·Katie·

Ulysses' emerald eyes glisten with the reflection of the screen of his phone. My bother sucks most of the time. Overprotection is his middle name, especially when mom and dad are working long shifts, or when they just travel for the weekend. Thankfully, he is graduating this year so he is gonna be gone next year to some posh university.

He is good at everything he does, and my parents always put him as the example of the family. But that's only because he has all these secrets I'm helping him keep from them, particularly the band he formed with Georgina's brother. Aside from that, he is a good person, so needless to say he will help Cassandra.

Jon breaks my trance clapping once when—apparently—a big idea hits his mind. "Let's just use one of those things girls wear in their hair. They do it in the movies all of the time. It can't be that hard." Jon turns towards the bathroom.

"A hairpin?" I ask, walking to my desk where I know I have a small box filled with those.

"What're you doing?" Cassandra quizzes Ulysses as I rummage around the contents of my drawer.

"Just watching some Youtube tutorials to open padlocks without keys," he explains to her.

"We don't have time for that!" she exclaims. "Let's just try to break it with a knife or a saw, maybe?"

"A saw? Really?" he asks, sarcastically. "We don't have many options, Cassandra. Unless you want to go have dinner while still wearing your coat."

She groans, her hands grabbing fistfuls of her hair. "Just open the damn thing."

I walk back to them holding no hairpin. Someone took them out from their place and I know it was Jon.

"I brought one of those hair things!" Jon beams, kneeling in front of the suitcase.

I glare at him with my arms crossed. "You took them from their place," I accuse.

"I needed them." He shrugs his left shoulder.

"You need a haircut, not a hairpin," I fire, my fingers toying with my necklace.

"Guys!" Cassandra barks. "Can we just focus on opening the damn suitcase?"

"Oh my God!" Realization hits me when I look down at the pendant of my necklace. "I have this." I show them the dangling key linked to the silver around my neck. "It's my journal's key, maybe it's like a universal key and it can open this thing as well." I beam, happy to have found a possible solution. I kneel next to Jon.

"Just let me first try with the hair thing." Jon nudges me away with his shoulder.

"Hairpin," I clarify. "And no." I nudge him away harder. "Let me first try with the key. I have a key you have a hairpin. I think padlocks are opened with keys, so make room."

"Just wait," Ulysses commands as he continues watching one of those dumb youtube tutorials.

Jon nears me, cupping his hands around my ear. "Come on, Kat. Let me impress Cassandra. I know I can open it," he whispers.

"Impress her?" I question loudly, my brows knit together.

He glares at me in response, making a hushing gesture with his index finger pressed to his lips.

"Are you serious, Jon? She is like five years older than you and teenhood hit her like a train," I hiss.

"Just let me try!" he insists.

Ulysses mumbles something about not putting something I don't know where.

I look up at him to try and get what he said, and then I hear the clicking noise of the hairpin finding its way into the padlock.

"Yes!" Jon cheers, smiling brightly at all of us. He and I are on our knees in front of the suitcase, while Cassandra and Ulysses are standing, looking down at us.

"I told you not to put anything in there!" Ulysses reprimands him.

Jon smirks, his eyebrows wiggling. "Watch this." His right-hand twists the hairpin to one side, and then a locking sound echoes in the room. Jon keeps trying to move the hairpin, but it's obviously stuck.

"What did you do?!" Cassandra's knees meet the floor next to him. "It's stuck! Now, this darn thing is stuck in the padlock!" Her panic-filled eyes flicker among the three of us.

My palm presses against my forehead. "What do we do now?"

"Just tell your parents I'm not going downstairs for dinner," Cassandra declares while standing up with a loud sigh. My bed squeaks softly, as she collapses on it.

Ulysses insists on finding an answer on his phone. "I'll just look for another tutorial. There has to be a way to unlock it even like this."

Cassandra humphs. "Is that all you do when you have a question in life? You look up tutorials on the internet. Dating you must be fun..."

There goes a missile by Cassandra. Although I doubt Ulysses may be hurt, he has too many walls around him. In fact, he keeps scrolling down his phone screen, openly ignoring her. "Jon, bring the vaseline from the bottom drawer in the bathroom," he commands my little, annoying brother.

"What for?" Jon asks, still on his knees.

"Just get the f*cking thing!" Ulysses urges him as he takes his place in front of the suitcase. Now he is on his knees, next to me. His hands grasp the rusty golden padlock, and he shakes it up and down.

"Just give up already. I said I'm not going, anyway," Cassandra claims, not interested in my older brother's attempt to help her.

"I don't give up easily, Bambi," he addresses her, his voice sounding hoarse as he struggles to remove the hairpin.

"My name is Cassandra," she states, annoyed.

"No. You're Bambi. You are a fragile, damaged person who is too afraid of the world 'cause your sister-"

"Ulysses!" I interject, stopping him before he finishes that idea. God, what's got into him?

"What? I'm not gonna lie. She is Bambi. She'll never be able to stand up."

Cassandra keeps her eyes on her phone, but I can see how glossy they have turned.

"Here's the vaseline!" Jon announces. "Why is everyone so silent? What did I miss?"

Cassandra stands up, treading until she is near enough to snatch the pot of vaseline from Jon's hands. Then, she approaches Ulysses. I hope she slaps him by the way. He deserves it.

"Let's see what you can do with this." She crosses her arms after throwing at him the pot.

Ulysses catches it mid-air, throwing her a tight smile.

After opening the pot, and grabbing some of the creamy substance with his fingers, he starts smothering the padlock, and its entrance. "Can you pull it out? My fingers are all sloppy," he asks Cassandra.

She sighs heavily, but her fingers quickly clutch around the hairpin and it effortlessly slides away.

"You're welcome," he states, mocking her.

"It's still locked, vaseline boy." She glares at him.

Ulysses looks up at me."Hand me the keys, Kat."

"Here." I grab it from my back pocket, and when I'm about to hand it to him, Cassandra grabs it first.

"Thank you, Katie." She smiles, teasing him because she was faster than him. "Bambi is faster than Vaseline boy," she boasts, making my lips break into an uncontrollable grin.

She enters the key, and a small burst of laughter escapes her lips. "Oh my Gosh! It's open!" She beams at me.

"Come on, dinner now." Ulysses stands up and walks to the door.

The door shuts behind Ulysses and Jon, as they hurry downstairs for dinner.

When I look back at Cassie to urge her to go with them, her eyes are trained on her opened suitcase. Her mouth is hanging open, and her hand is pressed against her chest.

"Are you okay?" I ask, worried.

She is stone-still. She might be in shock. I follow the direction of her eyes, and I see a notebook. It's all covered in pink and white shades of glitter, and there's a watercolor sketch of a lavender flower across from it. Even when it's pretty and kind of vintage, the thing is very worn, the glitter has faded away from all the corners.

"It's my sister's journal," she states while inspecting the notebook with her hands.

Throwing her a puzzled look, I kneel next to her. "You brought your sister's journal to England instead of your own?" I ask.

"N-no. I mean, yes." She opens it. Thousands of words and stick notes flood the pages. "I don't have a journal."

"Then?" I quiz her.

"Someone must have put it here. Along with this other book." She shows me the cover.

I grab the other book which happens to be The Odyssey. "You are into mythology?" I ask her, enthusiastically. Don't get me wrong but Cassandra doesn't look like the kind of girl who reads mythology.

"I used to..." she trails off as she grabs a loose page from her sister's journal.

"And what is that?" I crane my neck to have a better look.

"It's my sister's before-I-die bucket list," she declares. Her mood visibly changes. Anger washes over her fave as she snaps the journal closed and throws it inside the suitcase. Swiftly, she takes a pair of jeans, and some other articles of clothing. After standing up, she strides away from me.

I blink my eyes, as I am still trying to proccess the situation we are in right now. Cassandra disappears into the bathroom after shutting the door loudly.

"And what does it say? Don't you want to know more?" I talk to the closed door of the bathroom.

"No. I don't care!" she shouts.

The door opens, and she walks away. "Come on, dinner awaits."

A million questions run through my head as I hear Cassie going downstairs. Silence is the only protagonist in the room, and I know all the answers are in that journal.

Someday, my curiosity will kill me. I hope that day is not today because I just need to have a quick look. So, walking on the tips of my toes and with my heart pounding against my ribs, I approach her suitcase, and I grab the journal. Glitter smears my palms, as I look for the loose page with the bucket list.

Bingo! I found it.

My knees meet the floor as my eyes roam around Jazmin's handwriting.

Darn. This was no average girl.

[Word Count : 8307]