If one didn’t know better, Hazel de Medici’s room could be construed as uninhabited, or perhaps even abandoned. No photos or posters lined the walls, an odd occurrence that could be considered nonpartisan to her expected teenage fanaticism. The bed, its creamy cotton sheets blending in with similarly tinted walls, was clean and made, and the birch end table that stood on its right was bare and untouched, save for a single, empty glass vase. The bookshelves were nearly vacant, if not for a few old textbooks, and the door was left ajar.

In such a dull and lifeless area, anomalies could be quite easily identified; Hazel, laying stomach-first on the lightly colored hardwood floor with her nose in an enormous leather album, was no exception. Every few seconds or so, she gingerly turned each yellowing page; after a while, however, she appeared to be fixated on one of the dusty photos in particular.

The photo outlined three figures, donning plastered smiles and expensive clothes, standing on the deck of a large white ship titled the U.S.S. Montague in bold yet neat lettering. On the furthest left side was a young blonde woman in a patterned red dress, her shining hair reflecting off the unrelenting sunlight. On the far right was a broad-shouldered man who seemed to be roughly the same age as the woman, wearing a crisp, dark suit which matched his similarly colored hair. Hazel stood between them, projecting all of the expected energy of a five-year-old. Her dark curls were unruly from the wind, and her small hands dug into her hips with an alarming ferocity. Her teeth were bared in a large smile, her eyelids shut vigorously enough to create endearing wrinkles. The two figures beside her, her mother and father respectively, rested their hands on each of Hazel’s shoulders.

And after ten years here she was, the current Hazel searching for some trace of meaning in the jubilant expressions that decorated the figures, as she knew them now to be grim and deceitful. She could sense a pang of longing surface from her core; the photo in front of her was quite evidently a memory, and yet the sense of euphoria that it emitted seemed completely alien.

Hazel sat up and rested her head on the pale bedframe behind her, shutting her eyes as she did so. Her mother had moved away from the aforementioned image of the shining blonde in the photo a long while ago; the version of her that Hazel was familiar with was simply a ghost of her past beauty, gaunt and hollow.

She could recount myriad instances when her mother arrived home drunk and disturbed, yelling some intangible babble as she threw her coat and shoes to the house servants. Her steps, usually weightless and delicate, seemed hefty enough to belong to someone twice her size. She would generally be studying in her room, praying that fate would bestow upon her a brief sliver of mercy, that perhaps her mother would notice something new and tantalizing to fixate on instead. However, it was never so; everything else in the house was decorative. Hazel was the only one aside from her mother who held the smallest fragment of substance.

Her steps, asymmetrical and erratic on the circular, mahogany staircase, would echo throughout the house, louder and louder as she edged nearer. Hazel could feel her heartbeat quicken twofold. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

“Haaaa-zel...Hazel! I know that you’re in there!”

In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out, In-

Hazel could feel herself wince as the rusty, golden hinges on her door would creak open, the sound of her mother’s erratic footsteps drawing nearer by the second. Finally, she would see her gaunt, pale face, caked with gaudy makeup with half-lidded eyes and a twisted smile, her bleached blonde hair unkempt and rumpled.

“Of course you’re studying...an ugly little prick like you would have no friends, huh…” Her slur grew more distorted by the second. Despite the seven or eight odd feet that separated them, Hazel could smell the whiskey on her mother’s breath.

She sighed. “Hello, mother.”

“Well aren’t you the polite little f'er? Hello, mother…oh, shut up you bitch.” She flailed her leg in Hazel’s direction, her mother’s left stiletto grazing her cheek and bouncing off the wall behind her.

In Hazel’s past experiences, she would continue to spew out various insults directed at her for a solid ten minutes or so, until she found a relatively empty surface to vomit on, promptly passing out afterward. Hazel would find herself under the obligation to carry her outside and place her on a bed in close proximity, and then clean up the pool of bile left behind.

This was such a common occurrence for her that she found herself desensitized to her mother’s actions, whatever they may be. She utilized her time into tallying where exactly her mother would choose to vomit on instead and would cover those places with plastic, as to make cleaning easier.  It was fine, she told herself. Father will come home soon.

Her father was a comforting antithesis to her mother’s hostility, or at least, he seemed to be. He was not home often and therefore was not aware of the actions she took when he was away; in his presence, Hazel’s mother seemed to be the perfect and composed hostess that she was expected to be. His presence could be equated to a breath of relief to Hazel: his enigmatic laughter and endearing jokes that made esteemed guests and servants alike smile presented itself as a silver lining to her dreary days. Her familial affection was reciprocated by him, as at his every arrival, Hazel found herself nearly buried by expensive, exotic gifts which originated from whichever place he had recently traveled from. Despite whatever hopeless aftertaste her mother’s disparagement left her with, she always had her father’s love to depend on, a pure inverse that could even the odds.

But that, too, proved itself to be defunct.

On a morning during the past week, she had left school, claiming to feel sick. Her temperature was determined to be 102.3 and she was succinctly chauffeured home. As she was greeted by the doorman and ushered in, Hazel could discern a familiar figure-around six feet, with dark hair and olive skin: Could it possibly be…?

“Father?” Hazel trudged through the hallway, dragging her backpack on the smooth marble floor. She placed it on an intricately embroidered sofa, careful not to get the crimson fabric dirty.

As she moved closer, she could tell that it was indeed her father, and yet...something felt wrong. His complexion, usually full and lively, was pale and almost sickly, and his normally well-built figure seemed to be unusually scrawny, with visible bones in his face and neck.

“Ah...haha…Hazel, darling. You aren’t the type to skip school, aren’t you? You’re a good girl.”

“I’m running a fever, so I left early. Petrokov drove me back home.”

“I...see. I thought no one would be in the house. Well, lucky me! It’s always...a great day to see my daughter…” His dark, charcoal colored hair that he primarily wore slicked back was messy and ungelled.

“I thought you were on a business trip…you told Mom that...you were going to London…” Hazel could feel her head throbbing in sync to her heartbeat.

“Ah! The plane, um, landed at the wrong airport and got delayed for a long time…”

“Could you please move out of the way? I feel faint.” She felt herself grasping every last bit of sanity that remained in the feverish haze of her thoughts, trying to maintain the impersonal etiquette she was supposed to retain with even the ones she loved dearly. She was told that verbose, polite language would make her seem like the eloquent lady that someone of her family’s class and status should epitomize, but to be perfectly candid, it made her feel alienated and alone.

“See, that’s…” Her father’s head frantically shifted left and right, oscillating between paranoid glances and polite smiles.

He gasped in a sudden moment of realization, his yellowish hands meeting each other in a clap with voracious excitement.

“You...you can sleep on the couch! I’ll get a blanket, just you wait--”

“What exactly are you--” Hazel walked towards the doorway which her father stood between, attempting to gently push him away. Every fiber of her being was hoping for some kind of reluctance, a form of compromise that he was seen to be capable of in the past. Instead, she was met with an unexpected forcefulness.

“You can’t--”

Hazel felt her heart sink. “Listen, I’m guessing that you have some other woman, or whatever in there. I don’t care. I won’t tell Mom. I just want to rest--”

“Well--”

A third voice echoed through the doorway that her father was so desperately trying to conceal. It was what she expected and yet, completely different than what she foresaw.

“Hey, Marcus...right? I’m still waiting for the check.” A shirtless man in what Hazel would guess was his twenties strode through the hallway and rested his head on her father’s left shoulder, snaking his bare arms around his waist. She just realized the state of her father’s shirt: loose, crumpled. The first three buttons were open.

“It’s gonna be two thousand and five hundred, plus tax. So around two thousand five hundred fifty...”

“Okay. Okay. This is your problem, so I’m just gonna--” Hazel gently pushed the prostitute away, and made her way towards the stairs. She felt herself rapidly blinking, fighting back the tears that attempted to spill out. To believe all these years that he was truly a good, honest person, to believe that he was the one that grounded her...she could hear her father and his lover’s voices echoing behind her and yet at that moment, she had never felt more alone…

Hearing the door slam below her, Hazel bolted upright with a jolt, her thoughts slipping from her reach. She took a quick breath and banged the musty album shut, visible dust flying out and falling onto the floor. She stood up, heaving as she attempted to lift up the photobook while remaining stable. After a few seconds of gaining a sense of balance, she finally wrapped it under her left arm. Slowly edging towards her back window, she finally grabbed the ledge with her free arm and pushed it open.

Grabbing the album with both hands, she extended her arms into the open window space and shoved it into the shrubbery below. It landed uneasily, haphazard branches snapping with its weight. Closing the window with a distinct slam, Hazel stormed back over towards her bed, a single tear streaming down her face.