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 Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 10:23 am
Tallulah kicked the front door closed as she flipped through the mail. Bill, Oriental Trading Co. catalogue, bill, bill, magazine, pamphlet from a college she wasn't interested in... fancy envelope with her name on it? She set the rest of the stack on the counter and investigated the envelope further, sliding a thumbnail under the delicate seal and pushing it open.
She pulled out a sheath of papers. On top was a note written in delicate, feminine handwriting. Beneath it was a stack if glossy photos which she did not look at immediately.
She read the note.
Dear Tallulah,
I thought you might enjoy these. Ask Jaimie about them sometime.
Sincerely, Celeste.
Tallulah set the note aside and looked at the first picture. Jaimie. Younger. In a frilly, pink dress. She bit back an expression that was some mixture of a smile and intense curiosity, and reached for the phone.
"Hey, I got something interesting in the mail today... do you want to come over?"
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 12:03 pm
Judging by the amount of time elapsed before Jaimie showed up at the door, his expression set in an anxious grimace, though his eyes danced between anxiety and aggravation at people not present.
He couldn't quite get the handle on his fidgeting either, taking his hands in and out of his pockets and rocking on his heels after he'd run the bell.
He wasn't sure if he felt guilty for ever having played that kind of game with his sister, playing on people who had trouble telling them apart to begin with, or if he just felt guilty for getting caught.
After all he'd been going to a fair length to sink down and blend in with the 'normal' side of Destiny City. Especially to Tallulah, who, like something out of a book he'd read once. ((Was it called Dangerous Liaisons? Or was that the movie they'd based on it?)), struck him as tomboyish, but otherwise the sort of polite soul who would frown on tying peoples perceptions and attempts to gender-identify the twins in a knot.
Angus was definitely, he assumed, the kind who would tie HIM in a knot if HE saw the pictures. No idea about her mother though.
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 12:09 pm
"Hey!" said Tallulah cheerfully, opening the door. She hadn't looked at the rest of the pictures yet, preferring to let Jaimie explain them himself, but they were from his sister, so she was pretty sure they were probably the genuine article. Of course, she knew plenty of boys with baby pictures in dresses - her own father included. Angus had been regularly stuffed into frilly church dresses until the age of two, when her Aunt Margaret was born and Grandma Cowden got the little girl she'd always wanted. This wasn't quite a baby picture, but Tallulah being Tallulah meant she could stretch benefit of the doubt for miles.
"Come in," she said, motioning him into the foyer. She looped an arm under his shoulder and helped him limp to the window seat in the living room. "Let me go grab it-"
She vanished into the kitchen. "Do you want anything to drink? How'd your sister get my address?"
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 12:28 pm
Jaimie stopped mid fidget to blink uncomprehendingly, at Tallulah. It obviously wasn't the reaction he was expecting out of her. Not cheerfulness anyway.
He definitely wouldn't have believed her, at this moment, if she'd told him about Angus. Angus had not struck him as the type to ever tolerate frills, even at the tender age of two. Surely two year old Angus would have been bench pressing boxcars with his stare.
"I'm uh. Not entirely sure but I've got some ideas." He cleared his throat anxiously and shrugged. "And I quote. "Do you know there are only three women named Tallulah in Destiny City and two of them are over seventy?"
Actually he would love something to drink, but he wasn't legal for anything he thought he wanted. "Uh, sure, drink. Drink sounds good."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 1:27 pm
"Is diet pepsi okay?" she called back, scanning the fridge. It was going to have to be okay, it was the only thing they had until Nellie got home with groceries later. She poured two glasses with ice, tucked the envelope under her arm, and returned to sit besides Jaimie.
"I didn't know that," she said, handing him a glass, "but it doesn't surprise me."
She set the envelope between them on the loveseat, papers slightly protruding but otherwise in the order she had found them. "I only looked at the first one," she said earnestly. "I don't know why she sent them but I thought we could go through them together-"
She hoped Jaimie wasn't embarrassed or angry that he thought she'd looked. After all, as soon as she'd seen the first picture she'd realized that this was, perhaps, something she wasn't meant to see.
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 2:06 pm
"Yeah, thats fine." He accepted a glass of diet pepsi and took a sip, only keeping his poker face until Tallulah mentioned his sister. "... She's uh." He cleared his throat and looked for someplace to put the glass down, and instead held onto it. "She's rather firmly convinced that she hates you." He admitted. "I think you can do the math from there." He glanced ruefully at the pile, wondering what pictures she'd sent.
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 2:23 pm
"Where would she get an idea like that?" asked Tallulah. She hadn't been aware of Celeste's supposed dislike of her, but now that she was it was going to bother her all the live long day. She set her soda on the window sill and moved the note aside to reveal the top photograph. Jaimie, or at least she thought it was Jaimie, about eight, in pink frills, blonde hair done up in short, fat sausage curls.
She smiled at him. It was a kind of funny picture. He was sitting on what appeared to be a tuffet, although the precise definition of 'tuffet' was one of those things people long pondered over but never actually learned until they were studying for the SATs.
"What do you think, next?" she asked, and shuffled the pink frills to the bottom of the pile. The next picture appeared to be of Jaimie and his sister, aged about thirteen, both wearing sparkly red tank tops. It was hard to tell them apart.
Tallulah studied the picture for a moment and then pointed to the figure on the right. "That one's you, right? Your nose is bigger than hers."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 2:41 pm
"I think she thinks you're taking away her twin brother..." He said slowly. It was the best explanation he could come up with, though really he felt more like he was watching an angry dog defend it's favorite bone.
"...That's one of the first times we snuck out to a dance. Cee and I said we'd give a kiss to whoever figured out which one of us was which." He raised his eyebrows and blinked at her. "You know no one figured it out?"
He pointed at the pink dress and added. "We were putting on a play. There's a matching photo of Cee. We called it "The Skit". We were each others reflections." He explained. "There were other versions of it too, later. We got really good at it. My mother finally decided it was too weird and threatened to separate us. There's probably at least one other photo in here from it."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 2:59 pm
Tallulah blinked back. "Really?" She looked at the photo again. "I can see why - I got it right, though, right? Do I get a kiss?"
She smiled wider and turned to the next photo. It was the "Skit" again, apparently - Jaimie and Celeste, side by side in the same frilly dresses, though these were a different cut and powder blue. They looked a little bit older, ten or so, perhaps, each sitting on a wooden stool.
Tallulah wrinkled her nose. "I'm with your mom on this one, Jai," she said. "It is creepy."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 3:06 pm
"Yeah you did." He flashed a faint grin, clearly impressed, then leaned over and gave her a quick peck on the cheek before looking back at the photos. "We used to have a blast. It's a lot of work being that creepy." He noted, though he seemed partially embarrassed and partially stung. "We propped an empty picture frame between our desks for the mirror. Creepy or not It used to be a lot of fun. I don't think we could get away with it now, not without even more work than it used to be. Anyway she'd look lousy with stubble." He winked and added. "Yeah we did it the other way around too, though that obviously doesn't cause as much scandal."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 3:19 pm
The next picture was of Jaimie and Celeste both dressed up as either Charlie Chaplain or Hitler in a salvation army suit. They were again identical, but significantly less creepy, aged perhaps nine-ish. "Yeah," she agreed. "The effect's not quite the same."
Although that might have been the eyebrow-pencil mustaches on their upper lips doing the talking.
"In third grade," she said slyly, "right before school started I got gum in my hair and wound up with this horrible boy cut. I made a friend who thought I was a boy for six weeks." (To her friend's credit, it wasn't like she had discouraged him in this notion, even going as far as to tell him her name was Josh, and they hadn't been in the same classroom.)
She flipped the page again.
"Bathing suits?" she asked. "Really, Jai?"
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 3:52 pm
"My friend Bill swore up and down that we wouldn't do it. Then he bet me his bike." He grinned wickedly. "That was a great bike."
He added in perfect seriousness. "Unfortunately I crashed it when Cee bet me that I couldn't do one of those fancy bike tricks you see online. As it turns out she was right."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:39 pm
Tallulah laughed and leaned in close as she flipped the page. "You break your foot that time, too?" she asked. "I'm learning all sorts of stuff about you today - don't quite think this is what your sister had in mind, though..."
No, from the sounds of it, Celeste had been expecting Tallulah to be scandalized in a way quite the opposite of her present behavior. She smiled at the photograph of Jaimie, aged barely more than five, looking sulky in a Cinderella dress, while Celeste preened in a replica of Belle's ballgown. "Looks like you didn't want to play along that time," she observed.
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:47 pm
"Ha. No. I wanted to be the Beast. he had a whole castle full of things that did what he wanted. Cinderella and cheek pinching fairies and a really horrible hairdo. But nope, apparently that party was princesses only. Anyway she hid all my hot-wheels and wouldn't give them back unless I played along. Apparently you would be surprised how many interesting places a hotwheel will fit."
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 8:08 pm
"Bell was always my favorite princess," said Tallulah carefully, "but Beast was the best prince. Because he had, you know, a personality. And a library."
(Aladdin was the second best.)
"I kind of always wished I had siblings," she said, and then flipped the page. The last picture in the stack was of Jaimie, again about thirteen, vamping in a body-hugging blue sequined dress and a pair of heels.
Tallulah burst out laughing.
"And then I remember why I'm thankful that I don't," she giggled, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and giving him a playful squeeze. "Wow, your sister made you do all this? She sounds... kind of controlling, I guess."
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