One Bite

Chapter 1-2

A few hours and one stupid dress discarded for a much preferable T-shirt and yoga pants later, Anna knocked on my door.

"Miss Zara." She entered my bedroom with, surprisingly, Elena following behind her.

Anna's words didn't register with me. I was sprawled on my stomach, engrossed in a romantic novel. The main plot line was a police agent who worked undercover to rescue a daughter from within a drug cartel family. It was a modern-day fairy tale.

I'd give anything to be this girl...

Ahh, what if one of my father's security guys has watched me grow up and blossom? He's waiting for the right moment to confess his pent-up feelings so he could tear me away from this isolated misery.

My eyes lifted up to the security detail outside my room. His left hand lifted and scratched the back of his neck.

A girl can wish.

None of the security guys glanced at or spoke with me, other than a relayed message from my father or "Miss Zara." A few I saw briefly, then never again.

Sensing two presences looming over me, my eyes lifted up from my laptop and settled where Anna and Elena stood. My eyes blinked because, sure enough, they stood at my bedside.

"Oh." I snapped my laptop shut as fast as my wrist hinged.

My bedroom reflected a physical manifestation of how I never made a single decision for myself. Like the rest of my father's house, it looked opulent. I wish I could take credit for the décor, but everything had all been selected by my father's interior design team. All I'd requested was 'not pink,' and someone selected all-white furniture with gold accents and splashes of royal blue in the linens and curtains.

"I'm not even sure I like blue," was my first mumbled reaction.

The design team's crestfallen expressions were the last I saw of them. In my defense, they didn't ask further preference questions and made all subsequent decisions for me. One morning, a large truck showed up in front of the house and six hours later, my bedroom was intact.

The designer made one mistake by getting me a dresser with a large vanity mirror attached. That mirror started my obsessions of visually inspecting myself as an empty shell of a person.

In addition to the standard furniture, ten-foot tall French doors open out to a small balcony. The space was the perfect balcony for a prince to rescue a princess from, maybe steal a kiss, even stage a Taylor Swift video. But no prince ever came, not even a Swiftie extra. The closer we got to my eighteenth birthday, the angrier I got at those stupid fairy tales.

And at myself for reading them in the first place.

When my daily injection routine first started, at night, I tied my bed sheets together, scaled down the stucco exterior with dreams I was a vigilante, and landed on the spongy grass below with a satisfied grunt.

I never got further than that landing spot before my father's security team ushered me back inside. At first, they were amused but, after a few more attempts, my father had the doors barred.

Initially, I yanked at the bars until my wrists strained and fingers numbed, but couldn't do anything about them. Other than keeping me indoors, the resulting lack of fresh air in the room felt more stale and oppressive. The thick, uncomfortable atmosphere served as an effective reminder of my father's intentions to keep me trapped here.

"Will one of you please tell me what's going on?" They looked at each other with apprehension for a few moments, then Anna's gray eyes turned to me.