Chapter 1

My life was shaped by neat edges, straight lines, and well-crafted lies.

I woke at five-thirty every morning in our two-bedroom apartment above the deli. Coffee first, then reviewing notes for an AP class before leaving for Riverside Prep. My grades and interview skills had earned me a solid spot, but I worked harder to maintain the appearance that I belonged there.

At home I was Aiwei. My mother made sure of it. She'd never once called me Ivy, and she said it like it belonged to someone else's daughter... someone she hadn't carried up three flights when the elevator broke. Ivy was the name I'd chosen for Riverside, the one the scholarship committee could pronounce. My mother pronounced Aiwei perfectly, every time, on purpose.

In the mornings, if I left early enough, I could avoid the hallway that always smelled like frying oil and bleach. I spent that time constructing the version of myself the scholarship committees liked best: brilliant, disciplined, untouchable.

By second period, the performance was seamless.

"Ivy." Dr. Aldridge held my calculus test between two fingers, like something rare. "Ninety-eight. Again." She said it to the room, not to me, and she said it the way teachers do when they've decided you're a lesson the other students should learn from. "This is what focus looks like."

A few heads turned. I gave the small, gracious smile I'd practiced in the mirror over the deli's cracked medicine cabinet… pleased but not proud, grateful but not surprised. The smile of a girl who belonged.

"Some of us don't have a choice but to focus," I said lightly, and got the laugh I was aiming for. It landed as modesty. It wasn't. It was the truth, dressed up so it wouldn't show.

Across the aisle, a girl in a blazer that cost more than our rent leaned toward her friend. "Scholarship kids are so intense," she whispered—not quite quiet enough. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. I kept my eyes on my recopied notes, my expression arranged, and let it slide off the surface I'd built for exactly this.

That was the whole trick of Riverside. Belong loudly enough and no one checks the receipts.

I had color-coded cells for all of it. Spreadsheets. Calendar entries. Essay prompts scheduled across the week, with time blocked for drafting recommendation-letter requests. My entire future, maintained in tidy columns. Downtime was a reward, released only when the tasks above it were done.

So when the knocking started that Thursday night… Hard, official, and impatient. My first instinct was irritation. The intrusive rhythm didn't belong in our apartment. Neither did the men standing outside when I opened the door: two police officers, tired-faced, hands resting too easily near their belts.

"Is Daniel Chen home?"

The older one spoke with an accent. Boston, maybe. Somewhere north.

I didn't even think before I answered. "No. He moved out months ago."

A lie. The only thing I lie about—newly crafted every time, fitted to the situation. Danny still drifted in and out like the weather. Three nights home, two gone, one asleep on the couch at noon, one with bruised knuckles and some shrugging excuse. Our mother had stopped asking for details because they frightened her. I'd stopped asking because the answers made me hate him for making me worry.

The older officer glanced at his notebook. "You've heard from him recently?"

"No." I answered.

Another lie. The faster they leave, the sooner I find out what he did this time.

He studied me, maybe hearing how fast it came. "If he contacts you, tell him we need to speak with him."

"About what?"

"We're concerned for his safety."

That was the phrase that stayed with me after they left. Not arrest or questioning. Safety.

My mother stood in the kitchen doorway in her thin cardigan, face pale beneath the harsh yellow light. "What happened?"

"Nothing," I said automatically. "They just had questions."

Her mouth tightened. "About Danny."

I looked away. "I have homework."

It was almost true. I did sit down at the small table with calculus problems spread before me, but the numbers blurred. Danny had been gone three days. That wasn't unheard of, but the police at the door made it different. Made it real. Made it heavy.

The next morning, the world kept moving as if nothing had cracked.

Riverside's halls gleamed with polished floors and donor plaques. Girls in tailored uniforms complained about summer programs in Europe. Boys in expensive sneakers talked about early acceptance. A world I belonged in but never seemed to fit.

I moved through them like a blade, cutting in front of one group, slicing through another. I had mastered the art of making distance look like discipline.

Halfway through second period, I felt someone watching me.

I looked across the courtyard and spotted Mateo Reyes leaning against the brick wall near the senior lot. Dark hoodie, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable. He didn't belong at Riverside. Not really.

He'd been enrolled once, on some athletics-outreach deal, before vanishing back into the Hollows — the neighborhood south of the river, across the proverbial tracks. The place where broken things went to be ignored. He existed in the shadow of rumors, and I'd heard them all.

Rumor said he fought. That he'd put a boy in the hospital. That he could kill someone without much trouble. Rumor said a lot of things.

All I knew for certain was that when he looked at me, it felt less like interest than assessment. I looked away first.

When I got home that afternoon, the apartment door was ajar. Every nerve in my body turned to ice.I nudged it open with my foot, listening. Inside was a wreck. Drawers yanked out and dumped. Couch cushions gutted.

"Hello?"

I left the door open behind me and pulled out my phone as I stepped in, moving from the living room through the short hall to the kitchen, over things strewn across the floor. In my mother's room, her jewelry box lay splintered—though the cheap chain necklaces inside had been left untouched.

In Danny's room, I couldn't see the floor. Closet, desk drawers, the plastic bin of winter clothes from under the bed—all emptied.

This wasn't theft, it was a message.

Spray-painted in black across Danny's wall, over the peeling poster of some basketball player he'd once worshipped, were six words.

DANNY HAS 7 DAYS

I stood very still.

Danny had always been a problem. A disappointment, like a wound that kept reopening. But this was bigger than sleeping through shifts, or borrowing money, or coming home bloodied and grinning. Bigger than one more reckless mess.

Seven days. Someone had put a clock on my brother and for the first time in a long time, I felt my perfect future tilt. And underneath the fear, something older and uglier rose to meet it. Danny had dragged disaster to our door and left it there for me to find.

So I would find out how deep it went, even if it meant following it into every place I'd spent my whole life trying to outrun.