Prologue
ALIZE
I slide the blade across my thigh quickly.
The line of pressure erupts into a slicing pain that chases away the anxiety building in my chest. Red beads near the mark, then spills over, mixing with the other bloody lines.
With a hissing sigh I take the blade to my skin twice more until all I can feel is pain.
The blood trickles down my thighs and into the shallow puddle of water in the bath, tinging it pink. This should hold me over, at least until I can talk to my father. That man always puts the fear of god in me, and this is the only way I can get myself calm enough to tell him what I need to.
A tendril of shame curls in my chest, but I ignore it.
I’ve lost track of the times I’ve told myself that I’d stop this. That I would find a better way to deal with my anxiety. But nothing ever works. My options are few in this gilded cage.
I’m walking on a tightrope, and this is my safety net.
It’s my comfort. When the feelings get too much and threaten to swallow me, it is the only thing I can trust. It’s the only thing I can depend on.
When I feel like the pain has purged me enough, I continue with my morning routine.
The blood still leaks from my thighs while I shower, but I hardly pay it any mind. The bloodletting is cathartic, and I spend a second admiring the color of it swirling down the drain. Once I’m out of the shower, I dress my wounds with antibiotic ointment and change into some loose-fitting clothes.
I’m in the middle of taming my curly mane when the door to my bedroom creaks open. The steps are too light to be my father’s. There’s only one other person who would come into my room without knocking.
Dolores.
When I get out of the bathroom, I find her setting the table in the corner of my room. A serving cart is nearby, and the aroma wafting from the food makes my stomach rumble.
Today is a special morning, so I get a special breakfast.
Dolores smiles at me while I sit, and she places a napkin in my lap. I smile back, genuinely. She’s the only person I can trust in this house, the only person who won’t rat me out to my father.
And she’s suffered for keeping my secrets. I’ll never forgive him for that.
“I had them make your favorite,” she signs when she’s finished setting the table. “Croissants.”
I bop my head, signing back. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
A choking sound leaves her, but I know it’s meant to be a laugh. I remember what it used to sound like. Her laugh was practically the soundtrack to my childhood.
While she plates my food, I take a sip of the orange juice and study her movements.
Though she’s doing her best to hide it, I can tell Dolores is just as nervous as I am.
Her eyebrows are drawn together, her jaw set.
Even her hairstyle is more reserved today—instead of letting her salt-and-pepper curls free, they are swept back in a bun.
I’m sure everyone on the estate feels varying degrees of anxiety about my father coming home today. He’s like a storm.
Michel Moreau always leaves destruction in his wake.
“You promise to be good today?” Dolores asks me.
I put my half-eaten croissant down and give her a smile that I hope hides my uneasiness. “Yes, I will be.”
“And you will tell the master that I have taken good care of you?” Dolores’ fingers tremble, and guilt pricks the hairs on the back of my neck.
It’s a conversation we always have before my father returns, but it never gets easier. Especially when Dolores wears the evidence of my father’s rage. It took years for me to be able to even look at her without bursting into tears.
I’m eighteen now, but she still suffers for a childish mistake I made when I was six.
“I will,” I sign, locking eyes with her. “I know I say this often, but I wish I hadn’t snuck away to the lake when you told me not to.”
Her eyes are sympathetic, even though I know she’s aflame on the inside.
“You were a child, Allie. You did what children do.”
I look away from her and out the nearby window.
In the distance, beyond the sprawling green gardens, the surface of the lake glimmers. Perhaps Dolores is right and I did do what a child would do.
But my father did what most parents wouldn’t
Her screams from that day still haunt my dreams. There was blood—so much blood. It was on her dress, on the floor. The hallway where it happened smelled like bleach and disinfectant for days afterward. The other housekeepers avoided me for weeks. I thought I had killed her.
When she came back, I was happy. But she’s been different ever since then. The ugly scar from my father’s knife stretches from her cheek to her neck and she can’t speak anymore.
I’ll never be able to hear her laugh again.
“I wish it never happened,” I sign.
Dolores’ smile is sad. “Just don’t do anything to upset your father and it won’t happen again.” Her words are meant to cheer me up, but they only make me sink deeper.
My eyes drift to the window again, a lump forming in my throat.
There’s truth to her words, but I can’t do that. I only hope this time my father takes out his anger on me. It’s the threat of his violence that has stopped me from telling Dolores about my plan.
If she doesn’t know, he can’t blame her for withholding information from him.
“Do you know what time he will get here?”
My father and I barely speak when he isn’t home.
The staff always seem to know more about his whereabouts than I do. Because Dolores and I are so close, they try to keep their conversations secret, but that doesn’t stop her from eavesdropping.
She tells me that they often forget she’s around because she can’t speak.
“He’ll be home before dinner. Marie started making his favorite dessert earlier than she usually does.”
I nod, filing away the information.
Whenever my father is home, he usually insists we take dinner together in his study. It’s an all-around uncomfortable experience for me, but he seems to enjoy it. I think it gives him the illusion that we’re a functional family.
Dinner will give me the privacy I need to have the conversation I’ve been rehearsing in my head ever since my acceptance letter came in.
It’s like a fever dream. I got accepted into Harvard to study law. It feels like my very own real-life version of Legally Blonde—if Elle Woods was a five-foot-four socially awkward black girl, that is.
If anybody asked, I would tell them I applied as a joke.
Deep down though, I knew that Harvard application was my only chance at something other than the life my father had planned for me. All my life, he’s kept me locked up like a prisoner—moving from place to place with a cast of tutors to homeschool me.
The only reason I even got that semester in high school last year was because the state mandated it as part of my homeschool curriculum.
Harvard is my chance at normalcy.
A chance for me to experience life as a young adult instead of pining away for it while I watch TV characters live out my wildest dreams. I want to feel the rain on my face in a strange town. I want to be able to make a friend without fearing that my father will find them and hurt them eventually.
I want to be free.
Today, I’ll tell him and face the consequences.
The sound of dishes clanking together pulls me out of my thoughts. Beside me, Dolores is stacking the empty dishes from my breakfast.
I drain the last bit of orange juice from my glass and start helping her clean up. She doesn’t like it when I help her, but I do it anyway.
The last thing I remember is giving her a cheeky smile.
The world grows quiet for a moment, then everything gets too bright and too loud all at once.
A huge blast tears through the room, flinging me so quickly and so fast it’s like I’m being torn from my limbs.
Sharp and constricting pain stabs me all over my body.
It’s all I can feel, and I can’t tell where it starts and stops.
It feels like I’m on fire.
There’s gravel in my eyes when I blink. My vision is cloudy, thick fog hangs all around. I try to take a deep breath. The air burns going down.
Little by little, I regain my bearings.
I’m lying on my back, I guess, since I’m staring at the ceiling. Or, what used to be the ceiling. There’s a huge hole in it, and the sad gray sky looks down at me. I blink quickly, but my vision doesn’t clear much. It’s like I’m peering through water.
My mind reels as I try to piece together what just happened.
This can’t be real, right? There is no way this is happening right now. There’s a thick ache in my throat. I’m struggling to breathe, like my lungs aren’t working. The pain worsens with each breath.
If this is what dying is like, then I was right to think I don’t have the guts to commit suicide. I’ve never felt this horrible, ever.
I turn on my side.
There’s a huge hole in the floor right beside me. Through it, I make out the mangled interior of the foyer. There are burnt pieces of wood, shattered glass, and crumbling concrete everywhere.
Thick particles of dust and ash swirl around in the air like dirty snowflakes, buoyed by tendrils of smoke. I struggle to push myself up. Adrenaline starts to take over, and my heart rattles in my chest.
“Dolores?” I shout. My voice sounds as horrible as I feel, like I’ve been chewing glass. Despite the biting pain, I force myself to stand.
The world spins when I do. For a split second, everything goes black.
I was flung to the far corner of the room. Dolores was standing right beside me before this happened. She should be close by.
I keep calling her name, hoping she hears and makes some sort of noise I can use to find her. My ears are ringing, but every few steps, I hold my breath and listen.
I must save her.
Anxiety meshes with the pain searing my limbs. My steps are slow and labored as I drag one of my feet since I can’t put pressure on it. I glimpse rivulets of blood rolling down my arms and legs.
Shit, that can’t be good.
I keep up my search for Dolores. If she’s unconscious, I’ll need to find her and take care of her until one of the guards comes to help us.
It’s like I’m watching myself from a distance. None of this feels like it’s actually happening. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe this is all a dream, and I’ll wake up soon. For a while, that thought calms me.
But even if this is a dream, I need to find Dolores.
The fuchsia fabric of her dress flashes in the corner of my eye, and my heart leaps. She’s laying down, probably just as disoriented as I am from the explosion. I stumble towards her, scraping my arm as I squeeze through the tiny gap between a fallen piece of the roof and a collapsed stone column.
I scream when she comes into view.
Only the lower half of her body is intact. The rest of her is a mangled mess of blood and flesh. I choke back a sob, unable to look away. One side of her head is crushed by the marble bust of me that my father had commissioned last year. Thick, black blood seeps into the charred carpet beneath her.
If this is a dream, I want to wake up now.
I don’t want this to be true.
It can’t be.
The air disappears from my lungs, and my head starts to spin again. My body gets heavy, too heavy for me to hold up. I want to touch her, but I can’t even bring myself to do that. Maybe if I don’t touch her, then she’s not dead.
My vision grows spotty.
The heaviness is unbearable now. I crumple to my knees with a squelch, and that’s when I notice how wet my whole body is. There’s a huge blood stain seeping through my tattered shirt.
I guess I’m hurt more than I thought.
When I try to call for help, my voice doesn’t work anymore. My body gives out further, and I end up slumping against the fallen column. Dolores’ disfigured body is right next to me, but I try to imagine her the way I remember.
The pain starts to fade away.
I take it back. If this is what dying feels like, maybe it isn’t so bad after all.
As the world goes black, my eyes catch on something lying next to Dolores.
My Harvard acceptance letter—the one I carefully hid in a shoebox under my bed—is right by her shoulder, strangely undamaged despite the explosion.
It’s the last thing I see before the world goes black.