My Flawless Life


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Contents
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Coda
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Books by Yvonne Woon
 Back Ad
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 
 
 
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 iv
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Contents
 1
 
 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 
 
 For my dad
 
 
 
 
 
 1
 
 Picture, if you’ll indulge me, a portrait gallery.
 
 It’s a jewel-toned room wallpapered to look seamless, as though there are no windows or doors, no entrances or exits. The
 subjects clasp their hands stiffly at their waists, emanating a quiet power. Power that was framed and nailed into the walls.
 Power that trapped you, that seemed dead but was very much alive, that you could pass every day, not knowing it was there,
 watching you, altering the direction of your feet as you walked.
 
 
 If you asked me to describe St. Francis School in a single image, this is the one I would choose. Not because it depicts a
 place steeped in old money or a sycophantic worshipping of the past, though both were true of St. Francis, but because it
 was a trick.
 
 
 The thing about portraits is that they’re an illusion. The subject puts on their best outfit, their finest face. The painter makes their shoulders squarer, their cheeks rosier, their fabrics richer. You believe what you’re seeing is true, but it’s a distortion. 
 
 Look closer. Maybe you’ll spot a telling detail: a fly on the still life, a wrinkle in the skin, an errant brushstroke that
 makes the eye glint.
 
 
 Are you paying attention?
 
 
 I was standing in the portrait gallery at St. Francis when the message came in.
 
 The room that evening was humming with people. We were there for the fall alumni gala, which was billed as a night for students
 to network with alumni about colleges, but it was really a fundraising event for the school. Every event in the Washington,
 DC, area is, at heart, a fundraiser, you just have to figure out who has the money and who’s asking for it. In the hierarchy
 of fancy parties, alumni galas, even at a school like St. Francis, weren’t high on the list of places to be seen at, but my
 family and I had long stopped being invited to public events, so the ones at St. Francis were all I had left.
 
 
 “What do you think he did to get his money?” Adam said beside me, nodding to one of the portraits. “Oil? Railroads?”
 
 “Newspaper magnate,” I said.
 
 “How do you know?”
 
 “The newspaper on the floor by his chair,” I said. “The black smudges on his thumb and forefinger. Everything in art is a symbol.” 
 
 He feigned skepticism, but I could tell he knew I was right.
 
 Adam Goldman was one of my few remaining friends, if you could even call him that. We didn’t spend time together outside of
 school; in fact, we rarely spent time together in school because he didn’t like to be seen with me. I pretended I didn’t care, that I wasn’t bothered by the way all my former
 friends avoided me as if what had happened to me was contagious. Though Adam wasn’t part of their group, he orbited them—the
 popular and powerful at St. Francis, which I once was a part of. Sometimes I resented that he had access to them when I didn’t,
 though I was glad for his company, even if it was only in