For most of my life, Valerie could take what she wanted and leave me to deal with the consequences. But after she destroyed the one expensive thing I’d ever bought for myself, I finally stopped being the sister everyone expected me to be.
From the beginning, Valerie always came first.
My mother died giving birth to me. When I was five, Dad married Diane, who came with a one-year-old named Valerie.
I didn’t mind much at first, except for the cake.
Picture my eighth birthday. One slice of chocolate cake left on the plate.
I’d been eyeing it all night.
Diane looked at it, looked at four-year-old Valerie, and slid the plate across the table.
“She hardly got any,” Diane said.
“It’s my cake,” I said.
That was the first time I heard those words.
It was nowhere near the last.
Christmas was worse.
Valerie’s pile looked like a department store window. Dollhouses with working lights. Boots in her exact size.
Every gift had been thought about.
Mine came from whatever was left in the bag, usually socks and a gift card Diane grabbed at the gas station.
Once, when I was ten, I asked why.
Just asked, nice as I could.
“You should learn to share,” Dad said, without looking up from his coffee.
Share what? I hadn’t been given anything to share.
But I learned something that day.
Asking for equal treatment only got me a new charge: selfish, jealous, ungrateful.
So I stopped asking.
I stopped expecting, too, which hurts less than you’d think. Mostly it just goes quiet.
***
As we got older, I became the reliable one.
If Valerie made a mess, I was expected to help fix it. At sixteen, I even covered for her after she snuck out to a party.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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