I lean my head against the window of the SUV and watch the unfamiliar landscape roll past. I would normally be excited to be seeing California for the first time, but I'm too exhausted for excitement right now. In my current state, all I can manage is faint curiosity. Also, this isn't really California. Not the parts I would want to visit, at least. This is just traffic. I've already seen plenty of traffic. I sigh and watch the cars go by, sometimes racing past in a hurry to get where they need to be, and other times slowly crawling, honking their horns in fury that they aren't where they need to be. A hand takes mine and squeezes it reassuringly.
My twin sister, Lauren, grins at me from across the backseat. "You look so gloomy," she gives my hand another squeeze. "We're in California, it's sunny, and soon we're gonna be starting school and you'll get to make all the goofy movies you want. So lighten up a little!"
"I'm not sad, I'm just tired," I explain. She knows that though. She knows me better than anyone else in the world, maybe even better than I know myself. Lauren's just a constant ball of sunshine and happiness and has never let anything keep her down. Not even a 15-hour travel day. It certainly wore on me.
"Yeah, it's been a long day, but we're almost done! Just focus on that, soon we'll be at our new house and meeting new people and all this travel will be behind us." Her smile widens, somehow, and I can't help but mirror it back at her. Though we're not identical twins, we still look shockingly similar. Same thick dark brown hair, same brown eyes, similar facial bone structure. Even if you don't know we're twins, you can figure it out pretty quickly. The only real difference is that I'm a boy and she's a girl. I keep my hair a little shaggy, and she cuts hers short for a girl, normally wearing it as a spiky, unkempt mess that ends just below her ears. It works for her though, framing her cherubic face and shining, inquisitive eyes. We're both 18 and carefree and silly and trying our best in this world.
We don't come from money. Quite the opposite, in fact. But when we were six years old our aunt got us an old video camera for Christmas, and our view of the world changed. We were no longer poor kids from the Midwest who struggled in math, instead we were making movies. Her primarily in front of the camera and me behind. Constantly writing (though the complexity of our early works was definitely lacking), filming, and acting out short films. It started with just me and her, but eventually we dragged our friends and family into acting with us, making them play parts as needed. That was fun, but exhausting. The core though, for the last twelve years, has been just the two of us. It's easier to discuss and plan a movie when you always know exactly what your partner is thinking.
The original camera died when we were nine, and the two weeks between that camera's last gasp and our parents helping us purchase a new one were the longest of my life. Those two weeks were the basis of my college application essay to Los Angeles School of Advanced Artistry. It's the most prestigious school for a wannabe filmmaker like myself, and Lauren's desire to be an actress led her to the same conclusion. While we got accepted, we didn't get any of the scholarships. Not unexpected, you have to be the cream of the crop to get a full ride considering only half a percent of applicants get accepted. But it was prohibitive when we saw the official yearly estimates.
Our hopes were crushed for four long days until we got the mysterious scholarship offer that allows us to follow our dreams. A full-ride for both of us, a total of $960,000 between us for four years. The scholarship didn't come from the school, but from a private entity. A "Ms. Larson Holdings". In addition to normal GPA requirements for maintaining the scholarship, it came with several odd stipulations, such as a requirement to live in specific housing, and not returning home for any breaks other than for the summer. It only took us ten minutes to accept, strangeness be damned. Our parents were overjoyed that we found something to allow us to follow our dreams, and accepted that we would have to settle for phone calls on Christmas and birthdays.
"Joe, look," Lauren says, tapping my arm to pull me out of my thoughts. I raise my head to see the car pull up to a gate. The driver, I can see through the side window, is leaning out of the driver's window and pressing keys on a keypad. The gate opens, and he pops back inside, then drives us down a long road flanked by green fields on either side towards a mansion visible a quarter mile away. "We're here!" The excitement in Lauren's voice would be obvious even if I couldn't see her hands shaking.
To say our new home is large is an understatement. Even the word mansion is an understatement, though I admit I have very few of those to compare it to. Three stories, each wide with rooms. The third floor has several exterior doors leading to balconies, something absent on the other floors, though the first does have a large patio coming off of the left side of the house.
Surrounding the house, as we get closer, I can see a large grove of trees, providing privacy from anyone who might try to spy on the place, with a few vast green swaths of land there to break up the trees. In front of the house is a fountain encircled by asphalt, and a nearby garage. Our driver pulls up along the roundabout and parks right in front of the front door, then turns off the car. I look at Lauren, and she looks back at me, a smile on her face, a glimmer in her eyes. As one, we unbuckle our seatbelts and climb out of the car. The late summer heat hits us like a truck. California is a fair amount hotter than we're used to, and our ride here had been well air conditioned.
"Go on in, I'll take care of your luggage," the driver says with a chuckle, "it's part of my job description anyway."
I turn towards Lauren but she's already bouncing towards the front door, a jittery half-skip gait that makes her look like a cross between a rabbit and a newborn deer. I hurry to catch up and reach her just as the front door opens a few feet from us.
"Joseph, Lauren!" The speaker is a woman in her mid-40's, roughly. Her lustrous red hair is mostly contained in a bun, though a few strands currently hang loose on either side of her face. Bright green eyes, already studying us, sit above a mouth smiling wide at us. My eyes, those of a teenage boy, roam down her body quickly. Perky slightly-more-than-handful breasts strain against a tight, tan athletic shirt that hugs a fit form. Not the body of an elite athlete, but rather someone who works out on a schedule and takes care of herself. Dark blue yoga pants wrap around an appetizing looking butt and the legs of someone who runs regularly. This must be Ms. Larson. Hopefully. I only pray she didn't notice me checking her out. And that she doesn't notice how much I appreciate her body.
"Come in, come in, it's so nice to meet you!" She says, holding the door open and ushering the two of us inside. She follows us in closely, shutting the front door behind us. There's a brief moment where I wonder why she makes a point of locking the door if the driver is still going to bring our luggage in, but I brush it away under the assumption there's a side door.
The room we're in now looks, at first appraisal, like the world's nicest locker-room. It's large, spacious and empty in the middle except for two cushioned benches. Along the side walls are six enormous closets. They're all currently open, and show enough space to easily house my entire wardrobe. Five of them are labeled with names set into the wood above them. Mine and Lauren's are on the same wall as someone named Alex. The other wall has an empty, and then a Tyler and a Kayla. Ok, weird. I was expecting a grand foyer, or some sort of lobby. Not a set of closets.
"I'm sure you're tired, and have dozens of questions and just want to get settled," Ms. Larson addresses us as she walks over to a bag on one of the benches and pulls out two packets of papers. "But before we get to any of that fun stuff, there is the legal side of things to take care of." She slinks back to us, her gait oozing a level of confidence I wasn't sure was physically possible in a person. "I have some non-disclosure agreements here," she hands one packet and a pen to each of us. It's four pages, and full of legalese as I flip through it. "It's standard stuff," she continues, "feel free to read over it, but to summarize it: you don't talk to anyone outside of this house about me, the house, or anything you see or do here. You should understand that I am a very private person, and other than the students that live here for the scholarship, I don't like sharing details of my life with anyone. If you don't think you can do that, then I'll have my driver take you back to the airport and pay for your flight home." She looks at us expectantly.
I look at Lauren and see her already signing her name at the bottom of the last page. "You didn't even read it!" I exclaim, "What if this is a thing that says she gets your soul or something?" I round on my sister, chastising her for her lack of foresight, as I often did.
"Why would she get my soul? That seems incredibly difficult to enforce. Why would she want souls anyway? She have a machine that runs on soul energy? Lot of work to get a single soul," She looks at me with a smile that says I'm an idiot. I've seen it many times. She's rarely wrong about that, but I wish she wasn't so happy for me to be an idiot.
"Ok, good point," I say, watching her hand the paperwork back to Ms. Larson, "but still, shouldn't we... talk about it or something?"
"What's there to talk about?" Lauren counters, turning towards me. "It's our dream school, for free. F-R-E-E," she spells the word in my face. "This is just an NDA. You'll sign these your whole life, probably, and it's definitely worth what she's paying for us to sign it." Lauren stares at me, her eyes boring holes through my skull and into my brain as if she can force me to admit that she's right. And she is. That's the worst part, she's always right about this stuff.
"Fine," I say, and I sign the NDA, then hand the paperwork and the pen back to Ms. Larson. She grins as she takes the documents from me, and files them away, then pulls out another sheet of paper for each of us. "And what's this?" I ask, looking puzzled. More things to sign?
