“Nah,” Parrish says, smiling coquettishly. That stupid fuck! I think as the Cortez girls steer us into a smaller side room that’s decked out in horrendous shades of pink animal print. “I’m not in the show, but who cares? Pretty sure old boomers are the only ones who watch daytime TV.” My eye twitches as the Cortez girls giggle and flirt, but I take a seat where I’m told as a young girl with a shaved head and a septum piercing steps forward to take over my hair and makeup duties.
“We’re going to Saint Croix this week; maybe you could join us?” Maria offers, ignoring the glare her older sister levels on her. It’s a glare that very clearly says he’s mine; I saw him first. I’m not sure why but that alarm bell in my chest starts to blare like a tornado warning. And I’m furious about it. My cheeks feel hot and my pulse is racing, but I do my best to pretend that I don’t care.
“Most tempting offer I’ve gotten all year,” Parrish says with a slick smile, reaching up to run his tattooed fingers through his brown and blond waves. He’s one of those foppish rich boys who acts like they roll out of bed with this sweet, mussy hair when in reality, he spends nearly an hour in his bathroom every morning. What a dick, I think as he meets my eyes in the mirror and smirks. “Especially considering that my new sister here stole my girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Maria breathes, clamping a hand over her mouth as her eyes sparkle with the promise of juicy goss. She drops her hand to her side and leans in conspiratorially. “Is that true?”
“Of course it isn’t true,” I reply as the makeup artist attempts to put a pair of falsies on me. “She left him for me specifically.”
Parrish just keeps smiling, lifting his brows up and letting his gaze slide to Francisca’s in a conspiratorial sort of way. The smirk she gives him in reply makes me feel stabby as fuck.
“Question,” Francisca continues, taking a seat in the chair beside mine and swiveling to face me. “Why are you doing a talk show for old people when you could be insta-famous online? Personal branding is important, and you’ve got clout in spades.” She holds up a hand, like she can already see my name in lights.
The shaved-head girl pulls the pins out of my hair as I stare at myself in the mirror and wish I were anywhere but here. Hell, I’d even take an entire afternoon alone with Parrish if it meant an escape from all of this. I don’t want to be famous because I was kidnapped as a baby. That’s not what defines me; it isn’t who I am.
Though I’m starting to wonder, the longer I’m here, who exactly is it that I am in the first place.
“I watched a documentary on being an influencer once; you can rent a private jet for four-hundred bucks an hour and pretend you live a really awesome life.” The two girls stare at me before exchanging a look.
“Hey Parrish.” Francisca swivels her chair away from me like I’m a horrible disappointment. “Come make a quick video with us?” He shrugs and stands up, following the Cortez girls out of the room and leaving me to the horrible ‘Millennial makeup artist’ who does a fabulous job regardless of her birth year.
As I step out of the hair and makeup room, I run back into the Cortez girls again but they’re substantially less friendly this time around. Apparently I’ve pissed them off. Maybe that’s my real superpower? Pissing other people off …
Parrish is with them, but his face is impossible to read.
“What did you do? Turn them down for a threesome?” I quip as he lets his gaze drift over to me.
“You only wish I’d turned them down,” he adds with another infuriating smile. “I’m going to Saint Croix next week.” He takes off down the hallway as I grit my teeth and wish a plague of locusts on his stupidly pretty head. Obviously, he’s just said that to get under my skin: Tess would never let him take a trip like that without her.
At least I know I’m not the only one wearing gilded chains.
I ignore him and follow the instructions of a woman with braids like Danyella—I think she said they were called Ghana braids—and an authoritative looking badge with a lanyard. She guides me to the edge of the stage next to Tess.
“You look very pretty today,” Tess tells me, but I can’t summon the energy to look over at her. My palms are sweating and my heart is racing, but it’s a million times different than the way those same symptoms feel when I’m around Parrish. This isn’t an oh my god, I’m crushing hard moment, more like an I’d rather be anywhere but here moment.
I say nothing. My mouth feels dry; my tongue is like sandpaper. I should be back home with Sally and Nevaeh, looking up colleges and contemplating if we’d rather take a gap year or just not go to college at all. We should be working on summer plans and bingeing Netflix shows together, gossiping about love interests, and watching Nevaeh perform her dance routines in her mom’s driveway.
Instead, here I am, across the country, standing beside a woman that I don’t particularly like, waiting to go live for millions of people to gawk at.
I can’t fucking wait.
“You’ll thank me for this one day,” Tess says, but more like she’s talking to herself instead of me. Good. I don’t particularly want to talk to her right now, not after she and Paul ransacked my room, took my things, and forced me to participate in this stupid show.
The lights flicker on and off and a sign that reads Silence, Please burns red above the stage.
“Welcome back, familia,” the host—Martina Cortez—says, introducing herself and the show the way she always does. “Today we have a very special returning guest—bestselling author Tess Vanguard. Tess is the author of over twenty-three novels and winner of the Women’s Literacy Prize three years in the running. Not only is Ms. Vanguard a champion for lost and stolen children, but she’s also a woman who’s experienced every mother’s worst nightmare. Let’s take a look.”
Martina turns toward a large screen on the back wall where a cheesy video begins to play. As soon as her voiceover begins to regale the story of my early life with Tess, dizziness takes over me and I’m forced to brace a hand on the wall.
“From an early age, Tess Patterson knew only two things: that she wanted to be a writer … and that she wanted to be a mother.”
At first, I decide that I can’t look at Tess. I just can’t. The video and the voiceover might be cheesy, but the story is almost too real. There are pictures and videos of me as a baby—ones that I’ve never even seen before. You’d think—you would fucking think—that Tess would’ve shown these to me at some point, that she might’ve made mention of my father, that she’d want to spend any time together at all.
But no.
The only time she wants to spend with me is on the set of some stupid show that my Grandma Carmen makes fun of.
“That day—a day like any other—is when tragedy first struck this small but resilient family.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I clench my jaw, glancing surreptitiously at Tess. If she finds out that I do, in fact, have my phone, I’m in trouble. If I lose it, I have a feeling that something in me will just break into a million pieces. The small screen in my pocket is a key that connects me to Maxine, that allows me some sort of escape from this new life of mine.