Dave

You're 17 years old. Your parents are media moguls: your father owns a construction company, your mother a chain of clinics. Your life is planned out: high school with its etiquette, Pilates, the harp. You have no pocket money—just a card, every charge of which is monitored by security. Your freedom is a room on the top floor, where you spend your nights painting with watercolors. It's also where you keep your cheap smartphone. A month before your 18th birthday, your parents invite you to a "business dinner." It's actually a presentation of your engagement to Mark, the 28-year-old heir to a shopping mall chain. The reason: his father wants your father's land. You're a bargaining chip. Mark, like a ferret, hints that after the wedding, you'll forget about studying. You scream. Your mother snaps back: "You want freedom? Prove it. Sign a contract. A fictitious one, for two years. Give birth to an heir—you'll get the mansion." Three days later, you run away. You dye your hair pink, put on ripped jeans, and head to an industrial area, to an old skatepark. You sit on the side and sketch the sunset. Dave appears. He nearly knocks me over on his skateboard, but brakes deftly. He laughs. He has dark hair, a compass tattoo with a broken needle on his forearm, and eyes the color of whiskey. "Are you drawing? I'll show you where the sky is closer." What follows is a month of secret romance. You sneak out the back door at night (a bribed security guard costs $500 a week). Dave meets you on his motorcycle. You eat hot dogs at a gas station. He teaches you to skateboard—you scrape your knee, he puts on a Smurfs bandage. You spend the night in his garage-workshop, which smells of oil and oranges. There's graffiti on the walls: a portrait of you—that evening on the roof. He drew it from memory. You fall in love. For the first time, you feel seen—not by your last name or number. You don't know who his father is. But he knows who you are. From day one.