The Dark Side Ep. 01

Ten years ago.

It was a quiet night before Christmas. In the house all the lights were out and seemingly everyone had gone to sleep. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, this silence was interrupted by a short creak of a door, coming from the upper floor. Someone whispered something, but maybe it was just a wind outside. It was hard to tell from the living room where the Christmas tree was located. Another short creak on the upper floor, followed by whisper and quiet laugh. Then again silence for a moment, which seemed to be very long.

A sound of carefully placed and silenced steps appeared on the upper floor. They slowly moved to the stairs and moved down. They stopped for a moment, each time the stairs creaked.

"Honey, creaking is just a security measure, so no one can get in our house unnoticed," whispered a man, while silenced footsteps approached the living room.

"It just reminds me of our teenage years," a woman whispered back, with a smile in her voice.

"Yeah, your parents garded you well," man whispered. His words were followed by short and quiet femenin giggle.

"Hush, knight," the woman said quietly. "Put the biggest present in front, that's for Robbie," she continued after kneeling next to the Christmas tree.

"What did you get for him?" a man asked, while placing the big, wrapped present, in front of the Christmas tree.

"Something that every man would want for Christmas," the woman quietly replied, while placing and arranging other presents under the tree.

Man chuckled. "Don't you think he's too young for that?"

"Shut up, you dirty mind," the woman giggled. "He's just four years old and he'll get something nice from Lego."

"I don't know what you're talking about," the man smirked. " I was thinking about PlayStation. Marta and Annie also would love it."

"Marta is just six and Annie is just eight, and I don't want to turn this house into a non-blinking-sleeping-zombie world," the woman got serious.

Suddenly, a light switch clicked and the room was filled with bright light. At first, both adults seemed to be surprised by the lights coming on, but after a moment their looks turned to a young girl who was standing next to a door on the opposite side of the room.

"Annie?" The man was surprised. "Is everything ok? Why are you not sleeping?"

Young girl, with dark brown hair , dressed in her pink pajamas, looked at her parents in disbelief. She tried to say something, but nothing came out.

"Lyers," she unexpectedly cried out, bursting into tears. "I hate you," she shouted and ran over to the door on the other side of the room, and up the stairs, into her room.

THE DARK SIDE

Episode 1

Present

The school bell rang and my last fall semester as high school senior was over. As usual for the last class of a semester, it was with our class head-teacher, who handed out our final mark reports. Classmates packed their stuff, if they had any left on their tables, in their backpacks and hurried out, wishing Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, or just wishing happy winter holidays; while our head-teacher Ms. Pine tried to hug as many of them as she could.

I was finishing packing and reorganizing my backpack, when I felt someone approaching my table.

"Annie, do you have a moment?" Ms. Pine asked. I looked up. She was standing on the other side of my table and looked at me with her big eyes. I never managed to tell the color of her eyes. They are somewhat between dark blue and dark gray, but her pupils are always so big. I don't know why, but it's so hard to look away, when I look into them.

"Yeah," I breathed out. Ms. Pine smiled and moved to her desk.

"I want to talk with you about your grades," she reached her desk and took out a kettle from under it. I gave her a confused look. In response she just smiled at me for a brief moment and disappeared into the bathroom.

"Grades?" I breathed out and became a bit paler with every moment she was filling the kettle with water in the bathroom. I grabbed my backpack and looked for my mark report. "Is there a problem?" I think I vocalized my thoughts. I must say that my surprise and confusion lies in the fact that I'm a very good student. Almost Excellent, if not perfect. I can't recall a time when I had a mark lower than 8 out of 10 in any of the subjects.

While I was examining my mark report, water from the tap in the bathroom stopped running and Ms. Pine returned to her desk, plugged the kettle in a power extension cord and pushed the button on it, for boiling to start.

"Would you like tea or coffee?" she asked, like she hadn't heard my question. I took my eyes off the mark report and with the same confused expression looked at her. There she was again - behind her teacher's desk, touching the top of it with her darkly red painted fingernails, looking straight at me with her eyes, while her lips curled up in a pleasant smile.

"Um... Am..." came out of me, instead of an answer. Maybe some more unarticulated sounds, until the kettle started boiling and she turned away, to get cups.

"Let's have multi-fruit tea," she said, arranging tea cups on her desk and taking a package with tea bags out of one of her desk shelves. Meanwhile, I returned my attention to my mark report and scanned it one more time, but still I had no clue where the problem was hiding.

"Annie, come here," Ms. Pine said, as soon as the kettle turned off. "Or you would like me to bring tea over there?"

I looked up, but she wasn't looking at me. At least not directly. She was busy pouring water in tea cups. "No," I breathed out. " I'm coming."

I closed my eyes, counted to 10, opened them, stood up and walked over to her desk.

Take a chair, come and sit down," Ms. Pine encouraged me. "What's wrong Annie?" she asked as soon as I took a chair from a nearby table and placed it next to her desk, to sit down.

"Um... You said you want to talk with me about my grades. Em... But..." I touched the tea cup on my side of the desk and instantly pulled my hand away. It was enormously hot. I looked up at Ms. Pine who sat down on the other side of the desk and nodded towards me, while wearing a smile on her face. After a short moment I continued: "But, I don't understand where's the problem with my marks?"

"Annie, why do you think there's a problem?" Ms. Pine placed a candy box and package with cookies on the desk between our tea cups. I looked down, in my tea cup, in which a tea bag was floating and coloring water in a darkish tone of red. "There's no problem. With an average mark of 9.63 out of 10, you have the highest mark among high school seniors this semester," she explained after a brief moment of silence.

"Then, everything is fine?" I asked with worry in my voice, not daring to look at her.

"You've worked hard this semester," Ms. Pine said, taking her tea bag by the string and twirling it around her cup. "For the last three years I have worked here,you always had the highest marks in the class."

"Yes, I have, but I haven't cheated," I blurted out, taking the string of my tea bag and unconsciously copying her movements.

"Annie," after a short moment of silence, Ms. Pine placed her left palm on my right hand, which was drawing circles in the cup with a tea bag. "Please, don't worry. Everything is excellent."

As soon as she touched me, I instantly froze. I couldn't explain that, because her palm was warm and her touch , as well as skin felt very soft. My sight moved to her left hand which was cupping my right hand. Only then I noticed that her fingernails are not just simply painted in darkish red color, but they have small pictures, like pictograms on every of them, in a slightly different tone. Or maybe I was just imagining things.

"I want to talk with you about your future plans and discuss the ways on how you could even better prepare for centralized state exams, to get better grades in your high school diploma." she continued.

I breathed a sigh of relief. She took her hand away and I moved my sight up, where I met her smile and her eyes. "I don't know. After school, I think, I'll go to uni," my voice cracked a bit.

"Which fields are you interested in? Have you already checked study program descriptions?" Ms. Pine asked, looking straight at me. She moved her tea bag to the side of the cup, and took the teacup in both hands, put it to her lips and drank a bit.

"No, I haven't," I looked down and shook my head in denial. "But my boyfriend studies at University of Latvia, Faculty of Humanities. I think I'll choose something that is available there." I paused for a moment and took a cookie from the box in front of me. "Maybe something languages or translation related."

"Are languages your passion?" Ms. Pine asked, while grabbing a candy from a candy box.

It took a moment for me to give a response. Mainly because I never thought about what I'll be studying from the point of view of my passion. It always was me and my boyfriend - that we should study next to each other, so we could spend time together as much as possible.

"Umm... I think that working as a proofreader, editor, or translator is a good job for stay at home moms," I finally said.

Ms. Pine took a sipp from her cup, while looking straight at me. Even as I was looking down into my tea cup, I could feel her eyes on me. I felt like I'm in an exam for which I hadn't prepared, and for some reason my teacher's approval of my choice mattered to me. The silence seemed very long, even if it was just for a few seconds.

When Ms. Pine put her tea cup back on desk, she said in the same confident manner, which she always had: "It's very good that you know your goals and passions. Being a mom and being able to be with children as much as possible is the most wonderful thing in the world."

A goosebumps ran down my spine. My teacher just approved of my choices. It felt so pleasant. A smile appeared on my face and I looked up, to meet her gaze.

"Annie," Ms. Pine's facial expression transformed to a serious one. " You have a very bright mind and you're capable of much more than just following someone."

"What do you mean?" my smile dropped a bit.

"I am saying that you, Annie, are a smart, intelligent young woman, who is curious and goal oriented," she drank a bit more from her cup, to continue after a short moment of silence. "As a teacher, I must give you one, but very important advice, that will help throughout your life: never base your happiness and your future plans on one person, unless you can predict it. People are temporarily in our lives, they come and go, for various reasons, while you're stuck together with your life."

I wanted to say something, to protest that my boyfriend Intar is not going anywhere, but couldn't vocalize my thoughts, so I grabbed another cookie from a cookie box, which was followed by candie from a candy box, and sipped warm tea from the cup.

"Hey, Annie, are you coming?" came a familiar voice from the hallway. "Mom and dad are waiting on ya."

I turned to the door, to see my brother Robbie standing there, wrapped in his winter coat and scarf, wearing his warm smurf-alike winter cap, and having his backpack on one shoulder. Then I looked back at Ms. Pine, who gave me a pleasant smile, with a slight nod. "Robbie, I'm coming," I turned to face my brother. "I should be down there in 10 minutes."

"Yeah, right," he smirked, " They are parked on the right side of the parking lot, next to the big oak." He turned to leave, but paused for a moment and added: " Don't be too long, we'll be waiting for ya nigga." After that my brother ran away and we could hear his footsteps echoing in the empty hallway.

"I apologize for my little brother," I said, turning back to Ms. Pine. "He's just 14 and he's usually very nice and polite..."

"I know Annie," Ms. Pine warmly smiled. "He wants to be noticed and admired. Like most kids around his age, he thinks that the easiest way for that is through provocation."

I took candy and drank a little bit of tea. "You are always so calm with all things that happen around in our class, and you always know what to say, and act. How do you..." Ms. Pine interrupted me by placing her warm left palm on my right hand.

"Learning is the key," she warmly said. "More you study , read, and experience for topics you're interested in, and go an extra mile for subjects you're not interested in, the more you'll know. There's no such thing as knowing too much, and you never know when that extra mile could save your day or life." She took her palm away and drew her attention to her purse.

I grabbed one more cookie and finished up my tea. Before I could thank her and get up, she took out a pencil and note paper from her purse and turned back to me.

"Before you go, I wanted to give you something," Ms. Pine said and quickly wrote something on note paper and handed it over to me.

"What's that?" I looked down at the paper she gave me. There was a web address and some kind of access code under it.

"It's the web address of a school," she explained. "Very prestigious private school where only students with extremely high marks and good recommendations are accepted."

"Oh," I gasped. "I don't think my family could afford private school, not even talking about prestigious ones."

"It's prestigious not because they study kids from wealthy families, but because they constantly have highest marks in centralized state exams," Ms. Pine kept explaining. "If I remember correctly, in the last five years, the average mark for high school diploma never slipped under 9.8 out of 10. Besides, there are no fees for studying over there."

"Do you want me to transfer over there?" I looked up at Ms. Pine, slightly confused. "I have only one semester left to study."

"Annie," Ms. Pine started, but paused for a moment. "I'm just telling you about opportunities. You should research this opportunity and see if it fits you." She paused for another moment, to drink some tea. "In my opinion, here you don't have anyone with whom you could compete, but there you'll be among like minded people who want to learn and not afraid of going an extra mile or two to research one or another topic."

"ok," I stood up and smiled at Ms. Pine. "Thank you. I promise to look at it when I get home."

I went to my table and slipped the note along with my mark report into my backpack. Zipped all the zippers and turned around to see my class head teacher. She was there, now standing behind her desk and looking at me.

"Ups," I said, noticing that I forgot to put back the chair that I took from a nearby table to sit on. I went back and put it in its place. "Sorry for that, I almost forgot," I tried to explain myself.

Ms. Pine just smiled broadly. "I'm happy that we got a chance to talk in a less formal way," she said.

I don't know who hugged who first, but it felt amazing. A warm and pleasant sensation overtook me, and I didn't want to let her go, but eventually, I had to. We wished each other happy holidays .I took my backpack and went out of the classroom. At the door I turned around and looked at Ms. Pine one last time, this semester. She was back behind her desk and looking at me. I waved to her bye and she waved me back. Maybe it was just my imagination, but for a moment I thought that she made a kissing movement with her lips. With a smile on my lips I disappeared in the hallway.

Just a few more minutes later I walked over the school parking lot to my parents car, trying not to slip on snowy and icy ground. On reaching the car, I got in the back passenger seat , on the right side. Everyone cheered when I opened the car door.

"How did it go?" my dad, who was behind the wheel, asked.

" We heard that you had to stay after the class," my mom who sat in the front passenger seat, on the right side, added.

"I missed you too," I looked for my seat belt. "My average is 9.63 out of 10."

"Genius!" Robbie, who was sitting next to the left back passenger door, exclaimed.

"What was that after class about?" my dad asked, while he drove out of the parking lot on the street.

"Nothing much, some treats, and some home tasks in which I should look into," I said, moving my attention to my sister Marta, who was sitting between me and Robbie.

"Ms. Pine doesn't give you a break even during the winter holidays," my mom laughed.

My sister was occupied with her smartphone. She was typing something and scrolling through the pictures. I couldn't see exactly what she was doing there, so I leaned in, trying to look over her shoulder.

"She's a lesbian. Isn't she?" my brother asked.

Suddenly, my sister Marta jumped a little bit and turned her phone's screen off. I wasn't sure if that was because she felt me trying to see what she's busy with, or due to Robbie's question.

"Who?" Marta, surprised, asked.

"Head teacher of Annie's class," my brother explained.

"What?!" I exclaimed in a loud voice. "Are you sick or something?"

My sister slightly jumped again and this time covered her right ear.

"Why do you think so?" my mom calmly asked.

"Because she has short hair," my brother answered. Hearing that my mom started slightly laughing. "No, I'm serious, I've read it online," Robbie protested. "The article described how to recognize a lesbian."

"What are these signs?" my mom tried to ask without laughing.

"Oh, there was a lot," Robbie was really excited to be able to tell about his discovery. "One of the signs was that they wear shirts and pants, instead of blouses and skirts, another one was that they wear rings on their right hand, not on left."

"Shut up, little smurf," I exclaimed, this time in a bit lower voice. "That's total crap. If girl has short hair and wears pants, it doesn't mean she's a lesbian."

"I'm not a smurf," my brother felt wunded.

"Hush, everyone," my mom interrupted us before our fight could go even higher. " Annie, let your brother talk. I really want to know."

"No, she called me a smurf," Robbie protested.

"Ok, I'm sorry, you're not a smurf," I said sarcasticly. " Go on and thell what you know, lesbian expert."

"Annie," my mom said in a bit of a frustrated voice.

"Umm, then another sign there was that they wear earring only in one ear, they have piercings in their belly button, nipples and elsewhere," my brother continued.

"How do you know that it's true? Anyone can write anything they want," my mom said.

"It is," my brother tried to stand on his truth. " I saw it on TV."

"On TV?" My mom was surprised.

"I think he's in trouble now," I whispered in Marta's ear. In response, she weakly smiled.

"Yes, on the Adult Channel," Robbie explained to my mom.

"I didn't know we ordered such a channel package," she turned to my dad, who was looking straight at the road in front of him.

"No, mom," Robbie tried to explain. "It's on the Nickelodeon channel. During the day they show Nickelodeon, but during the night the Adult Channel."

"He's not the only one," Marta whispered back to me and we shared glances with each other.

Knowing my mom, I expected her to say something about the rules which we have at home. For example, we're not allowed to watch TV during the night and we may not use screens after 10 PM till 6 AM. Only exceptions are family nights, when all of us gather in the living room and as a family watch TV or movies from streaming service. She could also threaten that she'll complain about this to our cable TV service provider.

Instead my mom just inhaled, like she wanted to say something, but nothing followed. For a few minutes we drove in silence. No one dared to say something. Getting into an argument with mom is like playing with a fire - everything can end up well or not, depending on the seriousness of the argument.

Marta had sunken back into her smartphone and scrolled through her Instagram feed, placing hearts under pics. Robbie pretended to be asleep, with his smurf like cap over his eyes, my dad looked at the road in front of him. It was hard to tell if my dad was just concentrating on the icy road and keeping a safe distance from the car in front of us, or if he was thinking about something. I couldn't see what my mom was doing, but I assumed she was thinking about something.