Anvil

He recalled them talking about the famous painting in class. "Expressionist Edvard Munch painted The Scream in 1893 in Oslo, Norway. He was important--"

"No, Andre. I'm not looking for historical facts. I'm asking for your impression of the painting. Your interpretation of what it's saying emotionally," the teacher corrected gently.

He stared at the desk surface and remained quiet. It was a painting of a cartoonish figure screaming. He didn't know what to say. He knew he wouldn't get away with using one of the answers he'd used on the assignments.

She turned the page to Gustav Klimt's painting, The Kiss. All the facts popped into Andre's head, but he knew she wasn't interested in hearing them.

She looked at him with a sad expression and closed the book. "I have a nephew who has the same difficulty with connecting emotions and expressing--"

"I'm nervous. You're making me feel very uncomfortable," he blurted defiantly.

Her brows rose in surprise. "Oh! I'm sorry. It wasn't my intent. I'm just trying to determine what challenges you're having in my class. You aren't exactly the same as my nephew, but there's a large gradient on the spectrum. You must be very close to the top, as you seem to have no difficulty with most activities," she said gently.

He blinked at her in confusion.

She paused as she saw he didn't know what she was talking about. "Have you not spoken with a doctor about this?"

He frowned as she was making no sense, and he was growing more nervous by the second. "I've been to the hospital before. I've seen doctors," he snapped. He began preparing to leave.

She saw she wasn't connecting with him, so she'd just let him go for now and keep an eye on him in her class. She believed she understood now and would compensate for his condition. She decided she would revise and resubmit his class marks. He was doing very well on the elements he could do, so he deserved to have this reflected in his grade. She stood, and his eyes flicked to her once more nervously. "That's all I wanted to speak to you about. See you in class tomorrow?"

He stopped moving and looked at her again, then nodded.

She turned and left, and he watched her go. He glanced up at the clock. His half-hour of peaceful reading wasn't going to happen now. He needed to walk off his stress. He put his earbuds back in and left the library. He made it outside and walked around the block a few times until he felt himself recenter.

It was time for class.

Chapter 3

Cassandra gave her departing customer a professional smile, immediately turned off the light at her wicket, and locked her drawer. She ignored the scowls of the customers waiting in the line and headed for the hallway leading to the basement lunchroom. Two of the other tellers were sitting at a table together, talking and finishing up their lunch. They should have returned to work minutes ago to free her to leave on hers. She'd waited long enough.

They glanced at her, and their eyes immediately went to the wall clock.

"Shit! We're late!" Wendy cursed.

"Yes, you are," she commented over her shoulder as she went to the fridge to get her lunch.

She heard them scrambling to tidy up and the whispered bitch from Wendy, which wasn't unexpected from her. Helen snorted and stifled her laughter. They hustled out of the lunchroom to get back up to their stations. Not that they were in any danger of being challenged by the manager. Wendy and Helen would just bat their eyelashes at him and preen for his leering eyes, and he'd let it slide.

Cassandra ensured she wasn't late, completed her work on time, offered the bank's services to the customers each time they approached her wicket, regardless of their need or interest in them, and maintained a professional attitude throughout her business day. She had the best rating for sales amongst the tellers aside from Hamesh, who was a terrible flirt with the older ladies who approached his wicket.

Truthfully, Cassandra didn't care how much she sold and didn't want top spot on that leaderboard. This job was just a placeholder for her, but she would ensure she received an excellent referral.

Retrieving the lunch Andre made for her, she stopped by the TV mounted on the wall and turned the volume down. She didn't need to hear the news while she read her book. No one else would join her for the late lunch period.

She sat at the table in the corner, facing the door, and she pulled out her paperback.

She took the sandwich out of the bag and added the fresh tomato slices. Her first bite was heaven. He knew exactly how much mayo and how much pepper to add. She ate slowly to draw as much pleasure from her small meal as possible. Andre was a treasure!

Something flashed on the TV screen and caught her eye. It was a local story of child abuse being exposed.

Invading her peaceful thoughts, her memories of the police arriving at her apartment two years ago surfaced.

It had been so unexpected. The officers first confirmed she was the sister of Andre Volkov and took her to the hospital, where they said he was recovering from a beating.

All the way there, she was thinking of her father's hot temper and was terrified to see the damage he'd done to the skinny little boy she'd last seen three years earlier.

When she'd been guided to the exam room where Andre was resting on the bed, she'd locked up as she'd thought they'd taken her to the wrong room. The man stretched out on the bed was a complete stranger. The skinny and frail thirteen-year-old boy she recalled was now a muscular and handsome sixteen-year-old young man, aside from the black eyes, bruises, and the broken nose. The muscles were the most surprising of all.

When his eyes turned and locked on hers, she felt that connection like a physical jolt. She saw him then. The boy she remembered was inside those eyes, and he was desperately sad. She'd immediately moved forward and gently kissed his forehead. She didn't know where to put her hands, as he was so bruised.

Finally, she just took his hands in hers. His eyes were very glassy as he'd been given painkillers, but she saw the joy in them, and that filled her with a happiness she'd forgotten she could feel. When she blinked away her tears, she saw he was asleep. She stared at the damage that monster had done to her brother and felt her rage slipping free. She turned to face a nurse who was waiting inside the drawn privacy curtain. That seemed a little odd.

"Where is he? He won't get away with beating Andre like this," Cassandra said softly, to not wake him.

The nurse shook her head and gestured for her to follow her outside the curtain. She gently released his hands from hers and kissed his forehead again to calm him.

Stepping outside, she looked at the nurse. "I've been with your brother since he was admitted, and he opened up to me. Perhaps because we look similar," the blond nurse added with a small smile, then continued. "Your father didn't beat him. It was his stepmother, Gloria," she said quietly, and Cassandra was rocked by the news. The nurse pressed on. "Andre confessed the woman has been sexually abusing him... for years."

Cassandra broke down and cried on the nurse's shoulder as guilt ripped through her for abandoning her brother in that house of vipers.

The tickle of the tear rolling down her cheek brought her back from her memories. She wiped it away and went back to eating the sandwich he'd made for her. She ate slowly to cherish every bite.

The chocolate pudding he'd packed in the bag satisfied her need for something sweet. She watched her weight and did her best to not overeat. Her only overindulgence was occasional binge drinking. She knew that wasn't healthy, but it was her only outlet for dealing with her frustrations and unhappiness.

Andre was the only bright spot in her life, and she'd failed him so terribly. The man he was today was still very much a stranger to her, as he didn't seem to open up to anyone. He rarely spoke at all.

She couldn't help but feel that was at least partially her fault.

She knew she wouldn't have been able to get him away from her father and Gloria when she left, but she hadn't even tried. The day she fled from that house, she remembered his wide, frightened eyes watching her from the door leading to the basement, where his room was. When their father cursed at her, Andre fled to his room, and to her, it felt like he was abandoning her.

She'd turned her back on her family as well when she left.

Three years later, she took Andre back after his abuse.

After the hours they spent at the hospital, the police took her and Andre back to their father's house to collect Andre's clothes and items because, for the short term, he was going to be in her care.

When they arrived, their father, Pietro Volkov, was drunk but backed off sullenly when the police officers told him not to interfere. Andre went downstairs to pack while she remained in the kitchen. The moment the police stepped outside, Pietro returned to confront her. His rough voice was still clear in her mind.

"I told you to never come back, ungrateful bitch!"

Her temper flared as well, one of her father's gifts. "I wouldn't have had to come back if that fat cow you married hadn't sexually abused Andre! I guess you weren't man enough for her!"

His backhand across her cheek caught her by surprise, and she was knocked to the floor after she crashed into the kitchen counter.

Her rage exploded, and her split lip didn't prevent her mouth from firing another salvo. "So, your cowardice leaves you no other option but to strike women, little man?"

Pietro roared and lunged at her with murder in his eyes.

"NO, PAPA!" Andre yelled and tackled his father before he reached Cassandra. The two fell to the floor, but Andre was only trying to hold his father back from his sister. Pietro turned his frustration and anger on his son. He pinned Andre to the floor and punched his face.

Cassandra tried to stop him and scratched his face before he slapped her off her feet again.

He touched his cheek and looked at his bloody fingers before looking into her eyes. "I should have put you in the ground with Leslie."

Andre tried to break free, but Pietro went back to hitting him.

Cassandra stumbled out of the house and the two officers smoking by their cruiser saw her and came running. They rushed inside and pulled the man from his bloody son. She returned and gently touched Andre's shoulder. He turned bleary eyes toward her, smiled, then passed out.

They went back to the hospital, and Andre had his nose reset once more. When the police interviewed her, Cassandra repeated what her father had said. The officers asked who Leslie was, and she explained.

Leslie Punk was the woman Pietro married before Gloria. She supposedly left him after four years of marriage. One morning, the kids woke to find she was gone. She was friendly but not the nurturing type, preferring to spend most of her time tending her precious vegetable garden behind the house. Cassandra confessed to the police that she hadn't connected the disappearance to her father's forbidding them to work in the garden after Leslie went missing.

As their previous home was in the neighboring state, the police contacted local authorities to dig up the garden. In the meantime, they gathered more information from Cassandra about Pietro's wives.

Before Leslie, Pietro had been married to Eleanor Vandenstein, Andre's birth mother. Cassandra's memories of her were of a nervous woman, always worrying and never happy. She also didn't bond well with children, even her own. She suffered chronic weakness and ultimately committed suicide when Andre was five and Cassandra was nine. She recalled her father scolding the woman about how poor a mother she was compared to Cassandra's mother, Kira, and how prestigious the Marin family was back in his home country of Georgia compared to the Vandenstein's in America.

Cassandra didn't understand then but now realized he was speaking of his wife's family, not his own, the Volkovs. She told the police she had no memories of her own mother as she must have been just a year old when Pietro emigrated to the States with her.

The police continued their investigation while Cassandra brought Andre home from the hospital.

Their first weeks together were rocky. Her guilt tormented her, and she had her habits and a small apartment. Fitting someone else into that led to short tempers and sharp words, but only from her. In a moment of weakness, the memory of how he fled from her when she was forced out of the house caused her to accuse him of abandoning her. She recalled how he dropped to his knees before her as he shook his head vehemently, fear in his eyes and tears on his cheeks. He apologized again and again, and her anger crumbled seeing his genuine distress.

Adding to this pressure, the police investigation found Leslie's body where the garden had been. They also got a court order to exhume Eleanor, and a new autopsy discovered traces of poison throughout her body, proving she'd been slowly poisoned for years.

Their investigation followed Pietro's journey to Poti, Georgia, when the police contacted the local authorities. They learned that a Kira Marin married Pietro Volkov against her family's wishes, had his child, and mysteriously drowned ten months after the birth. The death was listed as suspicious as she'd been a champion swimmer. Then Pietro disappeared with the infant.

Somehow, the sordid tale of her father's trail of dead spouses leaked, and the press fanned the flames of sensationalism until the story became a larger-than-life tale of a rabid serial killer. Someone connected the dots to his latest wife, Gloria Davenport, who'd been arrested on sexual interference charges, and the story went supernova.

The court had no choice but to put the two siblings into protective custody.

Cassandra arranged to have her and Andre's surnames changed to Marin, as she no longer wanted them to be associated with Volkov.

As quickly as it exploded, the story faded when Pietro was found dead in his cell. His cellmate had killed him with a shiv. There would be no trial, and the public's bloodlust seemed to be quenched by his ultimate end.

Gloria pleaded guilty and avoided having to endure a lengthy trial of her own.

The bank Cassandra worked for had a branch with an opening in a decent-sized city in a neighboring state, so they offered her a teller position there, and she accepted. She found another inexpensive one-bedroom apartment, as it was all she could afford, and they moved. She enrolled Andre in the local high school to finish his last year. His school transcript showed his grades were excellent, so the school was pleased to get him.

They managed to slip into their new life with relatively few ripples, and they kept their heads down.

Cassandra folded her lunch bag and put it into her carryall with her book as she looked up at the wall clock. It was almost time to go back to her wicket. She'd spent her lunch hour lost in her memories and not happy ones at that.

Then she remembered Andre was going to make her dinner tonight.

That brought a smile back to her face.

Chapter 4

Andre successfully endured another morning of classes and avoided the drama the other students seemed to thrive on. This avoidance wasn't made any easier by the fact that student seating in the classrooms was arranged alphabetically by surname in rows. The A's to D's got the coveted window row, and the S's to Z's got the row furthest from the daylight. While he would've preferred to sit at the back of the class as he'd managed in his last school, here, he was somewhere near the middle, surrounded by MacGraw and Martine, ahead and behind, and Harrison and Rossini left and right. The worst part about that was these names belonged to a clique of chatty cheerleaders. They weren't too pleased about his proximity, either. He knew that at least two, maybe three, of these ladies had boyfriends in the classroom, as he'd received glares from some of the male students, too.

The morning classes were behind him, so he put it out of his mind. He had an hour until his next class, as he didn't eat lunch. Typically, he'd hang out in the library, but this morning's visit from Ms. Rubio soured the appeal of going there now. He could find a spot outside to read his chemistry notes, as there was a quiz this afternoon, but there wasn't any actual need to go over the material again.

As he stopped next to his locker to drop off his morning's books, he saw Mr. Garlin, the Phys Ed teacher, standing a few feet away next to the open doorway to the new weight room the school set up. Andre peered inside the room at the machines. He felt a familiar itch as he saw the stacked plates.

"Mr. Marin! You think you might sign up for the weight-lifting team if it means you get to work out on the new equipment?" the man said louder than required for their proximity. Rumor was the teacher was partially deaf.

The gym teacher was frustrated that Andre never signed up for any of his organized sports. While Andre took Phys Ed class for the exercise, the teacher noticed he avoided anything involving teams. The keen-eyed teacher knew he was fit.

Andre glanced at Mr. Garlin and shrugged as his eyes immediately returned to the machines. He really wanted to use them.

When Cassandra was forced to leave home, Gloria turned her attention to the scrawny boy in her basement. She chastised him for being weak and skinny. She brought home free weights and books on bodybuilding. She created a program and a schedule for him to follow and forced him to train. After each workout, she'd feel his muscles to see how much they'd grown. This involved a lot of touching, and he hated that part, but she told him his father wanted him to become stronger and put her in charge. She'd demean him about how weak and puny his muscles were after every workout.

When he began showing signs of improvement, Gloria increased the intensity of his workouts. It was painful, and he'd be weak as a kitten after each session. Then she'd begin touching him again, which hurt his strained muscles, but he was helpless to stop her.

Eventually, he outgrew his free weights, and she purchased an actual functional trainer like the school now had. This also meant new exercises and harder workout sessions, more pain, and longer, more thorough muscle inspections afterward. When she felt he wasn't trying hard enough, she'd punish him both verbally and physically. Truthfully, the verbal abuse was a constant as Gloria always found some fault in his effort or body.

So, he worked out harder.

Shortly before the incident where he had to leave their home, Gloria began to touch him... differently. It frightened him, yet he felt powerless to stop her.

"Marin!"

Andre jolted out of his memories as he looked at the teacher who'd been trying to get his attention.

"Geez, boy! You're practically drooling looking at the machines. Did you want to try one out?" the gym teacher asked.

He glanced at the man and nodded.

"Get your gym clothes, change, and meet me in the room," the man said.

Andre stuffed his backpack and hoodie in the locker as he pulled his gym bag out. After locking his locker, he hustled off to the boys' change room entrance and ducked inside. He quickly changed into the gym uniform of a white t-shirt, blue shorts, white sport socks, and sneakers. Everything else went into a locker, which he secured.

Three minutes after the invite, he was standing in the room next to the functional trainers. Mr. Garlin hadn't returned yet.

The school had picked up six units and installed them two to a wall in the spare room. He inspected one and confirmed the installers had done a good job with the assembly.