Chapter 1: The Fate of the Sisters

Chapter 11

Kassandra2

I could smell summer in the air. It seeped into my skin, my nose, my eyes—bright flames of warmth slowly spread into chest.3

Finally, school was over.4

I heard my name and accepted my diploma, smile plastered on my face. Cameras flashed in the distant bleachers, two voices raised above the others: “Go, Kassie!”5

I waved back, knowing it was my mother and sister, and descended back down into the crowd.6

The rest of high school graduation was a blur. Every other student in Whitmore High that surrounded me appeared as faceless, mindless beings with their uniforms of blue robes and caps. Most of the girls cried, the men hollered and cursed. Party announcements flit from one mouth to the next, of raging keggers and parents gone on trips.7

I sat in my chair, oblivious to the rest of my peers, because I could almost see the miles forming between them and myself. I was not like them; I never was.8

And I didn’t have to pretend anymore.9

My mother was a woman of beauty and wisdom. Like all children, I treasured that image, even when the flaws slapped me in the face.10

“Your sister is right,” she said, and I grunted. Serena Katz stared off in the distance as she drove, while her lime-green eyes flickered to me while she spoke. “You should go.”11

“See, Kay? I told you. Only losers stay home on their grad night,” my sister goaded from the back seat. 12

I turned from my front seat and faced her. Although she was a year younger than me, Lorraine’s face was powdered enough to resemble a mummy decades older. Her eyes sparkled with mirth within their black-lined sockets.13

“Only whores go out and party every night,” I snapped back.14

“Kassandra!” Serena shouted. “There is nothing wrong with going out and having fun, especially tonight. Tonight you should do something you’ll remember, something you haven’t done before.”15

I rolled my eyes. Little did my mother know, I had already planned to go to the party my sister told her about. The few friends I had were throwing it, but I wasn’t going to give them the ego boost.16

“I’m going to go to the movies,” I said instead. 17

We arrived at our house shortly after. A small single story a miles walk from the beach, it resembled a brick rather than a home, all ninety-degree angles and crisp lines. 18

My family separated from the front door, as we usually do. My mother went off to the study, where hundreds of books waited to be translated; Lorraine ran off to her room, where loud screaming music pounded against the wall within minutes; I was left by myself in the foyer, my graduation robe still slung over my arm.19

I decided to follow my mom. The door was shut, so I rapped my knuckles against the door before barging in.20

Serena’s long red hair was pulled back into a bun, her steady fingers already turning through the pages of some four-hundred year old book. Hearing me, she looks up, and I saw something flash in her eyes that surprised me—anger.21

“What is it?” she demanded. It didn’t feel like a question.22

I swallowed the lump in the throat, hating that my eyes suddenly started itching. Don’t cry, I tell myself. 23

“I thought you might want to save this for Raine,” I said, showing her the robe.24

There was silence as Serena raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me, her mind still elsewhere. The tension visibly drained from her face after a few moments. She closed the book in front of her, pushed it aside, and sat back in her chair. The archeologist was gone, momentarily; here was my mother.25

“That’s sweet of you,” she said, taking the robe. She held onto it, running her fingers across the shining fake satin. “I won’t let her know.”26

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a small smile creep. Of course my mother knew when her daughters weren’t on good term. I cleared my throat, dismissing the moment, and turned my attention to the book in front of her. Her usual assignments were brown leather bound texts, the pages yellow from age and bulging out from the covers. This new project was different.27

Instead of brown plain leather, it seemed to be made out of scaled skin—a grey color with speckles of green and black, like a python snake. There was an actual title printed on the cover in a russet color, but I couldn’t read the foreign language of course. The pages sat neatly within the bindings, white and glowing in the dim light of the study.28

“What is that?” I asked, jumping into the chair across from her. 29

She saw what caught my attention and smiled the most dazzling smile I’ve ever seen from her. It wasn’t just the fact that she was my mother that made Serena so beautiful—she just was. I’ve dealt with it all my life, the disappointment of my peers that such an amazingly titan-colored woman would produce such a plain child.30

“Whitmore University just discovered this last week,” she told me. The green of her eyes changed to a tiger-yellow whenever she spoke of her work, the passion which made her thrive. “They finally excavated that old church on the beach.”31

“How old is it?” I guessed it was about a century old, maximum, judging by the page conditions.32

Serena’s slim shoulders leaned forward until less than a foot separated us. I could see every smooth pore on her face, the creaseless eyes and the polished lips that created her face. “Three-thousand years old.”33

I am speechless. 34

“We received the data results yesterday,” she continued on. “That was their approximation. But I know exactly how old it is.”35

“How?” My voice is weak, almost a whisper, and I am embarrassed by it.36

Serena opened the cover and turned the book around to face me. It looked like a cover page, a title in bold and something small in the right corner. “That’s a date,” she continued. “They must have missed it during the initial tests, but I found it last night.”37

“What does it say?” I put my face closer, hoping that the strange lines would form something familiar.38

From the corner of my eye I could see Serena look away from me. She licked her lips and then forced a smile, less bright than the one before. “In nine days, it will be precisely three-thousand years old.”39

My mind went blank as I did the math. Today was the fourteenth of June, graduation day. “The twenty-third?”40

“I know,” my mother said, and her eyes couldn’t meet mine. “Can you believe the coincidence?”41

Something about her tone made me sit straighter in my chair, lean back farther away from the table, and look at my mother in suspicion rather than in awe.42

For some reason, the term “coincidence” didn’t sit right with me—after all, both my sister and I were born on the twenty-third of June. 43

“Do you mind?” she asked, reaching for the book again. “I’m really focused right now.”44

Her head was already bent again by the time I stood up from my chair. Even if I did want to respond, she wouldn’t have heard me. She was somewhere else, thousands of leagues away even though she sat less than a yard from me. Silently, I left, while my thoughts raged like a storm.45

Coincidence? Yeah, right. I didn’t need to be psychic to know that what my mother just told me was a lie.46