Stolen Voices ✓

March 10th

I'm drowning,

and your standing three feet away

screaming "learn how to swim."

-cj

March 10th:

She glares into the mirror, shattered around the edges like her demeanor. Mara feels strange, staring into her cerulean eyes emphasized by the eyeliner and eyeshadow of her mother's choosing. Her cheeks are dusted rose, taking away the sharpness of her character. Leveling her down to a naive looking girl.

Her vine-like scars, coiling around her wrists, are hidden by the silky sleeves of her thin cardigan, worn over the dress her mother insisted she wears. Mind that its winter and below-freezing temperatures, Mara sneers at the girl in the reflection of the mirror.

This is Emanuella, the girl Mara tries to discard like a piece of dirty laundry. She is buried in the dark corners of her personality, itching to be danced with by a man in a tailored tux and a wealthy hunch.

Emanuella is the girl Mara was raised to. The girl she could never seem to get proper, a piece of herself that never fit into the ideal picture of perfection. Mara prefers the dirt of life, whereas Emanuella is the type to step on anything lower than her elite kind.

Mara doesn't fit into the society of people who fake happiness and go home to empty households decked with gold and silver. She feels that friendships are meant to be more than business transactions, and she would much rather find love on her own accord.

Three knocks against the wooden door bring Mara back to reality as she looks away from her unrecognizable reflection. Boring holes into the surface, she wills herself to lock it. Sadly, it swings open with a sharp blast of wind. There stands her sister in the doorway, her brown hair tumbling into waves around her narrow shoulders.

"Jeez. For a minute can something not be about you. This is my party, and I will not have you ruining it with your complaining," Darla scoffs, rolling her eyes in distaste. 

Mara, in every sense, is the black sheep of the family. With her honey blonde hair and blazing blue eyes, she never had a chance of fitting in since the day she was born.

"Ah, but you can ruin it all on your own, dear sister. Especially with those split ends I can see from here. And you look a little peckish, paler than normal. Are you sick?" Mara drawls in her vibrant posh accent. She watches in amusement as her sister clutches the ends of her hair, bringing them close to her face as she glowers.

Mara strolls past, purposefully brushing her shoulder against Darla, who only glares harder. She makes sure to sway her hips, accentuating them as she sashays down the long stretching hallway. Heading in the direction of voices mingling together into what is supposed to be a party celebrating Darla's engagement. 

"Emanuella where's your sister? The guests are expecting her appearance." A hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing her shoulder blade in a trivial warning. Mara spins, to find her mother's eyes darting all around the room in search of her sister. She suppresses the laughter burning her throat, masking her amusement.

"Darla is in the bathroom, crying by now I presume," Mara shrugs. A smile spreads across her face as she watches her mother's expression morph from confusion into horror.

"What did you do?" She groans, rubbing her temples as if it physically hurts her to be standing here. People continue to congregate around them, swallowing them into a hole of soft female voices being drowned out by loud, booming male ones.