The Dynasty (Currently Translating It)

Chapter 1

Teresa awoke with a start, her hair pissed off and in her mouth. She did not know if it was that gloomy dream where she was in the rain that had awakened her or the fuss caused by her twin sister against her door.

-Open,Terry, come on !!

Still in the vapes, her room began to turn as soon as she had opened her eyes. Her head was heavy and she felt muddy. She tried without success to put the events of yesterday evening in their context and order, vaguely remembering that she was angry with her sister,Camille, who continued to knock on her door seeking bogus excuses.

Everything came back to the girl's mind like a good slap in the face: last night, she and her sister had gone to a party to celebrate both the end of their studies in high school and the beginnings of their birthday party the next day. But as she had feared, her sister's"buddies", who were the kind of mongrels, had made herdrink to see how far she could go: they had been quickly satisfied, because she had been almost drunk dead to the first beer, at least from the snippets of memory and the words of her sister behind thedoor.

She knew that she should never have followed Camille in her delusions, something she usually refused because she knew it would never bring anything good. But last night she was convinced, by the argument of"oh but you can only feast your 18 years old once in your life,so you need to EN-JOY !"; It hurt her, since she was living her first -and last, she promised herself - hangover.

"Come on, let me sleep, dirty traitor! Teresa screamed in a hoarser voicethan she would have imagined.

-Oh, Terry, do not take it like that! How could I have known that you do not hold alcohol !! Please help me, I will not be able to prepare everything alone! Camille begged.

-Like if you had to be alone! Mom will help you, and it's more your party than mine!

-Oh, do not say that! It's your birthday too! It's not my fault though ..uh ..

She knew that her sister was going to say "you have no friends," and she could not blame her for that.

Teresa and Camille were two heterozygous twins who did not really resemble each other, either in physics or in personality. Camille looked like their parents, this subtle mix of cultures between a British and a Spanish. She had a skin that gilded quickly in the sun, beautiful thick dark blond hair, eyes between blue and green, a pulpy but muscular body, because she loved sport and wanted to do medicine, because to crown everything in this portrait, she was brilliant. She had been able to attract the graces of her teachers and classmates,becoming from kindergarten a popular girl. 

Teresa was not the opposite, but almost: thin, she had white skin like mother-of-pearlor whipped cream; her hair was stiff and black, but fortunately shining with silvery highlights; the strangest thing was probably her eyes, whose pupil changed color in the sunlight, from a chocolate brown to carmine red, which earned her the sobriquet of "vampire"or "witch" in middle school . Studious as well, she had, unlike her sister, preferred the path of books, devouring them fromher bed at a young age. She was quickly classified in the weirdos that we loved to torture from time to time, before encountering an angry Camille, who although she didn't like the image conveyed by her sister, defended her from time to time, when the "joke"was too mean. Although she would not dare to admit it, Teresa knew that her sister was doing her best to hide their affiliation, and their future entry to college would finally free her beautiful sister from the weight of her twin.

Indeed, if Camille Dermil had chosen to do medicine, it was not the case of Teresa, who was running away from doctors like the plague ("an apple a day keeps the doctor away, as long as you just aim well"as Churchill used to say), for having seen too many of them during her childhood because of her eyes, and her taciturn nature so far from her perfect sister. Teresa was not envious, but they were so different from each other that her integrity was affected, to the point of being called "the anomaly" by the rest of herfamily, a nickname of which she was finally used to it.

-Teresa,if you don't go out, mom will ask questions and she will give me asoap if she learns that I brought you drunk at home! Camille continued.

-So what ! The girl scolded her, she would be right! Do you realize thatit could have gone bad!

-What? Not at aaaaall, they are our high school friends, there is nothing tofear!

-They are YOUR friends, and they dreamed to make me drink and they succeeded, and you have followed to stay in the game and not pass for a dumbass!

There was a small silence.

-Touché. Ah, this is so annoying that way you have to always find the real reason in me and swing it in my face without taking gloves! moaned Camille. But it's deserved. Can you go out of this bedroom now? Before mom comes back from shopping and wonders why you're not upyet? Please, please!

Teresa sighed.

-Ok, ok. Give me time to wash myself and check my emails.

She clearly imagined her sister raising her fist in a sign of victory behind the door, then heard her go away. She stretched her back,arms, neck. The memories of her bad dream had almost disappeared fromher memory, although she noticed that it had been several weeks since she did it intermittently, as if she was watching a movie of which she already knew the outcome. She turned on her computer and went to wash before returning with her toothbrush in her mouth when she heard the ringing of a new email in the box.

She sighed with annoyance when she saw that it was still an advertisement to enroll in a faculty she had never heard of, in the large town of Ecine, relatively close to her village, at an hour or two away from her place. She opened the message anyway, but the text remained unchanged:

Dear Miss Dermil,

Weare pleased to announce that you are already registered in our magnificent faculty of Djinnevra in Ecine!

Come and spend your university studies in a faculty where tradition and modernity blend, in a historic building surrounded by beautiful parksfull of flowers and wooded with centenary trees where you can relaxand revise!

Individual university rooms are available to students, which can be arranged at their convenience, in accordance with the rules of procedure.

Our faculty is not like the others, you will come out grown and transformed!

To confirm the good reception and reading of this email, please click on the link below. You will be officially registered on the list of participants at the entrance ceremony. More information will come later.

Best regards,

The Djinnevra faculty.

The e-mail, with its header stamped with the university's logo, was written in a fake handwriting font, and animations in the background showed views of the park, which seemed far too good to be true. Teresa wondered how they could have her e-mail address, knowing that she had not done any research to find a university by the start ofthe school year, much to the sorrow of her parents, Henry and Olivia. Teresa had followed a literary curriculum, but didn't see hersel flocked up in a classroom for the rest of her life.

She put the mail in the trash, and went to finish getting ready, just in time for her mother's return.