Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
All I had to do was buy that plane ticket and make my dream of escaping a reality.
It wouldn’t be easy to leave, considering they monitored our every move. Guards were always present. They wouldn’t even let us go to school, instead, they homeschooled us.
Our parents knew how to fake affection.
It made me wonder why they’d wanted me.
Stephen—as my brother liked to call him—was always busy, and Mom was just as distracted with her social life. Too involved with her committees and parties. Often having to go away on business of her own.
The truth is, my parents were strangers to me. They didn’t feel like parents.
Through the window, I saw my mother looking over the crowd, and I knew without a doubt that she was searching for me, wanting to introduce me to her friends as her beloved daughter. Showing a brightness off to them that came off as creepy if you knew the truth—that she was one way with me in public and another when alone.
My avoidance had been discovered, and if I didn’t appear soon, there’d be hell to pay.
It’s time to get fake.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and headed out of the sanctuary of my room. The only place I could let my dreams run wild and believe in more. In a life where I could run wild and free.
Where I could visit coffee shops or head out to the movies with friends or alone. Maybe even dare to go to a club.
In my dreams, there would be a Billie Eilish concert to see. Maybe see Harry Styles live. And if I was really lost in my thoughts, I would go to dinner without my parents, maybe even visit Café Du Monde in the French Market and eat my weight in beignets and drink enough coffee to keep me up for a week.
When I stepped outside onto the lawn, I glanced around to decide what path to take, where I could hide and not have to play the game and pretend that we all liked each other.
I didn’t look like them and didn’t feel like them. Hell, I didn’t even sound like these interlopers.
Another thing drilled into me from an early age was to perfect my accent, so I sounded uber posh, like one of those Ivy League students. The ones who got to make decisions for themselves.
I was raised to be perfect. Poised, polished, and precisely elegant. No southern accents. No hair out of place and, most importantly, no personality—in case I was ever noticed.
It was exhausting, to be honest.
What was it all for?
Perhaps for this precise moment, when I could make an appearance and smile and wave at strangers as Glassman’s daughter. Giving credence to the web of lies they’d spun about my brother and me existing happily in this place. One happy family that could make the neighbors think they were the outliers.
Across the lawn, surrounded by Archie’s fake friends who he didn’t even know, my brother stopped talking just long enough to stare up at me with the same emotionless expression. That silent warning to prevent me from coming over. He didn’t want me embarrassing him in front of these people he hoped would be his friends.
There was no affection here.
Not even in his eyes.
It didn’t take him long to make his way over to me. We might not be close, but we both agreed this place sucked.
The one thing that tethered us together.
He stood beside me. Neither of us spoke. Both of us watched the crowd as if we were waiting for something to happen. As though someone might point out what we were so good at hiding.
I’d filled in the spaces between the mystery—imagined my dad was an American spy, and that was why he kept us safe in Louisiana. Or maybe he advised senior political figures with his foreign business insight, which warranted the impenetrable-iron-gates kind of protection.
Archie looked miserable. Both of us just looking out at his fake friends, who seemed to be having fun, as we waited for the curtain to rise on our ruse.
“Where is he?” I finally asked.
Archie turned to face me, cocking his head in a question. “Who?”
I shook my head at his silence. “Dad. Who else?”
“Oh. . .” He trailed off for emphasis. “You really think he’d be out here for this?”
I let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Yes.” I shouldn’t have hoped, but somewhere inside me, I’d convinced myself I deserved it. “He told me he would be.”
“Wow, Anya. You actually believe that shit.” No matter how much he disappointed me in the past, I did.
“He didn’t attend mine.”
“You weren’t turning eighteen.”
“True. He was out of the country on business on my sixteenth birthday, remember?”
I nudged his arm playfully. “You know he loves you in his own twisted way.”
Archie smirked, but then his eyes filled with sadness. For him or me, it was hard to tell.