This book could not have been written if not for the presence of several very important people in my life. I am thankful, as always, to my husband, who puts up with me on both the good days and the bad, and to my daughter and my son, for on-demand opinions from my target audience, as well as for their willingness to eat pizza when deadlines loom.
Thanks to Rinda Elliott, who helped me brainstorm Brave New Girl on the way from Oklahoma City to Dallas. Your friendship and willing ear mean so much to me.
Thanks also to Jennifer Lynn Barnes, for endless suggestions and opinions over weekly working lunches. Sometimes our lunches are the sanest hours of my week.
Endless gratitude to Sophie Jordan, Aprilynne Pike, and Kimberly Derting, who helped me figure out what this book was missing. I miss writing with you all in person!
And thanks most of all to my editor, Wendy Loggia, and to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who got the whole thing rolling. Your support means the world to me!
Can’t wait to find out what happens next?
Here’s a sneak peek at the sequel,
STRANGE NEW WORLD.
ONE
WAVERLY
I flop on my bed and touch the center of the screen covering the far wall of my bedroom. Rows of E-scape messages pop up. On the left edge of each message is a photo of the person who posted. Some of the messages are photographs. Others are video clips, playing silently because I’ve disabled the sound. I don’t want to hear about all the fun people are having without me.
Suddenly my bedroom door slides open with a whisper, and I wave my hand in a swiping motion, closing the message stream. The screen flashes white, then becomes transparent, showing the colorful stripes of the wall beneath.
“Knock, knock,” my father says from the doorway, even though the door is already open. I’ve set it to let him in but to keep my mother out. Of course, she can override the settings, but the fact that I want to keep her out will be enough to make my point.
My dad doesn’t say anything, but I know he saw my screen. He knows I was stalking the E-scape. “What, no production crew today?” He glances around my room in mock disbelief as he steps inside carrying a covered tray.
“What would be the point?” I get up, and the white comforter smooths itself out, leaving a flawless, wrinkle-free finish, erasing any evidence that I was there. “You think the world wants to see me sitting here staring at the wall?”
He smiles as he sets the tray on my dresser. “The world wants to see everything you do. They didn’t dub you and Hennessy digicast royalty for nothing.”
I shrug. I have fun playing princess on camera. I don’t even mind being recognized in public—that’s really the only reason I go out. But my father knows me like my millions of followers never will.
“I hear we have attendants to do that.” I nod at the tray.
“I am aware,” my dad says with one brow raised. “But when your daughter already has everything—including the number-one ranked digicast worldwide—sometimes the only thing left to give her is the personal touch.”
“That is so cheesy.” I roll my eyes, but I can’t hide my smile.
“Actually, it’s chocolatey.” He lifts the lid from the tray, revealing two steaming mugs of something divinely sweet-smelling. “Organic cocoa.”
“Mom’s cocoa?”
He nods. “First shipment of the season.”
Okay, yes. It’s just hot chocolate. Except that the cocoa beans this chocolate comes from are organic, grown overseas in actual dirt and watered by hand. Harvested by hand. Dried and processed by hand. Packaged by hand.
All that specialized labor makes the cocoa insanely expensive.
“And…” My father lifts a smaller dome lid from an opaque glass bowl at the back of the tray. “Hand-cut chocolate-hazelnut marshmallows.”
“Does Mom know you dug into her stash?” I grab a mug and use a tiny set of tongs to drop two large, fluffy marshmallows into it. I glance at the reading on the side of the mug. It’s set to keep the contents at the perfect drinking temperature.
“Let me worry about your mother.” My dad picks up his own mug, then settles into my desk chair as I sink onto the edge of my bed. “So…” He takes sip of cocoa. “Why are you grounded this time?”
I tuck my legs beneath me and cradle my mug. “I honestly have no idea.” My father scoffs, but I talk over his skepticism. “No, really. She said Seren’s party would be nothing but trouble, and when I accused her of not trusting me, she grounded me from the party she already didn’t want me to go to. It’s like she set me up.”
My father frowns. “That doesn’t sound much like your mother.”
“I know.” Normally, my mother is logical to a fault, but…“It’s like she has something against Seren. She grounded me last year on his birthday too.” I pluck one of the soggy marshmallows from my cocoa and bite into it, frowning as I chew. “And she dragged us all on vacation during Sophia’s birthday party this year, remember? Maybe it’s not just Seren she doesn’t like, but his whole family.”
“I think you’re reading a little too much into it,” my dad says.
“Or maybe it’s Seren and Sophia’s mother. The Administrator could creep anyone out.” I take the first sip from my mug. It’s decadently sweet, yet creamy. The kind of thing I should be drinking on camera.
“The Administrator is just doing her job.”
“No, she’s living her job. You run all of Digicore, but you don’t go around making people call you the CEO, do you?”
My father laughs, and chocolate sloshes near the edge of his mug. “So why is missing this party such a tragedy, anyway?” he asks. “How is it better than the one you went to last week or the one you’ll go to next week?”
“I don’t party every weekend,” I insist. But I’m just avoiding the question. My father may know me better than my friends and followers do, but the me he knows is still his little girl—even if only for a few more weeks.
“I mean, it’s not like you’re really missing out on anything,” he says. “There’s still a video block at Lakeview, right?”
My silent sip tells him more than actually answering would.
“Ah. That’s it,” he says. “What happens in Lakeview stays in Lakeview, right? Because of the video blackout.”
There are only two parties a year in Lakeview: Seren’s birthday party and Sophia’s birthday party. And because it’s a digital dark zone—meaning no video—you can do whatever you want at a Lane party without worrying about it showing up on the E-scape. Or the public streams. For one night only, it’s like you don’t exist, except to the other people in the room.
“We can cancel the digicast, Waverly,” my father says, his brow furrowed in concern. “I said from the beginning, as soon as it stops being fun—”