The Coven

ADOLESCENCE

I think that after primary school, things got a little strange;  during that time of life when you lose what you believed about yourself, to fall into the unexpected emotional spiral that hormones bring. I never asked any of my friends if they felt like me, we did not connect, at least not beyond regular superficiality. 

When I think of those days I feel that more than going through adolescence I was doing it through depression. Maybe it was too difficult and pointless for me to try to be as an adult, considering how I used to feel about them, or perhaps it was that I found no purpose in getting up every morning like a zombie, force myself to wear the ugly burgundy uniform -I hardly ever bother to take a shower- and drive to the stupid school, to spend my day amongst nuns trying to teach useless knowledge to a bunch of apathetic teenagers. All I really wished for back then, was to be in my room, reading my beloved tragedies or watching my favourite movies, eating all the crap food that I could put my hands on and let the time consume itself.  

This might be the perfect moment for me to introduce my parents to you dear reader, and now that I think about it, to introduce myself. My name is Darcy Brooks, daughter of Augustus and Ava, sister of Katrina, half-sister of Allegra and Nina. Together we are The Brooks. 

I’ll start my descriptions with Augustus. His story is a real mystery to me, as the absent parent he was I create a romanticized version of him, and of course, I made him a hero, one that would appear when least expected but most needed, I used to tell myself stories about him arriving to save me from my horrible mother; and when I was fourteen, my wish came true, I need to be very clear about this, I got my wish but in a very different way I ever imagined; he stayed a couple of months with us, distracting my mother at least, he told me he loved me once, “even if I don’t show it”, he said, hug me a couple of times, and then disappear from our lives. I was abandoned again, this time to pick up the small pieces of my mother’s broken heart, and eight months later, I received the most amazing present my parents ever gave me, apart of my own life of course; my sister Katrina.

Ava, my mother is a very strange person, at the beginning of my life I thought all the ladies were as good and devoted as my grandmother Marie, but her daughter was completely different, a perfect opposite perhaps. She lived for her own adventures and career; I remember being alone most of the time, and whenever she was with me I automatically became her made, cooker, errands girl, nanny and with the years, her driver too. The story I always tell to describe her laziness, is from when we lived in a really big house at that hell town I hated so much, she would always call me from her bedroom with urgency screams, when I finally arrived there, usually running up the stairs, she would ask me to pass the remote of the telly; she was not able to get up the bed to get it from the table a few steps away. Do not get this the wrong way, is about greatness not about me being a slave or anything of the kind, is just that my mother should have been a princess of Monaco instead of a regular girl. One day, after Katrina was born my mother took me to some weird group therapy session, she got obsessed with all those things after my father left; so, in that group, the participants made a representation of our mother-daughter relationship, is impossible for me to forget how the person representing me walked around the room carrying the one representing my mother, she was hanging from her neck with both arms. That was my life without a doubt.