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My new employers are the very epitome of the jet set—at least if one ignores Nikolai’s street brawler hands.
I force myself to look away from those angry-looking knuckles and focus on the child next to me, who’s again eating calmly and quietly. Disconcertingly so, I realize. What four- or five-year-old doesn’t play at least a little with his food? Or demand adult attention on occasion? I know the boy can smile and laugh and play like any other child his age, so why does he turn into a kid-sized robot at mealtimes?
Feeling my gaze on him, Slava looks up, his big golden-green eyes strikingly solemn. I smile at him brightly, but he doesn’t smile back. He just refocuses on his plate and resumes eating. I eat as well, but I continue watching him, my sense of wrongness intensifying by the second. There’s something unnatural about my student’s behavior, something deeply concerning. Maybe the boy is more traumatized by his mother’s death than he seems on the surface, or maybe something else is going on… something far worse.
I steal another glance at Nikolai’s knuckles, a horrible thought slithering into my mind.
To my infinite relief, the injuries look fresh, as if he’s just pounded something or someone into the ground. Since Slava’s been with me all morning, he couldn’t have been that someone. Besides, only an impact of great force could’ve caused those types of contusions, and there’s nothing about the way Nikolai’s son is sitting or moving that would indicate he’s been beaten so severely—or at all.
Whatever my employer is guilty of, it’s not child abuse, thank God. I don’t know what I’d do if that were the case. No, scratch that. I know. I’d call Child Protective Services and run, taking my chances with my mom’s killers.
Which reminds me: I still don’t have my car keys.
I’m about to ask Nikolai about them when Alina smiles at me and asks, “Have you always wanted to be a teacher, Chloe?”
I nod, setting down my fork. “Pretty much. I’ve always loved both children and teaching. Even as a child, I’d often play with kids younger than myself so I could cast myself in the role of their instructor.” I grin, shaking my head. “I think I just liked having them look up to me. Stroked my ego and all that.”
As I speak, I’m cognizant of Nikolai’s eyes on me, intent and unwavering. A predator’s stare, filled with both hunger and infinite patience. My skin burns under its weight, and it takes everything I have to keep my gaze on Alina and pick up my fork as if nothing is happening.
She asks about my choice of college next, and I tell her how I was lucky enough to get a full-ride scholarship there.
“I’d never even thought about applying to such an expensive school,” I say between bites of delicious smoked fish and richly flavored beet salad. It helps if I concentrate on the food instead of the man staring at me. “My mom worked as a waitress, and money was tight for as long as I can recall. I was going to go to community college, then transfer to a state school, using a combination of scholarships, loans, and work-study to pay my way through. But just as I started my senior year of high school, I got an invitation to apply for this special scholarship program at Middlebury. It was for children of low-income single parents, and it covered one hundred percent of tuition, room, and board, in addition to providing an allowance for books and miscellaneous expenses. Naturally, I applied—and somehow got in.”
“Why somehow?” Nikolai asks. “Weren’t you a good student?”
I have no choice but to meet his penetrating stare. “I was, but there were students in my circumstances who were far more qualified and didn’t get it.” Like my friend Tanisha, who’d gotten a perfect score on her SATs and graduated as our class valedictorian. I told her about the scholarship, and she applied to the program as well, only to be instantly rejected. To this day, I wonder why they chose me and not her; if it was a matter of surviving adversity, Tanisha had a “better” story, with her partially disabled mother raising not one but three children on her own, one of them—Tanisha’s younger brother—with special needs.
“Maybe they saw something in you,” Nikolai says, his eyes tracing over every inch of my face. “Something that intrigued them.”
I shrug, trying to ignore the heat coursing under my skin. “Could be. More likely, though, it was just dumb luck.” It had to have been, because a couple of months later, Tanisha got acceptance letters from every school she’d applied to, including Harvard, which she ended up attending thanks to a generous financial aid package. Not as generous as the scholarship I got—she graduated with seventy thousand dollars in student loans—but good enough that I stopped feeling guilty about taking the spot that should’ve been hers.
