Chapter 3

POV Stas

She wasn't ugly—I lied. And she wasn't a skeleton, either. She was very skinny, like a reed, and unusually meek. Quiet and distrustful, she trembled at the sound of her own name throughout that first evening in the house, like a rabbit.

When Pop admitted to Mom that he had a daughter, I thought I'd misheard him. When he guiltily said he had to look after her for a while, I came close to shouting “No!” in both their faces and pounding my fists until they bled from disappointment. When Mom stunned me by agreeing to bring her into our home, I smashed the mirror in my room and hated the girl with all my heart, already knowing I'd never accept her. A stranger. An outsider. Someone who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. Out of the past—from nowhere—to destroy with her presence everything I'd dreamed of for so long.

Why now? Today, right now—why?! When had I finally gotten a family? Not a broken fragment, but a real family, like everyone else? When had I gotten a home of my own, my own world, and someone who brought Mom back into it? With him, strangers disappeared from my life, and I felt free to look my friends straight in the eye. When had I almost convinced myself I'd forgotten who I was and what I'd been born into? Why?

A single mother. An orphan with a child. Fatherless herself, with another fatherless child in her arms. No aunt, sister, or brother. A hand-pie vendor determined to make it on her own, even at the cost of her chance at romantic happiness. As a child, I constantly heard my nannies—usually women from the market my mother had hired—pitying me. They indulged my whims, calling me a child born out of wedlock. A boy deprived of male attention, destined to have a hard time in life. A boy who might never build a family of his own. Because without a father, there was no one to set an example.

For a long time, I couldn't understand why—until I grew old enough to ask my mother myself and get an honest answer.

No father. And, practically speaking, I'd never had one. Because he hadn't wanted me. Hadn't loved me. Period.

That was Mom all over; she never knew how to dodge the truth. Even when I saw my friends and their parents looking happy and heard their latest stories—“Me and Dad…”—she always answered, “Don't be jealous, Staska. At least you have me. You'll have everything, son. Even better than your friends, you'll see!”

But I was skeptical until Matveyev came into my mother's life. A quiet, unremarkable midlevel accountant who also worked as a driver—and soon became her husband. Not a spendthrift, not a drunk, not a cheapskate. Just an ordinary guy, with no family of his own and no dark past trailing behind him.

I don't understand why other teenagers hate their stepfathers. Matveyev never came between me and my mother, and he was always friendly with me. I accepted him the first time he held out his hand and agreed to go to a soccer game with me; a few days later, he even went to a parent-teacher meeting at school in place of the perpetually busy director and talked with the other fathers. He never said no when I asked for something, and he gave me the male support I'd lacked for so long. I grew increasingly possessive of his time.

Yes, he wasn't my father, but he wasn't a stranger either. To Stas Frolov, he was Pop, and he seemed not to mind. No, definitely, I was perfectly happy with my stepfather. I was—until she suddenly appeared in his life, in ours: his daughter from his first marriage, a girl named Nastia.

She didn't look like her father. Not one bit. Except maybe for her quiet nature. Barely even a girl, scrawny and unwanted, dressed in a ridiculous coat and an old-fashioned knitted hat. I didn't want to see her, but Mom made me come downstairs. And even take the lousy coat off the stranger—the boss was a master at giving orders—and her hat. I tore it off the girl's head myself, expecting to find mouse-brown hair as thin and faded as she was, but it spilled over her shoulders in a beautiful, silky wave. Then I saw her eyes—deep, clear blue, ringed by long dark lashes like a storybook elf's—and realized I'd lose. If I forgot who she was, I'd lose the battle for my family right now. Because those eyes could break through any wall of hatred and worm their way into a person's soul.

Sneaky little thief.

She didn't keep me waiting, and that same evening she took over my room. She settled into someone else's bedroom for the long haul, making fools of everyone with the oldest cheap trick in the book—tears and a fake illness. And so what if the doctor had said so? I wasn't going to believe her. Or forgive her.

I could hardly wait until I was alone in the house with my poor relative, and I promised Mom I'd be a good little boy. And, of course, tell and show my precious, sick little stepsister everything. So sweet and modest. Yeah, right!

 I walked into my room without bothering to hide, as soon as the gate closed behind my parents' car, but she didn't hear me. She didn't startle when I sat down on the bed or pull the covers over her head; she just kept sleeping. She didn't seem to be faking it, and I sat at the foot of the bed for fifteen minutes, studying the sleeping girl, her face now free of the protective mask of confusion and fear. I no longer knew what I wanted. What I'd been waiting for all this time.

But I hated her, didn't I? Hated her with all my heart. All these days? The girl who, like an eraser, had rubbed me out in my mother's eyes, and who now slept peacefully in my bed, her dark-blond hair spread across the pillow, her soft, childishly plump lips slightly parted.

She was wearing my T-shirt with the logo of a famous basketball team—old, but beloved. I recognized it instantly, but for some reason my heart started pounding faster—not because of the fresh resentment heating my blood, but because of the small swell of her breasts, the thin fabric pulling slightly with each breath…

Damn little brat! Crafty, slippery little sneak! She'd figured out exactly how to get under my skin! First Pop, then Mom, my room, and now my personal things. What would your next move be, huh? My heart?

I suddenly wanted to hit her just to shut the voice inside me up, but she opened her eyes.