Paragon ✓

II. Things Fall Apart

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. – Khalil Gibran

She chased after amethyst lights. Despite her frantic advance, the paired, round lights receded. Everything around her was winter-white, severe and soft, oppressively brilliant. There were sounds, gasps that felt urgent, distressed. None of it stirred her focus from the lights. The deep purple flames melted the white around her and silenced the noises. If she could only reach them, she knew there was safety, there was peace. She was closing in, and she reached her hand out to touch them.

Suddenly, her arm was ripped away, and her whole body followed it, and though she tried, she could no longer see the light, only blinding white. She heard a cry, and knew it was her own.

Katia clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. It had been ten years since she'd dreamt the dream that had haunted her childhood. Every night, her father came into her room to wipe away her tears, to soothe the terrible emptiness that remained after the nightmare faded. When Katia was seven, and the dreams made it difficult to stay awake at school, Ninel had given her medication that put her to sleep. The dreams had stopped then, and never come back, even after Ninel stopped the drugs. Not until tonight.

She rubbed the memory from her eyes and rolled out of bed. It was no use dwelling on dreams. She locked herself into the bathroom before Irina woke up.

After showering and dressing quickly, she headed down to the most important sequence of the morning: breakfast. She took the stairs three at a time, the last echoes of her nightmare muffled by the grumbling in her stomach. In the kitchen, Katia made three turkey sandwiches for her lunch and one for Irina, and then spread cream cheese over a bagel for her sister's breakfast. She scowled as she stared at the pantry. They were out of Honey Nut Cheerios. She poured half a box of Cocoa Puffs into a large salad bowl, filled it with a litre of milk, and turned on the television.

The television was always switched to the news channel in the Yazykova house. As the cereal turned her white milk a sweetened brown, the television anchor reported a story about an incident in Iraq involving a private military company two weeks before. Seven insurgents had been killed. Katia slurped her milk disdainfully as she watched the US Secretary of State explain exactly why the deaths of seven men somehow accounted for the deaths of twenty civilians.

Irina stomped down the stairs, buds in her ears streaming awful music loudly.

"Did you finish all the Cheerios?" Katia accused, turning off the television.

"I don't even eat cereal. You probably finished it." Irina answered. As she followed Katia out the door, she muttered, "Always so pleasant until someone messes with your food."

Katia tossed the keys in the air, and slid into the driver's seat. She flashed her sister a wicked grin. "I toyed with the engine yesterday."

Irina fastened her seatbelt, and gripped the passenger door. "How fast?"

"Let's try for two-hundred."

"In a Jetta?" Irina crossed herself backwards. "Angels save me."

Katia laughed and hit the accelerator.

They pulled into the school parking lot; after Irina had recovered some colour they said quick good-byes, heading to their respective classes at opposite ends of the school. Irina had taken a year longer to complete her courses, so they would both be graduating that year. However, the sisters hadn't taken a class together in two years.

Katia preferred to slip from class to class, walking so far to the edge of the halls that she could run her fingers along the locker doors, head down, hair draped in front of her face, doing her best to disappear. Her locker was easily recognizable by the word psycho burned onto the door. When they'd done it, the principal had pulled her out of class, at a loss for who could have done it. In truth, it could have been any one of them. She crammed her backpack into the locker and headed to her first class.