Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Plato

JENNIE

I wake up to the sound of a woman's voice. It's angry and confrontational. I definitely don't want to get involved with that drama, so I keep my eyes closed and breathing even, pretending to still be asleep.

"Why is she here?" The voice is shrill and fuming.

Lalisa sighs. "I'm not explaining this again, Rosé. You work for me, not the other way around. I shouldn't have to have this conversation with you."

"But—"

"You're pissing me off. Stop."

She's silent for a moment. "Fine, but I don't like it."

"Noted," Lalisa says dryly. "Do you have what I asked for?"

I hear a ruffling of a bag, probably a purse, before the woman, Rosé, says, "Here."

"Thank you, Rosé. You may see yourself out now."

It's a dismissal, and my body relaxes when I hear her leave. Lalisa's footsteps are eerily silent as she approaches the bed and throws something onto it beside me. It's heavy.

"Here," she says.

I peek an eye open slowly, pretending to just wake up. She rolls her eyes at my theatrics.

"How'd you know I was awake?" I ask.

She doesn't answer me, and I don't bother asking again. I haven't forgotten about her time as a fixer. With her super ninja skills, she's probably able to count my heartbeats from a mile away like Edward Cullen or something equally cool and predator-like.

Instead, I look at the thing she threw at me. It's a black, nondescript binder, unlabeled and about an inch thick.

"What is it?" I ask.

"It's full of paperwork and activities for marriages involving a noncitizen. Green card marriages. They use these activities and questionnaires in preparation for their interviews with immigration officers."

"And you thought we could use these to get to know one another," I finish.

She raises one of her hands, showing me an identical binder. "It's a quick and efficient way, yes."

I moan and nod. "Fine, but let me brush my teeth first."

When I'm done brushing my teeth, I find Lalisa on the bed, sitting crisscross applesauce in jogger sweats, she looks mouthwatering and almost… approachable. She has a pen cap in her mouth and has already begun filling out her questionnaire.

She glances up at me as I approach her, perching myself on the other side of the bed. I catch the pen she throws my way, open the binder, set it comfortably on my lap, and start my questionnaire.

We sit in comfortable silence, the only sound coming from the scribbles of our pens. The questions are simple at first, just general background questions… But the problem is that my background is shady at best. My name isn't even my real whole name.

I answer the questions as best as I can, filling out my legal name and being truthful about my birthplace. I leave my biological parents' names empty, because answering those lines will just lead to more questions about why I have my mother's last name and not my father's. If the rest of the questions are like this, this is going to be a long day.

By the time an hour has passed, I've only answered a handful of questions, skipping about ninety-nine percent of them.

I groan, finally deciding to give up. "This isn't going to work."

Lalisa studies my face, lingering on the light sheen of sweat on my forehead. (Some of the questions made me nervous. Sue me.)

"Why not?" she asks, her tone even but annoyed, which I find typical.

I settle for a half truth. "Because I'm a foster kid. I don't know a lot of things about my past, and what I do know is complicated. Like the parents section. Am I supposed to list all the foster parents that had a hand in raising me? There's a lot of them."

She reaches out and grabs my binder. A frown graces her face as she scans the pages, presumably annoyed by all the empty blanks. She sighs. "We'll have to do this verbally."

Great.

Now I have to lie convincingly aloud.

I nod reluctantly. "How do you want to do this?"

"We'll go question by question, taking turns to answer them."

"Okay. You go first."

"My name is Lalisa Pranpiya Manoban, and I was born on May 17, 1991."

She snorts when she catches me taking notes on the Quizlet app of my phone. I make sure to set my profile to private first. I don't want people to wonder why I have flashcards on Lalisa's life, like I'm a stalker or something. I wave for her to continue.

"I was born at Mount Sinai Queens Hospital to a junkie mother and a pimp father. No siblings that I know of."

I wince at how casually she said that, my fingers hesitating on my iPhone screen before completing the flashcards.

Mother's occupation? Junkie.

Father's occupation? Pimp.

Lalisa stops talking and pulls out a slip of paper from the back of her binder. She places it in front of me. It's a nondisclosure agreement.

I skim through it, as she says, "You need to sign this before I continue."

I nod and sign it after reading the whole thing. It's pretty straight forward. I don't have to give up the blood of my firstborn or anything… but under no circumstances can I disclose anything about my time with Lalisa in relation to the fake nature of the relationship. I am also not allowed to discuss any sensitive information regarding Lalisa or her businesses with anyone other than her or any other relevant, involved parties. Basically, I need to use some common sense when talking to people about Lalisa.

After I hand the signed NDA back to her, I begin my turn:

"My name is Jennie Kim." Currently true, previously false.

"I don't have a middle name." False.

"I also don't really know much about my biological parents." False.

"I don't know where I was born either." False.

"Someone dropped me off at a fire station." Truth.

"And social services came to pick me up." Truth.

"As for my foster parents, there have been way too many to count." Truth.

"I've had a lot of foster siblings, too, but I was never close to any of them." Truth.

"I never stayed anywhere for more than a few months anyways." False.

"Should I name all of my foster dads, moms, sisters and brothers? I really don't want to." Biggest Truth I've told yet.

I don't want to open up the Pandora's Box that is Steve and my name and, most embarrassingly, the way I ran away from my problems rather than facing them. It's also disconcerting how much of my life is a lie. Lalisa may have a dubious background, but so do I. I have no right to be alarmed by her when my history has just as much gray matter as her.

There's a contemplative look on Lalisa's face before she shakes her head. "If it comes up, I'll just say that you bounced from foster home to foster home, never staying anywhere longer than a few months."

I nod, hiding my relief behind a trite smile. I'm happy to be done with my round of lies. Honestly, I'm wondering why I didn't go into politics. With all the lies I'm used to telling, I think I would be pretty good at it. Politifact would probably give me a pants on fire rating on their Truth-O-Meter, but that seems to propel careers rather than damage them.

I'm picturing myself in a stuffy pantsuit, speaking at dozens of campaign rallies, when Lalisa gestures for me to continue. I do, endeavoring to be as truthful as possible from here on out. Because, honestly, who am I kidding? I can't pull off a pantsuit, I'm afraid of public speaking, and I usually fall asleep within the first few minutes of a lecture, let alone hours of congressional hearings. The only political trait I possess is a thoroughly sculpted affinity for telling lies.

"The foster homes were in the High Desert of California, above the Inland Empire. It's a pretty poor area with a high crime rate and ridiculously high temperatures." I wince. "You can probably guess what type of place that was."

Not all of it was bad, but it certainly wasn't safe or fun. It's the meth lab of the nation. From what I remember, there are a lot of trailer homes there that house meth labs. It wasn't unusual for a home to suddenly go up in flames, and when that would happen, everyone knew what type of home that was.

At Lalisa's silence, I continue, figuring it's safe to mention my social worker, "My social worker's name is Mary Peters. She was my social worker from the time I entered the system to the time I aged out. She's good people. She's probably the closest thing to a parental figure I've ever had, but even then, we're not really close. I haven't talked to her since the day I aged out."

I really should talk to Mary, but I'm too ashamed of myself. I ran, even though she'd advised me not to jeopardize my future like that. She told me we could do something about Steve, but I didn't believe her. I still don't, but I do feel bad about losing touch with her. She went above and beyond for me. There's no denying that.

As we continue, I'm relieved and amazed to see there's no judgment in Lalisa's face. She just nods and internalizes the information I give her, easily memorizing it with that savant brain of her. Me? I have over a thousand flashcards by the time we're done with the questionnaire. I now know way more than I ever expected to know about Lalisa.

I have flashcards full of mundane stuff, like:

Name? Lalisa Pranpriya Manoban.

Favorite color? Black.

Childhood pet? A black Pitbull terrier named Dog.

Beverage of choice? Water or black tea. Nothing else.

It's very subtle, but I think Lalisa really likes the color black.

It's when we delve into the darker aspects of Lalisa's life that I realize how honest she's being. The courage to speak about painful life experiences is foreign to me, so seeing it in Lalisa is as impressive as it is alarming.

"Where did you learn to fight?" I ask, remembering how she beat Bastian when she was only fifteen.

We've slowly steered our way from the questions on the worksheets to unexpectedly easy conversation. I'm genuinely curious about her and her past. This is more than learning about things to use against her.

"My parents didn't have a lot of money, so I grew up in a pretty shitty area. There were a lot of gangs. I didn't join one, but I did have to learn to fight and defend myself. I ended up signing up for MMA classes at a local gym." She laughs, unashamed. "I stole the money for the classes from my mom's drug fund. I'd mix her drugs with sugar water, so it'd last her longer. Then, I'd steal the money it saved and use it on classes.

"One night, I was finished sparring, and some chick comes up to me. We end up fucking in the locker room. We get caught, and it turns out she's dating Bastian. A week later, he comes at me with a baseball bat, and I fight back. Beat the shit out of him, too.

"I should have been put down after that, but the capos were impressed. So, Vince took me in. He didn't have kids of his own, and for some reason, he wanted me. I moved into his house on the Upper East Side, and he enrolled me into a private prep school nearby. After that, I went to Wilton. Vince could've paid my tuition, but he already did so much for me, so I didn't want to ask. I ended up working out a deal with the family, and well, you know the rest."

As for my part of the getting to know you, I lie about what I have to and tell the truth about what I can. I don't think Lalisa is suspicious of me. My foster care upbringing makes it easy to divert attention from my lack of a personal life growing up, and I'm able to parrot the same theme over and over—that my childhood sucked but was typical for a foster kid in a poor area.

Blah, blah, blah.

To be fair, that's pretty close to the truth. Because that's my past—a whole lot of blah.

But now? Even though this whole situation is really messed up, it's still exciting.

I feel like I'm living for the first time, and I have Lalisa to thank—and blame—for that.