Trouvaille

1

I was never big on dramatic events, all sparkles and high-end fashion, bubbly champagne and strained formalities exchanged between people who can't wait for the first chance to stab each other in the back but do hell of a job at being all smiles while the camera is rolling. Much to my dismay, in my twenty two years of life, I have witnessed so many such occasions that I had become somewhat an expert.

Unnecessarily huge weddings, prom nights, my mother's boring soirées. It's all just for show. A perfect occasion for idle part-time moms and full-time arm-candy hunters to show off their new, more-expensive-than-kidney Jimmy Choos while keeping an eye on all the fresh meat at their disposal. It always somehow ends up with fresh meat in question being chicken, if you know what I mean, and somehow always a uni pal of the part-time mom's uncharacteristically boring, ever annoyed daughter. Not that she minds the chicken, the part-time mom, that is. The daughter, on the other hand, usually prefers oldish men in tight suits and pointy shoes so hideous, they might as well be used for pricking yogurt pots in the park. Daddy issues, I suppose.

At such events, the decoration is by rule horrendous, followed by an almost as horrendous choice of music, although I had a chance of listening to a pretty solid band on a certain wedding, which was, by all means, a one time luck, a miracle really that was never to repeat itself.

But back to my strong animosity towards drama in general. Drama as in glitter sewn over clothes. Drama as in multi-floored or tier or whatever the fuck they are called cakes with loads of castor sugar and creepy fondant figurines that keep staring at you even when you move from side to side. Drama as in champagne, the most boring and overpriced drink to have ever existed. Needless to say, being in the spotlight falls into this category as well, something I've expertly learned to avoid ever since I was old enough to walk, always lurking in the background, always with my nose in a book, always in my sister's shadow.

That pretty much sums up the reason behind my profession, and my sister's, the discrepancy between the two so profound that it perfectly reflects our characters. While Elena has chosen a path that would, if she happened to make it big, make her a star of the show, always in the spotlight, I had taken a path which would leave me somewhat in the background, the little screw keeping the impressive piece of furniture upright. My sister the performer, I the costume designer, always at her service. Of course, as a sister of an uprising star I had another profession altogether, something of a moral support, though I had never been quite fit for the job, because I was never good with words either.

It's not that I'm stupid or bland or in a huge need of a new personality - in any case, if I am, no one ever bothered to point it out - it's just that I don't like people all that much. I am straightforward, unfiltered, and I happen to think majority of people are miserable, doltish, obtuse-like-an-ashtray twats, which makes four of five of my conversations with others an irreversible catastrophy. So I try not to speak too much, or to filter my thoughts before I do, which is hell of a task and I usually fail miserably in trying to do so.

In fact, I was struggling with it at the moment, as I was watching my sister's pompous dress, flashy enough to prick the eyes of those sitting in the last row, two hundred meters from the stage, let alone the poor lads in the front. The thing is, the dress had been finished late, just before Mother and Elena left for Rome, which meant that I, who had joined them in the great Italian city only two days later, hadn't got the chance of seeing it yet.

That is, until now.

And I was seeing it alright, considering it looked as if Tinker Bell was playing with pixie dust and ended up spilling much more than she'd intended. I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth, but good God.

"You don't like it," Elena said after inspecting me for a moment longer, obviously aggravated.

"No!" I blurted out, but I was so quick to reply that I'd only confirmed her statement. "No, it's just..." my words trailed off into nothingness as I caught a glimpse of my sister's beet-red face.