Tess smiles but doesn’t answer, and we suffer through a mostly silent meal.
Afterward, Tess and Paul lead the way to the garage, pausing just in front of the door to offer me up another key. This time, however, it isn’t an iron skeleton key that smells vaguely of blood. No, this is a shiny black key fob with chrome accents. The BMW logo takes up the center of the device.
I look up to find Tess doing her best to suppress a grin. It’s a bit faded at the edges, but it’s there.
“Happy birthday,” she tells me, and then she pushes open the door to the garage, revealing a white convertible with a giant bow on the hood.
She’s gotten you a sportscar for your birthday, I realize, my hands beginning to shake.
“You’re still grounded for the rest of the week, so Paul or I will be taking you and Parrish to school, but after that …” Tess trails off, waiting for my reaction. She and Paul exchange a brief look over my head.
Be happy, Dakota. Be happy.
“It’s beautiful, thank you so much,” I tell them, trying to shake off this strange sense of foreboding. Like, if I accept this car, it’ll bind me to this place and I’ll never be allowed to leave. It’s like a fairy offering, some fancy delicacy held out by a suave but unsavory forest spirit. If I take a bite, that’s it: I’ll be trapped for eternity.
“Also,” Paul begins, and I glance his direction to find him smiling at me. He looks like a Ken Doll, to be quite frank, a personality-free piece of plastic. “We’ve decided that you can choose one surgery to have during summer break.”
The key fob nearly falls from my hand as I stare at him, and Kimber makes a noise of protest from the direction of the living room.
“So freaking unfair,” she grumbles as I struggle to grasp what my new stepfather has just said.
“I’ll be performing the surgery myself,” he continues proudly, as if this is the greatest honor that could ever be bestowed upon another human being. All I want suddenly is to run far, far away, until I fall into the sea and its salty arms sweep me away. “If you want to save it until after graduation, you can do that as well. We made the same deal with Kimber, one surgery before junior year or …”
His voice fades away as I begin to sway. Things only get worse from there as his next words filter back through my consciousness.
“With all this media attention, you could really run with having any sort of career you wanted. Add in the right procedures, and the world really is your oyster. At your age, I’d recommend a rhinoplasty, as the nose is nearly finished growing—”
My brain obscures the rest of Paul’s words as the BMW key weighs on my hand like a dumbbell. I feel so heavy all of a sudden. Heavy and disoriented. Frankly, I’d rather be back at the party, kissing Parrish in front of all my new classmates.
“I remembered you saying you didn’t like your nose,” Tess tells me, touching a finger to her own. “I was bullied for my nose in high school, too, and I just thought—” She stops talking, as if she’s just realized what the look on my face might mean.
“The car is fantastic,” I say. I mean, my words say that, but my voice is this distant, quiet thing that I barely recognize. “I don’t know how to drive though.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to sign you up for some driving lessons,” Tess says with another brilliant smile. “Wouldn’t that be fun? You could get your license and drive yourself to school?”
Drive myself back to New York state more like, I think, remembering the deal I made with Grandma Carmen. If I came home with straight As first semester of sophomore year, she’d teach me how to drive and let me have Saffron’s old Kia Rio. I’d already plastered the bumper with too many stickers to count and hung a bunch of shit from the rearview mirror. I was ready. I got the grades.
Then I got spirited away.
“Sounds great, thank you,” I tell her, still struggling to control my disappointment. “I think I ate too much. Is it okay if I go upstairs and lie down?”
Without waiting for an answer, I turn and head for the stairs. Parrish is lounging against the wall near the entrance to the living room. For the briefest of seconds, our eyes meet, but I’m too numb to process the expression on his face.
Instead, I turn away and make my exit before either Paul or Tess can stop me.
The BMW’s key fob is clutched so tightly in my hand that it leaves a mark that doesn’t go away for hours. The one on my heart, well, that one lasts much, much longer.
Eventually, I get the courage to open the nightstand drawer, the bright pink envelope—and the box with the skeleton key—staring back at me. Without bothering to open the card, I take both items to the trash can in my bathroom, chuck them in, and close the lid.
I don’t think twice about it.
Later, when I open the door to the hallway, I see Parrish’s door is open and he’s seated in a gaming chair near his wall-mounted TV. I watch him for a moment, recognizing the game he’s playing as one of the last ones I live-streamed before shutting down my Twitch channel.
With a tentative knock on the doorjamb, I wait until he lifts a hand to wave me in without even looking. Kim Dracula’s Paparazzi is playing on his open laptop. Taking a seat in the chair beside him, I notice Parrish glance my way with surprise. He didn’t expect the knock to come from me.
I grab the abandoned controller from the arm of the chair, likely left there by Chasm before he headed home—we are technically still grounded, so school night sleepovers are a no-no, even for him.
“Mind if I join you?” I ask as Parrish pushes his headset off and gives me a long, studying sort of look. After a moment, he shrugs his shoulders like it doesn’t matter to him either way.
“Suit yourself,” he says, and I find myself grinning for the first time today. I very quickly head back into my room to grab my own headset, and then connect to the private Discord server he’s on. I immediately recognize both Chasm’s and Maxx’s voices on the other end.
“Are you guys ready to get your asses kicked?” I ask, and there’s a pregnant pause before Maxx’s confident laughter buzzes through the headset.
“Is that you, Little Sister?” Chasm asks as I look up and realize for the first time that Parrish has not one but two OLED TVs mounted to his wall. The controller I’m holding goes to a separate PS5 from the one Parrish is using. I quickly sign into my own PlayStation account and glance over at my stepbrother … and fake boyfriend? Eww. What the hell have I done?
Set up a lovely little romance novel plot, that’s what.
I wrinkle my nose and shake my head to clear the memory of Parrish’s hot mouth slanting across mine, the brilliant sweep of his tongue, the possessive heat of his hands. Good god, Dakota, get it together!
“It’s me,” I confirm as Parrish looks me over with that strange, detached aloofness he so specializes in. It’s all bullshit, of course. I’ve seen it crack into pieces more than once since I got here. I tuck my legs up in the oversized gaming chair, gathering my messy hair into a loose bun at the back of my head. I hand over the controller. “Send friend requests to yourself and your friends.”
“Maxine says hi,” X tells me, and I hear my sister cheering for me in the background. She despises playing videogames, but she’s always happy to watch a loved one play and provide moral support. “Glad you’re here,” he adds as Chasm cackles gleefully.