Bound - The Primori Academy

The Deal

The house was supposed to be empty when Elowen got home from school.

Linda worked until five on Thursdays. Frank didn't get back until six. Elowen had learned their schedules the way prey learns the patterns of predators—carefully, obsessively, because survival depended on knowing when it was safe to breathe.

But Linda's car was in the driveway.

Elowen's stomach dropped. She stood on the cracked sidewalk, her backpack heavy with textbooks she'd never asked for but was expected to carry anyway, and stared at the rusted sedan like it was a threat. Which it was. Linda home early meant something had gone wrong. And when things went wrong for Linda, they got worse for Elowen.

She could turn around. Walk to the library. Kill a few hours until the danger passed.

But that would mean coming home late. And coming home late would mean questions, accusations, punishment for breaking rules that shifted depending on Linda's mood.

Elowen climbed the porch steps. The wood creaked under her feet. Inside, she could hear voices—Linda's sharp and nasal, Frank's lower rumble. They were in the kitchen. Elowen moved quietly through the front door, setting her backpack down with careful silence.

"—fifteen thousand," Linda was saying. "That's what they're offering."

Elowen froze.

"For what?" Frank's voice was skeptical. He was always skeptical. It was the only consistent thing about him.

"For her." Linda laughed, short and humorless. "Can you believe it? Someone actually wants to pay us to take her off our hands."

Elowen's chest tightened. She should move. She should go to her room, close the door, pretend she hadn't heard. But her feet wouldn't cooperate. She stood in the narrow hallway, barely breathing, her heart pounding so hard she was sure they could hear it.

"What's the catch?" Frank asked.

"No catch. Some elite academy upstate. Full scholarship, all expenses paid. They just need us to sign the paperwork saying we consent to the transfer."

"Why would they pay us for that?"

"Does it matter?" Linda's voice sharpened with impatience. "Fifteen thousand dollars, Frank. That's a new roof. That's the vacation we've been talking about. That's her gone and money in our pocket."

There was a pause. Elowen could picture Frank leaning against the counter, arms crossed, his face set in that expression of permanent dissatisfaction. He didn't like her. He'd never pretended to. But he also didn't like being played.

"Sounds too good to be true," he said finally.

"I talked to the woman on the phone for twenty minutes. It's legitimate. Some kind of private institution for gifted students. They saw Elowen's records and think she'd be a good fit."

Elowen almost laughed. *Gifted.* She was barely passing most of her classes. She wasn't gifted at anything except making herself small.

"Her records," Frank repeated, skeptical. "What records? The girl's got nothing special about her."

"I don't know and I don't care." Linda's voice was flat now, final. "They want her. They're willing to pay. We sign the papers, she's gone by the end of the week, and we never have to deal with her again."

"What about the state?" Frank asked. "Don't we lose the monthly check if she leaves?"

"The academy's paying more than we'd get in six months of state checks. And we don't have to feed her, clothe her, or listen to her moping around the house like we owe her something."

Elowen's hands were shaking. She pressed them against her thighs, trying to steady herself. The words landed like blows—*pathetic, burden, nothing special, gone.* Each one a confirmation of what she'd always known but had never heard spoken so plainly.

They were selling her.

Fifteen thousand dollars. That's what she was worth. Not as a person. As a problem they could solve.

"When do they need an answer?" Frank asked.

"I already gave them one." Linda's voice carried a note of satisfaction. "Told them we'd sign whatever they needed. The car's coming Friday morning."

"Friday?" Frank sounded surprised. "That's three days."

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Linda said. "The sooner she's gone, the better."

Elowen turned and walked to her room. Her feet moved automatically, carrying her down the hallway and through the door that didn't lock. She closed it behind her and stood in the small space that had never been hers, staring at the bare walls and the narrow bed and the single window that looked out onto the neighbor's fence.

She should feel devastated. She should feel the sting of rejection, the humiliation of being sold like furniture they didn't want anymore.

And she did feel those things. They sat in her chest like stones, heavy and cold.

But underneath the hurt was something else. Something dangerous and bright and impossible to ignore.

Hope.

She was leaving.

In three days, she would walk out of this house and never come back. She wouldn't age out of the system and disappear into nothing. She wouldn't spend one more year making herself invisible, counting down the hours until she could escape.

She was escaping now.

It didn't matter that they were being paid. It didn't matter that Linda had agreed without asking her, that Frank had calculated her worth in dollars and found it acceptable. It didn't matter that some stranger had looked at her records—whatever those were—and decided she was worth buying.

What mattered was that she was leaving.

Elowen sat on the edge of her bed, her hands still shaking, and let herself imagine it. A different place. Different people. Maybe even a different version of herself—one who didn't have to be small and quiet and invisible to survive.

She didn't know what this academy was. She didn't know why they wanted her or what they'd seen in her records that made her worth fifteen thousand dollars.

But she knew she was going.

And for the first time in longer than she could remember, Elowen Cross let herself believe that maybe, just maybe, things were about to change.