Page 1 of Hide and Keep

Iread the email again, my head swimming, my body temperature skyrocketing more than it already was.

He said I had four years. Four measly fucking years to get the full college experience. Or as close to one as I’m allowed.

Does he know I left?

Even if he figured it out, he doesn’t know where I am…right?

Every year, the Saturday after Halloween, our local corn maze gives college students the place to themselves for a night to run amok. Originally, it was meant to be an opportunity to decompress with peers, but under the anonymity costumes provide, it quickly became a hunting game of sorts, and now it’s legend among the entire Northeast, not just the state of Connecticut. For everyone outside the maze, life continues as usual, but for everyone inside…time comes to a standstill. For one night only, all bets are off. Responsibilities cease to exist. Relationships are put on pause.

You can do anything you want, be anyone you want, and most importantly, bewithanyone you want.

That’s the whole point of Hide and Keep now—you run, you hide, but once you’re found, that person gets to keep you until the first light of dawn appears, then everything goes back to the way it was before you stepped into the maze.

Every high schooler dreams of finally getting to attend Hide and Keep, myself included, but me being…well, me, I wasn’t sure I’d get the chance.

After high school graduation, when my father informed me of my new future, I decided I would. Ishould. I’ve been planning for this event ever since, going to great lengths just to experience a night of total anonymity while I still can.

I change my phone to selfie mode, trying to see myself through the dark of the backseat. Thanks to a lacy black mask covering half my face, heavy makeup, orange contacts, and my hair hidden under a long amber wig with artificial monarch butterflies clipped to the wavy strands every few inches, I don’t look anything like I normally do.

I don’t feel anything like I normally do either. Or at least I didn’t until this email appeared on my screen, reminding me not only who I am but who I have to be.

Not even a full three months into my freshman year and my father’s already changing the terms. I thought four years was nothing compared to the lifetime he’s demanding from me. Now he’s cutting it down to only one. Less than one really.

“If it’s all right with you, I’m gonna wait in this line so I can drop you off near the front?” the rideshare driver says from the front. “Even though I’m technically supposed to, I won’t charge you. I just don’t feel comfortable leaving you on the side of the road out here.”

I can’t help the incredulous huff that leaves me before I thank him. This man sounds more like a father than my own.

Money determines my father’s every move, even the emotions behind them. Everything in his world is so incredibly fucking dire, while everything in mine is trivial, including my happiness.

Including me.

The thought makes my stomach churn.

The only thing Arthur Munreaux cares about is money. His entire personality is based on the balance of his bank accounts.

Which I have access to and could do anything I wanted with…as long as my father approves.

I study the driver’s profile. He sounds like a father…

“Ugh. My father’s gonna kill me,” I complain under my breath.

Feeling his stare, I frown at my phone, my eyebrows scrunched together painfully.

“For coming here? You’re old enough, aren’t ya?”

I meet his weathered eyes through the rearview mirror.

I used to hold that same belief, that once I was eighteen, that was it—the end of my father’s reign over me—but that was back when I was too naïve to understand age is the only number on this planet my father doesn’t give a shit about.

“No, that’s not it. I was supposed to do something for him before I went out tonight and I completely forgot,” I lie.

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.”

After a moment of sitting in the long line of cars waiting to turn into the parking lot, the driver asks, “What was it?”

“I was supposed to go into the bank and transfer some money for him.”

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