“Adria,” said Zia standing right next to me, “you’ve met Isaac.”

I raised my head quickly half-way and then carefully the rest. She was supposed to take me straight to her room....

I wished I hadn’t looked. I didn’t like what I saw. Isaac sat on the center of a giant leather couch with girls on both sides of him and one lying across the back, behind him. There was another girl sitting on the floor between his legs. These particular girls couldn’t have been his sisters. No way. Sisters, at least in my world, don’t sit so closely to their brothers. They don’t lay their heads on their brother’s lap and stroke his hair, as two were doing to Isaac. Worst of all, a sister in my world would never lick her brother’s earlobe. She eyed me from across the room with such a threatening glare and Isaac gently, yet bitterly pushed her away from him.

I admit I was repulsed by the whole display, hoping I didn’t just walk into some freak cult where everyone in the family engaged in incestuous acts and were trying to recruit me as part of their harem. But my fears were put to ease when I realized that the girl sitting on the floor between Isaac’s legs was a skinny Korean girl and the one stroking his hair had to be Indian, like from India.

Okay, so incest was out—huge relief there, but the other obvious worries weren’t going to be so easy to relieve. As I stood there feeling unwelcome by all and slighted by a guy that had no idea he was slighting me, I thought this was a good thing, Isaac being a total man-slut. Although I was disappointed, he fixed that minor infatuation problem of mine for me, and I barely had to lift a mental finger.

“Why did you bring her here, Zia?” Isaac pushed the girls away from him and stood.

He walked toward us.

What an ass, I thought. I was secretly thanking him at the same time, for making it so easy for me to dislike him. It was always more convenient to find reasons to be turned off by guys, than it was to give in to the attraction. Alex had always been right about that, I would just never let her know it.

“Isaac, stop it,” demanded Zia. “You worry too much.”

She lowered her voice to him. “Better watch Rachel though. She don’t look too good.”

It became obvious which was Rachel and why Zia seemed worried as the raven-haired girl sat with her fists clenched and a very tight jawline. Surely she wasn’t looking at me like that; I hadn’t done or said anything to cause it. I was being paranoid again.

Isaac never looked me in the eyes. His passed right over me as he turned and walked back toward the couch.

Zia stayed close to my side.

“He’ll get over it,” she said. “Come on, my room’s this way.”

The lighting in this place reminded me of our den at home where only one lamp and the glow of the TV put off a dim light amid the surrounding darkness. It seemed Zia’s whole house was as dark.

We walked up the creaking stairs and passed a few bedrooms on the second floor, which were empty except for odd pieces of miss-matched furniture and unpacked boxes piled against the walls. I wondered just how long ago it was Zia and the Mayfair’s moved to Hallowell. I remembered Julia mentioned Zia had only started school a week before I did.

Zia’s room was at the end of the hall, full of the usual stuff and actually looked like a room that had been lived in.

“I know you’re probably wondering about the boxes,” said Zia.

She walked over to a mound of clothes and tossed them on the floor, revealing a chair underneath.

“I guess so,” I said, taking the seat and pushing aside a thermal shirt and a stray sock she left behind.

“We moved here around the time you did,” she said. “Got lucky to find this place—gotta love the seclusion.”

A large dresser with a cracked mirror stood directly across from me. In its reflection, I noticed posters on the wall behind me of bands I had never heard of before. Zia liked her punk and metal. A string of multi-colored Christmas tree lights hung sloppily from flat, silver and gold thumbtacks pressed into the wall.

“Where did you move from?”

She hesitated. “South Carolina.”

“All of you...I mean all of them moved here?”

Zia shook her head. “Oh no, just me and my brothers and the Mayfair’s. The others just hang out here, so to speak.”

Zia plopped down amid a fluffy black and red bedspread.

“Ummm, how many of them are Mayfair’s exactly?”

She looked up in thought for a moment, as if counting in her head. It seemed she started to answer at one point, but then had to recalculate. She used an invisible chalkboard in front of her.

“Including Isaac,” she said, “eight...no nine! I forgot about Daisy, Xavier’s twin sister. She’s usually up in her room and not down there with the drama.”

I looked at her questioningly.

“Isaac isn’t the only one that attracts a lot of girls,” she began. “His brothers, Nathan, Seth and Xavier, are chick magnets too.” She faked gagging herself with her index finger. “Shannon, Phoebe, Elizabeth and Camilla are the sisters.”

“Including Daisy?”

This was all so much to take in at once.

Zia nodded.

“I get along pretty good with Daisy,” Zia went on, “probably because she and I are a lot alike. Now Shannon, she’s a real bitch. Phoebe is like her little sidekick, but she can be sweet when Shannon’s not around—totally impressionable. Camilla’s a slut and Elizabeth is just Elizabeth.”

I felt like I should be taking notes or something.

“Large family,” I said.

“You could say that,” Zia replied with a faint grin.

“And what about you?” I relaxed my back into the engulfing chair, making myself comfortable. “Why do you and your brothers live with the Mayfair’s?”

Zia hesitated once more. I noticed these hesitations because they were more obvious than normal. I just couldn’t tell whether she was hiding something, or if she was just the type that always thought about her answers before telling them.

“Our parents were killed,” she said with a sort of misplaced pause, “in a fire a few years ago. Isaac and my brothers had been good friends and we didn’t have any other family except back in Michigan—dad’s second cousin, I think. He was a train wreck. No big deal though; we wouldn’t want to live with any other family anyway. Trajan is...well he takes care of us.”

“Trajan?” I said. “Is he Isaac’s dad?” I realized right away how often I said Isaac’s name. I could have just said Mr. Mayfair, but I didn’t.

“Yeah,” she revealed. “They’re all half brothers and sisters; three different mothers, but let’s not get into that. If Isaac knew I was telling you this stuff, he’d kill me.”

I scoffed quietly. “I believe you,” I said, “why is he such—“

“A jerk?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be fooled by the exterior, Adria. Isaac isn’t that bad. He’s just got a lot on his plate is all.”

“Yeah, I could see that downstairs,” I grumbled under my breath.

Zia smiled. “Oh, the girls.” Then she laughed a little. “More exterior. Isaac wouldn’t give any of them the time of day.”

Was she serious? I know what I saw. He might not have been returning their ‘affections’, but he looked cozy.

“They’re not his type,” said Zia, intruding upon my thoughts it seemed. “He just...well, he has a hard time getting rid of them.”

There was another one of those hesitations again.

I stopped myself before asking any more questions about Isaac. Oh, I wanted to ask more, definitely, but this was getting ridiculous. It amazed and annoyed me how just seconds ago I had been ‘over him’. It was like some evil twin lived inside my head and decided it was her turn to make all the wishy-washy decisions.

“So, about your sister,” Zia said.

“Yeah, about Alex.”

Zia crossed her legs upon the bed. A gust of wind rattled the window and outside I could hear wind chimes ringing erratically. 8:02p.m. glowed red on the bedside clock. A pyramid of empty soda cans stood next to the clock; the top can had an incense stick poking out of it. I could still smell the incense lingering in the room from the last time it had burned. A stack of CD’s lay strewn on the floor next to one wall, a pile of paperback books next to another. Forgotten Realms mostly. Zia was not a very organized person.

She looked across at me, her gaze severe, yet at the same time, gentle.

“The Vargas family,” she began, “they’re like a cult.”

Oh great, so my whole freak cult theory couldn’t be thrown out entirely.

“And looks like Alex is their newest recruit,” she went on. “They won’t hurt her though. They’re pretty protective of their family, if you want to call her that.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Well, my point is that you and your aunt and uncle can go to bed at night knowing that Alex will be alright with them protecting her, but...”

“I was waiting for the ‘but’,” I interrupted.

“But if you or anyone else tries to force her back home, or goes onto their grounds, I can’t promise that you won’t be hurt, maybe even killed.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I knew this was bad; I knew my sister was wrapped up with the worst crowd ever, but I never expected to hear something so harsh.

“And I know you might think you should call the police,” she added, “but don’t. That’ll only make things worse.”

I stood up then and began to pace.

“I don’t get it. I don’t even understand what you’re telling me. What kind of cult? What do they do? Is it some religious thing, or what?”

“Definitely not religious.”

“Well then what? And why would they kill me? Wait—how do you know that?” I stopped in front of the door and stared across at her. I know I must have looked desperate because I was.

Zia stared straight at me. “Look, just don’t go after her. Let her do what she wants; let her figure out what she’s doing on her own time.” She hesitated again and looked away from me. “She needs them for about a week more. After that, when her head is clear, we’ll all be able to tell what side she’s on and so will she.”

I was completely baffled by her comments.

“Are you insane? What do you mean she needs them? I—”

“Please, just trust me on this.”

“So then what do I do?”

I went back to the chair. Any other time and I would already be out the door and dragging Alex back home, but something about Zia’s sincerity was frightening. This wasn’t like a teenager running away from home to live with her boyfriend or anything. This was a hundred times worse. I could feel it in my bones.

6

I SAT HEAVILY INTO the chair, my body stiff, my hands pressed firmly between my knees. I realized that the colorful specks swirling in my line of vision were from staring at a mosaic lamp too intensely.