I knew without doubt his strong arms would have held me tight to his chest in a loving hug, whispering encouraging words filled with kindness and motivation just like how I imagined a grandfather would.
But I could not stray from my routine with a lengthy chat about feelings, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be letting him touch me despite knowing in my gut he meant well. So, I was trapped in the same conversation each day, hoping he understood how much it meant to me without ever having to explain.
“Marco wanted me to tell you that he will be sending a man around later to replace your boiler.” Oh no. No, no, no.
My heart dropped at his words, terror instantly filling my chest at the idea of a strange man in my home. Would he try to speak to me, or interrupt my day? Or worse…
“His name is Ryder, he is very tall and beautiful, and he has these gorgeous eyes I want to sink in,” Pablo sighed dreamily as he gave me more details than most people needed, “he was clean and polite, and I told him to come to me first and I would show him upstairs. I can wait with you until he is done if you want?”
I can’t have him here. I don’t want it. Laina is with me, but where is Dari? I can’t have him here without Dari. I need to meditate. What happens if he is late? He can’t start past three if he says he will be here for three. I won’t allow it.
Pablo cleared his throat and said my name, bringing me out of my head for the moment and back to the task at hand.
He smiled gently, passing over three cups of coffee and bagels for me and my sisters, careful to keep his fingers away from mine. I never paid for anything here, he simply began offering things to me the first week we arrived and had continued to do so each morning for the past year, refusing to ever accept payment.
It was strange how well he seemed to know me without me ever offering out information; I could never have afforded to eat here once a year, let alone daily.
“Thank you for the offer but we will be fine. Dari will be there.” I picked the food and drinks up in one hand, careful to not spill a single drop.
“No problem baby, but I’ll be sure to tell him to run along if he is even a minute late. And you let me know when he leaves okay?”
I couldn’t stop the smile on my face as I nodded thanks at Pablo. The man truly was a life saver sometimes and when we had no choice but to move on from this city in the next couple of months, I would really miss him. He had been a bright ray of light in an otherwise dismal life.
Pushing back the idea of our eventual departure I trudged up the creaky wooden stairs at the back of the café to our apartment, carefully counting each step. I didn’t care how many steps there were to certain places, but I liked recording the number anyway. Knowing how far I was from to an exit was a crucial part of being able to run if the need ever arose.
Even if I were blindfolded and had my hands tied behind my back, I could still find my way from our apartment to the street with ease.
“Laina, open the door please.” I spoke to the empty hallway, knowing my sister would hear me even though I was quiet.
Laina always knew when I was back and she always knew when to open the door for me, but that didn’t stop me from asking her nicely each time. I was an asshole to most people, but would never be impolite, especially to family. After all, we had gone through wars together, they deserved an inkling of respect from me.
As I entered our tiny home I sighed with relief. The four basic cream walls, pale wooden flooring and sparse furniture made up the entirety of my world. It was the first place in years I wasn’t terrified of entering and the only one that I would miss when I left it behind.
I was more than happy with our slice of paradise, regardless of its size. It may not have looked like much, but it was our home, where nobody could hurt us or ruin us anymore. It was perfect. Beyond perfect.
“Ciao Kaida, how was your run?”
Laina asked me the same question each day even though most times I gave one-word replies. I began our usual small talk as I prepared for my shower, meticulously removing each item I had on me and putting them in their place on the tray by the door.
“Good. I think it’s becoming too easy though.” I bit my lip and Laina smiled warmly, her full lips wide and glistening with some pink gloss I wasn’t a huge fan of. It looked sticky.
“Maybe you could add ten minutes on the next time and go from there?” She offered carefully.
The idea of changing my day like that instantly sent me into a panic. I couldn’t stop the sharp intake of breath or shake off the desire to hurt something. My fingers clenched and my palms began to sweat.
“But you are probably best leaving it alone for now; don’t want to upset your day now do we, bellissima?” Gorgeous. Laina placed a gentle hand on my arm, my worries evaporating as she did. It was okay now; I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Everything was fine again.
My sisters were the only ones in this world who accepted my ridiculous need for control without question, even though they couldn’t understand it. They always tried to get me to change things, or accept miniscule differences into my day, but they never pushed me too far and always held onto my routine with ease.
I didn’t even have to ask Laina to put my coffee into my own mug and place it in the small microwave to stay warm until I showered. She just knew I had to have my mug, and have the coffee after I was clean, and she refused to make a big deal out of it.
I didn’t know how she knew that the idea of drinking from a strange cup made me want to scream until my voice died, but she just did. I couldn’t have asked for better siblings to look after me and my OCD. I had been diagnosed when I was eleven, but they had been helping me out long before that.
“Dari will be back at two thirty.” Laina said, tucking a strand of her shoulder length honey blonde hair behind her ears.
Laina’s hair was the only thing she had different from Dari and me. She was the blonde one of our little trio, but the rest of her features were like ours. Her dark chocolate eyes were just as kind as Dari’s, but they lacked the spark of anger behind them that she had.
Laina was filled with enough light to blind the world if you stared at her long enough, and I often found myself staring and coveting to my heart’s content, wishing to have even an ounce of her kindness and joy.
We weren’t identical triplets, but we were almost the same. Each one of us had a defining feature to set us apart from the other, almost as if we had been designed by someone who didn’t want the hassle of guessing who was who.
Though I would have much preferred it if we were the same in every way, and no trace of disorder had broken our looks. But of course, that was unreasonable, and as I watched Laina’s dark eyes sparkling as she looked at the food in the oven, I realised maybe it was for the best for them they did not look like me after all.
My hair may have been darker than the night sky, but my eyes refused to match my siblings. My right eye was deep golden/brown like a batch of caramel chocolate that had melted in the heat. The left was a blindingly light blue, with flecks of silver thrown in for good measure.
I knew it was a genetic condition, and completely out of my control, but the difference between each eye irked me every time I saw a mirror. It was some sort of karmically bad luck to be someone who craved routine and similarities, to be given something so permanently different.
“Your clothes are on the bed. Bring me your dirty ones when you’re done bella.” I'm hardly beautiful you sweet, silly girl.
Laina retreated with her drink and bagel back to the small cream pull out that still managed to take up most of the apartment space. Our apartment was only a one bedroom, with the living area, dining, and kitchen all in the same spot.
We could have shared the tiny bedroom if we had to, but my sisters had refused, insisting they preferred to share the couch bed instead. I was sure it had nothing to do with my hatred of sharing a space with people, and my raging desire to be alone when I was pissed off.
I was showered, dressed and ready f
or my free time in perfect succession, leaving me a minute spare to make sure I placed all my products back the right way. With the back of a spare flannel, I wiped down the fog from the bathroom mirror and growled at the state Dari had left her things in.
She was always leaving her makeup and hair products haphazardly despite knowing I didn’t like it, and it riled me up more than when someone drank straight from the carton of milk - which was a sin worthy of death in my book.
But of course, I never once complained to her; how could I when I would never deign to remove her self-control, knowing she was free to do as she pleased? But that didn’t stop me from picking them all up each day, carefully placing them in the correct order, cursing to myself before I even dared step foot outside the bathroom. If organising her crap was something I had to do for the rest of my miserable life then so be it, I would do it without verbal complaints that she could hear.
A clanging of something heavy hitting the floor interrupted me from my task and I shot out the bathroom towards the source of the noise.
“Kaida!” Laina shouted my name and I rushed to her side, just in time to see the shadows in her soulful eyes.
“Dari killed a man; she’s going to get arrested unless she leaves a certain way.” Laina gasped and stilled a moment, before her weird echoing voice finished saying whatever it was she was seeing. “She needs to trust the man with the green eyes.”
Laina had been this way a few times before. Her eyes would turn dark, and her voice spoke with a sense of power that I couldn’t even describe if I tried. She told me she saw flashes of things that hadn’t happened yet and that she whispered whatever she was seeing to the world even when she didn’t want to do so.
I was never a fan of supernatural things – if Vampire’s existed then I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, they creeped me out - but with Laina it was always hard to completely deny the existence of anything strange. She was literally seeing visions of things that hadn’t happened yet, how else could that be explained if not for some type of magic?
I waited patiently for my sister to return to normal and soon enough she was back, panic settling across her features.
“Dari killed a guy; she needs to run or she’s gonna go to jail.” Laina explained as she yanked her phone out her purse and quickly typed a message to our sister.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised at Dari’s actions; she had been working for a gangbanger the last eleven months, doing God knows what in exchange for cash. Dari had promised to tell us everything one day, but for now the less we knew the better.
She was the sole reason we had a place to live and food in our mouths and I would never dream of questioning her about how she did it. Plus, I knew how bad her temper could be and had no objections to anything she did to control it.
Not that I condoned murder; I just condoned my sister murdering. I was sure there was a difference. As far as I was concerned helping my sister evade the police was a normal part of life that I would never hesitate to take part in.
Laina began to pace, worrying over every possibility. Like a world class actor, I remained calm as could be, pretending nothing different was happening so I wouldn’t go into a tailspin and lose focus on the task at hand. My sisters didn’t need me to flip out right now, they needed my help.
“Make sure she checks for her DNA.” I told Laina, as I grabbed my lunch and joined her on the couch to wait. “If there is even a single strand of her hair there then they could connect her to it.”
Most of my evenings were spent watching random police interviews and crime shows on YouTube, so I knew enough to recall how most criminals were caught. If they were caught that was.
“I’ve told her what to do.” Laina replied with a frown that I tried to dispel. “She’s read the text so we should be fine.”
I remained calm and collected on the outside, careful to keep Laina happy. But deep down I was raging and scared, and there would be nothing I could do until Dari came through our door.
“Come on Dare.” I whispered, praying to whoever was listening that nothing too bad would happen today. “Come home.”
Laina
There was nothing in particular to say why the day wasn’t sitting right with me. Saying I could feel it in my bones only made me question my own sanity even more than I usually did. I couldn’t sit still, even when I tried to sink my teeth into the latest book in the Twilight series. If seeing things in dreary Forks from Edward Cullen’s point of view hadn’t been enough to quell my restlessness, then I doubted anything in this world could.
It was ten to three and I had already cleaned the entire apartment, made a loaf of bread that was baking, showered and curled my hair, and watched a documentary about lizards. It wasn’t normal for me to be so antsy, but I guessed that was the theme for the day in our house.
Kaida was always on edge and Dari had been in a foul mood since she had returned home, half soaked from the random spurt of rain and cursing everything under the sun as she refused to say more than thanks to me for my help evading jail.
She was normally a lot nicer and would stop for a chat about her day, even if she were wet, but today she had no patience for anything and pretty much waltzed in and went straight to the bathroom. It was probably on account of the accidental murder she had taken part in, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t know with Dari; she was too morally grey to ever figure out her emotions easily. For all I knew she was pissed that the rain had ruined her makeup.
Kaida was pacing the living room non-stop, anxious, and frustrated about the intruder coming to fix our boiler any minute now. I had spent the last twenty minutes watching her braid her hair, over and over, until there wasn’t even a single hair out of place. Not that anyone but her would have noticed if there was.
“Kai, would you give me a hand for a moment pretty please?”
I put on the charm, smiling at my sister like an angel, hoping she would take a pause for my distraction. I was excellent at playing the innocent kid act and it never failed to get the attention of my sisters. Every time I batted my lashes or simpered my way into help, I felt a pang of guilt. But it wasn’t enough to stop me entirely.
Kaida strolled round the kitchen counter and nodded, her multi-coloured eyes still flickering to the door every few seconds. I knew she hated the colour of her eyes being different, but I loved it on her. Kaida looked very darkly normal on the outside, with her all-black outfits that covered every inch of her skin, and the way she never looked anything less than perfect. But deep down she was a raging storm of chaos that was barely kept at bay.
To me her blue eye was a reminder that she wasn’t what she seemed at all, and under that carefully constructed layer of meticulous normality, lived a deep fire that could ruin the world.
I longed for the day she was able to get over the demons inside her head and become the person she was meant to be. It was going to be scary as hell, but worth it all the same. I was a sucker for dramatic endings, and Kaida’s would be the best of them all.
“Can you help me slice this please it’s way too hot.” I pointed her to the loaf of bread I had made and handed over a knife.
Kaida wordlessly began slicing evenly, the fresh baked loaf doing nothing to her hands of steel. Considering I was the chef of the family Kaida was the one with the ‘kitchen hands’. The heat of things never could quite reach her too pale skin.
I had once watched her take a glass dish straight out the oven without gloves on, and not even notice what she was doing until I shouted at her. There hadn’t been a whisper of a burn on her palms. I was a little envious.
Humming a tune that was stuck in my head I went to fetch Dari. The ache inside me was growing stronger, and I needed to keep moving against it if I wanted things to go smoothly this afternoon. There were only four minutes until the boiler man was supposed to arrive and Kaida would have freaked without Dari’s presence and me in a good mood.
Can’t say that I blame her though, I wouldn’t like strange men eit
her if I was in her shoes.
I found my wild sister lounging on Kaida’s bed in her underwear, with not a care in the world that the red lace was on display for all to see. She had the confidence of a lion and I wished I could steal just a touch of it for my own weaker heart.
“Hello Lainy-pie, is it time for me to babysit She-Hulk?” Dari jumped to her feet, crumpling the white comforter on the bed. She winked at me and headed for the closet, muttering about how she should start charging us the hourly babysitter’s rate.
You wouldn’t have thought she had killed a man not long ago; she was strutting about the place like it was the best day of her life, all traces of her mood seemingly down the drain with the mud she had been covered in.
I tutted at her, leaning down to smooth out the comforter’s creases before Kaida noticed.
“Yes. You have about two minutes to be dressed and in the living room.” Even when I was satisfied that the bed was once again perfect, I knew it wouldn’t make much of a difference; Kaida would still notice the change somehow.
On account of the rain, the faint smell of damp was in the air. I lit a peach candle on Kaida’s old wooden beside table, banishing away all foreign scents from the room. Dari would have been in trouble so many times if not for me keeping up after her and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the lack of care.
CONVICTION OF THE DAMNED: SUPERNO ACADEMY BOOK ONE Page 2
