SPOOFERAMA Ch. 4: Sister, Sinister Sister by Alana Smithee
Grace/Dimitri Home Ch. 3    Ch. 5
	By the time Grace stopped crying over the alleged murder of her sister by her alleged lover, the bottle of wine she had stolen from Lily's refrigerator and stowed away in her closet one memorable rainy evening, had already turned into vinegar. Which was a good thing, because Lily was making a salad and needed nothing more than the tantalizing, ambiguous and amazing white vinegar which her mother just happened to find while looking for the phone again. But overall, that night was a quiet one in Manning Manor, except for the sound of blue birds chirping over Lily's head as she sat kniting blue booties for the new baby, having basically forgotten about the children she'd had before the hunky human noodle she now called hubby had entered her life. Rick sat next to her on the floor, and practiced looking at once sexy and confused in the little mirror he carried around in his pocket. Meanwhile, Jessie lay peacefully on her bed in the attic, daydreaming about what Katie might be doing back in her own house. Suddenly, she realized something was missing. She wasn't miserable, irritated or anxious, and she wasn't even close to tears. She darted from her bed in panic. What was happening to her? Had Katie's influence ruined her helpless and delicate personality? Then, from the corner of her eye she spotted the seashell necklace she had stolen from Grace the night of the bathroom fight. She sighed with relief. Nothing was wrong with her, it was just that Grace was gone from the house. She was probably out snooping around somewhere in other people's stuff again. Jessie slowly laid her head on her pillow, her golden hair remaining perfectly in place. But she was simply too sensitive to relax. Grace had left the house hours ago, claiming she wanted to go hunting for books (meaning booty, to the less oblivious) in the "library," known to Katie and Jessie as 'Dimitri's Den of Literary Licentiousness.' Jessie never told anyone about Grace's "educational" excursions, because she didn't want make her own life a living hell, but in spite of herself she was becoming more and more worried about her evil step-sister. She knew that Dimitri could have a dangerously intoxicating effect on women, to the point where they would exhibit a series of odd, unexpected behaviors. They would speak endlessly about plaid shirts, hybrid cars, red wine and yellow ties and how reading Chekhov was better than sex. They would experience lapses in memory, remembering only events and people which somehow related to Dimitri, and they became instantly color blind, seeing only the colors red and green. Gradually, the outside world would become nothing but a distant distraction as they devised elaborate literary rituals reminding themselves of the importance of the man who had dramatically altered their lives with a plastic cup, a subtle smile and the word "uh-huh." Jessie had explored this syndrome in a research project she did in her science class, and lately she was trying to persuade her therapist to start a "Demented Dimitri Detox Program," but to no avail. With these thoughts, she sat at her desk with a mournful look on her expressive face, and began writing a long letter to Grace, in pink sparkly ink about how she felt about the situation. What the letter said, we will never know. But later Jessie concluded that she probably shouldn't have written all that stuff, and Grace agreed with her. Despite Jessie's perpetual perfection, the person who was most concerned about Grace was the one who rarely ever got any lines. She was sitting in her room nervously biting her nails in a cute way. Even though most people in the house mistook her for either a puppy or an armrest, Zoe noticed things. She noticed that her sister was prone to crying on the days she didn't have English class. This made Zoe very nervous. If Grace didn't remain in complete and total control every minute, the impact of her tears on the environment could be devastating, and Zoe was planning a weekly meeting of the 'free Tibet for tots' program at the local park across the street next week. Grace had been gone long enough to flood a large portion of the Evanston area by now, and Zoe decided that no sister of hers was going to damage the earth any more than her mother's SUV did. Last week Zoe had persuaded Eli to switch to organic marijuana and this had increased her confidence in her ability to make a difference in the world. Grabbing her hand mirror and hemp purse, she climbed out the window, her long silky hair blowing gracefully in the wind. Zoe might be little, but she was on a mission, and nothing, not even the weight of stolen makeup in her purse, was going to stop her.
					Continue to Ch. 5: Destiny Turns On The Dimitri