Chapter 1 I didn’t own a single pair of jeans. It’s crazy, I know, because what sixteen- year-old girl doesn’t have at least one pair, maybe with a tear in the left knee or a heart doodled across the thigh in Sharpie? It wasn’t that I disliked the way they looked, and it had nothing to do with the fact that my mother had been a fashion designer, especially considering that she used jeans in her collections all the time. But I was a firm believer in the phrase “dress to impress,” and today I was definitely going to need to make an impression. “Jackie?” I heard Katherine call from somewhere inside the apartment. “The taxi is here.” “Just a minute!” I scooped a piece of paper off my desk. “Laptop, charger, mouse,” I muttered, reading off the rest of the checklist. Opening my satchel, I searched for my possessions to make sure they were safely tucked inside. “Check, check, check,” I whispered when my fingers brushed against all three things. With a bright red pen, I marked an X next to each of them on my list. There was a knock on my bedroom door. “You ready, honey?” Katherine asked, poking her head inside. She was a tall woman in her late forties, with golden hair that was cut into a mom bob and starting to gray. “I think so,” I told her, but my voice cracked, revealing otherwise. My gaze snapped down to my feet because I didn’t want to see the look in her eyes—the sympathetic one that I’d seen on everyone’s faces since the funeral. “I’ll give you a moment,” I heard her say. When the door clicked shut, I smoothed down my skirt as I glanced in the mirror. My long, dark curls were straightened and tied back with a blue ribbon