Danny would be Adonis, too perfect for his own good with a face made to break hearts. Alden has a Zeus-like air to his features, with a straight nose and a thick beard. I could imagine him tossing thunderbolts with precision. River would be Ares, the god of war, with his fierce eyes and lips that form a harsh line whenever he looks at me. Mark is most like Hermes, with his leaner build, and Tobias is most like Atlas. With his thick muscles and strong jaw, he could totally hold the world on his shoulders.
But all of them might as well be Cerberus, the three-headed hound of the underworld, snarling and snapping at whoever approaches. They want to drag me down to their level, and they seem to have succeeded all too easily.
For a flash, a surge of heat spreads over my face. I look down at the grocery bags in my hands and wonder how the hell I got here. A week ago, I was living with my mom, the picture of normality. Now I’m stooping to previously inconceivable levels, filled with bile and hatred and a hunger for revenge that I don’t fully understand.
Mark has so many accountancy books on his bookshelf. I guess he’s the numbers nerd of the family. He also has a photo of him as a child, perched on his mother’s lap. In the image, his arm is hooked around her neck in a sideways embrace, and his smile is so broad, that his gap teeth are out in full force. I swallow as I find myself wondering about the pain that they all experienced when she passed away. I lost my father in a way, but at least he’s still alive. We might be estranged right now, but there is always the tiniest flicker of a belief that we may talk again in the back of my mind. Knowing he’s out there means that I haven’t fully had to grieve his loss.
Blowing out a breath and shaking the thoughts from my head, I stride toward Mark’s closet, pulling the fish from the packet and sliding it into a shoebox resting on the top shelf. The smell is already rank, and the fish is still relatively fresh. After a full day out of its packet in the warmth of the room, it’s going to be ripe!
Tobias’s room is next. Unlike his brother, he maintains no order in his space. Discarded clothes hang over his chair, and his bedsheets are so disheveled I can imagine him thrashing around in a nightmare. Books are spread open on his desk in evidence of his studying, and trophies spread like a shiny parade across his shelves. A board displays around twenty retro-style photos of Tobias and his brothers and friends. There are women in the snaps, sometimes with their arms draped around his shoulders or their lips pressed to his cheeks. They look like the kinds of photos I have stored on my phone from my final years at college. Days when I used to hang out with all the football players and cheerleaders, pretending I loved the drinking and the backstabbing, trying to keep up with everyone, so they didn’t think I was a weirdo who enjoyed pottery more than I enjoyed dancing and hooking up.
Maggie wasn’t like that. She was the one person in my life who I would have considered confiding in, but then she had a fling with our mutual friend’s ex-boyfriend and ended up pregnant. By the time I found out about what was happening, she’d already left and moved in with her foster brothers. The rest, as they say, is history.
Tobias also has a picture of his mom on his nightstand, as though he’s placed it close, so she’s the last thing he sees before he goes to sleep.
Fuck.
Why the hell do these assholes have to be so human?
Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe all these pranks are pushing me too far? But as Maggie said, it’s war. They started this. Is it so terrible for me to try to finish it?
Tobias’s closet is as messy as his bedroom, so hiding the fish is easier, and I continue through Alden’s room, which is filled with art that makes me stop in my tracks, to River’s and Danny’s. In each, I find myself having to ignore the masculine scent that lingers in the air and all the things that make them less two-dimensional.
By the time each room has a fish in the closet, my chest feels hollow, and there’s a lump in my throat. None of this feels right to me. I don’t want to be an enemy to anyone, but my family has done nothing but take the misery inflicted by the Carltons. So now, they need a taste of their own medicine. It doesn’t matter how much it feels uncomfortable. It doesn’t matter how much I need to push through and pretend all of this is water off a duck’s back for me. If I have to act as though I’m enjoying the retaliation, I will. I’ll make them believe that I’m a woman who can’t be walked all over. I’ll show them that not all Hortons lie down and take it as my dad did.