Beyond The Bell

Beneath the Surface

Normal POV
Jasmine pushed the door open to her house, immediately met with the familiar sound of voices drifting from the living room. She kicked off her shoes and tossed her bag aside, hoping to slip upstairs unnoticed. But of course nothing goes unnoticed in a house like hers

"Jasmine!" Lea said, which caught everyone's attention.

They all looked up at Jas with the same unreadable expression.  Jasmine froze in place, her hand still gripping the bannister. All eyes in the room were fixed on her now— Lea and Trina were seated on the couch; Reggie standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room; and Alyssa was looking on her phone before setting it on the coffee table. Each of them wore the same expression, that unsettling mix of anticipation and judgment that Jasmine had come to dread.

"You know we gotta talk Right?" Trina said, her voice carefully neutral, but Jasmine could hear the edge beneath it.

"Wait a minute, I'm the oldest sibling." Jasmine replied quickly, trying to keep her tone casual as if this was a conversation she hadn't been avoiding all day. She shrugged slightly, glancing between them. "I ain't gotta answer to y'all."

Alyssa's brow furrowed, and she leaned back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. "That's not the point, Jasmine. We need to talk."

Jasmine's stomach clenched. That phrase—*we need to talk*—was always the beginning of something bad in this house.

"About what?" she asked, already bracing for whatever lecture was coming. She felt the weight of Reggie's gaze, but her brother said nothing, content to let the girls handle the situation.

Trina stepped forward, folding her arms. "You left school for over a year and came back just to get into a fight—what's going on with you? What happened to you trying change?"

Jasmine's defenses rose immediately, She looked taken aback by her cousin's audacity.  This is exactly why she didn't wanna have this talk. the constant probing, the endless questioning, as if her life were some kind of open book that everyone had the right to flip through. "I am changing," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'm just... a work in progress."

"Girl, you know how much time you had to work on yourself?" her Alyssa spoke up. "You need to get it together, Jasmine."

Lea sighed, taking a more measured tone. "We're just worried about you, Jas. You used to talk to us. Now, it feels like you're shutting us out."

Jasmine felt the pressure building inside her, the frustration bubbling up. "I'm not shutting nobody out," she snapped, louder than she intended. "I didn't ask for none of y'all to tell me how to act. If I need y'all help, I'll ask for it."

"That's exactly what we're saying," her Alyssa shot back, her voice rising. "You don't even tell us what's going on anymore. We're supposed to be a family—families talk to each other."

Jasmine clenched her fists at her sides, feeling cornered. "What do you want me to say? That everything's fine? That this is easy? Because it's not!" She took a breath, her voice wavering now. "And maybe that's why I don't feel like talking to you. Because every time I do, it just turns into this—into the four of you making me feel like I'm doing something wrong."

Silence filled the room as her words hung in the air. Her siblings exchanged a glance, and Reggie finally looked away, focusing on his phone, as if the tension was too much to handle.

"Jasmine," her Trina started, but Jasmine cut her off.

"I don't wanna hear none of that shit," she said in a agitated tone, but there was a weight to it now, a sadness. "Just leave it alone." She turned on her heel, making her way up the stairs before anyone could stop her. The sound of the door closing behind her was louder than the argument that had just unfolded downstairs.