Dead Jealous

Silhouette

Sky shoves her way through swarms of teenagers, drunk and high and dizzy in all their adolescent glory. What exactly makes young adults so desperate to be something they're not? To form a gap even wider between their younger and older counterparts?

Music shakes and pounds the air. Surely a neighbour will have called the police. The song playing sings clearly into the night. "It only takes two lonely people to fuck love up and make it evol, It only takes a drop of evil to fuck up two beautiful people."

She goes through the house to the living room. Sky might still be there, and if she is it's the perfect place to get it through her brain that she needs to stop. It is private, small and sound proof in that small room.

She whips the door open. No one is in there. Where has she gone now?

Sky wanders to what appears to be the dining table. Candles sit dully on its surface, sad and unlit. Beige placemats lie across the table.

Suddenly she hears soft, small thumps like things being dropped, and the crackling of paper and plastic wrappers. She walks over to the source of the noise which seems to be a large, walk-in pantry.

"Hello?" Sky says softly and cautiously. As her eyes adjust to the dark, she can faintly see a silhouette.

"Hi, sweetie."

Her hands clench into angry fists. She could recognize that voice anywhere.

"Shut up," Sky demands. "Don't call me 'sweetie,' bitch!"

Tara stalks out of the pantry holding an apple. Its glossy red surface faintly glows in the reflection of the street lights that shine through a window across the room.

Her mouth stretches into a smile.

Sky grits her teeth. "What are you doing, anyway? You can't just steal their food."

"I'm sure they won't notice one apple. Don't be such a tight-ass."

"So first I'm a sweetie, and now I'm a tight-ass?"

Tara's sugary smile stretches even further over her pale teeth. She doesn't reply or make a response.

She walks to sliding drawers, opening and closing them.

"Bingo," she says, sliding out a thin, sharp knife, glimmering in the light.

She places the apple on the bench and slices it into several pieces.

When she is finished she brings a slice to her mouth and crunches on it.

"So what do you want?" she asks through her mouth full of apple.

Sky rolls her eyes. "You're disgusting," she says.

"Is that all? Because I really need to get-"

"Shut up!" Sky cuts her off. "What I want is for you to stop sabotaging my life just because you don't have one! Ok?!"

"Honey, I'd rather have no life than have yours," Tara stiffly smirks.

"Would you? Would you really?"

Tara raises her eyebrows in affirmation before lifting another piece of fruit to her mouth.

Lightning-fast, Sky grabs Tara's wrist and wrenches it across the bench. Tara cries out as her body slams into the corner of the bench.

"Stop it!" she cries out.