Round 1: Kirsch

Maxwell Kirsch and his husband Samuel Kirsch are Adults. Their daughters Felicitas (Liss) Kirsch, Caritas (Cari) Kirsch, and Iustitia (Izzy) Kirsch are Teens.

* * *

Even after all these years and three teenage daughters, Samuel and Maxwell Kirsch were still in love enough to start kissing in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the path of anyone who might try to walk by. Their partnership just… worked. Maxwell had an undemanding job that left him plenty of time to pursue his many hobbies and still have time left over for Samuel, while Samuel stayed home, took care of the girls, and enjoyed being wooed and pampered by his husband. And if Maxwell sometimes wished Samuel would contribute financially a little more now that the kids were older, and if Samuel wished Maxwell’s hobbies left him more time to take Samuel on dates and maybe push for a promotion so they could buy some nicer furniture, well, nothing was perfect.

And now that the girls were older and could mostly take care of themselves, that left Samuel and Maxwell a lot more time to spend together.

And while Samuel sometimes did grow wistful that they hadn’t actually been out on a proper date in years, the only bad times in Maxwell’s life right now were when Liam Brennan came over for the weekly chess nights he hosted. He had no idea why Liam had taken such an instant dislike to him. It seemed like from the first day they met, Liam had had it in for him. At first Maxwell had tried to be friendly; now he didn’t even bother. He didn’t have it in him to be nice to Liam anymore, not when Liam spent half the time shooting barbed insults this way and the other half bragging about whatever new and expensive item he had bought recently.

He took a quiet pleasure in the fact that the latter had grown less and less frequent ever since Liam had lost his job. He wasn’t normally one to wish bad fortune on others, but if anyone deserved it, it was Liam.

The girls had gotten used to answering questions. “Yes, we do look a lot like our parents. No, it’s not an amazing coincidence, we’re not adopted, one of our dads is transgender.” “No, Izzy doesn’t stand for Isabel, it stands for Iustitia. Yes, I know what it means. No, I don’t know why my parents gave me a name like that. No,  I don’t think they hate me.”

Liss had big plans for her life. She was going to be an artist… or a programmer… or both at once. Or maybe she would try a career in business. In any case, it had to be something that paid well, so she could start living a life of luxury. And something interesting enough that she wouldn’t get bored. In any case, she knew that whatever she ended up doing, she would have to get good grades in order to do it. So she spent as much time studying as she had to in order to get her grades up, even if it meant spending less time with her best friend Dmitri Fish.

Dmitri was being weird lately anyway. He was acting like he had a thing for her, which she supposed wouldn’t be bad exactly, and she had to admit he wasn’t bad-looking, but the thing was, she liked their friendship the way it was. She didn’t want things getting weird between them, and Dmitri seemed determined to make it weird. So homework made a good excuse not to go over and see him.

Cari had started spending a lot more time on her homework, too, but only because Liss was. She would much rather have been playing soccer, but she couldn’t let any of her siblings start looking better in their parents’ eyes than her. It was useful to know where you stood with people, and never good to let anyone else be more trusted than you.

Samuel didn’t know their motives; he was just happy to see his girls studying together. It made him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Izzy was another story.

She cared about her family, and always tried to bring Maxwell out of the bad mood Liam got him into. She cared about her teddy bear, which she still hadn’t gotten rid of even though her sisters both teased her for it. She cared about world peace. What she didn’t care about was school.

Izzy was full of all this energy these days, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She felt restless, stuck, in a way that wasn’t just about being the youngest in a house full of sisters. She wanted to do something that mattered. She wanted to change the world. And instead she went to high school every day and came home and watched TV.

Cari’s obvious sucking up drove her crazier by the day. It was clear to her that nothing her sister said was sincere. But whenever she called her on it, Cari would, of course, deny everything – which just made Izzy more furious, although that hot honest rush of emotion was strangely satisfying in its own way.

But for the most part, despite their differences, the Kirsch family was comfortably happy. Every night they hung out around the dining table and shared stories about their day while people ate if they felt like it and did homework unless they were Izzy.

On weekend mornings they would all sit in the living room together in their pajamas, eat scrambled eggs, and watch TV.

It was kind of ridiculously wholesome, and even though Izzy complained, she secretly liked it that way.

Izzy had a tiny bit of a crush on Dmitri Fish, although she would never admit it to anyone. It wasn’t like she really expected it to go anywhere – she knew Dmitri and Liss would end up together in the end. Even if Liss was pretending not to know what she wanted yet, it was obvious how things were going to turn out. But she couldn’t just stop herself from noticing him.

Liss didn’t have much time these days to think about romance. In addition to trying to improve her grades at school, there was her art to consider. She wanted to be an artist when she grew up, at least she thought she did, but her paintings… well, they just weren’t very good. Her dads told her they were fine, but she knew they were just being kind. Everything she painted looked something a five-year-old had put together with fingerpaints. She had given up asking her dads for private lessons – she knew they couldn’t afford it. So she kept cranking out bad painting after bad painting, trying to fix her mistakes, hoping that eventually she would start improving.

Cari’s main concern, aside from getting her daily workouts in, was keeping up with her sisters. Liss always had things to talk about – it was like her mind was constantly whirring at a million miles an hour. Izzy was obnoxiously helpful for someone as contrarian as she seemed, always offering to help out around the house. It felt like a full-time job sometimes, making sure she was as engaging as Liss and as helpful as Izzy.

Sometimes Cari felt like she was missing something, some essential spark that her sisters both seemed to have. Whatever it was that made Liss genuinely enthusiastic about school and her art and everything else, whatever it was that made Izzy sincerely want to help everyone out all the time, she didn’t have it. Sometimes she got the sense that she had been pretending all her life. The only thing that really made her feel alive, that made her feel like she wasn’t pretending, was control. She liked knowing she could make someone react exactly the way she wanted them to react, and do whatever she wanted them to do.

But she was so good at faking that sometimes she forgot she was doing it.

Lately, though, it was getting harder and harder with Izzy. Izzy just got on her nerves – her incessant sincerity, the way everything Cari had to work so hard for came so naturally to her. So Cari would bait her intentionally, and then Izzy would get mad, and then the whole situation would go spiraling out of control. It made Cari uneasy when people were mad at her. It meant they were more likely to see through her.

Maxwell and Samuel weren’t sure what to do about the growing rivalry between the two. Sure, the girls had had their spats before – it was part of raising three kids – but this seemed different somehow. It felt like it ran deeper, and would be harder to solve.

Liss often tried to mediate, but it usually didn’t help. She found herself spending more and more time with her easel, or at Dmitri’s house.

The growing stress at home was enough to make Liss start to reconsider her thoughts about romance. She really needed a distraction, and Dmitri was awfully comforting to have around. But she didn’t want to use him just to distract herself from her warring siblings; he was too important to her for that. So for now, they stayed just friends.

After talking between themselves, Maxwell and Samuel called a family meeting to help Cari and Izzy work things out. They both smiled and apologized and promised to try harder, and Samuel – optimist that he was – completely believed them, but Maxwell found himself wondering whether it would really stick.

Izzy decided that if she was going to try to stop letting Cari bait her, she was going to need some sort of distraction, an outlet for her excess energy. Liss had talked to her about the temptation to use Dmitri as a distraction, so Izzy decided to take her big sister’s advice – or at least she was calling it advice – and find a boyfriend. She asked Cornelius, a boy from school, out on a date to the Blue Velvet. She had no idea whether he was her type or not. To be honest, she didn’t really care. That wasn’t the point. The point was to do something to quiet her mind down for a while.

And for that, Cornelius worked very well.