The Project

My Real Family

-Arista's POV-

I have always like air travel, even though my family could rarely afford it. We were middle class in every sense of the word. However, we weren't a family in as many ways. I skipped out of school the week after I started my sophmore year and have not been back home since. It was not that I was abused or starved or anything physical, it was the lack of emotion in that place. My parents only cared about the upkeep of appearance, making sure my siblings and I maintained our 4.0 grade averages, excelled at extracurricular activities, and thrived in our social lives. Outside of that, they lacked empathy for anything involving us. I started working part time at age thirteen, lying about how young I was because I could always pass as older.

I hoarded my money and when I had enough, rented a tiny one room apartment in a pretty sketchy neighborhood. But it was mine, and I was finally free to live in my way. I had access to super human strength so I was never that worried for my safety. Sometimes I do wonder about my siblings who I left behind, I was second oldest out of four children. My older sister was out screwing her way through the world, becoming very popular with her employers. She was five years older than me and at just eighteen had already conceived and aborted three babies. I cry every time I think about the children she gave up. Her reason was simply that they got in her way and she did not have time to raise kids. With her short, voluptous frame and waist length dark hair, she had an utter disregard for everyone other than herself and worked her way into the elitest world of whatever boss she was sleeping with at the time.

The next in our family behind myself was another sister, she was only a year younger than me and was twelve when I left. She was the best of all of us, a little blonde angel who could never think the worst of anybody. Slender and delicate, lacking the curves my older sister and I inherited from our mother, she charmed the world with her bright smile and blue eyes. I think our father loved her best, she was the closest thing to perfection a human could achieve.

After her a brother, only six years old and already the spawn of satan. He would hang my little sister's dolls from her ceiling fan and even cut off one of her braids while she slept one night. She had to take her school pictures with a very new pixie cut hairstyle as he cut it just below her ears, and being the sweet girl she was she smiled and said she now looked like a fairy and thanked him for the new haircut. He enjoyed killing our pets, even the kittens I was so fond of. When I found one with its neck snapped and the poor little body left in the bird bath in our backyard I wept for an hour before I was able to bury it. Our mother adored him, he was her baby boy, her only boy. He played Little League baseball and would always mimic our father much to her delight, but only me and my older sister saw him as the devil incarnate. Mother saw him as the poster child for every cliche sport for boys, putting him in baseball and football and always showing up to his games with big posters that has his number on it depicted in his teams colors of blue and gold. Only I saw him break a teamates arm when they took his gatorade.

The funny thing was the fact that everyone who knew us thought we were so perfectly happy. My older sister was several states away, her misdeameanors were kept within the family, so to the outside eye my parents had four lovely children, a simple two story grey house in a nice neighborhood with a wrap-around porch and a very pretty green yard and white fence combo, and were head of the church board. We looked as though we were spit out of any 1940's family show, and we acted it. It was a living hell. I broke my arm when I was little falling out of a tree and my parents barely batted an eye, they just took me to the doctor and gave me my medicine on time. I was emotionally starved as a child and will always hold it against them.

As a child you crave love and can not understand why it is witheld even when you do your very best to be the very best. So even as I am trapped in a secret orginazation that thrives off the forced labor of children, I can be happy in it. The people I meet wear their hearts on their sleeves, not because of a show of affection but because of their revealed rage and anger, their sadness and frustration. Everyone here is a volatile mix of feelings and I love it.

We continue to fly through the air as I watch Cade, restlessly bouncing his leg while his eyes observe everything. He seems wound tight with the anticipation of what is to come.

Nick is almost a statue in how still he sits, lost in thought. His eyes are clouded with whatever is pulling at his mind.

Cole is unable to be still as he runs from window to window in the plane, calling out to anyone who listens about what is beneath us now. His childish excitement is heartwarming.

And I realize that these people who I am about to risk my life with, are the only reasons I would ever kill.