I haven't told Lizzie that she pretty much saved my life when she moved in. I think it's because I'm in the middle, but I often got so lost in the shuffle, that aside from school and meals, I wouldn't leave my room for weeks. Without even being grounded! Derek and Marti both demand so much attention that I kind of faded into the background. In her own way, I suppose Casey helped too. When they moved in and Casey and Derek squared off for a fight, somehow it always became "Venturi's Vs MacDonald's." And I suddenly became included in my own family. But really, it's Lizzie who saved my life. It started out as us against Casey and Derek, not wanting them to push us around in their struggles to win. It grew to become the greatest friendship I had ever had. It possibly rivaled whatever it was Derek and Marti had. In fact, I felt it was superior; Lizzie and I didn't have 10 years age between us. We had less than one. We got along. We were in the same class at school. We had inside jokes, private moments, shared feelings that both of our older siblings were absolutely nuts. Memories of being the forgotten middle children left at school were secretly thrilling to us; it gave us even more bonding time. I don't know how the bond between us got so tight. Maybe because, even though we would never admit it to them, (we had our health to worry about!) we felt more intelligent than Derek and Casey. They fought constantly. They acted about as mature as Marti towards each other. Sometimes I felt like Lizzie and I were the older ones. We had real conversations. If we disagreed we had honest discussions and we were fine with agreeing to disagree. In a home where I had been so lonely, and then all this chaos moved in, Lizzie came with it. The calm before the storm. The one who always helped pick up the pieces. Dare I say it, my other half? And I had never really let her know how important she was to me. But I had had it. Her twelfth birthday was coming up, and I was going to give her a present. A thank you for, well, for completing me. I couldn't put it that way, of course, it sounded so, so old. Preteens didn't have 'other halves', we didn't 'complete' each other. We stood awkwardly on the opposite sides of the gym at school dances for at least 2/3rds of it. We acted like the opposite sex had cooties. And yet I was absolutely positive that even if I couldn't say it, that's what it was. Was this a middle child thing? Acting so mature? I'm sure outsiders wouldn't see us that way, or me at least. I put on a great façade to the outside world, and our family as well. Burping the alphabet, setting traps for my siblings in the one small shared bathroom so I could get more time in it. When you were in the middle, you learned you had to do things like that, though. It was a means of survival. What shocked me, though, was how Lizzie seemed to go through it all beside me, instead of against me, like any other sibling. So next week, on March 15th, her birthday, I was going to let her know that without her, I'd be lost. I just hoped she wouldn't hate me forever after that.

Edwin surprised me. Our friendship sprang up so fast. I remember going up to the attic, those first few weeks. I would pretend that Derek and Casey were getting to me, but really I was growing rather fond of my new stepbrother. Unlike the two eldest in the Venturi-Macdonald clan, Edwin and I never had to win. Sure, we wanted to get what we wanted. Who doesn't? But it wasn't a win-at-all-costs kind of thing. It didn't cause us to have massive blowups. We got along, and when we wanted different things we came to a compromise, always willing to help each of us win a little. That's how it happened. Edwin was a comrade first, a partner in crime second, and a best friend finally. But lately I was a little worried. I had gone from seeing Edwin as a best friend (which I still totally saw him as, in addition) to something more, maybe a crush? I'd only really had a couple of crushes before, though, and this felt different. I didn't see him as "the totally cutest boy I've ever seen" because regardless of how step we were, we had definitely had a little sibling bonding that Derek and Casey lacked. Mostly because we had to protect ourselves from them. That and protect ourselves from being lost in the shuffle. We were one of those great teams, neither person a sidekick because we each contributed something different to the team. Something equally important. With Edwin, it was like all our bonding was leading to something higher. Something over our heads which we at our present stage couldn't grasp. The only problem I saw in it, was that we weren't headstrong like our siblings, we were too afraid of losing each other to do something about it. But the more and more Derek and Casey fought, and the more and more our parents would forget my soccer match, or Edwin's hockey tournament, and the more and more we stuck together because of it, the more I wanted him to kiss me. I just feared that if he ever did, it would wreck everything.