Natalia POV

Jeremy and I were in economics working on our project. I glanced over at Jillian who was watching me work with Jeremy sympathetically. She didn't have any work to do today.

"So how do you want to set these prices?" he asked, snapping my attention back to the project.

"Um…five dollars?" I said, having not been paying attention.

"For candy? Damn. Rich girl," he teased.

I laughed with him. "Jeremy, you're so nice. I mean, way too nice for me."

"I'm really not that great," he said. "I've been involved in too much stuff. It's like, in Mystic Falls, I lived with my sister and aunt—"

"What happened to your parents?" I asked.

"They drove off a bridge."

"I'm sorry."

"So after that, I became the drug-using delinquent. Then my aunt died, and it was just me, my sister, and my history teacher, believe it or not, and that is a long story." I laughed and he continued then. "They…didn't like my behavior, so they sent me to live with family friends here."

"I bet you miss them," I said, wondering what it would be like to be sent away from my mom, dad, and brothers. Dad, I could probably live without, but not my mom, or Matt or Tyler.

"You know, surprisingly, I'm actually fine. Here, I think I'm doing much better. With the drug part, anyway, because I haven't actually gotten that many grades yet. That's why we should do good on this project that we should be working on instead of telling my life's story."

"True," I said. We looked down at the paper and began to work again.

o.O.o

"So, shouldn't you be working on that stupid project again?" Tyler asked when I got home later in the day. I had stayed after for a little bit of cheerleading practice, but then told the coach I wasn't feeling well and got in my car and drove home.

"Can't work on econ every day," I replied.

"When's it due?" Tyler asked.

"Next Wednesday," I replied.

"Yeah, but you have Mrs. Mansew. She'll give your whole class at least a two day extension, if one person complains about not having it done on time."

"Right. She did that once," I remembered. "And then she started complaining about not being able to grade them before the end of the card marking."

"That's what she does. But she'd never take it out on the class. It's her fault for not preparing enough time to grade in the first place."

"She is a major pushover," I said.

My mom walked in then. "Hey Tyler!" she practically shouted. "Sorry I haven't been around much in the past two days. I've had to work late."

"We know," I said. "You never work late anymore. Last night was the first time in months, years even, that you had to work late."

"I know, and I felt bad for missing Tyler's first day back."

'But not for me?' I thought.

"Listen, Nat, we know you don't like dad, but there's no reason you have to be so afraid to be here when mom's working late."

"What do you mean, Tyler?" my mom asked.

"Natalia is scared shitless…I mean, she's…terrified of staying here when you're working late and me and Matt aren't here. She used to beg us to stay home on nights when you would work late, and when we'd ask why, she'd say, 'Daddy's scary.'"

"I did?" I asked. Believe it or not, I don't remember much of those nights.

"Yeah, you'd clasp yourself around our knees, remember?" he asked.

"Vaguely."

"You don't have to lie. It was pretty pathetic for a thirteen year old, but we're all family here."

"I don't remember that," I said.

"Hm. Maybe we should take her to some memory therapist or something," Tyler said, though I was pretty sure he was just kidding.

And speak of the devil, and he shall appear, my dad came in the room then. "Hey, guys, we're all here tonight!" he said excitedly. "Let's do something special for dinner, and Tyler, no skipping out this time."

"Hey, Jerry," my mom said, "can I talk to you in our room?"

They left the room—well, my mom dragged my dad out of the room, that is to say—and Tyler started laughing. "I guess she took that whole knee thing a little too seriously," he said.

"Were you lying?" I asked.

"No, I'm just saying. Dad can be a scary guy sometimes. Granted, he's your dad, so he shouldn't be that scary to you, but apparently he was. What did he do, get drunk and hit you or something?"

"Let's go see what they're talking about," I suggested, deciding for the moment not to answer.

When Matt and I were seven and five, respectively, we decided to make a map of the entire house. We wanted to figure out which rooms were above which, and what rooms a ghost could walk through a wall to get to. We got to our storage room and heard voices directly above us.

Now a little background about the storage room. When my parents were looking at this house, there was one room that was locked shut from the inside. The realtor had explained that the owners' teenage son lived in that room and refused to unlock it, so they had to leave that room to the imagination. Once they bought the house, they met with the people who previously owned it and discovered they never had a son, only three daughters who were five, three, and two. Upon entrance into the locked room, they discovered a dead body of a seventeen year old kid, his throat slit. They called the police who removed the body, but for some reason my parents never moved away. Still, the memories were unbearable, so they kept the room as a storage room, or as I like to call it, the hoarder room, because we don't actually need any of the stuff in it.

Anyway, when my brother and I had checked out this room, we heard our parents talking in their room. We discovered a hole in the ceiling, right in the corner. We figured it was because the house was so old and that there was just a hole our parents never bothered to fix. We had looked for the hole in their room, but had never found it. We figured it must have been covered by the carpet in their room.

And we discovered it was an amazing place to eavesdrop.

"What did you do to our poor daughter Natalia when she was thirteen?" my mother was asking.

"Nothing. She just didn't like the noises in the house, and since I was always sleeping, tired from work, she thought there was no one here."

Okay, I don't even remember it and I know that's not right.

"Look. When I married you, I knew you had a problem. I thought you could fix it. But I swear to God, if you've been drinking again, I will divorce you!" my mother yelled.

"I haven't. I promise."

I turned to Tyler with a shocked expression on my face. We never had alcohol in the house, and mom and dad had both assured me that it was because neither of them liked it. "Dad was a drunk?" I whispered in shock to my brother.