illuminate excerpt

7/28/2019 Illuminate Excerpt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/illuminate-excerpt 1/18

“Part The Picture of Dorian Gray, part The Devil Wears Prada, this original and engrossing story will keep surprising readers right up to the thrilling climax.”

—Josephine Angelini, author of Starcrossed



opyright © 2012 by imee gresti

ll rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections

from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing

ompany, 215 Park venue South, New York, New York 10003.

Harcourt is an imprint of Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing ompany.

www.hmhbooks.com

ext set in MrsEaves.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

gresti, imee.

Illuminate / by imee gresti.

p. cm.

Summary: brainy, shy high school outcast interning at a hicago hotel discovers

that the hotel staff has an evil agenda planned for her classmates on prom night.[1. Supernatural — Fiction. 2. Internship programs — Fiction.] I. itle.

pz7.a268754i1 2012

[Fic] — dc23

2011027326

Manufactured in the nited States of merica

K 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

45XXXXXXXX



A Rare Opportunity

3 1 4

U p until that point, English class had been unremarkable. We

were halway through The Picture of Dorian Gray. Mrs. Harris,

with her voluminous behind precariously perched on the ront o

her strained wooden desk, scanned the room searching or fick-

ers o comprehension — or, at the very least, consciousness — in

a sea o clueless aces. I slid down in my seat, letting my long

wispy hair, still damp rom my morning encounter with winter’s

sloppy-wet sleet, all around the sides o my ace: trying to hide.

I’ve never much been one or participation. I generally know the

answers — I just don’t appreciate the attention that comes rom

knowing them. nswer correctly and you have urther cemented

your reputation as a brainy, hopeless outcast. nswer incor-

rectly, and not only are you considered a bookish nerd, but now

you’re even bad at that. It was a lose/lose situation. So I read

ahead in the book, tuning her out, glancing up every now and

then to the clock above the chalkboard or to the windows where

blustery, chalk-white skies hung over another rigid January day.Evanston, Illinois. he tundra that was the greater hicago area

would likely look this way until pril, but it never bothered me so



4

much. I liked the way that braving its wind-whipping wrath could

make a person, even someone as easily tossed around as me, feel

stronger.

“So let’s talk about the nature of good, evil, and hedonism,”

the teacher droned on.

t the mention of hedonism, on reex, my eyes darted two

rows in front of me. Buzz-cropped Jason bington, wearing

his basketball jersey, number 9, to advertise the big game this

weekend, nibbled on the cap of a blue ballpoint pen —my blue

ballpoint pen. Somewhere inside my stomach, swarms of butter-ies uttered from their cocoons. It was for this very reason that

the front outside pocket of my backpack bulged at all times with

scores of these pens, which I had, optimistically, bought in bulk.

Jason never seemed to have his own, and he had asked to borrow

one from me weeks ago and then again and again and now this is

what I had become to him: a purveyor of pens. t the desk beside

him, a blond creature — his blond creature — named ourtney

twirled her artfully hot-rollered, bodacious curls. his is what

boys like him were conditioned to expect. his wasn’t me, and

I couldn’t imagine it ever would be, regardless of what magical

metamorphosis one was expected to undergo during high school.

I was a work in progress, but I had no reason to believe the n-

ished product would ever be quite like that.

I had stopped paying the least bit of attention to Harris’s lec-

ture when she called, “Ms. erra? Haven. Did you hear me?”

o be honest, no. Scrambling, I shufed through the shards

I had caught of her lecture, searching for the most likely line of

questioning and then shooting out an answer that ought to t.

“m, Dorian and Lord Henry believe in following the senses,pursuing whatever pleases them, uh, no matter the consequenc-

es, and, um, not worrying about right and wrong?” I proposed,



5

swea dampening my emples. Jason angled his head back jus a

ouch in my direcion. I fel oher eyes on me oo.

“thank you, ha’s lovely.” She was holding a slip of paper she

had jus aken from a senior girl, bored, chewing gum, who now

lef he room. “Bu your presence is requesed in he principal’s

ofce.”

weak chorus of “ooooh” broke ou as I gahered my books

and boulder of a backpack. s I squeezed hrough he aisle, pass-

ing Jason’s desk, he looked up for only a momen, expressionless

and sill chewing on my pen.In my wo and a half years of high school, I had ye o se

foo inside Principal tollman’s ofce — I’m jus no ha kind of

girl. So I couldn’ imagine wha his could be abou. n he walk

here, fooseps echoing on he linoleum, faded voices mufing

ou from passing classrooms, I ried o hink wha i could be:

Was i Joan? Was somehing wrong wih her? this is how i is wih

me, always expecing he wors.

Bu in our case, his sor of overreacion was jusied.

this is jus wha happens when you are discovered, as I was,

a roughly age ve, in a muddy dich somewhere off Lake Shore

Drive in he dead of winer. lile Jane Doe, barely breahing,

no memories of anyhing ha came before ha nigh, no one o

ever come looking for you. nd you ge raised by he kind nurse

who evenually akes you in, names you, feeds you, clohes you.

fer a hing like ha, worry becomes more han a reex; i be-

comes an umbrella shading daily life, hovering closer every ime

someone ges home lae or doesn’ call when hey say hey will.

“Ms. terra, have a sea,” Principal tollman said over he op

of he rimless reading glasses perched on her nose when she saw me sanding in he doorway of her ofce. She squared up in her

chair. “So i looks like congraulaions are in order.” I fel my



6

eyes involuntarily bulge. “We’ve just been notied that you and

two of your fellow eleventh-graders have been accepted into the

Department of Education’s Vocational Illinois Leaders intern-

ship program.”

It took me half a second too long to process.

“h, wow. hat’s great, thanks,” I said, more reserved than

she probably expected, but I was preoccupied. In my mind I was

sorting and sifting through everything I’d applied for in the past

year. here was just so much. nything that could earn me extra

cash for college or would sound good enough to help me clinch ascholarship to one of my dream schools. Internships, fellowships,

essay contests — my mailbox ooded with the constant stream of

applications and deadlines and hopes. nd yet, somehow, this

didn’t even ring a bell.

he principal took off her glasses and stared at me with a faint

smile, a director waiting for the reaction shot she wanted. “his

sounds fantastic,” I said. “I really am honored. But forgive me,

I can’t seem to recall actually applying for this.” nervous grin

propped up the corners of my mouth.

She laughed, a small, charmed chuckle. “Yes, well, that’s be-

cause you didn’t. hat’s the beauty of this particular internship.

hey just pluck the best and the brightest and place those stu-

dents with a thriving Illinois enterprise for the semester. It’s a

new pilot program the state is trying out. You will each be paired

up with someone at this business who will act as a sort of advanced

independent-study tutor and a mentor. nd — ” Glasses back on,

she read from a paper. “It appears you’re going to be placed at

the Lexington Hotel in hicago. Why, that’s really remarkable,

you know. hey’re about to reopen, and the woman who ownsit has become the toast of hicago’s business world practically

overnight. You may have seen her in the Tribune and on the news.



7

his is a tremendous privilege. It says here that room and board

are provided, and there’s a considerable stipend in exchange for

good old-fashioned hard work.”

Her words rushed at me too fast to make sense of. So I would

be living at this place? Living at a hotel? Working full-time? No

actual classes? “onsiderable stipend”? It was a lot to wrap my

head around. Do things like this just fall from the sky? Perhaps

the near-perfect grades I worked so hard for, the afterschool job

I had held for pretty much a decade, the Saturday nights spent at

home studying, were nally paying off in something that couldgive me a shot at the pricey and prestigious schools on my college

wish list.

“I know we’ve started our semester — the timing is a bit odd;

I suppose the state board is still ironing out the kinks — however,

we’ll make it work since this is a rare opportunity.” She said this

with a hands-clasped, tilted-head gravity that suggested she would

like some gratitude and gushing in return.

“hank you, Ms. ollman. I appreciate it. his is really great.”

My mind was already ve steps ahead, wondering what Joan would

say. Would she even let me go? What would I bring? How would I tell them at the

hospital?

“You start next week. Everything you need to know should be

in here.” She stood and thrust a slim manila envelope at me, then

surprised me by grabbing my limp, unsuspecting hand for a rm

shake. “Do us proud, Haven.”

I had never seen so many people crowd the half-moon of the

pediatric nurses’ station when there wasn’t an emergency. here

must’ve been at least three dozen of them pulled from even thefarthest corners of Evanston General Hospital’s compound and

representing the full color spectrum of scrubs — pinks, blues,



8

greens, Disney characters — all buzzing around me, nibbling on

heaping slices of red velvet cake (my favorite).

Joan had, of course, orchestrated the whole thing. Now she

bent over the sheet cake bearing the message H appy BirtHday and

Congratulations, H aven! W e’ll miss you!, dishing out precisely

sliced pieces as fast as she could and, naturally, with a smile.

She had just turned fty a few months earlier, but besides

her gray hair, which she hadn’t bothered to dye, you would never

have guessed her age: her social calendar, from her book clubs

to her bridge nights, put mine to shame. I wished that she triedto date more — of the two of us, she seemed to have a better shot

at it — but she could be stubborn about that. It was the only thing

she got touchy about. Joan had divorced a year or so before she

found me, after discovering she couldn’t have kids of her own.

She didn’t talk about it much, but the other nurses had over

the years, so I’d gotten the whole story in bits and pieces. hey

thought she was too scared now, and they tried to push her into

dating and set her up to little avail. But at least she had plenty of

friends. She was always either going to a party or throwing one. I

wished to one day be such a good hostess. t the moment, though,

I was doing my best as the center of attention, another tricky role

for me. s problems went, this was a ne one: surrounded by so

many well-wishers I had managed only one bite of my celebratoryconfection before being pleasantly besieged by a tug at the arm of

my salmon-hued scrubs here, an ambush hug or a jolly pat on the

back there.

“Y’know, I just don’t know how I’m going to tell some of

my patients about this. hey’ll be devastated!” said blond-bee-

hived Nurse alloway from cardiac. She stabbed at her cake asDr. Michelle from pediatrics — the youngest resident in the



9

enire hospial, and my idol — and whie-haired Nurse Sanders,

wih glisening eyes behind her hick glasses, nodded in agree-

men. this was my lile sororiy. “You’ll break all heir hears,”

alloway wen on.

“nd hose are hears ha are already in prey bad shape o

begin wih!” Dr. Michelle chimed in wih he punch line. We all

laughed. this is wha passed or humor in hese pars. Indeed, a

ew paiens liked o call me a “hearbreaker,” which was cerainly

somehing I never heard rom anyone who wasn’ an ocogenar-

ian wih ailing vision. Dr. Michelle smiled. “We’ll miss you,Haven.” She could almos pass as a paien in her deparmen,

being so energeic, young, and, like me, only a couple inches

over fve ee.

Sanders snied. “ould you sill come on weekends? r eve-

nings?”

“Now I’m saring o eel bad,” I said. “Maybe I should say.”

he oher end o he nurses’ saion a good feen ee away,

Joan perked her head up, waving her cake knie in he air. “I know

you’re no guil-ripping my girl, are you, ladies?” she called over

o us, cuing a piece o cake or hersel a las. Propped up on

he able behind her was a ramed phoo o me, abou en years

old wearing a mini–candy sriper’s uniorm. Images o me were

all over his place: I was everyone’s surrogae child smiling rom

heir deskops and cabines and compuer wallpaper. the hospi-

al had prey much been my daycare cener or as long as I could

remember; I came o work wih Joan and was babysa by anyone

and everyone unil I was old enough ha hey could sar giving

me somehing useul o do. Joan wandered over, plae in hand,

mouh ull o cake, and pu her arm around me. “We have o lehis one spread her wings. She’ll y back.” She winked.



10

“I’ll be bck t the end of June. You’ll brely hve time to miss

me,” I sid, crter deepening in my hert. “I’ll do goodbye

tour before I go tody.”

and tour I did, mking the rounds to see ll my fvorites nd

ending the dy with the toughest stop of ll, peditrics. I cut

pied piper’s pth through the wrd, collecting pjm-cld fol-

lowers s I went room to room dispensing hugs nd kisses nd

promising to be bck soon. We lnded bck t the plyroom nd

gthered t the bulletin bord we hd ssembled together: col-

lge of photos of ech child in the wrd, running the length of the wll, with border in riot of colors. It looked like mssive

yerbook pge, nd we updted it with new photos of everyone on

regulr bsis. It hd strted s nothing relly, just little proj-

ect for photogrphy clss lst yer. I hd sked few kids if they

would be willing to let me photogrph them nd they greed, nd

then somehow everyone wnted in on it. Jenny, bndn-cld

fourteen-yer-old, hd explined once, “we look better in your

pictures thn we do in the mirror.” I ssured her no Photoshop

ws involved — this ws them.

he strngest thing of ll though ws the rection bck t

school. Most of the kids in tht photogrphy clss were in there

either for esy as or were relly tortured rtist types who dressed

ll in blck. hen there were people like me, who could ppreci-

te the rts, even if we didn’t quite hve the skills to prticipte,

nd gured we couldn’t be tht bd t pointing nd shooting.

When I put together tht project though, something clicked. You

looked t the pictures nd jumped into the eyes of those kids nd

felt like you knew everything there ws to know bout them. Ech

semester the clss voted on someone’s work to be displyed in theglss cse in the school’s front hllwy, nd somehow they chose

me. Every time I wlked by it, I would see hndful of people



11

stopping to stre, kids who never seemed to notice nything.

Even Json abington hd looked — few times in fct — nd once

when I hppened to be wlking by (becuse I wlked by lot) he

sw me nd elbowed me, nodding t the cse, nd sid, “his is yours? It’s relly cool.” ht ment more to me thn I’d like to

dmit. But it ws true; the sweet fces of my subjects did ll seem

to glow in those pictures, like the cmer cut down to their core.

I ddressed my little posse now. “I’m officilly putting you

guys in chrge of the Wll of Fme.” I knocked knuckle ginst

the bulletin bord. “Dr. Michelle hs kindly promised to tkethe photos so you cn keep rotting in the new ones. Don’t let

her slck off. I’ll be bck soon nd it better be in good shpe.” I

smiled.

“oooh, um, she’s not such good photogrpher,” Jenny

whispered. “emember the one of me with just one eye open

when you were out tht one dy? It took, like, n hour to get

something even tht good.”

“Good point. We’ll just hope tht she’s improved since then.

r else, you cn be cmerwomn.” I winked. “I’ll miss you guys.

ky, high-ves, everyone.” I rced round slpping ech soft

plm.

N ight hd fllen by the time we left the hospitl. he lights of hicgo were dull glimmer in the distnce s Jon drove

through the windswept suburbn streets of cozy, quiet Evnston.

he city felt much frther wy thn it ctully ws from home

nd the comfortble routine of my life. he cr heter blsted,

nd beneth my puffy prk I could feel cold bnds of swet trick-

ling down my skin. I sighed.“You oky?” Jon sked, peeking t me from the corner of

her eye.



12

“Sorry, yeah.” I kep my gaze sraigh ahead ino he ice-

encrused, velvey nigh. “tha was a lo ougher han I expeced.”

“ course, honey, hey’re all like amily. Besides, going-away

paries are designed o make you sorry you’re leaving — hey’resneaky ha way.” She smiled, and I did oo. “Bu you know wha?

We’re all righ here. We’re no ha ar away. I’ll be fne.”

“I know, I’m jus sor o, I don’ know, nervous.” winge o

guil nipped a me. I didn’ wan Joan o worry, and I cerainly

didn’ wan o remind her ha jus abou weny-our hours ago

she was compleely veoing his whole plan. She had sounded allhe expeced alarms: Why do you need to stay there? How hard are they going

to be working you that they need you on the premises 24-7 when you only live an

hour away on the L? Don’t they know there are child labor laws? Sure, I had

old her, he whole hing is organized by he sae Deparmen o

Educaion so obviously hey’re no shipping us o o some swea-

shop. Bu, in he end, here was no denying he honor ha seemed

o come wih his, and ha sipend ( Joan’s eyes had posiively

bulged). I had pulled ou he packe rom Principal tollman,

wih all he pariculars abou he hoel, glossy phoos o is gran-

deur, and a hos o clippings rom every newspaper and magazine

in he ciy abou he glamorous woman — urelia Brown, blond,

sunning, unbelievably young, and powerul — who would be my

new boss. Joan had o say yes.Bu now, as Friday nigh closed in on me, ushering in wha I

knew would be an inense weekend o preparaion or his sudden

new chaper, nerves were geing he bes o me.

“I jus don’ know wha his will be like,” I coninued. “I don’

know i hey’ll like me or i I’ll do a good job. nd i’s jus weird.

I mean, I’ve never even been o camp and now I’m going o beliving somewhere else. nd I know I wan o go away o school, bu



13

I would have a whole exra year o ge ready for ha, you know? I

jus feel really . . . off.” tha was he only way o pu i. I fel ha I

was playing he role of me — and doing i badly — in wha would be

a spinoff of my life. the glow cas by he sreelamps ransformedhe bare rees lining our pah ino spindly, enacled beass. I

shivered and ook a deep breah.

“Don’ worry. they picked you, remember? they know you’re

special,” she offered, in soohing ones. “nd, besides, Dane

will be here. You kids will have each oher.”

“I know. tha’s he only reason I’m no oally freaking ou.Imagine wha a baske case I’d be if I had o go i alone.”

“No kidding.”

Dane Dennis had been my securiy blanke, and bes friend,

for abou en years now. tha he was one of he oher wo kids go-

ing o he Lexingon wih me migh have oherwise seemed pure,

dumb luck, excep ha he and I were always neck and neck, vy-

ing for he op of he class (poliely, of course). So i made sense

when he hedged a lunch, sheepishly peeking ou from behind his

chin-lengh dreadlocks and grabbing a french fry from my ray.

“You wouldn’ happen o have any news, would you?” He had

eased ino i, hen bulldozed on. “Because I do. nd I will die if

you don’t have news. Please ell me you’re diching his own and

breezing ino he Windy iy for a cerain fabulous inernship.”He raised his eyebrows a me — up/down, up/down — conspirao-

rially. Insanly a wave of relief washed over me.

“You wouldn’ be checking ino he Lexingon Hoel, would

you?” I answered.

“Yesss!” He was pracically jumping in his sea now. “h my

god, we’re going o have so much fun. I mean, who lives in ahoel? nly, like, rock sars and celebriies and maybe hose



14

messed-up starlets who, like, divore their parents. Get me out of

this horrid high shool and into chiago soiety!”

“Yes, please.” I smiled. We looked around at the tables full of

people who would elet us president of things like Frenh HonorSoiety, but yet not talk to us ever. “re you a little . . .”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“Hello?! Yes. otally nervous. I mean, the whole thing seems

like kind of a big deal — ollman was, like, weirdly exited, and I

sure don’t want to mess up. We ould get total kikass ollege re-ommendations out of this. nd these people ould probably get

us into any shool in chiago without even trying: Northwestern,

. chiago, they probably know everyone. We’d be idiots not to

be nervous. But we’re smart and seriously, we work hard. It’s all

good.” He swatted his hand at me, no sweat.

nd I exhaled. his was Dante’s rare talent — far more im-

pressive than his tenure on the honor roll or his landslide re-

eletion to student government, or the absurdly gourmet bake

sale he organized for harity eah year, full of the most preious

onfetions you’ve ever seen (he was no less than an artist whose

hosen medium just happened to be frosting). No, his greatest

aomplishment, as far as I was onerned, was his ability to at

as a human tranquilizer for me. He ould keep me operating ata sane and steady level no matter how twisted up I felt inside. He

had proven his aptitude for it from that very rst day I met him at

the hospital so many years ago.

Bak then, I was a ve-year-old roaming the pediatri ward

halls waiting to nd out who I was and where I would be shipped

off to. He had been rushed to the emergeny room by his frantimom after he had fallen limbing a tree. He had landed on a

mess of stiks and roks he had olleted to build a fort and



15

ended up scraping up his back somehing erce and man-

gling his arm. tendon damage forced him o say overnigh,

and he wandered ino my room wih his broken arm plaser-

cased in a sling. We were up ill nearly daybreak elling ghos

sories. He wen home he nex afernoon, bu became a regular

visior for he monh I was here. Every few days he would ap-

pear, running down he hall, pulling his mom uhie wih him,

his lile arms always full of coloring books or suffed animals or

picures he’d drawn for me.

Joan pulled ino he driveway of our own house. Home neverlooked so good as when you knew you were going o leave i. urs

was all and narrow, a faded royal blue ou fron, wih brown

shuers and a slim covered porch. the place was pleny big for

jus he wo of us and mere blocks from Lake Michigan, which was

sill and icy now, bu would be our favorie escape for afernoon

sunbahing and picnicking when he weaher was warm.

“Go on in, I’ve goa ge some hings ou of he runk.” Joan

shooed me away.

“Need help?”

“Nah,” she insised. “I’ll be jus a sec.”

Wih ha, I ran up he fron seps and o he porch as fas as I

could, he icy air chilling me o my bones as he wind howled and

whooped around me. My gloved ngers fumbled wih he keys

and nally he door opened and a blas of hea warmed my skin.

I ipped on he ligh. through he living room, back in he

kichen, a shimmering silver balloon shaped in he number 16

danced above he able. homemade cake and a palm-size box,

wrapped in gliering silver paper wih a maching bow, waied

for me.I dropped my backpack on he oor and beelined sraigh o

my birhday shrine, unzipping my coa as I wen and disposing of



16

it on a living room chair on my way. Joan was already at the door

by the time I dug my nger into the uffy icing and licked it off.

“Part two of the birthday extravaganza!”

“Delicious. nd amazing. But it’s not until Monday.” hat, at

least, was the date we had always celebrated since we didn’t really

know for sure when I was born. It was the anniversary of the day

when I had been found and taken to the hospital where Joan was

the rst to tend to me, patching up my gashes and scrapes, check-

ing for broken bones, and slowly getting me to talk to her, though

I had nothing to say, nothing that was helpful at least.“I thought since we were already in such a festive spirit, we

would just continue the party. Let the good times roll!” She set

down her purse and shimmied off her coat, hanging it on the

rack by the door. I took the glittering box in my hands and shook

it.

“So can I open it?”

“You’d better!” she said, joining me at the table and sampling

a nger’s worth of icing herself. “Go on!”

I tore at the paper and opened a white velvet box. Its contents

sparkled.

“I know you’re not into jewelry, my precious little tomboy,”

she said. “But sixteen is a biggie and I thought you should have

something pretty.”

I pulled out a necklace, webbing its gold chain around my n-

gers. It’s true: I didn’t wear jewelry, and what few pieces I’d ever

gotten had always sat in their boxes untouched. But this one al-

ready felt different. For one, it wasn’t a heart or a dangling birth-

stone or any of the typical kinds of things I was used to seeing

on the girls at school. Instead, this pendant, almost harp-shapedand running the length of my ngertip, was something entirely



17

new: a single gold wing, its textue softly ippled to give the illu-

sion of feathes.

“I found this at that antique shop I always dag you to with

me,” Joan said.

“right, the one next to that bookstoe that I always sneak into

when you take too long.”

“Exactly.” She smiled. “I just thought it looked special, like

you, and unique.” She kissed the top of my head. “I liked the

wing, because you’e eally going places, you know that? You’e

soaing, Haven. You have so much ahead of you.”“hanks, Joan, I love it, I eally do.” I gave he a hug and held

he a few seconds longe than I nomally might.

“Maybe you’ll actually wea this one, you think?” she asked,

smoothing my hai.

“I’ll pove it.” I dangled the necklace fom my nge and lift-

ed up my hai. “Would you?”

“I’d be honoed.” She fastened it on, then tuned me aound

by my shouldes and staightened it in place so it hit just at that

little indented spot at my thoat. “Pefect, go see.”

I studied myself in the bathoom mio. My eyes went di-

ectly to the pendant. Geneally, eveything about my appeaance

seemed eithe impefect o, at best, plain Jane. My nose always

looked to me like a blob of uncooked cookie dough. My hai,

skin, and eyes wee just one shade off fom one anothe in the

colo spectum: caamel skin, bone-staight honey bown hai,

dak ambe eyes. he pink scubs hanging as they did on my boy-

ish fame did nothing to impove upon all this.

nd I had won entiely the wong long-sleeved themal shit

undeneath the V-neck top today. My favoites wee in the ham-pe and poo planning had left me with only this old one, with



18

a V-neck just a touch too deep. I looked at the mirror now and

wondered if that corner of my scar — the three nasty stripes angled

like accent marks and pebbled in texture like burns, located in

the space above my heart — had been peeking out like this all af-

ternoon. It was only two inches long but, when coupled with the

pair of scars on my shoulder blades, collectively signaled one big,

marred canvas. he necklace clearly should have looked glaringly

out of place having me as its unworthy mannequin. But somehow

this new piece seemed at home. he intense shine of the gold

caught the light and cast a soft glow upon my face. I did like itactually. Perhaps I was growing up at last. Maybe this was the rst

sign of the sophistication to come. Sixteen. It felt weighty, substan-

tial, important.

“I love it,” I called out, still admiring it in the mirror. “hank

you so much.”

illuminate excerpt

Documents