Tiny Dolls

prologue

The flashing of cameras from the crowd look like twinkling stars in a sea of darkness, I can't make out any of the faces yet they can all see mine. The delicate heart painted onto my lips, the white foundation making my already porcelain skin glisten even more so underneath the stage lights, I close my eyes and take in a deep breath, I am light as air. My feet glide across the stage and before i know what I'm doing the music is lifting me higher and higher, I am so light, so graceful and sure of my movements I don't think anyone would notice the difference if i had actually began to fly.

I radiate beauty and know I am everything my peers want to be, but thats when it happens. My fall from grace, in an instant I feel the floor slip out from beneath me. I lose my footing and tumble so heavily into the trap door on the stage, but before I've made it down my pleading eyes find one thing in the darkened wings of the stage. A silver locket, my silver locket, the one with a beautiful rose gold pendant and a picture of my mother clipped to another girl's neck. I feel mine ache as I lay on the hard wood floor, my sight comes and goes in rapid and nauseating patterns. Until finally I close my eyes, the fake eyelashes kissing my cheeks softly as I slip into a sleep I'm not sure I'll wake up from.

~

I hear the air leave Amy's body as her delicate body smashes against the floor beneath the stage, an empty and broken feeling fills my chest before i pinch myself. Tears prick my eyes and I look around playing as clueless as can be, as if I wasn't the one who pulled the lever, as if I wasn't the one sneaking into Amy's room at forbidden times in the night for stolen kisses and pillow talk only to find out she had a boyfriend and was soon to be engaged. I don't let what I've done weigh me down, not yet. I run across the stage in graceful strides, my white tutu bouncing around my hips like small clouds.

"Someone help!" I scream looking desperately into the sea of darkness that is the house. The entire theatre has gone into a panic and there are sounds of people snapping pictures, dialing for paramedics, or just crying. Amy was too loved for her own good, I manage to slip down into the hole and kneel over her body.

She's passed out, maybe even dead, her soft lips parted in a perfect 'o' shape as if she'd even rehearsed her own death. Death. What if she is dead? Tears stream down my face and onto her cheeks as I grab hold of her soft blonde hair, the hair that smelled like strawberries and got all frizzy after we'd finished hooking up, the hair that she'd grown to love thanks to her boyfriend's constant compliments.

I wonder where he is, her boyfriend, my brother. It's odd how the fact that we're related isn't as important as the fact that he'd stolen her from me. My best friend and my brother. He knew the feelings i had for her, I had even told him about having our first kiss in the pool during summer break when we were 12. Did that mean nothing to her, did the sloppy way his lips always smashed into hers really make her happier than the soft, loving ones I'd always given her?

Im hysterical now, paramedics pry me off of her and pull her onto a stretcher screaming to one another about head trauma and loss of blood. Then i notice the broken glass, the gash on her neck, the metallic liquid streaming down my hands and onto my wrists then down to my tutu. What have I done?

~