“Keep dreaming, Little Sister,” he tells me, turning and sauntering off in the direction Parrish went. He makes sure to flip Lumen off as they pass each other, but she ignores him.
“Do you like the buzz I’ve generated for you?” she asks, reaching out and sweeping a tendril of hair back from my forehead. The move surprises me, but I don’t stop her. Everyone’s staring at us now, expecting some sort of a show. I’m not sure if giving them one—especially one that isn’t true—is the right thing to do, but my back feels bowed under the social pressure.
Ugh.
If invisibility were an option here, I’d probably take it. Back home, it was mostly just me, Sally, and Nevaeh. We went to the occasional party or sporting event or whatever, but there was none of this salivary expectation like I’m feeling now.
The students at Whitehall Prep do indeed enjoy a good show.
“So I looked you up last night,” Lumen continues, her blond ponytail curled in gentle waves and bouncing as she moves. Her makeup is flawless, her blazer ironed, the pleats in her skirt arranged just so. She barely looks human, but at least she’s smiling at me. I imagine that if she wanted to, she really could make my time here at Whitehall an even worse hell than it already is.
“Looked me up?” I repeat, still glaring at Chasm and Parrish’s retreating backs as they make their way down the wide hall. The walls are covered with this intricate wood paneling, and the floors are old but well-kempt, the stone covered in a thick layer of sealant or varnish or whatever. You can tell the building’s been here since the late eighteen-hundreds just by looking at it.
“You’re a superstar,” Lumen continues, giving me her elbow so we can loop arms. She’s a good three inches taller than me, but she seems like she’s a foot taller based on her presence alone. I hate to think it, but I’m sure Tess would be a hell of a lot happier with a daughter like Lumen instead of one like me. “The internet is in love with the story of your kidnapping.”
“It’s my defining feature, apparently,” I add with a dry humor that I don’t particularly feel inside. I used to have an online presence based on my gaming merit. Not anymore.
“It gives you this enigma vibe,” Lumen says, looking me over appreciatively as she guides me down the hall like an escort. “Run with it. You could have a lot of fun here at Whitehall,” she continues, glancing down at me with pale brown eyes. For a minute there, I’m pretty sure she’s checking me out, but then she blinks and the moment’s gone.
It only takes about five minutes of walking by her side to see that she most definitely is the queen bee on campus. Parrish is the lazy prince, and Chasm is his overprotective knight. Everyone else is just background noise.
“What’s your schedule like?” Lumen asks as I slip my phone from my pocket and hand it over to her. She scans my itinerary for a moment and then nods. “Your first class is across the hall from mine. Follow me and I’ll show you how to get there; this campus is a fucking labyrinth.”
Frankly, I think my schedule looks like something out of a nightmare.
Period One: Introduction to Probability and Statistics
Period Two: Academic Composition
Break
Period Three: Technical Writing
Period Four: Computer Science 1
Lunch
Period Five: Beginning Japanese
Period Six: Software Tools: App Development
I wasn’t given my choice of classes, so I can only assume this is Tess’ doing. A warm anger spreads through me as my fingers clench tight around my phone.
“Are you going for a degree in computer science or programming or something?” Lumen asks me, glancing over at me. I give her a look that clearly communicates my distaste with the new schedule, and she laughs. “Right. My mom wants me to be a software developer; I feel your pain.”
“What would you rather be?” I ask, posing the same question to myself. I’m not sure I have the answer right now, but I know that computer science isn’t it.
Lumen looks up at the ceiling wistfully for a moment and then shrugs.
“An influencer, I guess?” she posits, and I hold back a sigh. Of course. Influencer, YouTube star, Instagram model, TikTok sensation, Twitch streamer. Pretty much everyone I know is desperate to find a lucrative career in one of those fields. They may as well buy a lottery ticket and hold their breath. “You?”
I shrug because I don’t even have a basic answer to give.
I thought I knew who I was, but after discovering the Banks weren’t my biological family, and that Tess Vanguard of all people was my bio mom, I have no idea.
“Enjoy your class and find me at lunch,” Lumen says with a wink, opening the door to my first class for me and holding out a hand to usher me in. There isn’t a single person in the hall or the classroom that misses that move, notes it, maybe even snaps a pic of it.
With a deep breath, I slip my phone back into the pocket on my blazer and dive in.
First day of school at Whitehall Preparatory Academy, a school for innovators, engineers, and world leaders. That’s it. That’s their slogan. There are no art classes, no music classes, and only one foreign language class because we don’t really need them, the software is there to make inter-language communication an easy feat.
The only—and I mean only—creative endeavor left at the school is the theater program, headed and funded by Danyella and her family.
“We were able to get committee approval by reminding the board that as technology improves, people seek more real-life ways to connect. Live performances are not dead. Live performances were dead in the early 2000s and during that covid pandemic thing. Live performances are now. They’re human.”
“I’m sort of a … closet theater lover,” I admit, sitting on the edge of the stage and bumping my heels against it while Danyella works on a paper on her laptop. She’s wearing a pair of rectangular glasses with a hot pink frame that are so damn cute, I want to borrow them and pop out the lenses for a day.
“You’re the school’s poly, bi-icon and you’re in the closet?” she asks, smiling, but keeping her attention on her screen. It’s lunchtime now, but I don’t have the energy to brave the cafeteria just now. Everyone wants to talk to me, and it’s exhausting. At CHS, lunches were spent under the old tree out front of the school. But here? We’re not allowed to leave the building during the day. The gilded cage feeling creeps over me again as I scroll through the disturbingly silent group text with my girls.
There are three messages from me and no reply from either of them.
Loneliness sweeps over me like a cloak, but I shake it off. I’ve got Danyella right in front of me, and Lumen’s standing invite for lunch. Plus, even if they dislike me, at least Parrish and Chasm are willing to game with me. And then, of course, there’s Maxx …
“What’s your paper about?” I blurt, adjusting the black blazer and the plaid tie that gets tucked underneath it. I hop down off the edge of the stage and make my way over to where Danyella’s sitting in her academy-issued slacks. Apparently at Whitehall, they don’t give a shit whether boys wear pants and girls wear skirts; it’s allowed either way. Good for them. Sex-role stereotypes are annoying as fuck.