Remembering isn't always good

She looked us all up and down. She was carrying a tub of lactose-free ice cream with two spoons and it all fell to the floor when Styles kissed her cheek and stopped acting as my shield. I saw her and she saw me. She had more surgery than the last time we met, her lips looked like sausages and her cheekbones were sharp as knives. She was very thin. Her eyes seemed to flare with anger and contempt as we passed one by one to say hello.

Styles bent down with Kevin and Lydia to pick up the cutlery and food. Hypatia and I stared at the woman for minutes that seemed to take forever as one after another passed by.

The woman looked at both of us with disgust and superiority. Hypatia folded her arms and refused to lose the staring match that had developed.

"Who are your new friends, Styles?"

"Mum," she stood up, "this is Eleanor, Hope and Rebecca," she pointed to Lydia, Hypathy and me in that order.

"She reminds me of..."

"It's not her, Mum. How could I bring a savage into your house?"

"I know, darling," she squeezed his cheek, then patted it and went into the parlour with her husband. "By the way, Rebecca, watch your step. I'm delighted to meet you."

Delighted. Delighted?

I stood blankly, watching as her strange figure disappeared between the coloured curtains that separated the central hallway from the living room.

Delighted? Delighted that I wasn't there to stay? I had seen in her eyes that she had recognised me. She knew who I was. Her way of saying my name. She was delighted.

Everything around me at that moment disappeared. Instead of the wonderful sunshine outside, everything was grey. The raindrops were pounding on the windows, wanting to get inside the house. Styles' screams were much sharper than his voice of the moment. There was an existing bruise on my forehead and I had the feeling that both my lip and nose were bleeding profusely. I was bone chilled and very cold. I was lying on a splintered wooden floor as damp as my clothes. Drops began to fall on me. I felt each and every one of them hitting me softly, not like glass. It seemed as if they were trying to comfort me little by little. I was very cold and shivering. I tried to concentrate on my hands, blew warmth into them and tried to get up, but my bruised legs did not want to follow the example of my arms. My attention then shifted to the conversation between the two adults inside the house. They were delighted that I was no longer inside. She was really glad that I was out, without her son. I also heard another voice. It didn't fit in with the surroundings. It was calling someone else, someone called Rebecca.

The whole image fluttered in front of my eyes.

I blinked several times. Styles was holding my arms in his hands. Lydia and Hypatia were looking at me, highly concerned about my condition. Kevin had his hand in front of his mouth and a slight frown on his face.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "It hasn't happened to me before."

Styles' father came out of the small living room that occupied most of the ground floor of the house. He gave us one of his warmest smiles and stayed to chat amiably with all of us.

"You don't go to Styles' class," he admitted after a couple of minutes. "How do you know him?"

"I'm actually a friend of Kevin's," Hypatia went on, "I was introduced to Styles this morning."

"I am Hope's friend, and therefore Kevin's friend."

"Rebecca is a childhood friend of ours," entered Kevin.

The father seemed to partially recognise me, but could not put the pieces together properly.

"Styles had a sister," he said. "If you were really friends with them, you should know her."

"Yes," I replied. "I still keep in touch with her."

"How is she doing? Is she doing well?" his voice softened and broke.

"Of course. It's pretty good."

Kevin squeezed my arm lightly, he was really uncomfortable.

"Is she happy?"

"Yes, very much so, and he thanks you for giving him the courage to climb out of the window when he couldn't get through the door."

Tears welled up and threatened to fall, sliding down his flushed cheeks. He was a good man who had fallen in love with one of the worst people who could exist on this planet. Considerably short, chubby and bespectacled, Styles' father was a big man with a big heart that his son had inherited.

"Thank you," he whispered before going to an office they had set up on the first floor to work. "Thank you so much for letting me know. She never deserved to be here. We didn't deserve her."

Lydia wiped away a couple of tears that had come from the emotion of the moment.

When the door closed I looked down at my hands. They were clasped and pale from the tension I had been exerting all the way from the moment we got out of the van. I could see the marks my fingers had left on my skin. Red smudges on a sea of milk white.

Styles led us up the stairs to a landing where there were four doors: the bathroom, Styles' room, his parents' room and a guest room - my old room -.

There was no carpet on these. Not like before. Now the maple stairs were in plain sight, beautifully polished and cared for. There was no trace of the purple carpet, nor of the red carpet that was laid after that. That.

"Don't think about it, Stella," Styles whispered to me.

"I can't do anything else," my voice came out hollow. "I can't see more than that, brother."

"It wasn't your fault. And you know that."

"I am not so sure."

"You didn't break my nose with a bat, a rival did."

"Because I distracted you."

Styles grabbed my right hand.

"It was my mother," she closed her eyes momentarily. "You, little sister, you were locked up at home."

"What?"

"My mother played you the video she was recording, right?"

I closed my eyes. I could still see the fastball my brother had thrown to his opponent. How when they changed the game, the one who had missed that fastball picked up the bat and threw it to my brother in a friendly way, laughing. I also remember how I shouted his name to congratulate him on the pitch. But that wasn't my voice and I didn't realise it until that moment. It was a high-pitched, obnoxious, posh, nasal voice.

"She put it on you while she was beating you, didn't she?"

"Stop, Styles."

"Tell me!"

Hypatia stopped at the bottom of the stairs and spun on her heel when she heard Styles raise his voice. She had assumed he had too much patience, that his manner prevented him from getting angry the way he was getting angry. Curiosity made her stand still, blocking Kevin from passing, looking at both of us. Kevin mimicked her, Lydia bumped into him because she was thinking about other things and also turned when she saw Kevin and Hypatia's face.

"I don't want to, Styles! Don't you understand?!"

"No matter how much you hide it, you won't make it go away. We both know that."

"You don't know that."

I bumped him with my shoulder as I passed him and went up the steps, two by two, to where the three of them were enjoying the scene we had formed.

"Stella..."

"No, Kevin. Not now."

Lydia grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly. She knew that if she hugged me I would push her away. She also knew I needed someone to remind me that this was all in the past and would never happen again. Hypatia took my other arm as we walked into Styles' room. Lydia leaned her head against my arm to reassure me that she wasn't going to move from there, Hypatia put her hand on my back and ran her hand over my back several times trying to calm me down.

"You can't force her," I heard Kevin scold Styles. "Never again, Bro, never again."

"She deserves to know what really happened. She also needs to accept it."

"Now there are three, do you understand?" He sounded furious. "If you mess with one of them, you mess with all of them. Sound familiar? Her, you and me? "

Styles looked down and ran to his room to tap me on the shoulder. Hypatia was the first to jump.

"Kevin is smart," she commented without smiling. "I wish something would rub off on you. You mess with one, you mess with all of us. You don't want to mess with any of us."

"Hypatia is capable of making you dig your grave and bury you alive in it," Lydia no longer wore her sweet, little-girl smile. "I could ruin your life with just a camera and a computer."

"And your sister, man," Kevin went into the room and closed the door. "She can torture you with her eyes closed in the same way she was tortured."

Hypatia, though upset by Kevin's comments, nodded in agreement with what the MIT aspirant had said.

"And as good as you are, Styles, there are times when you're a real jerk. And Stella's like my sister too. Do you understand that? I can beat the shit out of you as many times as it takes."

"Guys," I interrupted. That's enough, it was just a misunderstanding. It's no big deal. Seriously, it's no big deal."

Styles thanked me with a nod.

"But don't ever make me say anything, Styles. Please."

He accepted that and whatever his sister wanted. He realised that I had become much more closed than I already was when I was 8 years old.

Kevin sat on the bed next to Hypatia. Lydia was at his feet, leaning on her knees - which she used as a headrest-. Everyone was waiting for Styles and me to stop talking or for him to apologise for his behaviour.

"Why did you want the complete plans of the White House?" I asked to settle the previous conversation.

Kevin scratched his neck looking for a good excuse for trespassing in both government buildings.

"Don't lie to me, Kevin," I narrowed my eyes.

"Well, that's interesting," he clapped and slipped his arm behind Hypatia's. "We've done the same thing as you, but six months apart."

Lydia turned her head to get a good look at Kevin.

"Because you were the ones in the video, weren't you?" Kevin pulled out his mobile phone and the video that Hypatia and Lydia posted about the public charge came up. "I hacked you as soon as I found out what you had done and who you were. I didn't know Stella was one of you. We admire you deeply."

"Kevin, don't get sidetracked, dear," Hypatia slapped his hand lightly.

"We were looking for something in the White House that turned out not to be there, although our contact on the inside tells us otherwise. That's why we wanted the plans, to know where it was."

"What do you want the Big Book of Secrets for?" asked Lydia curiously.

"How do you know of its existence?" Styles sat in his desk chair facing our friends.

"Maybe because we have it," Hypatia leaned on her elbows, rubbing Kevin's arm. "We've been much faster and more efficient than you."

"What did you want it for?" Lydia went on to attack Styles with her questions.

He swallowed and looked at his friend, looking away from my friend's big eyes. His right leg started to go up and down rapidly. He was getting on his nerves and he was getting on mine. I stopped his leg.

"Our contact challenged us that we couldn't make it," Kevin shrugged and smiled mischievously at Hypatia.

She opened her mouth in amazement. She was impressed by what my childhood friend had said, rather by how he had said it. She covered her mouth with her hand and blushed slightly as she tried to control the comment that was forming in her head. She blinked rapidly and repositioned herself closer to Kevin, if that was even possible.

"You're a great liar! You've got to teach me, mister! I almost bought it!"

Lydia looked curiously at the couple sitting on the bed above her.

"What do I get if I guess in less than ten minutes?" Hypatia's eyes sparkled with intensity, and she tapped Kevin's shoulder in a friendly way. "What do you give me?"

"A candy."

The pictures in the room were replaced by pristine white kitchen cabinets, the awards hung on shelves in cooking utensils and the large vertical poster of the Washington Nationals on the fridge. Everything was illuminated, not by the room's spotlights, but by the rays of a sun that did not enter the room because the curtains were closed.

The voices of my friends gradually became distorted until there was no more than an imaginary hooting of a pigeon that was not there. My height diminished noticeably. My hair was in two braids that my friend had braided for me before I left the orphanage, and I was dressed in one of the best Sunday suits the centre could afford.

A man took some candies down from the top of the fridge and held them out kindly to me. I took one gratefully and smiled. He left the jar on the counter, so I could take more, and carried a small bag of my clothes up to what was to be my room.

The woman of the house, a very under-operated harpy, appeared with a beaming smile at the entrance to the kitchen. When she saw that only I was there, her countenance changed. It transformed into a deep hatred and disgust for me. She was twice my height and looked down on me.

I tried to get out of the reality I had unknowingly put myself in. I knew that day and I knew what happened next. I had to get out of there any way I could, that was all I could think about at that moment. I needed to find a way out fast. I couldn't move. I was still stuck with the candy in my tiny little girl hands. My feet didn't want to move no matter how many orders I gave them, it felt as if they weighed a thousand kilos more, as if they were glued to the ground.

The harpy bent down without bending her knees over me and snatched the candy from my hands. As if she had one of the biggest diseases, she threw it in the rubbish with her long claw-like nails to keep it out of her hands.

"If your parents hadn't been our friends, you little minx," he took the jar, closed it and put it back on top of the fridge, "we wouldn't have adopted you. You're getting to be a nuisance, and you've only been here a few minutes. A few minutes in which you've stolen Styles' sweets."

She knelt down next to me and lifted my dress a few inches, exposing my slim stomach. My skin was milky white, I didn't get much sun; I spent the day reading inside buildings.

"I should be in the car with Styles, but you're here early," her finger stilled under my ribs, just the sharp point of her metallic nails. "I should be talking to the other mothers about how wonderfully my son plays baseball, but I'm with you. You should be grateful for a home to live in, not steal from this one."

The nail began to sink into my skin, separating it, opening a path that was soon filled with blood. His hands were cold, very cold, and every inch he touched stung. The warmth of the blood soon became noticeable. It slowly trickled down my side and slid down my leg to the floor.

My eyes filled with tears and my lower lip began to tremble. I was terrified and didn't want to cry in front of the woman. I had a strange feeling that if I did, she would kill me on the spot. I stopped breathing and looked at her inhibitedly.

The blood hit the ground. As soon as he heard the first "plick" I could see nothing but fire in her eyes.

"Look what you've done," he pointed to his hand, then to the floor, then to my little white shoes. "You have made me angry. Because of you, my nails, my very expensive nails, are full of blood that will take me a long time to clean. And the floor... The floor! Also!"

She slapped me hard and threw me to the ground. I came within inches of hitting one of the corners of the central island.

"You are very ungrateful, very spoiled. Stealing something that is not yours!"

I dared not contradict her. A tear rolled down my cheek.

Where was there a way out? My head was searching everywhere, but I was a puppet of my memories. I couldn't move if I didn't move in the reality I was drowning in at that moment. I needed to get out.

I couldn't get up. When I looked at my dress, it was covered in blood, as were my hands and the floor.

The woman kept screaming at me. She screamed louder and louder and louder. Scolding me for staining her kitchen floor and fingernails.

The door opened and stayed open. Through it came different voices accompanying a smaller version of my stepbrother Styles. The woman, before Styles entered the kitchen, ushered me out the side door of the kitchen into my room.

I heard some very distant ones: "Stella? Stella. Earth calling Stella" from different voices. I concentrated on them.

Everything was back to normal.

I sighed heavily, relieved not to be there, in that unpleasant reality that had been my childhood.

I was in Styles' room and he was shaking me to come back to me. Kevin was holding a glass of water and Hypatia was holding a chair behind me. Lydia had a piece of chocolate in her hands.

"What happened to you?"

My mouth was dry.

"We thought I gave you something. You're paralysed. You were standing. You were unresponsive," Lydia's brow furrowed slightly and her mouth twisted in concern. "You started crying quietly," she whispered. "I thought something really bad had happened to you."

I looked at them in fear, almost in a state of panic.

"I was here," I said worriedly, "and then suddenly I wasn't."

"Where were you?" Hypatia held out the glass of water.

"In the kitchen," I confessed. "The day I entered this house."

"No," Kevin shook his head several times. "Not again, please."