2: 2
After Mom gave birth to me, Vanessa suddenly developed an anxiety disorder.
She was terrified our parents wouldn't want her.
She cried and threw fits all day long.
So Mom and Dad made a point of ignoring me, to prove to Vanessa.
That even with me around, not an ounce of their love would be split away from her.
After Tyler was born, my parents told me to look after him because he was little.
But Vanessa never had to look after him. She could even boss him around.
Mom and Dad laughed and called it the pecking order of blood.
Yet Tyler was never once afraid of me.
Senior year, when I lived on campus, the laundry I'd hung out on the balcony sat there for two months and nobody brought it in for me.
I mentioned once that Tyler could bring my clothes in, and Mom and Dad's brows knit together in an instant:
"A grown girl like you, and you need your brother to bring in your laundry? Don't you have hands and feet of your own?!"
After hearing that, all I could do was set my clean summer uniform in a ventilated spot indoors.
When I came home the next month, I couldn't find it anywhere.
Vanessa said, without a shred of concern, "You didn't even know to hang it outside. It got all musty and stinking in the house. I have rhinitis, so I had Tyler throw it out."
So when I stepped up to give the speech as the school's model senior student.
I had to stand there under the blazing sun in my winter uniform, the students and teachers below wearing every kind of look, and all I could do was mumble something about running cold.
I still passed out on the spot from heatstroke and years of poor nutrition, and they laughed at me for a long time.
The one who led the laughing was my own brother.
He'd just started high school, and he clutched his stomach and pointed at me, doubled over:
"Wearing a winter uniform in the middle of summer. That's my second sister for you. What a moron!"
It was the peak of summer, yet I was shaking all over from cold, or maybe from rage.
All I could do was ask in a trembling voice, "Didn't you throw out my summer uniform?"
He curled his lip, not caring at all. "No summer uniform, so wear a short-sleeved shirt. It's not like the school bans it."
Vanessa and Tyler had run wild for so long that they didn't care about losing conduct points for not wearing the uniform.
But I couldn't afford that.
Because starting in middle school, apart from tuition they never gave me any allowance.
Because Vanessa would say our parents favored me, and because Tyler's grades were bad and he needed tutoring.
Mom and Dad said money was tight at home, and since I wasn't going without food or clothes anyway, they made me walk a mile home every day for meals.
Three years of middle school, with an hour and a half for lunch break, I spent the whole time on the road, my calves aching until they burned, not daring to stop.
Because I was afraid of missing the first afternoon class.
It wasn't just allowance. Even the pads I needed every month for my period, I had to borrow one at a time from the girls in my class.
After long enough, they always looked at me with contempt:
"Borrowing and never paying it back, what kind of borrowing is that? Might as well just have us give them to you for free."
One of the crude boys snickered, "I've got a way to make you not bleed for ten months."
I covered my face and ran home, mortified.
Looking at the blood on me, I walked into Vanessa's room for the first time.
It smelled of luxury perfume, and it was the only large master bedroom in the house, sunlit and airy.
My room had no window. It was the space under the stairs, converted, stuffy and stinking and damp.
When I reached out, my whole body went tense and sweaty, and it took me a long time to steel myself before I took a single pack of pads, terrified Vanessa would find out.
The moment I opened the door, by the worst luck, I ran straight into Vanessa coming home with her friends.
They exchanged a glance and put on faces caught between wanting to laugh and holding it back:
"Nessa, you were right. Your sister really is a compulsive thief."
Even though this was the first time, Vanessa said, with such weariness:
"This sister of mine just loves to compete. She has everything she needs, but she always thinks my things are better. She even steals and wears my underwear. It's so unhygienic."
In that instant, it was as if the very skin had been torn off my face.
When Mom and Dad came home, all they saw was me, red-faced, screaming like a lunatic, ugly with rage.
And Vanessa, eyes swollen, weeping prettily like rain on pear blossoms.
Smack—
