The ride back to Los Feliz feels interminable. Sol is bursting with excitement and I’m coming out of my skin.

“That went better than I could have expected,” he says. It’s mid-September and the weather is picture perfect. The windows are down and I’m grateful for the fresh air. I feel hot and unsettled. He’s practically bouncing in his seat. “I hadn’t expected Reece to be at the meeting.”

“Yeah, that was a surprise,” I mumble as I stare unseeingly out of the window. All of the other studios had a mid-level executive make their pitch. They’d all just wanted to buy my rights. Then they’ll write the screenplay to tell the story they think will be most marketable. I couldn’t stomach the thought of my story being exploited like that. Sol and I drafted that agreement thinking no one, especially not one of the largest and most successful film studios in the world, would say yes. We’d never presented it to anyone before. No one had made it past the pitch. I hadn’t expected anyone to, but then, I hadn’t anticipated Reece Carras or his passion.

My pulse jumps as I remember the real thrill I felt when I walked into the room and saw him there. I recognized him right away. He’s as famous as most of the stars in the movies he produces. The only son of the Carras Media Dynasty, he’s the heir to a fortune that is made up of assets that span the globe.

He’s also a former Olympic athlete. He won gold five times for Team USA. When he came home from his final Olympic games, triumphant, but badly injured, he picked up the mantle of responsibility and worked his way up to head of the studio over the last ten years.

At the same time, he started making a name for himself in the immigrant rights movement. He’s put his money where his mouth is. He has a legal defense fund that is set up to pay immigration attorneys who represent people when they are detained. He’s used his celebrity to campaign for politicians who share his point of view. I’ve followed his activism and he’s been a hero of mine for years. Meeting him today was surreal.

He’s not what you’d call classically handsome. His features are too strong, his brow too brooding, his lips too full. But that five ’o’clock shadow at ten in the morning? I didn’t realize how attractive that could be until I saw it on his strong jaw. My fingers itched to touch it. The intensity of his gaze was nearly hypnotic, I found myself losing track of my thoughts when he looked at me.

I can see why he was voted “Sexiest Man Alive” by a major magazine last year. He’s sinfully compelling. And tall, and still as broad and wide as he’d been when he was swimming competitively. I remember watching him at the Olympics and being awed by his agility in the water.

My reaction to him has surprised me, I’ve never thought much about men. But, I’ve also never met a man like him before.

It takes us ninety minutes to get back to Los Feliz and Sol talks almost the entire time. I’m lost in my thoughts. The scene from the book, the one he said struck him, was one of the hardest to write. I took it straight from my own experience as a child and the hurt from that day is something I’ve never forgotten. It was a turning point in my life and that he understood it so clearly, moved me.

For the first time since the idea of selling the film rights came up, I find myself hoping it will happen. I’m not sure that he’ll actually sign the agreement once he reads it thoroughly. I’m asking for a lot of money—and a lot of control.

Big budget action films are his studio’s bread and butter. So, this book adaptation is definitely not in their wheelhouse.

I know immigrant rights and immigration reform is his cause célèbre. But I can’t believe he would concede so much, to make it into a film. He could just have his screenwriters write something else.

The other studio we met with said they’d let me advise on casting, but wouldn’t let me be part of the screenplay development. I had Sol send them an email declining as soon as we got home from the meeting. I’m glad I did. If Artemis actually agrees to my terms, it will be more than I could have hoped for.

We pull up to the bungalow I share with my friend, Jessica. Sol unlocks the car door for me, but puts a hand on my shoulder when I start to reach for the handle. I look at him quizzically, his eyes are soft, and there’s a small smile on his usually frowning mouth.

“He’s going to sign it, Lucía. He wants to be the one to make the film. He’s a smart man. He’s young, but he’s trying to shake things up over there. He’ll have it back to us before Monday.”

I lean over to peck him on the cheek. “Well, we’ll see,” I say, reluctant to count my chickens before they hatch.

“Oh, ye of little faith. Trust me. I know him. He’s never sat in on one of these meetings. They’ve never pursued a book-to-film adaptation. He wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t want this story.” He pats my shoulder. “He’ll give you whatever you want. His lawyers aren’t going to find anything in that contract that’ll be a deal breaker. Monday, you’ll see.”

I smile at him. He has yet to steer me wrong. But I grew up knowing that nothing is guaranteed. I won’t believe it until it’s in my hands.

“Talk to you Monday, Sol,” I say noncommittally before I hop out of his car. I watch him pull away before I walk up the short flight of stairs that lead to our front porch.

I don’t go inside right away. Instead, I sit on one of the black wrought iron, cushioned chairs we keep there and survey my surroundings.

A quiet street, potted plants on my stoop, neighbors waving as they walk by—these are all things I dreamt of when I was growing up.

I love Los Feliz. It’s full of history and character. This is the neighborhood where the artists, the real ones, live. Our house was built in the 1920s. It’s been renovated, but many of its original features, including the stained-glass door that creates a kaleidoscope of color on the foyer’s parquet wood floors, remain.

I started practicing yoga when I got my first job. Every morning, I greet the sun on the back porch. I commune with the sounds around me. I focus on the positive things in my life and spend time making those the narratives I carry with me all day.

When I sat down to write Throw Away the Key, I hoped that I could shed some light on what it’s like to grow up feeling like an American, loving America, but not being loved in return. I also wanted to pay tribute to my brother, Julian, by telling his story. That story is just one of many in a book that spans the first twenty-one years of my main character’s life. But I borrowed heavily from my own experiences throughout. I let my bitterness and rage bleed into the pages of this book. It’s covered in my fear and vulnerability; bound together with the hope that someone would read it and be moved. It was such a cathartic experience, pouring out onto paper what lives in my heart every day.

When I’d finished writing, Jessica edited and proofread it for me. We bought a cover from someone Jessica met on Facebook and uploaded it to online retailers, sold paperbacks of it in Jessica’s store, Amour, on Hillhurst Avenue in the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The reception it’s received and its success have exceeded my wildest dreams. It’s also made me money. I couldn’t believe it when I started getting my royalty checks from online retailers. I went from living one paycheck away from disaster to being able to write my mother a check for almost fifty thousand dollars overnight.

Amour is a wildly successful store and boasts a clientele that reads like the who’s who of Hollywood. She sells all of her handmade jewelry, ceramics and furniture there. One of O Magazine’s editors is a client and picked up the book. She read it, loved it, and next thing I knew, it was being featured in their magazine. Then, Sol found me and things really took off. I had already sold over two hundred thousand copies when he negotiated a six-figure advance and a nice royalty-share for a paperback deal with a huge traditional publisher. And everywhere I went, I saw copies of Throw Away the Key. It was incredible.

Then, I started getting calls to do television interviews and magazine features. The attention frightened me and I turned them all down. My life has been focused on survival. I’ve never had the luxury to dream beyond that. And survival has meant living off the radar.

Attention means questions and there are many that I can’t afford to answer. I also worry about my mother and how this might impact her.

Lucía Vega is not my real name. It’s the name I chose when I decided to publish my book. And now it feels like I’m living vicariously through her. Lucía’s not undocumented. Lucía’s a published author, with a nice house in Los Feliz and a tattoo of the word Libertad—Spanish for freedom—next to her left breast, right over her heart. Lucía’s confident, smart and brave. When I step into her shoes, I feel like I can do anything. Be anything. In writing this book, I also wrote the ticket to my own emancipation. I’m free, at least while the world thinks I’m Lucía Vega. I’ll protect Lucía and her existence fiercely. Ana Maria De La Vega Rios—the undocumented, scared, tired girl—doesn’t exist in the reality I’ve created.

Reece Carras symbolizes everything girls like Ana aren’t supposed to dream about: Power, money, autonomy . . . sex.

But girls like Lucía Vega? They can dream about those things and they can go after them. It’s a pipe dream, but today it was close enough to touch.

My stomach grumbles and I glance at my watch. It’s getting late. Just as I’m getting ready to go inside and scrounge for dinner, Jessica pulls up in her little bright blue Mini Cooper. She’s my roommate, my friend and my inspiration. She lives her life exactly as she likes. She’s thirty-five and has been widowed for more than ten years. She’s French, came here as a student, but got married before she even graduated. Her husband died less than a year later. He left everything to her. The house, all his money—and he had a lot of it. She’s lived here ever since.

She’s never been back to France. It holds bad memories for her and she won’t talk about her life there at all. When her mother died last year, she refused her sibling’s pleas to attend the funeral. She was stone-faced as she talked about it, but I heard her sobbing in her room later on. It’s a subject that she never talks about. I have some of those too, so I don’t push.

She doesn’t need to work for the income, but she’s an artist and loves it too much not to. Amour is where she sells all of her creations, and now she has a small section for books, too.

I watch as she hops out of her car. She looks like the quintessential California girl. Blond, tall, skinny, except for her surgically enhanced breasts. Her face is Botoxed, filled and peeled to make sure that not one line creases her skin. I think she looks amazing. So does every man who lays eyes on her.

She’s a modern-day Lothario—loves them then leaves them and never looks back. She’s not cruel, but she doesn’t do attachments anymore. She always tells me that she likes her independence too much to settle down again. I think it’s because she still misses her husband.

“Bonjour, my little soufflé. Why are you sitting here looking around like you just moved here?” she asks cheerfully as she plops down into the chair next to mine. We’ve become so close. We are family to each other. She loves effusively and is generous with her affection. I love her.

“Just thinking, enjoying the nice evening before I go inside.”

“You were pretty pessimistic this morning, did the meeting at Artemis not go well?” She slings a sympathetic arm over my shoulder.

“No, actually, it went very well. And . . . Reece Carras himself was there,” I sing at her and prepare for her reaction.

She shrieks, her grip on my shoulders tightening to a near choke hold. “Mon Dieu! Reece “Sexiest Man in The World” Carras was there? You were in the same room with him?” She jumps to her feet and looks down at me, eyes narrowed. “What in the world are you doing here and not in his bed? I can’t imagine he looked at you and didn’t come on to you.”

“He definitely didn’t come on to me. He was there to try to get a deal done.” I try to sound nonchalant. I know all that intensity and focus I felt from him today was about the book and not me. I look down at my right hand and remember the current of energy that traveled up my arm when we shook hands.

I grimace at my calloused palms. I got my first manicure this morning, but no amount of pampering can disguise the fact that I’ve worked with my hands most of my life. The women in his world are beautiful, dressed in couture and perfectly made up. My clothes come from secondhand stores, though these days, they’re upscale consignment ones. And the only makeup I wear is my red lipstick, and that’s only because it reminds me of my mother. At least, what she was like when we were young.

She rolls her eyes at my lack of enthusiasm and pouts. “You don’t even care. Such an experience is wasted on a person like you. You met the sexiest man in the world and you’re acting like it’s nothing. Did you at least take a picture?” She sits back down and puts her elbows on her knees and cups her chin with her hands. She looks at me with a mixture of pity and disgust.

I laugh. She’s obsessed with celebrity gossip. She watches E! religiously and knows more about celebrities than she knows about me. She told me that she’s waiting for Tom Cruise to discover her store. Her more famous clients never come to the store themselves. They send in personal assistants and drivers instead. She’s dying for a celebrity encounter.

Reece is one of her favorites. Last year, he went through a very public, very ugly divorce. He and his ex-wife Fabienne had been together for ten years when they split. They married young, right after he won his Olympic Gold. She’s a world famous supermodel from Brazil and he was the dashing young athlete who was going to inherit a huge movie empire. They were tabloid darlings and their split was major news.

Jessica read me daily updates on his divorce proceedings. His ex-wife accused him of cheating on her. He never responded publicly. They had a prenup and apparently, she made a mint off him. Once the divorce was finalized, he disappeared from the public eye, only making appearances in relation to his immigration activism.

“Did you at least tell him you have a roommate who adores him?” Jessica asks, still pouting.

I roll my eyes back at her. “I was there for a meeting, Jess. Which by the way, went very well. I think it’s going to happen; he really wants the option rights.”

“Of course it’s going to happen, my little brioche bun,” she says with a small, sad smile. “When it does, I hope it will take some of that sadness out of your eyes. I know you think you hide it well, but my heart aches at the emotions you wear plainly on your face. Especially when you think no one’s watching.” She pats me on the knee, stands up and heads for the door.

“I’m grilling portobellos for dinner tonight!” she calls over her shoulder as she opens the door.

I groan and call after her, “I’ll never become a vegetarian and I’m not on a diet! Stop trying to convert and starve me.” She laughs that tinkling laugh and disappears inside.

I laugh, too, but her parting words stay with me and sober me. She’s right, I don’t remember a day in more than fifteen years that I haven’t felt sad. Because at the end of the day, my brother is still dead. My heart has a permanent hole in it.

I’ve lost a lot. I’ve given up even more. But, in writing this book, in telling my brother’s story, I feel like I’ve started to get some of it back.

Today, I sat across from one of the most powerful men in this town and made demands. And he took me seriously. But even if he hadn’t, I would have been fine. It feels good to have what I need; to not feel desperate, for once.

I stand up to walk inside and take a deep breath, letting myself absorb the sound of Los Feliz at dusk. It’s quiet, but there is a hum of contentment in the air. The sounds of people going about their lives in total peace.

I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone looked over their shoulders. They didn’t loiter outside talking to their neighbors. They didn’t cook on their back decks and play music that they sang along to. They didn’t speed down the freeway with their tops down, not caring if it meant you might get a ticket. Living in the shadows meant you didn’t do things to draw attention to yourself.

I want to live free. Just like my neighbors in Los Feliz; enjoying the small pleasures of life without worrying that doing so would mean my undocumented status could be discovered. I’ve been considering how to make that a reality. One option is to voluntarily depart. It would mean waiting three years before I could apply to return. But, if I’m deported before I can leave on my own, part of the penalty would be a ten-year wait before I could apply.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to leave the country I call home. But, for the chance to become a real member of the orchestra that gives Los Feliz the sound of freedom, I’m willing to try.