Chapter Text
It starts with a follow request.
On a normal day, Felice would decline without a second thought; she doesn’t recognise the name, and she’s always getting requests from strangers. Most of them are adoring or simply curious, but some of the people who have slipped through her privacy settings over the years are very, very weird. Hazard of being rich and famous, she supposes.
But this one makes her pause.
It’s on her personal account, for a start – the one with no profile picture and a made-up last name. Nobody who doesn’t know her in real life knows about that account. It’s the one place on the internet she can be herself, safe from fear of judgment from the media (and her mother). Mainly it’s pictures of Sara and her other Hillerska friends, documenting their time at school, dotted here and there with snippets of poetry and her own art. Nothing scandalous, but also nothing a stranger needs to see.
Waiting in the car for Sara and the boys to pay for the fuel and return with the snacks, she has nothing better to do, so she clicks through to the stranger’s account. Was it just a random follow suggestion, or has the existence of her secret account been leaked somehow? It’s happened before to people less well-known than her, and her stomach clenches. Stella and Fredrika might be upset with her, but they wouldn’t do that.
It sucks, having to constantly feel like she’s on high alert. Anything done by anyone in this car could end up in a magazine, and suddenly she feels terrible for sucking Sara into it all. She would much rather be famous for something real, like a world-renowned research paper or her art, and not for simply being the daughter of a rich family with noble lineage who just happens to be close to a prince. It’s all fake, and she kind of hates it, but at least she’s been trained since birth on how to act. Sara doesn’t have that luxury.
The woman’s profile says her name is Nora Holleran, and she’s from America. She’s pretty in a distant, untouchable way, and judging by her posts (which are sporadic at best) she’s also incredibly smart. Felice googles her, impressed by what she finds, and after clicking through a bunch of links on her professional website she can fairly safely verify that this is her real account.
Laughter snaps her head up, and she feels a soft smile forming as Sara and the boys spill out of the petrol station, Wille’s hands laden with snacks and Sara’s neck caught firmly under her brother’s armpit.
“Let me go!” she shrieks, elbowing him in the ribs, and Simon makes a show of dropping his arms and clutching his side, mortally wounded. It makes Felice feel so soft, in a way she didn’t know she could. After everything, seeing the three of them so open and carefree is everything.
The car doors open and the laughter fills the small space, expanding between the cracked leather seats until the entire world feels infinite. This road trip has come at the best possible time and she’s determined to soak in every minute of the freedom that they have all finally allowed themselves to seize.
On her screen, the request stares up at her, waiting. Why is it that Nora Holleran, data analyst for the American President, wants to follow her little secret account? Curiosity getting the better of her, she clicks “accept”, and then drops her phone into the cup holder to snag a handful of chips. Sara starts the car, and, still laughing and shouting over each other, they pull back onto the open road.