The Sway

by Amy Patrick

  When it first kicked in as a preteen, I experimented with it. Using it on my human peers always left me feeling guilty, and seeing their zoned out expressions and hearing the obedient tone of their voices kind of freaked me out.

  Hopefully, niceness (and begging) will suffice for this situation. Keeping pace with him, I work to remove the hysteria from my voice.

  “I can’t come back tomorrow. I probably can’t come back this week at all, and I really, really need to get the application today.”

  Now that I’m in the building, I’m surprised at how attached I feel already to the school. It seems like a place I could belong. If I can fill out an application this week at Ava’s house and mail it from there, Pappa will never know. Until there’s a reason for him to know—a reason that will never exist if I can’t convince this guy to help me.

  “Maybe... maybe you could show me around?”

  He stops, and now he really looks at me. Glancing around at the empty hallway first, he brings his gaze back to me and surveys my appearance, his eyes stopping at my purse before returning to my face.

  Nope—not big enough for a weapon, Mister. You’re safe.

  No doubt he’s trying to determine what I’m up to—to see if I’m some sort of a threat or just the clueless prospective freshman I’ve claimed to be.

  “I’m not sure,” he says, dragging out the last word. “It really would be better for you to go through the enrollment office. It’s not really appropriate for me to give you a tour alone after hours like this.”

  Shoot. It’s not working. But it has to. I’ll have to use it. It’s not like it will hurt him.

  Touching his arm to stop him from walking away, I gain and capture eye contact with him. Don’t want to lay it on too heavy—just enough to get his help. I put my will and the minimal amount of Sway I can manage behind my words.

  “Please change your mind and show me around, tell me about the school, and then get me an application from the enrollment office. You’ll feel good about doing this, and nothing bad will happen as a result of it.”

  I hold his gaze in mine for a few seconds to make sure it takes then step back and smile at him like the docile Southern belle I’m supposed to be.

  He blinks a few times and shakes his head, returning my smile. “As I was saying, I’m so glad you could make it for a tour today. I don’t often give them myself, but I’m happy to show you around, answer your questions, and then I’ll get you an application to fill out. I’ll even make sure to put it in Mrs. Moser’s hands personally, with my highest recommendation. Now, this is the pottery studio.” Pulling his keys from his pocket, he inserts one into the lock of the nearest door.

  I follow him in, working hard to maintain my happy expression. I should be happy. I’m getting what I wanted. But I hate the way I got it.

  He hasn’t even seen my art portfolio. It could be full of stick figure drawings and crude finger paintings for all he knows, and he’s planning to give me his “highest recommendation.” Not only could it turn out to be embarrassing for him, it feels like cheating to me.

  I don’t want to be accepted into art school because I glamoured some poor guy’s brains out. I want to earn it—I want my art to speak for itself. I want him to give me an application, not a free pass.

  After touring the classrooms and the gallery and stopping by the office for the forms, I follow Professor Gould to the exit doors.

  “Thank you so much for the tour. I hope I haven’t made you late for anything.” It didn’t occur to me until just now that his kid could be having a recital tonight or something.

  “No, no, my pleasure. And I wish you the best of luck. Like I said, whatever I can do to help.” He raises a finger. “Oh—I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me before—long day I guess. I’ll need to see your portfolio before speaking to Mrs. Moser. Let me give you my email address and you can send me a zip file, okay?”

  My heart lifts from the soles of my shoes and flies up through the top of my head. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll send it right away. Can’t exactly admit me without it, right?” I’m almost delirious with relief that the school will require proof of my talent before admitting me.

  “Right” he agrees, and raises a hand in a goodbye gesture as I turn and practically skip down the sidewalk to the photography studio.

  My steps slow as I reach the building and turn the corner to the front walk.

  The car is there at the curb and my driver is pacing in front of it, phone to his ear.

  Chapter Ten

  Watched

  “So how does it feel to break the rules for once?” Ava stands in the doorway of the guest room, obviously having overheard the end of my phone call with Pappa.

  “Um, it feels like I’m going to be on total lockdown for the rest of spring break.”

  The driver apparently waited for an hour before calling Alfred to report my unscheduled exploration. The agent, in turn, called my father, who just gave me an earful.

  “No more going off on your own. You might think you know about big cities, but Los Angeles is not Atlanta, and you have no idea the trouble you can find there. You’ve been quite sheltered,” he said.

  Yeah, whose fault is that? That’s what I wanted to say. Thankfully, he could only hear my thoughts when I consciously directed them at him. What I actually said was, “Yes, Pappa.”

  “So, did you sneak off with a boy?” Ava says, dragging out the last word and grinning ear to ear like she’s waiting to be let in on some great conspiracy.

  “No. I took a walk... to a school.” I wasn’t really planning to tell her that last part, but it popped out anyway. Maybe my excitement over the art school is too big to stay penned up inside me.

  “A school?” She wrinkles her nose. “That’s a letdown. When I sneak away, I make sure it’s worth my while. Which means, of course, it’s to meet a guy.”

  We laugh together, and I decide to confide in her a bit more. “It was actually worth my while. I loved the school. I just hope I can get in—it’s really late to apply.”

  “Oh.” She nods. “So you want to come to college in California?”

  “Sort of. It’s an art school. But please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want my dad to know. It doesn’t exactly fit into his plan for my life.”

  She matches my eye roll with one of her own. “Tell me about it. My parents’ plan involves bonding me with a guy back in Florida. But I can’t get enough of these California boys. It’s Mother’s fault really. She shouldn’t have sent me out here if she didn’t want me to sample the local goods.”

  “Well, unfortunately, that was probably my first and only ‘field trip.’ I know they’re going to watch me every second now.”

  “There’s always a way,” Ava says. “If you need to get away again, just tell me and I’ll help.”

  * * *

  A messenger delivers my modeling portfolio from Stephen early the next morning. He is some kind of incredible photographer because the photos aren’t half bad. I don’t even recognize myself in one of them.

  The driver arrives to take me on my go-sees. The first is with a clothing designer who makes funky things in loud patterns that all seem to involve polka-dots. She looks like someone who’d design crazy circus clothes—bright pink hair, too much makeup, and glasses with giant frames—polka dot, of course.

  She says I look young, which she likes. At her request, I do some impromptu posing, which she doesn’t seem to like. “Well, you’re very green, but still, you might do for the photo spread. I’ll call your agent with my decision.”

  The next one is for lip gloss. I have to smile and pout for no less than ten people, being passed from one to the next as I work my way up the booking chain. It might not sound that hard, but I’m exhausted afterward. All that energy trying to be pleasing to strangers. I’m not sure yet what models get paid, but whatever it is, it can’t be worth it.

  My final go-see is for a teen fashion magazine. The photographer is one of those Stephen warned
me about. “Intimidating” is not an adequate word for this guy. He frowns and fusses, barking orders at me to walk, stop, turn around, look at him, stop looking at him, smile, stop smiling. By the time the appointment is finished, I’m ready to pose for the cover of Nervous Breakdown Journal, and I know I’m not going to get the job.

  “Okay—you’re hired,” he growls, sounding like it tortures him to say it. “Be here at five a.m. Thursday morning with clean hair and no makeup—we’ll be doing a sunrise shoot.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I back toward the door, still not quite believing it. “Thanks.”

  He frowns at me, and I hurry out of the room already dreading Thursday. But I am looking forward to some free time before tonight’s scheduled event, a trip to a Sunset Strip nightclub with Ava and her roommates Serena and Brenna. It’s an officially sanctioned outing, arranged by our mutual agent Alfred and intended to raise all our profiles on the Hollywood social scene.

  When the driver drops me back at home, I go in search of Ava and more specifically, her laptop. Thoughts of my parents and their accident have plagued me constantly since my arrival in California. The look of this neighborhood and even the feel of the air here bring back so many childhood memories. I’m hoping some research will turn up the details I need to fill in the many blanks I have about the events that changed my life so drastically five years ago.

  Her laptop is in its usual spot, the center of the white leather sofa in the great room. Opening it, my heartbeat trips with the same kind of adrenaline burst I got when Pappa caught me studying with Carter. He’s never expressly forbidden me to research details of the crash, but somehow I know he’d disapprove.

  I begin typing in the search box when a tiny red light catches my eye. It’s next to the small circular webcam above the screen. My heart leaps up my throat, crashing into my tonsils. I slam the cover down over the keyboard, which probably wasn’t smart, but I’m not doing my best thinking at the moment. Questions are whirling inside my brain.

  Why is that on? Does that mean someone was watching me?

  Probably. What else could it mean? I’ve heard webcams can be controlled remotely from another computer. Assuming it’s not Ava on the other end of the connection—and I’m sure it’s not—then it’s someone else—someone who should not know what I’m searching for.

  And if they can watch remotely through the camera, they might also be able to tell what I’m typing. My heart flips again. Whoever it is might know about my search yesterday for the art school’s address—Pappa might already be onto what I’m thinking.

  I pace around the great room, to the kitchen, back across the room to the large picture windows, which now that I’m looking, I notice have no covering at all—no shades, no curtains.

  Maybe the webcam thing is some creepy stalker who’s figured out how to spy on the models and the actress in their own home. Why does that seem less scary than the thought of our parents watching us? In any case, I’m going to tell Ava about it as soon as she gets here.

  As if on cue, the door opens and she comes in, dancing to the pop song blasting from her phone. Spotting me, she breaks into a big smile and comes over, looping her arm through mine and pulling me into a little dance with her on the kitchen tile.

  “You ready to go shopping?” she asks loudly over the music.

  “For what?”

  “What?” She turns down the music.

  “Shopping for what?”

  “For some hot clothes to wear to the club tonight. Alfred has accounts at a bunch of the shops on Rodeo. He likes for us to look good when we go out, and you probably don’t have any club clothes, do you?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Well come on then, girl. Grab your purse. We only have a few hours.”

  When I tell Ava about the creepy webcam thing, she just shrugs, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. Her car’s what you would expect a model in L.A. to drive—a Porsche Cayenne. Appearance is everything, after all, according to the Dark Elven philosophy.

  “I’m not surprised,” she says. “Alfred’s a very ‘hands on’ agent. He likes to keep tabs on his girls. Or maybe it was my parents.”

  “Or mine,” I say, shuddering.

  There will be no more searching on Ava’s laptop or any other computerized device in the Model Mansion. And I certainly can’t use them to send my art files to Professor Gould. A flicker of panic unsettles my midsection at the thought of leaving here without applying to the school. But on our way to Rodeo Drive I get an idea.

  “We passed a library back there,” I tell Ava. “Would you mind circling back and dropping me off? I want to... browse around a bit.”

  “What about shopping?”

  “You can pick something out for me—I don’t care what it is—you have good taste, and I think we’re about the same size.”

  She shakes her head sadly, looking at me like I’m a bag lady on the roadside or some poor soul on the news who lost her home in a wildfire. “What is the world coming to when a girl would rather shop for books than clothes?”

  I grin at her. “Story of my life.”

  “Okay then,” she says on a baffled sigh, taking a left at the next light and executing a U-turn. “I’ll come back and pick you up in a while. Don’t leave there, though, okay? I’ll get in big trouble if I lose you. I don’t want your dad yelling at me.”

  “I promise.”

  Clutching my purse with the flash drive inside, I get out of the car at the curb and walk up the sidewalk with a quick wave over my shoulder. Ava needn’t worry about my leaving the library. Not when it’s got everything I need—a public computer I can use to email the art files to the professor, and to search for some answers about my parents’ deaths—all out of range of the spying eyes of Pappa and Alfred.

  The automatic door swings open, and I step through with a smile, breathing in the scents of old paper, air conditioning, and hope. Maybe this place holds the answers to my future... and perhaps my past as well.

  Chapter Eleven

  Crush

  I certainly hope Ava’s shopping trip is going better than my detective work. Other than the newspaper articles I’ve read before, the computer search turns up nothing. No death certificates or burial information, no FAA reports or even local police reports on the crash. Maybe that kind of thing isn’t available to the public?

  I’m thinking about where else I could access that stuff when it occurs to me that this is the perfect time to email Carter. I’ve been thinking of him these past few days and wondering how his spring break is going.

  I type the email, telling him how I utterly suck at modeling and asking about his week so far. He must be on his computer already because his return email is quick.

  “Hi. Good to hear from you. I’m sure you don’t suck. That much. Ha ha. Are you having any fun?”

  I send one back immediately. “Not yet. Going out on the Sunset Strip tonight, though, so maybe.” My fingers hesitate before typing the next words, but then I do it quickly and hit send. “I visited an art school. It’s amazing. Trying to get up my courage to send in pics of my art portfolio.”

  There’s a long pause before he replies, and I’m wondering if he stepped away from his laptop, but then it comes.

  “You’ll need this.” He attached a photo of my meadow painting—the one I destroyed in that moment of despair. I forgot he took one with his cell phone in the art room that day. I guess he saved it.

  It makes me sad to see the painting again, but I’m also grateful to have the photo. As Mrs. White said, it probably was my best to date, and it really should be in my portfolio, especially since I’m applying to the Dowrey Center late and need every advantage I can get.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it—you have no idea how much.”

  “No problem. Glad I could help. Now—send it to the school before you have a chance to chicken out. See? I do know you. Chat you later, tater. Miss you.”

  I’m torn between laughing at his hokey sendoff and feeling giddy at
his last two words. They probably didn’t mean anything, but I realize I do miss him. I’m looking forward to seeing him again when I get home.

  Which will only be home for a few more months. Before you move away to get married.

  Ugh. I compose an email to the address Professor Gould gave me then pull the flash drive from my purse and attach the zip file full of artwork plus the picture Carter sent me. Taking his advice, I hit send before I can change my mind. Then I log off the computer and whirl in my chair to get up.

  And find Ava standing right behind me.

  “Oh my gosh, you scared me. How long have you been there?”

  “Your painting is very good,” she says, wearing a secret smile. “And you have a boyfriend.”

  “No. I don’t. He’s not. He’s just a friend.”

  “Sure, that’s what I tell my mom about my boyfriends, too. You ready to go? We’ve got to get back and start getting ready. It might take you a while to squeeze into the teensy mini-dress I bought you.”

  “Oh no. You didn’t,” I moan.

  She flashes me a dazzling grin. “Oh yes I did. And it’s going to look amazing on you. By the end of tonight, you’ll have a fan pod waiting list a mile long.”

  * * *

  The atmosphere at Club Crush fits the name—people are packed in like vacuum-sealed almonds. I follow the other girls, squeezing past chattering, laughing people until we reach the edge of the dance floor where there’s a little more breathing room. The air smells like beer and cologne, and colored lights flash and change all around us, making the faces appear and disappear in sync with a driving house music beat.

  “That’s DJ Quattro,” Ava’s roommate Serena informs me as she pulls me with her to the bar. Flipping her long blonde curls over one shoulder, she lifts a finger to catch the bartender’s eye and signal for a drink. “It’s house music tonight, but they have rock bands, pop stars in here on different nights. We come a lot—especially when our friends are playing.”

  “You know this guy?” I motion to the famous DJ. Even living way across the country in Atlanta, I know his name. His mixes play on one of our radio stations on Saturday nights.