Chapter 1 – The Big News
If my mom had told me we were moving across the world while I was in the middle of eating cake, I might have choked to death.
Instead, she waited until after dinner, when Derrick and I were still at the table, pretending to finish our vegetables. She folded her hands together like she was about to announce we’d won the lottery.
“Your dad and I have been discussing this for months,” she said, her voice way too cheerful, “and we’ve decided… it’s time to be a family.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, tilting my head. “We are a family. Unless Derrick here is secretly adopted, in which case, surprise!”
Derrick kicked me under the table. “Don’t start.”
My mom smiled like she hadn’t heard me. “We’re moving to the United States.”
Silence. Even the air conditioner seemed to pause.
“Moving?” Derrick repeated. His fork clinked against the plate. “As in, packing up and leaving Lyon, France? As in, goodbye croissants, hello hamburgers?”
“Yes!” Mom clapped her hands. “It will be a new beginning. A new opportunity for all of us.”
I blinked. “You can’t just…just uproot us. My entire life is here. My friends, my school, my—”
“Closet,” Derrick said dryly.
I glared at him. “Not funny.”
“It’ll be good for you both,” Dad added from the head of the table, his voice calm in that serious way that always shut me up as a kid. “And… there’s something else we need to tell you.”
The room shifted. His tone wasn’t about hamburgers anymore.
Mom and Dad exchanged a look, that kind of married-people telepathy that never means good news.
“You’re not just moving to America,” Mom said. “You’re stepping into who you really are. Cecily, Derrick… you’re royalty.”
I laughed. Like, full-on laughed. “Okay. Sure. And Beyoncé is going to be my new math tutor.”
“I’m serious,” Mom said. Her dark brown eyes softened. “Our family lineage goes back generations. You are a princess, Cecily. And Derrick, you are a prince. But no one can know. Not yet.”
The fork really did slip out of my hand this time.
