Mortal Enemies

Lana has an awful nightmare that alarms her therapist and is assigned an art project with a boy named Vega.

Russian Chapter Gloassary
Dochka is an affectionate term for 'daughter' in Russian. Babushka is the Russian word for 'grandmother'. Matryoshka dolls are the ones that you can put inside one another.

Things were certainly not as they should be, even though, at first glance, they definitely seemed to be. Svetlana was in her mother's home. She knew it was the right place because she could see all the Matryoshka dolls sitting on the mantlepiece and there were the blue antique sugar bowls on the parlor table angled the same way her mother always set them. The violet curtains with the vine-like patterns were pulled over the window as her mother always made sure to do in the evenings. She could even smell the black cherry tea her mother always made before she went to bed.

But Svetlana wasn't standing in the parlor with the Matryoshka dolls, violet curtains, and the sugar bowls. She was above the parlor, in the ceiling, looking down at it in its after hour. That was not how certain things should be due to gravity, which led Svetlana to believe that she was dreaming quite lucidly. She didn't remember dreams often, but she knew that none of them had ever felt so very life-like. She could never smell things in a dream before, and she had never felt the cool breeze in her hair. It was all very surreal, floating high above the still, empty salon of her mother's classic Manhattan apartment.

However, things did not stay quiet for long. First, glass shattered and then fell to the ground. The sound was magnified to the equivalent of a lion's feral roar compared to the deafening silence that had dominated just moments before. Next, a tapping noise could be heard in the same direction as the shattering glass. It was a soft noise, but the first disruption was like a sharp needle to a bubble full of sonic waves; it unleashed and heightened all other small sounds to a new level of ferocity. But Svetlana knew exactly where those sounds were coming from, and she had a very good theory about what was making them as well. But for the life of her she could not move. She was fixated above the salon, forced to keep speculating and theorizing about what was actually going on.

Thankfully, it did not take too long for whatever was causing such a ruckus in the wee hours of the night to reveal itself. Svetlana had previously imagined it to be a burglar, breaking into the home through the backdoor with the glass window incorporated into it, which was terrible in its own right, but the truth of the matter was even worse. It was a hideous creature made purely of tree branches and leaves except for two great red eyes. It stood too tall for the one level apartment and so it had to stoop against the ceiling, scraping its thorny mass across the Ralph Lauren paint. Also, its tremendous stature put the thing far too close to Svetlana's eyes. As it shuffled through the salon, spreading dirt and debris and crashing through the glass coffee table and the poor sugar bowls and designer furniture, it looked up into Svetlana's eyes. She felt cold all the way through and out of her nervous system from its fiery gaze. If she had not already been paralyzed she knew that the sight of that cold red stare from the monster would have solidified her in the night sky just like a constellation.

Svetlana did not understand the tree monster's purpose for destroying her mother's parlor or its need to exist at all within her subconscious, but she knew that it was for anything but positive actions. The way it appeared proved her of that. It's thick dark branches weaved in and out around each other like snakes to form a big, horrid mass of sin. The way its hands and fingers were created from the most jagged and sharp looking tree limbs made it seem menacing and dangerous and the fact that it had leaves poking out of the torso so randomly only made him seem more unorganized and more unsympathetic than the way he destroyed the place. She could understand how that would be unavoidable with his size if he was coming to deliver some important news, but at least he might have been able to make himself seem more approachable and friendly if he truly was not a dangerous creature. And Svetlana would bet all the kush in the world that he was one of the most hazardous beings to ever be created within one's subconscious.

Turning away from Svetlana's invisible eyes, the monster continued his way through the salon, trashing it to rubble in his wake. With fear overwhelming her heart, Svetlana watched helplessly in her fixed state while the creature broke down her mother's bedroom door. Mere seconds later a hair-raising shriek sliced through the air and into Svetlana's skin. A loud, authentic roar that sounded like metal screeching against metal blew up from the house. The walls suddenly became transparent for Svetlana to peer into the gory sight of her mother's murder at the hands of the monster.

With the strength of a hundred men, the creature took hold of Odessa Campbell and pulled her apart limb by limb. Blood stained the purple walls as it gushed and sprayed out of Odessa as thick as a vat of crimson paint. Svetlana wished to wake, close her eyes, or run away but she could not. She was insubstantial and disembodied. She was neither eyes nor spirit, she realized, she was the house itself.

And then she was in her bed, still dreaming of course, but seemingly awake for she had shot up, holding her throat that gushed blood, filling up her esophagus and choking her. She lifted up her hands to stop the blood from drowning her, but in her hands was a long, sharp kitchen knife covered in her own blood and her mother's old wedding ring in the other hand. She tried to scream but all that came out was a fountain of blood; her very last breath.

"Holy f*****g s**t," Svetlana screamed, finally freeing herself from her nightmares. She had burst up from her bed like she was emerging from a body of water and leaned over the side of her mattress, coughing and gasping for air. She could still feel the very surreal feeling of drowning in her own blood. Even though she was a hundred and fifty percent sure that was all a dream, she still reached her hand up to feel her throat. It was whole and together, not sliced open like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Svetlana grabbed her cellphone off her nightstand to check the time. Even with the terrifying dream to efficiently wake her, she had still slept through her alarm and was only allotted thirty minuets to prepare for school. As if on cue, her brother burst in the room.

"You didn't even f*****g knock," she said angrily.

"You screamed," he said as an explanation.

"I could have been having sex," she countered.

Leonidas laughed cooly. "The only people who score around here have dicks. Get the hell up before we're late, zadrota."

"I'm not an idiot, you b*****d!" she yelled after him. Svetlana jumped up out of bed and threw her alarm clock at the wall where it smashed to pieces. She wasn't pissed about Leonidas being the usual a*****e, but the fact that she had dreamt about her sorry excuse for a mother. She didn't know what the hell the stupid tree weirdo was about, but she knew that dreaming her mother was murdered by a fictitious creation of her sleeping mind was going to be a big topic of discussion with her therapist.

Ever since her mother had dumped her and her brothers with their estranged father so that she could go "live the single life for a while" Svetlana had been the only one who had to go to therapy to deal with the abandonment. Her father told her that it was because she was the only who had reacted so terribly to the new living situation. In Svetlana's opinion, disappearing for a few weeks on an alcohol-drinking, pot-smoking binge was not a bad reaction to be abandoned like a baby on the fire station's doorstep-and it was during the summer so it wasn't as if she had missed some school for it.

But her father chucked her into the shrink's office still and now she had to go see Dr.Wilson every Monday and Friday to talk about her feelings. It was so annoying and she always left the place feeling pissed and confused. The questions and direction of the conversation Dr.Wilson always pushed her down had too much to deal with the prospect of never ever seeing her mother again. Of course, that would never happen, though. Mothers and daughters didn't just stop seeing each other for no reason. Svetlana was sure her mother was going through some kind of midlife crisis. Soon, she'd be begging for them to come back and then Svetlana could get the f**k out of San Francisco.

The Golden State was often portrayed as a sunny, tropical beach haven full of paradise, Coronas, the stickiest, ickiest weed in the continental USA, and sweltering hot temperatures, but San Francisco wasn't like that at all. The sun was blocked by an almost constant layer of thick fog, the beach was not very tropical and seemed more like La Push in the fall rather than Bora Bora in July. Coronas were present but the sticky icky weed was subpar. She learned quickly that one had to drive six hours through the godforsaken center of California to get to Los Angeles where everything worth being in California resided, including the best of the stinkiest weed. And the temperature was far from sweltering. It was more like freezing. There were some good days in the summer but it was nothing like the hellish summers they got in Manhattan that forced the inhabitants to their summer homes in East Hampton. She constantly had to wear a jacket and long pants with supper cozy boots. Sure, she could exercise her large collection of designer winter wear but she had hoped to be in shorts and tank tops.

To say the least, the Bay Area was not as fantastic as she thought it would be, but it wasn't Hell on Earth. It was like purgatory in Northern California. But eventually her mother would get through her phase and she could go right back to Manhattan where she knew she belonged.

"Lana, seriously, hurry the f**k up! We're taking your car today, remember!" one of her brothers yelled, banging on her door.

Svetlana wrenched the door open furiously. "Chill the f**k out," she growled. "I'll be ready when I'm f*****g ready."

"Dochka," her father's dark Russian voice rumbled from the top of the stairs. "Why are you two fighting already?"

It took a moment for Svetlana to get over the irritation that her father only ever spoke Russian to them. It wasn't that she couldn't understand it because she had lived in Russia for longer than she ever lived in America, but it was just annoying. He claimed he didn't want them to forget their native language or where they came from, but that was complete bullshit because he was half Greek and didn't even know who Plato was. True, his Greek father did abandon him and his Russian mother before he could even walk but still she needed to be angry at him for something. She needed to hate someone for this situation. She couldn't fully hate her mother for having a nervous breakdown, but she could hate her father entirely for leaving her mother for the awful city of San Francisco.

"Papa, it's not me, it's-" she stared closely at the brother in front of her and decided he was Luka so purposely she called him "-Leo. He's being an a*****e."

"You know that I'm Luka, Lana," Luka growled ferociously. One sure-fire way to piss Leonidas and Luka off was to mix them up. They tried extremely hard to look different, and envied the fact that Svetlana was an entirely different gender so she never got confused as one of her brothers.

"Well, sorry, Luka, but you just look so much like your twin brother Leonidas," she grinned evilly.

Luka's eyes dared to pop out of his skull, he was getting so damn angry. "We're triplets, d****t!"

"Dochka, stop it," her father scolded her, reaching the bottom of the stairs. "You guys are family. You shouldn't be fighting with one another."

"Sorry, Papa," the both said, Svetlana laughing and Luka seething.

"But Lana is taking so long and we're going to be late for school," Luka said in his defense.

"I'll take you and Leonidas to school on my way to the hospital," Demetrios Liakos said with ease. "Svetlana, dochka, please, try to make it to school on time, and do not forget to go and see Dr.Wilson today right after swim practice."

Svetlana rolled her eyes and groaned. "I never forget, Papa. Why do you always have to remind me?"

"Maybe you never forget because I always remind you, dochka," Demetrios replied with a wink and big smile.

His contagious fatherly smile coaxed one traitorous smile out of her. Her father opened his arms for her and some

other force of evil pushed her into his warm embrace. He smelled perpetually like cigar smoke and vodka even though he only drank a small glass after work on Saturdays, which were the busiest days at the hospital since he had clinic duty.

"I love you, dochka," he told her sincerely. "Have a good day at school."

"I love you too, Papa." The words practically flew out of her mouth before her angry side could stop them. "'Hope you save a lot of lives today."

"Hopefully," he agreed with a lighthearted smile.

Once her father and brothers were gone, Svetlana jumped into the shower and modeled her wardrobe in her head while she washed her hair so she could cut her time in half. She saved about fifty minutes that way and was out of the house in twenty. She could still make it to her first class of the day early if she did not stop at her locker to take off her jacket. It wasn't an enormous sacrifice to make, but she was a little weirded out by the fact that getting to class on time was such a big deal to her.

Realizing what was going on, Svetlana slammed her fist on the steering wheel and let out a swear. She was following her dad's orders unintentionally once again. It was so hard to defile him on petty things such as punctuality. Disappearing for days on end was the easiest thing to do, but being late to class on purpose was such a juvenile thing for her to get programmed into her brain. She didn't exactly want to be a pest to her father but she felt like she needed someone else to suffer as much as she was. Her brothers did not seem to care too much that their mother threw them away like they were last seasons YSL dresses, but it cut Svetlana extraordinarily deep. And she was so damn angry about it. Her therapist had her write down all her angry thoughts towards her mother in letter but never let her send them. It was supposed to help her let go of her fury, but Svetlana found that vandalizing buildings and cars worked better as well as ticking people off. Basically, getting into a lot of trouble helped ease the anger and hurt she felt for a little awhile. Then, it came back and she had to do it all over again.

But annoyingly her father hardly gave her any kind of grief about her acting out. It actually kind of made her feel guilty when her father was so nice and understanding. He wasn't that way after she disappeared for days, but whenever she did stupid stuff like skip school or miss curfew he just gave her a stupid lecture and a bear hug and all was forgiven. He had always tried to be apart of her life even after him and her mother split up and now that they lived together he was always trying to do things for her like buying her an art studio and plenty of supplies. But Svetlana wasn't ready to be Daddy's Little Girl. She was still waiting for her mother. She was sure within the year her mother would come back to get her and her brothers and things would go back to normal. Things wouldn't be so fucked up and out of order anymore.

*

"It's just so f*****g unfair," Mikaela Hudson groaned during third hour. "You get to live with those two pagan gods of Sexy-kos and I'm stuck with my mom."

Svetlana rolled her eyes and looked over at her brother. Her brothers were carbon copies of each other down to the very last black ringlet. All of them were pretty identical apart from the fact that Svetlana looked so much more feminine and she was about three inches shorter than them. They were all the same shade of buttery brown that her father referred to as "tyanuchki" which was a Russian candy that was simply toffee. When Svetlana was a little girl her father often called her "tyanuchkishkya". It was just an affectionate way to call her a Russian-made toffee candy because of her toffee skin color. It came from her mother's side of the family. Her mother was quite pale but Svetlana's maternal grandfather had been from Ethiopia and somehow his genes skipped Odessa's generation and went straight to the triplets.

"I can't believe you think those two idiots are attractive," Svetlana said to her friend Mikaela. "They look like sideshow freaks."

"They are so damn cute," Mikaela sighed. "I can't tell who is yummier Leo or Luka. Even their names are sexy."

Svetlana could have thrown up all over the floor. "Okay, you need to stop lusting over my brothers in front of me. I have to see them again today."

Mikaela frowned in sadness. "Don't rub it in," she groaned.

"You know who's really incredibly tasty," Svetlana said with a whisper of seduction on her tongue.

Mikaela's big brown eyes lit up with excitement. She was the kind of girl who lived for juicy gossip, rumors, and hot boys. She always wanted to know about everyone's crush and whoever someone hooked up with and whichever boys had came out of puberty looking like they had an extreme Cristiano Ronaldo makeover. It was endearing to Svetlana because in the short space of time that she had grown to know her neighbor, she knew that there was a lot more to Mikaela than her fix for scandalous information.

"Who?" Mikaela asked excitedly. "L.A.X? That whole mysterious loner thing has got to be a turn on, right?"

Svetlana shook her head slowly, a grin tugging at her lips. "I'm talking about Ivory."

"Aspen?" Mikaela asked, clearly feeling dejected and let down. "He's like our brother...that's so disgusting."

"His tattoos are just so damn sexy," Svetlana raved. "And those deep blue eyes are just magical."

At that moment Ivory popped up behind Svetlana as if on cue and they both started laughing at the pale, repulsed face of Mikaela. Realizing they were playing a cruel, disgusting joke on her, she turned scarlet in the face and gave them both the finger. "You sick twisted b******s," she growled lowly so that Mrs.Keaton could not hear her swear. "I hate you both."

"That's what you get for drooling over my idiot brothers in front of me like that," laughed Svetlana.

Ivory took the seat next to Svetlana and gave them both curious looks once their laughter died down. "'You guys going to the party on Friday?"

"Hell yes," they said at once.

"But why are you just now getting to class?" Svetlana asked him. She had just watched him slip in through the open door while Mrs.Keaton was checking an email on her desktop.

"I got high," he said casually but then his face sparked up. "My eyes aren't red? You can't tell that I'm stoned?"

"No," Svetlana said in awe. "How high are you?"

"Super f*****g high," he said with a lazy grin.

Mikaela leaned over on Svetlana's desk, interested. "What did you smoke?"

"It's some kick a*s kush," Aspen told them with a wicked grin. "We'll smoke some after school-Lana's place, right?" His teasing smile let Svetlana know he was just f*****g with her.

"Screw you," she hissed. "You know my papa will lecture me if he knows I'm still smoking weed."

"We'll smoke it in your car, Ivory," Mikaela decided breezily.

The other two nodded with knowing looks just as Luka and Leonidas came over to sit in front of them. Mrs.Keaton was blissfully unaware of all the seat changing while she stood up at the chalkboard with her back facing the classroom. Svetlana even had to check the clock to know what subject she was supposed to be learning.

"What's up, Ivory?" Leonidas asked him as Mikaela had a mini heart attack beside Svetlana. She rolled her eyes at her annoying best friend.

Where have you been?" Luka said next.

Ivory stuck his tongue out and then said eccentrically, "Blazing up, man. You should come get high with us after school."

Svetlana hated the fact that Ivory was her friend and her brothers' friend as well. Luka was more his friend than Leonidas. Ivory was more like Leonidas' friendly drug dealer. Both of them liked to get high like Svetlana and Luka even went to a lot of parties, but Svetlana was the only one who ever disappeared and gave curfew the finger.

"Sure, sounds fun," Luka smiled cordially, his brilliant white teeth sending Mikaela into a bright red look of awe.

Svetlana knew he did that on purpose. "Where at?"

"My garage," Ivory answered immediately. "I'm gonna assume that Red over here will be driving you guys around."

"That's it," Svetlana said angrily. "I'm dying my hair back blue." She was so tired of being called "Red" especially since she was so angry all the time. Every time someone said hi to her in the hall and called her "Red" she wanted to punch a locker. "And my hair is rich auburn in the back and my bangs are chestnut blond thank you very much," she said, quoting the labels on the hair dye boxes she used to dye her hair at the end of ninth grade. She had been hoping for a nice new summer look but it only seemed to backfire on her. She liked being called "Blue" much more than red.

Somehow a sad and chill blue seemed much more favorable than a mad, unstable red.

"Don't listen to him," Mikaela said, smacking Ivory in the back of his head. "Your dye job is really cute."

"F**k that," she hissed.

Ivory laughed. "You're so sensitive, Lana."

"It has come to my attention," Mrs.Keaton called over the now booming chatter, "that some of us have reassigned our seats without permission. Please, correct this problem and get your textbooks out."

Begrudgingly, the boys got up and returned to the preassigned seats. Lucky for them there was only five measly minutes left in class, but they were still given biology homework. Ivory was the most unhappy about it because he couldn't get an extended turn-in date since he had missed most of the lesson. He complained about that all the way to his shared ceramics class with Svetlana. Mikaela and her friend Tessa Stewart had the great honor to stalk after Luka and Leonidas, giggling, on their way to geometry.

Svetlana couldn't help but laugh at the two. She also felt really disgusted. She just could not see how her brothers would appeal to anyone. They were big, tall freaks of nature and hardly had anything appealing going on the face. Luka had a really disgusting piercing through his lip that Mikaela thought was just "so f*****g sexy" and Leonidas had big thick glasses that covered his otherwise, nice eyes. The color was nothing to boast about; they all had very dark brown eyes that only showed a hint of anything nice in the sunlight but they were big and she had been told she had nice eyelashes so they weren't terrible. She figured it'd be a lot worst if she didn't have any eyes at all, so she was grateful for obsidian eyes.

"I swear Keaton seriously has it out for me," Ivory bemoaned tirelessly. "She's prejudice against my outward appearance."

Svetlana would have agreed with Ivory if she could wrap her mind around the fact that Mrs.Keaton, the woman who was an avid member of the Peace Corps, who volunteered at shelters and soup kitchens, and had adopted a poor, starving child from Africa, could be prejudice towards anything other than people with a lot of money who did not give back to those with less. If he had not been talking about Mrs.Keaton she probably would have agreed with him because he did not have a very...sophisticated image.

Ivory had a lot of tattoos. Nobody called him Ivory because of his skin color. If they were to give him a nickname based on that it would be Ink. He had long sleeves of tattoos down his arms. Svetlana's favorite being the big Chinese dragon that breathed blue fire all over his shoulder and parts of his back. She also adored the big swan on his neck with frighteningly blue eyes to match his own. A lot of people though it was pretty pretentious and narcissistic to exaggerate the fact that his eyes were so captivating, but Svetlana knew he did that just to piss people off. Everything Ivory did was to evoke a strong emotion out of people. He loved to make someone feel something. That was part of the reason he was call Ivory.

Ivory was musical prodigy like Mozart or Chopin. The way he played the piano could make the stoniest person shake in fear or the fiercest individual break down into tears. And he was very passionate about his music. One would not think that about him at a glance but he was definitely a serious person when it came to his art. He wasn't an artist like Svetlana, but he was an artist most definitely. And that's why he was called Ivory by everyone who knew how extraordinarily his tattooed fingers stroked the ivory keys of a piano.

"You're just being a little b***h, Ivory," Svetlana told him in all honesty. "You know how to do it so why is it a big deal?"

"Because I've just been stereotyped," he said angrily. "Stereotypes are the bane of my existence."

"You can't avoid stereotypes, Ivory," she said. "Whenever someone sees you they'll think you're a motorcycle-drying hooligan who shoots up heroin and works at a tattoo parlor."

He glared at her as they entered the ceramics classroom. "Let's not even get started on the stereotypes you get stuck with."

Svetlana just laughed.

"Wow, a Russian who actually has a sense of humor," Ivory said in amazement after they took their seats.

"Poshyel k chyertu," she said abrasively.

Ivory grinned at her and got really close to her face. "What does that mean? Is it Russian for 'you make me really horny, Ivory'?"

Svetlana chortled loudly, pushing him away from her with her hand to his face. Ivory was always flirting with her in a really creepy disgusting way just to make her squeamish. Hooking up with Ivory would be like sleeping with a cousin.

"You wish you made me horny," she told him with a slight scowl.

"Not really," he admitted. "I'm going to be celibate for a while. You seem to be handling it pretty well, Virginia," he grinned, wriggling eyebrows at her.

Svetlana's face heated up to blush that she tried to hide. "That would be very hilarious if my name was actually Virginia," she said dryly.

Someone cleared their throat loudly. Svetlana turned to find out who was trying to get her attention and saw her ceramics teacher Ms.Elliot looking annoyed and the other students looking at them with amused faces. Svetlana laughed. Everyone had been listening to their weird conversation. Now, of course, their would be rumors of her and Ivory sleeping together but that wasn't new. There was always a rumor about Ivory f*****g one of his friends that happened to be girls because he was just so invading when it came to personal space, but Svetlana did not mind at all.

"If you and Mr.Greene are finished, Miss Liakos, I would like to start class," Ms.Elliot said irritably. Ms.Elliot was only in her twenties, so she never got mad with chatty students. She only got annoyed like someone's older sibling got when they were being exceptionally immature. She did, however, look like a miniature Mrs.Keaton. She had blonde hair scraped back into a knot all the time, square glasses, and always wore those ugly frilly eyelet lace dresses that looked like Svetlana's babushka's curtains.

"Sorry, Ms.Elliot," they muttered, smiling at one another.

"Okay," Ms.Elliot said on a sigh. "I know we just finished a group project, but I would really like to get these

assessments out of the way, so we're doing another one." The class all smiled at their friends without showing the dismay that Ms.Elliot seemed to feel towards group work. "But before you all start choosing your partners, let me explain what exactly you'll be doing together. This is going to be pretty much a very free assignment but you must have color, an original design, and it must be somewhat useful in everyday life, not just for decoration. So like a bowl or something." Svetlana couldn't help but think of how unoriginal those examples were.

"Oh, good," Ivory said to Svetlana. "Now, we can work together. You can draw me some more tattoos." Most of Ivory's more recent tattoos had been partially Svetlana's work. She did not personally put them on his body but he took her designs his trusted tattoo artist.

Svetlana frowned at him deeply. "No, because you didn't like the last one I drew."

"I did like it-I just wanted it in a different color," Ivory disagreed softly. "I have too much blue on my body. I want some green or red."

She pouted, pulling out her sketchbook and pencils and pens. "But I like blue. It brings out your eyes."

"Liakos, Greene," Ms.Elliot said, hovering over their desk. "I don't think you two should work together. Liakos does most of the work, doesn't she?"

Svetlana was about to deny but Ivory could not resist the urge to be an a*s. He smiled at Ms.Elliot and said, "I provide all the emotional support."

Ms.Elliot narrowed her eyes at him. "That's not how you're going to slide through this group project this time. I'm assigning you two partners. Lana you can go and partner with Leighton, and, Aspen, you and Hector can go work together."

With wide eye of fright, Svetlana shook her head vigorously. "No, Ivory and Hector hate each other. They'll be fighting before the end of class."

"The groups exist as I have created them, Liakos," Ms.Elliot said in a bitchy tone. "Now, move."

"You really don't get it, Ms.Elliot," Leighton Vega piped up. He and his best friend Hector Wilcox sat directly behind them so they had heard the entire exchange and Hector was already seething about it as well as Ivory. "Those two have hated each other for two years straight. They'll kill one another if they're forced to work together."

"Working on this project together ought to ease all that old tension," Ms.Elliot said, sure of herself.

Leighton and Svetlana exchanged worried looks as they switched their seats. Svetlana watched Ivory sit beside Hector and could see his hands tightly wound into big white fists. He angled his chair so he was sitting as far away from Hector as possible. Hector looked as if he was getting ready to jump up and hit either Ms.Elliot or Ivory with his chair.

"So I'm pretty lucky, getting partnered up with you, huh?" Leighton said with a dorky smile.

Svetlana let out a small laugh, trying not to focus too much on the painfully tense conversation going on between

Hector and Ivory. "What?"

"Well, you're the best sculptor in the class," Leighton said as if it was obvious. "And Hector and I are probably the worst, so this is pretty good for me."

Svetlana nodded her head. "So this really bad for me? You're gonna make me do all the work?"

Leighton floundered and put his hands out as if to physically stop her negative thoughts about him in their tracks.

"No, I'm not a slacker. I'll try my best but I'm not really a hands on kind of guy."

"Yeah," Svetlana said, admiring the way his neck got all red when he was embarrassed but not his face. She also noticed that he had three distinct beauty marks on his neck in a line kind of like the Three Kings. She told herself that she was perceptive of these things because she was an artist and often drew portraits of people, but she knew it was merely because she thought Leighton Avior Vega was cute.

But none of this was new. Svetlana had been coming to San Francisco every summer (and some Hanukkahs) since she was twelve years old, and Mikaela's dad worked with her papa at the hospital, so she had known her and Ivory for a while and corresponded throughout the school years. Mikaela often talked to her about the super hot and older LAX, aka Leighton Avior Vega. He had originally been nicknamed LAV but it eventually just became easier to say LAX because of the airport.

Everyone knew about him because he was a great baseball player. Svetlana could remember seeing him at some bonfires in the summers but she had never actually spoken to him until then. She didn't have a crush on him, but she did think that he was adorable. He was two years older than her, a senior, so there was no way anything could transpire between them except for a whole lot of nothing. But she could still look.

However, there was something very weird about him. His only actual friend was Hector Wilcox. He wasn't exactly outgoing and sociable like Svetlana who had too many "friends" to count. He used to go to a different school over in North Beach, San Francisco. That had never stopped him from hanging out with the kids from Riverdale High because Hector had always gone there, but at the beginning of his Junior year, Leighton and his sister Isla moved in with their older brother in Russian Hill, so that was why Svetlana was sitting next to the curly-haired, green-eyed LAV. Svetlana, on the other-much lonelier-hand, had made a habit of calling him just plain old Vega. She liked his last name a lot, not as much as she liked Leighton, but it was a known fact that he hated his name because it was unisex.

"So do you have any ideas at all about the project," she asked him noncommittally.

Vega shook his head. "No," he said on a sigh. "I guess we could make a dog bowl or something."

"Do you have a dog?" she asked.

"Nah," he said, "I'm allergic."

"Well, then that really wouldn't be useful, would it?" she said.

Vega narrowed his emeralds at her. "Don't get fresh, okay, I'm just brain storming."

She laughed at his stupid old-fashioned slang. "You're supposed to be socially awkward."

"What?"

"Well, you're popular but you really keep to yourself," she explained. "I just thought it was because you were shy and reserved but you seem great with strangers."

Vega looked at her head on. "Not everyone likes to be the center of attention, Svetlana."

Svetlana was surprised for two separate reasons. The first being the fact that he actually called her Svetlana. Only her father ever actually called her by her given name; she was surprised to find that she really liked it. The second being that he was implying that she liked to be the center of attention. Svetlana only ever wanted to be around Ivory and Mikaela and to escape her feelings. The fact that that put her in a position where she interacted with a lot of people did not mean that she liked to have all eyes on her. That was probably the last thing on earth that Svetlana wanted. The only person's attention she wished to capture was her mother's.

After she disappeared for a few weeks, her father had cried and hugged her for hours when she came back but her mother didn't even call or send her an 'I'm glad you're not kidnapped and tied up in a rapist's basement' text message. She didn't even care if Svetlana was alive or dead, it seemed.

Wounded, Svetlana replied, "That's really funny, I guess." She looked down at her blank paper and started to draw a picture of her mother, starting with the tight, raven-colored curls.

"I was just kidding, Svetlana," said Vega.

"Hmmm," was her reply.

"Svetlana-"

"You say it wrong," she said abruptly, looking up from her mother's dark brown eyes inked into the paper's fibers. "It's pronounced sveet-LAH-nah."

Vega smiled at her. "So like Sweet Lana."

She rolled her eyes. "You are so American."

"Sorry," said Vega airily. "So what part of Russia are you from? Siberia?"

"Ha ha ha," she droned, frowning. "I lived in St.Petersburg. There are a lot of tourists that come to see the Kunstkamera, the Winter Palace, and the ballets and such."

"So if you're Russian, why would you move to Russian Hill, San Francisco? As you must well know there are no significant Russian populations over here."

She gave him a scowl. "My dad moved to Russian Hill because he received an offer to be head of neurology at Opal Heather Teaching Hospital. The fact that it's Russian Hill is merely a coincidence."

"Aah. Okay, I have an idea now," he said excitedly.

She smiled, amused. "My background information has given you an idea?"

He nodded as if it was obvious. "Of course, you thought I was just curious about you apparent heritage. I knew you had to grow up in Russia because you have faint accent. You talk slower than normal, when you say 'this' or 'that' it become 'zis' and 'zat', and your h's are a little harsh like you're biting into an apple when you say them or about to cough up something."

"Wow, you are so good at boosting up self-esteem," she said dully.

"'Just being honest," he shrugged. "But it's cool, you being Russian. I've never known anyone from Russia. How would you say my name in Russian?"

"Lee-ton," she said darkly. "So what was your idea earlier?"

"We should make something that's Russian," he said. "What is something that you guys use purely in Russia?"

"Uhhh," she frowned. "I don't know...vodka?"

He laughed. "Come on. More people in America drink that than all of Eurasia."

He obviously had never been to Eurasia. There was a reason that vodka was translated to water in English. "Okay, we can make a candelabra," she said at once.

"What?" he asked. "There are candles everywhere. I have about ten at my house right now."

She shook her head. "Not just any candelabra, a menorah."

"What's a menorah," he asked.

"It's the thing you put the candles in for Hanukkah," she explained. "A lot of the world's Jewish population lives in Russia. And Hanukkah is coming up soon too."

"Are we actually going to put candles in it?"

"Of course. We need to show that it can actually be used during Hanukkah, but I doubt that my family will actually use it."

"So you're Jewish?" he asked curiously.

"Obviously," she said, rolling her eyes. "Why? Are you an anti-Semite?"

His eyes almost bulged out of his head. "No, oh God, no."

Svetlana laughed at the way his neck got all red again. "I was messing with you," she said. "I know that in America people are a lot more tolerant about Jewish people."

"So do you go to...Temple?"

She laughed. "Not all the time anymore. There was a lot of assimilation of the Jewish people in Russian so my papa is not very observant. My mother always made us got to Temple, though."

"Cool," he nodded. "Are you gonna sketch it out before you mold it?"

"Of course," she said absentmindedly. "It's just a menorah, though, so this'll be an easy A and she'll have to give me one when I use my Jew-card."

Vega chuckled. "So we should probably work on it after school too. We only had a week to do the last project and

Hector and I almost did not get it glazed in time."

"Sure," she said, flipping a page in her sketchbook to start on the candlebra. "I have my own art-"

"You f*****g a*****e! I'm going to murder you, you dick!" Ivory roared.

Katy Watkins let out a terrified scream when Ivory grabbed Hector by the scruff of his neck and slammed him on her desk. She ran towards the front of the classroom, away from the brawling boys as Ms.Elliot got on the phone with the main office.

"Aspen, relax, man!" Svetlana called to Ivory in vain. He gave Hector a blow to the eye.

"You f*****g b*****d!" Hector roared, pushing Ivory off of him. Hector balled up his fist and gave Ivory a taste of his own medicine, shattering his nose and spewing blood all over Ivory's t-shirt and the floor. Svetlana's heart dropped into her stomach. She moved forward to put herself between Ivory and harm, but Vega caught her by the arm and pulled her into him as he took a few steps backwards. Just then, Ivory retaliated by sending another punch into Hector's gut, causing him to fall over Svetlana's desk and knocking her sketchpad to the floor. She pointed a stern finger at them.

"If you guys rip some of my sketchbook pages-"

"Alright, alright, boys," the big, burly administrator everyone called Puck said as he came into the room. He was about six five and looked like he bench-pressed a million, so he picked up and separated Ivory and Hector like someone pulling two slices of bread off a sandwich. "I'll just take these two down to Rudy, Kendra," Puck told Ms.Elliot while the boys squirmed in his arms. Just looking at all that blood on Ivory's face was enough to make Svetlana want to scream.

"You're gonna make sure Ivory's nose is checked by a doctor, right?" she called after Puck.

Puck just grunted and Svetlana went into a mad dash to gather her things. She didn't care if she got suspended for making sure her best friend didn't end up with a nose like Owen Wilson's. Ms.Elliot was too busy trying to calm down the hysterical Katy Watkins to notice Svetlana making her escape. However, Vega did and he tried to stop her.

"Wait, Svetlana," he said perfectly as if he had been raised in Moscow. "We just a have few minutes left in class and we haven't decided when to meet up to work on the menorah."

"Tomorrow after swim practice. I have to work at four so before then," she said hurriedly, slipping out of his grasp after Ivory's trail of blood.

"But...Sweet Lana," Vega muttered too low for her to hear as she went after the boy she really cared about.

Author's Note

Is it too long for one chapter?