Crimson Snow

  Crimson Snow

  Ina Carter

  Copyright © 2020 by Ina Carter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 9798645624446

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Prologue

  It was late spring in my first year of elementary school. My half-brother Kevin and I were huddled behind the school gym - our usual hiding spot to eat our lunches.

  “Why are you crying?” Kevin lifted my chin to look into my puffy, red eyes. I sniffled loudly, showing him the crumpled paper in my hand.

  “My letters are all wrong. I try to make them straight, but then Mrs. Collins always uses the red pen over them and tells me mine were crooked. Then she puts the sticker with the sad kitten on the bottom. Vinnie says the sticker means you are stupid…Mama tells me it don’t matter, because I ain't going to courage…”

  “You mean college? Don’t listen to Ma, Julie – you ain’t going to be like her. You are smart. Give me that paper.” He grabbed it from my hand. Then he started ripping it to small bits and gathering the fragments in his left palm. And he was smiling.

  “Do you like Christmas, Jules?” he grinned, his toothless smile a little warped. His green eyes lit up. They did remind me of the twinkling lights that Mr. Berg put on the window of the convenience store around Christmas time.

  “I love Christmas. It’s my birthday!” I couldn’t help but grin, too. My birthday was two months away, and I’ve been trying to learn my numbers, so I could count the days. I already knew how to count to 100.

  “You know what we don’t have on Christmas, Jules?” Kevin asked.

  “Sometimes, we don’t get presents because we were no good…” My lifted spirits dampened, thinking of daddy’s scowl when he told me I made Santa mad.

  “No, Jules. It’s not about the presents. We don’t have snow on Christmas. Not here in our part of Texas. Haven’t you seen on TV – everyone is jolly and singing around the Christmas trees, and it’s always snowing outside the window. I kept thinking it’s magic falling from the sky. Maybe God gives his Christmas blessing to us in every snowflake…. and …. maybe this is why we ain't always happy, Jules… we don’t have the snow…”

  Then, Kevin lifted his hand and threw up in the air the paper shreds. They twirled like real snowflakes. At least it’s how I saw them - fragile, almost transparent, with little blue and red strains of color. I was afraid to reach and touch them, telling myself I didn’t want them to melt. Afraid that maybe the magic would disappear… I was not sure I liked the red streaks marring the pure white snow. It was like God cried bloody tears for us. I was about to tell Kevin that, but he leapt and grabbed one snowflake before all of them landed on the yellowing grass at our feet. He held it in his palm. He came closer to me and hunkered down to look into my eyes. Then he opened his hand. “Look, Jules!” he whispered. As afraid as I was, I peeked at the “ice crystal” he was holding. There was a word on that “snowflake,” and it was in blue ink. The carefully written straight letters of the only one word I knew how to write well. JULIE.

  “How?” I looked at Kevin mesmerized.

  “Magic, Jules. I told you!”

  Chapter 1

  (Present Day)

  The small pieces of ripped paper twirled around the room carried by an invisible air current, and then softly touched the carpet- silently dying. Fragmented words. Translucent white and blue-veined snowflakes. They didn’t have a crimson shade in them anymore. The bleeding was only internal these days. On instinct, I reached and grabbed the last piece of paper still lingering in the air and taking its time to land on my carpet. I clenched it in my fist and closed my eyes. The air halted in my lungs for what felt like an eternity. With the next breath, my eyelids fluttered and my palm opened. “STAN.” The sliver of a word I already despised. If that was indicative of what the future held for me, I didn’t want to face it.

  “Lauren, what is this?” I heard my father’s stern voice coming from my doorway. My head snapped, and I was ready for my words to follow, but when I met his iron blue stare, I bit the inside of my cheek. I felt the pungent taste of iron in my mouth, but the pain that followed I didn’t actually mind. It was mine and only mine.

  “Come to my office,” he commanded, as his eyes trailed the mess littering the floor, his frown deepening before he turned his back and left. I looked out the open window, and it was tempting me. I could climb out and tell him to go to Hell. It wasn’t like it would be the first time I took off. I could fly out of my golden cage and spread my wings. Sadly, my wings were now clipped and my jaw sewed shut. I was domesticated and tamed. Obedient. Like a sheep. I lowered my head and with my tail tucked between my legs, I dragged my feet down the hallway to the door my father had left open.

  I didn’t close it behind me when I entered his office. I just stood in front of his desk, my hands properly placed at my sides, my eyes focused on the Persian rug.

  “Do I need to ask, Lauren? That was the application to Stanford you were supposed to be filling out.”

  “Yes, sir! I will, sir,” I was tempted to reply, but he would think I was mocking him. He would be right. I lifted my eyes to him, expecting to see once again his disappointment with my “oppositional defiance.” They liked to slap the term on me left, right, and center, but this year the only thrill I got is when I managed to surprise them. Ruin their expectation that I would say something snappy or insolent. I killed them with kindness.

  “I am sorry.” My voice sounded calm and regretful. “I was just having a hard time writing my essay. It’s difficult to explain why I am two years behind my peers. Stanford can see in my application that I am graduating high school at almost twenty.”

  I knew I was guilt-tripping him. It was his decision to hold me back grades at school for two whole years. As much as I hated “Carlton Academy,” the private prep school I’d attended since middle school, it would have been preferable to the curriculum of therapy sessions and psychiatric evaluations I endured for two years. My parents left it to the pros to deal with my “problems.” They still did as they desperately searched for someone else to fix me.

  “How are your sessions with Dr. Rogers?” The question came as no surprise. He always alleviated his guilty conscience by reminding me that he’d done his job and paid for the best therapist in California to help his daughter get acclimated to normal life. What was normal anyway? I never understood. Normal was a societal perception of customs everyone should conform to, but it depended on what society we were talking about. It was completely normal for cannibal tribes to kill and eat their enemies. For some mammals it was also completely normal to eat their offspring after birth if the cub seemed sick or deformed. I guess I should’ve counted my blessings that my family’s “normal” included therapy, not murder.

  “Everything in therapy is good,” I
answered my father laconically. I was glad that I was over eighteen, and the therapist was not obligated to disclose to my parents anything we discussed in our weekly one-hour sessions. Not that I shared much with Dr. Rogers. He asked questions, and I told him what he wanted to hear. I just drew the line to only discussing my “problems” related to the last few years of my troubled life. To all his probing about my childhood and how I felt about it, I just cut him off. I always said, “It’s all behind me, and I’d rather not open ‘Pandora’s box.’” It was a lie of course. The box was never closed, and I dug inside it daily.

  I looked out the window hoping for snow, but this was California, and Christmas was never white.

  “Good. Good…” my father murmured. When his eyes landed back on me, I knew what was coming. His mood swings were always in exact order – disapproval, a sprinkle of a guilty conscience, and then contempt and orders.

  “I want you to finish the applications before the end of the month, Lauren! You know there are deadlines.”

  “I haven’t decided on a college yet. I can wait…” I tried to wiggle my way out. I knew it was pointless. All decisions were made for me a long time ago. My sister went to Stanford, my dad’s Alma Mater, so this was his first and probably the only choice for my future. He would be pulling some heavy invisible strings, accompanied by a “generous donation” for me to be accepted, as he liked to remind me.

  “I think we talked about this! It’s not like you can get into an Ivy League School on your academic merits alone. With the year you wasted partying, I am surprised you managed to get a decent GPA. We have a deal, remember?”

  Like he’ll ever let me forget.

  “Of course!” is all I said. I had accepted my parent’s opinions about me a long time ago. To them, I was nothing but a delinquent who wasted her “potential.” For some reason, they forgot the SAT score I got, and that in the last two years, I had earned a lot of AP credits, so I could go to a good college without any help from them.

  “You know this conversation wouldn’t be necessary if it wasn’t for your contraventions two years ago…” He didn’t miss a chance to bite again, sinking his teeth into the open wound.

  “You are right.” I had to bite my tongue again, until it bled before I uttered the agreement. “I know I could have done better sophomore year. I regret a lot of things... but considering Stanford… Maybe I should look into the UC schools…. USC even… They have a great music program, and auditions are in a few weeks…” I breached the subject as my desperate attempt to grasp at the last straw of hope that maybe he would let me have a choice in my future.

  My father’s face froze like a cartoon on the TV screen when you hit the pause button. It was a little distorted and maniacal.

  “I told you I am not paying for a pointless degree in music. I want you to get a diploma in something that you can apply to a real job!”

  I wanted to tell him that music was a real job. It might not be in his world, but it was all that’s been keeping me from falling apart in the last few years. It was not a hobby (as he called it), and it was not an outlet for my anxiety (according to Dr. Rogers.) It was my life. The guitar was the one thing left of my life when I was free. I poured my heart into each song I wrote. Music was my normal.

  “I am not good at anything else,” I stated the fact. I was sure this was one thing we agreed on.

  He was about to open his mouth and give me the usual reprise. “When I was your age, I didn’t care much for law either, but I followed my father’s footsteps, and I learned to love it. See where it got me…Blah, blah, blah…” Mr. District Attorney and his big egoistical substantiation of his own truths. Before he spoke, something caught his attention in the hallway and he halted.

  “Bianca, come here,” he barked. I cringed internally, not even looking back at the open door to see my sister’s expression. Her whiny voice was enough confirmation she was not pleased to be summoned.

  “Daaad. What is it now? Is this about Lauren again?” She almost hit me as she passed by me. I couldn’t even be offended by her attitude anymore. She never liked me, and the feeling was mutual.

  Our father didn’t seem pleased with her tone either. He plainly hated disobedience, but in Bianca’s case, he sometimes let it slide, considering she mastered our mother’s mannerisms and tone, which he’d learned to tolerate over the years. I guess my big sis spoke “trophy wife” language already. She sure looked like one.

  “Can you tell Lauren why you chose communications as a major at Stanford?” Dad stared at her.

  I finally looked at Bianca, and she was staring at me like I was dog poop stuck to her shoe, that was about to make her barf - not talk to it.

  “What’s the point?” At least she was honest telling me to my face that I was too dumb to understand anything.

  “The point, Bianca, is that you chose to follow in your mother’s footsteps, and then you formed your life plan around your chosen major.”

  Oh, let’s set as an example my mother’s amazing life goals – a year as a newscaster in some local TV station, reporting petty crimes and hanging around the courthouse pretending she was a journalist. It was the starter job her communications diploma got her, which was a means to an end, until she successfully grabbed the attention of the best-dressed attorney walking into the building. Bianca was on point with that life plan –short skirt and open shirt button showing enough cleavage- check. Rich boyfriend- check. Stanford degree in a party major- check. My sister was exceeding expectations. No wonder I was such a disappointment. I failed as a gold digger on all levels and this was all girls were good for in my father’s opinion.

  It was funny that my father always pointed out that we should follow in my mother’s footsteps, not his. He kept saying that law was definitely not a good profession for a woman. He was a chauvinistic bigot, and I thought I might actually apply for law school just to spite him. Not that I could ever practice law. I had a record.

  “Dad, why are we even discussing this?” My sister sounded frustrated. “Lauren can’t get a job in wardrobe at the TV station…” She glared dismally at my ripped jeans and a tank top.

  Bianca was talking about her coveted internship again. The whole family couldn’t stop bragging about her “great achievement.” My sister was two years older than me, but as I was barely graduating high school, she was already a junior at Stanford. This summer she managed to secure some internship at KTLA as an assistant to some producer. I didn’t want to rain on her parade, but the truth was the guy played golf with my father at the “Oceanside Country Club” in Pacific Palisades, where my parents were long-time members. Their club was the “rich and famous” playground. In all honesty, Bianca didn’t score as P. Diddy’s aid, but some C rated TV producer, but who was I to undervalue her successes?

  My sister was already ahead in the game for marrying rich and playing arm candy. Her boyfriend Bart (short for Bartholomew mind you), was not only the son of a senator, but he played NCAA Division I college baseball for Stanford’s Cardinals. He was a senior, and it was rumored he’d be drafted by Major League Baseball this year. The family was expecting a proposal before the draft. I didn’t care for sports and especially baseball, but Bart might not be that amazing, since some kids get drafted right out of high school to the Majors. Bianca was home in L.A. this week because her boyfriend’s team was playing against some local college.

  “Bianca, why don’t you bring Lauren with you to the game this evening? Maybe she needs to hang out with you and your friends more often. You’ll be a good influence.”

  “The Hell NO!” Bianca yelped.

  I think my sister echoed precisely the words I didn’t voice. The color rose on our father’s face when he heard her statement. He exploded.

  “I had enough of this! You two need to learn how to get along, and Lauren is coming with you. Bianca, if I hear a whisper about you or any of your friends being condescending towards your sister, you might forget about this internship. Maybe it’s your fault sh
e started hanging out with the wrong crowd. You never included her in anything…”

  He was going to blame my disobedience on Bianca this time. Like I’d always felt warm and cozy in this house, coddled and understood by my doting parents, but I never appreciated all the privilege and safety they provided me. My sister was a horrible self-centered human, but at least she was not trying to pretend otherwise.

  I used to say this stuff out loud. Now I swallowed my words. Not because I cared what my family said or did to me. I held my opinions and didn’t speak my mind because it was part of the deal. If I obeyed and did what I was told, my father, the DA, would get Tyron and Max shorter and easier prison sentences. My friends were over 18, legal adults, and one stupid mistake got them incarcerated for three and a half years. Thanks to the deal I made with my father, they were now serving in a low-security prison and were not locked up with hardcore criminals. I felt daily “survivor’s guilt” because I was right there with them when they got arrested but got out of the situation unscarred. I was underage by three months, and my friends testified that I was not involved in the crime. They had my back, so I had to do the same for them, even if it got me locked in a prison of a different variety.

  I blamed myself for what happened that night. I snuck out and walked the two miles from my house in the gated Santa Monica community - down to the beach to meet with my friends.

  I found Tyron hanging around the pier. His brother was having one of his usual parties, and Ty had enough of the drunken brawls in his house. Ty’s brother, Marcus, was his guardian until he turned eighteen. Their mother had taken off a few years earlier to live up North with some boyfriend and had left her kids behind. Tyron’s brother was a low beat loser, who I suspected dealt drugs and got entangled with a lot of shady characters. Compared to Marcus, Ty was a pretty normal guy, just like me - a victim of circumstances.