her bedroom door locked which is just bizarre.
Parrish’s, on the other hand, is wide open.
I slip inside, but just for a moment, just to look around. I’m aware that I’m being a bit of a creeper here, snooping through other people’s rooms, but also … Parrish gave me a ‘fuckability rating’ so screw him.
Anyway, there’s a king-size bed, freshly made and decked out in all black linens. A few of the decorative pillows have designs on them that look like old-fashioned Sailor Jerry tattoos, and there’s even a desk with a sketchbook, colored pencils, and an iPad. The iPad is locked, but the sketchbook is filled with beautiful drawings, some of them in color and some of them in black and white.
Holy shit, did he draw these? I wonder, studying one with an anatomical heart pierced through with an arrow. The detail work on each piece is insane, and the style sort of reminds me of the tattoos I saw on Parrish’s wrists and hands. On the edge of the desk, there’s a portable tattoo kit, a box of disposable black gloves, and a shit-ton of ink. There’s even a fake hand which is creepy as fuck.
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