There were two conflicting views about Sara Diane Kramer.
Grown-ups had adored her, ever since she was a tiny little girl. They cooed over her impeccably neat black hair and big green eyes, her delightful manners and stellar schoolwork, and of course, her gorgeous paintings. Those grown-ups included her parents, whose eyes shone with pride as they gushed about how smart their daughter was, how talented she was, how she was going to be a famous artist one day.
But among her siblings, she was bossy, stuck-up Sara, who didn't care about anything but her studies and paintings, the golden child and perfect favorite among their parents, who they had to worship and praise or she'd run to Mom and Dad crying about how her brother and sister were being mean to her.
Paintings had always, always calmed her down from the hectic buzz of the Kramer household. No matter how much her siblings and the noise made her feel like either exploding or curling up in a ball, she could feel her anger and doubt and everything around her fade away the second the first stroke of that brush trailed down the canvas, her long hair tied up and her face screwed up in full concentration as she forgot about everything but the painting in front of her.
Jed and Amy didn't understand, and neither did her mom and dad, as much as they supported and praised and gushed over her.
She felt joy whenever her parents praised her, whenever they talked about how mature she was, how sensible she was, how smart she was, how talented she was, how they wished Amy and Jed were more like her...as they did whenever she created another beautiful painting or aced her schoolwork. So she continued to create paintings, continued to be a perfect student.
She had been drawing since she could remember, but it was only since she was ten that she watched her family, Jed lying in the sun with his eyes closed, tiny little Amy looking up at her big sister like she was all, knew all, and could do all, her mom sitting in an armchair cradling Jed in her arms, her dad dancing in the living room to some horrible song before the rest of the family joined in, George curled up on the rug next to the fireplace. She drew the shine in Amy's dark green eyes, so much like hers, the sunlight on Jed's red curls, the warmth of her mother's smile and the bulges in her stomach, the movement of her father's body, the flicker and sparks of the flames in the fireplace and the individual furs on George. And sometimes, she thought they were more beautiful than the earliest of sunsets and clearest of lakes.
She loathed babysitting her siblings. It was one of the consequences of the eldest. Always having to watch over them, having to deal with pranks and fights and messes and noise, oh the noise. But whenever she did babysit them, her parents would continue to praise her and talk about how mature and sensible and helpful she was to babysit without complaint. So she continued to babysit whenever her parents asked, and never let them know how much she hated it.
She couldn't help the sheer panic that rose in her whenever she got a less than perfect mark in a test or used the wrong shade of blue on a painting. Her schoolmates and even her friends thought it was ridiculous, that she was being paranoid over nothing, that she could murder somebody and her parents would still think she was god's gift to the earth. But she couldn't help being worried.
She had made a few friends at school, but most of the girls thought she was snobby and boring and full of herself, too obsessed with painting to do anything fun. She didn't care. As long as she had her parents' approval, that was all that mattered to her.
At least, she convinced herself she didn't care.
All of the girls rolling their eyes or backing ten feet away from her when she talked about her most recent masterpiece or perfect grades made her realise something: everyone liked Amy for her sense of humor, her casual and easy-going nature. Nobody would ever call Amy snobby or boring or full of herself. Amy wasn't obsessed with something nobody cared about – well, there was her Bob Marley and reggae music, but she wasn't obsessed with it to the extent Sara was about her paintings. And ever since then, she wished she could be more like Amy.
It wasn't until Amy barged into her room one night, begging for her to believe her, that Sara realised that she had made a horrible mistake.