Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) Read online

  by Helena Newbury

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  © Copyright Helena Newbury 2014

  The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.

  Cover image photo: Phil Marley (with models Devon Mayson and Harry May)

  The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Police Department and the Chicago Police Department are in no way affiliated with this book, nor do they sponsor or endorse it.

  This book contains scenes that may be triggering for survivors of physical abuse and rape.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to:

  Aubrey, Andra, Emily, Julianne and Maria for their feedback.

  My awesome street team: Emily, Harman, Heidi, Jasmine, Jodi, Lisa and Solmarie

  Phil Marley, Devon Mayson and Harry May for the cover photo

  And—as always—Liz, my editor.

  But thank you most of all to my readers, who made this series a success.

  Prologue

  Three Years Ago

  Emma

  The Greyhound sped through the night; I huddled in my seat and didn’t move.

  Firstly, I didn’t want to interact with any of the other passengers: some sleeping, some talking, some drunk. I didn’t want anyone to ask what the matter was. So I stayed still, the hood of my sweatshirt almost hiding my fact, and hunkered down, staring out of the window.

  Outside were endless plains—Ohio, I figured, by now. Every mile pushed Chicago a little further behind us, but it was like being an ant crawling away from a huge, hovering foot that could come down and crush me at any time. A mile didn’t make a difference. A thousand miles wouldn’t make a difference. So, secondly, I sat there frozen, sick with fear, waiting for his car to blast past the bus. Even if I didn’t see it happen, I’d still tense up every time we stopped, in case he’d somehow gotten ahead of us and was waiting for me.

  But the main reason I didn’t move is that I couldn’t. Twisting shifted my ribs, which I figured were cracked again. Standing meant the bruises on my thighs and ass woke up and started throbbing again, a wash of raw pain that brought tears to me eyes.

  So I sat there like a statue and I waited.

  And I prayed he’d never find me.

  ***

  All cities are ugly at dawn. The flaws hidden by the night—the drunks and the addicts and the homeless—are still there, but now cruelly exposed. The streets are clogged with overflowing trashcans and the air’s alive with last night’s discarded strip club flyers.

  New York was beautiful. In my eyes, there were no flaws. Everything was fresh and clean and new, because I was seventeen hours away from Chicago. I watched the sun turn the windows of skyscrapers into gleaming gold. My own reflection, a slightly top-heavy girl with her red hair pulled back into a ponytail, was barely visible, and I was glad of that.

  I had a lot to do. I even had a list. But I allowed myself two indulgences, a little celebration of having made it out. First, a warm sourdough pretzel from a street vendor, together with a cup of coffee that was the best thing I’d tasted in days.

  Second, I shouldered my pathetically small backpack and hiked all the way down to Battery Park. I stood and looked out at the Statue of Liberty and, once I’d checked that I was the only person in sight, I did something I hadn’t allowed myself to do for a long time. I cried.

  ***

  The first thing I needed was a place to stay. Chicago had taught me that money can buy anything, if you find the right sort of person. Even in a strange city, my life had attuned me to be able to find them. A sort of homing instinct that took me straight to a seedy motel where there wouldn’t be any questions.

  I hadn’t slept for two nights and I was practically hallucinating. But before I crashed out, there was one last thing I had to do. I pulled the Polaroid camera from my backpack and took off all my clothes. And then, using the self-timer, I took photos of everything he’d done to me.

  ***

  In the room, the threadbare curtains safely closed, I opened my backpack and looked underneath the concealing layer of clothes. Six thick rolls of greasy bills. Enough to pay my tuition and rent a place—not a nice place, but a place—for at least a few months, until I could find a job. By September, when the academic year started, I could be all settled in.

  You can’t just change your name. You have to alert people by putting your intended change in the local newspapers for a set period of time, so that people can still find you.

  I didn’t want anyone to find me.

  I knew that I needed to meet with a judge to get a special court order that would allow me to make the change without telling the press, and then seal the order so that no one could find out. To do that, I had to explain why my safety was in danger. And there was no way I was going to tell the truth.

  Fortunately, I’d become an excellent liar—or actress, if you prefer. It’s basically the same thing.

  First, know your audience. The judge, sitting slightly impatiently in his book-lined chambers, looked to be in his sixties. The photos on his desk told me he had children and grandchildren. The dusty computer and the overworked assistant told me he didn’t like technology. A family man, then, and a traditionalist. He’d have strong views, which would make it easier.

  His eyes flicked over my crumpled sweatshirt and ripped jeans, but I didn’t feel that blast of male lust I get when a man’s checking me out. He wasn’t turned on by a scared eighteen year-old girl, then. If he had been, it wouldn’t have surprised me. I was a long way past trusting anyone associated with the system.

  If anything, he looked concerned. I saw his eyes flick to one of his framed photos. He saw me as a younger version of his daughter. Perfect.

  “There’s this guy,” I told him. I was inventing as I went, creating the ideal monster for him to hate, one perfectly suited to his prejudices. So far, the man in my mind was just a big, muscled, amorphous mass.

  “Someone you know?” the judge asked, leaning forward. “Family?”

  I couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t tell him that it was my dad. He’d insist I went to the police, and they’d arrest my dad, and then everything would come out. It had to be a mysterious stranger, someone the police could never conceivably find.

  “My ex-boyfriend,” I said in a small voice.

  The judge took a breath. Just the tiniest intake of air, but I knew what was coming. A lecture on personal responsibility and how I should face up to the man through the courts, so he didn’t hurt anyone else. He needed a push.

  “My—my daddy,” I choked out, my voice breaking, “he tried to warn me. He—said he was trouble.”

  The judge’s face darkened. Bingo. He’d been that father, ignored by the wayward daughter. He was going to go into full-on Papa Bear protective mode. He just needed a little push.

  I’d done my homework, of course. That morning in the library, I’d worked through every case he’d presided over in the last year and noted which races got the harshest sentences. I knew exactly how to light his touch paper. The tears were running
down my cheeks, now, and they weren’t faked. All I had to do was let about one percent of the pain I felt inside seep to the surface.

  “He—he’s called Carlos,” I told the judge, squeezing the words out between sobs.

  I saw the change in his face, the deep-seated racism he probably wasn’t even aware of making his forehead and cheeks flare red. I had him, but there was still a danger he’d insist on righteous justice, on pursuing the mythical Carlos instead of shielding me from him.

  “He’s always moving,” I said quickly. “Always on the road. He doesn’t have an address, so the police can’t catch him. And I think he might come to New York.” I sniffed. “I—I want to make a fresh start, and go to college, and—”

  The judge gave the tiniest shake of his head, probably unconscious. He was winding up to give me a speech about putting Carlos behind bars. Quick! Push him over the edge!

  “He did this to me,” I blurted, and scattered the Polaroids across his desk.

  He lurched backward as if burned. My naked breasts, black with bruises. A purple foot mark across the creamy white of my ass cheeks. More bruises on my thighs, my sex visible at the top of the photo. The judge closed his eyes, but it was too late—he’d glimpsed the body of the girl sitting across the desk, and his face was crimson with embarrassment. “I don’t need to see that!” he snapped. “Put them away!”

  I gathered the photos up, nodding as if ashamed, which I knew would make him feel even guiltier. When he finally brought himself to look at me again, I could see the burning anger in his eyes. The judge was well into his sixties and not much bigger than me but, if my abuser had been in the room with us, right at that moment, the judge wouldn’t have let him out alive.

  I’d brought the judge to exactly where I wanted him. I could feel the rage and guilt pouring off him. Some bastard—some bastard his precious justice system couldn’t catch!—had done awful things to me—in his mind, his daughter! He’d failed to protect me. But he could at least see I was protected in the future.

  He could barely keep his voice level as he signed my court order. “Do you know the name you want, Emma?” he asked. “Surname first.”

  “Kane,” I told him. I figured that was simple and easy to remember and different enough from my old name—MacGinnis.

  “And first name?”

  I’d decided years ago, a teenage dream that became a hope to cling onto and finally became a desperate, last-ditch plan. “Jasmine,” I told him. “I want to be called ‘Jasmine.’”

  ***

  I knew exactly what I was going to do. Back in Chicago, I hadn’t dared send off for a brochure from Fenbrook Academy, in case my dad saw it. I’d kept my dream locked away in my head, something to be brought out in the dead of night, when I lay awake with tear-wet cheeks. Now, it was becoming real. The first time I walked past the red brick building and touched the polished plaque, I almost started crying again.

  It was only May. I had almost four months until the fall semester began and I could start as a freshman. That gave me plenty of time to get ready.

  I found an apartment. The landlord was a sleazebag, but I figured it was an acceptable risk. I was naive enough to think, back then, that I’d soon trade up to somewhere nicer.

  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. N
ow, 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?”