Manipulate

Chapter One

I look at the mirror hanging on the wall. My reflection stares back at me. My dad says that I look so much like her. My mom. I look like her. My eyes are the same shade of blue as hers and my hair is the same color, texture, and length. I can't believe this. She disappeared when I was five years old. I can't be like her. I won't be like h- My thoughts are interrupted by a loud, screeching, in-human noise.

"Abhaya! Abhaya, get down here! NOW!" My stepmother screams at me.

My dad said that he promised that he wouldn't love anyone else but Mom. He lied. To me and to him. I run down the stairs as quietly as I can.

"Don't run down the stairs! Be a lady, Abhaya!" Donatella snaps at me. Her daughters, Linda and Lillie, snicker, but Donatella doesn't scold them for anything.

"Abhaya, I need you to bring me three cups of tea and a plateful of cookies. Now!" Donatella demands.

"That's not very ladylike of you," I mutter under my breath.

"Excuse me, what did you just say?" Donatella snaps from across the room.

"N-nothing," I stutter.

I walk out of the room and down a long hallway full of valuable items and pictures of Donatella, Lillie, and Linda. My mom would never approve of their behavior. Aj and I imitate their behavior as a joke. In the end, we end up on the floor laughing until we couldn't breathe.

I head to the kitchen and open up a box of tea and set it on the stove to boil. I remember my mom teaching me how to make tea the proper way. She used to stand behind me and teach me how to boil the water and how to drain it. I set the pot on the stove and start boiling the water. While I wait, I get a box of chocolate fudge cookies out of the pantry.

They don't deserve to know my mom's recipe for cookies, cakes, dinners, and other foods. I hid the cookbooks in my room under my bed. Then I found a secret compartment in the cupboard. Donatella wouldn't dare look in there. I hear the water start to boil. I quickly start dumping the tea into three cups. I grab the plate of cookies and the cups of tea and put them onto a tray.

I walk back into the living room and set the tray down on a glass coffee table and quickly leave. I head back to my small room in the attic. Aj stops me on my way. Aj has been my best friend since I was a baby. He always wanted to take care of me, he wanted to play with me even though he had school work. He always kept me out of trouble. Aj kept my world from falling apart when mom disappeared, he always helped me when no one else could. And when Donatella married my dad, he promised me that he wouldn't let her hurt me.

"Hey, where are you going? Abhaya, I need to talk with you for a minute," Aj whispers into my ear.

"Okay. I was going to my room," I say, suspicion creeping in my mind.

Aj and I climb what seemed like the never-ending staircase up to my room.

"Abhaya, I heard dad speaking on the phone earlier. He was talking to someone. They want you to- um, well, they want you to go live in a secret society and train you to become one of them. They might know where Mom is and why she left," Aj explains to me.

"Why me, though?" I ask, unsure of the situation.

"Because, Abhaya, you know mom the best and you are strong enough to do stuff that I can't do. Plus, you are younger than me, that means it'll be easier for you to move around. There's something about you that I don't have."

Aj is right; I am small enough to fit myself inside the closet upstairs. He is right about me being younger than him. I'm only sixteen and he's twenty-one. But I wonder what makes me different from him.