6/10 Wealthy Prisoner Bird Vengeful Daughter

Chapter 6: The New School, The Same Cage

The first morning in the new house was worse than the first night. At least at night, I could hide in the darkness. Morning brought with it a sterile brightness that flooded through the enormous windows, leaving no shadows to conceal myself in.


Breakfast was a tense, silent affair. Richard tried to make small talk about the weather. I responded by intently studying the patterns in my oatmeal. When he offered to drive me to my new school, I cut him off before the sentence was even finished.


“I’ll walk,” I said. It was over a mile, but I would rather walk through fire than be trapped in another vehicle with him.


Northgate High was exactly what I expected: a sprawling campus of beige buildings filled with kids who had known each other since kindergarten. I was a foreign object, an anomaly. As I navigated the crowded hallways to find the administrative office, I could feel their eyes on me. Whispers followed in my wake like the tail of a comet. The new girl. The one whose parents had that messy public divorce. The one whose mom ran off with some rich guy.


I collected my schedule, my face an indifferent mask I had perfected overnight. My locker was in a crowded main hallway. As I was trying to wrestle the rusty door open, a girl with a platinum blonde ponytail and too much lip gloss leaned against the locker next to mine.


“You must be Tala,” she said, her voice cloyingly sweet. Her friends, a matched set of clones, giggled behind her. “I’m Brittany. I just want to say, we are all so sorry for what you’re going through.”


The fake sympathy was more insulting than open hostility.


“Are you?” I asked, finally wrenching the locker open with a loud groan of metal. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re enjoying the show.”


Brittany’s smile faltered. I slammed my locker shut, turned, and walked away, leaving her and her audience speechless.


The rest of the day was a blur of introductions and sideways glances. In the cafeteria, I sat alone, building a fortress wall around my table with my backpack and textbooks. Across the sea of chattering students, I saw him. The boy I’d noticed briefly when we first pulled into the neighborhood. He was sitting with a group of friends, laughing at something one of them had said. He wasn’t a jock, wasn’t a geek. He was just… normal. He happened to look up, and his eyes met mine for a fraction of a second. There wasn't pity in his gaze, or the morbid curiosity I’d seen in everyone else’s. It was just a look. Direct. And then he looked away.


That brief, neutral moment was the only time all day I felt like a person instead of a spectacle.


When I finally got back to the house, the exhaustion hit me like a physical blow. The social armor was heavy. I trudged up the stairs to my room, craving the solace of my locked door. But when I pushed it open, I froze.


It was immaculate. My clothes, which I had left in a defiant pile on the floor, were now neatly folded in the drawers. My books were arranged on the shelves. My toiletries were lined up in the bathroom. My mother had been in my space. She had touched my things.


The cage suddenly felt a hundred times smaller. The violation of it stole the air from my lungs. This wasn’t just a house; it was a prison where even my own room wasn’t truly mine.