A Girl Called Fearless: A Novel (The Girl Called Fearless Series) Read online

Dad frowned at me, but then he said, “Jessop Hawkins. Your Contract’s with Jes Hawkins.”

  “So when do I get to meet Jes?”

  “At the Signing.” Dad tried again to get past me, but I threw my arm across the doorway.

  “What do you mean ‘At the Signing’? Dayla met her Contract months before her Signing.”

  “He’s a busy man, Avie. He doesn’t have a lot of time for social pleasantries.”

  My arm dropped and Dad escaped into the house. He called Jessop a man? A busy man who thinks meeting his future wife is a social pleasantry. “No, wait. Stop. Stop! How old is he?”

  I caught up to Dad in the hall, but he stood with his back to me, his hands on his hips. Then he barked, “He’s thirty-seven, Avie. And I did consider your feelings, because the other offer I had, he was fifty-three.”

  Dad stalked off, leaving me in the hall, my voice as dead as my mother.

  8

  The hardwood floor swayed under my feet, rolling like a 5 on the Richter scale as I ran into the kitchen and whipped out my phone. “Dad sold me!” I texted to Day and then slammed my phone on the counter. Day had left her cell in the car she and Seth abandoned in Visalia.

  Dusty, my dog, came running and I scooped her up in my arms. Her little white paws bicycled the air as she licked my face.

  My eyes burned with tears I was too angry to spill. If Day were here, we’d go upstairs and scream and thrash around my room, and she’d call Dad names like “fascist pig.”

  And after that she’d pick out a playlist and soundtrack Dad’s betrayal. Then she’d curl her arms around me and let me cry until finally she’d say, “Who the hell is this Hawkins guy, anyway? Let’s steal Roik’s phone and check him out.”

  I could barely breathe.

  The countdown: six months, probably, before the Signing ceremony, maybe another three before the wedding. I could finish junior year, and then …

  Gerard came out of his office. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to.

  “I guess you heard.”

  He nodded. “You need anything?”

  A life. Love. My best friend. Not a future in one of the most powerful families on the West Coast. Whatever that meant.

  “No,” I said, because at that instant I couldn’t think of anything Gerard could do or say or give me that would fix a thing.

  He headed for the back door. “I’m around if you change your mind.”

  I buried my face in Dusty’s baby-soft fur. I can’t believe this is happening.

  Gerard’s cell buzzed on the counter, making Dusty squirm. I went over and pressed Ignore.

  His phone didn’t have paternal controls, but Gerard would know if I called Yates. I set his cell down, and picked it right back up again. It didn’t have purity screening, either. The paternal controls on mine would block all information on Hawkins. Living males were off-limits for searches. Historical figures didn’t pose a threat to a girl’s virginal status.

  I silenced Gerard’s ringer, and slipped the phone in my pocket. “Come on, Dusty. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Dusty did somersaults as we slipped out to the street. I should have told Roik I was going, but right now I didn’t feel like making his job easy. Besides, the streets in our gated neighborhood were monitored.

  I walked Dusty up the hill, past houses hidden behind hedges and gates, so only the roof or top floor of the Spanish hacienda or Italian-style villa or cutting-edge architect-designed house was visible. Oak leaves littered the pavement, crunching under my feet as I put distance between me and Dad.

  I waited until we’d turned the corner before I took out the phone. A few taps and I had a full bio and pic of Jessop Hawkins. He wasn’t ugly and he wasn’t decrepit. The right schools. Collector of modern art. Major donor to the Paternalist Movement. Majority stockholder in Regimen Industries. Estimated worth: five hundred million.

  Five hundred million. It didn’t make sense.

  Why me? If you could afford any girl in the United States—no, in the world—why spend fifty million on me? I wasn’t that good-looking. I mean, I wasn’t a troll, but I didn’t have a body like Dayla’s or a face like Sparrow’s or long ballerina legs like Sophie.

  The only explanation that made sense was Dad threw me in as part of his business deal, pure and simple, and Hawkins was such an incredible romantic he went for it.

  I heard a car behind me and dropped Gerard’s phone in my pocket, just as Big Black pulled up ahead and blocked me. Roik rolled down the window. “What do you mean, running off like that?”

  “I didn’t run off.”

  “Get in.”

  “Can’t I go for a walk? Or does Jessop Hawkins have a problem with that?”

  Roik shut his eyes. He was silently counting to ten.

  “I won’t get in the car. There are fifty cameras on this street. I’m perfectly safe and I’m going to finish my walk.”

  “Fine,” Roik said. He threw the car into gear. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  He drove off and I didn’t even care he was pissed. He couldn’t tell me how to live my life.

  9

  Roik couldn’t tell me how to live my life, but Dad could. Apparently, I was now “valuable” and when you’re “valuable,” there’s a whole new set of rules for you.

  I refused to come down for dinner and no one made me. I climbed into bed with Dusty and cried until my eyes puffed up.

  “Day at least had a say in things,” I said, stroking Dusty’s fur. “Her dad did a Search, and she chose the guy she Signed. Braden was only seven years older than her.”

  But not me. Dad went behind my back and chose a guy twice my age, and never even asked once what I wanted.

  I sat straight up. Like the old, rich guy who Signed Becca.

  My heart squeezed, remembering. She was Yates’ sister, but sometimes she’d felt like mine, too. I got up and went to my closet.

  The box I’d stuffed in the back was right where I left it after she died. “For Avie” was scrawled on the packing tape in black marker. I set the box on my desk, fighting the urge to put it right back where I found it.

  Why did you do it, Becca? Was being Signed to that man that awful?

  I don’t know what I expected to find when I cut through the packing tape, but there was nothing very dramatic inside: a stuffed whale, a couple paperbacks with frayed corners.

  But under the whale was a plain white envelope with my name on it. Please don’t let this be a letter. I didn’t want to know what awful things she’d been through. Not really.

  My fingers trembled as I picked up the envelope, but then I heard the slinky sound of a chain and I ripped it open. Becca’s silver dolphin pendant.

  She’d always worn it. Always. I fastened the necklace around my neck. My finger ran down the sleek silver back and caught on the fin. I forgot. Becca had taken it off right before her Signing.

  The books she’d left me weren’t any I recognized. I checked to see if she’d written anything inside. Nothing. But I found a photo between the pages of The Awakening.

  It was from our last vacation in Maui, and it was me and Becca and Yates posing on the beach with our arms around each other. Our dads were in the background, lounging at the resort bar.

  I stared at the picture. It was August just before Mr. Sandell surprised Becca by Signing her away to pay off his gambling debts. Our moms had both died two years before. Becca had handed me down her two-piece, because I’d just gotten breasts and my one-piece didn’t fit anymore. The shiny fabric was printed with turquoise fish scales, and I felt like a mermaid, tying the skinny straps behind my neck.

  I remembered Yates taking me to the surf shop and getting me measured for a board. Becca was off snorkeling when we carried the boards to the wet sand and pulled on our rash guards. Then Yates squirted zinc oxide onto his finger and swiped a skunk stripe down my nose.

  We paddled out to where the waves were breaking, and sat on our boards, watching the ocean swell. The waves broke small a
nd lazy, and we did more talking than surfing.

  The resort had posted armed guards in speedboats, but Roik wouldn’t take his eyes off us. He stood in the surf beside Becca’s bodyguard as she snorkeled.

  A big wave came along, and we paddled hard to catch it. I felt the wave grab my board and I leaped onto my feet and stretched out my hands. Yates soared alongside me, our fingers nearly touching, the wave surging under our boards, rocketing us to the shore, when I fell.

  I hit the water, tumbling under the wave, and spinning, spinning as the blue pinned me down. I held my breath, fighting the fear that I couldn’t get free, that the wave would hold me there forever, churning me until all the air in my lungs was gone.

  Then it passed and spit me up, and when I finally broke the surface, I saw Yates swimming right for me. He’d torn off his leash and abandoned his board. “You okay?!”

  I wiped the hair out of my face, and kicked to stay up. “Yeah,” I said, realizing that I was okay. I had survived the spinning, collapsing surf.

  Yates beamed. “You rocked out there,” he said. “Ready to go again?”

  I smiled back, wanting to be a girl that rocked it. “Sure.”

  Later when we came in, my legs had turned to Jell-O and Yates walked me to the dry sand, his arm around my waist. Roik met us and threw Yates a towel. Then Roik stood between us like a wall as he wrapped mine around my shoulders.

  Becca ran up, her eyes flashing as she told us about the sandbar shark that passed ten feet below her. “When I’m a biologist, I’m going to live right here in Maui and study sharks!”

  Now she was gone.

  I sank to the floor, and Dusty ran over and jumped in my lap. She looked at me with her big round doggy eyes. “What are we gonna do, girl?”

  Dusty squirmed and knocked the photo out of my hand and onto the carpet. That’s when I saw the scribbled inscription on the back.

  A, Stay free!!! B.

  Chills went through me. Becca always ended her messages with a heart or a smile, not exclamation points that looked like slashes. She wasn’t telling me to be myself.

  I heard Roik downstairs and scrambled to my feet. He’d gone through the photos on my laptop last year and, in a complete violation of my privacy, edited out Yates and every other guy over twelve. I wasn’t about to let him get his hands on this. I flipped through the DVDs in my bookshelf.

  Titanic was piled with Mom’s old favorites that Gerard had saved for me. I opened the case and took out the card with the cast list and director’s comments. Before I stuck the photo inside, I took a second to look at the other one I’d hidden.

  Day had Seth take it for me for my birthday. Yates was speaking onstage at a rally for justice. His fist was in the air and his motorcycle jacket was open, and I could read the Thoreau quote on his shirt: LET YOUR LIFE BE A COUNTERFRICTION TO STOP THE MACHINE.

  Students crowded the lawn, looking hypnotized by what he was saying. Especially the blond girl next to him. I felt a sudden, sharp twinge right in my chest and dropped the photo on the floor.

  Keep it together. I made myself breathe, trying to make the twinge go away as I tucked both photos out of sight and snapped the case shut.

  When I turned around, Becca’s dolphin glinted at me in the mirror.

  Stay free!!! Oh, Becca, I wish I knew how to do that.

  I wrapped my fingers around the little silver dolphin and held on tight. Becca had gone through with her Signing. Dayla had run from hers. I didn’t want to end up like either of them, but I didn’t see any way out.

  Pending Contract

  10

  When I came down for breakfast, Gerard had made me cinnamon toast with chopped walnuts sprinkled on top, his version of a hug. I gave him a thank-you smile, and he gave me a latte. Then we had our usual It’s Too Early To Say Anything Breakfast together, but we both knew it wasn’t usual at all.

  He passed me cucumber slices to put on my puffy eyes. Then he turned down the volume on the Domestic Arts Channel, because he knew I saw way too much of Martha Stewart in training videos at school.

  I held the cucumbers on my eyes and thought about how I had to announce to my class that I was Pending Contract. And worse than that, I had to tell Yates. Knowing how he hated Contracts, I wanted him to hear it from me, not someone else. I’d tried to record a message back to him, but fifteen seconds wasn’t nearly enough time to explain how this was Dad’s deal, not mine.

  Gerard was making up the grocery list on his cell when a news flash came in. Usually, he’d just glance at them and go back to what he was doing, but this time he slid the phone over to me. “I think you might want to see this.”

  I put the cukes down.

  “Sources close to multimillionaire and gubernatorial hopeful Jes Hawkins confirmed his bid to acquire a thirty percent stake in ailing biotech firm Biocure Technologies. The acquisition is rumored to include a Contract for the sixteen-year-old daughter of CEO August Reveare.”

  Tell me this is not happening. There was a pic of me in my uniform standing on the Masterson front steps.

  “You’re kidding me! Who took this?” I shoved it so hard it smacked Gerard’s cup.

  “Based on the timing and where it was taken, my guess is a bodyguard in need of cash. I’ll tell Roik to let the other guards know you’re off-limits.”

  What I really wanted was to be off-limits to Jes Hawkins.

  Gerard pretended not to notice while I scanned the Net for any more humiliating pics. So far everyone was using the same one, but the bloggers were each applying their own uniquely cruel comments about whether Hawkins got a good deal.

  In just twelve hours, my private life had turned into media food. Becoming Jes Hawkins’ Intended made me a target. I would be followed, watched even worse than before.

  When Dad got home, I’d push him to kill the publicity—he was always pretty protective. The problem was that, right now, he was more concerned about saving Biocure than he was about me.

  11

  Before we got in the car, I handed Roik the earring. “I won’t be passing messages for you anymore,” he said, “You’re Under Contract, now.”

  I watched him slip Sparrow’s invention into his pocket. “First, Yates is my friend. And second, technically, I’m Pending Contract,” I said back.

  Roik yanked open the door. “I could go to prison if anything happened. Accessory to grand larceny. They’re holding Seth Brown without bail.”

  Coward. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen. Why would it?” I said brightly. “I’m Contracted to Jes Hawkins. Lots of girls would kill to marry a man like him.”

  Roik’s voice softened. “All right. Just so’s we’re in agreement.”

  “Of course we are.” I climbed into the car.

  Roik drove, one hand on the wheel and the other on the automatic weapon on the seat. After Amber Saunders was taken during an ambush, he and all the other bodyguards had powered up.

  If Roik wouldn’t help me, I thought, maybe Janitor Jake would. He ran the “magic oven” in cooking lab. Put in an expensive pair of boots, tags still on, and a couple days later the contraband you desire appears. What would he charge me to pass a message to Yates? Prescription drugs? High-tech toys?

  News vans met us at the community gates and followed us all the way to Masterson, even after Roik flashed his automatic weapon.

  I cringed in the backseat behind the tinted glass and shades Roik had tossed me. The paparazzi on motorcycles couldn’t see me, but they ran alongside the car, snapping at the windows like a pack of wolves.

  A security team stopped the photographers at the Masterson gates, but the paparazzi yelled my name and shutters clicked at my back as I walked up the front steps. The Headmaster met me at the door and informed me that instead of going to class, I was to go directly to Mr. Hope’s office.

  I’d forgotten they’d make me see the Signing Counselor. I flung my backpack over my shoulder and stamped down the hall, averting my eyes from the Signing portraits: girls in
crystal- and pearl-encrusted dresses who’d left Masterson their junior or senior year to get married. Only four seniors had actually graduated last spring.

  I knocked on Mr. Hope’s door, remembering how Dayla used to call him No Hope, because once you got Signed—

  Hope pointed and I dropped into the hard chair across from his desk. He shut the door and all the air in the room was sucked out.

  I glanced at his shelf, and saw that the rumor was true. Even though Hope dressed the hip academic, all tweed jacket and tortoiseshell glasses, there was a photo of him spray-tanned and oiled up for a bodybuilding contest.

  “Congratulations on your impending nuptials,” he said, pure business. “This is merely a preliminary meeting. We will discuss the details of the Signing and Wedding ceremonies after you’ve had a chance to think about what you want.”

  I nodded. I want this to go away.

  “I suggest you take the next two days to think, and we’ll meet again on Thursday. Normally, I would not recommend undertaking a Signing on such a short deadline, but Mr. Hawkins has assured us that with his resources and connections—”

  “Wait. What do you mean, short deadline? I thought we were setting the Signing for March or April?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Hawkins was quite clear that given his campaign schedule, the Signing must be completed by November twenty-third and the Wedding no later than December first.”

  “December first? But there has to be some mistake. That’s three weeks from now!”

  “No, I can read you his instructions if you like.”

  I jerked my backpack up off the floor. “I need to talk to my father. This has got to be a mistake,” I said, tearing the door open.

  “I’ll see you on Thursday, Ms. Reveare.”

  12

  I called Dad. It wasn’t a mistake. Hawkins had written the deadlines right into the Contract.

  I walked down the hall as if I was lost deep underwater. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel, couldn’t even cry.