Kera
"We should get our tickets for Premium soon, or we may not get the best section."
"Seriously, Suzy? VIP passes. We'll have even better seats than those in the best section, and backstage access."
"Aren't VIP passes practically impossible to get? They're only available for those who have connections with the organizers, or like, the Queen of England."
"Come on, Suzy. Have you forgotten who I am? I'm Kera Rosamund. Do you honestly think I wouldn't have those connections? And even my godsister, Princess Elaine, doesn't have access to these tickets. You guys are just lucky enough to be friends with someone like me who has unlimited global connections right at her disposal."
I would usually never step anywhere near a festival with a ten-foot-pole, but Premium is an exception.
The Premium Music and Arts Festival is an exclusive outdoor music event held at the Empire Island Resort, on a private offshore island to the south. The high-value tickets weed out the underprivileged, and only those with 'Perfect' on their ID are permitted to register for entry, ensuring that everyone attending is a person of quality...
As far as they know.
I violently crush the train of thought in my head threatening to rise and swallow the lump lodged in my throat, putting on a smile in an act of forced composure.
"You two can pay me back once I've confirmed the tickets."
After a few moments of silence Thalia speaks up, "H-How much are these tickets gonna... cost?"
"$9,999 for VIP tickets. Plus extra for transport and accomodation. Why?"
Her eyes widen a bit when I say this, which makes mine narrow curiously.
"It's nothing," she tries to brush off with a tight smile, but it's even more stiff than mine was.
Thalia has been acting strange lately. I've noticed that she tends to go quiet whenever Suzy or I bring up Premium. She also doesn't follow us to the mall anymore, and when we go out to eat together, she just orders a drink and none of the mains.
She does this exact thing when we go to our favorite Japanese restaurant after school. Suzy gets a salmon rice bowl, I get a soft shell crab sushi roll, and Thalia just asks for green tea, which comes free.
Throughout our entire conversation about Premium — what we're going to wear, where we're going to stay at night, what drinks we're gonna sneak in — Thalia remains silent. I can tell that there's something she wants to say, but she keeps hesitating, giving up each time and looking down at her empty glass.
"Kera..." she eventually starts gingerly.
I pick up a piece of sushi with my chopsticks with ease and look up at my redheaded friend.
"I don't think I'll be going for Premium."
"What? Why?" I demand.
Her answer is so mousy that I almost don't hear her, but I manage to catch it: "I... I don't think I can... afford it."
The sushi drops from my chopsticks as my head snaps up to look at her with an expression of disbelief. I stare at her blankly for a few seconds, before breaking out in laughter.
"Good one, Dawnings."
She blinks a few times and furrows her defined eyebrows together. "I'm being serious, Kera."
I continue laughing like a maniac, holding my stomach and wiping away the tears from my eyes.
"Stop joking around, Thalia. You're so annoying, you're making me lose my concentration on eating."
"It's not a joke." She says this so seriously that I almost believe that she's telling the truth, if it wasn't for how ridiculous the idea is. I guess I've managed to rub off on Thalia after all our years of knowing each other — she's finally picked up my art of sarcasm. She's just not as good at it as I am, of course. She's still an amateur, how cute, but I'll teach her.
"Say that one more time and I might actually believe you!"
She looks into my eyes with her shining blue ones. "I'm being serious." Her eyes flit between me and Suzy. "Don't you guys believe me?" This time I actually falter for a second. Isn't she taking this joke a little too far?
Thalia runs her hand through her thick auburn hair a few times, appearing nervous, before speaking up again, this time neither looking at me nor Suzy.
"I've been wanting to talk to you guys about this for a long time, but I didn't know when or how to bring it up." She swallows hard. "I'm not... as well off as you think I am."
Suzy gasps bimbotically, while I look at Thalia with an eyebrow raised, telling her to elaborate.
"I mean sure, my dad's a prosecutor and we live in a big house, but... my dad lost a lot of money in the stocks, and especially since the divorce earlier this year, we don't actually have the money to live as flamboyantly as you guys do."
A reverent silence falls between us.
"Are we... still friends?"
There's a few more moments of dead air, in which everyone has their head down, as if we're mourning over someone who'd just died.
After a while I raise my head and put on a smile. "What are you talking about? Of course we're still friends."
Thalia's head shoots back up as she looks at me with her mouth slightly agape. "R-Really?"
"If we break off our friendship over something like this, how would that make me look? Come on, I'm not like that."
Thalia stares at me for a few seconds, seeming to calculate what I said. I just look back at her, face remaining completely passive as our staring match continues.
Suzy laughs uncomfortably and pats Thalia on the shoulder. "Come on, 'Lia, we're not like that. Don't worry about it. Maybe we'll go to the festival next year, if your family's situation is back to normal again."
I grin widely though it doesn't reach my eyes. "Yeah, next year maybe. Hope for the best for your financial issues. Tell your dad I wish him luck."
Thalia opens her mouth in an aborted attempt at a laugh. "Thanks, Kera."
***
I arrive at my dad's and walk down the familiar halls of my childhood home. I haven't been here in ages. It almost makes me nostalgic.
I see a man in a suit with brown hair with graying ends coming down the main staircase, and I immediately rush forward towards him.
"Daddy!" I throw my hands around his round torso and squeeze him tightly.
"Kera, sweetheart! I... wasn't expecting you until later."
I pull away and look up at him with a smile. "My lunch ended early so I wanted to come here and surprise you first. I haven't seen you in so long."
"Yes... I am certainly surprised!" I notice him rotate his head slightly and glance up at the staircase before fixing his brown-eyed gaze back on me again, offering a smile which doesn't reach his eyes. Mine narrow slightly.
As if on cue a bubbling bimbo bumbles down the staircase. She doesn't look any more than ten years older than me. It's no news to me that my father is currently a certified man-slut— I mean bachelor who bangs women young enough to be his daughters, a new one every other week. But seeing them standing before my very eyes is another thing altogether.
I at least expected Daddy to have better taste.
"Mason, I'm ready to go—" Her silicone-filled lips stop as soon as her over-lined panda eyes land on me. "Oh, your daughter's here?"
"Evidently," I enunciate, rolling my eyes.
She 'discretely' pulls down the edge of her skirt, which doesn't do much to hide the fact that it's two sizes too small, and comes toward me with her hand outstretched. "Hi, Kera, I'm—"
"I don't need to know your name. You're just temporary anyway, I'm highly unlikely to see you again," I say casually, rejecting her offered handshake.
She opens and closes her mouth a few times, sputtering in shock, then retracts her hand awkwardly. My father uncomfortably clears his throat.
"I-I'll make my way out first, Mason."
Her stilettos click across the marble floor in tune to a melody I can only describe as 'the walk of shame'. I wave brightly at her as she all but runs out of the room towards the front door.
Once she's gone I snap my head towards my embarrassed father's and cut him with laser green.
"You had a lady friend over when you knew I was coming to see you today?"
"I told you, I wasn't expecting you until later."
"The dress she's wearing isn't even in season. I mean, if that can be considered a dress at all. Last I remembered clothes are actually supposed to cover your body." I notice his cheeks turn an uneasy shade of red when I mention that. "Did you two have lot of fun?"
"Honey-bear, I'm sorry, it was bad timing, but I really have to go and see her out—"
"Fine!" I stomp my foot angrily and pout. "Go. Go see her out. Go arrange for her car. Go get hitched with her or something. I know how much your weeklong flings mean to you. Much more than your only daughter does, at least. So go. Just go! I don't wanna continue standing here and look at your face of shame either!"
"I'll make it up to you, sweetie-pie, I promise." He attempts a half-hearted smile, but I just glare back at him with my eyebrows furrowed, mercilessly unrelenting. He claps his hands together. "For now you can look through the things the helpers are bringing up to the living room from the basement. You can take whatever belongs to you or your mother if you want it. I'll be right back, baby-boo!"
As he dashes off to escape my fiery wrath, I huff in vexation and cross my arms over my chest.
"Stupid dad. Who needs him anyway? If he doesn't know how to appreciate his only daughter then I'll just ask Theodore to adopt me. At least he gives me platinum credit cards in place of affection," I grumble under my breath as I stomp towards the living room. "Dumb woman. I bet she can't even recite the entire alphabet without help. She's not even pretty. I'm eight-hundred times more beautiful than she is. And she smells like a perfume shop explosion."
I look at all the boxes in an organized mess across the living room floor. The maids and butlers are still bringing up more from the basement. They're mostly filled with old toys and clothes that I'd worn once before realizing it wasn't really the right shade or I didn't like the way it worked with the current theme of my closet.
One box in particular catches my attention. It's a medium sized purple box with a passcode lock. Since it's sealed shut it probably means that there's something worth hiding inside, and the fact that I'm being denied access to it makes me feel challenged.
"What's in that box?" I ask one of the old maids bustling by with three boxes stacked in her arms. She cranes her neck past the pile of boxes to look at what I'm pointing at.
"I-I don't know, Miss. I think it belongs to Mrs Rosamund."
I narrow my eyes and walk towards the box as the maid rushes away with her boxes.
My mother's? I just got ten times more curious. I didn't know my mother even kept any material belongings besides her beloved tablet and reading glasses.
Upon taking a closer look, I realize that although it's in good condition, the box does look pretty old. Something from my mother's past? This just keeps getting better. Now I have to know what's inside.
I try a few combinations but to no avail — her birthday, my birthday, even the day Rosamund Tech was founded. What could it be? I may not know much about my mother, but I do know that everything she does has a purpose. She calculates all her moves, there's nothing she does that hasn't been carefully planned and pre-planned before that. She wouldn't use some random combination, I'm sure there's a meaning behind it.
I rack my brain for any special number or significant date on my mom's calendar...
That's when it hits me. Her calendar! I vaguely remember as a child, when I was about eight or nine, my birthday was coming up, and I had a feeling she was going to forget it like the previous year and go on another business trip, so I planned to log it as a reminder into her calendar on her tablet somehow.
Once, she accidentally left her tablet unlocked on the table while leaving the room to take a business call, and I seized the golden opportunity to enact my plan.
When I got to October of the calendar dates, there was a birthday logged in already, but it was near the end of the month, so it couldn't be my birthday. If she couldn't even put in her own daughter's birthday on her calendar, I really wondered who had the privilege of being deemed important enough by my mother to have their birthday logged in. I clicked on October 28, but it was strange — all it said was 'Red Sweater'. At that moment I heard my mother coming back in the room and quickly shut off the tablet.
October 28. 2-8-1-0. Could it be?
The box pops open, and my heart leaps in excitement. Nice try, no one can get past Kera Rosamund and her laser intelligence. Not even a locked box.
I flip open the lid, and look inside for whatever secret object of my mother's was being hidden away.
Books. No— Diaries. Something that might give me a peek into the cryptic life of Cordelia Rosamund.
I close the lid and rush upstairs with the box in my hands.