Chapter 3

In about half an hour her sister will walk through the door. At least that’s what she hoped at the time, but it won’t be for about another half hour that she’ll know. She always finds it odd when she realises things about her sisters. There’s a moment here or there when she realises she’s like her older sister, but she rarely finds herself realising she’s like her twin. She knows she’s so much more like her, and it’s not something she’ll deny but she sees things here and there and says “That’s like her.” She was always smarter than her twin, or so she believed, and never aspired her to be like her at all. It’s hard to aspire to be someone lesser than you. So she aspired to her older sister, three years above her. There were seventeen days where she was only two years younger and she only wanted to be better than her. Of course, since she had three years more it was hard to beat her and she never did. Whatever she did, her sister was always being praised for things she wanted to be praised for. She didn’t realise at the time that in three years she might be being praised for it but when she looks back she was never praised for it in three years. At that time though she knew she was so crap at it that she didn’t mind. Not all at least, there was always that one thing there that she was aiming at being good at. She wondered that if her sister wasn’t good at it she would get the praise; she would be the best one in the family at it. Only now though, just only now, she’s found her thing. She can do that, her sister can’t. But it will never be the same, she wanted so much to be good at it and she thought she was. She was waiting for the time when her parents would look at her and say “you’re good.” But instead all she overheard was a soft comment “it’s horrible.” It was horrible she felt. Everything, every thought she had that they would think she was good, would praise her, would be proud of her, was gone. Her hope was gone. She still shares it with her father, at least one thing but she found it hard to do it. The only reason she could manage with it was because it was different, that type of different that even if it is terribly horrible it can be classed as different and therefore not bad. Like abstract paintings and live art.

Oh how there are some things she loathes, but she hates to hates things. She likes everybody, her best friend even says that (though her best friend doesn’t know she hated her for awhile- disliked though only).

Her sister walked through the door, tired and rugged and then she showed her the tick bite she had gotten the other day. She had pulled it out with tweezers, unaware of the dangers of leaving a ticks head under the skin. She’d been scratching it so it’d gone red. It didn’t look good, and the girl who remembers what’s gone through the red tree is worried, as she always worries. When she worries she prays to God and as she cries out what comes to mind is the first time she really cried out to Him. She was twelve, they both were and they were walking home from school. They normally caught the bus but for some reason they were walking that day, it wasn’t too long a walk, perhaps they had had afternoon sport practice. Along the road which they walked there was a tree, something which they had never really noticed but must have always been there and this tree, unlike most of the trees around bore fruit. What fruit it was they didn’t know, but it was like a nashi and the twins loved nashis, enjoying the pear-like apple-type fruit eagerly whenever some ended up in their house. Her sister, for whatever unimportant reason, wanted to eat the fruit and despite how she reasoned she took some bites. She was fearful of the unknown fruit. Not many days after she drove past the tree with her mum and asked about the tree. There was a comment made about the fruit was poisonous. That’s when she really prayed. She cried out to the only one that could help, she called and called and He answered. Her sister never had to be rushed to the hospital, or foamed at the mouth. The eating of the fruit, all in all, may as well have never happened, it made no difference in anyone’s lives. But it did in hers. He was there. She had always believed in Him, she had never known anything else and it’s only after this that she begins to fall. She doesn’t doubt, she never really doubts, she doesn’t know life without Him, but it’s not good.

Her faith though is matters far too complicated to discuss, like anything beyond weather is for the noble lady.