Escaping Perfect Read Free Page A

inside my head. I hadn’t touched a violin in four years, but my fingers still remembered everything, and considering my current freak-out level, they were twitching like crazy.
    It took some concentration, but I stilled them. Lia Washington, I thought calmly. That’s my name. I’d chosen my grandmother’s maiden name, and I knew she’d approve.
    Outside the window, the green hills of Tennessee rolledby; horses raced across an open field in the distance. It was all so peaceful, a serious contrast to the pounding of my pulse. I couldn’t believe I was here. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I’d daydreamed about this moment my entire life—the day I would finally break free. When I was nine, I’d envisioned a distant foreign princess cousin swooping in to bring me back to her castle. Around age thirteen, I’d devised a plan to break out of Worthington and hire someone off Craigslist to pick me up and race me across the country to California, where I’d spill my secrets to a filmmaker, become an instant millionaire, and file for emancipated-minor status. Of course, I’d never truly believed any of those plans were plausible. And now, here I was. Without a plan. And it had somehow worked.
    For now, anyway. How long would it be before my parents or their security team or the FBI found me? What would they do to me when they did?
    My fingers were twitching again, and now they started to shake. I had to get a grip. I reached up to crack the window and let the scent of fresh, wet earth fill my lungs. For half a second the panicked rate of my heart slowed.
    You’re doing the right thing. For the first time in your entire life, you’re free.
    â€œLia Washington,” I whispered, trying to make them sound like words I’d said every day, forever. “I’m Lia Washington.”
    The bus’s brakes squealed, and I almost threw myself into the aisle, ready to run. But when I looked back, there were no police cars, no black vans bearing down on the bus. We’d simply come to a stop sign.
    â€œPull it together, Cecilia,” I muttered under my breath, sitting back again. I wasn’t even going to make it one day if I was this on edge.
    But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What was my mother doing right now? My father? Had they found the limo at the bottom of the bog yet? My crushed and drowned cell phone? Did they realize I’d run away, or did they think I’d been kidnapped again?
    My mother was probably frantic, trying to deal with the press and figure out what her official statement would be. And Dad . . . well, I’d be surprised if he even noticed I was gone.
    A lump welled in my throat, but I swallowed it down. I’d long since adjusted to the fact that my family didn’t actually care about me as a person, didn’t care to know who I really was or love me for it. There was no reason for me to get all sentimental about it now, when I didn’t have to think about it anymore. In fact, if everything went as planned, I’d never have to think about it again.
    We hit a bump in the road, and when I looked up, I wasstaring at the big, white sign with its scrolling green letters— WELCOME TO SWEETBRIAR, TENNESSEE, POP. 5698 —as it slipped by the window. My exhausted heart fluttered with excitement. Make that 5699.
    I sat forward as, within seconds, the buildings of downtown rushed by. This was it. I was home.
    I had only been to Sweetbriar once before, when I was six years old and Gigi had brought me here to visit with her best friend, Daria, and her grandson Jasper, who was two years older than me. It had only been for a couple of days, but the place had made an impression, and everything was exactly as I remembered it. The clapboard storefronts. The fat, pink blooms on the magnolia trees bobbing in the light breeze, casting shade over the brick-lined sidewalks. I gripped the back of the seat in front of