Epilogue

October 20X6, Los Angeles

I stare at my ceiling, at the crystal chandelier sparkling in the moonlight, counting the seconds, listening to the house settle in for the night. The light under my door dims as my parents shut themselves in their room. Outside my window, my old friend the olive tree beckons. A few more minutes…

In the days I’ve been home I’ve hardly had a moment off camera. There have been countless visits from old acquaintances—none of them friends—a lavish party in my honor, dinners, events. My parents are taking full advantage of my homecoming and the outpouring of support for their poor, kidnapped daughter. Forced to chop off her signature curls. The one who doesn’t look like herself anymore. Tiana’s protégé no more. Something wild has entered her eyes. Something is off. I hear them whispering and I don’t care, though I’ve found it easier to play along—to play nice—while I plot my escape.

Keystone is all anyone asks about. They’re envious I’ve been there and they haven’t. They’re dying to know where it is. The hunt is on. Investigators from all over the world are combing forests, searching for mythical secret entrances and hideaways hidden among majestic trees. They’d love for Keystone to become Network-bait for thousands of Influencers boasting their version of perfection for the benefit of the have-nots. But not if things go my way. My parents threaten me with starvation daily, begging me to spill Keystone’s secrets.

But I’ll never tell.

To be honest, though, Keystone’s fate is the least of my worries. The longer I’m away from Garrett, the more my anxiety grows. I may be “home,” but this is far from over. It’s not like Madden is going stop hunting me. Tiana and Noah are great at smoke and mirrors and can make it look like I’m one place when I’m really somewhere else, but they’re not that great. They’re amateurs, really. And I’m not going to stick around for this puppet show, pretending I’m excited to return to Influencer life while the truth is I’m on lockdown. My “parents” had me declared mentally unwell and have been granted conservatorship, meaning they can legally make decisions for me, that I have to ask their permission if I want to do anything, like I’m a child.

Forget that.

There’s no way I’m letting them have control of me. If all goes according to plan, I’m leaving for San Francisco.

Tonight.

Getting out of here won’t be easy. My stream is live 24-7 and the stitches in the back of my neck where they installed the tracker have yet to dissolve. But that’s a good thing.

My only possessions are the clothes on my back—currently black satin pajamas and slippers—and the makeshift tool garter I’ve been building from odds and ends I’ve been able to steal from the stupid parties I attended this week, plus items like the coins from the piggy bank in the back of my closet. Otherwise, my parents confiscated everything. Almost. When I found the key in my pocket on the helicopter, I knew exactly who it was from. Every hug is an opportunity to plant something… Always thinking, that Garrett. I hid it under my hip pad and planted it in the flower arrangement in our entryway the moment we walked in the door, along with my tiger’s eye pin that I had the sense to remove from the inside of my jogging suit before my parents burned it.

The pin is inside my nightshirt and the key is taped to my thigh now, but I can picture it. Small, flat, and silver, it has “Property of Florence Moore” etched on the head. There were no other messages on the key, as I’d hoped, but I know where Garrett is sending me. To Stanford. To his dorm room. To find the Warhol tape.

It’s time. I can’t wait anymore. All is silent, but somewhere out there someone is watching me sleep. Aware I’m on camera, I sit up and make a show of stretching, like I just woke up. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I cover my mouth like I’m going to be sick and run to the bathroom, making it inside just before I throw up. In actuality, I douse the mirror-camera that is in place to record my makeup application process with an open bottle of hair product I left out earlier. But to the cameras, thanks to my sleight-of-hand training, it looks like it came out of me. The product is sticky and gooey and should distort the image being fed to the Networks, though I have no intention of letting the camera see me leave.

After making my way to the toilet stall—which is thankfully still private—I grab the makeup I’ve been stowing away all week out of the toilet tank. I had the good sense to remove my LED freckles on the helicopter and glue them inside my armpit so nobody could take them away, and between the freckles and the iridescent glitter I smear over my face, I should be sufficiently disguised from the FR cameras so they won’t report my whereabouts to the Networks. I don’t know how to arrange the freckles to make my face read as someone else’s, but hopefully the cameras won’t be able to place me and that will be good enough. When my parents find me missing in the morning it’ll be a different story, but I plan to be long gone by then. I’ll have already visited the gravesite of Tweek and Buffy, beloved hamsters, and retrieved my cache with my new ID, AMPs, and identity that I hid last year when Garrett and I arrived in San Francisco for his Initiation Heist.

Hopefully it’s still there.

I wind my newly dyed black hair—my mom is up to her old tricks and trying to transform me back into her carbon copy—on top of my head. Feeling at the base of my skull I find the stitches where they implanted the tracking device and grit my teeth as I pick at the threads with my fingernails until the wound opens and warm blood trickles down the back of my neck. I squint my eyes shut and poke into the hole, sweating and trying not to gag for real as I hunt for the chip. Finally finding it, I curl my finger underneath it, cringing at the nerve endings that shock my spine, until I dislodge it. It pops out into my hand and I exhale. I drop the chip on the floor and do my best to stop the bleeding with wadded-up toilet paper, but my racing heart suggests it’s taking too long, so I release my hair, hoping it will be enough to cover the dried blood.

Good old Bernard, the robo-guard my parents use to keep me under constant surveillance, is positioned outside my bedroom door, so I’m not going out that way. Staying hyper-focused on my plan, I tuck the glitter makeup in my pocket then use the Dremel I was able to lift from a workshop at one of the week’s events—and also hid in the toilet tank—to cut a hole in the ceiling, giving myself access to the attic. I pull myself up and inside the crawl space and clamber onto the roof into the black night through one of the solar fans that are part of the house’s cooling system. The chilly desert air cuts through my thin pajamas, but I don’t care. My sinuses clear and I can taste freedom. Sliding over the solar roof, I scoot to the edge and lower myself over the side closest to the olive tree. I grip the gutters, my knuckles white, as I dangle along the side of the house until my toes touch branches. Dropping down, I squat on the olive tree limb and find my balance. From there, I creep to the trunk and climb down the tree.

With my heart full and my chin tilted toward the slivered moon, I head into the night, taking the same path through the canyon I took nearly a year and a half ago when this all began. This time, I’m walking away from my old life for good, though. And I don’t look back.

I have nothing and I am no one. But that doesn’t scare me. I can be anything and anyone I want to be. I am possible. And right now, the only thing that matters is:

I have a boy to save.

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