See Jane Run

Chapter One

“No, Riley. No way.”

“But, Dad, you haven’t even heard—”

Riley Spencer’s father took a slurping sip from his coffee cup and looked over the rim at his daughter. “I said no. End of discussion.” Riley blew out a sigh and crossed the kitchen, slamming the cupboard door after retrieving a coffee cup.

“I hope you’re pouring that for me,” her mother said, coming up over her shoulder and slipping the now-full cup out of Riley’s hands. “What’s going on?”

Riley fumed. “I can’t go on the school trip—the school trip to look at colleges—and now I can’t even drink a cup of coffee! It’s like you want to keep me here in this stupid little fortress forever!”

Riley’s parents were staring at her, her father in mid-sip with newspaper in one hand, her mother with a glint of a half-smile on her pale pink lips.

“Ry, we talked about this.”

“No,” Riley said, “we did not talk about this. You talked about this. And no one said I couldn’t drink coffee.”

Her father shrugged and went back to his paper. “Have a cup of coffee. Be five foot two for the rest of your life. See if I care.”

“We already had this discussion, hon. Your father and I said no.” Riley saw her mother’s eyes flash over the rim of her coffee cup. She gave a quick glance at her husband, and Riley knew she was shut out.

Her mother sighed. “It’s not like we do this for no reason, Ry.” She shook a single pill from the prescription bottle and held it in her palm. “There will be crowds and a lot of confusion. Dr. Morley said it would be best to ease into a new environment.”

Riley glared at the tiny pill before snatching it up and popping it into her mouth. “What’s the point of taking antianxiety medication if I never even have the opportunity to get anxious?” But even as she said the words, a tiny, singeing panic burned up the back of her neck. “It’s not like I have a panic attack every time I leave the house or anything.”

“Riley…”

She slumped, glaring through lowered lashes at each of her parents. She let out a low, dejected sigh before pushing around the cereal in her bowl.

“Well, I guess getting straight As doesn’t matter anymore anyway. If I can’t even go check out a university on a heavily chaperoned school-sponsored trip, there’s no reason to even apply to college. I mean, I don’t want to go to a school I’ve never even visited. Even if it is my beloved father’s alma mater. What if there are rapists and murderers surrounding the campus? I’d be caught totally off guard. I guess it’s going to be Crescent City Junior College after all. I hear they have a pretty decent math department. I think it was ranked eighty-fifth in America’s Best Junior Colleges. Eighty-fifth. That’s not bad, right?”

“Ry, we agreed that your dad and I would take you and Shelby to look at colleges over your spring break. What happened to that?”