The smell of wealth is distinct. It isn’t just the scent of expensive perfume or the sterile crispness of high-end air conditioning; it is the smell of safety, of a world where the floor never vibrates from a passing subway and the air never carries the scent of rotting trash. As I stood in the shadow of a marble pillar inside the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, my stomach let out a treacherous, hollow growl. It was a reminder that I hadn’t eaten anything substantial in three days—unless you counted the half-eaten granola bar I’d found in a library trash can.
I looked down at my hands. They were trembling, but not from the cold. My fingernails were chipped, and my skin was stained with the grey dust of Skid Row, but I didn’t care. I pulled my oversized, tattered hoodie tighter around my frame, trying to hide the rip in the elbow and the way my ribs jutted out like the keys of a broken instrument. My sneakers, held together by peeling strips of Grey Duct Tape, felt like lead weights.
The ballroom was a sea of light. Thousands of crystals in the chandeliers vibrated with the low hum of the city’s elite. These people—the men in their custom-tailored tuxedos and the women in gowns that cost more than a year of my mother’s medical bills—were gathered for the “Opportunities for Youth” gala. The irony was a bitter pill that stuck in my throat. They were here to celebrate their own generosity while the very youth they claimed to support were kept behind velvet ropes and iron-jawed security guards.
Just get to the piano, I whispered to myself. Just one song. That’s all you need.
I had spent weeks at the Los Angeles Public Library, hunched over a flickering computer screen, tracing the movements of the man I needed to see. My mother, Elena Ruiz, had died two months ago in a shelter that smelled of bleach and despair. She had left me nothing but a stack of handwritten sheet music and a name she only whispered when the fever was high: Lawrence Carter.
I watched the guards. They were thick-necked men with earpieces, their eyes scanning the crowd like sharks in a reef. They saw me. I saw the moment their expressions shifted from professional boredom to sharp, predatory alert. I was a stain on their pristine canvas. I was the “dirty child” who didn’t belong in the kingdom of Eleanor Davenport.
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