" But Mama, if I don't do the essay right now, I won't have any other free
time to do it until Saturday, and the essay is due this Friday," my big
sister would complain to my mother.
"Oh yes, that's right Maria. Well, I guess you can finish your project for the studio on Saturday," my mother would reply. This would usually happen, and my sister would outsmart my mother. It happened all the time at our place, since my sister was the brilliant "genius" with the 163 IQ. Everything and everyone seemed to care about her, and they knew her, but me, they only saw me as "the smart one's brother." You see, I had ADD, and not everything seemed to come very easy for me, but it just didn't seem fair that my sister got all those good genes from Mama, while I was stuck with the lousy ones. To tell you the truth, I think Mama was a little disappointed with me. I was in eighth grade and taking only the advanced math corse, but passing with a C average. Mama would always get so mad with me when I didn't get negatives and positives right.
"Marcus, can't you figure this out? Your sister took this corse in the fifth grade as was doing Algebra 2 at your age!"she would say.
It always seemed to be me getting the blame for everything. So what if my sister was perfect? It didn't mean that I had to be too. Besides, being perfect means that everyone depends on you for everything, which had already happened to my sister. Her teachers assigned her extra essays to write for magazines and extra projects for contests. I didn't really know how she did it, all the extra work I mean. Being assigned like, a million assignments of homework for one night seems pretty bad. But then again, my sister thought that three assignments with forty problems each was easy, but like I said, my sister is perfect and everything is easy for her. The girl was already taking collage corses, and she was only in the tenth grade. Mama was planning to send her to Vanderbilt, or one of those big collages, even though we didn't have the money. But Mama figured that Maria would get several scholarships to pay for at least half of the tuition, and we'd save up for the rest. I don't know what Mama was planning to do when I was ready for collage, but she'd probably get me the one's that you could do on the internet that only costed about a thousand dollars and lasted eighteen months. To tell you the truth, I couldn't wait until Maria went off to collage, that would give me two years to be with Mama, and who knows? Maybe by then Mama would see that I'm not as dumb as she thought. If she would just pay attention to me and help me with the stuff I didn't really get, I might be able to raise my C average to a B.
Now don't get me wrong about my sister, she's really sweet, and she helps me with my homework whenever she has the free time. Maria's a great teacher, but she's usually very busy and sometimes gets a little stressed over teaching me. The last time that she had helped me on anything was three months ago, and the assignment that I had to do in Math, I got an A. So, I wasn't as dumb as Mama thought, but I think that Maria has just a little to much to do. She helps with the school newspaper, plays oboe in the school band, does after school practices three days a week for the dance team, and several other things that I probably didn't even know about.
I stomped upstairs to my room one afternoon, mad as ever at my mother. My math teacher, Ms. Williams, assigned our class thirty-five problems because several people were talking. I really hate it when things like that happen. People talk in class like there isn't any tomorrow when they know that the teacher said not to, and then the teacher gets really mad, and gives everybody a punishment assignment. I don't think that it is fair that I was stuck in a class with people like that, but it was the only period for advanced math and I was with the people who didn't care. Anyways, she assigned us the homework for the next day, and we didn't know anything about it, but you think the teacher would know that people who don't care about their grades, didn't even do their homework, so she could just have given everybody a zero and me a seventy-five.
I stomped all the way home, mad because the homework had something with x and y values, and I didn't understand any of it.
"Good Afternoon Marcus, how was your day?" my mother asked, as cheerful as ever.
"Oh, it was fine, except our teacher assigned us extra homework again," I complained.
" Marcus, it will only help you more. It's just like Maria at dance practice this afternoon, she's practicing to keep up her skills and to make her even better," Just then, the phone rang, and Mama went to pick it up. I glanced at the caller ID, and saw that it was from Maria's high school. Great, I thought, she probably won another award. But it wasn't.
I saw a worried look on Mama's face, and I thought I even felt a little afraid to. So many thoughts went through my mind at the time. Bomb? Terrorist attack? Guns at school?
Mama slammed the phone down and ran to snatch her coat.
"Mama, what's going on?" I asked her as I grabbed her keys for her. "Maria fell at dance practice. They think she pulled sprained her ankle badly. I'm going to pick her up. You stay here and do your homework."
"But Mama, I need your help to do it! I don't know any of it!" I cried. "Oh Goodness Marcus! Can't you do anything? How hard could it be to graph a few math problems? Maria did it in fifth grade!" she said as she ran out the door. I heard her car start up, and watched her pull out of the driveway.
"Mama!" I cried. How could she have left me to do homework I didn't even understand? And I couldn't believe she had practically called me stupid! So what if Maria did advanced math before I did? I'm not the genius!
I stomped upstairs, and refused to even carry my math book up there. If I couldn't figure it out, than I wouldn't do it. I'd wait for Maria to get home. With that foot of hers, she wouldn't be doing hardly anything for a while. I decided to spare my thirty minutes of free time sketching pictures of race cars and football players. It was a hobby that everyone at my school was doing. All the jocks would sketch pictures of professional football and basketball players, and if they were any good, they would sell them for a good five or ten dollars. But it was different with me, when I would draw a great picture, I couldn't sell it, it was like it was a part of me. Some of my bad pictures, the jocks thought were wonderful, so I'd sell them to them. Either way, I made a profit.
I grabbed my sketching paper from under my mattress, where I hid it and all of my drawings. Mama didn't really believe in sketching and drawing. She believed that it was a waste of my time.
"Why do you sit and draw those pictures? You should be studying," she would tell me.
So, I bought the sketching paper with my allowance and with any spare time I had, I would draw. I had about a hundred drawings that I had drawn and kept, all hidden under my mattress as well. I reached under the mattress to grab my pencil, but was surprised when I couldn't feel it under there. I got down on my hands and knees and lifted the mattress all the way up. No pencil.
"Err!" I yelled as loud as I could. It didn't really matter because all I got in reply was my echo. I knew that Mama didn't have any pencils in her desk, because she was a nurse and she only believed in using pens. So I had to go in Maria's room. I opened the door and was greeted by a sparkly clean scent. Maria was perfect at everything! She made strait A's, did almost every single after school thing imaginable, did extra homework, was nice to everyone, and still had time to keep her room clean! The only reason that she helped me with my homework, is because Mama makes her. If Maria had a choice about everything, I'd be a foster child, and she'd still hate my guts.
Now knowing the truth, I thought about it. There were times that she'd slammed her door in my face, when she get frustrated while trying to help me with my homework, and times when she said she'd hated me.
As frustrated as could be, I punched a fist down on Maria's desk, and was alarmed when her binder fell off and hit my foot.
"Ow!" I yelled. Her binder was huge! Bigger than Jake's, this kid who is a complete nerd at our school and also does extra homework like Maria. I picked up her binder that had broken along the seam. Great I thought, now I have to buy Maria another binder! So mad at myself, and knowing that Maria would probably ask for the most expensive binder, I grabbed a pencil and didn't see this big book fall out of her broken binder until I tripped over it as I was heading back to my room. It was a small, hardback book with a dark-green book cover over it. It was very small, and I thought it was one of her text books because it was so thick. I wondered what subject that it could be as I opened it up. I hoped it was her math book, so I could at least look at what I had to look forward to in high school, but it wasn't. When I opened it up, the writing style print was unusual and smeared, and I wondered why the words were slanted. As I read the first few sentences, I then realized that this wasn't a textbook at all. It was Maria's diary!
I slammed the book shut and set it back on her desk. If Maria knew that I knew where her diary was, and that she even had a diary, she would be very mad at me, even threaten to tell Mama. And if Mama found out, I wouldn't hear the end of it until I went off to college, and I might still even her about it then!
I started to walk out of Maria's room, but something told me to stay behind. After all, I was home alone, and probably would be for thirty minutes. Maria and Mama would probably never find out, unless guilt got to me and I confessed, but that rarely happens to me, and I did hide the sketches under my mattress. Even though my mind was telling me to go back into my bedroom, my feet carried me over to Maria's organized desk while my hands picked up the diary. I flipped to the first page and read the first passage.
Dear Diary,
My name is Maria Gonzalez, and I am 14 years old. I have always wanted a diary to keep my thoughts in, but I have never really been serious about it until now. Because it has a book cover on it, no body can really tell if it is a diary, or a textbook.
I flipped several pages into the book. This was so typical of Maria. She had her own diary starting out just like everybody's. I flipped mid-way into the book, a little after I glimpsed at something that said "I'm sixteen" in capital letters. This seemed to have just been written not to long before. Even tough I felt a little guilt, I read Maria's writing.
Dear Diary,
Sometimes, I feel like Mama expects too much from me, and too little from Marcus. She is always telling me when I should do something and what I should do. She won't even let me have a boyfriend, at least, I haven't asked yet, but I'm going to soon. Joseph has already asked me if I have asked Mama several times, and each time I must make up an excuse so I won't break his heart, but I am afraid that If I do ask Mama, she will tell me that I should work on my studies and forget boys. WORK ON MY STUDIES!!! Mama doesn't see that a life with out love, is not a life to live. I know that she doesn't know that because of the way she treats Marcus. My brother is a very nice boy, but all Mama can do is pick on him and complain about his grades. If Mama would spend less time yelling at him, she could see the real Marcus, and she would see that grades don't really matter for your intelligence. Look at me! I have a 163 IQ and I can't even find the own courage to talk to my own mother! But Marcus is greater than that. He's not shy about anything. When he needs help, he has no trouble going to ask Mama for it, even if it means getting yelled at. Sometimes, I need help, and I can't go up to Mama and ask her to help her with something I'm not sure of, or else she would say something. That is why I put this green book-cover on this journal two years ago. I put it on here so it was only a place that I knew about. It would be a place that I could really express myself, without my mother. A place that only my eyes could see.
Maria
I couldn't read anymore. Maria didn't really see me as a dumb boy like Mama had, and she had called me intelligent! A word no one in my entire life had ever called me! It felt wonderful! I sat the book down, and turned to leave the room. Maria then came in, followed my Mama. Maria had a small bandage on her foot, but she could still walk on it very well. Mama took one look at the binder and her mouth dropped open.
"Marcus Roberto Gonzalez, you had better have an explanation for breaking Maria's binder!" she cried.
"Mama, I'm sorry, I needed a pencil and I went into Maria's binder to get one, but as I did, it kind of broke," I confessed.
"Mama, it's okay. I've had that binder for two years. They don't last forever you know,"Maria defended me.
"Well, then you best clean this stuff up.What did you need a pencil for anyway?" "I needed it for my math homework," I said.
"Don't worry Mama, I don't have anything tonight. I finished it during study hall. today. I can help him," Maria said. We both walked out of the room together, and headed towards mine. All the way there, I hoped that Maria would forget about her diary, and not know that it was laying on her desk the entire time. Once we got into my room, I realized after Maria had walked over to my bed, and that my sketches were still out. I just hoped that she wouldn't tell Mama about them. Mama would be even more disappointed that I had hidden these from her, but I doubted Maria would tell. Not after I'd read what she really thought about me.
"These are really good," she said to me. "Did you draw them yourself?"
"Yes," I answered, "it's just a little hobby I have."
"You ought to look into a career in animation, they make all those animated movies kids love to watch. You'd be really great at it because you never give up at anything you do."
I grabbed my math book, and Maria and I worked for forty-five minutes until I got it right and was able to do it on my own. Then I got really sad, because Maria and I had fun together, and she never had any free time. I wished that Maria wasn't a complete genius, but I felt guilty thinking that. Once we were done, we walked downstairs, and were surprised that Mama wasn't cooking Tacos yet, what she cooked every Friday night.
Oh no! I thought as I remembered Mama telling me to clean up the mess I had made in Maria's room before I left without doing it. Mama was in Maria's room reading her diary! She had to be because she was quiet the whole time we left. Before I could go upstairs to stop her, Mama came down.
"Maria, I think I am forcing you to do too much. You don't have a life, all you do is study for extra projects and assignments. This is all up to you, but I am saying that you should go out sometime, and meet this boy Joseph. I don't mind it, and instead of spending all my time on you, I will help Marcus with anything he needs, and don't you dare be afraid to come up to me for anything ever again," Mama said.
"Really? Mama, are you sure? Because I don't mind all the extra assignments, I just get tired of doing them after a while," Maria answered, not worrying about the fact that Mama had read her diary.
"I'm positive," Mama said, and then pulled us both together in a big hug. We stayed there for I'm not sure how long, until I could take it any longer. "All right, too much love for Marcus," I complained.
Both of them laughed and Maria helped Mama with supper. Even if my sister seemed to get on my nerves for being a genius, and Mama would always get mad at me for not knowing anything, I realized that I didn't mind it at all. Because, after all, my sister was perfect.
"Oh yes, that's right Maria. Well, I guess you can finish your project for the studio on Saturday," my mother would reply. This would usually happen, and my sister would outsmart my mother. It happened all the time at our place, since my sister was the brilliant "genius" with the 163 IQ. Everything and everyone seemed to care about her, and they knew her, but me, they only saw me as "the smart one's brother." You see, I had ADD, and not everything seemed to come very easy for me, but it just didn't seem fair that my sister got all those good genes from Mama, while I was stuck with the lousy ones. To tell you the truth, I think Mama was a little disappointed with me. I was in eighth grade and taking only the advanced math corse, but passing with a C average. Mama would always get so mad with me when I didn't get negatives and positives right.
"Marcus, can't you figure this out? Your sister took this corse in the fifth grade as was doing Algebra 2 at your age!"she would say.
It always seemed to be me getting the blame for everything. So what if my sister was perfect? It didn't mean that I had to be too. Besides, being perfect means that everyone depends on you for everything, which had already happened to my sister. Her teachers assigned her extra essays to write for magazines and extra projects for contests. I didn't really know how she did it, all the extra work I mean. Being assigned like, a million assignments of homework for one night seems pretty bad. But then again, my sister thought that three assignments with forty problems each was easy, but like I said, my sister is perfect and everything is easy for her. The girl was already taking collage corses, and she was only in the tenth grade. Mama was planning to send her to Vanderbilt, or one of those big collages, even though we didn't have the money. But Mama figured that Maria would get several scholarships to pay for at least half of the tuition, and we'd save up for the rest. I don't know what Mama was planning to do when I was ready for collage, but she'd probably get me the one's that you could do on the internet that only costed about a thousand dollars and lasted eighteen months. To tell you the truth, I couldn't wait until Maria went off to collage, that would give me two years to be with Mama, and who knows? Maybe by then Mama would see that I'm not as dumb as she thought. If she would just pay attention to me and help me with the stuff I didn't really get, I might be able to raise my C average to a B.
Now don't get me wrong about my sister, she's really sweet, and she helps me with my homework whenever she has the free time. Maria's a great teacher, but she's usually very busy and sometimes gets a little stressed over teaching me. The last time that she had helped me on anything was three months ago, and the assignment that I had to do in Math, I got an A. So, I wasn't as dumb as Mama thought, but I think that Maria has just a little to much to do. She helps with the school newspaper, plays oboe in the school band, does after school practices three days a week for the dance team, and several other things that I probably didn't even know about.
I stomped upstairs to my room one afternoon, mad as ever at my mother. My math teacher, Ms. Williams, assigned our class thirty-five problems because several people were talking. I really hate it when things like that happen. People talk in class like there isn't any tomorrow when they know that the teacher said not to, and then the teacher gets really mad, and gives everybody a punishment assignment. I don't think that it is fair that I was stuck in a class with people like that, but it was the only period for advanced math and I was with the people who didn't care. Anyways, she assigned us the homework for the next day, and we didn't know anything about it, but you think the teacher would know that people who don't care about their grades, didn't even do their homework, so she could just have given everybody a zero and me a seventy-five.
I stomped all the way home, mad because the homework had something with x and y values, and I didn't understand any of it.
"Good Afternoon Marcus, how was your day?" my mother asked, as cheerful as ever.
"Oh, it was fine, except our teacher assigned us extra homework again," I complained.
" Marcus, it will only help you more. It's just like Maria at dance practice this afternoon, she's practicing to keep up her skills and to make her even better," Just then, the phone rang, and Mama went to pick it up. I glanced at the caller ID, and saw that it was from Maria's high school. Great, I thought, she probably won another award. But it wasn't.
I saw a worried look on Mama's face, and I thought I even felt a little afraid to. So many thoughts went through my mind at the time. Bomb? Terrorist attack? Guns at school?
Mama slammed the phone down and ran to snatch her coat.
"Mama, what's going on?" I asked her as I grabbed her keys for her. "Maria fell at dance practice. They think she pulled sprained her ankle badly. I'm going to pick her up. You stay here and do your homework."
"But Mama, I need your help to do it! I don't know any of it!" I cried. "Oh Goodness Marcus! Can't you do anything? How hard could it be to graph a few math problems? Maria did it in fifth grade!" she said as she ran out the door. I heard her car start up, and watched her pull out of the driveway.
"Mama!" I cried. How could she have left me to do homework I didn't even understand? And I couldn't believe she had practically called me stupid! So what if Maria did advanced math before I did? I'm not the genius!
I stomped upstairs, and refused to even carry my math book up there. If I couldn't figure it out, than I wouldn't do it. I'd wait for Maria to get home. With that foot of hers, she wouldn't be doing hardly anything for a while. I decided to spare my thirty minutes of free time sketching pictures of race cars and football players. It was a hobby that everyone at my school was doing. All the jocks would sketch pictures of professional football and basketball players, and if they were any good, they would sell them for a good five or ten dollars. But it was different with me, when I would draw a great picture, I couldn't sell it, it was like it was a part of me. Some of my bad pictures, the jocks thought were wonderful, so I'd sell them to them. Either way, I made a profit.
I grabbed my sketching paper from under my mattress, where I hid it and all of my drawings. Mama didn't really believe in sketching and drawing. She believed that it was a waste of my time.
"Why do you sit and draw those pictures? You should be studying," she would tell me.
So, I bought the sketching paper with my allowance and with any spare time I had, I would draw. I had about a hundred drawings that I had drawn and kept, all hidden under my mattress as well. I reached under the mattress to grab my pencil, but was surprised when I couldn't feel it under there. I got down on my hands and knees and lifted the mattress all the way up. No pencil.
"Err!" I yelled as loud as I could. It didn't really matter because all I got in reply was my echo. I knew that Mama didn't have any pencils in her desk, because she was a nurse and she only believed in using pens. So I had to go in Maria's room. I opened the door and was greeted by a sparkly clean scent. Maria was perfect at everything! She made strait A's, did almost every single after school thing imaginable, did extra homework, was nice to everyone, and still had time to keep her room clean! The only reason that she helped me with my homework, is because Mama makes her. If Maria had a choice about everything, I'd be a foster child, and she'd still hate my guts.
Now knowing the truth, I thought about it. There were times that she'd slammed her door in my face, when she get frustrated while trying to help me with my homework, and times when she said she'd hated me.
As frustrated as could be, I punched a fist down on Maria's desk, and was alarmed when her binder fell off and hit my foot.
"Ow!" I yelled. Her binder was huge! Bigger than Jake's, this kid who is a complete nerd at our school and also does extra homework like Maria. I picked up her binder that had broken along the seam. Great I thought, now I have to buy Maria another binder! So mad at myself, and knowing that Maria would probably ask for the most expensive binder, I grabbed a pencil and didn't see this big book fall out of her broken binder until I tripped over it as I was heading back to my room. It was a small, hardback book with a dark-green book cover over it. It was very small, and I thought it was one of her text books because it was so thick. I wondered what subject that it could be as I opened it up. I hoped it was her math book, so I could at least look at what I had to look forward to in high school, but it wasn't. When I opened it up, the writing style print was unusual and smeared, and I wondered why the words were slanted. As I read the first few sentences, I then realized that this wasn't a textbook at all. It was Maria's diary!
I slammed the book shut and set it back on her desk. If Maria knew that I knew where her diary was, and that she even had a diary, she would be very mad at me, even threaten to tell Mama. And if Mama found out, I wouldn't hear the end of it until I went off to college, and I might still even her about it then!
I started to walk out of Maria's room, but something told me to stay behind. After all, I was home alone, and probably would be for thirty minutes. Maria and Mama would probably never find out, unless guilt got to me and I confessed, but that rarely happens to me, and I did hide the sketches under my mattress. Even though my mind was telling me to go back into my bedroom, my feet carried me over to Maria's organized desk while my hands picked up the diary. I flipped to the first page and read the first passage.
Dear Diary,
My name is Maria Gonzalez, and I am 14 years old. I have always wanted a diary to keep my thoughts in, but I have never really been serious about it until now. Because it has a book cover on it, no body can really tell if it is a diary, or a textbook.
I flipped several pages into the book. This was so typical of Maria. She had her own diary starting out just like everybody's. I flipped mid-way into the book, a little after I glimpsed at something that said "I'm sixteen" in capital letters. This seemed to have just been written not to long before. Even tough I felt a little guilt, I read Maria's writing.
Dear Diary,
Sometimes, I feel like Mama expects too much from me, and too little from Marcus. She is always telling me when I should do something and what I should do. She won't even let me have a boyfriend, at least, I haven't asked yet, but I'm going to soon. Joseph has already asked me if I have asked Mama several times, and each time I must make up an excuse so I won't break his heart, but I am afraid that If I do ask Mama, she will tell me that I should work on my studies and forget boys. WORK ON MY STUDIES!!! Mama doesn't see that a life with out love, is not a life to live. I know that she doesn't know that because of the way she treats Marcus. My brother is a very nice boy, but all Mama can do is pick on him and complain about his grades. If Mama would spend less time yelling at him, she could see the real Marcus, and she would see that grades don't really matter for your intelligence. Look at me! I have a 163 IQ and I can't even find the own courage to talk to my own mother! But Marcus is greater than that. He's not shy about anything. When he needs help, he has no trouble going to ask Mama for it, even if it means getting yelled at. Sometimes, I need help, and I can't go up to Mama and ask her to help her with something I'm not sure of, or else she would say something. That is why I put this green book-cover on this journal two years ago. I put it on here so it was only a place that I knew about. It would be a place that I could really express myself, without my mother. A place that only my eyes could see.
Maria
I couldn't read anymore. Maria didn't really see me as a dumb boy like Mama had, and she had called me intelligent! A word no one in my entire life had ever called me! It felt wonderful! I sat the book down, and turned to leave the room. Maria then came in, followed my Mama. Maria had a small bandage on her foot, but she could still walk on it very well. Mama took one look at the binder and her mouth dropped open.
"Marcus Roberto Gonzalez, you had better have an explanation for breaking Maria's binder!" she cried.
"Mama, I'm sorry, I needed a pencil and I went into Maria's binder to get one, but as I did, it kind of broke," I confessed.
"Mama, it's okay. I've had that binder for two years. They don't last forever you know,"Maria defended me.
"Well, then you best clean this stuff up.What did you need a pencil for anyway?" "I needed it for my math homework," I said.
"Don't worry Mama, I don't have anything tonight. I finished it during study hall. today. I can help him," Maria said. We both walked out of the room together, and headed towards mine. All the way there, I hoped that Maria would forget about her diary, and not know that it was laying on her desk the entire time. Once we got into my room, I realized after Maria had walked over to my bed, and that my sketches were still out. I just hoped that she wouldn't tell Mama about them. Mama would be even more disappointed that I had hidden these from her, but I doubted Maria would tell. Not after I'd read what she really thought about me.
"These are really good," she said to me. "Did you draw them yourself?"
"Yes," I answered, "it's just a little hobby I have."
"You ought to look into a career in animation, they make all those animated movies kids love to watch. You'd be really great at it because you never give up at anything you do."
I grabbed my math book, and Maria and I worked for forty-five minutes until I got it right and was able to do it on my own. Then I got really sad, because Maria and I had fun together, and she never had any free time. I wished that Maria wasn't a complete genius, but I felt guilty thinking that. Once we were done, we walked downstairs, and were surprised that Mama wasn't cooking Tacos yet, what she cooked every Friday night.
Oh no! I thought as I remembered Mama telling me to clean up the mess I had made in Maria's room before I left without doing it. Mama was in Maria's room reading her diary! She had to be because she was quiet the whole time we left. Before I could go upstairs to stop her, Mama came down.
"Maria, I think I am forcing you to do too much. You don't have a life, all you do is study for extra projects and assignments. This is all up to you, but I am saying that you should go out sometime, and meet this boy Joseph. I don't mind it, and instead of spending all my time on you, I will help Marcus with anything he needs, and don't you dare be afraid to come up to me for anything ever again," Mama said.
"Really? Mama, are you sure? Because I don't mind all the extra assignments, I just get tired of doing them after a while," Maria answered, not worrying about the fact that Mama had read her diary.
"I'm positive," Mama said, and then pulled us both together in a big hug. We stayed there for I'm not sure how long, until I could take it any longer. "All right, too much love for Marcus," I complained.
Both of them laughed and Maria helped Mama with supper. Even if my sister seemed to get on my nerves for being a genius, and Mama would always get mad at me for not knowing anything, I realized that I didn't mind it at all. Because, after all, my sister was perfect.