Were- It All Began

Chapter 1

Elide walked down the halls with her eyes on the floor ahead of her, counting the tiles. Every time someone bumped into her, she flinched. She did not want to go home, but, after eight hours, she did not want to be at school anymore, either. It was her senior year and it was almost finished. She could just taste the sweet freedom she would finally have come May, and her eighteenth birthday.

The third bell rang, and the halls filled up more than they already were, which had not seemed possible. It seemed like everyone who had passed her was now purposely shoving her, and she even heard some of them whisper, as if they all were talking about her. She knew most people did not care about her, even to gossip, but there were the select few who went out of their way to make her life a living hell. She finally got to the front doors of the school and pushed through them. She looked at her plain Walmart watch: 3:02 pm. She had to hurry back home before she would get into trouble. She could not take another punishment after the last one two days ago. She already had to hide major bruises with her hoodie, making her sweat all day long.

She took the familiar route home: three blocks down on the sidewalk, cross the street and take the path through the woods. She walked up to her house from behind, taking the worn path straight to the back door. Sometimes, especially during summer and fall, Elide had to trim the branches on the path, just for her to keep it from scratching her up.

As quietly as possible, she walked inside, shutting the door behind her and going straight up to her room. Their house was nice. It was not the huge houses most of her schoolmates had lived in, but it was no shack, either. It was two stories, plus a renovated attic, and a basement. It had very modern furnishings and had five bedrooms. She stayed in the attic, of course, while her two sisters each got a bedroom and shared a “fashion room.” Her parents shared a room and an office, and the last bedroom was her brother’s. She and her brother, Tristan, were adopted, the only difference being that they did not have the same biological dad – his biological dad was their adoptive dad’s brother, meaning he was her brother’s biological uncle – and the only reason she had been adopted, too, was because of the law keeping her and her brother from being separated. She was constantly reminded of this as if she didn’t already know it, every day of her life.

Her mom had married her brother’s dad, and so they only shared a biological mom. Their parents had a date night on the first Friday of every month, and since she had turned ten, she had always been the babysitter. One date night, right after Elide had turned twelve, her parents were late coming home. She still remembers laying on the couch, her brother, who was five at the time, was asleep next to her, and she could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. It had been two hours since their parents said they would be home, making it midnight, and they hadn’t called once. Elide got up and grabbed their house phone, dialing her mom’s cell phone number. She waited and waited as it rang, but the voicemail picked up. She tried her dad’s phone next, but got the voicemail for him, too. She remembers the sinking feeling in her gut as she woke her brother up and ran next door with him. The neighbors called the police after another two hours had gone by with no answers. The next day, around lunch, a cop came back to the neighbor’s house. Their parents had gotten into a car wreck near Seneca. Neither of them survived. They had driven off the old bridge. No one even knows why they had been in the neighboring town, where it was all wilderness, old tribes, and lonely houses. All Elide knew was they were never coming home, and that the only home she had left was wherever her brother was.

Elide went up both flights of stairs, shutting her door behind her once she reached her room. She threw her backpack onto her bed and changed out of the ugly uniform she had to wear to school, putting on something much more comfortable: running shorts and a tee-shirt. Immediately, she went back downstairs and into the kitchen, where the cook, Otsana was waiting for her by the sink.

“Hello, sweet Elide. Ready to start?” Otsana asked her, handing her a sponge.

“My favorite part of the day,” Elide replied, genuinely meaning it. She loved cooking and cleaning, and, of course, gossiping with Otsana. She took the sponge and started washing the rest of the dishes, handing them to Otsana to dry. Her adoptive parents made her “earn her keep,” even though she mostly didn’t mind this part of it.

“Lady Claire called today. Seems she is having trouble with her husband again,” Otsana said as she dried the bowl in her hands. She is a middle-aged, Greek woman, and sometimes her accent still came out, even though she lived here, in the States, for most of her life.

“Is it the blonde again?” Elide asked jokingly.

“Nope, this time it’s a red-head.” They continue to gossip, cook, and clean for about two hours before anyone comes home, which is pretty unusual. Usually, Melinda, her adoptive mom, would be at home waiting for her, and her sisters would be home thirty minutes later, having stopped to gossip with their friends before driving home. Elide’s brother, Tristan, usually wasn’t home until six, having had to stay for one sport or another. Currently, the sport was football. Lastly, their dad, Alaric, would be home at seven, and head straight to the office for two more hours, rarely even eating dinner with the family.

“Well, I’m glad to see you two are actually getting something done for once.” Melinda griped, followed in by her two daughters and the maids, whose arms are now full of shopping bags. “Ladies, bring those bags up to the girls’ fashion room and fit their dresses for them. Oh, and clean the room while you’re at it. It’s like a pig-sty up there.” She adds, flicking her hand in dismissal. Melinda walked around the kitchen island and leaned over to smell the food they had cooking.

“This smells horrendous. Did Claire or Emily call back, Otsana?”

At this, Elide tunes out the rest of the conversation. Otsana is the only worker that Melinda keeps. The others, she rotates through like crazy. It’s funny, though, because she always hires these young, gorgeous women, knowing her husband will cheat on her with them. This brings Elide to ponder how Alaric treats Otsana like a mom, even being kind and thankful. She is his soft spot, as she watched him grow up, having worked for his parents before she worked for him. Otsana tells me that he isn’t so bad most of the time, how he just has a dark side. “But, don’t we all?” She always says.

“Elide, did you even hear me? Are you paying any attention to what I am saying at all, child?” Melinda yells, bringing Elide back into the present.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” she says, knowing Melinda hates being referred to as ma’am in fear of seeming her actual age. She’s had enough surgery to where she really shouldn’t care. Melinda does care, though, and steps closer to Elide, so that she is in her face.

“Watch your tone, slave girl, or you will deal with my anger. You don’t want that, do you?” She spits, threatening another punishment on Elide.

Even though rage boils in Elide’s blood, she somehow gets it through her clenched teeth: “No, Miss Melinda.”

Melinda storms out of the room, not even bothering with whatever she was commanding of Elide to begin with. Elide gives Otsana a look to say “see what I deal with? Do you see why I need out?” Otsana returns this with a kind smile and guides Elide out of the room.

“Why don’t you go relax for once while I finish up. I won’t tell, promise.”

Elide can’t help but hug the woman before running off to her room as quietly as possible. She immediately plops on her bed and pulls out the laptop she had bought herself last year after Christmas, and starts on school work for the night. Much quicker than it feels like to her, thirty minutes go by, and her phone starts vibrating like crazy at her side. She smiles when she sees who it is and answers it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, E! What’s up?” Kat basically yells into the phone. Kat, or Katerina, is Elide’s one and only friend. After she turned sixteen, Elide was informed by her social worker that at eighteen she would be given her parents’ old cabin out in Seneca. Elide didn’t even know the cabin existed, but immediately was ecstatic. The only people who knew it existed were her, Kat, and Otsana. Every time her adoptive parents and all of her siblings left on some trip or other, Otsana gave her food for the weekend and the keys to her old Jeep and sent her on her way out there. Kat always met her there and helped her get it cleaned and fixed up.

Elide had met Katerina whenever her social worker had driven her to the property on the day of her sixteenth birthday. When they drove up, Kat had been sitting on the edge of the front porch, waiting to show them around. Kat’s parents had been somewhat looking after the place since Elide’s parents died, mainly just making sure no one broke in.

“So, when you said it was a cabin, you didn’t mean a cabin at all,” Elide had muttered to herself. The “cabin” turned out to be a two-story, house with big, modern windows looking out into the woods surrounding it. The house wasn’t in terrible shape, but it needed some help, for sure. Kat showed them around, and the girls ended up being able to stay the night together. Elide and Kat quickly bonded and had been best friends since.

“How is Queen Bee?” Kat asks sarcastically.

“As cruel as always. Did you expect any different?” I ask, laughing a little at how much this situation sucks.

“Not really,” she says, going silent for a few seconds, and then adding, “So, does it still piss you off how they treat you? Like, does it make you so so mad you could really lose it?” The way Kat says this seems like she is being cautious about something, and it slightly puts Elide on edge. Her arms and legs begin to feel weird and tingly.

“I mean, yeah. It will always piss me off. They treat me like a slave; hell, Melinda calls me her slave girl. They hide me away, make me ‘earn my keep,’ and punish me for no damn reason by beating me just to fill their own sick needs…” Elide has to stop and breathe deeply, feeling the angriest she ever has. Her arms and legs are still tingling, and now her teeth feel tingly, too. Everything around her seemed to go red for a few seconds, even.

“Elide? Are you okay?” Kat asks, sounding a little panicky. Elide takes a giant breath and lets it out slowly before answering.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just got worked up. Listen, Kat, I need to get back downstairs and help Otsana set the table and all that.” It isn’t a total lie, but Elide doesn’t want Kat to worry after her.

“Okay, girl. Call me if you need anything! I love ya!” Kat says, still not sounding like her usual self. Elide has this bad feeling about it, but doesn’t say anything about it.

“I love you.”