Clandestine

forty one

-diane-

Andrew finds me after fifteen minutes. I've gotten half of my clothes in the closet, but I don't know what to do with all my random possessions. He says that supper is ready, letting me escape from the current problem.

I walk downstairs and find that Kristy has made lasagna. Not the frozen kind with the cheap cheese and crumbling noodles.

Fresh lasagna.

I sit down at a nicely made table. Andrew sits on one side of the table, Kristy on the other.

This is the way a proper family should sit. For a second I feel like their child.

I was never able to do this with my family. You can't be the perfect three when your mother died. My father was rarely home. I usually sat on the couch watching television while eating.

We begin eating and the food is incredible. I realize I've never tasted anything so delicious before.

Kristy makes small talk about how school is going, to which I have to respond that I'm not technically in school, that I was being homeschooled. Kristy says that I can choose to go to a public school or just continue online.

I know that I'll just continue online. I don't see the point in going to a place where you want to learn when you have to tolerate a bunch of kids who don't want to learn. If I'm going to have to spend my time learning about things, I'd rather actually learn than waste it.

When Kristy exhausts all the respectful conversation topics that aren't too intrusive, we talk about my room and what I'd like to do with it.

Kristy is a part time home decorator which explains all the cute little knick knacks that lie around the house. Kristy hopes to someday leave her accounting job and work full time as a decorator.

The meal passes quickly and before I know it we are clearing the dishes. I try to help, but Kristy and Andrew shoo me away. I try to make an argument about how I'm living in this house and I have to pull my own weight and somehow manage to pay my rent, but they just laugh me away and say they'll find something for me to do once I'm settled.

I find my way back to my room so that I can finish unpacking.

I shift through my suitcase and pull out my laptop. I think I will have enough time to do this now without someone coming in on me.

I suppose one thing about living in a house with other people is that you have to be used to interruptions.

Unfortunately, hacking isn't something that should be interrupted.

And I need to hack. At least, I think I should have to. I need to find out who this Julia girl is.

If Julia was punished for talking to me as she said she was, there should be a record of it on the Assembly reports website. Of course, there wasn't a report of my father's death, but this might be different.

What if I can never find out who she is? I don't think I will be able to trust her without knowing where she came from.

I hack into the website layer by layer. If Andrew or Katy were to come into my room right now and distract me, the website would tag my computer as an intruder. I can't be distracted.

I tear away the barriers around the website until it's completely open to me. Then I do a complete search of the website for the name Julia.

There are thousands of finds.

I expected this. Julia is a common name. Surely there must be hundreds of criminals throughout history that would have the name Julia.

I narrow my search down to finds within this year.

The searches lower to hundreds.

I didn't expect it to be this many. After all, how many criminals could have been named Julia? Perhaps there is a serial killer named Julia.

I page through the results and freeze.

Julia Quintana is the only name that was found for those hundreds of times.

It couldn't be. Julia couldn't be...she couldn't be Marcia Quintana's daughter. She...

I open another browser on my computer and type in the name Julia Quintana. Surely the daughter of the most powerful Assembly would be in the media quite a bit. Some paparazzi must have managed to find a picture of her.

Hundreds of pictures show up as I search images. Though her hair is all the colors of the rainbow, it's clear that it is her. The most recent picture of her is of her sitting at a table of a ritzy party with bright pink hair, bent over laughing with the same two friends she dragged out of my party.

Julia is the daughter of my father's enemy.

Julia is my enemy.