My face melts in shock, my eyebrows drawing together in an inward stare. A forceful breath escapes my mouth, and suddenly my thoughts are a jumbled swirl. I can’t make out a single coherently clear one amidst the scattered and muddled pieces. I need more information.
I place my fingers in a pinch across the bridge of my nose, pushing out slow, deep breaths to try and calm down enough to think of my next move. I need the library, but it’s too late and I’ll never make it out of the house without being caught. Brendan and my mom would assume I was trying to sneak in a forbidden run and send me right back to bed.
All I have at my disposal is the internet. I scramble to clear the stacks of school papers, pens, pencils and phone accessories from my desk so I can get into my laptop, nearly knocking my lamp over as I move in a frenzy.
My music stopped playing long ago, leaving only the taps of the keyboard to fill my silent room. My fingers restlessly tap against the mouse in between clicks, as I dig for any confirmation I can find of my mother and father’s attendance at WJ Prep.
The sound of a flushing toilet from down the hall causes me to jump, as if I know I am uncovering dangerous top-secret information. Things that someone would want to protect and could jump out at any moment to punish me for even trying to uncover it all. A thought that seems absurd in the comfort and safety of my own home, but nothing feels safe right now. It hasn’t since my first day at that damned school.
Digging through every free record available to me on the internet, I am finally able to locate several that both relieve and terrify me. I find the original certificates of my mother’s marriage and my birth. Both featuring my mother’s name as…Lala Nickelson.
My eyes narrow at the name on the screen, the glow of it burning into my pupils until they start to water. The laptop slams shut and then open again. I can’t decide if I need to look straight at it for two more hours before I believe it, or if I’ll throw up from staring a second longer.
I fly into a manic pace around the room, muttering names and dates as I rub against the back of my neck. I feel stupid. Why had I never asked what my father’s last name was? A name that surely would have been both mine and hers at some point in time.
But then I wonder…even if I did have the name Nickelson floating around in my brain, would I have even thought of it when Lily told me about the Jameson Automobile founders?
I go to take a hurried seat at the edge of my bed but stub my toe on the frame, only making me angrier and more frustrated.
Shit!
My hand clutches around my throbbing toe as I bounce around in circles, screaming silently beneath my breath, still trying not to wake my mom and Brendan. I am no more ready to face them now than I was before my detective work.
Then the moment I sit down I can’t help but jump up again. For how drained and despondent I felt only an hour ago, now I’m unable to sit still. My muscles feel like they’re jumping underneath my skin.
I rub my hands against my arms, my hairs standing on end from the coursing adrenaline. My vision blurs in a sudden heatwave across my skin as I try to push away my biggest fears. My father was an elite, meaning I was more than just some rat caught up in their game. I was tied to it by blood. But just how deep that tie is…that’s what I can’t figure out.
All I have is the tree of hierarchy spelled out to me by Lily and these photos and records that indicate my parents attended WJ Prep, with at least one of them being an Elite. But a few of those things are more than what I had at the start of the day, and that’s something. Right?
Up until now it felt as if I had no options. No choices for recourse or any way to fight back. And anything that could be pursued, who was I to even try it? I’m nothing around here. Worse than nothing, I’m hated by the people who run this town.
It baffles me even more to think my father was once one of them. Shouldn’t that mean I’m on their side? That I inherited a sort of white flag or magic key?
But he isn’t on their side anymore… He isn’t even in the same town. Bringing a burning flood of more questions barreling up into my throat.
What went wrong? Why isn’t my father still here living it up with his high school Elite buddies? Raking in the profits of the Jameson Automobile Company?
Worse than that…is he the reason I’m here? Why I was offered the scholarship in the first place?
Another thought sticks to my brain…the most irrational one, but the one my hormonal lusty side is distracted by the most. Did all of this somehow make my attraction to Emmett more justified? Was there something buried beneath these new revelations that excused his behavior?
If my mom could get past whatever my father’s horrible faults were as a member of the Elites enough to marry him and have me, then surely, I could ignore Emmett’s confusing hatred for me enough to give into our urges.
But that doesn’t take away the fear. All he has promised is punishment…punishment I would supposedly enjoy and want more of but abuse all the same. So why do I still want it? Why am I grasping at straws in the middle of this new evidence that would give me an excuse to act on my inescapable attraction to him?
After all, Vivian is more of an Elite than I am. Her parents are still all tied up in it and had never left. If bloodlines were to determine who went to bed with Emmett, she’s obviously the front runner. Which is why he was kissing her in the garage…but then he was looking at me the entire time.
I try to shake my sexual fantasies away as my body shivers again. Really, I have no idea what any of this means, but it feels like the start of something. A foot in the right direction, and I
am desperately willing to cling to anything that hints at an end in sight. I try to keep my grip on the momentum rather than tumble back down under the weight of what felt like a mountain in front of me. One where I can’t even see the path up or down.
My eyes glint across shelves of trophies and medals, all of my running accolades that used to make me feel so big and proud. Now they just taunt me. They tell the story of all my potential that is now completely overshadowed by this Elites nightmare.
I look to the posters of Shalane Flanagan and my other favorite runners tacked against my wall and wonder if they ever had to deal with this kind of stuff. I have prepared myself for every kind of typical challenge or obstacle a runner could face. Shin splints, runner’s knee, stress fractures, meniscus tears. A bad run at the worst time, like the one I had the day I met Emmett just before coming here.
But I had put so much energy into my sport, I had forgotten to prepare myself for the possibility of whoever my real father was coming back to haunt me. The missing chapter to my story I thought I might make time for some day…when I’m older and in the middle of an illustrious running career. Not now. But it seems I have no choice.
Suddenly, the ding of a new text causes me to jump. I look to the message from an unknown number.