I’m also the only person in that house who doesn’t know that it’s my birthday.
“Oh, you just wait until you see what you’ve gotten as a birthday present.” Parrish said that to me the other day, but I didn’t … I thought he’d meant for next year or … something. Shit.
Dakota Banks’ birthday is October twenty-fourth, exactly one week before Halloween, sixteen years ago.
Mia Patterson’s birthday, apparently, is February twenty-seventh.
I wasn’t sixteen until … now. I’ve been fifteen for four months longer than I expected.
A chasm opens up beneath my feet, and I feel suddenly like I’m falling. Somehow, I manage to stay on my feet, but I don’t feel good. No, my head is spinning, and my belly swims with nausea.
Tess hands the balloons out, but I can’t seem to force my hand to move to take them. After several long, agonizing seconds, I do. Mechanically. My face feels frozen into this caricature of a human being.
“Come downstairs,” she says excitedly, and I realize that she’s been waiting for this moment for fourteen years. Fourteen years of missing Mia, of missing her birthdays, of finding February twenty-seventh roll around again and again as hope dwindled. I’ve often wondered what sort of thoughts went through Tess’ head during that decade and a half. It’s an important part of empathy, after all, trying to understand what others are going through.
She probably thought much worse than what happened to me actually happened.
Sexual assault. Human trafficking. Death.
My smile feels like broken glass, but I keep it in place anyway. The cost really is rising exponentially, each time I have to fake it. Eventually, the dam of my emotions is going to break and I’ll be flooded and drowned with them, choking on my own pain.
I know Tess isn’t meaning to be sinister. Hell, it probably hasn’t even occurred to her that I might celebrate my birthday on a different day. On a dead kid’s birthday? I wonder, thinking about what Parrish told me about Saffron and her lost baby.
Whatever compassion and empathy I feel toward her, I have to redirect toward Tess.
I am Tess’ lost baby.
“We had breakfast delivered,” she says as my eyes stray past her eager expression to Parrish’s. He may as well be carved of stone for all that he’s giving me this morning. His hair is mussed up, but not the careful mussing of a teenage boy who’s in love with his mirror. No, he’s very clearly just gotten up as well.
Our eyes meet. We kissed last night. The whole school thinks we’re dating. Well, the whole school thinks I’m dating both Parrish and Lumen. At the same time. The first day at Whitehall should be fun.
“Sounds great. I’ll be down in a minute,” I tell her as she pauses, her gaze flicking to one side before coming to land back on me again. She doesn’t look like a super wealthy bestseller right now. Instead, it’s quite obvious she had me young. Tess Vanguard née Patterson barely looks old enough to be my mother. Instead, she looks decades younger than her thirty-four years.
But just like Parrish, that instance of vulnerability fades in the span of a single blink and Tess is smiling confidently again, like she’s got a secret she just can’t wait to share.
“Here,” she hands me a card, and then pauses, curling her hand around mine in a rare gesture of affection. Other than the initial hug and kisses she gave me when we met for the first time, this is the most we’ve ever touched. I look down at our hands, remembering two birthdays ago when Saffron cupped the side of my face, tears brimming in her eyes, and put our foreheads together. I felt so loved then. Even though she wasn’t around much, when she was, she didn’t hesitate to show affection. Was it all a lie then? Was I just a stand-in for a baby she missed too much to face reality? “Don’t open it yet. Tonight.”
Tess withdraws her hand and then glances over at her stepson with a long-suffering sigh.
“You do own clothes, do you not?” she asks him, but he ignores her, waiting until her head disappears from sight down the staircase. His attention shifts to me. I haven’t moved yet. Instead, I’m standing there clutching those goddamn balloons in my hand, the card burning my opposite palm as I squeeze it tightly enough to wrinkle the pink envelope. The question is: will the card be addressed to Dakota? Or to Mia? And who, exactly, is it that I am?
“When’s your real birthday?” Parrish asks, surprising me. I stare at him, rooted to the spot by withered vines of emotion. I don’t want to feel so … god, so fucking sad. Check your privilege, Dakota, I tell myself, and I try. I do. This is a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood, and Chasm was right: Tess loves me in a way that I barely understand. So why do I feel so listless and empty?
“October twenty-fourth,” I breathe, trying to fight back the tears. Parrish won’t understand. Or, even if he does, he won’t care. I’m not sure I can take his cruelty right now. As if he can sense this somehow, he says nothing, turning and heading back into his room.
He closes the door behind him as I retreat into my own room, heeling the door shut and then leaning my head back against it. Closing my eyes, I focus on taking deep breaths before setting the cluster of bells and plastic shapes that weigh down the balloons on my nightstand. Wrenching the drawer open, I start to toss the envelope inside when I notice a small box that wasn’t there before.
Huh.
Is that why my door was unlocked last night? Did Tess come in here and leave something for me? If so, she didn’t mention the fact that I was missing from my room or ask where I’d been.
There’s a bow on the box, and a small card tumbles out when I slide the lid off.
My beautiful daughter. Patience is key to everything. Happy birthday.
Inside the box is a key. A big, fat skeleton key that smells a bit like blood. It must be made of iron, I think as I heft the item in my palm and frown. What is up with Tess and her secret gifts? First, the metal heart pin. Then the card that she doesn’t want me to open in front of anyone—least of all her, apparently. And now this?
With a small sigh, I tuck the key back in the box and return it to the nightstand drawer. Whatever gift this goes to, I’m clearly meant to wait for it.
Throwing on a white midriff sweater and some old Hot Topic pants that Maxine passed down to me after she left her so called ‘eGirl phase’, I open my door at the same moment that Parrish does. He looks me over with a quick flick of his brown eyes, attention resting on the double pair of navel piercings in my bellybutton. I’ve got silver rings in both the top and bottom, dressed with opals. Because, you know, opal is the birthstone for October.
“Nice metal,” he says, lifting his gaze back up to my face. “Got anything else?”
His question takes me back a bit, almost as much as the rare praise that preceded it.
“You mean, like in my nipples or something?” I choke out with a laugh, but Parrish doesn’t laugh with me. Instead, he maintains that heavy stare of his. And holy hell, does it feel like it weighs a million pounds.
“Or anywhere else,” he adds, but it’s not a question. My cheeks heat as he holds out a hand and very dryly adds, “after you, un-birthday girl.”
The reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland catches me even more off-guard than his supposed reference to pierced genitals or whatever. I accept his invitation into the hallway which is easily wide enough for us to walk abreast. So we do.