THE WHISPERS OF DEATH

Chapter 1

Scarlett looked into her pearl bordered mirror and examined her face, before tilting her head to slide a pearl pin into her long wavy black hair. Her long heart shaped face was pale and glassy and her leaf green eyes were bordered with a thin eyeliner. 

"Preening again, Scar?" A voice asked as she whirled around.

She pretensiously coughed and said, "No... Of course not."

"Mm yeah definitely," Jeanette said. 

She stood there.

"Are you gonna get out or what?"

"Yes, because I came for absolutely no reason didn't I?"

"So..." Scarlett trailed off. Jeanette grimaced. She came and sat down on Scarlett's bed and bowed her head down, ombre waves curtaining her olive face. "Just a hypothetical question...-"

"When you say that it's hypothetical, I know that it's automatically true. So just get on with it before I send you out, or lift you up and go and place you in the garbage."

"Nothing... I mean you would say that nothing's wrong, I thought it was a little suspicious, but I'm probably overreacting."

"About what?"

"Um, it's okay. I'll just tell you another time."

"But-". Jeanette walked out the bedroom door down the hallway to her room and began typing on her laptop. And she didn't even have to get up to see her do that. She could hear her aggressively jabbing the keys. Scarlett paused. What if something was wrong and she wasn't telling her? Well surely she would have told her by now. Maybe she was pranking her, she considered, like the one time she told her that their foster parents were getting divorced. I cried for ages then, thought Scarlett. So she decided she'd ask later. I have enough on my plate already, Scarlett turned on the heel that was taking her to Jeanette's room, and went back to hers.

She pulled the pin out of her hair and walked down the stairs. Her mother stood there, and gave her a hug before giving her a bowl of ramen and told her to go and give Jeanette that. Scarlett nodded and walked up the stairs, precariously balancing the bowl between her fingers hoping not to scald them. She walked into Jeanette's warm room and gave her the bowl of ramen. I stood, fixated on the decoration of the inside, like a ray of sunshine, her room filled with warm autumnal shades and polaroids and a reading nook next to the window. Her books stood in a tottering pile, a mix of thriller and crime fiction, and Twilight. She's in that phase I suppose.

"What are you here for, to enjoy the view or something?"

"Sorry, mum asked me to bring you some ramen. You know if there is a problem, I am there for you, you know that right?"

Jeanette coughs: " yeah please enough of this sweet cosy talk, just give me the ramen and get out."

"But really, if it's a serial killer you do know that I can track them and catch them down right? Literally the reason I'm graduating from Yale."

"Yes, yes, just so that the teenagers or retired detectives can do the FBI's job." 

Scarlett laughed. "Yeah hopefully it wouldn't come to that. But seriously-"

"Yes, yes, I'll tell you if something's wrong." Jeanette rolled her eyes. The were a few moments of stiff silence. "So can you get out now?"

Scarlett laughed and stood there before crumpling against the doorframe in hysterics. Jeanette got up and pushed Scarlett out of the door and shut it tight and swept her hand with the other feeling glad to have succeeded in pushing out her skeleton of a sister.

Oh, how she didn't know the danger she was facing.