The Unwanted Heiress And Her Silent Tears

The Escalade hit a red light in downtown Boston, and Abigail saw him.

She almost missed it. Her eyes were unfocused against the window, tracing the edge of a public park, when the flash of white snagged her attention.

The boy from the balcony.

He was slumped on a wooden bench, head lolled to one side, wearing the same white button-down he'd had on yesterday. Except now it was smeared with dark dirt and rust-colored stains that looked a lot like dried blood. A purple bruise covered his left temple. His eyes were closed, his face slack with pain.

All of the reckless, manic energy she'd seen on the balcony was gone. He looked like something that had been broken and left there.

Abigail sat up straighter, pressing her hand to the glass.

In the front seat, Hank's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. He followed her line of sight. His jaw went rigid.

"Drive," he said quietly. "Don't stop."

The light turned green. The Escalade surged forward and the boy disappeared behind them.

Abigail didn't say anything. But she kept seeing the bruise. The blood on his shirt. The way his hand had been lying open on the bench, like he'd stopped bothering to hold onto anything.

A few blocks later, the car hit a wall of brake lights. A police cruiser was managing traffic at the intersection ahead — they were one block from the school. The Escalade rolled to a stop and sat.

Abigail looked at the door handle.

She thought about the handkerchief at the bottom of her bag, clean and white with hemmed edges, her foster mother's careful stitching. She thought about a person bleeding on a park bench while the world walked past.

"I think I dropped my orientation folder back there," she said, and pushed the door open.

She was out before Hank could turn his head.

She ran back through the cold air, canvas bag bouncing against her hip. The park came into view. The boy was still there, still in the same position, barely conscious.

She slowed her steps.

Up close, he looked younger than he had on the balcony, and worse. Much worse.

She didn't dare touch him. She didn't know him. She remembered the look he had sent through the window — that flat, hostile precision — and she stopped a careful distance away.

She dug the handkerchief out of her bag and crouched down. Gently, without touching him, she laid the folded white cloth on the bench slat beside his hand.

Then she stood up and ran.

She didn't know why she'd done it. It was just a piece of cloth. It couldn't fix a bruise that size, or whatever had happened to him the night before. But she'd spent two days in a house full of people who looked through her like she didn't exist, and she knew what it felt like to be invisible when you were hurting.

She wasn't willing to do that to someone else.

She arrived at St. Jude's Preparatory School gasping, hair windswept, and five minutes before the first bell. The courtyard was full of students stepping out of Porsches and Range Rovers in perfectly pressed uniforms, and Abigail in her worn sweater and scuffed sneakers moved through them like a wrong note in a practiced song.

She kept her head down and found the administration office.

Alistair Calloway, the Dean of Students, looked up from his mahogany desk, scanned her clothes in one dismissive sweep, and pushed a schedule and a plastic ID card across the desk.

"You are here because of the Richmond family's generous endowment," he said, his voice polished with contempt. "I suggest you keep your head down and do not drag down the junior class GPA. We have standards."

Abigail picked up the ID card. "Understood," she said, and left.

She was halfway down the main hallway, squinting at her schedule, when the warning bell screamed. The corridor emptied in seconds. She broke into a jog, spotted the plaque for AP Calculus, and turned the corner.

A body hit her like a freight train coming out of the stairwell.