Who We Are

"Kat, we're going to talk about this," my father stated as he pulled into our narrow driveway, "I know that it's awkward for all of us, but as your father, I have to understand that you and your sister are getting older and are going to be venturing out into that world, no matter what I say."

I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the handle to push the door open and get out. He sighed and followed suit, calling at me over the hood. "Katerina, I want you and Gwendolyn upstairs when they get home."

I stepped through the front door and slammed it behind me, taking to the stairs as it opened again and he came through. My younger sisters would be home from school any minute now and I knew there would be a lot of explaining to do about my eye and an even worse apology to Gwen for causing our father to decide to have such an embarrassing talk with us.

Octavia and Gigi's bus arrived home first and they were excited to see our dad. The little girls rushed inside at the sight of his car and the youngest through her arms around his neck. I peered down from the top of the stairs as he explained to them that he was going to have a 'conference' with Gwen and I and that they were to stay downstairs and not eavesdrop. If Gwen or I had told them they would've been outside our door seconds after it closed, but they worshipped our father so they nodded eagerly and took to the living room, asking him to join.

I turned and headed back to my room. They didn't know I was home yet and I wanted to postpone my explanation for as long as I could. When Gwen got home without me she called out for me, only to meet a reply from Gigi who explained that I wasn't here before our dad could interject with the truth.

I couldn't hear the entire conversation, but soon after I could hear Gwen tromping up the stairs, distinguishable only by how it sounded when she walked. She burst through the door and called a hello while she dropped her bag to her bed. "Where have you been, I was so-" she trailed off when she turned around and saw me, her eyes widening, "What happened to you?"

I sighed. "It's a really long story. Lets just say that Emily's boy obsession didn't quite feel the same way about her." I slid over to sit up at the edge of my mattress. "I would've told you I left early, but Dad ushered me home and to the clinic. I'm fine, by the way."

Gwen stepped forward with wide eyes, holding a finger out as if she was going to poke the bruised skin around my eye. I slapped her hand away and she snapped out of it, dropping down to her own bed. "And this happened today?" she questioned, "I didn't hear anything about a fight."

"Last night," I answered with a shake of my head, "Like I said, it's a long story and I don't have time to tell you."

Gwen shoved a stray curl over her shoulder as if she was annoyed by it and then frowned at me. "Aren't you grounded? That sort of means that you have all the time in the world, Kat."

"I don't know," I rebutted, surprised that my father hadn't played that card by now, "But Dad found out about Ronnie and the nurse at the clinic started talking about being 'intimate' so now Dad wants to have 'The Talk' with us, and I'm so sorry, because it's going to be really terrible."

Gwen's eyes widened and she quickly reached back for something. She latched onto a pillow and hurled it at me, catching me off guard. I slapped it down, a little stunned, and watched her.

"What were you thinking, Stupid?" she asked rhetorically, pacing on her feet, "How could you let Dad find out about you and Ronnie? Again? He's going to kill all of us and subject us to pictures of STDs. I can't handle this right now, Katerina."

"It's not your boyfriend that he's plotting to murder, Gwendolyn. So relax. I'm sure he won't even care about whoever you date in the future, so long as it's not Ronnie or Riley. You could probably even rob a bank and he wouldn't care," I offered as support and advice.

She just turned her head and glared at me. "Yeah, but he's going to ask if I'm seeing anyone and then I'll have to explain to him that, why no, I don't, but no promises that I won't fall haphazardly in love with someone that he'll utterly hate in the future."

I rolled my eyes at her dramatics. "You're off the hook, Gwen. At least he won't be asking you questions about your sex life."

"You have a sex life?" Gwen asked, her eyes a little wide, "You and Ronnie haven't even done anything, right?"

"Right," I agreed, keeping to myself the way he made me feel when his fingers brushed my skin and how all the air in the world disappeared with his body was weighing down on mine. "We haven't done anything. There's no way I'm ready for that and I don't think he even wants to, at lea-"

"You think that Ronnie Radke doesn't want to have sex with you?" she asked in a state of disbelief, "Katerina, that's insane. When he's around you that boy oozes desire."

I cringed at her choice of wording. "That sounds disgusting, stop talking."

She chuckled and nodded. "It's true. He's definitely lusting after you. The cute, gorgeous, innocent Katerina Silverstein."

"If I'm all those things than so are you," I rebuffed, "More so since I took AP Anatomy and Physiology last year. There are things about the human body that can't be unlearned. Plus, you're not even in Health yet."

"My best friend is dating Monte Money's younger brother," she argued stubbornly, "I hear things."

I gave her a look to say how dimwitted I thought that sounded and she seemed to catch on. "Oh.. yeah, you hangout with Monte himself."

"Uh, yeah," I said, "But I'm sure that Max is way more obscene than anything you've heard."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Crude, how?" she asked slowly, her eyes narrowing back even farther than they were supposed to.

I kicked at her through the space between our beds. "Okay, we're not talking about this, Gwendolyn. Just brace yourself for whatever our father is going to subject us to."

She huffed lightly and scooted back on her bed to lean against the wall. I skipped cross the open space and joined her so we could sit side by side and force our father to remain on the opposite half of the room. While we waited, Gwen reached out to touch my eye and I slapped her hand away continuously.

"I just want to see if it hurts," she objected, reaching out again, "It looks like it does."

"Then it does," I rebutted, pushing her narrow fingers away, "Obviously."

She looked at me with the same look I was giving her and we stared at one another, as if the other was dumb or just incapable of accessing the knowledge stored in her brain. We were still looking at each other, communicating only through eye-rolls, and huffs, and slaps, when the bedroom door opened and our father stepped in and closed it behind him.

Gwen and I slid to sit up higher against the wall. Our dad paused and looked over our faces as we stayed silent and stony, peering back at him. "I'm sure Katerina already explained to you why you're up here," he said to my younger sister, "And I'm giving you one chance to tell me if there is anything going on, that I don't know about, between you a boy." He looked harshly at her and crinkled the pages in his hands.

She shook her head. "No, sir."

"We have a new policy," he continued, moving to sit at the end and edge of my bed, "If I find out that any of you, now and in the future, are seeing boys without asking my permission, it will be over instantly. There will be no apologizing, no rationalizing, it will be the end and you will be grounded."

Gwen turned her head the littlest bit and met my eyes before we both turned back to our dad and nodded in understanding. I didn't speak since I had brought this on us, but I was wondering how my father intended to hold to these rules seeing as he hardly ever spent more than eight hours at home in succession.

"I trusted you girls," he said, "And I believed that you were smart enough to take care of each other and look out for one another. I'm disappointed not only in Kat, but in the rest of you for not telling me what she got herself into." He stared at Gwendolyn as she avoided his gaze.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she answered, finally looking up, "But I acted the way I did because I knew you wouldn't understand. You would've grounded us all anyways."

"Damn right I would've!" he bellowed, clenching his hands together, "I would've stopped all of this before it got too far and I would've moved us to the other side of the country in order to keep you girls safe."

"We're not in danger," I argued, narrowing my gaze at him, "I'm dating, Dad, not being threatened by mob bosses."

"Don't joke," he answered, "I'm willing to let you make your own mistakes, Kat, but there's just one thing that I won't allow." He tapered off while looking at the two of us, his eyes seeing us as we were ten years ago. We were still his little daughters - the very last pieces of his wife.

He composed himself by looking away and blinking the thoughts and memories right out of his head. When he looked back, his eyes were hardened and we were again the teenage girls who he was battling to keep innocent. "I won't allow you to be sexual with him," he said with no hint of embarrassment or hesitation. He was a police officer now, not our father, and it was obvious. "If I find out that anything has happened between the two of you, I will press charges on him the minute he turns eighteen. You will be at the doctor's office and they will subject you to every type of disease and pregnancy testing you could imagine. You will never see each other again."

He reached across the gap between beds and handed both Gwen and I papers. Gwen looked down at them before I did and her eyes widened dramatically. She peered over at mine and then up at me as I finally looked down.

"Dad, what-"

"It's everything you need to know about STDs and teen mothers," he explained, "Pulled straight from some of the files from my office. Those are the stories and histories of women facing the rest of their lives with diseases that can kill them and young mothers who are struggling to raise their children both with and without the men who helped put them in that position."

The front cover of his makeshift booklet was an image of some sort of venereal disease. It was disgusting and I quickly folded it in half the best I could and removed it from my sight. Gwendolyn quickly followed suit.

"I want you both to read it all," he said, "Consider it part of your punishment for lying." He stood up and stepped towards the door. Empty-handed, he paused and turned back to us, "You're both grounded indefinitely. And keep those away from your sisters. They don't need to see that."

Gwen and I both knew that our younger sisters would be punished for keeping my lies to themselves. They would start a familiar rotation of chores and punishment and it would force them back to their own ways. They were still our dad's little girls and he knew the exact way to keep them as so.

When he closed the door, Gwen groaned loudly and chucked the packet against the wall, letting it fall down onto my bed in a crinkled mess. "I don't want yours too," I complained, moving over there to throw it back at her, "Do you think he'll give us pop quizzes just to make sure we've read it?" I settled back down onto my own bed.

"I wouldn't put it past him," she said glumly, "At least I'll ace my health class after this."

I couldn't help but smile at her dry humor. "And now I won't feel so under-educated compared to Ronnie. Even though this might scare me away from ever doing anything sexual ever."

Gwen's lips pressed together. "Were you planning on it?" she asked, her eyes meeting mine, "You know, with him?"

I shrugged, eyes cast down at the carpet. "Maybe eventually," I answered quietly, "I hadn't thought about it too much, but it would've been nice to make the choice for myself."

She nodded. "I understand. Do you think you and Ronnie will last now?"

"He cares about me." I shrugged. "I don't think it's just the hope of something like that that's keeping him here."

She tied her light hair up into a ponytail and then reached for her backpack. We'd been grounded before and we new the protocol. We were't allowed downstairs until he called us for dinner and only out of our room to use the restroom, but then we were required to be right back inside. Since we didn't have anything remotely entertaining, we both turned to homework, deciding to get caught up through the entire week.

"Do you think he'll take away my magazine's?" Gwen questioned as she picked through the problems of her Algebra book, "When I run out of tedious things to do, I mean."

I glanced at the hoard of magazines under her bed and shrugged. "Just hide some in your underwear drawer," I suggested, "I doubt he'll ransack it looking for contraband."

She chuckled and smiled at me over the gap. Being grounded wasn't terrible when you were shut up in a room with one of your bestfriends. Gwen and I could usually find something to do if we had endless time and if we were quiet enough our father would never know that we were having fun despite his attempts at keeping it from us.

"Sorry I got you into this mess," I said as I tossed by Algebra II book to the floor and pulled my English closer.

She hummed and shrugged to suggest that she really didn't care all that much. "If I ever like someone that Dad hates as much as he hates Ronnie, I expect you'll be on my side."

I grinned. "Always."