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hey besties 😀
warnings: allusion to child abuse, character death, swearing, pageant girl culture
please let me know if I missed any!!
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Beauty came along with fame like second nature. It was a privilege more than it was a luxury. And lucky for Dove Salazar, she had plenty of it.
Cameras pointed in your direction, capturing the light in your eyes and watching the gloss that would cling to your lips shimmer as a smile would be stretching prettily onto your face. To be enchanting to capture the hearts of others, a special emotion filling one when you would just past by with flowing hair and sunkissed skin that seemed to glisten beneath the sun. They didn't have to know you for you to be admired. Just to sit there and look pretty as others adored the ground you walk on.
Dove Salazar was a pretty girl living in a material world, that was simple enough to understand. She knew that beauty was a concept in a world full of subjectivism, but what she didn't expect was that it would get her to make a name for herself. To live in the rich man's world where money and fame were the motivation to living lavishly like a real life Princess and become her own rich man.
And that, by typical movie standards, made her a ruthless bitch.
Oh, well. She'd rather be a coldhearted diva in custom Louis Vuitton dresses and Swarovski jewelry than be another Gabriella in a world where only one Sharpay exists.
The people of the Philippines, her home country, loved her. That much she could remember as soon as she stepped into the spotlight at a young age. She didn't know why, then, but believed what she had was something 'special' as her father would tell her. Something that would make people want to listen to her like the words that fell from her lips were liquid gold, or if she were someone important. It almost made her proud. You know, how easy it was to capture the attention of others.
Others would call it narcissism, but she called it confidence.
And it didn't exactly help that the young Filipina girl had so much of it.
Dove, now a young woman with money and designer clothes, didn't always have such a price tag to her name. She didn't have brands chasing after her, modelling gigs to book and pretty Princess waves she'd have to practice whenever the next pageant crown would land on her head. She started herself humble, starting her life with her papa in the rural parts of the Philippines where her good looks and strong voice had only gotten her far enough in the pageant world to win enough cash for groceries, bills and medical expenses.
If you had thought teenage Dove with a bank account with a of zeroes was unbelievable--which she prided herself in earning all on her own--the younger version of her lived the rags to riches cliché where her only want in that world was to help her father survive. He was the reason Dove Salazar became an expensive name, why his little Dove became the successful woman she was today.
He valued an earnest living than a cheated one, even if the world seemed to be against him.
Her dad was a hard-worker by nature, the type of man who'd lend you a few bills before telling you it were no problem. A real people person that those in his neighborhood respected and adored because he was genuine and kind. He wasn't the type of person who took a few handouts, or shortcuts, or the easy way out. Her father challenged himself because he didn't want his child, his Dove, to think of him of someone who would give up so easily when there were still one-hundred-and-one solutions out there in this vast universe.
Maybe that was why Dove learned to love what she did. To adore the lights kissing her skin and the designer brands she was sponsored by digging into her flesh and scratching irritating lines. She learned to love all the struggle she had went through doing pageants because there was someone who needed her help and she knew her dad couldn't do it on his own, no matter how many times he persisted on it.
Pageants were the fastest way to earn cash as a pretty enough girl with mediocre talents, especially at her age. All she had to do was smile, wave and walk. Interviews were done, but with enough observing her seasoned competitors with a keen eye, Dove had mastered what most girls her age were guided to say by their parents.
My wish for the world is world peace, one little girl would say with a toothy grin. End world hunger, another would snuff pridefully. All important, yes, but not specific enough. Saying it isn't enough, her dad would tell her, you need to believe that what you're saying is important. That's when people will believe that it's important too.
Baby Dove's answer was one for the history books, having her now stepfather, then dad's best friend, cheer loudly. It had earned her a gasped shock from the parents in the crowd.
I want women and men to be paid equally, young Dove stated with a glare. Only stupid people pay others based on their gender and not on their skill level are stupid.
Surprise, surprise. Dove won a fat enough check to get her dad a pacemaker and sent those girls with poorly written scripts home.
It was then and there Dove had learned to apply her father's ambitions and beliefs to this entirely new world she had stepped into. Be hardworking, be brave and be the smartest person in the room.
Be the voice that should matter.
She learned there were two types of people in this world as her dad would hoist her into the air with a chant--only to put her down seconds later to catch his breath--as his best friend, Lorenzo, would scream in delight with a small tiara tangled in her dark tresses and glittery eyeshadow hiding her curious eyes: the people who wore the crown and those who didn't.
Dove wanted to wear the crown all the time.
When Dove's father had passed later in her life, someone else was there to pick up the pieces of her that were still in mourning. Her father's best friend and Italian foreigner to the Philippines, Lorenzo Ricci, had opted for her to be taken back home and to her mother. Now, she had never taken much interest in Dove, paying her child support when it was due while she posed in front of cameras and paid attention to other motherless children in her province for another charity, but seeing Dove before her...
Glaring and calculating eyes, fixed frown and sunkissed skin, Emilia Salazar--former Miss World Philippines contender--was suddenly fixated on the idea of extending her legacy. The Salazar legacy.
Now, this sudden rise to fame and launch in popularity in the Philippines never allowed herself to become a bleach-blonde Barbie doll with a pink mansion and a purse puppy in Beverly Hills. She'd never stoop herself to that level, not when it was obvious that her mother had as she indulged in her luxury life and exploited Dove's fame to boast her own that only seemed to slowly diminish as time went on.
It disgusted her, and Dove was sure to tell her that.
No longer seven years old and using her checks for groceries, electricity and clean water--and whatever else her dad wanted to buy for their two-person family then--Dove Salazar became reborn like a phoenix rising from its ashes. Like wearing her stilettos down a runway with a plastered, red-lipped smile, Dove ran pageantry and people of the Philippines adored her. They loved how glamorous she was. How she, despite already having her national titles, gave back to her community and upheld her values.
And it did help that people believed she was carved from ivory. A daughter born of beauty, poise and grace with her shoulders pulled back, silky, raven hair falling down her slim figure and cheekily pink lips that would curl into a smile.
Seventeen year old Dove was a sight for sore eyes, attractive even when she was dressed plainly without her glitz and glam. And that's how she was back at home, something Emilia ridiculed her for as she hobbled down the hall with dyed and lobbed hair, eyes as sharp as a hawk's narrowing on her daughter. The Filipino girl had left the kitchen to sit in the living room, leaving her nanny who had ushered her out with a stern nod to wash the dishes when Dove had offered.
Because of course Dove was raised by her nanny instead of her mother.
The sunkissed girl wore a loose basketball shirt--that was probably one of her cousin's hand-me-down's--and a pair of fitting shorts, socked feet with UGG slippers padding against the wooden floor and to the couch. In one hand, she carried a cucumber salad and the other had her phone, keenly watching an interview that was broadcasted a couple hours earlier.
It was Dove's habit of watching her interviews to see what she could improve on. If her posture was correct, if the dress complimented her skin tone and make up, or if she had something in her teeth. There was always something to improve on, Emilia Salazar would work unkindly in a snide, if I can see that you're imperfect, so can others.
Fix it.
With a fork kept between her lips, Dove propped her legs on the couch and moved her interview onto the TV, brown eyes behind her glasses searching the video as she stabbed a cucumber. The interviewer's voice was sound through the speakers around the open space, sunlight peering through the panes of glass and filling the home.
"'And there she is! Miss Teen Philippines Titleholder, Dove Salazar, strutting into the scene with a beautiful midnight blue designed by Vera Wang!" The interviewer ogled with a plastered smile, offering a hand to the approaching girl with folded sleeves that were supposed to imitate the ones on the Maria Clara and a tuille skirt. Dove had politely waved to the cameraman, bowing her slightly as she smiled widely with eyes crinkling in joy. "'Dove, do you have anything to say to your lovely fans?'"
Flipping her hair over her shoulder, Dove beamed at the camera, using both hands to wave at her audience with the interviewer by her side hold the mic close to her lips. She looked happier there, with no one breathing down her neck.
"'Hi, Love Doves! I just want to thank all my fans, my family and my friends for supporting my campaign!'" The girl dressed so elegantly on screen blew kisses at the camera, her signature greeting, before she would face the interviewer would ask more questions. It was pretty rare for beauty queens to be getting interviews outside of competitions, but with someone like Emilia Salazar as your mother, the Filipino girl found herself doing more of them than she had expected.
Especially the staged ones, the types that were particularly set up to ask about how Philippines' once treasured beauty queen was like as her mother.
Great, she'd answer with a fake smile and lying through her teeth. Dove actually hated her mother and her exploitation.
"You should've smiled more. You could've emphasized your gratefulness." Emilia scowled, her English punctuation rolling off of her tongue easily and scaring the Salazar girl out of her skin. She looked over her shoulder to find her tigress of a mother strutting towards her in red-bottom shoes and Chanel necklace dangling off of her neck. "And stand straighter. You look defeated, we're winners."
Grabbing her by the shoulders from behind, Dove stiffened at her touch as Emilia's red nails dug through the material of her shirt. She had forced her daughter's shoulders back, then forced her head to tilt at a certain angle that portrayed her dimpled smile in a flattering light. One that was scarily similar to the Salazar woman's when she was still competing in pageants.
"She looks beautiful." Yaya May, Dove's nanny, complimented gruffly as they crossed their muscular arms over their chest. In contrary to the hundreds of other nannies that had applied to look after the ex-beauty queen's daughter, Yaya May--bless their heart--was the only one who could hold their own between the war that existed between the Salazar women.
The nannies before them were already worn down, crying from stress, because of the constant berating of the tyrant that was Emilia Salazar, the hundred-and-one chores to keep the house and the rebellion that arose from the young Filipino girl. Dove was quoted to be not as... tamable as advertised on paper, especially not as she had gotten older and better at dodging her mother's punishments.
Yaya May, however, was military-trained and adapted to what both needed. Emilia, a quiet servant and caretaker to her troublesome child--her words-- and a confidant to Dove's lone-wolf type attitude.
Emilia spared them the glare, only to huff and roll her neck in annoyance when Yaya May threw the Salazar woman a pointed look, daring her to say something. Biting the inside of her cheek, the Salazar woman hissed out a sigh as she waved her manicured hand in the air, signaling the end of the conversation and strutting out of the room.
"Yaya, can you book a massage for tonight at six? My back's aching." Emilia sighed tirelessly with Jimmy Choo's clicking against the wooden panels. Yaya May could only nod stiffly, sparing Dove a softened look at the younger Salazar's disdain as she poked at her cucumber salad with harsh thrusts.
As elegant and prestigious as Emilia Salazar was, it was no secret to anyone who stayed in the Spanish Villa with the woman knew her as some sort of reincarnated Devil wearing Prada. She was demanding, rude and was always one who craved the spotlight as it never usually fell onto her. She liked challenges--which was probably what drew her papa in so easily back then--and practically believed that the entire beauty community, the Philippines, hell, maybe even the world revolved around her and her needs.
Dove may be confident, but she'd make sure she'd never end up as arrogant as her mother.
"Maybe you're just getting old. Your wrinkles are showing." Dove spoke in her Filipino dialect, her voice just as snarky as her words that she knew her self-absorbed mother wouldn't quite understand.
Tagalog was the sunkissed girl's first language, but English was a close second, especially since her mother had grown up in America and had only moved back to her cultural roots for the sake of being named Miss World Philippines.
Dove knew her Tagalog was poor at best, which was why she usually kept her snide remarks in a language she barely understood. Although it was the cheap way at getting back at her mother for all the punishments she'd get in disguise of disciplinaries, Dove enjoyed the smaller victories like pissing her mother off.
Her language was probably one of the last living aspects Dove had from her old life, especially when most beauty contests nowadays preferred contestants to speak English. Before Dove Salazar had become a household name, she was simply just another girl competing for a plastic crown and a sash that declared you the best girl running.
Her dad was always so proud when she brought home the gold.
Oh, and a big prize, too.
"English, please." Emilia demanded, though her mannerisms didn't speak as much politeness as her words did. She hated whenever the Filipino girl would talk in her native tongue, seeing as her own daughter knew it better than she did, considering the older woman was born and raised in the States.
"Yaya May thinks I look nice." Dove scoffed, feeling her mother's hand dig into her scalp and pull the band that kept the dark tresses of her hair out of her face. It tumbled like dark waters crashing against uneven currents, which by any standard of Emilia meant imperfection, meant messy and untamed.
Running a hand through her daughter's hair, Dive swore under her breath that she'd bite her hand off.
"That's because she doesn't run in pageants to win, Josephine." The Salazar woman with red painted lips frowned expectedly. Dove scowled at her mother's use of her first name, but Emilia ignored her gravelling. Instead, she took the young beauty queen's glasses away from her face with a manicured finger. The same talons scratched at her cheeks with an inspecting eye. "Smile wider."
Josephine was Dove's birth name, just as much as Dove was. Josephine Dove Heart Brillantes-Salazar, was her name, but because she had grown up with her dad and his side of the family in her younger years, Dove was the name that stuck out.
You'd meet hundreds of Josephine's, but how many Dove's did you meet? A rare few, that's how many.
However, her mother was adamant on changing it as she saw 'Josephine' as a more suitable name since she was the one that had picked it. Dove was her father's, thus why she hated that name being announced as Dove's official name when entering the world of pretty crowns and fame.
Petty, I know, which was just a trait that seemed to coexist within Salazar women. Along with their charming good looks and drives for challenges, pettiness
Dimples were another Salazar blessing passed down generations, second to the long, thick hair, third to the slim face and smiling eyes. They were a beauty feature, just as much as moles are, but when Emilia smiled with the same dotted cheeks, they seems to be more like pits of hell and evil intent than wells of beauty and good fortune.
Even forced, Dove restrained herself not to fall into her usual scowl, fearing the wrinkles her mother would eventually give her.
"Yaya May doesn't like being a 'she'. They're a 'they'." The Filipino girl grunted, pulling her face away from Emilia's twist and pinch to her cheeks. Yaya May, her nanny, stood a safe distance away, dusting some furniture and fluffing the pillows to the theatre room. She stared at her blankly, a cat-like stare that her nanny had become used to since the young girl never seemed to voice what she wanted. "Yaya May, if you want to quit because she's being difficult, you have my blessing."
Yaya May, in all their glory, paused their dusting and stood with their hands behind their back, arm muscles slightly bulging from the stress of working beneath the two beauty queens. Following the pair around the city, picking up groceries, cleaning, feeding, cooking...
You get the idea.
"And leave you alone with her?" Yaya May's voice grumbled half-jokingly with the younger girl, making her snicker quietly to herself before the Salazar woman with long, straight hair flowed down her back snapped her fingers to gain their attention.
Yaya May was quick to move, grabbing the nearest mirror and grunting as they held it up for Dove to see herself in it. As if the Devil sitting on her left shoulder—her mother dressed in seasonal red Prada and holding a metaphorical pitchfork and horns—Emilia stretched half of a smile on her wrinkle-free face as she pulled on Dove's face again, forcing her to smile wider than she had before.
Despite the smile of her eyes, her heated glare found itself staring lasers into Emilia's face before darting back to her own. She smiled at herself as if she were politely greeting a stranger, no real emotion behind that pretty grin, like she was just a doll for her mother's--and even the world's--amusement.
It was how she always felt, being nitpicked by her vanity-obsessive mother and under the observant eye of the public. Dove couldn't even relax at home, not with the looming, dark presence that would buzz past her ear like a mosquito.
"I look desperate." Dove mumbled, her skin suddenly feeling hot at the sight of herself, angry with the forced smile and the hands that kept it in its face. She huffed in frustration, tapping away her mother's talons off of her sunkissed skin. With her usual scowl, the Filipino girl chewed at her cheek in thought.
"You look like a winner." Emilia reminded her with a scoff, finally taking a few spaces to face her rebellious daughter. Dove did her best to retract the snarl she had kept in her throat, relaxing her shoulders back and standing taller to seem unfazed to her mother's tyranny.
The dark-haired beauty queen didn't want to come off as two things, never showing these sort of weaknesses to anyone: affected and more importantly, desperation.
And Dove had given up being desperate for her mother's love a while ago. That childish need in her cold heart had frozen over and left more than enough room for resentment.
"Winners don't have to look desperate." The Salazar girl bit back. Now, don't get her wrong, the golden girl of the Philippines loved winning more than anything and feeling the satisfying weight of a crown sitting atop of her head, but what made Dove and her mother so different from one another were their ideals.
Dove loved winning to her own design. She loved the competition and the adrenaline to push yourself to become better as she believed that was the only way to win.
"We do anything to win." The former Miss World sneered to correct her daughter's naivety.
Emilia Salazar, however, won according to her own rules. She loved sabotage, cheap, psychiatric tricks and the evil cackle that would leave her throat in satisfaction at every minor inconvenience the other girls she was against would face.
"Not if I sacrifice my dignity by begging and cheating." Dove rolled her tawny eyes in retaliation, knowing her mother's well-kept secrets from the public. She didn't just know them, she lived them, as she would sit in the hallway of their penthouse as random men would shuffle out of her mother's room without much of a passing glance.
Now knowing with what she does now, she doesn't bother to hide it and tosses it in her mother's face every chance she gets. Although it does sound cruel, Dove couldn't help the little smirk that would grace her pretty features when she would watch her mother's face fall.
Especially when Dove would mention her countless infidelities in front of her stepdad.
Call her petty.
"Now I see how alike you and your father are. You're both dense." Emilia growled, stepping closer to the younger girl with a similar fire in her eyes, fingers twitching in warning. Dove wasn't afraid of her--not as much as she liked to admit--but she wasn't stupid, especially when her stubborn pageant coach-like mother was red in the face with her red nails digging into her palms.
Before the Salazar woman could raise her hand to find delight in the flinch of fear from her child, another voice entered the room to keep the two caged-sharks kept in the same tank from killing each other.
Lorenzo Ricci, Dove's then-godfather and present stepfather. He was filthy rich with his own wine company and vineyard waiting for him back in Florence, Italy. He drove a Maserati and wore silk Versace button-ups and played golf with other rich, white men. In all honesty, Dove didn't get what her stepfather saw in her mother and she wasn't sure what kind of witchcraft her heinous mother had performed to keep a kind man like himself, but she assumes that everyone has a poison to pick.
The tall, Italian man that stood beneath the curved arch of the theatre room's doorway had olive skin, dark, curly hair and chiseled jaw. He dressed as expensive as he looked with Versace silk dressing his torso, Italian leather shoes that were slightly worn from hiking through the rows of his vineyard back in Sicily and business slacks.
Just the opposite of her mother, Lorenzo was a natural charmer with a classy smile and kind eyes, someone who seemed to be easy to push over. Her mother's type.
"C'mon, ladies. No fighting when I'm around." Lorenzo attempted to soothe them, coming between the mother-and-daughter pair with a timid smile. He looked back at the screen with mild curiosity before paying a compliment to his goddaughter, which had made Emilia scoff at his pleasantries. "You look great, Dove."
He pinched at the Filipino woman's waist in warning to keep her insults to herself, and for once in her life, Dove's mother had listened and bit her tongue.
Dove stuck out her tongue, pushing herself off of her seat to wander somewhere far away from her vain mother.
Neither of the Salazar women could argue with the kindhearted Ricci man in the room, knowing it was not only in vain, but as well as knowing that doing anything to the other--even with a passing insult--would wound him. Maybe somewhere in her mother's Grinch-like heart was some compassion for the man she somehow manipulated to marry.
And if there was one thing both women of the house could agree upon, it was that Lorenzo was too good for any of them. Too good for Dove's inner turmoil, and too good for Emilia's dark secrets.
"You know, I've been thinking, Jospehine." The former beauty queen cleared her throat as she chased down her sole heiress to her legacy in her stilettos, just catching Dove in the kitchen, putting her cucumber salad in the sink. She suddenly felt cornered. "How do you feel about moving?"
Dove blinked haphazardly at her mother's words. The penthouse that currently kept them was built beautifully that accented the Spanish interior, yellow undertones staining the walls and precious valuables decorating those walls. As narcissistic as it was, Emilia had headlines and covers of herself from magazines hung in frames, calling her the 'Queen of the Philippines'.
Next to those photos were trophies, replicas of the crowns she had won and the sashes that were once draped over her slim shoulders and cascading down the beading of her red dress. Mind you, those victorious evening gowns were locked away behind a glass panel, lock and key.
Miss Asia Philippines, Miss Charming, Miss Congeniality...
Some of those were even awarded to her at Dove's age, back when she lived in the States.
However, the title Dove seemed to resent the most out of the entirety of her mother's collection.
Miss World.
Emilia, throughout the young Filipino girl's childhood, seemed to love flaunting such an international title in her face. She told her she would never amount to it, not if she didn't do exactly as the Salazar woman would've liked.
The worst part, Dove had believed it.
And that only seemed to worsen her doubts of becoming Miss anything when she had lost the chance to become Miss International Philippines this year.
"Emilia, enough." Lorenzo warned, his face darkening at the vicious lilt at Emilia's words. Dove always seemed to be on edge whenever her mother talked to her--more so, talking down to her-- and this was no different. The sunkissed girl went hostile at her mother's words. "We talked about this."
She had never had to snap her head in her stepfather's direction so quickly before.
"Graduation seems too far, baby." Emilia purred with a pretty pout on her red-painted lips, sauntering over to the Italian man as she wrapped her arms around his torso like a viper. Squeezing just the right amount around her prey to watch the light die inside him.
All because the ex-beauty queen had known how much he loved having his little princess around, and without Dove, his will was as malleable as tin foil. After all, he was the one who had helped raised the coldhearted girl with her father, so sending Dove away was like sending your child to a boarding school in Azkaban.
"Gross." Dove gagged, side-eyeing her mother and trapped stepfather as she reached for a glass of water Yaya May had put out for her. She always tried to steer clear whenever her mother was particularly... flirty with her stepfathers.
No, that wasn't a typo. Stepfathers.
Lorenzo just so happened to be father number twelve.
"I'm talking about you... pausing your homeschooling to go to a real school." Emilia suggested with a bemused smile, one that made the hairs on the back of the Filipino girl's neck stand.
Dove would be lying if she said she wasn't intrigued on what a real school would be like, especially at her age now. She doubted it'd be like anything like those American-teen rom-com's where the new girl wins prom queen, or like High School Musical where anyone would burst into song.
When she thought of high school, she thought it'd just be... boring. Nothing special, but nothing like being at home all the time with nothing but the comfort of workbooks, Yaya May bringing her home-cooked meals during study breaks and sitting in one place for six hours everyday.
When Dove was a kid, sure, she went to the public school in her neighborhood with the money her dad would put together from the three jobs he was juggling. However, ever since she was thrusted into pageantry and had gained the fame as quickly as she did, Emilia made a point to make her go into homeschooling to focus on her rising career as a beauty queen.
Contrary to popular belief, Dove wasn't much of the social butterfly as she seemed online. Shocker, I know.
She was deathly claustrophobic of people and she was a pretty quiet kid, so homeschooling seemed perfect for her.
"Is it here in Makati? Quezon City?" Dove blinked before her mocha-colored eyes would slowly form into slits from her mother's beam. Her mother wasn't someone who'd be happy for anybody, much less her unless it'd benefit her in someway.
"The States!" Emilia squealed with a happy clap of her hands, Lorenzo tucking a strand of his long, wavy hair behind his ear as he tried to pull away from her ear-piercing screech. Dove, ever so the blatant starer, felt her eyes widen slightly and heart drop into her stomach. "Your Tita Dana lives in this quaint little city and I think it could... straighten you out."
The Filipino girl felt her blood run hot by the anger of her mother's words, the shock leaving just as fast as it come. She was used to the travelling all around the world in her private jet, or even from the comfort of first class, but it was never for too long.
Her mother was expecting her to travel half-way across the world, leaving her home and her father's family back in the Philippines to live her third year of high school in an unfamiliar place with a family member she barely even knew.
And if her mother's lovely sister was anything like her, Dove might as well just write the words 'I'm screwed' on her forehead.
However, how Dove chooses to comfortably wasn't exactly on the forefront of her mind. It was her mother's insistence of sending her away because she didn't want to deal with her anymore.
"What's that supposed to mean?" The sunkissed girl with dark waves in her hair glared with gritted teeth, her glass meeting the marble of the kitchen counter with a loud clang. If she had held it any longer, the four in the room were sure it would've broken in her grasp.
Instead of answering her daughter, Emilia could only smirk and snap her fingers, bringing Dove's nanny to stand at attention.
"Yaya." Emilia warned, making the Filipino girl snap her head in their direction with her teeth biting her cheek. Yaya May could only star back at her, before exhaling quietly.
"She's means you're... too abrasive, Dove." Yaya May spoke in English, though their words only seemed to make the Salazar girl scoff at the excuse.
Typical of her, Dove thought bitterly.
"You're sending me to the States because I'm not obedient? Because I won't smile?" The Filipino girl raised a brow in question, the reasons that left her lips sounding even stupider when meeting her ears. She rolled her eyes in annoyance, before giving her godfather, her father's best friend, a heated glare. "If you just want some alone time with your boyfriend, just say that."
Lorenzo flinched at her tone.
"I don't want you to go away." The Italian man with olive skin added quickly, eyes saddening at her insinuation and at Dove's defensive stance, her body closing in on itself.
Dove believed him, she did. She prided herself in being able to read people and strip them down to parts and instincts, but what made her doubt him was watching her trusted godfather change his tone when Emilia had pinched him.
"I don't want you to go away, Dove. We just... We just want what's best for you." He spoke quietly, but she could only furrow her brows at his words. He sounded as if he was saying it more for himself--for Emilia's pleasure--than to assure her.
She knew someone being manipulated when she could see one, but she knew escaping her mother was a harder feat than just thinking it.
Just ask husbands number three, six, eight and ten.
And they're dead.
Lorenzo wouldn't try to leave, she knew that. He was too good to his word. She knew for as long as she was staying with her mother, he would too. Till death with your evil mother do we part, then so be it, he'd say.
"I'm being serious, Josephine. You're not taking this seriously." Emilia groaned in frustration at his daughter's persistence. It was one of many qualities that the younger Salazar girl had picked up from her. She gestured to the entirety of the Salazar home and the success that she had gained to live so luxuriously comfortable, then to the window that brought in just the right amount of light into the room and the busy city and the even harder-working middle class below their feet. "I want my daughter to be a pageant princess, not this... deviant you've grown to become."
The Filipino woman parted from Lorenzo's side to make long strides towards Dove, angry clicks of her heels following her and echoing through the kitchen. She would've jabbed a finger into Dove's chest, knocked her palm against the plush of her cheek at that blatant–and even judgmental–stare the Filipino girl was notorious for giving. She hated that look, how bored she looked while the fear of being knocked senseless was no longer a fear to her.
She hated it when Dove wouldn't even acknowledge her.
Dove took steps forward, almost daring her mother to land a finger on her with their little audience. Her brown eyes bored into her mother's heated stare, but found her gaze wandering to Yaya May, who had stepped in just in time with a hardened stare.
"Maybe it's best if you two don't pick a fit." They advised gruffly, sending both mother and daughter a warning to halt their impending war for the sake of the soft-hearted man in the corner. He had a small frown on his face, finding Dove's lips parting –just about to say something to piss her mother off even further–and the twitch in Emilia's fingers. Yaya May put a hand on Dove's shoulder, a grip that was tight enough for her to obey as they guided the younger girl away. "C'mon, you'll have to set the table."
Emilia huffed, shaking her head with her straight lob flowing as she did so.
"I'm serious about this, Josephine. You're going to enroll into East High and you'll like it!" The older woman announced, leaving no room for discussion as Dove scoffed as she picked up her phone–and a few cloth napkins and placemats from the drawers–and followed Yaya May out to the grandiose dining room. She didn't want to look back, not when she could feel Lorenzo's stare at the back of her head.
She half-expected him to follow her out. Maybe talk to her about this entire arrangement.
But the only footsteps she could hear were her own.
Yaya May balanced plates, utensils and glasses in their broad arms before setting them beneath the hanging chandelier above their heads, gesturing to Dove to start putting out the placemats like she would from her etiquette class. If there was one thing they believed when raising a daughter could easily gain a couple thousand dollars for posting a photo on Instagram–whether it's just a photo of herself, or a promotional photo–it was ensuring that she grew up humble.
Rich people liked dumping their spoiled children on their nannies, which was the case for the Salazar girl, but Yaya May made sure Dove carried the virtues of her old life into her new one. That meant making the table, doing her own laundry and making her own bed.
The most privilege she got with Yaya May was not having to do the dishes when she had school, photoshoots or training camps to attend and to not have to make her own meals.
But that fact didn't stop her nanny from teasing her from time-to-time about how lucky she was. How the composer's daughter became an internet sensation, living in a house that was thrice the size of her dad's in their neighbourhood.
Unfortunately, neither of them were in the joking mood. Yaya May didn't have it in them to tease Dove of doing an everyday task, and Dove didn't have it in her to indulge that.
Not with the bomb her mother had dropped on her.
"She sounded serious this time." Yaya May started in Tagalog, their tone almost hesitant to bring it up. Emilia was known to make those sorts of threats before. First to boarding school, then to another family... now, another country half-way across the world. As much as Dove hated her, she could never find it in herself to doubt her mother in such a way.
"She cares about her audience." Dove mumbled back in the same language, clicking her tongue in annoyance. She messily put the salad fork next to the dinner fork, staring at it, then fixing it. She was a perfectionist at heart. "She'll probably make up some speech that'll make me sound like a spoiled brat and her, a heroic and brave mother to save the fact that she's sending me away."
Yaya May silently placed a plate in the gap between the salad fork and the dinner knife, then a napkin at the centre of the white plate. They nudged Dove to catch her attention, finger no longer messing with the placement of the forks, knives and spoons. They cracked a smile, one that was quite rare given their intimidating nature.
"At least it's not a pageant school." They bemused, making the younger Filipino girl breathe a laugh through her nose before fishing out her phone from her pocket. Her fingers danced across the screen in a melodic pattern, skipping past the apps and the one thousand plus notifications of her Instagram and Twitter. Opening a search engine, she looked up the school 'East High', the one her mother had announced from the kitchen.
With the quick Google search, Dove found out a lot more about East High than she would like to admit. East High was the same school that was used to film the High School Musical trilogy, which was an American classic. So, it had its reputation going for it.
She skimmed the student-friendly website and found out there was a robotics club and their team leader was a red-headed girl with curly hair and freckles, there was a drama club and their cover was a girl playing a work and there was an International Students Association. Their description was short, but the paragraph had included welcoming students of all backgrounds six times, and that most registered students were assigned in 'American Buddy'.
The Salazar girl had blinked at the picture of a tall Japanese boy with shaggy, black hair holding a thumbs up. His other arm was around another boy with a golden boy type of smile and tanned skin, mimicking the Asian boy next to him.
Other than potentially being assigned an 'American Buddy', that wasn't the worst news Dove had come across...
"Yaya May, did you know?" Dove fretted, perfectly arched brows furrowing as she held the phone closer to her phone with a concentrated pout on her lips. Her eyes carefully skimmed the small letters on the screen, reading the high school's biography before marching over to the doorway of the dining room, her voice carrying through the entire house. "You're sending me to Utah? Of all places, Utah?"
Salt Lake City, Utah was the same city her mother had been raised in as her mother–Dove's Lola, or Filipino grandmother–was brought there as a child. Emilia lived a fairly normal life there before fleeing for a chance to become Miss World and represent the Philippines. And as much as Dove knew, her mother never bothered to reach back out to her family in America, not after the fame she accumulated.
"You'll love Utah!" Emilia called back, making Dove cover her face with her hands before groaning tiresomely. There was nothing she had against Utah, absolutely none.
But it didn't sound as glamorous as living her American girl dream of living in a place as fast-paced as her, like New York, or just as sunny as the Philippines like Los Angeles.
But, for fuck's sake, Utah?
"She wants to kill me. Or, maybe, I'll kill her." Dove trudged back to the dining table with a shake of her head, not so much as disappointment, but in disbelief. Yaya May pulled out the chair for her as the young Filipino girl plopped dramatically into it. She looked up at her nanny, blinking innocently at them with a pout that was anything but. "You'd help me cover up my tracks. Right, Yaya May?"
Snickering, Yaya May threw the clean napkin at her face, making her grumble in response and hold her face in her hands.
.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.
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hey besties... hey...
y'all i think utah is cool don't come for me
i know its been a while since i've updated anything, but i've been kinda hesitating on putting out anything since i haven't written anything in a hot minute
and i want to be in denial that i've lost my touch, so please leave a vote and a comment (i'll really appreciate it if you do) and i'll see y'all again soon (i hope, i might fuck around and come back in a few months 🤪)