manic sister thinks i'm cracking (brother says it's in my genes)
Peter’s sweaty, dirty hands gripped around the bottle as the girl he was dancing with pressed against him, and he cheered as the music got louder. Mary was somewhere in the crowd, probably with one of the men she would cart to their hotel room tonight, doing drugs, and she had promised to save Peter some.
Peter was caught up in the surreal experience of partying, the highs and lows of drinking and drug abuse, and constant sex with other teenagers that had ventured out to the club and had managed to get through using fake IDs.
He knew that by now his sisters and cousins would be on his trail, but he didn’t care. Mary had assured him that they wouldn’t be caught, and with the fact that they had no technology on them (he had left his phone at the house), so either way, unless someone was actively watching them, they wouldn’t be found.
He cheered as he chugged the cup in his hands.
“Where are they?” Caterina stressed, running her hands through her hair as she paced the living room, distracting Tony from hacking into the CCTV cameras around the area. Already, the responsibilities of the world had been shoved onto her shoulders, and now it was her job to look after the family, and to learn how to, because Peter was gone.
“If you keep pacing, you’re going to distract me.” Tony said bluntly, his fingers clicking against the keyboard as he desperately scoured the area. “You want to find him, right?”
“What sort of question is that?” she snapped. “Tell you what, maybe we don’t find them! How would you feel?” Caterina then lifted Elisabetta from her ragged high chair and bounced her on her hip, sitting down to coo at her, and to change her.
The house was in a state of disarray, as the two younger siblings took on the burden of the world. Clothes were littered everywhere, and the children had free reign as nobody knew how to discipline them properly, apart from Malena and Ximena.
Chalk was covering the walls with crude paintings and houses, suns, trees and badly drawn animals. Ximena had spoken with them about the dire circumstances, and Mario, Luigi and Carlotta had frowned.
“But Peter lets us draw!” Carlotta had whined, and Ximena had almost lost her patience with the three-year-old, her bottled emotions bubbling up to the surface.
“Well, not on the walls, does he?” Malena had said softly, holding hands with Mateo as they joined the rest of their family as they had walked through the door. “There’s no sign of him down at the bar, and I’ve checked all of Mary’s usual spots.”
Caterina sighed. Her eyes welled up with tears as she thought of everything that could possibly happen to Peter while he wasn’t under their roof. She felt guilty. Perhaps she was the one to drive him to this, perhaps they all were, and maybe they wouldn’t be in this situation.
Caterina did not want to take on the burden of being the rock of the family, because now that Peter had been pushed down the same hill Ricardo and Richard were at the bottom at, she had to take their place. She wasn’t ready, she never had been, because Peter had been the only normal one, the only one who knew what it was like, the only one that had been through the same things she did and didn’t look down at her like she lacked the wisdom or maturity to do the same things that he did.
Tony Stark was her only hope, but she knew that Peter would not be normal, not ever again, and perhaps they wouldn’t find him, and perhaps she would end up going down the hill, and the cycle would never end. Caterina had once thought, in a moment of naivety, that Peter would be the one to end the cycle, to end the endless years of hate and pain that their family had been put through.
But again, she was proven wrong.
They had all gone to sleep, all in separate beds, including Tony, who was staying with them temporarily to oversee everything and in case Peter and Mary showed up at night.
Something crashed on the floor, and Caterina shot up, rubbing her eyes as she checked the clock. It was 2:10 in the morning, and she hoped none of the kids had gotten up to check on something.
She trotted downstairs, Tony following her, and she gasped. Mary and Peter were sat on the sofa, respective bottles of alcohol in their grips as they glared at one another.
Tony silently reached for his phone and began to dial 911. He spoke into it softly, the operator on the other end asking for his name, address, etc. Caterina gripped Valentina’s hand as the family gathered in the small hallway.
Police showed up five minutes later and stormed through the door, oozing authority. Peter had run, obviously high (Caterina had noticed when he stared at her with unblinking, dead eyes), to escape the cops and he was nowhere to be seen.
Metal cuffs tightened around Mary’s arms as they escorted her out of the house, and Ximena announced she was the new owner. In one of Mary’s normal episodes, she had entrusted the keys to Ximena, should anything happen to her or Richard.
“Wait,” Malena frowned, bouncing Mateo as she looked around. “Where’s Peter?”