Chapter six

DAPHNE

The next few hours after I agreed to go with Joe are filled with so many firsts that I am not sure my brain knows how or where to process and store it all: My first time hearing the wind whip through the sunroof while riding in a limo down Apollo Canyon. My first time experiencing the cacophony of excited, dreading, and anticipating tones of people arriving and departing on new adventures in an airport. My first time on a plane—and a private jet, at that. My first time outside of Utah. My first time stepping foot in California, with its soupy humidity clinging to my skin, and realizing sound resonates differently in wet air than it does in dry. My first time seeing LA—granted, it was mostly a bunch of blobs of lights, and traffic noises, as it was pretty late on our way to Olympus Hills.

But of all the firsts, the one I’m having the hardest time processing is the first time seeing the sparse dots of houses and shops in the red dirt as we flew over Ellis Fields from the airport in Saint George.

Because that image meant I had done it—I had said good-bye to everyone I loved.

“Call me at least once a week,” Jonathan had said with a hug and a big kiss on my cheek. “I want every juicy detail, you hear me.” I could hear low notes of disappointment in him, but he’d managed to keep a smile on his face.

“Of course.”

“I’ll pack up the rest of your things tonight and make sure they get FedExed tomorrow. I just expect Mr. Tight Pants here to pick up the bill,” he said with a smirk.

Joe nodded, and Marta—the glossy woman turned out to be Joe’s “personal assistant slash handler slash babysitter” (her words, not mine)—handed Jonathan a card with Joe’s address and account information for sending my things.

Indie gave me a melty Twix and half a bag of minipretzels for the plane. A gift I ended up being grateful for later, as the only service on Joe’s jet was of the bar variety.

“Do you have everything you need in the meantime?” Mom had asked. It was the first thing she’d said to me since I’d left her office in the shop. I’d expected another plea from her to stay, and almost felt disappointed by her question instead.

“Yes.” I was bringing with me my toiletries; three changes of clothes; my favorite sandals; Gibby, my acoustic-electric guitar; and much to the limo driver’s—who had to bungee it to the roof—dismay, my white and lemon yellow cruiser bike. Everything else I could live without for a few days.

“I am still not okay with this,” my mother said when Marta insisted we were two minutes off schedule and “must go now.” But she still gave me one last hug before Marta pushed me inside the limo with Joe.

As the limo started to pull out, CeCe, who had been called away by the people from the school who had come for the balloon bouquets, came running out of the shop just in time.

She waved both hands frantically, as if afraid I wouldn’t see her otherwise. I rolled down the window and shouted, “I’ll call you soon. I promise!”

And then that was that. I’d watched through the back window as we drove away, leaving my old life behind in billowing clouds of burnt sienna dust.

I still can’t get the image of my tiny town, with its tiny houses in the middle of nowhere, out of my head as we pull up to the security gates of Olympus Hills. The driver rolls down his window to show his pass to the guard, and I hear a cacophony of voices outside, shouting strange questions. At least half a dozen flashes pop on the other side of my window.

“What is that?”

“Paparazzi,” Marta says, stopping me from rolling down my window. “They can’t see you through the tinted glass. And don’t worry; they can’t get past the security gates, unless explicitly invited by a resident. That’s the beauty of Olympus Hills: it’s a private community, so no rats allowed.”

“Be nice, Marta. Those rats butter our bread,” Joe says. Or at least I think that’s what he said; all the words were kind of slurred together.

Marta had given me some brochures on Olympus Hills on the plane, and since she’d spent most of the journey sending emails on her iPad, and Joe had passed the time taking full advantage of the rolling bar cabinet that a buxom flight attendant would bring by every time he snapped his fingers, I’d had plenty of time to brush up on Olympus Hills trivia.

The brochure had described the place not as a town, but as a “luxe, master-planned community.” A description that seems very apt as we cross through the gates and into the neighborhood streets. Marta allows me to roll down my window once the gates are behind us. I want to see as much of everything as I can, even if it’s dark out. The streetlights illuminate houses that are twice the size of any home in Ellis Fields. “Holy crap.”

“These are the smaller homes,” Marta says. “There’s a lake at the center of the community. The houses get progressively more impressive, the closer their proximity to the lake. Joe’s new house is right across the street from the shore, of course.”

“Of course,” I say, and watch as the houses grow larger and larger until we turn onto the road that circles the lake. I lean out my window, trying to get a better view of the water. We didn’t have a lake in Ellis, so this is another first for me. One I’d been excited for since perusing the Olympus Hills brochure. It had said that the lake is shaped like a figure eight, with two islands in the middle. Everything is supposed to be connected by walking paths and footbridges. I can’t see much in the dark except the lights from the building on one of the islands reflecting on the water. That must be the school. The brochure had said Olympus Hills High is on the larger island.

I may not be able to see much of the lake, but there is plenty to hear. The calming flow of the water; the happy, pulsing beats of insects skittering across the surface; the rhythmic swell of the wind through the reeds. As we pass the smaller island of the figure eight–shaped lake, all the subtle sounds are drowned out by a song that reminds me of a mother’s lullaby. Well, a lullaby sung by a mother, not my mother—who might possibly be tone-deaf. I point at the tree-covered island and ask, “What’s there?”

“The grove,” Marta says. She shivers and indicates that she wants me to roll up the window. “Nobody goes there.”

“Why?” I ask.

She picks up her glossy briefcase. “We’re here,” she says as we pull into the crescent-shaped driveway of a building that resembles more a gargantuan Grecian temple than a home.