Chapter 2 The Announcement

Avery's POV

My mother told me about the live-in arrangement at 7:00 in the morning.

She was still in her work uniform. Coffee going cold in her hands.

"It's temporary. Three months, maybe four. They're offering housing as part of the package."

"You want us to move into their house."

"I want us to stop being two months behind on rent." She set the mug down. "Avery. I need you to hear me on this."

I heard her. I just didn't say anything back.

The kitchen was small and gray with morning light through the one window that faced the parking lot. I'd grown up in rooms like this one. Rented, temporary, always about to change. I used to think permanence was something other families got by default.

"When?"

"Saturday."

"That's two days."

"I know."

I looked at the cabinets. Half-empty already, the way they always got near the end of a lease. My mother had a way of packing before she even said the word out loud. I should have seen this coming.

"What about my school? My friends are here."

"You don't have to change schools. It's the same district." She reached across the table. I let her take my hand. "Avery, I know this is a lot."

"You have no idea."

She didn't argue with that. She just held on a second longer, then let go and stood up to rinse her mug. I watched her shoulders, the way they stayed straight even when everything else about her looked tired.

"The Ryders. As in Jaxon Ryder."

"You know him?"

"Everyone knows him."

She didn't ask what I meant by that. I didn't offer it. Some things were easier left in the ballroom, along with the video and the laughing and the two hundred thousand strangers who thought they knew something about my life now.

We packed that Saturday. Two suitcases each. My laptop, my hard drive, the box of coding books I'd carried through four apartments. My mother moved through the duplex slow and quiet, like she'd already decided and didn't have room left to look back. She folded things neatly. She taped boxes with the same steady hands she used for everything.

I packed fast. Looking at the room too long made it worse.

By noon the car was loaded. I stood in the doorway of my room and did the thing I always did before a move. I counted the marks on the wall where I'd hung posters. Four holes, unpatched, the landlord's problem now. I closed the door behind me without looking back.

The drive to the Ryder estate took twenty-five minutes. My mother kept both hands on the wheel the whole way, even at stoplights. I watched the neighborhoods change through the window. Smaller houses gave way to bigger ones. Bigger ones gave way to gates.

The Ryder estate sat behind iron gates that opened by themselves. Three stories. Stone front. Ivy climbing the east wall. A fountain running in the driveway in October for no reason except that they could afford to run it.

My mother parked next to a Land Rover worth more than everything we owned. She sat there a second, both hands still on the wheel.

"Heads up. Smile. Be polite."

"I'm always polite."

The look she gave me meant she remembered the filler comment.

Mrs. Ryder met us at the door herself. Tall, warm, Jaxon's same gray eyes. Her handshake felt real, not performed. She took my mother's coat. She asked about the drive. She said she was glad we were here, and something in her voice made it sound like she meant it.

She led us through a hallway bigger than our whole living room. Past a staircase with an iron banister. Down toward the east wing.

My mother's room had a garden view. A private bathroom. A window that let in actual light. More space than either of our last two places combined. Her face did something she tried to hide when Mrs. Ryder showed her the closet.

I looked away and let her have that moment alone.

My room was next door. Clean, quiet, a wide desk under the window like it had been waiting for me specifically. Mrs. Ryder mentioned the wifi was fast because her son used a lot of it for film editing.

I set my laptop bag on the desk and told myself this was fine.

"Jaxon should be back from practice around six. I'd love for us all to have dinner together tonight."

She said it like it was simple. Then she was gone, and the room went quiet, and I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.

Dinner with Jaxon Ryder. In his house. Where I now lived. Forty-eight hours after he watched Madison take me apart in front of half the senior class and told me it wasn't about me.

I thought about the drive over. The fountain running for no reason. The wifi that existed for his film edits. Everything in this house had a purpose except me.

Down the hall, I heard my mother's suitcase zip shut. A small sound. It meant she'd finished unpacking already, faster than I had.

I thought about the shed comment from the party. The exact wrong opposite of this house. Madison had made up a fiction about a life I didn't have. Now I was living in a different fiction entirely, one where I belonged somewhere I clearly didn't.

I opened my laptop and worked until six, because it was the one thing that still made sense.