Fearless Read online

  Fearless

  by

  Annie Jocoby

  Books by Annie Jocoby

  Beautiful Illusions

  goo.gl/IeWpW3

  Deeper Illusions

  goo.gl/qnDGPg

  End of Illusions

  goo.gl/xriRbc

  Broken

  goo.gl/NjHKd5

  Saving Scotty

  goo.gl/bVhuWl

  Ever After

  goo.gl/TUYfai

  Please note that Fearless is related to these above books, as the main character, Dalilah, is the daughter of Iris and Ryan, who are the hero and the heroine of the Illusions books.

  Copyright © 2014 Annie Jocoby

  Published on Amazon by Annie Jocoby

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Dalilah

  “So, anyhow, as I was saying,” I said to Alaina, who was, at the moment, my closest friend and partner in crime. “I have this recurring dream, and I just can’t shake it.”

  “What’s the dream?” she asked me, although she really looked like she couldn’t care less. She was looking at her phone and thumbing through the screens. Every so once in a while, she would smile, big, and show me what came up on it. “Wait, before you tell me, you gotta see this!” At that, she held up the phone and a video of two cats came up. The big yellow cat was yowling and screeching at a smaller cat, and there was a funny translation going on underneath.

  I rolled my eyes. It was soooo hard to actually sustain her attention sometimes. “Here, give me that,” I said, snatching the phone away from her. But, as I watched, I did find it all pretty hilarious, and I started cracking up in spite of myself.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty good,” I said, “now, about this dream I keep having….”

  “Okay, I’m listening,” she said, and, for once, it seemed that she actually was going to listen. “Go on.”

  “So, anyhow. I’m set to take an exam for a class that I hadn’t been to all year. I apparently thought that I dropped that class, but I find out too late that I didn’t. And I have no clue on where the classroom is, or where I need to report to for my test. Sometimes I don’t even know the subject. I just know that I have to take this test, and, if I don’t, I flunk out of school completely.”

  She had a knowing look on her face, but she just shrugged her shoulders. “That’s a common one. I have it, too, except that it’s usually a paper that I forgot to write and it’s due. Same thing. If I don’t get it in, I flunk out of school.”

  “Are you ever naked in your dream? Like you totally forgot to put your clothes on that day, so you’re running around, trying to hide behind bushes and stuff?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Again, that’s a common one. But let’s see what these dreams may mean, though,” she said, as she ran her finger over her phone screen again. She rapidly typed on the keyboard and brought up a site that focused on dream interpretations.

  I looked over her shoulder at what she was reading, and then she announced that I was fearing failure and of being exposed.

  Fearing failure and being exposed. Yeah, that made sense. A lot of fucking sense. After all, wasn’t it me who had an art showing at age 11, that was attended by several critics who proclaimed my work “mesmerizing and raw?” Wasn’t it me who just graduated from high school at the age of 16, despite the fact that I, in my early years, never wanted to skip a grade? As I matured, mentally if not emotionally, I started to see the wisdom in skipping through grades, because, quite frankly, I was bored to tears with what I was studying. Even in my advanced classes, I would look out the window when the teacher was droning on and on, my mind completely preoccupied on something else entirely. Usually I was focused on what new art project would occupy my time when I got home, but, sometimes, I just would sit there and think about things. About life. About why people couldn’t see things the way that I did. I saw so many screwed up things in the world, and I was just mystified on why it was all happening, and why we, as good citizens, would let it all happen.

  I mean, our democracy was being bought and sold by powerful interests, which meant that the average citizen was powerless to influence our laws, and nobody really cared about that. It was all the more frustrating, because I could see solutions to many of our problems, but the solutions were always non-starters, as they would benefit the people and not the super wealthy.

  Ironic. My own family was amongst the super-wealthy. Granddad was a billionaire, which made mom and dad also billionaires when the old man passed away. I never got to meet him, though. But mom and dad really weren’t wealthy, in the sense that they were like Scrooge McDuck. Counting their billions and cackling gleefully about getting more and more and more was not for them. They really were interested in changing the world, and their focus was always on animal rights. I was very proud that they managed to get some regulations passed, despite such fierce opposition from the other side, just because they had the money to do so. Fighting fire with fire, in the best way possible.

  So, yeah, I had other things on my mind besides learning about the history of the French Revolution in class. Besides, I already learned all about that when I was like six years old, and I got interested in history and read volumes about it. I aced my exams, always, in every class, but never because I actually learned anything at all from the teachers. I aced them because I had already learned most of that stuff before my classmates read Charlotte’s Web.

  School was therefore a huge drag. Nothing but a bother. An enormous bother. So, I finally allowed my parents to petition the school to skip me ahead. It was such a relief to be done with it all, really.

  “Hey!” Alaina said, bringing me out of my reverie. “I was asking you a question, space cadet.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. What was your question again?”

  “Why are you vulnerable and unprepared? That doesn’t sound like you at all.”

  Oh, doesn’t it? If she only knew. About my creativity blocks that I had, which meant that I no longer was able to paint like I used to when I was mentally free and not exposed to the haters who aimed to bring me down, just because I was better than they were. I happened to know that one of my rival artists was conveniently the daughter of a well-known New York Times art critic, and this critic just happened to savage my work as “prosaic and flat,” and proclaimed me washed up, with nothing left to say, at the ripe old age of 11. I mean, I was 11. I might have been an artistic prodigy, but I still had the emotional maturity of a 11-year-old, and I was devastated by this critic. And I started to find, from that point on, that I really did have nothing to say in my art. Funny how that worked.

  If she only knew that I was 16 years old, and was faced with the choices that I wasn’t supposed to face for another two years. I was supposed to figure out what I wanted to do with myself, for the rest of my life. Because I wasn’t in school anymore, and I didn’t much want to be a dilettante. And, as much as I loved and admired what my father and mother did, I had no interest in that, either. I just didn’t have the stomach to witness all the suffering that they had witnessed on the part of the animals, especially since they had little impact on what goes on, even with their billions. Yeah, they had some victories, but getting headway in an entrenched system, espe
cially when there was widespread apathy in the citizenry about what these animals went through, was proving difficult all the same.

  So, yeah. What was I going to do? Had no clue on that. No.clue. Yet, I was feeling the pressure on trying to figure it out anyhow.

  I finally answered her original question. “If you don’t think that it sounds like me, then I guess that you don’t know me like you thought that you did.”

  She twirled one long brown tendril of hair around her index finger while she continued just to stare at me. Then she laid down on my bed, and brought out one of my magazines and started reading it, her arms outstretched while she laid on her back. I started to feel annoyed with her, so I snatched away the magazine and put it back on the shelf. She rolled her eyes.

  “What?” she asked, indignantly.

  “I’m telling you that I’m a girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and you start reading a magazine.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t hear the nervous breakdown part. I just heard a rather whiny girl who won the genetic lottery telling me how tough her life is. Not to mention that you have two amazing parents who love each other and you. I’m not sure where you have the room to start going on about how awful your life is.”

  “I wasn’t trying to tell you that I had a shitty life. I was just trying to say that I’m at a crossroads, and I have no idea how I got here or how I get past it. Thanks a lot for your support.”

  “Listen, Dalilah,” Alaina said, as she suddenly was off her lazy perch and standing in front of me, her hands on her narrow hips. “You have everything. Everything. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Your parents are gajillionaires, you’re beautiful, you have a rocking body, you cruised through school without trying. I heard your IQ is like 180. Maybe you got your feelings hurt by the art critic who didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, and wouldn’t know urban expressionism if he saw 150 examples of it, but, come on. You have it all. So quit whining.”

  I sighed, realizing that she would never understand. How could she? How could anybody? Why would anybody feel any kind of sympathy for me, when there were people, lots of people, who had, you know, actual problems?

  “You asked,” I said, “about my dreams. Why would you ask if you really didn’t want to know the answer?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Just curious, I guess. Anyhow, you don’t know how lucky you are to get out of that prison system called school. I got two more years left. Two more years of greasy food and cliques. What I wouldn’t give just to be done with it all early, just like you’re getting to do.”

  “You’re luckier than you know,” I said. “Sometimes I think I might re-enroll, just to give me something to do.”

  “Yeah, Dalilah, no offense, but nobody wants you back. You set the curve in every class you took, so it threw everyone off. Without you there, some of us might actually have a chance.”

  I looked at her, not really knowing if she was being serious or not. She was smiling, but that didn’t mean that she was joking around. Finally, though, she started cracking up, and punched me lightly on the arm. “Kidding,” she said. “What’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you this preoccupied.”

  I just shook my head. “You really wouldn’t understand. Sometimes I feel like I don’t quite fit in with any world. I don’t fit in with my peers, and I really wouldn’t fit in if I went to college right now. I’m chronologically still a child, but I still feel like I’m expected to continue my education now. I mean, I have early acceptance to Harvard and Columbia, the only two places that I have applied. But I really don’t think that I’m going to get along there just yet. I’m in such a weird situation, and I wouldn’t expect you or anybody else to understand.”

  She sighed. “Don’t you have like relatives in New York City or something?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said. “My dad’s closest and oldest friend, Nick O’Hara, is living there with his wife and three kids. I mean, they live in Connecticut, but they’re both partners at a huge architectural firm out in New York. Why do you ask?”

  “Three kids, huh? Any boys your age?”

  “No. The oldest is only 12 and she’s a real pill. Why are you curious about that?”

  “Well, you know. It’s about time for you to look around and find a boyfriend or something to occupy your time. Good god, girl, every boy in school has been wanting to hit it with you, but you really don’t seem to want to have anything to do with any of them.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I knew that she was right about that. Boys, like school, just seemed to be a bother to me. I guess because most of the boys at school just seemed so silly. So preoccupied with getting drunk and going to parties. As if there wasn’t a care in the world. As if the world wasn’t falling to pieces right before their very eyes. I cringed, absolutely cringed, when I went to parties and saw all the beer cans being tossed into the trash. I secretly wanted to come to the home and raid the trash can the next day so that I could put all of the cans into the recycling bin where they belonged. Either that or bring a huge garbage bag to the parties and urge the party-goers to put their cans and water bottles into the bag so that I could take them to the recycling center myself.

  I just didn’t understand how they could still not be on board with the environmental concerns, even if this day and age. I mean, most of them still drove the gas guzzling SUVs, even though electric cars had long since become the norm. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t have the money to buy electric cars. The kids at my school came from wealthy families, some as wealthy as my own. No, they pretty much drove those cars just because they couldn’t give a crap about leaving the world in place for coming generations. And it made me want to throw up.

  Alaina was still watching me, waiting for my reaction to what she just said about my meeting a nice boy that I could date. I just shrugged my shoulders. “What’s the rush? I’m only 16. I’ll get there when I get there.”

  She muttered under her breath, and I could make out a little of what she was saying.

  “What?” I asked. “What were you just trying to say?”

  “I was just saying that your life is going to waste before my very eyes.”

  “In what way?” I demanded. “Just because I don’t want to date Seth McJockerson or Braden Lunkhead?” I was referring to Seth McNeil, who was the captain of the football team and one of my unabashed admirers. He asked me out every chance he got, and, since he was the most popular guy in school, the fact that I always turned him down rankled Alaina to no end. Braden Lockwood was another one. He rowed on our crew team, and was rumored to be Olympic-bound. He, too, had my number since as long as I could remember, but I never gave him the time of day, either.

  “Yeah, for starters, yeah. I mean, those two guys are the hottest guys on campus, yet you’re like Medusa to them. You turn them to stone with just a glance.”

  “Medusa. I’m impressed. Such a literary reference from you.”

  She threw a pillow at me. “Stop with the condescension. I’m being serious here.”

  “So am I. And, no, I have no interest in guys like that. I have no clue what we would talk about.”

  “Who said anything about talking? I’ve heard amazing things about both of their packages. If I were you, I’d hit that for no other reason than to see it in person.”

  “Gross,” I said. “And you’re not me, by the way. Let’s change the subject.”

  “Okay, let’s. How about you tell me why it is that you don’t paint anymore? You were on your way to fame and even more fortune, and you just…stopped. What’s up with that?”

  “I told you. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “What happened to you? You used to be so fearless.”

  Fearless. Was that what I was? I couldn’t remember a time when I was fearless. When I didn’t let my inner critic go wild.

  I wondered if Alaina was even right about that. That I was ever a fearless girl. I suppose she was, though. I suppose there was a time when I didn’t feel not good enough.

/>   I just don’t remember it.

  Chapter Two

  Four Years Later

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said to Kyle, who was tapping his toes and crossing his arms as I rushed into the tiny changing room.

  “Doll,” he said, “you’ve been late a lot lately. What’s going on?”

  I swallowed hard, knowing that I really couldn’t tell him the truth. Which was that I drank a few too many shots and ended up in the apartment of some guy in Queens. Considering that this art studio was located in SoHo, which was a considerable subway ride away from Queens, it was no wonder that I was a half hour late.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Better not. You better be glad that you got that beautiful boy Seth taking care of your pretty little ass. Otherwise, you might be out on the street. Because one more tardy, and you’re gone.”

  I bit my lip, knowing that he was absolutely right. I had long since declared absolute financial independence from my parents, over their objections, and this part-time job modeling nude for art students was really my only source of income. Well, that, and my side gigs modeling for established artists in the Village. Between all of these gigs I made enough, just barely, to afford my studio apartment in SoHo.

  Seth was much more established than myself. He was 21 and graduated early from Harvard and had taken his first job in the financial district. So he was making bank. Which he constantly threw in my face. Still, he more or less took care of me and made sure that I had groceries in the house. And the sex with him was pretty good, I guess. The high school rumors that were circulating about his Johnson did prove to be pleasantly true, which was a plus.

  Kyle was still crossing his arms as I hurriedly changed out of my clothes and into my white robe. I hated to keep the class waiting, I really did. Quite frankly, I was embarrassed to be in that situation. But it did seem to be happening more and more frequently for whatever reason.