by Alona Jarden
KATARINA
By
ALONA JARDEN
Text copyright © 2019 Alona Jarden
All Rights Reserved
This work is protected under the Copyright Act of the United States. No part of the publication may be used, copied, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or mechanical, except with the permission of the author, except for brief quotations included in critical reviews and articles.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidence.
That day, I left the house as if it wasn’t the first day of the rest of my life…
If I could call it mine to begin with.
Chapter 1
Kate
That morning, like every other morning, I parted from my father with a kiss on his forehead. In recent years it had gotten clearer and clearer that he was no longer as he once was. For as far back as I can remember, he had been my whole world. I never lacked anything, even though we weren't rich; I never felt that I was missing a sympathetic ear, even though he’d raised me on his own; and I never saw him demonstrate a moment of weakness, although it was clear to me that he had gone through difficult times.
Recently, the situation slightly changed.
The man I’d thought was omnipotent suddenly began to shrivel before my eyes, or was it that I had grown up in front of his?
"Go with peace, young maiden," he stated his usual call to me, as he used to do every morning from the living room window.
"Do your best to keep the kingdom, my precious knight," I answered my routine answer and set off.
Although the medical school I attended was far away from our home, and in spite of the fact that the bus station, which could have lead me to it, was not far away, I loved walking there and back every morning.
I enjoyed greeting the neighbors who passed by, relished walking along the dirt road that connected the suburban landscape with the city, indulged in breathing the morning air deep into my lungs and simply loved the peace and quiet that the road bestowed upon me, before my fellow students made me want to kill them.
"Latte, big, weak, with soy milk, to go please," I smiled at the barista who greeted me at my regular Starbucks branch, which I had visited almost every morning for the past six months.
"And a good morning to you too, Kate," he winked at me.
"You're right, Jade. I didn’t welcome you properly. Have a good morning," I smiled at him.
"Thank you, but you guessed it wrong again." His green eyes sparkled at me when he handed me my coffee.
"Should I wish you a good morning, Tom?"
"Nope. Wrong again."
"Well, it's not fair. If you wear a name tag, it has to be the right one. You know? You're misleading the public. I'm sorry, but I demand to speak to your supervisor!"
"These are the terms, Kate. You either guess my name correctly and never pay for your coffee again or keep guessing it wrong and live with the shame that accompanies those who do not know the right answers forever."
He always made me laugh.
On his first day, he’d taken my complicated coffee order and turned away to prepare it. I’d kept calling him by the name that was written on his name tag to make sure he was using soy milk, but he’d never responded. When he finally had turned to me and handed me my cup of coffee, he couldn’t understand why I was so upset. It was then that he’d explained how that was not his name and that they hadn’t made him a tag yet, but ever since, he refused to tell me the correct one.
All the branch employees knew about our little game but not one of them was willing to reveal the correct answer. Sometimes it seemed to me that they, too, enjoyed seeing me fail in my attempts to discover the true name of the barista who insisted on wearing the wrong name tag, the one that pronounced him as "Christian".
I went ahead and sat in my regular corner, sipping my coffee.
As a medical student, I knew the dangers and effects of stress or pressure on my health, so I’d built my life around a routine that ensured I did not rush anywhere. Every task and action I took got the time it deserved in order for it to be done with my full attention. If I felt I could not do something, I did not take it on myself in the first place.
"Hey, beautiful," Aidan, my schoolmate, was kind enough to finally show up to our regular daily meeting. "Do you come here a lot?" he leaned towards me.
"Why?" I smiled at him. "Why are you late again?"
"Last night's date refused to say good-bye." He held out his hand to me. "What can I say? They always want just a little bit more of me."
"I can understand why it's hard for them to say good-bye to a gentleman like you. Really, I can," I rolled my eyes at him and stood up, turning briefly to the barista. "Have a magical day, Nick!"
"Wrong again, Kate. It would be simpler if you agreed to live with the shame." His farewell words sent Aidan and me to our daily routine with a big smile on our faces.
Ever since we’d met, Aidan had tried his best to make us progress beyond the platonic boundaries that I’d defined for our relationship, but without any success. This was the third year we had shared the school bench and, at the same time, the third year I’d spent trying to explain to him that I didn't see him as a potential candidate for a romantic relationship. If he had not been the only one in the class who was an intellectual challenge for me, he would surely have found himself completely out of my life from the start, like all the other students I did not find interesting. As it was, he’d come to grow on me. The fact that he was the only partner I could learn with, helped me to restrain myself from shutting down his pointless remarks about my social life or his and as the years went by, I found myself liking him. As a friend. Sort of...
"So, Kate, are you ready for the anatomy exam?"
"Yes."
"I'm not," he exhaled in frustration.
"You're just being hard on yourself, Aidan, we both knew everything perfectly last night and there's no reason why we should not both succeed today."
"You know the material better than I do."
"Well, that's stating the obvious, but it has nothing to do with you. It's all me. I'm better than you, that's all." I grinned so he'd know I was messing with him, though in reality I meant every word I said.
"Can everyone please take out their books and open them to page two hundred and thirty-six?" Professor Thompson asked.
"What? There's no exam?" I rushed to express my protest at the change in curriculum that wasn’t expected for that day.
"Dear Ms. Briggs, do you want there to be an exam?" he asked, and a wave of vicious whispers swirled around me.
"I want an exam to take place at the first hour like planned, or else, it should not take place at all," I answered with full confidence and continued, "There is no logic to conducting an exam later today when everyone is tired and exhausted."
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" he asked and I did my very best not to answer with yet another snarky reply, but failed.
"Actually there's a lot more, Professor," I smiled playfully.
"Anything you want to share with the class?"
"Hmm..."
"Never mind, Ms. Briggs." He waved his hand at me, understanding exactly what he should and should not ask me, and continued to talk to my classmates. "As I said before, can everyone please open their books now?"
For two consecutive hours he repeated in an exhausting way all the material we were supposed to be tested on. Honestly, what was the challenge in an exam if a moment before it all the answers were said aloud? In my arguments to the class against deferring the exam, I’d noted that fatigue would strike all of us if we were to take the test later in the day, but the truth was that I feared that my extra distinction would not
be so obvious if he repeated everything moments before the exam, and thus helped others to succeed.
"Are there any questions at this point?" he raised his head just before everyone got up to leave.
"How in God's name does he expect there to be questions?" I muttered to Aidan. "He just provided them with all the answers."
"Shh..." Aidan, who wasn’t appreciated by the professor as I was, seemed afraid to draw his attention to us.
"Yes, please, you?" Professor Thompson pointed to Aidan.
"I... No... Um... Can you just go back to the exact body parts that will be included on the quiz?"
"Ass kisser," I whispered to him.
"Ms. Briggs, did you want to answer him in my place?"
"No, no, I would never dream of taking your precious place, Professor."
"Why not? You seem to have all the answers you need to do my job perfectly."
"Oh, I'm sure I could, but I'm simply not interested in your job, no offense. I will probably land a job at one of the best hospitals in the country. I'm not going to sit behind a desk and deal with unnecessary questions from lazy students like your job demands." I looked away, at the irritable stares of those I’d spoken badly about, and returned my gaze to the intelligent eyes of Professor Thompson. "Rest assured, Professor. Your job is safe."
"Oh, I wouldn’t go and say that, Ms. Briggs. I'm sure someone in this room knows so few of the correct answers, that the only job they'll be able to get is a teaching position, like mine. Not everyone is…" The bell ringing caused all the students to stand up in the middle of his wisecrack and start organizing their bags for the transition to their next class.
Many of the students sitting next to me looked at me crookedly. At the beginning of my medical studies, I had not allowed myself to be so cheeky to lecturers and, even towards the end of my third year, I still did not get as loose with other professors as I had with Professor Thompson. I guess in that way, he was different.
First, he was a medical legend. He’d initiated a real revolution before retiring from his research post at the hospital. The discoveries he reached are still milestones on which other studies are based. And all the while, he let his brilliant mind go to waste, teaching medicine.
I knew that nothing anyone could say could make him feel bad about himself or about his accomplishments, so I allowed myself to go into standoffs with him like that one, but not immediately.
During the first few months of our acquaintance, I’d chased after him in the cafeteria just to hear a little more about the path he’d taken in life, hoping to figure out if I could succeed in imitating it, even slightly. About six months after the beginning of the first year, he’d noticed the huge gap between me and the other students and had done everything possible to see me fail. He’d tried his best to make me realize I was no better than anyone else, but all he’d accomplished was proving to me, and himself, that I was just much better than any other.
After that, my classmates had stopped wondering if there was any romantic connection between us and had realized that the perfect sequence of grades displayed on my student file was the result of hard work and effort, rather than groans and pleasure I had never experienced with the professor. Or anyone else for that matter.
Later that day, Professor Thompson's unnecessary exam took place. At the end of it, he asked me to stay and help him grade the work of my classmates, as he had done multiple times over the past year.
"Oh, come on," I snorted, as Jennifer's answer sheet, the student I loved to hate, reached me.
"What's the problem now, Ms. Briggs?"
"You are, Professor. My problem is always you."
"Are you whining again for me having rehearsed the material a moment before the exam?"
"I just don't get it. Is that your way to encourage excellence? How am I supposed to shine above everyone else if you're pointing powerful lighting at them?"
"Well that's a new analogy, let me see what we've had up to now." He rolled his green addictive eyes and pointed them gently back at me. "You are a pencil sharpened in a box full of crayons."
"Right."
"You are the spicy dish on the menu that is bland and tasteless."
"Sad yet very true."
"You are a hunting dog among a variety of laboratory mice."
"I didn't think you'd remember that one. It was one of the first analogies I invented for me being the best."
"I remember everything, Ms. Briggs. Everything." God, how can someone be so smart and so handsome at the same time? "Now, go on with your work and grade the rest of the answer sheets."
"But..."
"Did she answer correctly?" He gestured to Jennifer's exam form on the table, between us.
"Yes, but I know for a fact that..."
"Then she gets the full score."
"I want to state on record that it's not acceptable to me, but okay."
"Thank you very much."
"You have no reason to thank me, Professor. I am cursing you generously in my mind right now."
"Very well. When you finish wishing me bad things, make sure to apologize. As far as I am concerned, your apology can also be said silently, in your heart. Anything that will help me not hear you is welcome."
I smiled to myself as I wrote the score harshly on the paper, right over Jennifer’s name. I added a few question marks randomly next to some of her answers, just to make her wonder what it was that she wrote wrong and stretched my smile ever wider.
As I walked to meet up with Aidan, I couldn’t help but think about yet another day in which the classes hadn't challenged me at all.
The difficulties inflicted upon me by the professor during my first year of studies had made me prove my abilities and progress in material by myself. As a result, my sophomore year had been easy and self-explanatory. I learned most of the third-year material on the vacation between semesters and the only lessons that managed to excite and attract me were the practical lessons, in which we analyzed bodies, watched surgeries or spent hours in the hospital.
Who would have ever guessed there’d be a time when I would long for the unremarkable days of those first few years?
"Well, are you going to tell me my score or not?" Aidan had reached the place we arranged to meet for our routine march back to Starbucks.
"You know I'm not supposed to tell you that."
"I know. You're also not supposed to fall madly in love with me, but here we are, as close as a pair of..."
"Eighty-five," I interrupted him.
"What the fuck!" he shouted. "Who graded my exam, you or the monster?"
"Do you mean, the beauty or the beast?"
"Kate, I swear... Who was the loser that graded my exam?"
"When you present the question like that, it's hard for me to confess that it was me, Aidan."
"You're a fucking liar, Kate. Did you do this to me?"
"Do you think I am a loser?"
"Ms. Briggs!" he raised his voice and I laughed in response. "I swear to God, if you do not give me a direct answer now..."
"Relax, Aidan. It was Professor Thompson," I chuckled slightly and put my hand around his shoulder amicably to console him for his average grade, "but you should know he was very impressed by some of your explanations. He said you have a promising mind."
"His mother has a promising mind." His forehead wrinkled and he kicked some dirt off the road. "What was your score?"
"He did not say," I shrugged.
"And you do not care?"
"Why should I take an interest in a stupid exam? I have a promising mind." I punched him in the shoulder, "And you, Aidan, stop trying to outdo others and be happy with your achievements."
"Look who's talking. You are that master of outdoing."
"But I'm not trying to transcend anyone, I just do it without any effort at all." I gave him an arrogant bow and quickly changed the subject of our conversation.
I knew the academic competition between us was not easy for him.
He’d ex
celled at a pre-medical course and had come to study at this specific medical school, assuming he was going to be at the top of the class, only to discover that an arrogant, cocky and especially promising young girl had come with the same goal and had achieved it before him.
"Do you have a date tonight?"
"Why Kate, do you want me to cancel it?"
"God forbid, I will not be able to fall asleep if I know that you will not empty yourself into a casual girl tonight."
"You can change that, you know. You can help me unload myself into a very non-casual girl."
"One that has an extraordinary brain?"
"And a body built for a night full of pleasures," his eyes shimmered.
"Enjoy yourself tonight, pervert," I winked at him a few steps in front of Starbucks, the spot that marked the point where our paths split, and hurried to hug him before we parted ways. "Do me a favor and put on a condom," I whispered in his ear and went on my way back home.
From then on, there was nothing unusual that comes to mind in regards to my walk home. I stepped a few more minutes alone on the dirt path that connected the big city to the suburbs where my father and I lived and everything was as routine as it could be.
The blue sky, the birds circling over my head, and the limited amount of traffic that bypassed me occasionally, leaving a cloud of white dust in the air for a while.
Fairly quickly, the dirt path was replaced by the deserted sidewalks and my eyes were drawn to a yellow car parked on the street corner. It had never been there before, or at least I'd never seen it anywhere in the neighborhood.
I almost got a glimpse into its back seat before I felt someone holding me from behind, putting on a cloth with some smelly stuff on it and everything around me turned black.
Chapter 2
Andrew
I shoved her little body quickly into the trunk of the car before anyone could see me. I pulled out the syringe I prepared in advance and injected its strong content into her blood stream before the impact of the ether could dissipate. I adjusted the rear view mirror so that I could confirm I wasn’t followed and drove the car out of the small town, where she had grown up and into the most crucial two weeks of my life.