Best Sisters // Hazlitt
Illustration by Rebekka Dunlap
Hazlitt
I was not prepared for the possibility of my sister. She was born in that in between time—the days before summer vacation has started and all the possibilities are still alive, waiting. I was jealous. After seven years, 11 months and one day, I had unwillingly ceased to be an only child. On the car ride to the hospital, I vowed not to hold her. That sentiment stuck. Maybe I would have changed my mind if she were soft and sweet, delicate as a ballet slipper, like the babies I’d seen in movies. But she was none of those things. She was a sound: squalling—with a tiny face wide at the mouth, bunched into wrinkles everywhere else. I watched her hiccup for breath, her wrinkled skin gone neon, bright as a Barbie shoe. There’s a picture of me from that day, standing over her, my head topped with a floppy mullet, soft stomach jutting out. The puzzled look on my face says, who are you?