After her father's tragic passing, Nora Davis is forced behind the scenes, nothing more than a stepping stone for others in their journey to stardom. When an opportunity presents itself, Nora, trapped under her stepmother's heel, takes it as her cha...
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Trapped in her bedroom, Nora thumped her head against the wooden door. Exhaustion pulled at every muscle and the meaty part of her fist ached from pounding on the door.
She'd been in here for the last two hours. Outside, the orange sky melded into a deep blue. If the window wasn't so high, or against the flat siding of the house, she'd have considered opening it and escaping that way. But there was nothing out there – no gutters, no trellis, no roofing – to keep her from plummeting to the ground. She would break her leg if she jumped out that way.
At this point, that might be her only way out. She hadn't heard even a whisper of movement on the other side of the door. The rest of the house was as silent as ever.
No one was coming by to let her out anytime soon.
❆❆❆
"Eli!"
The next day, Eli slammed his locker closed and put his cell phone in his back pocket. He'd been checking it, almost obsessively, all morning. Whether he was waiting for a text, a message board post, or a call, he wasn't sure. But his phone was painfully silent through his first-period class. Then his second. Then his third. Between classes he checked his notifications, scouring the messages pouring in, looking for that same profile.
"Eli!"
He was tired of waiting. The worry was now a solid brick in the pit of his stomach.
One day, he'd told her. It'd been a day and a half at this point. All he'd promised Nora was that he'd wait a day. Well, he'd done his waiting. Now, he was free to intervene.
"Eli, can I talk to you for a second?" Ariel asked as she appeared at his side.
Eli maneuvered around a small group of girls huddled in the hallway. "Sure," he muttered.
Ariel chattered next to him – something about another party at her house this weekend, and about the freckle on her elbow she was worried about. Eli only half listened. Most of his attention was on the Jostlin students bustling around him.
As he walked, a flame of anger grew in his stomach.
"I moved up to 1059 yesterday!"
"Katherine Slater is at 148 now—"
"Why are you doing that? Make a Scholar do it for you."
"The new Anonymous song debuted at number 1."
Eli's feet froze. Next to him, Ariel cut herself off, her eyebrows coming together. "Eli?"
"This school is ridiculous," he muttered to himself. Everything was numbers now. All about the numbers. Who was higher. Who dropped over the weekend. At what point had their generation stopped loving music for the music? Why did the ranking always come into play?
