Prologue
Ford
The sun was shining down on the verdant, perfectly landscaped quad at Wayland-Blaine Academy. Birds were chirping, the memorial fountain was splashing, and privileged students with no clue what the real world was like were frolicking around in their freshly dry-cleaned uniforms like the assholes they were.
I was so done with this place.
Two girls walked by with binders clutched to their chests, laughing with each other. Other kids sprawled under shady oaks in their stupid cliques eating lunch. Everybody was oblivious, just going about their days as if their lives hadn’t just imploded. Unlike me.
This never would have happened if I hadn’t left my chemistry textbook at home. Normally I didn’t lug it back and forth to school—the thing weighed at least five pounds—but we had a test today, and because the price of tuition granted us certainconsiderations, it was going to be open-book. Being a fairly average student, my GPA needed all the help it could get. Hence my mad dash home after third period.
But now all I could think about was how much I wished I’d remembered the fucking book when I had left for school this morning, instead of having to sneak back into my own house and accidentally overhearing my parents having another one of their arguments.
At least, that’s what I’d thought it was. Until I heard what they were actually saying.
My parents fought plenty, but always about small stuff. Where to go for dinner. Who to invite to parties. To whom they were or were not speaking in their social circle. The usual.
This argument had been different. I could tell from the moment I heard the tone of my mother’s voice that it was something serious. Serious like cancer, or a death in the family, or some kind of catastrophic financial or (God forbid) social ruin. Which is why I’d decided to eavesdrop.
I should have walked away.
But there’s a reason they say curiosity killed the cat.
“You’re disgusting,” my mother was saying as I crept toward the library doors.
“Stop being so melodramatic,” Dad had replied, sounding bored. “It’s an open secret. You think I’m the only one doing it?”
“These dalliances aren’t just a stain on our marriage. They’re embarrassing. You promised you’d stop!”
I was shocked to hear the tears in her voice; she wasn’t the emotional type. In fact, I’d never seen my mother cry. Usually if she got upset about something, she simply left the room. Which meant she might come barreling out the door any moment. I ducked behind the heavy drapes and held my breath.
That was when the rest of it fully sank in.Dalliances. Plural. My father had been having an affair—no, multiple affairs. He’d been stepping out behind my mom’s back, and apparently after he’d made a vow to stop. Meaning he had a history of cheating.
I’d had no idea.
Sure, I knew my parents didn’t have a warm, cutesy marriage like the kind I saw on TV, but I still thought they had a stable relationship. One that was solid and built on mutual respect and compatibility, if not affection.
My mother wasn’t done talking.
“Ever since you got mixed up with Konstantin Zoric, it’s been one ‘rumor’ after another,” she hissed. “And I know they’re not just rumors. Some of those girls are barely eighteen.”
She was definitely crying. My stomach churned. Dad was screwing Konstantin’s models?
Zoric…the name was familiar. Not just because Konstantin ran KZ Modeling, which was one of the most famous agencies in the world, but because his kids were classmates of mine at Wayland-Blaine. Stefan had graduated already, though he was still kind of a legend, but Luka was a senior this year and then the youngest one was Mary, or Maureen…no, Mara. I never paid much attention to her—she was kind of a quiet, lone wolf type—and even though she was pretty enough, there were plenty of other girls at school to keep me occupied.
“They’re not affairs, dear,” I heard my father say drolly. “Not technically.”
“Nottechnically? What does that mean?” My mother’s voice was shrill and panicked.
“They’re paid,” he said. “It’s transactional. Not a real relationship. Don’t take it so personally.”
“They’re hookers? And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
I stood there, frozen in shock. Not only had my father been cheating, long term, but he was doing it withsex workerssupplied by my classmate’s father. Actual prostitutes. No wonder my mother was freaking out. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Mom had let out another pathetic wail, and that’s when I’d slipped down the hall and out the front door. I couldn’t listen to any more of that. They had to be on the brink of divorce. And I’d seen divorce rip through families before.
My friends with divorced parents had gotten uprooted, their entire lives thrown into disarray. Everything had changed. They had shared custody arrangements, different homes, different sets of rules, parents who continued to bicker and snipe at each other from afar. Some of my friends had even been forced to move away from Chicago to live in the fucking burbs, or even out of state. Others only saw their mom or dad on the weekend, or during school breaks.
