Anna
It’s been a week since I last saw Luka, and I’m beginning to feel increasingly unsettled by his absence. What kind of man insists on taking in two women, then abandoning them in his obscenely expensive home with all of his valuables?
Even someone as rich as Luka has to see the danger and impracticality in something like that. What if Rachel and I decided to ransack the entire place? We could more than easily afford a halfway-decent place with even a third of the tech and invaluable artwork he has here.
There’s must be something going on. Maybe he got in trouble and didn’t want to tell us that he’s spending a couple of weeks in jail. Pavel certainly hasn’t been helpful, and none of Luka’s drivers will utter a word about Luka’s whereabouts.
The man just up and disappeared. Maybe Rachel and I should too.
I think back to one of my friends who’s now living down in Florida, knowing full well that she would take us into her own home in a heartbeat if she knew the circumstances. She would probably scream at me over the phone for a solid ten minutes after I told her what was going on, and then insist that we hit the road and come down to stay with her.
I pull up her Facebook profile on my phone, noting how effervescent and unnaturally optimistic her online presence is within the last few months. It appears that she’s gotten a boyfriend and a golden retriever puppy, posting about them both incessantly to the point of obsession. Nevertheless, her dutiful friends react to each and every photo and status update as though they’ve never seen a dog or computer scientist in their entire lives.
When I scroll through her profile, my heart sinks, realizing that she probably has absolutely no space for Rachel and me, even if she would want nothing more than to take us in and keep us out of the hands of a murderous gang leader. She needs all the time she can possibly find to
curate perfectly saturated photos of her smoothie bowls and beachside marathons, projecting nothing but delirious happiness and contentment as she makes her way through ‘this crazy thing called life’, as she puts it.
That’s disappointing. I’d be nothing more than an unwelcome burden-an inconvenience.
I’m just about to look up the handful of other questionably good friends I’ve retained over the years when Rachel skips into my room, startling me.
“I had my first counseling session today at school,” she begins, her eyes unusually bright as she wanders over to my bed, sitting right next to me.
“Oh,” I reply, thoroughly surprised that she would consider opening up like that. “How did that go?” I ask.
“It was really great, actually. I figured I need to work through some of my issues if I’m ever going to function in the real world.”
“That’s… a mature approach,” I reply cautiously.
“Yeah, we talked about mom and dad,” she says, retaining her cheerful tone.
I freeze as my heart skips. She talked about our parents? To a therapist?
Rachel hasn’t even spoken to me about our parents in years. I’ve made an unspoken effort to avoid discussing them at all, no matter how desperately I want to remember our lives before foster care. Even if that life was nothing but turmoil and resentment, we still had a family at one point. I thought she had completely forgotten that.
“You did?” I ask cautiously. I know better than to pry into Rachel’s inner thought life, but she seems unusually open to sharing it with me now.
“Yeah, I told her about how mom and dad would work a lot and that I never got to ask them much about their lives before we were born,” she replies,
and I’m shocked by her openness. I never knew that was even something that bothered her.
“Um, what else did you talk about?” I continue, planning each step of this conversation in my head to anticipate where I could go wrong, causing Rachel to shut down completely and refuse to speak to me for a week and a half.
“We talked about you and how long you’ve been taking care of me,” she replies. “I realize things have been hard for you since we were kids, and I appreciate you.”
My internal script dissolves completely, and I nearly break down into inconsolable tears. With enough years of practice, I’m able to choke the emotion out and focus on Rachel’s words, but her verbal affirmation of the effort I’ve placed into raising her catches me completely off guard.
“Wow, I really needed to hear that. Where did all of this come from?” I ask, anticipating a complete shut-down from her. I’ve extracted too much, and this is where it all falls apart.
“I don’t know. Since we got here, I don’t feel as like… tense anymore. Before at the old house, I always felt like my emotions were just a tangled ball of cords, and I couldn’t keep anything straight,” she begins, her expression pensive and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her.
“What do you mean by that?” I respond, but I know exactly how she feels. I spent every day of my adolescence like that, and it’s only recently that I discovered what it feels like to have a quiet space to think straight.
Rachel looks around the calm but lavish bedroom. “I’m not sure. It just feels easier to live now. I know it hasn’t been that long, but I don’t feel like I have a rock in my stomach all the time,” she replies. “It’s nice to be here.”
My eyes start to tear up before I’m able to center myself and blink the tears away. Knowing that Rachel has ever felt the same way I have in the past breaks my heart. Being in such an unstable, tumultuous environment at such a young age has already taken an enormous toll on her.
Yet here she is, somehow recovering just by virtue of being able to escape from the life I was barely able to scrape together for her. In a way, I’m
extremely envious of Luka for being able to provide that for my sister without a second thought.
Yeah, just go ahead and live in my guest house. It’s not a big deal.
The life I tried desperately to provide for her was still tearing her apart inside, driving her to use drugs as an escape. Here in Luka’s mansion, she finally feels like she can breathe. How can I possibly take that away from her?
“Do you really like living here, then?” I ask, already knowing what the answer is. I just need the confirmation from her, the confirmation that I can’t make her leave.
“Yeah, I fucking love it here. I want to stay here forever,” she says, only half-joking. She’s smart enough to know that the arrangement we currently have is precarious at best and dangerous at worst.
But she’s still young, and she’s been able to retain hope that the world around her will treat her with respect. I can’t rip that from her without cause.
“It is pretty nice,” I say, nodding in agreement. “The other day, I had to replace the soap in the bathroom, and there was just… more soap. At least three more soap dispensers below the sink,” I say, thinking to myself how ridiculous that something so simple could be considered noteworthy to someone like me. We’ve gone without necessities so often that just having paper towels and laundry detergent feels like a luxury.
“Yeah, I noticed that too. I don’t know. I feel like this is how everyone should be able to live all the time,” Rachel says.
That’s my confirmation. I can’t take her from this place. Not any time soon. We’re staying.