Chapter 2

What was I supposed to do? I didn't know. My stepbrother's bed, like all the furniture around it, seemed big and comfortable to me, unlike the old, sagging couch at Grandma's house. But it wasn't my bed, not my room, not my home, and after carefully folding my clothes and setting them on a chair, I curled up on the edge, afraid to wrinkle the fresh sheets. Wearing Galina Yuryevna's son's clean T-shirt, I felt like an uninvited, unwelcome guest. And yet my tights were drying on the radiator, while my warm cardigan and dress hung over the chair… My stepmother had been right: the hot bath warmed me, and despite my misgivings, I eventually fell asleep with only a corner of the blanket pulled over me.

That night I dreamed of gray eyes glaring fiercely at me from beneath dark, ragged bangs, and by morning I had fallen ill after all, so we had to call the doctor again.

I spent the next two days confined to bed, resting and taking my medicine. My stepmother checked on me; my father came by twice. I slept almost all the time, yet I could still hear my stepbrother and his friends' voices drifting in from the next room. Whenever loud, hoarse laughter came through the wall dividing our bedrooms, all I could do was assume it was directed at me and curl even tighter beneath the blankets. Or I'd wrap myself in Grandma's cardigan, climb into the armchair by the window, tuck my bare feet beneath me, and stare—stare—at the first snow of December, dusting the yard and the long street with a delicate powder. I'd study the windows lighting up in the evening gloom and imagine the people behind the curtains of those beautiful villas and castles, each fenced off from the others by tall wrought-iron gates.

From my father I learned that the settlement where his family lived was called Cherekhino, and I took pleasure in rolling the funny, musical name over and over on my tongue, because it sounded like my own sneeze. I looked out at the tall strip of pine forest in the distance. I looked at the blue spruces and firs, the slender, very young arborvitae, all neatly planted in decorative patterns in the yards around my stepmother's house and the neighbors' homes, and imagined how beautiful it must be here at Christmas! Nothing like our drab little factory town, with its five-story Khrushchev-era apartment blocks, two-story wooden houses, and bland, nondescript postwar Stalin-era apartment blocks.

There was no TV in my stepbrother's room, and I didn't know how to turn on the computer; the phone my father had given me was only good for calling Grandma… On the second day, I worked up the courage to open my brother's bookcase, where new books stood in handsome rows, still smelling of printer's ink. First I took Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Lost World” to bed, then Anne Rice's Gothic novel “Interview with the Vampire,” which I hadn't expected to find on the shelf.

But the weekend passed, my fever finally broke, and the next morning Galina Yuryevna allowed me to come downstairs, provided I'd had a quiet night. That morning, I knew my father and stepmother would leave for work, and I clearly heard them say that my stepbrother Stas, who was staying home to look after me, would see to breakfast. Even so, I went to sleep afraid, wishing the next day would never come.

My fear came to find me on its own. When I woke and turned my head, he was sitting on my bed (his bed, if I was being honest), one knee bent, his shoulders braced against the wall, watching me with a cold, unblinking gaze as he idly played with a keychain in his long fingers.

Seeing Stas's gray, angry eyes so close, I bolted upright and scrambled backward, yanking the blanket toward me.

“Not so fast, little sis!” My stepbrother easily caught my wrist in his strong hand before I could tumble onto the floor. “Where do you think you're going?” he grated through clenched teeth, his mouth tightening into a thin line. Drawing me closer, he promised, “You can't hide from me now just because you've got Mom wrapped around your finger. I'm not some softhearted stepmother who's going to fall for your tears.”

We were alone in the house, and I was scared, so I asked him to let me go.

“Dream on!” The dark, ragged bangs of his still-damp hair fell across his forehead, and he slowly brushed them back, giving me a chance to look at his face.

The night before, I'd read Louis's story until midnight, becoming wholly absorbed in the dark events of the young planter's life. Now, in the silence of my stepmother's house, her son looming over me seemed almost like that very hero from Anne Rice's novel—a handsome, merciless young man who had stepped straight off the pages of a book.

Stas Frolov was handsome and spoiled. And clever. His mother hadn't warned me for nothing. His self-confidence and quiet certainty that he could get away with anything were easy to read in my stepbrother's eyes and the cynical twist of his lips, and he gave me plenty of time to take him in.

“Okay, enough! I'm not a Picasso for you to stare at! And this isn't the Louvre, so stop gawking. Stop pretending you're some damn poor little lamb! Where did you even come from, anyway, you so-called relative?”

I didn't know what to say or what he wanted from me, so I obediently told him the name of my town, giving my brother an unexpected reason to laugh.

“No way?! Skeleton, seriously?! And I was hoping I'd been mistaken. I look at Pop, and I can't see a single thing you have in common with him! Nothing! And you came here, wormed your way into a family that wasn't yours, and fooled your folks in no time with a fake illness… What's your next move, little orphan? What, are you going to worm your way into your stepmother's good graces and kick me out of my own house?”

That wasn't true, and I shook my head frantically, clenching my hands into fists so I wouldn't cry.

“No.”

“Yes!” His angry fingers tightened around the fabric at my throat. “You already have! You climbed into my bed, put on my clothes! What, are you afraid to soil someone else's bed with your own rags? That doesn't make you any cleaner, so don't kid yourself! And don't put on that pretty little face for me; I'm not my mother! You won't squeeze a single tear out of me! I don't want to see you in my things again! Got it? As if I needed some random person wearing my clothes…”

It was unbelievable. I hadn't done anything wrong to him, and I couldn't understand such a reaction.

“You'll wash it until it's spotless. Now take it off! Take it off, I said!”

I doubted my stepbrother actually wanted to look at me then—not when I was a scrawny, sick girl. I think what mattered far more to him was the need to take back control of his life. Of the familiar order of things that had carried him from one day to the next. To get back his room, his clothes, his mother's attention… everything that had rightfully belonged to him until I appeared in his life—the hated stepsister who had tricked her way onto his territory. And I suddenly understood that if I wanted to survive on his territory, I would have to learn to protect myself.