I felt sorry for Cindy. I really did. She might have been a selfish, ornery, lying little brat, but she probably didn't know any better, and it seemed wrong to allow someone to never be happy. She lived in the world of the three bears: everything was too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft, too boring, too exciting, too dark, too bright, too loud, too quiet, with no Goldilocks to say anything was just right. But when she nearly got us arrested, I was a wee bit ticked off. It might have been true that she did work in our house. And that she had a stepmother and stepsisters. Her biological parents were actually both dead. But that's where the similarities between her story and the real story end.
At the tender age of five, Cindy's mother died of tuberculosis. Her father then met and fell in love with my mother, who had a six-year-old daughter at the time (me). My father died when I was two; he was a member of the king's army and was killed taking down an ogre, but not before he made sure the ogre was fatally wounded. I have one memory of my father, and I can't really say it's a memory; it's really just a feeling. I remember feeling warm and secure in his arms. To the best of my knowledge, Cindy has no recollections whatsoever of her mother. I have a few vague memories of my time living with just my mother, but Cindy has basically been my sister all my life.
Unfortunately, she doesn't see it that way. When we were younger, we were best friends. Cindy and I did everything together. But around three years ago, Cindy became a teenager, and unfortunately it wasn't just a number thing. She gradually turned snotty and sluggish. Why should she have to do work? It wasn't fair. She stopped calling mom "mom"; instead it was "stepmother". Dad died when she was ten and I was eleven, from the same thing that took Cindy's mother – tuberculosis. We both mourned his death. It was a tragedy, but we got over it. We kept living life, because what else was there to do? That is, until Cindy turned thirteen. She started blaming her actions on being an orphan. Once she even accused Mom of being glad Dad was dead. After seeing Mom's face, she never did that again. By Cindy's thirteenth birthday, we had already been growing apart for around a year. She had her friends and I had mine.
We were still nice to each other, for a while. Then we became "cordial". Then she stopped talking to me. Her chores took a very long time, because she took so long to accomplish anything, complaining the whole while. She questioned everything Mom did, even what she made for dinner. She became obsessed with boys, going out with a new one every few months. I was upset by Cindy's attitude change, but the last few years have been happy ones for me. I've learned a lot and made a lot of friends. I've become much better at playing the piano and violin. I even learned to play the oboe. I helped Mom as much as I could. Dad did trade in rare books and was good at it; he left us a fair amount of money, but not enough to live on. Mom did a lot of work as a seamstress and laundress, work that I actually enjoyed. Cindy, on the other hand, didn't, and Mom never made her help with other people's clothes.
For a while, Mom and I figured Cindy would "grow out of it". She didn't. Occasionally she went through weeks where she was nice to us with hardly a complaint. Then she just got moody again. By the time she turned fifteen, Cindy decided she was ready to be married. Mom and I both just gave her strange looks when this topic came up; the normal age for marriage was more like eighteen, with a few marrying around seventeen. Within a month or so, Cindy dropped it. Then the day of her sixteenth birthday an invitation arrived. The prince, a twenty-two year old hottie, was hosting a dance. Everyone in the kingdom between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five was invited. I figured it was a good thing we had a small kingdom. Cindy figured it was time to get herself a prince. Unfortunately for Cindy, she was gorgeous. I say unfortunately because it meant she attracted a lot of the kind of guys I would never touch. She loved the bad boys. And sadly, the prince had a reputation for extreme shallowness. A sixteen-year-old beauty was probably right up his ally. Cindy schemed about the ball every second of the weeks leading up to it. She decided a fashionably late entrance would get her as much attention as possible, as well as giving her the most time to get ready. Mom didn't believe in regulating our clothes; she thought we were old enough to know for ourselves what we shouldn't be wearing. This meant Cindy had bought a low-cut, strapless, sparkly minidress. She also decided six-inch matching shoes were the best way to go. I was going to the ball just to hang out with my friends and I was supposed to drive Cindy there, forcing me to show up late with her, as I couldn't physically drag her out the door. The second we got there, I left her alone; she didn't want me and I didn't want to be seen with her. I didn't worry about her after ditching her; she had enough friends and I wasn't going to let her ruin my night. It wasn't until I got home that I heard what had happened. Apparently the prince had asked Cindy to dance. She ecstatically accepted. Luckily it was a slow song, and he held her close enough her heels weren't a problem. They talked for several minutes about Cindy's miserable life with her awful stepfamily, who forced her to do endless chores. In fact, her stepmother's cruelty was the reason she was late; she had told Cindy that girls like Cindy wouldn't be wanted at the ball, and besides there was work to be done. Cindy was forced to sneak out of the house after her older sister had already left and walk to the ball, catching a ride from a kind stranger only after walking over a mile. The prince ate this up, and asked her to dance twice more. Then he tried to twirl her. Cindy tripped and fell. She couldn't get back up because her dress was too tight. I found this hilarious. After the prince helped her up, she was literally so embarrassed she ran out of the ball, losing a shoe in the process. After taking the other one off, she kept going, hoping to find someone to take her home because she didn't want to wait for me. She hitched a ride back home and immediately ran to her room and threw herself on the bed sobbing. It was half an hour before Mom could get anything out of her and Cindy refused to give anything but vague answers about dancing with the prince and leaving early. I came home around midnight after a frantic hour of searching for Cindy. Unable to find her, I came home, only to be told she was already in bed. The next day, the prince showed up at her door to return the shoe. Shocked and confused to find normal people waiting for him instead of the step family he had braced himself for, the prince explained exactly what happened. We, too, were confused by the description he gave of…us. Then he apologized for almost arresting us for child abuse. Mom thanked him for his apology, told him there were no hard feelings, and he left. Then she blew up. Cindy was grounded, possibly for the rest of her life. She was to wash her mouth out with soap twice daily for a week. Then she was sent to her room because if Mom had to look at her face anymore Cindy would be beaten about the face and neck with a potato masher. And, you know, I felt sorry for Cindy. I really did.