Lust, Loss, LOVE

Chapter I

JESSIE

Everything is dark. No sound can be heard. There's a road and not too many cars. It all seems...peaceful. Yet Jessie knows something's coming. Because she has had this dream before. Suddenly, sirens start ringing, the world starts spinning, and she hears someone scream her name. That's when she wakes up, gasping for air. She places a hand on her chest where she feels her dog tags under her shirt. She holds them tight and closes her eyes as her lungs fill with air. She takes one more deep breath before turning her head to the side to watch the sun rise through her window. She looks down at her alarm clock. 6:00 am. School starts at 8:00. Why not? she thinks to herself and throws her light blue sheet to the side before getting up from her bed and walking towards her bathroom, lost in her thoughts. It wasn't the first time she woke up this early, anyway. In fact, for the past six months it had become part of her daily routine. The doctor said the nightmares were her subconscious mind's way of reliving what had happened. Post-traumatic stress disorder, he called it. She had reluctantly accepted the diagnosis. Doctors are never wrong, right? Yet, when everything happened, she was in her room, profoundly asleep. How can it be PTSD, then? If she wasn't even present when what happened, happened? No. To Jessie, the nightmares were just a reminder of what she had done that day, the instant that changed her life. The one thing she regretted the most. Enzo had said it wasn't her fault. That it wasn't anybody's fault. But she knew it was hers. Who else's could it be? 

Jessie shakes the thought away and closes the handle, stepping off the shower. As she stares at herself in the mirror she notices the star-shaped scar on the right side of her neck. Her birthmark. It was the one thing that made her unique. She puts her hand over it, caressing it gently before heading back inside her room to get changed. Unlike most high school girls, Jessie didn't care much for how she looked or how she dressed. She usually picked the first thing she found on her closet.  This time it was a white, short sleeved t-shirt with a meaningless phrase in the middle of it, black joggers and her black converse. Once she brushed her hair, she looked at her hand-watch. 6:20am. Time to wake the sleeping beauties, she thought to herself before grabbing her phone from her bedside table and making her way to her sister's bedroom beside hers. She knocks on the door three times before opening it. 

"Mae? You up?" she asks, and turns on the light. Laying on her bed with her arms over her head, profoundly asleep, was her litter sister. Jessie smiles. "Come on, baby girl. It's time to wake up!" She hears her sister moan and watches as she covers her eyes with her arm, shielding them from the light. "Come on, Mae." Jessie insists. 

"Ugh, fine. I'm up, I'm up!" Mae throws her arms to the side in surrender.

"Good morning, baby girl." Jessie replies. "Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes, okay?"

"All right, all right." Mae replies before sitting down on her bed, letting the morning sleepiness sink in. Jessie chuckled and kissed the top of her head, before heading to her brother's room, located a few steps from Mae Belle's, in front of the stairs. 

"Enzo!" she yells. "Its time to wake up, sleepy head!" she adds and waits a few seconds to knock on the door. In 3..2..1...she thinks to herself before, like clockwork, the door busts open. She smiles at the sight of her brother. His eyes were still closed, and the bags under his eyes told her he had stayed up till late, probably studying, which was made evidently clear by the fact that he was not  wearing a shirt, yet still had on the joggers that he was wearing the day before. 

"Hello, big brother." she said and crossed her arms on her chest. Enzo rubbed a hand through his messy strawberry brunette hair and frowned, before letting it drop down. He opened his eyes slowly to look at her. She waved, and grinned.