Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (2 page)

The plaster was cracking on the walls of my bedroom, but I couldn’t afford to pay to get them repaired and the landlord sure as hell wasn’t going to do it. So I bought some paper and spent most of a weekend up a borrowed stepladder, gluing it over the top. I filled the apartment with thrift store furniture I hoped could pass for kitsch and filled the closet with thrift store dresses I hoped could pass for vintage.

And then it was time for me.

The bruises had started to fade but the emotional damage hadn’t. I still saw his face whenever I closed my eyes; I still jumped every time someone banged on the outer door of the apartment building with a heavy hand. I couldn’t afford therapy and wouldn’t have dared talk to anyone if I could.

Emma was broken beyond repair. I had to leave her behind. I had to become someone else.

I had to become Jasmine.

I knew who Jasmine was. She was the idealized me, a mirror version of myself with all the flaws turned into positives. I’d always hated my red hair. My dad had always picked it out as another reason to hate me, even before my mom died, and I was pretty sure I knew why: everyone else in the family including him and my mom had dark hair. As Emma, I’d always kept my hair fairly short and pulled back into a ponytail, or hidden under a hat. As Jasmine, I’d wear it as a badge of pride. I’d grow it long and lustrous, a shining mane down my back. And I wouldn’t call it
red
anymore. I was going to be glamorous. It would be
auburn.

Ever since my body started to change, I’d been curvier than the other girls. I’d hidden that, too, beneath baggy sweatshirts and combat pants, draping myself in layers of fabric until there wasn’t any shape left. But Jasmine sure as hell wouldn’t stand for that. Jasmine would be proud of her curves. She’d show off her boobs in low-cut dresses, and
work
that ass in tight jeans and pencil skirts. She’d be
voluptuous,
like a Hollywood bombshell.

I wanted to look different. More than that—I
needed
to look different. It was no good trying to hide under a rock. I knew my dad would be looking for me and there was always the chance he’d glimpse a picture of me somewhere. I had to be unrecognizable. To the extent that I could become a famous actress, with my picture plastered everywhere, and he’d stare straight past me. I wasn’t going to hide—or, if I was, I was going to hide in plain sight. Emma hid; Jasmine wouldn’t.

I was going to have the life I’d always wanted. All I had to do was become somebody else.

***

My eyes went from gray to green, courtesy of colored contacts. My face, once gaunt from stress and bad food, filled out. My skin went from deathly pale and spotty to something you might romantically call
ivory.
I grew my hair until it hung in long, shining waves I liked to think qualified as
tresses
. Hours on a fitball in my apartment nipped in my waist to give me a proper hourglass figure, although keeping it that way was a full-time battle.

Men still stared at me, but now their gazes didn’t make me embarrassed. I ate it up ravenously, because every time some guy gawped at the outer me, at my pale cleavage and bare legs, it meant there was no chance of them seeing the inner me.

If my mother had been alive, she wouldn’t have recognized me. But my appearance wasn’t enough. I had to transform completely. I worked under the assumption that, someday, my dad would sit at home, drunk out of his skull, and see a TV interview with a famous actress called Jasmine Kane, and if there was even the faintest suspicion in his mind that she was Emma, I would be dead.

So I worked on my accent, too. I’d already practiced at home, quietly reciting lines from movies while my dad was asleep. But now I had the time to sit there for hours, eliminating every trace of working-class Chicago from my voice. I went for something both upmarket and untraceable—it could have been from anywhere, but it spoke of private school and ample money.

It was over that summer that I got into cop shows, binge-watching everything from Scandinavian detective dramas to forensic crime lab series. It grew into my dream role—a good, honest cop, or maybe a tough detective. All this in spite of the fact that I’d still run a mile every time I saw a real-life cop... but I guess it doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that one. I’d been on the wrong side of the law my whole life. The idea of being the good guy for once was appealing.

Next came my posture and mannerisms. I studied the screen sirens, all the way back to black and white movies. I watched how they walked and moved, gaining a good inch in height when I learned to stand up tall. I tried to glide when I walked and practiced making everything look elegant—even putting on a coat. But the biggest change came with the confidence Jasmine gave me. I’d been hiding for years, because attracting attention meant pain. I’d walked around almost hunched over, closing in on myself, with the hood of my sweatshirt pulled up around my face. Now, I wanted people to look at me. I strutted. I relegated my sneakers to the closet and wore nothing but three inch heels, until anything else felt weird. My curvy ass stopped being something I hated and started being something men followed with their eyes.

By the time the semester started, Emma was shrinking, falling rapidly backward down a dark little hole into a secret corner of my mind, her cries getting fainter and fainter. Already, she seemed like a bad dream.

As I stood there outside Fenbrook Academy in the late summer sunshine, watching all the other freshmen arrive, it felt as if my whole life was stretching out in front of me. A bus pulled up and a slender girl—a dancer, I guessed—stumbled out hauling a backpack that looked as big as she was. She stood and looked up at the doors of the academy in wonder. Maybe she could be my first new friend.

A cab pulled up and an even thinner girl climbed out, wearing a gray dress that looked as if it cost a month’s rent. Her blonde hair was perfectly straight and, as she paid the driver, she stood with her black suitcase poised beside her, stabilized by one fingertip, as elegant as any fashion model.

As Emma, she would have intimidated me. As Jasmine, I was ready to march...no,
bounce,
straight over there and introduce myself. But before I could get there, the blonde joined the dark haired one and looked up at the doors with her. I gave them their shared moment of awe. Maybe I’d meet them later.

Then I saw her. Little more than five feet tall, struggling under the weight of a cello, or a double bass, or some other ridiculous instrument. She looked far too young to be anything but a freshman. I bounced over to her—I was getting to like bouncing—and grinned. “
Hi!”
I said ecstatically. “I’m Jasmine. Enrolling as an actress. Are you a freshman too?”

The girl blinked twice, studying me nervously through her glasses. “No,” she said doubtfully. “A sophomore. Karen.”

I felt myself frown. “You don’t look old enough. You look younger than me.”

Karen actually blushed. “I graduated high school a year early,” she told me, as if that was something to be ashamed of.

“So we’re the same age!” I said delightedly. I towed her up the steps and toward Fenbrook’s doors. “But you already know the place. You can show me around!”

“Well, yes,” said Karen. “I mean, if you want me to. I mean, I don’t really know lots of people or anything, and I only really go in the music department, but—”

“And tonight, we can all go out to a bar and get drunk with all the other freshmen,” I told her.

“But I’m not a—and I don’t really get—”

“I saw a place just down the street,” I told her. “Flicker.” I giggled, something I never would have done as Emma. But then I’d never have worn the bright red lipstick, or the tight summer dress, or the ridiculous heels, either. I’d never have tossed my hair and enjoyed the sunshine lighting up its curls or delighted in the simple pleasure of meeting someone who had no idea about my past.

I was so happy, I had to stop myself giving Karen an impromptu hug. And then I went ahead and gave her one anyway. Life was great. I was Jasmine, and the person I’d used to be was gone. “We’re going to be best friends,” I told Karen. “I can just feel it.”

Now

Chapter 1

Ryan

“Oh look,” said Hux, glancing sideways at me. “We’re passing by Fenbrook Academy. Again.” But the protest was muffled and half-hearted. Muffled because he was midway through his third glazed donut. Half-hearted because I’d paid for them.

“It’s on our beat,” I said, slightly defensively. I gave the patrol car just a touch of gas and it surged smoothly forward toward the red brick building.

“Ryan: just
ask her out.
”

We’d had this conversation every Thursday for months, because Thursday was the day
she
went to get lunch at Harper’s, the deli down the street. Not with Natasha and Clarissa, the ballerinas, not with Karen, with little one with the cello and the Irish boyfriend, but by herself.

I mean, not that I was trying to get her by herself. That sounds bad. I just mean: she was by herself, so I thought I should check up on her. In case anyone tried to mug her, or anything.

I lifted my foot off the gas so that we could roll down the street at walking pace, maximizing my chances of seeing her.

“I can’t ask her out,” I told Hux. “I can’t even talk to her.”

“You’re...what, six-five? Two hundred pounds? You got all those muscles bulging out of you like I never had at your age.” Hux shook his head in disbelief. “You can flatten three coked-up Russian pimps,” he said. “You can wrestle a loan shark to the ground even when he’s carryin’ an axe. But you can’t talk to a redhead?” He was grinning. He found the whole thing hilarious. And he had a point. I never normally had a problem talking to women. Only this one.

“She’s not
a redhead,”
I told Hux.
“She’s….” I could feel my face reddening. “...
special.
Better than you and me.” I mean, she was an actress for God’s sake. Maybe she hadn’t gotten her big break yet, but any time now those idiots in Hollywood were going to realize what they were missing and—

There she was.

Eyes on the heavens, as if she could will the sole cloud in the sky out of existence by sheer force of her personality. Her long, auburn hair hung halfway down her back, bouncing softly as she walked. My hands tensed on the steering wheel as I imagined running my fingers through it. Her lips, pursed in thought, could only have been carved by an artist. It was September, but the city was still doggedly clinging onto the warmth of summer and she was wearing a dress that hugged every glorious curve.

She was so beautiful I felt my breath stop in my chest. And I only had another five seconds to drink her in because then we’d be past her and I’d have to wait another week—

“Oh, for the love of God,” said Hux, and blipped the siren.

The
wa-wap
of the siren echoed around the quiet street, every passer-by looking round in surprise and then quickly looking away, hoping it wasn’t them about to get arrested. My head whipped around to stare at my partner in horror, then whipped back to Jasmine. She’d stopped dead and was turning to look at our car—

Our eyes met. I grinned a sheepish grin and slowed the car to a halt.

“Ryan?!”
she asked, bemused.

It felt like a fire hose had been attached to my heart in place of one of the arteries. A solid thump of emotion that she remembered my name. “Yeah,” I said, in a voice that didn’t sound like my own.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked. And even that throwaway, innocent comment was just laden with teasing, sexy innuendo. My mind filled with all the things she might have done wrong, and all the wrong things I’d like to do to her. Or was it all in my head? Was I just reading that into it because I was completely, hopelessly, smitten with this girl?

We locked eyes and, just for a fraction of a second, I swore I saw something. I was watching her as intently as I’d watch a suspect, desperate for any clue, so maybe that was why. Her eyes widened, her breathing seemed to change. Just for that instant, she looked—

She looked as if she felt the same way I did.

And then it was gone, so fast that I couldn’t be sure it had ever been there. The Jasmine I knew was back, flirty and yet untouchable, friendly and yet completely unattainable. She was so many levels above me it wasn’t even funny. She was going to Hollywood someday—I had no doubt about that. And I was going to be a beat cop until the day I died.

“Nope,” my mouth said, filling in for me while my brain was absent. “I was just—”

She smiled and I could feel every part of my body light up as if I’d grabbed a live wire. If I’d had any more words in my head, they evaporated.

“He just wanted to say ‘hi’,” Hux threw in, grinning.

Jasmine smiled and leaned down, bracing her bare arms on the sun-warmed roof of the car so she could look in through the window. She was wearing one of her low-cut summer dresses and OHMYGOD—