Question Two
Your dad is suffering from a terminal illness and is in constant pain. You are his doctor. He asks you to end his life to relieve his suffering and he will pass on his inheritance to you. Euthanasia is illegal in your country, but you have the means to do so. Do you perform euthanasia or refuse?
My foster sister, Scarlett, is already on the Randall family porch, huddled below a wood, faux-aged sign that reads Live Laugh Love. Ironic, considering the only one of those things the woman who bought that sign does is live, and that’s only by default.
As soon as Hank drives away, Scarlett leaps down the stairs and races across a carpet of meticulously manicured lawn.
I’m unable to utter a word before her long arms strangle me, and my mouth fills with the kind of glossy black hair I used to think only existed in commercials featuring perfect-looking teenagers trying to sell zit cream.
I know why the Randalls adopted Scarlett.
Tammy’s a minor home and lifestyle influencer here in Springfield.
She only has ten thousand subscribers or so, but she’ll tell anyone who sits still long enough that they tripled after she brought baby Scarlett home.
Followers couldn’t get enough of tiny Scar’s massive brown eyes, her ambiguous ethnicity, the oversized velvet bows Tammy insisted on pinning in her soft curls.
If Tammy could’ve had it her way, Scarlett would have stayed two years old for eternity.
Why the Randalls decided to foster teenage me is more of a mystery.
Scarlett thinks it’s because taking in troubled teens was in vogue around the time Tammy brought me home.
One of her competitors blew up on Instagram after announcing she was helping rehabilitate a seventeen-year-old drug addict named Stefan.
I buy that. I can picture Tammy strolling into Mountainview, the fluorescent lights turning her fake-blond hair and fake-tan skin the same sickly shade of orange, asking for the most disturbed teenager they had, the one they never thought they’d find a home for.
I wasn’t the worst-behaved kid at Mountainview, but I had the worst backstory by a mile.
And I made people uncomfortable. Make them uncomfortable.
Something about how I don’t blink frequently enough, how it looks like I learned to smile from a book, how I’ll break into the lockbox you keep under your bed for fun.
And then there’s my dad. What he did. Any chance of a decent family taking me in was pretty much obliterated two weeks before I was born.
“Oxygen is becoming a necessity,” I choke out, and Scar releases me.
“I saw the cop car from the window,” she explains, sniffling. “I was so sure someone was coming to tell us you’d been taken away.”
“Nope,” I say, gingerly removing a strand of her hair from my mouth. “You’re stuck with me.”
“Good. I don’t know how I’d ever survive senior year without you.”
I cock a brow in her direction. Scarlett Randall is universally beloved. She would not only survive senior year, she’d be voted homecoming queen, prom queen, class president, and varsity volleyball captain. She doesn’t actually play volleyball, but that’s a trivial detail.
In response to my disbelieving brow, Scarlett rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. I’d go back to being Tammy’s doll.”
Unfortunately, I can’t argue with that. Before I came along, Scarlett wore whatever Tammy told her to wear and did whatever Tammy told her to do and filmed whatever Tammy told her to film. She hated it, but she didn’t know how to say no. It was toxic. We’ve spent the last year working on that.
A curtain twitches in the window behind Scarlett’s shoulder, which means Tammy’s watching us. My expression sours.
“C’mon,” I say, nudging Scarlett toward the door. “Better get this over with.”
Tammy’s waiting for me at the kitchen door with her hands on her hips. She’s wearing a dress I can only describe as “slutty pilgrim,” her bleached hair singed and sprayed to form unnatural-looking ringlets that cascade down her shoulders.
“Scarlett, baby,” she says with a sickly-sweet smile. “Give Momma a minute? I need to have a little…chat sesh with Lia.”
Never before has anyone made the word chat sound so much like waterboard. Scar gives me a concerned look and hurries around the corner and up the stairs.
Once she’s gone, I flash Tammy a smile that’s all teeth. “What’s on your mind, Tam?”
Tammy’s smile vanishes as quickly as all my positive childhood memories. “I just got off the phone with the superintendent,” she snaps. “They aren’t pressing charges, but Adams High isn’t too keen on you returning in the fall.”
“Is that so?” I don’t allow any inflection into my voice, but I have to admit this hurts.
Adams is a good school, at least as far as public schools go.
None of the textbooks are missing pages, the teachers stay off their phones during lessons, and the other students mostly don’t bring weapons to school.
“He suggested I get in touch with the dean of the military academy of North Ridge and see if they have a spot available—”
“Military school?” I throw up in my mouth a little. “You can’t be serious.”
Tammy considers me, lips twitching. She’s clearly enjoying this. “There isn’t another public school that will take you, Lia. Not with your record.”
My criminal record is long and…varied, let’s call it.
There’s the normal juvenile delinquent stuff, of course: I’ve skipped school and pocketed a few things without paying for them.
I’ve been picked up once or twice for loitering in places I’m not technically supposed to be—but honestly, when you’re a foster kid with a record, everywhere is a place you’re not supposed to be.
And there was the boat thing. But I don’t like to think about that.
There’s also my issue with locks. As in, I have a hard time leaving them alone.
I broke into the teachers’ lounge at my elementary school because I heard the bathrooms were nicer than the ones for students (there were Pura air filters!).
I picked the lock on the file cabinets in my middle school counselor’s office just to read what they had to say about me (“issues with authority” was a primary theme).
And I’ve found my way inside nearly every locker at Adams at one point or another.
It’s the puzzle for me: I live for the moment when I know I’ve hit the pins just right, when the lock pops open, admitting me entrance to whatever it is someone doesn’t want me to see. Intoxicating.
But that’s not what gets to people. Neither of those things is.
What really bothers all the school principals and administrators and counselors are the stories they’ve heard about my dad.
About what he did. And I can’t even blame them.
I wouldn’t let the only child of Eli Michaels into my school, either.
“Then send me back to the group home,” I tell Tammy. Group homes are terrible places, but they’ve got to be better than military school.
“You know I won’t give up on you.” Her smile tightens. “Not ever.”
I don’t think she means for it to sound like a threat, but with Tammy, I never know.
“There is one alternative,” Tammy says, trying so hard to make her voice sound casual that all the hair on the back of my neck stands straight up. “I wasn’t gonna mention it because I figured you wouldn’t be interested. But…” And then she shrugs and smiles, waiting for me to ask.
Don’t do it, I think. It’ll be playing right into her hand.
She wants me to beg. She gets off on the look of hope on my face.
Like last year, I wanted to enroll in this sewing class.
She strung me along for weeks, telling me she’d let me if I unloaded the dishwasher, if I got a good grade on some pop quiz, if I filmed a segment for her channel.
Then, at the very last minute, she said no.
But I can’t help it. I really don’t want to go to military school. “What alternative?”
Tammy smiles the smile of an apex predator who’s just zeroed in on lunch. Without a word, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and hands it to me.
I stare down at the brightly colored web page already loaded on her screen. There aren’t any photographs, just the words Luminary Preparatory Institute emblazoned in a crest.
Below, several blocks of text:
Luminary Preparatory Institute is an innovative new school that aims to address the current limitations of the American educational system. Here, outdated conventions are challenged and reimagined.
Traditional grading? Abandoned in favor of mastery-based evaluation that rewards depth of understanding over test-taking ability.
Standardized curriculum? Replaced with dynamic, interdisciplinary tracks that adapt to individual aptitude, learning style, and long-term ambition.
Classrooms? Transformed into immersive labs, simulations, and Socratic forums where students learn by solving real-world problems instead of memorizing answers.
Luminary prioritizes deep focus, cognitive rigor, and character development. Confidentiality, ethics, and discipline are built into the very structure of the student body, preparing graduates not just for college—but for leadership in the age of complexity.
Says the school’s dean and director, Wyatt Sullivan, “Our innovative curriculum isn’t merely designed to reveal latent potential; it’s intended to ignite radical evolution. With our faculty of revolutionary thinkers, Luminary Prep is set to disrupt conventional teaching.”
This is not school as you know it.
This is Luminary.
That’s all I can take. I look back up at Tammy. “Why are you showing me this?”