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I Miss You; Chapter 2
My bedroom was a place that was entirely my own. I could put anything in it, and my dad couldn’t tell me to take it out. Or he shouldn’t. It was a place where I could express myself, and pack memories and all my junk in. My dad had said, “You only sleep in there.” But it was more than that. He didn’t understand the reason of decorating it. It was a place for me to be me.
All my walls were practically covered with posters and pictures from every year since I was about twelve. I had taken down the ones I didn’t like anymore; the out-of-trend pop stars and weird movie posters. But it was like my whole life was on those walls. I couldn’t just rip them down. When I thought about it, the blank white walls behind everything might scare me more than looking at the pictures, the reminders. I didn’t want to be like my dad and just forget about everything. Well, not forget, but not acknowledge.
My bed was covered in a plaid quilt, a hand-me-down from my grandma. I was always getting hand-me-downs. From my sister, my cousins, my family. Sometimes I just wanted something new. Something I could truly call my own. I didn’t mind the quilt, though; it was like a constant comfort for when things were bad. I could just hide under it and let go. The desk in the corner was stuffed with so many things I had no idea what was in there anymore. I promised myself countless times a year to clean it out, but that had never happened.
There were two windows, one of them on the wall by the door, the other next to my closet on the opposite wall. I liked looking out the one by my closet. It showed our backyard, complete with my mom’s gardens and the woods. If you went far enough into the trees, you would reach the tadpole pond where we had buried Ally’s pet turtle from when she was ten. I had covered the other window with a pillowcase to keep the sun out in the morning.
Slumping onto my bed I looked at the pictures framed and neatly hung just above my lampshade. Libby and Neal smiled down at me in each of the three frames. It was summer of last school year, sophomore year. We were being stupid at a cookout that had become a tradition between our three families. Neal and Libby were on either side of me, making faces while I rolled my eyes. It was one of my favorites. We had been celebrating my seventeenth birthday. I told myself I’d never take them down, and I didn’t want to, even though I didn’t exactly see those two anymore.
There was a knock on my door and I sighed, hoping it wasn’t my dad as I walked to open it. Ally stood there, purse in hand. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I walked to my desk and dug into my backpack that was sitting beside it, trying to make it look like I was busy.
She walked into my room, plunking onto the edge of my bed. The scent of cigarette smoke followed her, filling the air. “How was your…counseling?” she asked, picking at her nails. Even without looking at her I could hear the sarcastic tone in her words. She thought I was ridiculous, having to have counseling. Along with my dad, she thought I should be just like her. Anger exploded inside of me, but I ignored the question, walking to my closet.
“That bad, huh?” Ally made a face, shaking her head. “I saw a picture of the guy in that brochure. I would enjoy it, if I were you. He’s pretty cute.”
I turned on her, trying very hard not to throw a hanger at her head. “Maybe you should take a session then. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have a date by the end?” I growled, looking away when she laughed.
“God, dad’s right. You over react way too much.” A buzzing sound came from her purse and she opened it, pulling out her cell phone.
I felt annoyed to hear that she and dad had been talking about me. I knew they had been, of course. It wasn’t obvious at all when I walked into a room and they both stopped talking or turned away from each other. But just to hear her say it, or even mention it actually made me feel more hurt than I already did.
Ally jumped up, pushing her brown hair out of the way. “Well, looks like I’ve already got a date. Too bad for the counselor,” she snorted. “See you.”
I glared after her. I wanted to tackle her so bad. Maybe I should get a lock on my door.
Ally was only concerned about her own feelings, her own plans, and her own life. If she hurt your feelings it was tough luck for you, because she wasn’t saying sorry. Despite her personality, she had tons of friends, even after she had avoided her past ones for at least half a year. Everyone loved her, thinking she was so strong to pull through mom’s death. If they had any idea how she had really gotten over it, they’d think twice about respecting her.
Not only was she popular, she was pretty. Perfectly so. Ally had brown wavy hair, but it wasn’t the ugly waves that I had gotten from my dad, but the ones that flowed nicely around your face. She had read the beauty magazines her friends borrowed her to achieve the ‘perfect’ make up style. Maybe that’s why she looked so good all the time. You only saw the real her when she was walking from her bedroom to the bathroom in the morning. I honestly didn’t like the make up. I mean, it looked good, but I wouldn’t wear it. She wore lots of eyeliner, which supposedly complimented her eyes. I thought it made her look like one of those mean girls on television. Which I guess fit. But still, I was envious that she could make herself look pretty. I always had trouble with that.
I shut my door to look in the mirror that was nailed to the back of it. Sighing, I pulled back my hair, away from my face. It was dark brown and weird looking. The waves made it almost uncontrollable, but I just let them take over anyways. Freckles covered my nose and cheeks. I hated those; I thought they made me look childish. The only thing I liked about my face was my eyes. Their color was like a mixture of my mom and dad’s. They were bluish green; it seemed like they changed color in different lighting. My mom had always told me it would attract the boys when I was older. She had been wrong. Unlike Ally, I was tall. She had more of a shorter body like my mom, but I got my dad’s height.
I walked to my closet, knowing that if stared at my reflection too long I’d just get irritated with myself. If I didn’t pick out my clothes for school tomorrow, I would be a wreck in the morning. I always had to decide my outfit the night before, so I could just wake up, throw on my clothes, eat breakfast, and then get on my bike and go. But it wasn’t just for easy purposes. I was self-conscious of what people thought of me, probably beyond fixable repair. I didn’t like to draw attention to myself, so I made sure that I felt I looked decent everyday I went to school. Of course, having to share a bathroom with Ally didn’t exactly make me feel the best when I saw what she was wearing.
Dinner passed by in silence. Ally didn’t come home, but that was normal. It was kind of like she only lived at home for a place to sleep. I sat in front of the TV, but I had no idea what I was watching. It was just a background noise to my raging thoughts. I was thinking about counseling. Every Sunday in the afternoon I had to go and talk to this guy, until I was…what? What did my dad and Bryan Shull want me to be by the end? Normal? Because I thought I was perfectly normal. I curled up in the soft blanket, pulling it up until my head was all that poked out. I heard my dad moving around, cleaning up after our meal. I would do the dishes; I guess I moved too slowly to start before he did.
“It’s late. You should go up.” He had come to stand in the doorway of the living room.
I knew I should go to sleep; it was a school night. But I was angry at my dad for wanting me to be like Ally. I didn’t even know why that made me so mad, but it struck a nerve. I just grunted, so he knew I had heard him.
“Leave the door unlocked for Ally. I’m going to bed,” he told me. His voice sounded kind of anxious.
“Yup,” I said. I mindlessly started switching through the channels.
I didn’t have to turn around to know my dad stood there for a while. I could feel him watching me. That was a feeling I had a lot; that people were looking at me. But I didn’t really understand why.
***
My sister hadn’t always been the way she turned out to be. We used to be best friends. I could walk into her room without getting yelled at, borrow her clothes, ask her for advice; but that was all before…everything.
I guess you could say she truly started to change after mom died, but it honestly was earlier than that; probably her freshman year of high school. I mean, it’s normal for people to change as they get older, and definitely once they get to a new school—high school especially. And of course my parents thought she was becoming ‘a woman’. Most positively not. She had turned into a mean, selfish...bitch. And I was the only one who saw it happening.
It started with little things. Even so, she hurt my feelings, but she didn’t know it. At first, she started wearing make up. That didn’t hurt my feelings, but it bugged me. Ally was so pretty without all of that junk, and she couldn’t see that. She just loaded on the eyeliner and lip-gloss. Her new friends were the same. Soon enough, she became obsessed with her self-image. Ally would spend at least 20 minutes more than she had to in the bathroom, and whenever there was a mirror around, she developed an addiction to looking at herself. I hated it. She would constantly ask me how this shirt looked, if this made her look dumb, and then get mad at me when I told her it was good because she thought I was lying. But of course she always looked great. That was just the beginning.
She wouldn’t talk to me like she used to. Usually, after school, we’d both sit down at the counter and eat our snacks before we started our homework. We’d goof off and joke about everything, and I’d usually end up choking from laughing so hard. But that was before she became ‘independent.’
It was half way through her freshman year, eighth grade for me, and we were walking down our subdivision road from getting off the bus. She hadn’t been talking to me much in the past few days, so I tried to start a conversation. She had her earplugs in; listening to some rap song that I thought was stupid.
“Anything funny happen today, Ally?” I asked, nudging her when she didn’t look over at me.
“What?” she snarled, tugging out an earpiece.
I looked at her. “I was just asking about your day.” Freak out, will you?
She rolled her eyes. “Nothing that happened concerned you.” Ally gave me a look that told me everything I needed to know. She thought I was inferior to her because I was younger.
A weird feeling pinched my gut. “You usually tell me about stuff. Like, what about that Jared kid that keeps chasing you around?”
She made a disgusted sound. “Ugh. He stopped following me weeks ago. He was stupid, anyhow.”
I was confused. Ally had always told me how she thought he was cute. Now he was stupid? “But I thought—”
“—God, Lena. Just drop it, okay? He was stupid,” she sighed, walking faster and sticking her earplug back in.
As usual, I plunked my bag down on the counter when we got home, going to the pantry to grab a snack. I sat down, waiting for Ally to do the same. Instead, she grabbed a soda from the fridge and headed toward the stairs.
“What are you doing?” I asked, in spite of myself.
She stopped. “Um, my homework?”
I looked at the spot next to me. “Aren’t you going to do it down here?”
Ally shook her head, starting to climb up the stairs again. “I’m doing it in my room. And my radio’s going to be loud, so I probably won’t hear you if you try to talk to me.”
I turned back to my books. I couldn’t exactly register what I was feeling. Ally had never been rude to me. She would just ignore me. I was kind of wondering if I did anything to make her mad. It was like she hadn’t even wanted me to be there, and that I was just a little kid. I wasn’t a little kid. I was only one year younger than her.
Ever since, she’s distanced herself from me. We didn’t have those late night talks anymore, or watch movies together, or share clothes. It wasn’t the Brookes sisters when we were talked about. It was Ally and Lena. I knew one of the reasons why she acted like I was a loser. She was the worst when her friends were over. I knew they hated me. Or at least thought I was a dork. I had received all the weird looks and insulting jokes they thought I didn’t understand. I had been expecting that, though. Ally was part of the ‘popular’ crowd. All the preppy, well-known kids thought they were better than everyone else so why would I be an exception, even if I was their friend’s sister. I learned to avoid them whenever they came over. If they were in the kitchen, I was in the living room. If they came in there, it was time for me to go do my homework in my room. I spent a lot of time at Libby’s or Neal’s house too. They became my second and third homes.
But to a degree, it wasn’t that bad. Dad was the one who would tell them to leave, or stay in the kitchen longer than he had to so I wouldn’t be left alone with them. Even though he didn’t know how much they really disliked me, he probably got the fact that I was uncomfortable around them. I had to give him credit for picking that up.
Ally became worse as we got older. I was pretty much shut off from her completely. She acted like anything I had to say was of no importance, and she was off at her friends’ house more than she was at home. As I moved up to the highschool, everyone commented on how easy it would be with my sister helping me. Yeah, right. She avoided me at school. I was the geek, and she was the popular girl who avoided people like me.
But there was a positive side to it, I guess. Libby, Neal, and I were as close as ever. We all had the same lunch, and several classes were split between us; I had Spanish with Neal and math with Libby. They understood my annoyance and developing dislike of my sister. Whenever we planned something, it was always at one of their two houses.
As Ally and I grew apart, in the beginning I asked myself why. I wanted to fix it. I still wanted to have that close, best friend relationship with her. Obviously she didn’t. But it was always on my daily thoughts. I talked to my mom about it a lot, too. I always asked her why Ally hated me so much, and complained about all the mean things she did. My mom tried to reassure me that she was just going through her teenage phase, and was trying to find herself and what kind of person she wanted to be. I thought that was ridiculous. You don’t have to be cruel to find your personality.
I’ll always remember the time she started acting nice to me again. She smiled at me in the morning. She would grab me some juice from the fridge before going upstairs. It made me feel good. The weird pinching feeling in my stomach loosened, and I almost thought things were getting better. Then the day came in freshman year when I had to stay after school for a detention. Yes, I was shocked. The whole reason for it was stupid; I was tardy for class because I was using the bathroom. Of course I couldn’t tell my teacher it was because I had my period; he was a guy. So I just sucked it up and decided to go. It was only 45 minutes sitting in the library after school.
Ally had promised that her friend Greg would swing by and give me a ride home. I said I didn’t want to have a ride home from him, but she reassured me with a rare smile that she would be in the car, and they’d be waiting for me. I was so stupid.
My detention ended, and I walked out of school, happy to see the junky but running car waiting for me by the curb. And Ally was sitting in the passenger seat. I smiled a big smile at her. She had actually pulled through with this. I thought she was going to rip me off.
I approached the car, giving Greg a glance. Ally had her hand out the window, fingers tapping on the side of the door. “Hey,” I said.
“How was detention?” she asked, shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Boring. Mr. Meek made me stare at a wall. I couldn’t even read book titles or anything.”
Ally shook her head. “That sucks.”
I nodded, pulling on the door handle. “It’s locked.”
I could see Greg’s hand on Ally’s. How old was he? A senior? She was only a sophomore...
I pulled on the handle again. The door wouldn’t open. “Can you unlock the door, please?” I hoisted my bag up a little farther on my shoulder.
As Ally stared at me blankly, a little smile twitching on her lips, a lump crawled up my throat. I stared at her, pulling on the door handle anxiously. “Ally…”
“Lena, you deserve to learn a lesson. We’re going to be late for a movie, anyways,” she said. Greg smiled softly beside her.
“What are you saying? You said you’d take me home!” I retaliated, yanking the door.
“We’re already five minutes late. We should get going,” Ally said, turning her head away from me. Greg nodded,
changing gears. The car started rolling slowly.
Panic surged through me, and my breath caught in my throat. “Ally! Stop!”
She was totally ignoring me, fiddling with the dials on the radio.
“Ally, I have to come home! What will mom and dad say if you leave me here?” I exclaimed, jogging along side the car.
She shrugged. “You went over to Libby’s.”
I stared at her incredulously. Who was this girl my sister had become? Was she seriously going to leave me behind? “Ally, please, stop.”
Greg stepped on the gas, picking up the speed. I started running with the car. “Ally stop! Ally!” It was two seconds before they were going too fast for me to keep up. I watched them drive away. Anger and hatred burned through me, covering up my fear for the moment.
“Screw you, Ally! It’s not like I need you anyways!” I yelled after them. My nose tingled as hot tears spilled from my eyes. I knew at that moment that Ally would never be my friend, much less a good sister. Despite the huge amount of anger I felt, it still hurt to feel pure rejection from her. I wanted to be accepted by her, for her to love me and like me just the way I was. But she did not.
I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no phone, and I definitely didn’t want to go back inside to Mr. Meek. In the scheme of things, I probably should have, but I was stubborn. I think a part of me wanted to prove to Ally that I would do just fine without her. So I walked. It had started to get dark by the time I pushed open the front door.
My mom’s anxious voice echoed down the hall. “Lena? Is that you, honey?”
I bit my lip as I felt tears coming. “Yeah.”
She approached me, holding the phone. “Where have you been? Wasn’t Ally supposed to pick you up? I was worried sick; I called Libby and Neal…They had no idea where you’d gone to!”
I blinked. “Ally’s not home yet?” That meant her whole plan was ruined. If mom had called Libby to see where I was, I couldn’t be at Libby’s house. The chance at revenge leaped out at me, and I smiled when I saw mom shake her head.
“That’s too bad. She’s probably with her boyfriend Greg.” Mom’s surprised face gave away the fact that she didn’t know Ally had a boyfriend. “And you want to know where I was? What I’ve been doing for the past two hours? I’ve been walking, mom. I walked the whole, fricken way home! And why did I do that? Why, mom? Because Ally left me at school! SHE DROVE AWAY WHEN I WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE!” I yelled, storming up the stairs.
My mom watched me incredulously. She followed me up, coming into my room. “Lena, honey! What happened?”
I grabbed a pillow and hugged it tight, wiping my eyes on the fabric. “Ally came to pick me up…and she was waiting for me and everything…and then she just drove away.”
My mom’s eyebrows furrowed, and she fidgeted her hands. She always did that when she was angry.
I didn’t even know why I was crying. I didn’t care about Ally anymore. “She had the car door locked,” I said, taking a deep breath to calm myself down. But I felt some pride in myself. I had walked the whole way home. I didn’t need her.
My mom immediately made a huge fuss about the whole thing, going downstairs to call my dad. I hadn’t cared what they did to Ally when she came home. I stayed in my room the rest of the night. I think it was that night that defined our relationship for the next few years.
and there were a few typos/nitpicking things whatever ha but nothing big: