“Shall we then?” she asks cheerily, dressed in a short-sleeved beige suit jacket and matching slacks. With her hair coiffed and her makeup subtle but expertly applied, she looks like a senator or something. I can tell by her facial expression that she isn’t happy with my outfit today anymore than she was happy with the one from my first day here.
God.
It’s only been five and a half weeks since I arrived on a plane to SeaTac airport, situated in business class beside a woman who was a virtual stranger. Who still is a stranger. I feel like I know Parrish better than Tess. My first time on an airplane, and it wasn’t for any of the reasons I’d dreamed.
“Shall we take your car?” Tess asks me cheerily, plucking the key fob from the hook in the hall and giving me an overly bright smile. She’s trying too hard. Or maybe I’m not trying hard enough. There are no advice columns for how to deal with a situation like this. Trust me: I Googled it. The only things I found were articles about Alexis Manigo aka Kamiyah Mobley—a girl with nearly the exact same situation as me—and a book titled The Face on the Milk Carton.
Neither of those things helped.
I still feel alone and weird when I’m at home. School isn’t so bad now that I have Danyella and Lumen. Since neither of us has any real dating prospects—Parrish does not count as one, even if I were inclined to want him to be—Lumen and I have let the rumor that we’re going out hold tight. It keeps my social status up so that people generally leave me alone. And by people, I mostly mean Parrish.
“Sounds great,” I reply back with as much carefully calculated perk as I can manage. Together, we get into the BMW and Tess proceeds to give me a quickie driving lesson. After that, we leave the garage and I’m disappointed to see that the reporters are back, although substantially less in number. The best thing for drama is to remove the kindling from the fire. People get bored quick and move on just as fast.
As we drive, I play with my phone, just so I don’t have to absorb the awkward silence in the car.
There’s a text from an unknown number.
You got a B on your Japanese test, huh? Not bad, Little Sister.
A smile tilts my lips before I get control of it. Tess keeps flicking her eyes my way, like she wants to say something but doesn’t know how. I’d rather not try to find a way to explain that I’m grinning at a text from Kwang-seon ‘Chasm’ McKenna.
I program Parrish’s BFF into my phone and then try to think up a witty reply. When nothing comes, I send a meme that shows a girl perched on a boy’s chest like he’s a computer chair, her mic on and her screen showing a record number of kills.
He responds with a string of skull emojis and a pic of himself giving the middle finger.
I’m not entirely sure where we’re at as far as friendship goes, but this is better than the quips we were throwing at each other for the first few weeks. I guess he is sort of a nice guy, when he isn’t being hypocritical and trying to kiss me by a lake that he seems to own. Grr.
Turning the volume down on my phone, I very quickly pull up Parrish’s TikTok just to see if the video he made about me is still there. It is, and I frown, closing the app quickly. I’m not entirely sure why I thought he’d remove it, but I’m disappointed anyway.
“We could shop for things for your room today,” Tess suggests as I wonder why shopping is the only thing she seems to want to do with me. I’m not much for hikes, but I’d prefer if she asked me on one. Or we could watch a movie together. My grandpa and I always cooked together, but … it seems like that’s not Tess’ thing. Nor is gardening, another activity I enjoyed doing with my family. We could hang out in the pool together. Hit up a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Or do ‘the Kindle thing’ that Maxine and I still do together: pick a genre of book and set a fifteen-minute timer. We have to come up with five new titles we’ve never seen before, and then we each get to pick what the other person is reading and come up with a review. “I saw some really cute things at Pottery Barn Teen.”
Pottery Barn.
If ever there was a store that was further away from my vibe …
“Once my stuff from home gets here, I won’t need anything else,” I say, trying to keep the mood light. “My grandma does woodworking, so the bed is handmade. And my grandpa likes quilting so—”
“The Banks’,” Tess corrects, and I pause midsentence to look over at her. “The Banks like woodworking and quilting.” Her hands tighten on the wheel as she releases her breath and that trapped feeling comes over me again, like I wish I could unzip my skin and leave Mia Patterson behind forever. I only want to be Dakota Banks. That’s it. “Mr. Banks quilts?” Tess queries, like the idea surprises her.
“The shape of someone’s genitals doesn’t really affect if they can quilt or not,” I reply, and Tess heaves yet another sigh. She’s a conservative woman, for sure, and I would call myself … well, I have no idea what I am. Moderate, I guess. Free-floating might even be more accurate.
“Yes, well, it’s not a traditionally male activity,” Tess continues, and I wet my lips. The need to argue with her is so intense that I feel my skin aching.
“Does something about the penis stop a man from quilting? Like, does it physically stop him?”
Tess’ hands tighten even more on the wheel, and we end up sitting in silence for the rest of the drive. We climb out of the car and Tess leaves it to the chauffeur as I examine the only other teen girl that I see at Whitehall Gardens. She, too, looks like a senator. Everyone here does. Maybe most of them are?
We find ourselves seated at a table near the window overlooking the green. Old men play golf while we sit and each pretend to be absorbed in our menus. The fare is not what I’m used to.
“What is achiote rice?” I ask, wondering why every other item on the menu has goat or blue cheese crumbles on it.
“It has …” Tess starts, putting her menu down and beaming across the table at me in that way of hers, the one that both makes me feel inadequate and sad at the same time. “An earthy, peppery flavor. It’s used a lot in Mexican and Caribbean cuisine.” And also, the snootiest country club known to man, apparently.
“Roasted mahimahi with mojo shrimp and achiote rice it is,” I say, folding the menu and putting it aside. The waiter comes as if summoned and whisks it away, placing my cherry soda in front of me.
Tess and I stare at each other.
Awkward silence, my name is Dakota Banks, I think, chewing on my lower lip and searching desperately for something to say. I’m the sort of person who can’t stand the quiet stretches, who always has to fill it with chatter.
“Whitehall has a theatre program,” I offer up, hoping to spark a conversation that we can both enjoy. Whether or not Tess likes musical theatre, she’s clearly vested in my education. This should do it, right?
“Oh, I know,” she says with a lingering sigh as she unfolds and refolds her napkin in her lap. “Nobody ever got ahead by prancing across a stage singing songs from Grease. I’d just as soon they scrapped it altogether.”
I just stare at her.
Who are you? And how the hell did I come from one of your ovaries? I wonder as I fight the urge to scream.
“But … you’re an artist,” I say, confusion thickening my voice as I stare at the candle on the table instead of my bio mom’s face. When I finally get the courage to glance up, I see that she’s just as confused as I am.
“An artist?” she asks, like it hasn’t occurred to her that writing fiction novels is an art form. I always thought … the language she uses is so beautiful. How is this woman the famous author I’ve been idolizing since I read my first Tess Vanguard book at ten years old?
“You write novels,” I state, like it should be obvious, like I’m telling a grown woman that one and one equals two. “You wrote Abducted Under a Noonday Sun and—”
“I wrote that book to find my child,” she says, almost like she’s pissed off about it. “Writing is not art. It’s a job.”
This chasm opens between us, one tha
t’s gaping and wide and impassable. We’re just so different. Is it possible for two people with such opposing views to get along with one another? Guess we’re about to be a real-life experiment in exactly that.
“Since you’ve found me now, are you going to quit?” I spit back, with more vitriol and hurt than I realized I was feeling.
“Maybe you don’t fully appreciate how much I like money?” she quips right back. More silence. I think about responding with something equally as snippy but decide against it. Dakota Banks, not Mia Patterson.
“I joined the theatre program,” I say instead, my voice flat and lacking emotion. “Not to act, because I can’t sing worth a crap, but to work on costumes and set design.”
Tess looks briefly mollified, and then frustrated.
“Theater isn’t exactly a door to success in life,” she begins, and I find myself choking on the very fact that we’re having this conversation. “You’ve got to have a plan, Mia.”
And there it is again.
Mia.
She doesn’t bother to correct herself this time, folding and refolding her napkin yet again.
“Why don’t I just write about my experience as the kidnapped child of author Tess Vanguard?” I quip back. “That should bring in some big money, right? Or maybe I should be a hedge fund manager and make money in a legal but morally twisted and broken and corrupt way?” Tess’ eyes flick around, like she’s looking to see if I’m causing a stir. That panicked feeling in my chest begins to rise again, and bile comes up in my throat. I want to go home. All I want is to be back home. “Or maybe I should be a plastic surgeon who offers their step-kid a freaking nose job for her sixteenth birthday that isn’t really her birthday at all?”
I shove up from the table and speed walk as quickly as I can to the front doors, ignoring the curious looks of the staff. My phone is clenched in my hand, but there’s nobody here for me to call, nobody to come and save me.
Instead, I end up sitting on the edge of the curb, looking out at the sea of luxury vehicles in the lot.
After a few minutes, Tess comes out and sits beside me.
For nearly half an hour, neither of us says a word.
“I had the kitchen hold our food,” she says, and I glance over at her, tears dried, emotions in a twisted tangle. It’s like, nobody asked me how I felt about all of this. Not once did the lawyers or the judge or Tess ever ask me how this whole situation was affecting me. “I know this is hard for both of us,” she explains, reaching out to cup the side of my face. I allow the contact, if only because physical affection from her is so rare it may as well be a shooting star. “And I know I’m making a lot of mistakes. I know that, but there’s no rulebook for this. No checklist that tells you how to make your estranged daughter love you. I thrive on rules and routine, Mia. I’ve had to, in order to survive losing you. There were times during those years that I thought I wouldn’t make it, that I …”
She trails off and exhales, dropping her hand to her lap.
“Please stop calling me Mia,” I tell her for what I’m fairly certain is the thousandth time. “I understand you picked that name for me, but it isn’t the name that I grew up listening to.”
Tess stares at me for a long moment and then pulls in a big breath, nodding briefly. I notice that a single tendril of hair has escaped her bun, making her look much more human and less like, well, a politician. Gag.
“And I don’t want plastic surgery. I love myself for who I am. Love the skin you’re in and all that.” I look away toward the trees rustling at the edges of the parking lot.
“I understand,” Tess says as I glance back to find her watching me. “And you’re right. I shouldn’t … Paul and I should not have offered you that. Kimber is always asking, and I just thought …”
“Plastic surgery for teens is a little gauche, don’t you think?” I reply, but Tess just gives me a look.
“I think if surgery makes someone feel better about themselves, then they should do it,” she replies.
“Agree to disagree?” I ask, wondering what that phrase even means. I better get used to it though because it appears that Tess and I are going to have a lot of these moments. She nods and smiles at me, standing up and waiting for me to do the same.
“Agree,” she says, escorting me back into the restaurant.
For the briefest of moments there, I feel another glimmer of hope, like everything is going to be okay.
Of course, that only lasts as long as the meal. As soon as we get into the car, and Tess convinces me to visit some fancy clothing boutique in Seattle, she starts dropping hints.
“You mentioned writing a book about your experience,” she says slowly, carefully, as if she’s weighing each and every word. I glance over at her as she swings blouses across a wooden rack. Even the hangers are made of wood, no plastic or metal here. I stare at the cream-colored items, the white ones, the oatmeal ones.
Hm.
“I was only being facetious,” I admit with a loose shrug. “Writing isn’t my outlet. I’m not sure, exactly, what is, only that I need to create to be happy.”
“Engineering is a form of creating,” Tess suggests as she lifts up a conservative dress with a four-figure price tag. I almost choke. No way would I wear something that costs that much. Inevitably, I’d ruin it by spilling juice or sauce on it and then I’d have massive anxiety trying to get the stain out. “Or coding.”
“To some people, sure,” I reply vaguely, wondering where this is going. I sense something beyond just a motherly discussion of my future career. Anyway, engineering and coding are all fine and dandy. Careers to further technology, to help people live longer, safer, better lives is great. But art is the reason for living those longer, safer, better lives, right? Books, movies, theater, music, video games. Somebody has to make that stuff, too.
“Tech jobs can be very lucrative,” Tess continues, dragging this awkward conversation even further. She picks up an additional two dresses that I hope are for her and not for me. I decide I better pick something out—and I better do it quick or I’m leaving with an oatmeal-colored nun’s habit.
I spot a sparkly black dress on a mannequin and make an immediate beeline for it. It’s pretty much the only thing in this store that I don’t actively despise.
“Could I see this one, please?” I ask, pointing up at it as I pause beside an associate. It seems to be the only one of its kind in the store. She tells me the size to see if I think it’ll fit, and I nod. Tess catches up to me as the employee finishes getting it down.
“Looks like a dress fit for a nightclub,” she says which could be an insult … or not? Hard to say with her. I glance Tess’ way and try something I practiced several times on the plane. I absorb her profile, the shape of her lips, the glimmer in her eyes, and I repeat the word Mom to myself inside my head. Just over and over and over again to see if it’ll stick. “That won’t work for—”
She pauses again and then turns to me as the associate looks between us questioningly.
“Start a fitting room, please,” Tess tells her, handing over the clothes draped over her left arm. Grr. See, I knew they were for me. I despair at the idea of putting on a fashion show for Tess, my mind straying back to a shirtless Parrish and the milk lifted to his pouty mouth. I almost smile as I think about inviting him to play games with me again tonight. That’d be fun, right? Having a gaming buddy just across the hall. “Dakota?” Tess says, as if she’s repeating my name for the dozenth time.
I blink at her, trying to feel some hope that she’s used my actual name for once. Does it sound like grated bits of metal scraping over her teeth? Sure it does. But that’s okay. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“I’ve accepted an invitation to a talk show,” Tess tells me frankly, and my heart plummets to the bottom of my stomach, shattering to jagged pieces of glass. I give her what must be a look of pure hurt because she seems taken aback. “It’s for next weekend, for the Martina Cortez Show.”
The Martina Cortez
Show. Great. Ten years as the number one talk show in the world. That’s … just fantastic.
“Okay,” I say blandly, because I’m not stupid. I remember the conversation from the limo, of Tess shushing Paul when he mentioned something about a talk show. “What does that have to do with me?”
I turn away and head for the dressing room as quickly as I can, doing my best to ignore Tess’ tan kitten heels clacking on the floor as she follows. Stepping inside, I slam and lock the door behind me while Tess waits outside.
“Dakota, hear me out,” she continues, and then I see her start to pace on the other side of the door. “Getting our story out there is important.”
“Important for who?” I ask, undoing the straps on my jumper and kicking off my heels. I leave all the items on the floor as I tear my long-sleeved shirt over my head and grab the sparkly black dress. Sorry, Tess, but I am not wearing oatmeal or camel hair or sheep’s wool or whatever ridiculous name for beige the world has come up with now.
The dress slips easily over my head, but it’s a bit tight in the boob area. I love my boobs, to be honest, but I hate that I can never fit them into anything. Still, once I adjust the dress just right, it looks pretty good. A bit short in the front, a bit flashier than something I’d usually wear, but if Tess really wants to buy me a fancy outfit from this horrible store, then I pick this.
“Important for the world,” Tess says, which is ridiculous. “You were stolen from me. Don’t you think other mothers might be out there, wondering where their children are? We could give them hope.”
I open the door to look at her and she gives the dress a raised brow.
“Don’t pretend like going on this talk show is about helping others. It’s about helping you and your non-artistic book career that’s ‘just a job’.” I make quotes with my fingers and Tess’ mouth turns down in a sharp frown. We’re like oil and water, me and this woman. I might be of her, but I am nothing like her.
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