Gilded Cage

Chapter 2

The twins arrived late on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon.

After they settled in, Bea surprised me with a big, friendly smile. She invited me to read with her, a book titled Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I had been over the moon and couldn't wait to share a book of my own with her. I made a mental note to pick something ghostly or supernatural. She seemed to enjoy those genres of stories.

The next day, however, Bea snuck up behind me and poured a large pot of ice water over my head. She ordered Trick, who was bigger and stronger than both of us, to drag me into the basement and locked the door. The basement was windowless, and I couldn't find the light switch. Chilled to the bone and scared out of my mind, I shivered and sobbed in darkness for what felt like hours until Mrs. Watson finally found me. Our housekeeper didn't believe me when I told her the truth about what the twins had done. She called me a "nasty, little liar" and sent me to my room without dinner.

When my dad found out about the incident, he did nothing, said nothing, and I soon realized that no one was going to look out for me in Wellesley. I was unwanted and unwelcome in my own family.

I spent the next six years fighting for the right to exist under my own fucking roof. If I was lucky, my dad came home maybe once or twice a month. He worked for the government and frequently traveled to Washington DC for weeks on end. When he wasn't with us, Bea and Trick lorded over the place like Regina George and her loyal henchman. Mrs. Watson did everything in her power to please them, which often meant undermining and humiliating me whenever the twins threw a fit.

Bea was the human incarnate of Snow White's apple. Sweetness and light dipped in poison. I learned to tread carefully around her. There was nothing that delighted my half-sister more than to one-up me or put me down.

Trick, on the other hand, was a natural-born bully. Bumps and bruises became a normal part of my life during the first two years we lived together. But he was nowhere near as bad as Bea. As we grew older, conflicts with my brother became manageable once I learned to read his mood swings.

On occasion, I even managed to convince Trick to go head on with our sister, especially when Bea took things too far. Like the time she tried to shove my book of Emily Dickinson poems into a toilet bowl. I cherished this book above all others because Mamma had written, by hand, a special note for me on the inside cover: Mamma ti ama, Caterina. Mother loves you, Caterina. Trick recognized its sentimental value. It was one of the last gifts Mamma had ever given me. Using his superior size and strength, he had pried the book out of Bea's clenched fingers and returned it to me with a grunt.

The twins and I were approximately four months apart in age, but the three of us couldn't be more different. Trick had small beady eyes and a large meaty head. It seemed Bea had absorbed all the good looks from their mother in the womb. They were both fair-haired to my dark. Blue-eyed to my hazel. I was proud of my hazel eyes. Mamma used to say that the color was mercuriale, ever-changing, often appearing greenish beneath sunlight and browner in the shadows.

My half-siblings and I were enrolled at Ashton Wellesley Academy. Founded in the early 1900s, our school had been serving New England's wealthiest and most elite families for generations. Students typically started in sixth grade and finished during their senior year in high school. Nearly half of our graduates went on to attend one of the Ivies, Stanford, or MIT.

The campus was stock full of Georgian-stye buildings with red bricks, white columns, and rich Gothic Revival interiors in dark mahogany woods set against moody burgundy walls and muted green and navy blue textiles. The twelve academic buildings, four athletic facilities, and two dormitories—for the boarders—were interspersed across a sprawling green lawn and multiple concrete walkways.