Poison and Wine

Smashing the cigarette I just finished against the side of the new house, I looked over at my sister with a bored expression. “So, this is what we left New York for?” I asked, hefting my bag over my shoulder and carrying the other. Annie smirked over at me, her dark, curly hair billowing in the wind, flicking her own cigarette before taking a hit.

“Hey, it was either this or emancipation,” she said. I blinked at her, running a hand through my dyed red hair.

“We should’ve picked emancipation.” Annie laughed. A couple seconds later, the front door opened, and our brother stepped out, throwing his arms out in an over-exaggerated welcome.

“Brynna, Antoinette, welcome,” he said. I glanced over at Annie with a pained expression. I hated it when he called me Brynna.

“Hey, Chris,” we said in unison. When he took a good look at us, his smile dropped slightly.

“Antoinette, how can you do that to yourself?” He asked, motioning to the cigarette still between her fingers. She looked down at it before putting it to her lips and inhaling.

“Pretty much like that,” she said, smoke coming out of her mouth. I laughed, dragging our brother’s attention to me.

“Brynna, what happened to your beautiful blond hair?”

“Got boring,” I replied. “Might go back to blond. Might not.” I paused. “So, bro, wanna give us a grand tour?” The smile was back, and he led us through the front door of a surprisingly small house. Annie moved next to me and I leaned down, knowing she wanted to say something.

“I would like the house so much better if we weren’t living in a fucking cul-de-sac now,” she whispered. I rolled my eyes playfully. I would never understand Annie’s aversion to cul-de-sacs. Then again, I’m sure she’d never understand my aversion to apartments. We were just weird like that, I guess.

That was the beauty of being fraternal twins. We always thought it’d be cool to be identical, but she looks more like our dad, while I looked more like our mom.

He led us through the first floor; the kitchen, dining room, living room, computer room, his room, and the bathroom. “Uh, Chris?” Annie asked, dropping her bags to the floor.

“Hmm?” He asked, looking at her, his blue eyes that were carbon copies of mine and Annie’s staring her down.

“Where the hell are we supposed to sleep?” She asked.

“Oh, the attic,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“The attic?” I echoed.

“We don’t even get our own rooms?” Annie asked, looking affronted. We hadn’t slept in the same room since we were ten.

“I’m sorry, girls. This is a small house,” Chris said apologetically. “Follow me.” He led us to a door at the end of the hall. He opened it, and then moved aside to let us in. I peeked in first and there was a steep, wooden staircase leading to the attic. I gripped my bags tighter, and walked up the steps carefully. I didn’t want my foot to go through one of the steps.

When I got the top, I looked in and saw the room. There were two beds made on the window sill, which was kind of cool, two desks pressed against opposite walls with new laptops and iPods resting on top of them. I went over to the desk with the purple laptop and put my stuff down next to it. The other laptop was a sky blue color, which I knew Annie would like. I heard her walk up the steps faster than I did and then a gasp.

“Damn. Not bad, Chris,” she called down.

“Thank you, Antoinette!” He called back.

“Don’t call me Antoinette,” Annie muttered under her breath and walked over to the bed on the right, placing her bags on top of it. “The mermaids have got to go.”

“Agreed.”



An hour later had us unpacked, the ungodly mermaids off the fucking walls, and us walking into town. “Hey, they have sandwiches here! Come on, I’m hungry,” Annie said, gripping my hand and pulling me into the tiny shop. It was one of those hole-in-the-wall kind of shops, but this was kind of a hole-in-the-ground kind of town so the two fit in perfectly.

“Fuck, I want Chipotle,” I groaned, looking at one of the burrito sandwiches, which was like a breakfast torta according to the worker, the shop had.

“We can drive to Philly next week and go get some,” Annie said, ordering two steak burrito sandwiches and two cokes. I grabbed two bags of chips and placed them on the counter and paid, thanking the girl working behind the counter. She smiled, studying the two of us curiously. Not that I could blame her. This small town just got two new sarcastic bitches to play with. I’d be curious, too.

We sat down at a table for two, and enjoyed our burrito sandwiches. “This isn’t half bad,” Annie mumbled around some of the sandwich. I nodded my agreement. It wasn’t as good as Chipotle, but it would do.

When we were getting ready to leave, we stopped at the counter to get more coke, when two guys walked in. One was very tall, had to be at least six foot one or six foot two, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a slim build. The other, looked to be about five foot ten with shaggy brown hair and grey-ish blue eyes with a slighter more muscular frame than his friend.

The girl behind the counter noticed Annie and I obviously checking the two out, so she leaned against the counter and whispered, “Those two are hot, aren’t they? The taller one is Roman Godfrey. His family owns, like, almost all of Hemlock Grove. The other one is Peter Rumancek. He moved here about a month ago, but the two became pretty fast friends; practically inseparable.”

“Why are people giving the short one, Peter, weird looks? Is it ‘cause he’s new?” I asked, using my amazingly perceptive abilities. The girl frowned and leaned closer.

“Well, they say he’s a,” she paused. “Werewolf.” Annie and I glanced at each other with raised eyebrows.

A werewolf?

Interesting.