Melody.

Chapter 3: Melody

"Harmony?" I call. "I'm home!" The sound of her terrible singing echoes through the spacious house, meaning she's either showering or cooking. I dump my bag on the floor, and spot movement from inside the kitchen. She's doing a very bad imitation of the salsa, brandishing a wooden spoon in the air as she stirs some foul-smelling concoction in a saucepan.

"Hey, baby! Ooh. Ah. I wanna KNOW if you'll be my girl!" Cries my insane sister, and I wince.

"You're burning that!" I shout over the racket.

"Am I?" She giggles, looking at the blackened mush in the pan. "Oops."

"Bin it, may as well get takeout." I shrug, and she starts spooning the substance into the bin. "What even is that?"

"Pasta."

"Coulda fooled me..." I shake my head and ascend the stairs to get changed.

I change into baggy shorts and a white tank top, slipping on some neon pink slipper socks. I plait my hip-length hair down my back and then flick it over my shoulder. I put my iPod in the docking station and flick to Ed Sheeran's newest album. Deluxe Edition. Obviously. I lie on my bed, plumping the pillows until they're just right. I check my phone, and I have a new message.

Hey, it's Jasper. You know, the kid from school that you hate for no reason whatsoever ;) xx

I roll my eyes, and delete the message without replying. It's true, I do hate him. Passionately. And whilst I don't know why, my instincts tell me to stay away from that family altogether. I turn over as a new song comes on, the picture of my parents catching my eye. I blink back tears and swallow, because they wouldn't want me to cry. It was an accident that they died, nothing more. It just sucks.

We had a mansion in LA, but it was so empty without them. We'd been left a fortune in inheritance, so we decided to move here, since this is where Mum and Dad met. We moved in last month, and I'm in school still, so I had to enrol. And Harmony is 21, so she's my legal guardian now. It's been nearly a year.

"What takeout?" Harmony yells.

"Chinese!" I call back.

That boy plagues my mind. I recall the way his body was so close to me, and the way I tingled all over when his hand brushed mine. I remember how my back arched when he bit my ear so gently, skin bronzed against pale. My breath is coming a little slower now, and I shake my head. Boys are all the same, I know that. They only want one thing.

And his brother, Jaidon. That was a strange occurrence. I saw the way they both looked at me. Jaidon...like I was a rabbit and he was a fox. And Jasper...like he'd do anything to protect me from that. When I walked off, I felt a pair of eyes on my back all of the way. I wonder which one of them it was. I restlessly pace the room, fiddling with the bottom of my plait, and I slide down the banister to see what Harmony is doing.

As I pass the door, the bell goes, suggesting Chinese. I open the door and pick up the money from the table beside me, bending over to pick up the coin I'd dropped. I stand and look at the delivery guy, and my heart stops cold for a moment.

"Jaidon, right?" I say casually, though I'm sure you can see how fast my heart is pounding through my top, it's almost bursting from my ribcage.

"That's right. Say, Melody. Are you home alone?" Smirks Jaidon, and I slap the money into his hand, snatch up the food and slam the door, locking and bolting it. Harmony comes, or dances, through.

"Alright?" She says, motioning to my shaking hands.

"Yeah, just cold." I say, and give her the food to dish up.

She hands me my bowl of Chicken Curry, my favourite dish from that place. I imagine Jaidon slipping something nasty into it, and push it away, gagging. I put my head in my hands, forcing my breathing to be even instead of shallow and shaky. I prod the food, moving the sauce this way and that, and then shoot up from my chair, a cry escaping my throat. Harmony runs through the door, hands coated in sauce of some kind.

"There - it's a - there's a - someone put razor blades in my curry." I stammer, and she frowns, and takes the dish to the sink in the kitchen, where she puts the plug in and then empties the dish into the sink. She swirls the sauce and chicken and onion and mushroom around to demonstrate the lack of such blades. I fold my arms, because I know what I saw. Maybe I'm just tired after a long day. But I know what I saw. I can't explain it, but it doesn't mean it wasn't there.

I shrug at Harmony, pretending to put it down to a long first day. But I tell her I'm not hungry, and then I go upstairs and shut the door behind me. I loosen my hair from it's braid and brush it, putting my comb on my windowsill and looking out of the window. After checking it's locked, I climb into bed, leaving the light on. I check my phone, with another message from Jasper:

'Please don't hate me x'

I push down feelings of guilt, because he's really done nothing to deserve such hostility. It's that entire family. Not even Jasper, more Jaidon. What a creep...

I wake with a start. I look around, flicking my light back on. I never turned it off, I'm sure. The sight of my curtains billowing causes me to raise an eyebrow, and I stand, walking to the window. It's wide open, the cold air rushing in and eliciting gooseflesh from my pale skin. I fold my arms thoughtfully, wondering who's playing with me. I have to hang out of the window dangerously to close the window as it's open so far I can't even reach.

I shut my curtains, and check my phone. No new messages, and I read the one from Jasper. I don't know how to reply and do over, but I don't want to leave it. I frown, humming a tune.

Humming turns into singing, and I'm singing a song I don't know the words to. And I understand the words, sort of, but it's not in this language. And I don't know what it means, but I've grown to like it. It's been stuck in my head for nearly six months, but I don't tire of hearing it, even from my own lips. I've never heard it played by anyone, and it isn't on ITunes or anything. I drift off again, pondering the song.

It plagues my dream. I'm bathing in this pool in a clearing, with lush grass and clear blue water, and someone coughs behind me. I turn, and Jasper is there. I stare at him, wondering how he invades even my dreams.

"It's you." I say.

"Are you disappointed?" He half grins. I've never seen him do that.

"Should I be, Jasper?" I grin, jumping out of the pool and standing. "What kind of person bathes in something like this?" I eye up this little white toga thing that I'm wearing. He's frowning at me. "Is something wrong?" I say, concerned.

"No...this usually goes differently." He says.

"This being what?" I ask.

"He means," a voice behind Jasper startles us both, though I don't show it lime Jasper does. "That you're not kissing yet, and I'm here early. It means it's begun."

"What's begun?" We ask in unison.

Jaidon waits a moment, brushing hands over the grass and watching it die underneath him. "The chase before the kill." He looks directly at me, and pain explodes in my chest. I wake up with a choked gasp, because I'm in too much pain to scream. I can barely even breathe. I fumble for my phone, calling a number I don't know, and listen to the dialling tone.

"Hello? Melody, are you alright? Hello? Melody?" Jasper's worried voice would suggest, if I didn't know better, that we'd dreamt the same thing. I hang up as the pain begins to subside and I can breathe properly again. His name hangs on my lips like a prayer...or poison.