All Bilee wants in life is to fit in with her artist family. Her twin sister can do it all. Sing, dance, and paint. Her brother's well-known for his portraits, and even her father can carry a tune without hesitation. Bilee is what he calls "tone dea...
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Bilee's heart hiccuped in her chest the second her waking brain told her eyes to open.
Anxiety was something she was a little too familiar with, but today it seemed different.
Rigid.
Raw.
Like she was being suspended in the air by a single thread, and any wrong move would send her crashing to the cold, unforgiving ground.
She pulled her knees into her chest, making sure to take the blankets with her as she inched her way up her bed. "Good morning," she greeted herself under her breath. The dark room responded in it's senseless silence. She smiled taking a second to slow her heart, counting the picture-frames lining the sweet baby blue walls, and the clutter of books crammed carelessly in the far right corner of her room. "College."
Hearing it out loud didn't sound real, though she'd given it much thought. She wasn't going to be distracted by silly things like boys, sex, and drugs. She was going to work hard to get into a good university. One that would teach her about the real world and how to live successfully in it.
"Yellow." She noted the birds outside her window with a smile, their sound swirling around her hair in strings of vibrant yellow. She inhaled sharply through her nose and let out a long, drawn out breath through her mouth.
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Jubilee June Heartsong, the eldest twin, was known for her strength. She told herself she had to be reliable when everything else in her life was so unstructured. If wasn't organized, if things were left up to chance, she'd turn out like the students she'd heard so much about from her father.
That, and she was a little too acquainted with Effy's older brother, Tony.
The quiet house creaked under her weight as she navigated around the dark. With just a long shirt covering her body, she felt the need to grab the nearest blanket and cape it around her to ward off some of the cold quickly spilling in through the air vents. She was regretting her recent decision to donate her hair, once long and silky- now short, choppy, and totally out of control. Her sister had talked her into "reinventing" herself before college. And once again, she'd let herself go foolishly along with the plan.
