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Tentative
Chapter Five
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Seventeen days they keep me contained in the stark, blinding, sterile building, eagle-watched by Circe and various nurses. My skin heals in perfect seams, but they want me there for another reason – to relieve their consciences of whatever they feel plagues me.
They don't know what sits beneath the eddying surface. And they never will.
Twice there was a demand for me to seek the guidance of a licensed therapist; I rebuked both the recommendations and the person from the psych ward who was sent to see me.
Finally, they no longer could hold me – like a prisoner – and released me to the safety of my home. My apartment, now the domicile of my mother, uncle, Nick, and my twin sister.
I groan immediately upon entering the door, "What the hell are all of you doing here?" No one responds while I get a good look around.
It's not surprising in the least that they have cleaned up, but it's…geez. It's comforting that people actually took the time to spruced up the atrocity that was this space. My computer can actually be used now, because it's been taken out of the box and assembled. The dirty clothes I hadn't had time to clean are folded neatly on the bottom stair of the spiral which heads to my loft bedroom. All the dirty plates and take-out food containers are trashed, replaced with clean pots, pans, and china.
My sofa is recognizable as a piece of furniture and all the end/coffee tables are no longer covered with articles and books, as they've been placed onto the bookcases that had been housing my knickknacks. The small items now sit atop the piano and other, more convenient surfaces. The paintings and photos I wanted to hang have been, in tasteful places.
"Well, hello to you too." Evdokia looks at me with that look…that look that asks 'what-are-you-doing-to-yourself?' and requires an answer.
But I don't need to tell her what I have been doing, because she already knows and she's probably formulating a plan to get me to some mental professional's office. Worse, if that's truly so, I will end up at one. I cannot and will not fight with Kia. I've fought many battles with her. And lost every single one.
"Kia…please…I'm tired." I want so badly to slip into Russian and say what I have to say to her, but I was taught manners. Manners that dictate that I won't speak a language if not everyone understands it. We'll have her conversation in the near future, when there are far less people around us. "I just want to sleep."
She smiles that calming smile, "I put lavender oil on your bed."
"Damn you." It's an automatic reply to her memories, as only my darling sister would manage to recall with clarity that I sleep best when a little spritz of the flower's scent is laid onto my bed linens.
My twin merely continues her grinning, says nothing. Instead, she shoves me, to the horror of everyone else. To me, it's just another measure of how much she loves me.
Even if it will end in heartbreak, she does love me intensely and I'm not afraid to say how much I love her either. It's just that I know in the end she will discover that I'm not worth saving, not worth being someone she should know. It's part of the reason I left home in the first place. So she could learn to live without me at her side.
Unlike our childhood.
The sixteen-year old bully ran off, clutching his nose while it bled sparkly. It slipped through the crevices of his fingers, dripping to his shoes and staining the ground.
At fifteen, I already had a reputation. A reputation my father's proud of even though I am not, because he says it make me a man. All I feel is angry that people have turned me into this when all they have to do is stop taunting and teasing my family. So what if we're first generation Americans and there's so many of us we have to share clothes? Last I checked, not everyone can afford the best tee-shirts and slacks.
Evdokia sniffs and rubs her hands on her too-big jeans. A 'gift' from our oh-so-loving Papa, "Luka?"
"Yeah?" I call back, watching her. Knowing a breakdown would be occurring before the day was over, in the second-floor girls' bathroom, alone and silent. That's her nature and I wish she would just cry right here and now.
"You're always going to be here, right? Always gonna love me, no matter what?" Her eyes are wide. Crystal looking almost as she holds back from crying, even if she has the right to do so at this point. She never was one to show intense emotions in front of strangers and, aside from me and our brothers, every person in the school is tagged as a stranger.
"Da, Kia. Forever beside you."
We were kids, young and naïve and already a little world-weary. Unnerved by life and its assorted turns. That day…I knew that day that if I broke any one promise to my siblings – it would be that tiny, moronic exception.
The moment I reared back to sock the other kid, the exact second that my fist connect with his jaw, that I was not destined to remain in Cali with my family. I despised thinking that way for the rest of high school because my siblings needed me to tend to them. But I know I would never have survived if I had, and back then, my heart shouted that information to my head like a chainsaw though I chose to avoid hearing it.
"Sleep, Greg." She stands below me, at the foot of the stair, and looks up, "If I don't hear snoring, I'll come up there and lay down with you!"
"That's a real threat, Kia. Lemme tell you."
I crawl into the blankets, remembering the first time she'd called me by that nickname. Sophomore year of College, March – two days after I decreed my intent to escape our family. She called me that. Because she was scared. Scared of what it would mean when I left and she was the oldest. Scared to understand that our then-youngest brothers, Peter and Nikolai, would be have to be protected, like England did for Belgium way back when.
My skin creeps and slithers, or at least feels like it does, until my nails drift, search my nightstand drawer.
Nick calls up, "It's not there. We took the lighters away." I can here the disappointment in his voice and I rather don't care. No one from CSI wanted to see me for me until they realized I'm not an airhead; I offered Sara chances to know me, let Grissom know some of my past in the hopes he'd ask why I'd changed my name. But they never returned the gestures.
The logic makes sense though. They took my lighters because if I hurt myself with fire, remove the fire. They don't know how many other ways there are to burn, like rugs or hot water. And I doubt any of them will realize it until the deed is done. Until the water has begun rolling down my back in waves, leaving red welts and stinging scalds from the spray.
For now, I scratch thin lines up and down my arms. Little blood bubbles appear; flex my arm and the crimson slips to the formerly white sheets. Pinpricks of the color against the starkness that reminds me so much of the hospital. There I was guarded from my family. Perhaps I should have listened to the doctor's recommendations that I seek 'professional help' for my 'self-destructive behavior'.
Perhaps.
Then again, that would require that I actually intend to pay heed to…this. Thus requiring I felt that hurting myself is a problem.
It isn't. It injures only me and no other person. And what I do in the privacy of my own home is none of their concern, because a few weeks from now we'll be back to the way it always was. My family removed from my life barring the once-a-week phone call to chitchat about Papa and the weather; my oh-so-unhappy coworkers back to harassing me for results and telling me that I'm a waste of skin. I know this and I'm okay with it.
Since I make no qualms about the fact that my life will most probably end at my own hand. It is a notion that I am no longer in fear of. Hell, I welcome it and with an open heart, am ready to pass on to the next world.
"I warned you." My sister teases, pressing up to loft and slipping into the covers beside me. She chooses to not mention the blood now resting on her. Her hand finds mine, and, if someone who didn't know us were to see this scene unravel, would assume we were lovers when she lays her head on my chest, wraps a leg around mine. Decidedly un-sibling like behavior.
Except when we were children, we have one blanket for the entire family, which always went to keep Kiev, Mikhail, and Fyodor warm at night while Evdokia and I soothed each other with our own body heat and a few scraps of tee shirt for pillows.
"I missed you so much. If it weren't for Leks and Tas, I would have come years ago. Could have been roommates all over again." She tells me with a sniffle.
"I know you would've, Sis." My fingers reach her hair, to the spot at the base of her hairline that puts her to sleep in milliseconds.
I won't cry. I will not. Must be strong.
"We're so fucked up, Luka." There's a giggle in her words, as though it weren't something that we both already knew and loathe. She smiles into my chest.
So I laugh back, "Yes, we are. And I wouldn't have it any other way."
Because I would rather the life I have than one with a June Cleaver mother and a father who works a nine-to-five, a singular brother or sister. A white picket fence in the suburbs…that isn't us. It's the American dream my parents wanted and what we got was an American life – something I cannot trade.
"Remember when Niko was born? Those big eyes. I thought he'd be the one to change things."
Instead it was the birth of the second set of twins that turned the tables. Aleksey and I share the wonderful gift of Hemophilia, and Tassie, his twin and my baby sister, needed emergency surgery to correct problems with her heart and lungs. She narrowly survived, spent the first nine months of her life in an incubator in the NICU.
"Kiev's little mouth." I counter, recalling how he was always on the search for something to eat, "Peter and the light-socket."
That gets her to laugh, loudly, "I forgot about that! I swear I thought he'd electrocuted himself!" Kia spits out, hugging me as best she can, "Oh." She sighs, "Niko refused to have his party. He knows that you were sincere when you said you were coming, and he wants you to be there. He won't tell anybody 'sides Mama where he's going to college next year." Her eyes seek out mine, blue-crystal on blue-crystal, "All he wants is to see you. It broke his heart when you went away."
I knew he would miss me. I spent so much time with him, teaching him languages and camping out in our backyard or our living room. And one other…
"Peter?"
Blinking she responds, "No one told you." Soft murmur, then, "He's in juvie, Luka. He…uh…vandalized school property and stole a good seven-hundred dollars of stuff."
"Those are misdemeanors. They can't send him to juvie on that!"
My brother. In juvie. Not even where I can protect him from those devoid of scruples. He's stuck in a cell with other kids, probably put away for much worse crimes, waiting to go home. My heart and stomach twists with the idea that he's away from the people that love him, would do anything for him.
"They can because it wasn't the first time he got in trouble." She closes her eyes and refuses to look at me anymore, "He painted your name on the gym lockers one day while everyone was in class."
There it is. The un-critical blame that she'll never say was a blame.
My old instincts kick in and I want nothing more than to fly home, reprimand him while I hold Nikolai close, and make everything go back to normal. Yet I can't do that any more.
"How long?"
"Another two months. He tries to be brave when we visit, but…Luka, I can tell he barely sleeps. He's so scared." Her nails dig into my sides, unconscious reaction to being upset. Warm-wet seeping into my clothes, tears she sheds silent.
I cannot fix it, I cannot change what has occurred.
"Hey, babies." Mama calls up the stairs, "I made mushroom soup with ushki and your brother's chicken."
We let loose a little snort at our mother, "She's still calling it Kiev's chicken, eh?" I ask my beloved twin sister.
Rising she nods, "Yep. He says he hates it, but he smiles every time she says it." She holds out a hand and pulls me up, "Let's get you cleaned up first and then we'll eat." Guides me down the stairs, clicking on my stereo as we walk to the bathroom. Strains of Gotham City fill the room, causing her to grin that silly grin I haven't seen since she was a youth.
A giggle and we're dancing, twirling around the room. Threading through, around my dining table, past my piano and into the kitchen. "A city of peace for everyone of us…" I sing as she hums and claps her hands against my back in a deft rhythm.
The song ends and Foolish Games begins; she pulls me into my huge bathroom, pulls one of the washcloths from their place beside the medicine cabinet. Dampens it with lukewarm water, cleans off the dried blood on herself and I, covers the skin-rips with gauze wrap and kisses my palm, "Please, Luka, for me. Try to stop this. Come back to me."
I know what she means. That plea is not for me to go home to Cali.
That plea is for me to change back to what I was. Back to the teenager with the impenetrable heart, barriers built around his every feeling.
And I can't go back to that.
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*v* Cassie Jamie *v*
csimiami@cassie-jamie.com
