The Cold Summer Breeze

Prologue

Prologue

Grace Summers

The dull New York morning sun spread its boredom throughout the entire eastern sky with flecks of pale yellow that tinged the clouds with sudden bursts of colour. The melancholy atmosphere of the day reflected my wistful mood. Finished for the day, I rolled up the yoga mat from the cold, tiled floor of the veranda. I could already see the daily traffic pouring into the roads and it was only five A.M. Sinking into the plush red couch, I took a sip of the refreshing tea the maid had just brought and tried to relax a little. The key to becoming a perfect dancer is to gain perpetual control over every single part of your entire body, and being able to utilize and manipulate every single muscle, every single fingernail. Contemporary dancing is about the lightness and ease of movement.

I then took a quick shower, and let the warm water wash away the last shreds of stiffness from my body. I dried myself, wrapped a towel around my body, then entering my bedroom, picked up the jeans and black and white T-shirt laid upon the silk covers of my king sized bed and hurriedly dressed myself. Brushing my hair, I looked at my virtual image on the full length mirror on the wall. A brunette girl with a petite figure and big, dark, doe eyes stared back at me.

"Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" I mumbled. The girl in the mirror sneered and said, "Definitely not you Grace Summer." I shrugged; the irrefutable truth was that I was neither intoxicatingly beautiful, nor hideous, but floating unpleasantly somewhere in the middle, maybe a little towards the negative end. I did have a decent figure with long legs and curves, but my face portrayed sheer plainness and absence of glow; as my mother said, my face, "fails to grasp the effect of wealth and luxury" and didn't reflect my "privileged upbringing".
Shaking my head and smiling, I slipped on a jacket and slung my bag on my shoulder, then skipped down the marble stairs and past the library and ballroom and into the colossal dining room; where Martha, our housekeeper was setting breakfast. My twin brother George was already ensconced on top of his regular seat beside mine. Winking at Martha, I pounced on George like a tiger on his prey and screamed with such a high pitch, the intensity of it made George spill out a spray of tea and saliva and drop his cup, which clanked loudly as it landed on the saucer and reverberated in circle for a while before stopping. In the lengthy silence that followed, Martha gaped at the stain on the expensive linen tablecloth with a horrified face that was highly comical and George slowly got up from his chair. When he faced me, he was smiling from ear to ear; this made his handsome face configure itself into that of an evil goblin's and it chilled my bones.
George rose one foot high into the air and it hovered above mine. Before I could realize what was happening, he slammed his foot down on mine with such extraordinary force, I felt like my toes had been split apart and that my foot had fallen off.

"Eeeowwww!!" I screamed out so loudly that Martha scrunched up her face and took a step back. But George did not falter; he stood stock still glaring at me as I looked up at him with pure malice, clutching my foot. After half a minute of glaring at each other, we both broke out into paroxysms of giggles that surprised Martha; who after a while of taking in our stupidity; smiled, shook her head and went to the kitchen. She should've been used to this already, stuff like these were inevitable every morning with George and I.
After sending a piece of toast to my digestive system in three large bites, I grabbed a bottle of water and jogged out of the house. I jogged through the garden towards the driveway, where my shiny black Merc was waiting for me with the door wide open and the chauffeur standing beside it like a sentinel. I slid into the car and shut my door. A dark haired beautiful woman slid in beside me. She held her chin up high naturally and wore a designer suite made of rich, luxurious material.

"Good morning mother," I said, trying to force a smile. She assessed me from head to toe with a disapproving frown.

"Good morning Grace. May I know for what particular reason you chose to wear what you are wearing? You've been wearing this for a year now. Just last month I bought you so many new clothes from Alexander McQueen, you still haven't worn any one of them yet. Are you going to leave them to rot?.." Stop, please stop, I thought. "..But of course you do not care about our reputation or your father's position in society. I still have not recovered from the fact that..." Why is she not stopping? Does she not need to catch her breath? "...that last night you went to Mr. Simpson's party wearing jeans. You made me, my upbringing, my reputation an absolute joke..." Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Every single day ugh! "..Have you got no sense of responsibility? Your father and I are extremely disappointed."