No, his mother might protest the exile, and his father might blame her for preventing it, but Tru knew that military school was an empty threat. Otherwise he would have been sent away years ago.

Tru continued up the stairs, slipping quietly into his room and closing the door behind him. Safe in his personal cave, he dropped into his desk chair and woke up his computer. He had been in the middle of color correcting a scene from the short film he’d worked on over the summer when his mom had asked him to go next door.

He had just gotten back into the file when there was a soft rap on his door. He didn’t answer, knowing she would enter anyway.

Less than a second later, the door cracked open.

“Truman?” his mother’s soft voice asked.

He rolled his shoulders. “Yeah.”

She took his response as an invitation and opened the door the rest of the way. “I didn’t hear you come back.”

“Yeah, well, you were in the middle of a conversation.”

The silence was all too predictable.

They didn’t talk about it, never talked about it. As if by some unspoken agreement they had decided not to.

Tru didn’t remember ever agreeing to that.

“Are they coming to dinner?” she asked.

He added a filter to the scene, making the blues brighter and softening the reds and yellows. It instantly made the entire image more vivid. He played the preview, just to make sure it worked throughout the scene.

“Truman?” She fidgeted in the doorway. “Tru?”

“Yes,” he said absently. “They’ll be here.”

To witness the freak show firsthand.

He had to keep that in mind. No matter how much Sloane intrigued him, no matter how much he wanted to draw her out, draw her in, he had to keep her at a safe distance. Seeing the freak show was one thing. Getting caught in it was a whole different mess.

When his mother didn’t leave after getting her answer, Tru’s gut knotted. The longer she waited, the tenser he became. Shoulders stiff, neck tight, breathing shallow.

The longer she took to tell him, the worse it was going to be.

The panic shamed him the most. He knew what was coming. He always survived it. And still, he couldn’t control the fear.

That was, he often thought, his father’s greatest power.

Finally, after waiting long enough that Tru started to worry he might actually throw up, she said, “Your father wants to see you.”

Chapter Two

I choose my first-day-in-hell outfit carefully. Black skinny jeans, a black I <3 NY tank, black combat boots, and a black knit beanie. I accessorize with a stack of black and silver bracelets on my left wrist and silver spikes dangling from my ears. And I pull everything together with a thick ring of black eyeliner and extra coats of mascara.

If I have to spend any part of my senior year stuck in Nowheresville, I want anyone who sees me to know I’m doing it under protest.

When I walk downstairs, Mom is waiting.

She glances up from her phone, takes one look at my mourning blacks, and asks, “You’re not wearing that?”

I say asks because I choose to interpret it as a question. I’m pretty sure she meant it as a statement. Or maybe an order.

Considering I’m about to start my senior year half a country away from my friends and my home, she can cut me some slack on the “appropriate dress” debate.

“Yes,” I say, daring her to make this an issue.

She looks like she wants to argue, and part of me hopes she does. I feel like I have this huge supply of tension bubbling just under the surface. It would feel really good to release it in a huge fight with Mom. Unless she wants to physically drag me upstairs and force me into more colorful clothes, I’m sticking to my mourning blacks.

She relents, shakes her head, and returns her attention to her phone.

My entire body relaxes. Sure, the fight would have eased my tension. For a minute, anyway. Then it would have only made things worse.

Mom and I never used to fight. As far as moms and teenage daughters went, I thought we were doing pretty great. I could talk to her about almost anything. But then The Incident happened, and all that changed. What few conversations we’ve had since have been arguments.

Without a word, she turns and walks out the front door, expecting me to follow. I do—begrudgingly—wishing I could think of anything that might stop this freight train that is senior year in Austin from plowing right over me. But if I haven’t been able to come up with an alternative in the two weeks since she and Dad sprung this plan on me, I’m probably not going to think of one in the twenty-seven steps it takes me to get from our front door to the passenger side of the car.

I resign myself to my fate. For now.

Mom and I have had our awkward silences in recent months, but the one on the way to Austin NextGen is epic. Her lips form a thin white line, her shoulders rigid and hands gripping the wheel like it’s a life preserver.

For the first time, I really wish I had my driver’s license. Anything to avoid this unending awkwardness.

I open the map app on my phone and pull up directions to the school. The distance from the blue dot to the red pin is fifteen miles. Great.

To pass the time, I turn to stare out the window.

It’s weird to be going to school in a car. I’ve been taking public transport since the second grade. Buses in elementary school and junior high. Subways since I started at SODA. And now…car. This is definitely a step down.

I have always loved studying the crush of people on the morning commute. Too-cool-for-eye-contact businessmen reading the Wall Street Journal. Secretaries and personal assistants wearing utilitarian sneakers, their impractical pumps stowed in handbags the size of a hot dog cart. Janitors and cleaning ladies on their way home from the overnight shift. Public school kids joking and shouting way louder than the adults can stand.

This is like traveling in a bubble.

We go down a couple of suburban streets and then, when we’re out of our neighborhood, merge onto a major-looking freeway.

The traffic is insane. What should geographically be a twenty minute drive has taken forty-eight already, and we’re still two miles from our exit.

If the cars were people, this is what rush hour on the subway feels like. But there’s no sense of human connection, no interaction. Everyone isolated in their own little bubble, singing along with the radio or talking on their phones. Way too many are trying to text and drive, nearly running other cars off the road as they swerve by.

It’s so…empty.

Yay Austin.

Mom’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel even more as a jerk in a Beemer nearly takes off the front of our car in his rush to get to the fast lane. I know she drives when we travel and when she goes away on business trips, but she’s lived in New York for more than two decades. What if she can’t handle this kind of driving anymore?

She darts to the right, taking advantage of the opening the Beemer left, then dives onto the off-ramp. Maybe driving in madness like this isn’t something you forget how to do.

After we take a right at the light, the traffic eases up and Mom relaxes. I check the progress on my phone. We’re only a few blocks away from the school.

I let my head fall against the window of our new car. We’ve only been here three days and already we have a house full of unfamiliar furniture, a kitchen full of pricey dishes and silverware, and a shiny new Toyota in the garage. At least the car is only a lease. I would have been fine sleeping on an air mattress and eating takeout, but Mom says it’s more economical this way.

I think she just wanted a shopping spree.

The flashing blue dot on my map moves closer and closer to the red pin. Closer to my nightmare. T-minus three minutes. Two minutes. One minute.