Kasien
I sit at the kitchen table, my head pounding and my eyes sore from another sleepless night. I had homework for my Spanish lesson to finish, but I couldn’t concentrate no matter how long I tried.
Across from me, Natalya is checking her school bag while stuffing whole pieces of bread into her mouth, butter smeared all over it. Her fingers run through books and loose papers, probably missing something as always.
The clock on the wall catches my eye. She’s late again.
The bowl of cereal in front of me stays untouched. I’m too tired to eat. All I want is to go back to sleep.
I press my palms to my face and rub my eyes, trying to wake myself up, when the driver shouts at Natalya to get to the car.
She’s doing well in most subjects, but she already has two strikes for misconduct, and a third would be a problem.
I’m doing a lot of homework with her. She’s bright but can’t keep her focus for long. All her notes are covered with random scribbles. That’s the only thing she can do for hours without getting distracted—painting or scribbling some shit.
She finally closes her bag and gets up from the kitchen table.
“Don’t you dare flip your teacher off again,” I shout at her as she runs through the door to the car.
Her school uniform is all wrinkled and not tucked in properly, and her long black hair is messed up all around her head.
She nearly crashes into Adrien as he walks into the kitchen, looks up at him while gulping the bread, then keeps on running.
My chest instantly warms when I see him. He turns around and raises an eyebrow at her, but I don’t see her response as she’s already climbing into the car, leaving for school.
Adrien takes the rest of her breakfast and wolfs it down, giving me an annoyed look as he checks the clock.
We have a private church school today. Friday discipline session disguised as religion. Once a week, we have to listen to some religious bullshit even though we both know there’s nothing religious about this fucked up family.
Adrien’s sudden appearance in this mansion a few years ago was my salvation. He’s my best friend. More like a brother. We’re homeschooled together for the rest of the week, but Fridays are God’s day, apparently.
I roll my eyes at the thought and force myself to finish the cereal.
My whole body is sore. The Varners make me do so many sports that my body can’t keep up. Half of my side is bruised from yesterday’s kickboxing lesson. Adrien is a little better at it and they keep comparing us—thank God neither of us gives a fuck.
And I’m better at shooting, even if it’s just airsoft.
The morning sun isn’t hot yet and a light breeze makes the morning almost pleasant. We walk to the church and sit in the back, just in time.
Adrien is already wheezing into his sleeve laughing, because Father Matteo just said “The Lord enters us when we open ourselves fully.”
I stare at the floor, fighting a laugh too.
If the Lord saw the Varners’ mansion, he’d pack his bags and run.
Isn’t it enough that we’re seen as emos because we’re homeschooled? Do we also have to attend this religious shit?
When this holy moly torture finally ends, we walk back to the house. Our steps slow down automatically as we reach the lake behind the property, our only place that doesn’t feel like it’s watching us.
I sit in the grass while Adrien lies down, one hand under his head, the other playing with his tie.
My ribs throb and sting when I breathe. Yesterday’s kickboxing drills were brutal. The coach kept saying “again” until I saw spots in my vision.
“I found a nice stash in your mother’s bathroom,” Adrien says lazily. “Tried some of it.”
“Jesus. Stop taking that stuff. You’ll end up like one of those disgusting addicts.”
He just snorts.
“And stop calling her my mother,” I add.
“Sorry. Force of habit. Nat sometimes calls her that.”
Sylvia Varner. The coldest woman I know. Vampire.
She sucks the life out of me.
Natalya doesn’t hate her that much just because they keep her away from all the shit they do.
But I observe. They want me to learn. They even started taking me to some meetings in the city. There are things I see or hear that a fourteen-year-old probably shouldn’t.
Adrien is the only person I can talk to about all that.
Sometimes I’m jealous of him. He can live in the staff house on the other side of the property and doesn’t have parents forcing him into all this shit.
People are always coming to our house—mostly men, sometimes with their wives.
They almost always have guns tucked behind their belts and they smoke one cigarette after another, just like the staff in the mansion.
I got so used to the smell I almost like it.
All the staff carry guns tucked behind their belts too, except the women.
It doesn’t scare me anymore.
Sylvia says I’m their future. The heir. She watches me more closely every year. The way I stand, hit, breathe, react.
They make me do everything—kickboxing, krav maga basics, running drills in the woods, grip strength training, target shooting.
All while pretending to be a normal family. And if I don’t attend something and run to the staff house to watch movies with Adrien instead, Sylvia punishes me in the most original ways.
She hides my medication. She takes my favorite books and throws them in the fireplace, just for fun. Or my favorite, she locks me in the basement for an hour of “darkness therapy” to think about myself.
Bitch has no idea I snuck a battery and books in there.
Adrien is a bit luckier than me. As long as he does what he’s told, they leave him alone. But he wants to do everything with me anyway. He’s always had a stronger stomach for those kinds of things.
Sylvia looks at him like he’s trash she forgot to take out. Every time he pisses her off, I’m scared she’ll throw him out on the streets.
She said they’d deport him if she did that. I’m not sure how that really works and neither is he. But I wouldn’t let that happen.
We lie in the grass for almost an hour while he rewrites half the Bible into dirty Italian jokes.
Natalya learned some of those words last week and got detention for yelling one at her teacher.
Those two always end up in trouble, but Adrien takes the blame every time, completely unbothered by the consequences.
The afternoon sun is burning our faces and crickets scream all around us, disturbed by fish jumping in the lake every once in a while. We have a couple more hours of this peaceful day.
“They’re coming back in the evening,” I say and Adrien scoffs.
There are always so many duties I must undertake. It’s so exhausting. When the Varners go away for a couple of days, I finally feel like I can have some time as a normal teenager. We have some friends from the private classes and we all hang out in the pool house when the Varners are gone.
But I usually just want to hang out with Adrien and Natalya, even though she’s, of course, the most annoying person in the world.
Adrien’s head is bent over the Bible, his curly hair covering his face as he’s focused on making some origami from torn out pages.
“Hi, idiots,” Natalya says as she appears behind us, throwing her school bag by the lake and sitting in the grass right between us.
She only had four classes today. Either that or she skipped again—I hope not, but I’m not going to ask. Her uniform is all messed up and even dirty somewhere.
Adrien lifts his gaze to her and gives her that origami thing, while she smiles and studies it.
“Let’s go swimming,” I say as I get up and walk toward the wooden dock, taking my shirt and tie off.
“I don’t have a swimsuit,” Natalya argues.
“Jesus, you’re a child, who cares?” I snap at her.
Her face turns red as a tomato.
“I’m almost thirteen, you idiot, and I’m also a woman, if you didn’t notice.”
Her voice always gets annoyingly squeaky when she’s angry.
“I didn’t, to be honest. Just go in your uniform, it’s dirty anyway.”
Adrien gets up and takes her hand so she does the same. They follow me on the wooden dock.
“I’ll just put my legs in,” she mumbles, but before she gets to sit on the edge of the dock Adrien pushes us both in the water and jumps in right after us.
We all break the surface, inhaling some air, laughing.
The summer air is so hot that we end up playing in the water for more than an hour, competing for the best and most original jump.
We get out of the water and lie on the hot grass, waiting for our clothes to dry, when Natalya finds a small frog in the reeds by the water.
“Guys, there’s a lost baby frog,” she mumbles, then takes it in her hands and brings it to us so we all gently pet it.
“Kiss it, it’s probably some ugly old prince with warts instead of a nose,” I tease her.
“You’re disgusting,” she retorts and puts the frog on Adrien’s hand before they start making her a tiny leaf boat and releasing her on the lake, laughing like two idiots.
?
It’s already getting late, something around six p.m., judging by the sun. We slowly walk toward our mansion, none of us eager to go home and wait for the Varners. As we’re getting closer to the driveway, my heart sinks to my stomach. Their car is already in front of the entrance.
Fuck.
Adrien and I exchange nervous looks.
Why are they here so soon?
I quickly run through everything I could’ve done wrong or missed while they were gone, sudden anxiety filling my chest.
Did I attend all the classes? I think I did. I was supposed to run some errands in the city. I think I did all of that.
We all pick up our pace as we walk toward the mansion, and we’re all nervously quiet.
Natalya’s hair is still wet and her white uniform shirt is green from the grass. Shit.
We get inside and immediately walk into the kitchen to welcome them, finding it almost empty. Rick is probably in his office and Sylvia is sitting by the kitchen island alone, pouring herself a glass of white wine.
She wears her typical tight dress and heels, and her hair is smooth and long. Coldness lingers all around her.
“There you are. Sit down, all of you,” she says quietly, while bile rises in my throat.
She didn’t even give us a glance. That’s bad.
I knew she would find something. She always does. I did something wrong.
We all take the chairs by the kitchen island and sit down.
Sylvia opens her phone and her red gel nails clap on the screen, unlocking it.
Disgusting silence fills the enormous kitchen.
She turns the phone toward us, showing us an email from Natalya’s school.
I forgot about that. Shit.
She takes the phone back and reads the email out loud for us.
“Flipping the teacher off and calling another teacher—” Sylvia pauses before putting extra emphasis on that word, “Puttana?” Her eyes immediately jump to Adrien, who just breathes out a laugh.
Idiot. Can’t he keep his mouth shut?
She gets up, her heels clap on the floor as she walks toward him and we all freeze in terror. She grips a fistful of his curls at the roots and smacks his head so hard that his forehead hits the edge of the marble kitchen island, breaking the skin right above his eyebrow.
Natalya gasps and covers her mouth. He hisses and clutches at the wound. The stain of his blood is even on the white marble.
“Jesus. Clean that,” Sylvia snaps at him.
He immediately gets up and grabs a paper towel from the kitchen counter, wiping the blood from the marble.
She exhales and continues. “Go unload our stuff from the car,” she says, gesturing to Adrien, then turns to my sister. “Natalya, you are grounded. Go to your room.”
Natalya gives Adrien an apologetic look and disappears around the corner.
Sylvia finally looks at me, her expression empty and disappointed.
She must feel the hatred. It’s burning my insides.
I can’t push away the images of her head smashing on the marble kitchen island until she stops breathing. I imagine exactly where I would have to hit her so she wouldn’t get up anymore.
“Go change, you’re going to the city with me,” she finally says.
No.
I was actually praying for the basement this time. This is way worse.