The Prince (Masterpiece Duet 0.5)

“And I’m the dumbass who left you with my money.”

My cheeks turn hot. “I’m sorry I did that. I have it here, under my pillow. The rest of it, anyway. After I paid for the soup. But you can have that too, if you want.”

He laughs, the sound clanging like bells. “I don’t want it back.”

“You have to take it,” I say, scared that he sounds so much like that stranger. “The soup is enough for me, if you leave it. And you need the money more than I do.”

His shadow goes still. “What do you know about that?”

“I know you have a dad who’s mean, mean enough to run away from.”

“Doesn’t take a baby genius to figure that out. I pretty much told you.”

“Then there’s the man from the school.”

“What school?”

“From some fancy private school, I guess. He came to visit me at recess.” Something cold touches my bones, making me shiver. There’s a reason his laugh sounds the same. A reason he’s run away from home. The answer comes to me the way numbers do, before I’m even sure I want to know.

Black eyes narrow. “What did he look like?”

“Like you.”

This strange feeling comes over me, like it did when I first cheated. I knew I had something important I needed to do. But I didn’t have a deck of cards in front of me. No trigonometry proof to solve. Numbers were easy, but people are hard. They always have been.

A boy without any place to go.

A man who promises me safety, a real future.

The proof doesn’t write itself inside my mind. There are gaps between each logical jump. Unsolved variables. Unknowns. I can figure out the answer anyway. It makes too much sense.

“He talk to your class?” The boy’s voice is casual, but I can hear the tension underneath.

“Not really. He came at recess. I think Mrs. Keller told him what I can do.”

“And what’s that?”

I shrug in the dark. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it matters. It matters if you told him what he wanted to hear.”

That dark wave passes over me again, dragging me under. A warning. “He gave me a bad feeling. Not the same as Mr. Romero, but worse. So I told him a wrong answer.”

“Good. When he comes back you tell him as many wrong answers as you need to until he goes away.”

“How do you know he’ll come back?”

“Because he doesn’t give up.” A short laugh. “I thought that meant he would keep looking for me. Instead he went looking for a replacement.”

“Did you go to his school?”

The sound he makes is hard and mean. “His school? Yeah, I guess you could say that. Learned a lot. You wouldn’t like it there, trust me.”

“They don’t have the free lunch program?”

A longer pause this time. “It’s important that you don’t go along with him, understand? No matter what he says. No matter what he promises you. It’s not worth it, okay? You need to believe me.”

“I don’t even know you.”

He tosses the book aside. “I’m serious. You need to stay away from him.”

“Tell me your name. And don’t say it’s Quarter.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because you want me to trust you. At least I should know what to call you.”

“Damon Scott.”

My stomach sinks. “So that means your dad is…”

“Jonathan Scott, yes. You’ve heard of him, then. That’s good. You know what he’s capable of.”

Everyone in the trailer park knows about him, after Lisa Blake. The people my father plays cards with are dangerous, the ones he borrows money from even more so. But even he would never dare go near Jonathan Scott, the man who rules the west side of Tanglewood.

“Why would he want me?”

“Because he likes to fuck—sorry. He likes to mess with people. That’s what he does. Moves people around on his big ugly chessboard. You know how to play chess?”

I shake my head even though he can’t see me. Some of the books I’ve read have descriptions of chess. I know how the pieces move but I’ve never played. Never even seen a chess set in person. “Not really.”

“Well, pawns are the front line. They’re easy to find, but they can only move one way, one square at a time. A kid who’s what? Six years old?”

“Seven,” I say, indignant.

A soft laugh. “A seven-year-old doing trigonometry. Imagine what he could turn you into.”

“What?” I asked, a little awed by the idea that I could become something. Something other than one of the tired mothers with three kids from different men or one of the women on the street corners. A girl from the west side didn’t have other options.

“He’d turn you into a weapon,” Damon says, his voice flat. “A bullet. He would spend years making you, and when you were done, he’d pull the trigger.”

“Is that what he did to you?”

“Why?” he asks, his voice rough. “Do I seem dangerous?”

I remember the way he had looked that first night, all puffed up and strong. Like he could shoot me with the gun he claimed to have. Or slash me with his knife. Instead he had offered me food.

And he didn’t hurt me now, even though I’d stolen from him.

“You’re not dangerous.”

After a beat he says, “Not to you, baby genius. Not to you.”





Chapter Four





For the next four days Damon lives in the trailer with me.

Mostly he disappears during the day. He isn’t there when I get off the bus. But he always comes back at night. He works through the trigonometry book with me, teasing me when I get the answer right, encouraging me when I don’t.

“Won’t your dad lose his shit if he sees me in his bed?” he asks.

“I lock the deadbolt,” I say. “Even Daddy would have to knock to get in. And I’d wake you up before I opened the door. How did you get in, anyway?”

“The kitchen window.”

There’s barely a foot and a half in that space. Only enough for the feral cats in the neighborhood to sneak in and have a drink from the leaky faucet and dash out again.

He doesn’t act like Daddy. There are no rules and no drinking. But he does take care of me. Like a big brother, I decide. That’s what it’s like. A big brother who brings food and does math with me. I can almost forget that Daddy’s still missing.

I can almost forget that he might not come back.

It’s on the fifth day that everything goes wrong.

Mrs. Keller calls me to her desk. “Why did you tell Mr. Scott the wrong answer?”

I shrug. Maybe I didn’t know the right answer. She’d know that I’m lying. I can do a lot more than multiply numbers together.

Her eyebrows press together. “He has resources that we can only dream of at the school. Advanced teachers and materials.” She pauses, taking a deep breath. “There would be boarding. You would have to live somewhere else. Do you understand?”

This is my way out. An escape from West Tanglewood Elementary. A chance to be someone other than the teenage mother or the girl on the street corner.

“What about you?” I ask.

Her brown eyes widen. “What about me?”