Write = Get Reviews Forum Chapter 1 of my new story- OPI..

2016
I hung the flimsy ribbons around the outdoor pendant, hanging over the dining table i was kneeling on top of. The cheap dollar store ribbon already fraying and leaving trails of string all over the ground. Our whole backyard was covered in pale yellow decorations- ribbons, balloons and my mum had even placed daisy’s along the perimeter of the pool fence. It was the most luxurious fourteenth birthday party you had ever seen. My sister Olive had hung a black poster board and printed a mountain load of small props, glued the laminated paper to wooden dowels and placed the plethora in one of mums vases. She had been prepping for this birthday for almost a month, watching videos and hoarding pinterest boards on pinterest boards. She had enlisted my help a week ago, when she borrowed my printer for her makeshift photo booth home job.
Olive had been on the phone with her best friend every night this week. I can only assume adding more ideas to their “perfect birthday bash”. She would stare at the laptop with her thick glasses sitting on her nose, writing furiously in the notepad beside her. From what I could gather, this was the first boy/girl party Olive’s year group at school had ever thrown. This granted Olive some kind of royalty among her peers, it made her somewhat popular overnight, before then she had only really been close to her friends from ballet.
“Annabelle, darling, could you take that box back up to the cupboard please?” Mum called out to me from the garden, where she was tying the balloons to rocks, to keep them grounded while swaying in the wind. I shot her a thumbs up and picked up said box. I could hear Olive and her friend Lulu giggling while I was walking up the stairs, music blaring from her door, they had left the decorating almost an hour ago to get ready together. I gently knocked on the door, leaning against it while I waited for them realise my knocking wasn’t part of their song.
“Annabelle?” Olive opened the door with her freckled face squished between the frame, obscuring the rest of the room. Only an older sister would recognise this as a way of her hiding something. My something.
Olive’s yellow-green eyes were wide, trying to be innocent, magnified by her glasses. I pushed the door open, barging past her and into her room. Her friend Lulu was sitting guiltily on the edge of her bed. She looked like she had pashed a clown, her cheeks a bee-stung red and her lips shining with glitter. I panned to her dresser, where my box of makeup sat. Olive looked at the ground and mumbled.
“Sorry Annie”
Annie was a name only my sister really called me, and she only really called me it when she wanted something or broke something. Or in this case took something. I never really took it in an endearing way. I took a deep breath and picked up the box, opening it to the middle compartment, throwing a pack of makeup wipes at her friend. Lulu looked like she was about to piss herself, I had to hold myself back from chuckling at the pair of them.
“If you’re looking like a clown for those boys, i’d suggest trying again” I picked up the makeup kit and placed it back in my room. In all honesty I was going to give a lot of my makeup to Olive, In truth I never really wore it. But now after I had taken it back, I’d have to wait for at least a month. The music was turned down a little shortly after that.
I had just settled into a book in my downtime before mum needed my help again, when I heard my door creak open. Olive had stuck her face into my room, a begging smile appearing.
“Annie, can you please help us?” her eyes went between me and my makeup kit sitting on the floor underneath my desk. I sighed and laughed, placing my bookmark in and opened the door. Lulu was standing further from the door, surprised to see me open it.
“Hold still would you!” I was rubbing at her face trying to get the remainder of her massacre of colours off from Lulu’s face. She blushed (or maybe it was the actual blush) and stood still nervously. I threw the dirty wipes into the copper wire bin in the corner, both girls took a seat on my floor. I dug around into a small bag within my makeup kit, pulling out two tubes.
“Subtle is a lot nicer than cake faces okay? Trust me, the only attention you’ll get from the boys is laughs” I giggled gently holding Olive’s cheek. I placed a thin layer of mascara on her eyelashes, lifting her glasses with my thumb. I then handed her the lip gloss and she swiped it across her already peachy lips. The pair looked cute, just a slight more of glimmer onto their already pretty faces.
“Thank you Annabelle!” Lulu smiled, staring at herself gluttonously in the mirror, leaning in close to inspect her eyelashes. I shrugged and packed up my kit, peering out the window which looked down on the front of our house. A group of young girls stood on our front porch holding birthday presents wrapped lazily. Olive ran over and looked down at them, a wide grin spread across her face. She squealed with excitement and ran outside, dragging Lulu away from her precious mirror. I laughed and sat back down to start my book. Olive came pounding up the stairs, into my room and planting a kiss on my cheek.
“You’re the best Annie”
I smirked and playfully pushed her off. She fluttered back down the stairs towards her party. For my fourteenth Olive and I had sat ourselves on the couch at dinner time, eaten my favourite meal that mum had cooked, lasagne, and watched our top ten disney movies together. The list was heavily varied and practically drowned in various compromises. It was our collective list, with Mulan coming in first and Princess and the frog sitting at ten. But Olive and I were different in a lot of ways, not just appearance, but in general. I always thought people that are raised together are sort of similar and it may have been true when we were young, but the older we get, the more we grow into our own people i suppose.
“Happy birthday to you!” Everyone sang, the candles illuminating Olives face, she closed her eyes and blew out the candles, summoning a cheer from her twenty or-so friends who were gathered around her. Dad stood proudly to the side, snapping photos of her, the corners of his mouth seen behind his phone. I quickly ran inside to go grab some plates from the kitchen, a precarious pile in my hands. Olive ran past me and up the stairs, going fast so she wouldn’t miss the excitement.
“Where are you going birthday girl?” I called after her, she was already up the stairs and i heard her bedroom door swing open from downstairs. I laughed and shook my head, walking outside, one of Olive’s guests sliding the back door open for me while I placed the plates down.
“Where did Olive run off to?” Dad asked me, putting his arm around me, peering back inside. I copied, avoiding the eyes of cake hungry kids who were waiting for their piece. Dad scrunched his face and walked inside, I watched him disappear around the corner.
“Oh god! Julie!” Dad yelled, my mum’s face sunk and she ran inside, my whole body went cold. All the kids looked at eachother, hoping one of them would be able to answer my dad's ghostly yell. I quickly darted inside after mum, running to the staircase, where I could just see dad kneeling. Olive was lying in his arms, a gash in the corner of her head, with blood already in her hair, there were little spots of red along the bottom four steps. It was like a movie was playing outside my body. Olive looked unconscious and her polaroid camera was smashed on the ground beside her. My mum was holding her head gently, unsure of what to do. I blinked, in complete shock, I could tell my mum was talking to me, but no sound was coming out, just her lips moving.
“...the ambulance!” Everything came back and I felt fast and my breathing was shallow. I dialled while dad held my baby sisters hand, shushing her gently. None of us noticed the small group of kids that were gawking watching onwards.
⥈They were going to keep Olive in the hospital for a minimum of three weeks, the doctor said it would normally be two, but they didn’t want to start the plasmapheresis until her small head injury had healed a little. They were going to take her plasma and swap it with a fake plasma to get rid of the bad stuff. At least that’s how dad had explained it to me. Olive had been having trouble seeing over the past couple of weeks, but she was too embarrassed about her already thick lenses to get bigger ones, so she let it go. In that time her optic nerve had wasted away. None of it really made sense to her eye, despite the nurses best attempts.
When she ran downstairs with her camera, she had a momentary loss of vision and couldn’t see anything, she tripped and fell to the stairs. Olive’s sight came back almost immediately, but it had been gone enough for the doctor to worry and check her eyes.
“Optic Neuritis” the doctor had called it, he explained that until the procedures with her plasma began, she would keep experiencing momentary blindness. Olive was lying down in her bed, holding her palm to her eye and looking at her broken glasses an arm length away from her.
“Can you see?” I asked tentatively. She shook her head, shrugging.
“Barely” She chuckled and wiped her eye. The whites of her eyes were slightly yellow from the chemical grade eye drops they had given her, they were meant to make her migraines feel slightly less painful.
“The nurse asked me to read this book to you, if you…” I paused taking a sharp breath.“If you couldn’t” I finished. When Olive first got her glasses we had the occasional jokes of calling her four-eyes and saying she was blind, but now there was a silence between us. I had not known what to say.
Olive studied the picture book, squinting. It was barely ten pages thick and the art was childish, she wasn’t missing much.
“No thank you” she laughed weakly. Dad had gone to go pick up mum, who stayed while all the kids were getting picked up from the party, and this was the first time we’d been alone. I placed the book down on the crowded table, trying to angle it between the power board. I opened Olive’s phone, with my already saved fingerprint and slid in next to her on the bed.
I played her music, as loud as I could, filling the white room with her favourite artists and she listened. She really listened, she put everything she had into just hearing the words, closing her eyes and breathing shakily.