Ariadne reached the
gate at the entrance to her street and punched in the code at the box by the
entrance.
Her house was on a small cul-de-sac off of a much larger
residential street. The entire
cul-de-sac had been bought and paid for by her father and then gated off. There were three buildings, a garage to the
left of the gate which held the families three vehicles, the main house which
was directly opposite the gate, and the boat house to the right of the entrance
which fed out onto the small lake the cul-de-sac was built alongside.
Ariadne heard the buzz as the gate lock opened and yanked
the black iron to set through.
Her house had a black iron fence surrounding it with
arrowhead points jabbing upward towards the sky. The pathway leading up to the two story house
was constructed from pink stones fashioned into the shape of lily pads with grass
growing in between them.
The lawn was immaculately maintained by her family’s
gardener and even with the fall weather moving in the grass was still a vibrant
living green. The property was wide on
either side of the house. There was one
maple tree on either side of the house, their massive canopies stretching up
and over the fence as well as over the roof.
The iron gate to the house swung open before Ariadne
without a sound. She hopped the lily pad
stones towards the entrance. On either
side of the door were massive windows allowing a clear view outside from the
two living rooms. Ivy grew up the house
from beneath these windows, stretching almost to the smaller, circular windows
of the upper floor.
The door itself was white with stained glass windows
glinting with all the colours of the rainbow.
Ariadne tested the door handle and found it was unlocked, pushing her
way through into the foyer.
“You’re late!”
Ariadne rolled her eyes as she kicked her shoes off and
dumped her backpack onto the floor beside them.
She strolled forward into the kitchen, the hiss of something cooking on
the stove top and the smell of asparagus wafting through the air around her.
Of course, she found her mother, who had called out to
her, waiting for her at the table.
“Try not to overdue yourself with subtext there, Mom,”
Ariadne warned as she slipped into her seat at the table.
“What is that supposed to mean?” her mother demanded,
fixing her with a stern glare.
Her mother had a hawkish face, hair curled around her
head as though it fear the consequences of getting too unruly. Her eyes were a faded brown, clearly not the
source of Ariadne’s own emerald eyes.
Her nose was appropriately angled and hooked to serve as a beak and her
lips were needle thing, so much so that they seemed to disappear when she fixed
Ariadne with her stern looks, like the one she was gracing her with at that
moment.
“We were expecting you home sooner after volleyball
practice.”
“I was expecting you to be there to pick me up.”
“I had more important things to be doing than picking you
up. It was a fine day, you could easily
have walked home.”
“Yes Mom, that’s what I ended up doing.”
“Why did it take you so long?”
“It’s an hour long walk Mom, how long did it expect me to
take?”
“Well, you’ve kept us waiting around for you so I hope
you’re satisfied.”
“I couldn’t be more satisfied if I tried,” Ariadne
sighed, rolling her eyes, a fact which her mother thankfully missed as she took
a sip from the glass of red wine in front of her.
“Hello Ariadne, we were expecting you home earlier.”
Her father beamed at her as he entered the room, carrying
the frying pan before him. Her father
was a large set man with jovial features so that every aspect of his face
seemed to be angled upwards in a smile.
He was not exactly fat but you could hardly call him a skinny man. His pudgy fingers gripped a spatula which he
used to flip two pieces of sizzling ham onto Ariadne’s plate. She found her mouth-watering as she reached
for her fork. She hadn’t realized how
hungry she was until the smell of her father’s cooking had reminded her.
While her mother had absolutely no knowledge in the area
of cooking, or any desire whatsoever to learn how, it always fell to her father
to cook. This was no problem for him since
he loved to cook and loved the fact that he got to keep his skills honed by
making home cooked meals every night.
While Ariadne didn’t think it was her mother’s
responsibility to prepare the meals for the family or anything of the kind, the
fact of the matter was that her mother spent the majority of her day at home
when she wasn’t out participating in some mundane exercise with her other rich
wife friends. Ariadne had no idea what
she did with her time while she was home alone but she knew for certain that
nothing ever got done around the house unless it was done by either her father
or herself.
Nevertheless, her mother found plenty of opportunity to
complain about the stresses of a housewife lifestyle and alongside her argument
that they get a chauffeur she had often attempted to convince her husband to
hire a maid. Not only did Arthur Helen
not want anyone, not even a paid employee, having free reign over their house,
he saw no reason to hire something to chores that they were each perfectly capable
of doing themselves.
“How was your volleyball practice today, dear?” Arthur
asked, scooping two slices of ham onto his wife’s plate, and then two onto his
own.
“We’ve got a game next week so the coach is pushing us
pretty hard,” Ariadne replied. “But
nothing we can’t handle. We’ve won all
of our previous games so I’m not too worried about taking on this next team.”
“Who are you against?”
“Waterfront High,” Ariadne explained. “But I seriously doubt the kids from downtown
stand a chance against us. We’re going
to mop the floor with them.”
“Ariadne, you sound so butch when you talk like that,”
her mother sighed. “I don’t know where
on earth you get that attitude. Your
father was never much into any kind of low brow activity when he was in high school.”
“Come on now Crete, if Ariadne wants to indulge herself
in some good, healthy exercise I see no reason to discourage her,” Arthur
protested, having returned from the kitchen with the pot of asparagus.
“No,” her mother protested, taking another quick swill of
her wine, “it’s gross. All that
unnecessary movement and sweating. You
did shower before you came home, didn’t you?”
“Yes Mom,” Ariadne sighed, increasing the speed at which
she ate her ham. The sooner she could
get away from her mother the better.
“Good. If not I
would have sent you straight upstairs to shower before you ate. It’s rude to sit at the table smelling like
some kind of Neanderthal.”
“You know exactly how to make a girl feel wanted.”
“Don’t talk back to me like that, young lady.”
“All right Crete, that’s enough,” her father cut in with
a note of finality as he sat himself down at the head of the table. “Anything else of interest at school today,
dear?”
“Well, I did meet Janus Menelaus today.”
Ariadne felt the entire atmosphere of the table
shift. Her mother, who had been about to
take another sip from her wine glass, stopped and set it down carefully.
“You did, did you?” her father said. Strangely, his eyes darted to her hand before
returning to her face. “Well, I’m sure
it must have come as a bit of a surprise to learn he knew so much about you
when you had no idea who he was.”
“You might say that,” Ariadne nodded. “How come you’ve never mentioned him
before? He seemed to think his father
and you were very close.”
“Oh, we are, Janus didn’t lie to you about that,” Arthur
Helen nodded. “I’ve just never seen much
point in telling you all about the Menelaus’ since they live all the way in
Ontario while we’re out here on the east coast.
Our two families are connected mostly through our companies but I am
happy to call Zeke Menelaus one of my closest friends.”
“I’ve never even met him,” Ariadne pointed out.
“Well, technically you have, but it was much
younger. In fact, you met Janus for the
first time when you were probably eleven or twelve months old. You haven’t seen him since, of course, so you
can hardly be expected to remember who he is.”
“Well, he certainly knew a lot about me. Said he was coming out here for his final
year of high school before he attends Menelaus University. Is that university named after his family?”
“Oh yes, Zeke put a lot of money into New Carthage just
like I have.”
“This is all very fascinating, but I’m more interested in
how you treated Janus today. I assume it
was his first day at school?” Crete Helen asked, instantly fixing her daughter
with an interrogative glare.
“Yeah, he showed up near the end of history class,”
Ariadne replied.
“Were you nice to him?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I mean, did you show him the kind of courtesy and
respect that was due him.”
“I’m not sure I know what kind of courtesy and respect I
was supposed to show him,” Ariadne replied, attempting to dodge the question
since she wasn’t inclined to lie to her mother.
Crete Helen also had a knack for seeing right through her lies anyway,
no matter how much time she might have spent planning them out. “I didn’t even know who he was until he told
me that our families were friends.”
“So, basically what you’re saying is that you blew him
off,” Crete said sharply.
“I never said I did that,” Ariadne replied. “What makes you think he was so interested in
me anyway?”
“Oh, of course he was interested in you,” Crete snapped,
waving her hand dismissively as if Janus’ attraction to Ariadne was a
given. Some might have thought this a
compliment, but Ariadne knew better than to take it as such. “Well, it’s good to know that you bungled
your chance to make a good first impression.”
“Well, as I’m glad you’ve already decided that I’ve
‘bungled’ something so important. But
what about him? What makes you so sure
he gave me a good impression of him?”
“I hardly see how that’s relevant,” Crete replied, taking
a large gulp of wine.
“So, if he had been an overpowering asshole to me today,
that wouldn’t matter at all as long as I treated him like a king?”
“Watch your tongue.”
“And you watch yours,” Ariadne snapped. “Looks like Janus wasn’t the only asshole I
had to deal with today.”
Ariadne knew that wasn’t entirely fair to Janus. In truth, he’d been a little pushy but he
hadn’t been as awful as Ariadne was making him out to be now. But it was too late to take the words back so
she decided to just ride the storm out.
“Oh, you pretentious little bi-“
“That’s enough!”
Arthur Helen’s booming voice cut his wife off too late
and Ariadne was already glaring at her mother.
“I’m sorry Dad, I think I’ve just lost my appetite,”
Ariadne said, barely above a whisper.
She stood, not bothering to push her chair back in, and began to stomp
from the room.
“Hold on one second,” her father said, holding up one
pudgy hand to stop her. “While I don’t
think your mother is in the right state of mind right now to handle this
situation…tactfully, I hope you will realize that Janus Menelaus is going to
become a powerful man someday and the last thing you want to do is ruin the
relationship between his family and ours by being…inconsiderate.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m probably going to
be seeing Janus tonight at the Halloween events. I’ll give him another shot, but I’m not going
to pretend to like him if he’s not likeable.”
“I’m not driving you to that tonight,” her mother
reminded her in an icy voice.
“Don’t worry Mom, I wouldn’t dare expect you to
inconvenience yourself for me.”
