But I don’t find him. I do hear him, though. Low voices through a cracked pantry door.
“Don’t get any ideas, Lorenzo.” Meryl's voice sounds sharp and tired.
Lorenzo.So that’s his name. It’s fitting. Sexy. Like him. Oh, jeez . . . head out of the gutter.
I wait for a beat to see if they say anything else, but all I hear is silence.
Then a cough. “She’s not for you. You’re just the help. Her father would skin you alive for even thinking about it.” Elise speaks this time. She’s closer to my age and has no filter. Or at least that’s what I’ve gathered over the years when I have eavesdropped on the staff.
There’s not a lot to do around here when your parents forbid you from socializing with people whom they deem less than . . .
And seeing as everyone has their opinion. I have grown up all alone in this hellhole.
My heart stutters.
I step back into the shadows, out of instinct. Not wanting to be caught, but still not wanting to leave. I want to hear what he says and how he says it.
Oh, who am I trying to kid? I want to hear his voice.
Lorenzo doesn’t reply. Not at first. “Good thing I wasn’t thinking.” His voice is flat. Controlled. But something else is there as well. It doesn’t sound like defeat. It sounds like a dare.
I hope it is.
Because as I take a step back and leave my hiding place and head to my room, I can’t stop thinking about his voice. The perfect amount of danger in his tone. But I also can’t stop hearing what was said, by everyone . . .
“Just the help.”
They say it like it's a sin.
Like breathing the same air as us is some kind of offense. But what if the air down there is cleaner? What if the helper sees more than the helped?
What if the boy they tried to put in a box doesn’t stay in it?
I want to know what happens when he breaks out. I think I want to be the one watching when he does.
Because I’m done being stuck behind glass.
Maybe he’s the one with the key.
6
Victoria
The Danforth gardenswere designed to impress people.
Not people like Lorenzo and his mom, of course. No, in my parents' minds, this is above their pay grades.
Endless rows of roses.
A fountain shaped like a cherub. A bit ridiculous if you ask me, but it probably costs more than most people’s mortgages.
Which is the look my family is going for.
The whole thing disgusts me.
Not because it isn’t beautiful. It is, obviously. For the cost, I’d expect no less, but it’s obnoxious. In that curated, restrained kind of way. A floral museum that forgot real things grow wild.
Normally, I don’t come out here very often, not unless I stop on my way down to the beach, but today, I’m here for a different reason.
