Chapter 1
The warm March sun of Austin mercilessly points out every detail of my perfect life. I sit at a table outside the café, feeling the delicate heat of the afternoon on the back of my neck, but I do not turn toward the street. My world, for now, is the pane of tempered glass before me.
In the reflection of the window, I see Marie-Rose Lefevre — the girl my parents have polished for seventeen years to shine exactly as they expect. My copper hair is pinned so tightly I can almost feel it in my temples, and my light blue dress doesn’t have a single crease. I am a project. A walking lesson plan, a compilation of grades, and the promise of a brilliant future at the side of someone who will match our family silver.
I listen to the chatter of Lilly and Sophie, but their voices reach me as if from behind a thick wall. I stare at my reflection and think about how my life has already been written. Every step, from the choice of college to the color of the flowers at my wedding, has already been approved in my father’s office. I am obedient because it is easier. Because I’ve been trained that way. But somewhere beneath my ribs, where no one ever looks, I feel a strange, growing chill. As if the Marie-Rose in the glass were only a hollow shell, and the real me were slowly suffocating inside, waiting for any signal to escape.
I take a small sip of vanilla latte — it’s bland and overly sweet, much like this afternoon — and for a moment, I return my attention to my friends. They are completely absorbed in a glossy catalog. On the shimmering pages, models pose in this season’s trendy gowns, while Lilly and Sophie choose, with almost religious focus, the one, the most beautiful dress in which they will appear at the prom.
Of course, choosing the dress is only half the battle. The real trophy is to be with the “appropriate” boy for the occasion. Someone from a good family, with impeccable manners and an Ivy League future. Someone like Tyler, who sits two tables away, smiling at us and flashing his perfectly whitened teeth.
My mother is pressuring me to go to the prom with her friend’s son, Chad. I don’t like him. He is boring, predictable, and painfully proper. He’s a first-year med student and already wears sweaters draped over his shoulders with such devotion, as if he were in a photoshoot for a yacht club catalog. In my mother’s eyes, he is the ideal candidate—not just for prom, but for my entire life. Financial security, social status, and boredom wrapped in silk. I see him because it’s convenient. Because I don’t want to hear that I’m rebellious or ungrateful. He probably thinks we’ll be a couple. My mother certainly thinks so. I definitely do not.
I glance at the parking lot, searching for my white Volkswagen Cabrio. My parents decided it was safe, small, and “feminine” — perfect for a young lady from West Lake Hills. I hate it. Every time I get into it, I feel like a Barbie doll shoved into a plastic box that someone forgot to cut doors into. My car, just like Chad and that catalog of dresses, is another link in the chain that keeps me tethered.
I sigh, twirling a small silver spoon between my fingers, and then it happens.
First, I feel it in my spine. A deep, bass thrum that makes the hum of conversation in the café suddenly seem shrill and insignificant. In the café window, right next to my reflection, a black shadow appears. I blink to sharpen the image mirrored in the glass.
The car. Black as a damned soul and just as loud. A Mustang, a bit battered and old, but clearly well-cared for. It pulls up to the curb, the engine dies, and the sudden silence fairly rings in my ears.
I hold my breath, watching in the glass as the heavy driver’s door opens with a metallic groan. First, I see the boots — dark, scuffed, planted on the asphalt with such confidence as if the entire street belonged to him. Then, he climbs out.
He straightens up, and his silhouette in the reflection momentarily eclipses my own face. He is tall, much taller than the boys in my circle. He wears a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his forearms are covered in dense tattoos that seem to pulse in time with the Austin sun. Blonde hair falls over his forehead in a mess that Chad couldn’t achieve in an hour in front of a mirror.
A cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth. I see him squint his eyes as the smoke drifts toward them. There is something raw about this boy, something that makes my pristine Volkswagen Cabrio, parked right next to his black monster, look like a plastic joke.
Two more guys spill out of the car: a stocky, muscular Latino, short, with a crown of black curls, and a thin-as-a-rail brunette dressed in faded camo.
These are not the boys from the catalog. This is someone who has just forced his way into my world without asking for permission. They don’t belong here, in this neighborhood, with us, near the expensive boutiques and the café where a latte costs more than it should.
Maybe they’re tourists who took a wrong turn and will soon ask for directions. But no. They don’t look like tourists. Tourists hold maps and smile uncertainly, but these three walk toward the bulletin board on the building wall with such ease, as if they were the ones who built this café. The tall one, the blonde, leads the way. He crushes his cigarette on the sidewalk — right next to the “no smoking” sign — and reaches for a thumbtack handed to him by the stocky one. He begins to pin a small piece of paper to the board.
That’s when it happens. My attention, usually scattered between dress catalogs and college plans, focuses on his forearms. I’ve never noticed men’s hands before. They never interested me; Chad’s hands are always clean, sterile, and smelling of antibacterial soap. But now, seeing how the blonde’s muscles work under his skin, tightening with every movement, I feel a prickling down my spine. His tattoos come alive, coiling on strained tendons, and I feel as though I’ve just made a momentous, almost forbidden discovery.
Then the boy turns around.
He doesn’t do it abruptly. He does it with the same nonchalant confidence with which he extinguished his cigarette. Before heading back to the Mustang, he sweeps our table with a lazy, almost indifferent gaze. Lilly and Sophie instantly stiffen, donning their masks of cold condescension, but he doesn’t even linger on them. To him, they are just part of the café’s facade.
Until his eyes find mine.
In that moment, everything else ceases to exist. Time slows to the rhythm of my heart hammering against my chest. He looks me straight in the eye, and I forget how to breathe. This isn’t the polite gaze of a boy from my sphere, full of calculation or forced charm. This is a collision. I see up close how his pupils violently dilate, nearly swallowing his hazel irises as he realizes I’ve been watching him. He doesn’t blink. For that one, infinitely long second, I feel as if he has stripped away that light blue dress and looked directly into the chill I carry beneath my ribs.
“Billy, move it!” the stocky one suddenly barks from inside the car.
That name — Billy — cuts through the silence between us like a blade, but I barely register it. The boy blinks first, as if suddenly coming to his senses, and tears his gaze from mine so sharply I almost feel physical pain. He turns on his heel, gets into the car, and slams the heavy door. The Mustang roars, spitting a cloud of blue smoke directly at my Volkswagen, and vanishes around the corner, leaving behind only a shimmering in the air and the smell of exhaust.
As the roar of the engine fades, Sophie is the first to recover. She fans herself with the catalog, her lips curling in an expression of pure disgust.
“Christ, what savages,” she mutters, watching the smoke disappear. “Marie, you should check if they left soot on your hood. How can anyone drive... something like that? It should be illegal in this neighborhood.”
“Did you see that blonde?” Lilly sneers, adjusting her expensive frames. “Looked like he just stepped out of prison or some garage. Those tattoos... Revolting. I wonder what kind of trash he posted there.”
Tyler, who had been listening to us from the next table, suddenly stands up. He does it with that irritating, athletic ease of his. He adjusts his polo collar and walks over to the bulletin board. He doesn’t even glance at the paper. He just grabs it with a firm hand, ripping it away with the snap of the tacks that the blonde — Billy? — had so carefully hammered in a second ago.
He crumples the paper into a tight ball and tosses it carelessly onto the ground, right at the feet of a passing waiter.
“This is no place for notices from types like that,” Tyler quips, smiling at us with his practiced, patronizing superiority. “They spoil the view. Right, Marie-Rose?”
I look at that small, white ball lying on the sidewalk and feel something boiling inside me. Tyler just trampled the only trace of that prickling in my spine. I want to scream, but instead, I only clench my hands on my lap and force my lips into something resembling a smile.
“You’re littering, Tyler,” I say, standing up from my chair. My voice is calm, almost cold, perfectly measured.
Tyler raises his eyebrows, surprised by my sudden move, but he doesn’t protest as I pick up the crumpled paper from the sidewalk. Heather and Sarah-Jane exchange knowing glances — they probably think my obsession with order has reached a new level.
I turn on my heel and walk into the café. The cool, conditioned air hits me like a wet towel, bringing a momentary relief from the heat and their stares. I head straight for the trash can, but my hands move faster than my conscience. With a swift, practiced motion, I toss the crumpled napkin I was holding in my left hand into the bin.
The crumpled note from him disappears into the side pocket of my handbag. I don’t even know why I’m doing it. It’s irrational, even stupid — I should throw it away, I should forget about him before the Mustang truly fades from my ears. But my hand clenches around that paper as if I were holding the only key out of the plastic box I live in.
For appearance’s sake, I take a lip gloss out of my bag. I stand before the mirror next to the counter and, with prayerful precision, apply a layer of shimmering gloss to my lips. My hands aren’t shaking, but in the reflection, I see that my eyes are still too bright, too... alive. I fix a strand of my copper hair and take a deep breath, feeling the rustle of the crumpled paper in my pocket.
I am Marie-Rose Lefevre. I am perfect. And I have just stolen something that could burn my world to its foundations.
