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Chapter One

MADISON

"Congratulations, the best grade," Mr. Barnes tells me before handing me my final algebra exam. I just smile as a reply, looking at the test answered perfectly, in order and most of all, correctly.

The bell rings marking the end of the class, so I stand up taking my things from my place. "You better tell me your secret!" I almost jump when Anne shouts and gently pushes me from the back. I laugh in reply, placing my backpack on my shoulder.

"I don't know what you are talking about," I reply walking along with her out of the classroom while she ties up her red hair in a tall ponytail.

"Just look at you, you're the incarnation of the word perfection. You're beautiful, physically and psychologically, you're intelligent. There's nothing wrong in your life," she says while we walk through the corridor and to the benches outside the building. I force a smile to her as an answer. You can't imagine.

"I guess I'm just a nerd," I finally say sitting down on the bench with the rest of our group of friends.

"You aren't a nerd. He is. Truly... truly nerd." Jessica joins the conversation just before she kisses Levy. Her boyfriend and my best friend, kind of nerdy to be honest, even though on the outside he doesn't seem a bit like it.

"What did Ms. Perfect do this time?" he asks when they stop kissing. I roll my eyes.

"Just the best grade on algebra," Anne replies making Levy laugh.

"That's not new. I'm amazed that she's still being one of us."

"He's right. You could go and be part of the school's elite without problems. Hang out with whoever you want. You are perfection at its best and you don't take advantage of that," says Jessica looking at her reflection on her phone's screen while she puts on a pink lipstick -way too strong for my taste- but that mixes perfectly with her skin tone and her blond wavy hair. She's the exact stereotype of a typical American girl.

"Could we just stop talking about me, please?" I say ashamed and they all let out a laugh before they start talking about the party that they assisted last weekend.

Every day is the exact same thing. Mrs. Perfection is the title I won last year in school. In fact, it was nothing but a stupid election in which they named the most beautiful, intelligent and athletic girl from high school, that for some reason, ended up being me.

I really don't see myself that way. I look at myself in the mirror and the only thing I see is an ordinary girl with dark brown hair in messy waves along with the weird green eyes that I inherited from my father. As to my body, I guess it's only the consequence of all these years that I have been practicing tennis throughout my life. My intelligence, it's kind of rare but favorable. I perfectly understand everything since the very first time it is explained to me. I devour books in a trice, besides getting to memorize a big number of things in almost nothing of time, which leaves me plenty of free time that I don't really have anything in which I can spend it in.

"Madison?" Levy says taking me back to reality and I am truly lost so I just raise my eyebrows as an answer, "would you mind checking this out during your spare time? It's for my debate class on Monday." There's only both of us left on the bench. I don't really know when the rest of us left.

"Sure." I take the bunch of pages that he holds in front of me and save it in my backpack.

"The carriage awaits," he says right before I close my bag and look at the street finding my father's black Range Rover parked next to the sidewalk with Charles standing next to it, waiting for me. I sigh and stand up. "Goodbye," I say before I walk to the van, and he tells me goodbye by saluting me the way the old marines used to do a long time ago.

"Ms. Wrestler," Charles greets me politely before opening the door for me and I just nod getting into the back part of the van. "Your mother apologizes that she couldn't pick you up today but there was something..."

"Important." I finish what he begins to say while driving and sigh without getting surprised at all. As usual, her work is way more important than me and she cannot waste time picking me up or in general being with me. Just like my father.

Charles parks right in my house entrance and I admire the enormous construction from the window before he gets to open the door. When I get out of the car, I stare at the garden perfectly trimmed before getting into the house greeted by Teo, the majordomo. Upstairs, next to the stairs located right in front of the principal door, I find my mother coming out from the forbidden room. "Nice dress," she says obviously talking about the light pink dress I am wearing. I force her a smile back before I continue my way to my room at the end of the floor.

I leave my backpack over the desk right next to my door, take out my phone and then finally let me fall over my bed staring at the ceiling. Another day with the same routine: wake up, get ready, go to school, be the best of the class unintentionally, get back and be ignored by your parents for the rest of the day.

Honestly, I don't get why we have such a big house if there's only the three of us in this "family" or whatever it is that we form, without taking in count the rest of the people that literally help us to survive: Sarah, the maid and in fact the only person that pays attention to me in this place. Teo, the majordomo that always makes sure everything in this house works perfectly. Martha, the chef, and Charles, the chauffeur that always, always, takes me everywhere.

Per se, my house is formed by two floors and a basement. Downstairs, it consists just of an open space: so, the kitchen, living room, dining room, and bar are connected all the way on the first floor. Right at the entrance, there are the stairs that ascend in the manner of a semi-open snail to the second floor, surrounded by a dark and shiny wood railing that extends along the second floor. This floor, only formed by a corridor and unlike the first floor, it's only formed by rooms.

Long story short, the only thing you find upstairs are five doors that go from floor to ceiling carved in dark wood that matches the railing. At the bottom of the left side of the corridor, you find my parents' room which is the biggest of all, next to it, there's the one I like to call The Forbidden Door. I can't say much about this room since I have never really entered, but I guess it must be a kind of office where my parents work most of the time.

When I was just a kid and wanted to get in there, Sarah used to tell me that it was no more than a dark room where there were monsters like the ones in the stories that she used to read to me and that my parents fought day and night inside to get rid of them all. Way too fantastic... now I know, but at that time, it ended up with my interest in that place.

However, next to this door, there's my father's studio. Which is no more than a room kind of big with enormous bookshelves in each wall filled with immense books and at the center there's an oldie desk with a computer, it's the first door you find when coming up the stairs. Right beside this one, there's a room fully decorated and designed to receive visitors, something useless if you ask me since nobody ever visits us or at least... not in that way. At the end of the right side of the corridor, there's my room, big enough for me or whatever it is that I could need but a bit smaller than my parents' one. From outside, the big house is surrounded by an even bigger garden that extends itself for meters starting from the entrance, and there's a big pool in the back of the house followed up by a tennis court that occasionally, I use along with my coach.

As I said... a house way too above than anything we could ever really need. I remember one time my mother told me that the house was given to my father so that he could work without any distraction. In what? That's the same thing I asked her that day, to which she answered telling me it was a difficult job for someone my age to understand at that moment, but that it gave us an enormous amount of money to get anything we could ever want. That's right, money. Another thing to add to Miss Perfection's list.

I don't want to sound pretentious or anything but believe me. If only my life felt as perfect as it seems, I wouldn't have any problem accepting something as stupid as that.