I hadn't expected to leave the house in such a hurry.
When Dad came home I thought we'd eat dinner, listen to Yelena talk and laugh together, like we always did. We would watch a show together. I'd sit by Mom, Yelena on Dad's lap. We'd go to bed and I'd tell Yelena a story.
I hadn't expected this. I hadn't expected to leave so soon.
We passed the kids from our neighbourhood. Some of them I'd been to school with.
One girl, Anna, always waved when I went past her. I'd seen her today on my bike. I think she may have seen me through the car window, it was dark but I could see her face. I wanted to raise my arm and wave, in a hello like I normally would, but I couldn't. I was too afraid to wave at her, knowing it was a goodbye.
She'd never see me again.
The kids were nice and always let us join in with their games, though Mom always liked us home pretty early. We played tag together and I helped Matthew, a nice boy who sits next to me in maths, with his homework each week. He gave me jolly ranchers that Yelena always begged me to share.
They never made fun of Yelena's name and they said I was cool because they liked my hair.
It had been Moms idea to dye my hair. She said all American kids were doing it, though I never saw anyone else with blue hair in our town. Our town. Not anymore, I suppose.
When we passed the flashing lights, I almost longed for someone to stop us, to arrest us, to hurt us. I didn't care. I wanted to throw myself out of the car and beg at a policeman's feet just for another second of late-night homework finishing, family dinners and brightly-lit Christmas trees, no matter how fake the wrapped boxes were, just so for a moment it would feel real.
But as I heard Yelena talk to Mom, call her silly, and call the house we'd left "home", I could hear her perhaps start to realise that this adventure wouldn't be so much of an adventure after all.
Part of me wanted to sneer at her naivety, the smallest part of me that Natalia hid in, but when I heard the little tremor in my sisters voice, I kicked Natalia back, throttling her until she slithered into the part of me I knew would soon return.
I think Yelena did not want to believe it. And I didn't want to tell her, and nor could I jump out of the car and leave her.
Yelena wanted her song.
Dad always lets her play it because she was always anxious when our parents were doing something mission-related. Like a part of her knew we were doing something wrong. But Dad didn't like to see her worried, so he played it no matter how many times it drove him nuts.
I knew where we were going, we were going to the runway where we kept our plane.
I remember the first practise we had with the plane, Dad had taken us to the track after dinner, much like we were doing now. Yelena and I would pull the weights out from the plane and we'd get in with mum and wait a few minutes.
Dad would stay behind with his gun, "just in case" He would tell us, "just in case".
I remembered having to tell Yelena not to tell anyone at school about the plane. I think she only told one time, because she came home one day upset that she'd been called a liar.
That was the only time I was angry with her, for telling. For being a child, a four-year-old, a normal child who boasts. I was angry at myself for being angry with that, even if I had only been nine myself.
We passed by the baseball pitch. I craned my neck to get one last glimpse.
I wish I could've known who won.
The Americans like their games. I was a good bowler, Mom said I could try out once the summer was over but I never got round to it. I guess I never will now.
I remember when we visited an outdoor centre with school and I was the best on the shooting range. Mom told me I shouldn't have shown off, it might have looked suspicious. Dad was happy and ruffled my hair. I liked when he did that.
I think Mom just wanted my childhood to be normal.
As Yelena sang to American pie, I thumbed the picture in my hand.
It had been taken on fourth of July. Mom told us the first year we were here that it was important to Americans, so it was important to us too, at least in public.
I don't think Yelena was old enough to understand that we weren't supposed to actually celebrate American traditions. I think she just liked the music and food. She always needed headphones for the fireworks. She didn't like the loud noise. It didn't bother me.
There had been a photo booth at the festival last year and me and Yelena snuck into it. We spent Mom's money she'd wanted for parking and she told me off. I told her it was "just in case". I told her it would make a good addition to the photo album.
She lay off then, and praised my thinking. I might've believed my own lie at the time if I hadn't kept it out of the photo album.
Mom never mentioned it to me. Dad did, asking if I could find it to put it in the album. I think Mom wanted me to have something real to keep. Dad just wanted to be convincing. All that stuff in the album was fake, this was real. Real happiness. I wanted it seperate.
Mom sighed as Yelena sang "this will be the day that I die". I looked at her in the rear-view mirror. She seemed sad. She seemed tired and weary.
Dad looked triumphant, I didn't like it when he looked like he did now, like the man he really was. The man I always forgot he was.
Mom had the same look on her face as to when she apologised to me. She knew where we were going, she knew we might not survive. So to hear Yelena sing those words, innocently, must've made her feel guilty. Not guilty enough to take us home.
It was like the time that dad shouted at her. I'd sat on the stairs, keeping Yelena in her room. Mom was yelling at him, telling him that he was being careless. He told her he was bored of this role.
It was that night I fully processed that this little family unit was a lie, was a fake. A convenience. Me and Yelena were just completing the jigsaw of the perfect nuclear family.
But Mom had been sad after that day, hunched and guilty, for a week or so. Like she knew I had realised. My little bubble of security was broken.
I was glad then, for Don McLean's long song. It stretched the car ride longer. I wanted to cling to the normality of it all.
I thought about all the times we'd spent in here. Like when Yelena and I played hide and seek and she got herself stuck in the trunk of the car. Mum had to scramble through the backseat to get her out, the clasp had gotten stuck on the trunk. Yelena was still laughing when we got her out.
I looked at the dark sky and thought about how many parents were eating with their kids now, how many mothers were feeding their newborns, how many tears were being wiped after a nightmare and how many fathers played songs for their daughters.
The suburbs had started to disappear. And that was when I knew that my American life was no more. "Natasha" would just be another neighbourhood girl who moved away.
She studied economics at Yale University and is married to an accountant, living a boring, American life in a four bedroom house with two children and a dog called Buster.
Meanwhile Natalia would go on, she'd have no children and no name. She'd never graduate university, or high school, only on false pictures taken for undercover missions. She'd never marry or have children unless it was staged. She'd study fighting and guns and killing and blood until it all consumed her, or until she died. And then she'd be buried on an unnamed plot of field or thrown in a river. She'd have no legacy, no children, no real photo albums of Christmases and holidays. She wouldn't grow old and complain about aching joints. She'd never push her grandchild in a pram. She'd never die with the people she loved or be missed by her family.
Yelena would be much the same, a blonde woman who would never have a dog or her own clothes or a nice car. She'd never have a job as vet or pencil pusher. She'd die alone. "For a cause". But no cause should cost a girls life.
I placed my hand on my stomach as we pulled right.
My tummy gurgled and I regretted not eating a little more before leaving. I'd already been in that place for most of my life and I knew Mom's food would be the most substantial and tasty food I'd have in a long while.
Dad had told Yelena he had fruit roll ups. I knew because she heard my stomach rumble and asked Dad for them. He didn't acknowledge her but she just went back to singing her song. I felt angry that he'd lied to her.
I remembered wanting to learn to cook. When we'd first arrived I still didn't totally understand that our family was fake, I was only eight.
I'd told Mom that I wanted to be a chef. She'd looked worried at the time, as if she didn't want to dash my hopes but knew that I needed to understand that we weren't getting out of there forever. She needed me to understand that I could never have a normal job.
She'd sat me down and told me that when we left Ohio, I'd have to look after Yelena, because we needed to live.
I'd asked her why I may die and she told me that, one day, we would go back there.
I'd thought we had left forever. Even nowadays I sometimes had hope.
And I'd looked at her with such despair that it was the only time I'd ever seen her cry. That's when she first started telling us "pain only makes you stronger". I think it helped her most, giving us what little comfort and wisdom she could to survive the place all the women in our family dreaded.
I could see the field ahead of us, where we kept the plane, and in my head I said a silent prayer. To keep Yelena safe. It was more of a promise, a promise I knew I couldn't keep forever, maybe not even one I could keep for the next few hours. My promise was slipping like sand in a red hourglass.
As we got out, I almost thought I could take Yelena and run. But Mom ushered us into the plane too quick and Dad threw a metal container so high that I knew he'd catch up to us easily, and I didn't know what would happen if he did.
We strapped ourselves in and my heart was beating so fast all the blood rushed to my head, almost like I was upside down.
I saw Dad wait outside, gun in hand. "Just in case".
Mom tried to reassure me he was coming soon but my stomach twirled in well-practised pirouettes.
Yelena was whimpering a little now, she was hungry and afraid.
The big adventure wasn't happening.
We were going to be abandoned and manipulated, hurt and forced to live a life an American would find "cool", spies and martial arts, while I was dreaming of homework and TV dinners. Yelena didn't know this. All that was important to her was that the adventure wasn't happening.
I think that's what broke my heart the most, that I didn't have the heart to tell her that it would get worse.
She clutched her unicorn and I held the photo.
In my head, and I don't know why it stayed there as I usually try to get it out quickly, Yelena's song played. It spoke of melancholy and such American notions that I had grown to love and take as my own.
Our false life had become my real one.
For a moment, just a moment...it was real to me.
For a moment I had a real mother.
It was real to Yelena, it still was as we sat in the plane. And it was real to me too.
I had begun to believe it myself, that I would someday have enough money to take care of Mom and Dad when they were old, that I could take my children to see them, that I'd be studying for finals, drinking on my 21st birthday when my parents took me out to dinner, that I'd introduce my boyfriend to them, that I'd die old and happy with a beautiful view.
But it wasn't real. Who cares?
As Dad cocked his gun, Don McLean sang in head, "this'll be the day that I die".
He wasn't totally wrong. This was the day "Natasha" died. The American girl. With the nuclear family and the cool hair. The girl who wanted to play baseball and learn to cook. The girl with a little sister.
Natalia was returning. I could feel her creeping up on me. I could tell because the innocence was melting away, the laughter was turning to screams of little girls.
"Natasha" could never return, surely? I had no hope of this. I only had hope that Natalia could be saved by the remnants of Natasha, whichever little pieces of her would be left. I only hoped these pieces of Natasha could hold onto the cliff edge a little longer, and not let go.
Yelena and I would survive this, hand in hand. No matter how real, she was my sister, she was my family. I would always have a family. And I was better because of it.