Prelude I

#1

She was greeted that morning by a couch cushion hitting her in the face.

“Gah! Huh?” Jasmine spluttered as her hands reached up far too late to guard her face from any further projectiles. Luckily for her none came.

“Wake up!” Came Saffron’s voice, her sister spoke in an obnoxious singsong tone that made it clear that she was revelling in the moment.

“Urgh fuck off Saff,” Jasmine grumbled, rubbing at her eyes as they fluttered open.

“No need to be rude, I’m actually doing you a favor,” Her sister announced, voice still in an irritating singsong, “Mom and dad aren’t awake yet so you can get upstairs before they come down here and see you passed out on the couch.”

After a couple of blinks Jasmine fully took in the scene. Saffron was hovering just out of range of a retaliatory swipe, illuminated by a stray ray of light coming in through the curtains. A large grin plastered on her face, as she luxuriated in the moment, it was reminiscent of someone just settling down into a hot tub, or, more likely, a cat that had a mouse cornered. For a moment Jasmine’s brain told her she was looking into a mirror, the resemblance between the two sisters was uncanny and they had been mistaken for twins on more than a couple of occasions. But Saffron had her luscious, shimmering caramel brown hair that everyone went to great pains to compliment, something Saffron always accepted with a self-satisfied purr. For her part Jasmine was jealous of her sisters hair, the way it shone and glistened in the light and lay on her shoulders with an effortless elegance, Saffron could have been a model, and easily could have been a hair model for advertising.

Jasmine narrowed her eyes, there was a catch to the charity Saffron was offering. Neither sister ever gave anything to the other for free, unless it was a middle finger. “What do you want?” She grumbled as she sat up fully. As she did so she quickly scanned over the room to figure out where exactly in the house she had fallen asleep. It had been the study, which made sense, it had a large couch, and two arm chairs, all of which were loaded up with marshmallow-soft pillows. If you were going to turn up drunk and pass out in any room in the house, the study was the best option outside of the bedrooms.

“Well,” Saffron began, twirling away to recline in one of two armchairs that faced the couch. The waist of her cropped hoodie riding up to reveal the beginnings of abs, another part of her younger sisters body Jasmine found herself very jealous of. “I want to go to a party.” She proclaimed, a queen addressing her solitary subject, leaning back and bouncing one of her legs over the arm of the chair as she did so.

Jasmine’s eyes remained narrowed and she looked unimpressed. There was more to the statement than Saffron was letting on and she was intrigued to find out what the actual juicy details were, but she didn’t want to sound like her curiosity about Saffron’s social life had been piqued. “Then just go, mom and dad don’t care if you go to a party.”

“No, see they will mind, because it’s at Tyler Bowden’s house.”

Jasmine sighed. Tyler Bowden was seemingly the main character in a long-running drama that was playing out within Saffrons life. She was desperately attracted to him but it was an attraction he didn’t reciprocate, at least not openly. He had previously hosted a pool party where the police had been called due to the amount of noise and alcohol consumption. Which as far as their parents were concerned made any further parties at his house a non-starter. Jasmine didn’t get it herself, the exact same things happened at all the other parties they attended, so one being hosted at Tyler Bowdens wasn’t any different from any others. But she supposed there was a degree of plausible deniability involved. “And how does this involve me?”

The grin on Saffron’s face turned wicked. “I want you to cover for me. Really simple cover, just say I’m at Tegan’s house and we’ve gone out bowling or something.”

Jasmine rolled her eyes. “And what is in it for me?”

“Easy, you do this for me, I don’t tell our parents that you were out late drinking with whoever it is you hang around with now and not studying.”

“But I still could just tell them you’re going to Tyler’s.”

“Yeah, you could.” Saffron said, her focus had shifted from Jasmine and was instead centred on checking her nails. “But it’s mutually assured destruction.” As if to punctuate her statement the ceiling above them creaked, Jasmine looked up while Saffron checked her phone. “And there’s dad.” She started clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, simulating the ticking of a clock, counting down to Jasmine’s inevitable punishment and docked allowance should their father descend the stairs and find her in the study wearing the same outfit as the prior morning.

The two sisters stared at each other from across the study. Saffron stuck her tongue out, knowing her victory was assured. “Fuck you, fine,” Jasmine eventually relented, throwing her hands up uselessly as she jumped to her feet and began pulling her boots off so she could make her way across the lacquered wood in the entrance hall in her socks.

“Thanks Jazzy, love you, bye!” Saffron called from her perch as Jasmine shuffled away at high speed. She carried her chunky platform boots in her left hand as her right gripped the bannister for the stairs. She took them quickly skipping the middle step that squeaked loud enough to pierce through the veil between the living and dead, and slid across the landing to her bedroom door. She manoeuvred the door like a bank robber trying to finesse a vault door, opening it just enough to slip inside. Her room itself was a shrine to horror media and the color black with the remains of a child’s room buried beneath a layer of posters. Particularly committed palaeontologists would have been able to clear the various piles of t-shirts, tights, jeans and accessories away then peel back the assorted band and movie posters to reveal the baby blue walls beneath, and some old pencil markings tracking her growth, all the way up to five foot eight, A development that had surprised her parents the first time, but less so when Saffron also hit her growth spurt.

Not too long after she’d settled herself she, heard her dad knock on the door and poke his head in. “Hey Jazzy, breakfast will be in thirty.”

“Ok!” She grumbled into her pillow, breathing out a sigh of relief when she heard the door pull closed.

“Fuck.” She mumbled.