Revealed [UNDERGOING EDITING]

Bonus Chapter

Sephora (Age 14)

I walked slowly into the building in front of me. The bright blue sign sparkled with the words 'Safe Days Animal shelter'.

I took a deep breath and pushed on the heavy, glass door. As I entered, I heard my father's words playing in my head.

"I don't understand why you want to stay in a place filled with dirty animals. If only you hadn't opened your stupid mouth at the press release, you could have had an internship with the mayor. What a waste! Regardless, you better not embarrass me in that place or I will make sure you can never leave this house again. Do you understand?"

I remember the way I nodded silently, letting him carry on in his rage until I was allowed to go.

I hadn't meant to upset my father. I thought he would be happy with me choosing the animal shelter, especially in light of the bad press he had been getting from animal rights protesters after his last scandal. I thought I was helping but nothing is ever good enough for him, not anything I do or anything I say.

I am not good enough for him.

I shook the thought out of my head and moved into the lobby. A bright blond lady waved me through to the back of the shelter with a bright smile on her face. I returned the smile and walked past.

The moment I opened the door, a small girl with curly brown hair collided with me. The force of her hit was enough to send me into a slight daze but before I could recover, the girl grabbed me by the arm and began to run, dragging me helplessly behind her.

I followed her for a few seconds until she stopped at a large pool. Before I could make another move, the girl grabbed both my shoulders, tossing me into the frigid water.

I landed in the water with a loud splash and immediately struggled to get up, spitting out water everywhere. I brushed some of the water out of my face and concentrated on the girl's screams.

"My kitten! Save my kitten! Please!" she shouted hysterically.

I looked around the pool and was about to tell the girl there was nothing there when I saw a little white bundle squirming in the middle of the pool. All anger flew out of me as I concentrated solely on saving the kitten. I swam as quickly as I could and scooped up the waterlogged ball of fur and waded back to the edge of the pool.

"Here you go," I said, passing the little kitten to the girl.

The girl immediately scooped up the kitten and wrapped it in a soft towel before placing it in a nearby basket.

She turned back to me with a huge smile. Her bright white teeth shone brilliantly against her dark skin tone.

"Thank you. Billy tumbled into the pool and I can't swim so I did the only thing I could think of. My name's Jade. No hard feelings about the pool right?"

She held out her hand to me so she could pull me out. I looked at her hand for a while then a wicked thought came to my mind.

Before the girl could react, I pulled her into the shallow end of the pool.

Jade broke through the surface with a loud gasp. She looked at me for a while as if she could not believe what I had done. Then her bright smile came back.

"We square?" she asked raising her eyebrow.

"Yep," I replied returning her smile.

It looked like I had just made my first friend.

A/N: Hi everyone! I had a bit of inspiration and decided to publish this little chapter to say thank you to all my new amazing readers! Love you guys!