Am I Rich?

{ Alessia }

My father comes into our apartment shouting and being his irate and frenzied alter-ego, so I immediately stand up and try to go hide in my room while he shouts a thousand and a half things in Italian into his phone. I kinda understand the most basic meaning of whatever he's saying but I can't even make sense of it because he comes straight for me and orders me to pack my things.

I don't hesitate or waste time asking questions right now because I know they'll be ignored and I'll just make him angrier, so I shove my most important belongings and clothes into a suitcase and then my dad grabs my arm. He pulls me out of the apartment not even bothering to lock the door and then upstairs until we reach the rooftop of our building.

And then he keeps on pulling me towards a a sleek black helicopter parked there.

"Whose is that?" I ask, extremely confused.

"Ours." He answers, confusing me even further.

A fucking helicopter? Ours? Since when?

I mean, sure, that sounds amazing, but I didn't know we had one. I didn't even know we had enough money to even think about the possibility of maybe one day buying one. I'm immediately stunned, confused and pissed off... but I also get a little excited. It's not every day you find out you have a helicopter and that you're probably richer than you thought, but I still haven't forgotten how he refused to buy me a car last month because we were 'struggling' at the moment.

Did he lie?

"Get in right now, girl," my father hurries me, pushing me impatiently from the back. I groan, trying to make him feel all my annoyance while I get into the thing, staring at everything with my eyes wide open, taking in every little detail. It's really spacious inside, the seats are black leather, and there are some small screens like on airplanes. It's extravagant and elegant, therefore probably super expensive, "And stop grumbling like a toddler."

"Don't tell me not to grumble! I have every right to do so," I complain, because I feel like now it's an okay time to start with my complaining, "You always do this to me and I hate it. You always just do things and leave me in the dark... I don't understand anything!"

I end up screaming like a crazy person and give him an angry look so he realizes that having a helicopter all of a sudden won't get me to shut up so easily. I can't be blamed for acting like this sometimes, I am my father's daughter after all and he's known to be an explosive man. And I'm not like that all the time, only on occasions where my temper is warranted, usually by him.

My biggest issue with him is probably that I never, ever find out about anything going on around me; neither the important things nor the stupid stuff. My dad makes sure that everyone I know hides things from me as if I were a little girl who doesn't understand anything.

I may not understand some things and I may even be unintelligent in some situations, but I am definitely not his little girl anymore. I have the maturity to be able to participate in all family decisions and not just be dragged from one country to another like I have been all my life.

My father sits down next to me slowly, closing the door behind him and taking a deep breath. I can tell he’s coming up with a thousand ways to apologize without really apologizing, because that's just the way he is. He never accepts his mistakes and of course, he never apologizes, but he hates to make me mad too, so he always comes up with something.

I sigh in a pitiful way, crossing my arms on my chest slowly, knowing that my sad puppy face is going to work. He immediately puts his hand on my knee and looks at me with a sorry face.

No one would think at first glance that this tall, mean-looking man would be easy to manipulate, least of all by a newly turned 18-year-old brat like me, but he is. Or maybe I have too much experience manipulating him after so many years. Who knows.

Whatever it is, it always works.

No one would imagine that he would be so easily manipulated because he honestly looks scary most of the time, but it's because no one knows that my dad is just a sweet, loving man that would do anything for me, even drop his guard so much around me that he lets himself be manipulated.

I take a breath as the driver finally gets into the cockpit. This will be my first helicopter ride ever and I can't wait to tell everyone about it. If I wasn't pretending to be mad at my dad, l'd ask him to take a bunch of pictures of me with his phone so I can upload to every social media out there and make sure to mention that it's MY helicopter. That MY daddy bought it. That we have money and I'm not the starving poor girl everyone thinks I am.

The driver starts checking the buttons and starts saying a bunch of weird things on his communicator.

How boring, can't we just fly? I want to be in the air and enjoy the freedom that life has to offer. Maybe when we get to whatever our new home will be, I can convince my dad to let me borrow the helicopter to go somewhere cool. Like Greece.

"Baby girl, you know that there are certain things that...”

“That I shouldn't and don't want to know," I finish for him, rolling my eyes, "Yes, I remember."

I've heard that stupid phrase too many times not to know it by heart. I'm not as stupid as I look and as anyone would think. But I do hate when he says that to me, for several reasons.

For starters, I don't even really understand what it means, according to this ‘there are certain things I shouldn't and don't want to know' but why shouldn't I know? If they involve him, they involve me too. What kind of things are they? And why, me, his only daughter, can't know it? If I'm asking, it's because I want to know, obviously.

My dad probably invented that phrase just to make me angry and make me feel insignificant.

"Where are we going?" I shout over the sound of the blades after a while. I fumble with my gigantic headphones, ready to take them off if I can't hear my dad, which is most likely.

"Rome!" he answers, also shouting.

And yes, I heard him perfectly, right in my eardrums. Apparently that's what the speaker is for, who knew.

And I can only keep my mouth shut. I obviously can't say no to that.

We're going back to Rome whether I want it or not. Besides, we're already elevated, it's not like I can just open the door and leap into the air to get out of it.

Damn, I should have asked sooner.

In my eighteen years of life I've lived in Mexico, France, Italy and the United States. And believe me when I say it's not as cool as it sounds, mostly because they weren't fun or glamorous trips.

I spent my first six years in Mexico. I don't even remember much about it, but I've heard stories of those times and I know they were very nice and calm, until my grandfather died. Then I spent four years in France. I remember only because I didn't understand a damn thing people were saying; I had to learn English and what I could of French to half communicate caveman style with some people, but not really that many people because I didn't have a single friend.

After that we went to live in Rome and I had to learn Italian, which is the most difficult language of them all. But other than that I had a relatively happy life there, much better than I had in France.

At least I made some friends and there were more people who spoke English, plus my parents knew a lot of people there, they were kind of really popular.

We lived there for six years, the most important six years of my life, you could say. I met Nadia and Yazmin. They're twins and the daughters of my dad's best friend in Rome. And since they didn't know Italian either, we became friends very quickly. There wasn't a single thing we didn't tell each other and there wasn't a single day we weren't together, even if it was just to waste time locked in some room.

I had my first kiss in Rome, with the son of another friend of my dad's, his name was Lorenzo. We were thirteen. And I was in love with him.

God, I still remember him. To this day he's the most handsome boy I've ever seen in my whole life. With his blue eyes and his brown skin, so cute.

We were sitting alone in a plaza eating ice cream. It was the first date I had ever been on and I was terribly nervous. More than any other normal girl, that's for sure. My hands were shaking and sweating so much that when I reached to grab my red drink I dropped it on the table where we were eating lunch and it all fell into Lorenzo’s white pants. I was surprised he didn't slap me and run off after that.

As we ate ice cream and laughed about the drinking incident, Lorenzo said to me, ‘You're the prettiest girl I've ever seen in my whole life’, which I still doubt very much because I was a little fat and I was getting pimples all over my face. Anyway, then he caressed my chubby cheeks with the cutest gesture anyone had ever had with me and moved closer to me.

His lips smelled like chocolate and his tongue lightly touched my lips. I really could have screamed in the middle of the kiss from the thrill of his tongue touching my lips.

Fortunately, I didn't.

Right after that beautiful kiss, he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend and even though I wanted to, I said no, because my dad had said I couldn't have a boyfriend until I was fifteen and I followed the rules… but then the jerk got mad at me and the next day he told everyone at school that I had let him touch my underdeveloped boobs.

Underdeveloped. Yes, that's exactly what that ungrateful son of a whore said:

"Alessia let me touch her underdeveloped boobs."

Of course, he was right about the underdeveloped part, my boobs were barely growing, but I did not let him touch them.

That situation began a bit of bullying around school and it traumatized me. I never spoke to him after that and if I see him again I will most likely take off my shirt and bra wherever we are and show him how developed my boobs are now.

Everything was cool in Rome, except for Lorenzo… until my mom got killed and that absolutely ruined the vibe.

We had to run away from Rome just like we are doing now... and just like we ran out of France because my uncle died over there. I don't like to think about dead people, but it seems like my life is full of them.

My hypothesis is that we have some curse in the family.