1
The plane engines roaring from the runways reach us all the way over here, under the flat tin roof of the private terminal.
I pop and pop and pop my eardrums against the echoing rumble, but to no avail.
It isn’t helped by the three Rolls Royces lined up and waiting for us, engines purring.
The stink of petrol is starting to burn my nose.
But the families loiter.
Gathered around the glossy grills of the cars, everyone performs drawn-out farewells that grate on my patience. Apparently, all the time we shared at the Palace of Versailles, and the flight back to London wasn’t enough for everyone.
I stand like a sagged puppet, the toll of the past week weighing on me. Behind wretched Grandmother Ethel and her wicked cane, I stick to the border of the group, as though the distance will keep the others away from me—away from lingering goodbyes.
Around the narrowness of Grandmother’s bony arm, I watch Dray and Oliver over by the second Royce, standing close together with their phones out, screens lit.
Aligning their schedules, I guess.
It’s something they could have done on the jet, but instead they waste my time after landing.
Their mouths move with murmurs that don’t reach me over that constant echoing noise out on the tarmac, between the blare of machinery and the engines roaring on the runways.
I tug at the sleeve of my Ralph Lauren sweater and wish I was back home already, not just to escape the noise that makes me feel like I’m standing alone in a tunnel, but to getitover with.
The car ride home.
It will be no ordinary car ride.
One whole hour in the Royce with my family, it’s a chance to do something about my fate.
I’m going to beg, plead—and if I have to, I’m going to tell Fathereverything.
It might be the only chance I get.
Just days before I’m back at Bluestone, and who knows how many of those days Father will be around?
I’m not privy to his schedule, like Oliver is, like Mother is.
I wake up one day, and he’s gone away on business. I come to dinner in the dining room, and he isn’t there, no word given on his whereabouts, not to me.
But in the car, I’ll get a whole hour with him, uninterrupted.
It’s not like he can throw himself out the door to escape me.
The only problems are working up the nerve and figuring outhowto talk to my father.
‘Dray hurts me.’
I can’t lead with that.
‘Dray has bullied me for the past ten years.’
No, that won’t fly either.
It’s what Iwantto say, and it’s the truth.
But truth isn’t always the right thing to say to them.
