Escaping Perfect Read Free

satellite on the area. Which she could totally do.
    I just had to find the right turnoff once I got inside the park area. Then maybe I could stop for a while, give myself some time to think, figure out what I was going to do next. I eased the limo off the road.
    A few drivers peered curiously out at me as they blew by in the other direction. I noticed that the driver had left his black hat on the passenger seat, and I jammed it down on top of my hair. Not the greatest disguise in the world, but better than nothing.
    More signs pointed off to various sections of the park. Fishing piers, wildlife preserves, designated water sports areas. Finally, I found what I was looking for: an old, chipped signthat read PICNIC GROUNDS with a red sticker slapped across it— CLOSED . I ignored that, just like my grandmother always had. I almost laughed, remembering how her irreverence had stressed me out, how I’d spend the first half hour of any picnic worried that we were going to get caught. Never the rule breaker, and now I was breaking every rule in the book.
    As soon as I turned onto the packed dirt road, the trees and undergrowth bent in around me. High above, the canopy of leaves blocked out the sun, and long green grasses swished against the sides of the car. I eased my foot off the gas and realized that my ankle hurt from being in the same tense position for so long. Finally I found myself able to breathe. Able to think.
    What the hell was I doing?
    Did I really think that this stunt would prove anything? That I could escape my mother? No, in fact, I didn’t. When I’d crawled through that window, I hadn’t been thinking at all. I’d been working on instinct, hopped up on emotion. I had wanted to get away, plain and simple. I’d seen my chance and I’d taken it.
    The question was, what to do now? I took a deep breath and considered my situation. I had a ton of cash in my backpack—the bag I never left home without—from the tutoring services I offered at school. Okay, the flat-outwriting-papers-for-other-kids business I’d been lucratively running behind Tim’s back for the past five years. Most of the money was hidden under a floorboard in my room back home in Boston, where I made deposits every break, but I’d brought my latest haul—about two thousand dollars—­with me, in case the school did one of its random sweeps while I was away at the funeral. If I could just get somewhere, somewhere off the grid, maybe I could really and truly be free.
    I came to the end of the road and hit the brakes. The car stopped soundlessly. Fingers trembling, I shoved the gearshift into park. Before me was the bog where Gigi and I had picnicked just this past December. Where we’d tossed out a couple of lines and sat munching on cold fried chicken, not catching anything and not caring. I’d leaned my head against her shoulder and we’d daydreamed about going to Europe together. We’d talked about how once I turned eighteen, I could do anything I wanted, I could escape, and she’d be here to do it with me.
    Except that she wasn’t. Thanks to one tiny blood clot, she was gone.
    I leaned back in the seat and cried. I cried in total earnest and abandon in a way I hadn’t since Tash had called me to tell me Gigi had passed. For the first time in forever, I was trulyand completely alone, no bodyguard hovering, no driver or personal assistant or tutor listening in. I cried with everything I had in me.
    And by the time I stopped, I had a plan. By the time I stopped, I knew I wasn’t ever going back.

Chapter Two
    Lia Washington. My name is Lia Washington. Hi! I’m Lia Washington.
    The fingers on my left hand twitched atop my knee the following morning as I sat on the edge of my seat on the half-empty bus. It was an old habit from when I played the violin as a kid. I used to stay up nights, fingering scales and concertos under the covers, hearing the notes