Promised To The Alpha Twins
Chapter 1

I have always been a common girl, with a somewhat disastrous and complicated life due to the decisions my parents made, but always common, and I think that has been my best way to go unnoticed and avoid the problems of adolescence.

I arrived in this small town, whose name doesn’t really matter, from a much larger and more distant one, and after being placed under the legal guardianship of my mother, whom I had just started getting to know a few months ago, after the death of my paternal grandmother, who had taken care of me since I was five. Now I am only a few months away from turning eighteen and freeing myself, once and for all, from life with my mom, which couldn’t be more chaotic because she lives with a man who is not worth more than the rickety sofa on which he spends his existence reclining and drinking, with his eyes fixed on a TV screen that I don’t even think he is capable of watching.

“Are you going out?” Dub, Mom’s boyfriend, asked me, who only seems to react either when I pass by his side or when he hears that someone is about to leave, and it’s always for the same reason. “Bring me some beers, the ones in the fridge are about to run out.”

I said yes, although I know I’m not going to bring them, and not just because I’m still underage. I haven’t been saving up to buy him a drink, but rather to leave as soon as I turn eighteen.

The feeling of the cold wind on my face was all I needed at that moment and it made me want to walk. The next day classes were starting, the last semester of high school, and I didn’t even know where the school was.

“Do you know the Marie Curie School?” I asked the cashier at the store where I went to buy some cereal bars, a young woman who couldn’t be more than a few years older than me and who apparently had to make similar decisions to mine.

“Are classes starting already?” she said, with a smile that seemed to take her back to times when maybe she was happier. “You’re new around here, right?”

I nodded, somewhat embarrassed to have been discovered so easily.

“Curie is two blocks from here, down the gas station you see on your right.”

I understood what had given me away, and when I was about to leave with my purchase, I felt tempted to try my luck.

“Do you know…I don’t know, like a job?” I asked the cashier, with whom I felt like I could connect, despite having only exchanged a few words.

“Ask at the restaurants on Evans Street,” she said with the attitude of a true veteran in the pursuit of part-time jobs. “They’re always looking for waitresses.”

I thanked her for the tip with a smile that pretended to be conspiratorial, but it must have come out terribly because she looked at me with some condescension, as if saying, “I’ve been through what you’re just discovering, newbie.”

I decided to stop by the school just to see it and make sure it was where the cashier girl had told me. When I had it in front of me, I realized it was like any other school, just a bit smaller, and then I understood that, by being in a smaller town, my chances of continuing to be just a common girl who goes unnoticed were considerably reduced. This must be one of those towns where everyone knows each other by name. Suddenly, I had lost my appetite.

When I returned home, I heard my mother arguing with Dub, locked in their room as if that would prevent the noise they were making from coming out, and I was sure even the neighbors could hear it. I didn’t interfere, nor did I pay attention to what they were saying or what the reason for the argument was, although even if I wanted to ignore it, I couldn’t help but deduce that it was once again about the money that never seemed to be enough because Dub drank it all without contributing anything.

The air inside the house was stale and hot, so I stayed on the porch with my headphones connected to the maximum volume to avoid hearing the screams coming from the back of the house. It was almost nine o’clock on a Sunday night like any other, where nothing and no one passed through the streets of a small town, where I might no longer have the same opportunity I had in the big city I came from, to go unnoticed, like an ordinary girl who doesn’t want to mess with anyone, so that no one unwanted messes with her.

“Sussan,” my mother exclaimed when she saw me. I knew from her look that she didn’t expect to replace me there. The situation quickly became tense. I wasn’t even aware of what song was playing at that moment – I think it was something by Bon Jovi – and I didn’t know when I stopped hearing the screams from their fight with Dub.

“Lia,” I replied, barely looking up.

“Back to school tomorrow, huh?” my mother said as she took out a cigarette, only after several seconds of silence.

I got up.

“You don’t have to leave,” Lia said.

“But that’s what I want to do,” I replied, and the answer was true for that moment as well as any other.

Lia made no effort to stop me, and I entered the house, to the stale air of that house where I should never have come. I sighed as I entered my room, a small bedroom with only a single bed and a full-length mirror, broken in the lower left corner. I lay down on the bed, still with my headphones in my ears, this time aware that It’s My Life was playing, trying to sleep. Would I still have the same luck as before, or would Marie Curie School change my life forever? I would only begin to replace out the next day.