#jamestunia

tuneypot

It's raining on prom night, my hair is a mess It's running all over my taffeta dress It's wilting the quilting on my Maidenform And mascara flows right down my nose, because of the storm I don't even have my corsage, oh gee It fell down a sewer with my sister's ID

imagine if you had a younger sister, right, and she was perfect, so beautiful, and she had shiny red hair and always smelled good, like warm hay, and when you were thirteen and she was eleven she got a letter, telling her she's literally magical. and so she goes away, and when she comes back at eighteen she brings a perfect boyfriend with her, and they get engaged at the family christmas, maybe, he goes down on one knee after asking your dad, and they're the perfect couple, beautiful and so fucking right together. and you're still living at home, and your last boyfriend was three years ago, and you're mousey-brown and bland to your sister's vibrancy, her literal magic (i cannot stress enough how magical she is), she's effortless with everything, it all drops into her lap and she spins straw into gold every time. and everything you do takes work, it takes effort, and you try so hard. and then one day you catch your little sister's husband looking at you. and you catch it again. and he starts talking to you, little comments, i like your hair today, so you wear it like that for a full month, but he doesn't say it again. you start wearing shorter skirts around the house, he'll clench his fists when you rise up on your tiptoes to greet him, kiss him on the cheek like a good sister in law; what's that perfume, and you douse yourself in cheap chemist rose-scented eau de toilette, and it kind of smells bad on your skin, but he said he liked it, and you don't even know why you're doing this, why you're even entertaining it, except that your little sister has taken everything you thought you were going to be and eaten it up, digested it and shat it out and left nothing, nothing, for you, and her husband is looking at you hungrily, like you're something he'd eat up, like you're something he can't figure out even though you're being hideously obvious, shamelessly so, you puzzle him, and fuck, if that doesn't send a thrill down your spine.

and that's how it starts.

picture lily and james go on a perfectly respectful 50s-esque date for milkshakes under the watchful eye of her father and james walks her to her door after and then immediately walks around the back of the house to try and crawl in petunias window meanwhile barty is already waiting in lilys room for her to get back

petunia knew she was ugly when she flushed. she didn't look like lily, who got a sweet rosy circle on each cheek, blending in nicely with her freckles and making her look pink and pleasing. no, petunia got red blotches, up and down her neck and forehead. and around them, her skin got weirdly white, stark and obvious and deeply unappealing. she knew this because as a child she had been obsessed with her self; making every face she could into her bedroom mirror, rushing to the bathroom after she burst into tears to see exactly what she looked like when she cried, proof of her grief over some perceived slight from the neighbourhood boys painted down her cheeks, glazed over her washed-out irises. once, she brought herself off in front of the mirror, to see what that looked like, but the flush came back, horrid splotching across her chest, her stomach, and she cried, then, too, knowing. lily was pretty when she cried, her eyes blazing greener, lips turned down in a perfect little pout. tuney's crying face, especially when she was really upset, got all twisted up, so she looked like she was smiling, those red-white blotches cropping up at random.

once, after an argument at the dinner table (instigated by lily, ended by petunia; both girls rushing off to their seperate bedrooms to sulk), petunia and lily's stepfather had said that the first pancake was always a bit of a shit, and that their mum couldn't possibly hold that against tuney. petunia hated him already, but that was the moment she vowed to get rid of him, and, in a rare moment of sisterly solidarity, she and lily had planted evidence of infidelity- lacy knickers from primark, not their mother's size, in his back pocket. it spiralled from there, and their stepdad left in a rush. when their mum cried, she got the same pink circles as lily did, which was dreadfully unfair, because even though petunia was the first pancake, she still felt she deserved at least one nice thing.