Nothing that I could have pictured about the boys was correct. Charlotte walked over and grabbed my hand, bringing me over in front of them and smiling, reassuringly.
"Boys, this is Maya. Maya, these are my four sons." She said, motioning over towards them.
I looked back in shock and almost choked on pure air. Sitting in front of me were some of the most attractive boys I had ever seen. They must have been about high school age, but they all looked like they had just stepped off a magazine shoot. If you wanted to talk to them, you probably had to speak to their agent first.
I stayed silent, and so did they. They looked me up and down with surprise, and a bit of anger maybe. They clearly did not want an outsider here. I wondered if Charlotte had run this by them first or just decided to throw me to the sharks and see if I could swim.
I decided to try to distinguish them mentally, so as to not get them confused.
First there was the one closest to me, who had light brown hair and dark brown eyes like mine. His jaw was sharply defined, and dark eyebrows hung deeply over his eyes. He seemed the oldest of them all and was by far the biggest. His shoulders and chest were broad beneath a dark flannel, and his hands looked bigger than my head. He shifted his body ever so slightly towards me and in front of everyone else, and I realized he was being protective over the others. How interesting. It always seemed to me that the people who did the most for others were the ones who were hurting the most. I wondered what his deep dark secrets were.
I turned to the next one, and immediately my brain sensed that I should be worried. This older boy had midnight black hair but bright blue lightning eyes, and his face seemed to be stuck in a perpetual smirk. He sat casually on the couch as if he didn't have a care in the world, but the way he had scanned me when I first walked in told me the opposite. I had an immediate urge to prove myself to him. I can fight well, I wanted to say. Don't be so cocky.
The third boy had dark olive toned skin, and dark eyes to match. His brown hair seemed to spill in a curly tumble over his head but wasn't bothering him. He seemed like an athletic type, who was into soccer or baseball, maybe. I almost wished I had checked their rooms earlier, so I could tell if my guesses were accurate. They normally were, but I couldn't be positive without proof. Reading people was a gift, but also a necessity. Trust is not one of my strong suits.
The last boy I faced seemed the nicest of them all, his face holding a semblance of a smile. He seemed cautious but optimistic and stood up to welcome me after a tense minute.
"Hi, I'm Caleb." He said, with a soft and boyish grin, holding out a hand. "Nice to meet you." He said before sitting down again. His blond hair fell over his eyes as he looked at the floor, avoiding the glares of the others.
"Brooklyn." The athletic boy said, without looking up from his cuticles.
"Damon." The scary one smirked, eyes on mine. I held his gaze evenly to show I wasn't afraid.
"And I'm Dominic." The oldest one finished.
I turned to Charlotte, who smiled broadly as if things were going well.
"Great!" she said. "Thanks for that, you guys!"
She faced me then and said, "I know that living in a new house can be nerve-wracking and strange, but please know that my boys are completely safe and can help you with anything you need!" I saw Damon roll his eyes with distaste at her last comment, but I was particularly interested in Dominic's expression at the word "safe". It was subtle, but it kind of looked like he had been shocked.
"Thanks." I managed to say.
She nodded. Her expression seemed to want more from me, so I asked what was on my mind.
"Why do they all look different?" I said naively. I heard chuckles as if it was a stupid question from the guys, but Charlotte shot them a glare.
"Good question!" she said. "Dominic, Damon, and Brooklyn are actually my adopted sons. I got them when they were just little kids."
"Adopted from where? Hollister?" I asked under my breath.
She laughed, so I probably said it louder than I meant to.
"What about Caleb?" I asked, looking at him curiously.
"My husband and I had Caleb ourselves. He wasn't yet 10 when his father passed." She said mournfully.
I thought about the pain she must have felt, realizing that it was now her responsibility to raise three adopted sons and her own little boy alone. I couldn't imagine the stress she must have faced in her life. I looked at the boys and saw Caleb glance down at the coffee table. Maybe when a tragedy happened in a family, the burden became a shared responsibility. I wondered if that made it better, or worse.
"Well anyway Maya, dinner is going to be on the table at 8:00 if you're hungry, and I would love for us all to get to know one another a little better."
I nodded, and then walked back up to my room when she let me go. I heard her behind me hissing out instructions to the boys like a real mom, probably forcing them to be nice to me. I smirked to myself as I jumped back onto my bed. Damon would not be too happy with that.
- - -
When 8:00 rolled around, I reluctantly walked downstairs and headed to the dining room. I'm not sure why exactly, but I pictured that this home wouldn't really be lived in. Big fancy homes always held that connotation to me, but this one still seemed well loved. There were scuffs on the hardwood, probably from fights between the boys. There were shoes and backpacks in the wrong places. A picture hanging on the wall of the boys as kids was even hanging a little bit in the wrong direction. I smiled at that but fixed it. Maybe when I left, this place would be better off than when I found it.
Knowing my luck, I seriously doubted it.
When I passed the kitchen and made it to the room that smelled like heaven, I looked around cautiously. There was a large mahogany table that had 6 seats, and most of them were taken. A large exhale then came from behind me and I jolted forward in surprise.
"Aww, did I scare you?" Damon asked as he slipped into a seat beside Dominic.
"You wish." I replied coolly before taking one next to Caleb.
Dominic and Damon snickered as Charlotte walked into the room holding a glass dish the size of the table. Well, not quite, but pretty damn big. She set it in front of us and I inhaled the casserole she made eagerly. She let us dole ourselves each out a piece and I got one bigger than Damon's. I smirked at him, and his eyes tightened ever so slightly. When we all had food on our plates, she let us start and basically go crazy.
After tasting the delicious meal, I realized this would be my reality for at least a week. How did I get so lucky? I didn't deserve it.
"Thank you for this, Charlotte." I said gratefully, letting my fork fall for a second. This was so much better than hospital food, or even the stuff I used to cook for myself. I wasn't much of a chef, and I had become ironically pleased with the taste of burnt food.
She smiled at me and said, "Not a problem, Maya! We're so glad you're here!"
Damon spoke up, mocking his mom's expression and tone. "Yeah, Maya! How could we ever live without you?"
Dominic slapped the back of his head and Charlotte gave him a motherly look; kind of a pointed glare. A strange urge to receive a glare from her too flushed through me, but I would have to shut it down. That was stupid to think, and this wasn't permanent. Nothing was.
"Let's talk about our days, how 'bout?" she offered, ignoring the slight. "Caleb?"
Although I barely met the guy, I couldn't help but be drawn to him like a magnet. He seemed charismatic and relaxed, like a day at the beach with friends. I wanted him to like me too, almost immediately.
He smiled and said, "Well I went out with Tricia today, and we saw that new Spiderman movie. It was awesome!! Although Trish didn't seem to like it..."
I leaned over a little and whispered, "She sounds like an idiot." I gave him a wink and he laughed, shrugging.
I looked up to see the other boys glaring daggers at Caleb. "You would know." Damon coughed back childishly at me.
I looked up at him angrily. "So, Damon, why don't you tell us about yourself next? I'm sure it's your favorite subject!"
At that, Caleb and Brooklyn laughed. Charlotte looked alarmed but didn't say anything.
"Nothing much happened today. Except I met a girl that is definitely not my real sister, who gets to stay in my house." He shot back. Although I was interested in why he phrased it like that, I was seeing red. I got ready to answer, but Dominic interrupted us.
"Yeah, Maya. Why don't you tell us more about you? Like why the hell you're staying at our house in the first place?" His voice was deep and somewhat frightening. I pretended it didn't affect me but bit the inside of my cheek as I focused.
I took a deep breath and addressed it calmly.
"I didn't ask to be here. There was an accident at my real house and now nobody that I know can legally watch over me. Lastly, I'm not old enough yet to be emancipated." I explained without emotion, leaving out the details. I looked over at Charlotte curiously, to which she nodded. She wouldn't tell them my secrets, it seemed.
"Of course, you're not old enough for emancipation." Brooklyn said. "You're like 12."
"She's 16," Charlotte interrupted calmly, despite her family dinner having gone off the tracks a while ago.
"16 and a half..." I muttered, looking down. When I peeked up to see the quiet boys across from me, I saw Damon smiling. Not a smirk, not an evil grin, but genuinely smiling. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion but decided to speak again.
"Anyway, I won't be here for very long. Just until Charlotte can get rid of me to somewhere else that she thinks is safe. I promise for right now I'll stay in that room upstairs as much as possible and not bother you guys. I'm really grateful I get to stay here at all, your house is huge." I said, almost shyly. I stood up and thanked Charlotte for the meal, then got out of there as quickly as I could. I heard arguing behind me, and questions whispered tensely, but I tried to ignore it and shut it out.
When I got to my room, I sat on my bed and faced the wall. If I got one gift at all from my childhood, it was the ability to make everything go numb. I closed my eyes and trapped myself in the darkness of my thoughts. I could picture his hand grabbing my wrist and throwing me back against the wall, or countertop. I remembered him hitting me in the stomach most of all, where all of my oxygen was forced out. Then, the choking. My neck would be purple for what seemed like days. Little speckled bruises covered me like a strange pattern of feathers on a bird, where his fingertips pressed down. Finally, I had sunk into the darkness far enough. My body felt like it was floating on top of a pitch-black pool, and I was at peace. Pain is just a message, I thought, and you can ignore the call.
After watching another episode of a show with no emotion, I drifted off to sleep.