Learning to Love June

My sister is the luckiest person on the earth. My sister falls in love at least two times a week, and everyone has always been in love with her. She’s like this hurricane that comes and sweeps you off your feet. And the second you see her, you’re hooked. I think this is why I’ve always wanted to be my sister. All my life I watch her and think that she is just so amazing, and that if I could just be like her, everyone might love me, too.

Her hair is wavy down her back, like some sort of icy blonde waterfall, when you walk behind her in the hall, you can’t help but stare. Her eyes are the same color as the ocean, but as wild as a tiger and when you look in her eyes it’s like you’re trapped. But in the best way possible. When I was little I used to have daydreams about being my sister, not being a princess. Because in my mind, she was a princess and I was the ugly step-sister.

I watch my sister fall in love all the time and watch my heart break. I watch her be this beautiful, wonderful thing and wish that I was even a fraction of what she is. Or at least that someone might love me like they love her. But when I wake up I face the truth that I’ll never be my sister, and no one is going to love me like they love her, or watch my hair fall down my back, or tell me my eyes look like a tiger. I know that when I wake up, I’ll still just be June and that I won’t ever be Jessica.

Someone told me once that if you look at me from a certain angle, I look exactly like her. But I know that’s not true. My nose isn’t as cute as her mine slopes down like a ski hill and turns up at the end. My eyes are the color of grass the summer and my hair hangs straight and never dances. Plus there’s too much of my hair to do anything with, it gets so thick on my neck that I have to hold it up with a rubber band. When I look in the mirror I know that I’m not my sister, and that hurts down to my core.

I’ve wanted to be my sister since we were three and she got the purple bike. Leaving me with the old, slightly rust, red bike that she didn’t want. I never wanted that bike, and for as long as I can remember it’s been a symbol of how I’ll never be as good as her. I remember thinking it was because my mom loved her more, but she told me that I was her baby girl, and that nothing could take that away from me. But sometimes I think she outshines me in a way that no one else can.

When we were young, Jessica and I were inseparable, and we did everything together. But as the years went on she began to change into someone else. She became popular, and everyone fell in love with her. I was left stranded, wounded, and lonely as she went on with her happy life. Sometimes I don’t think that God was fair in giving her the beauty and the popularity but then again, he’s God and he doesn’t have to be fair about anything.

When I grow up, I pray that at least one person is going to love me the way they all love her.

&&

“June, hurry up!” Jessica calls from the car, sitting there with an arm draped over the back of my seat and her hair blowing in the wind even though there’s barely a breeze. I slide my foot into my shoe and slam the door behind me, hoping that it didn’t knock down the picture of us from the Grand Canyon again.

Jessica got her car on her seventeenth birthday; it’s this shiny, cherry red convertible that anyone would look good in. But with Jessica in the driver’s seat, she looks a little bit like a Goddess. And as much as I know that I should love her because she’s my sister, I can’t help but hate her a little bit.

When I slide into the passenger seat she throws the car in reverse and backs out of the driveway at lightning speed, without looking both ways. But I get why she wouldn’t need to considering this car shines so much you can see it a mile away. I put a hand over my hair as she speeds down the street to keep it from whipping around in the wind she makes from driving this fast. Her eyes are straight ahead and hidden by a pair of huge sunglasses which make her look mysterious and alluring. I tried them on once when she wasn’t home, and they just made me look like some sort of bug.

It seems like it takes us all of two seconds to get to school, but I know it must have been at least five minutes from the time that moved on the clock. As soon as she parks the car- in the best spot of course- I fly out of the car and into the school, terrified to be stuck there when one of her friends comes up. Her friends are so perfect that it hurts your eyes to look at them, and they always just make you feel that much worse about yourself. I always hated her friends when she became popular, avoiding them like some sort of plague.

When I get inside the school I feel myself relax a bit, knowing that I’m not the only imperfect one here. In fact if you look around, you see all the faces staring back at you, and none of them are perfect like my sister. They all have some sort of flaw that sets them apart from popular, and being around other flawed people suddenly makes you feel that much more comfortable. It makes you feel slightly less alone when you’re not the only imperfect human being.

“June!” I hear Becky call over the crowd, her voice scratchy like she was smoking, even though I know she’s never taken a drag in her life.

She weaves her way through the thick crowd, but I can see her hair before the rest of her face. For the a reason completely beyond understanding Becky chopped all her hair off last summer and started wearing it in spikes all around her head, like a crown. She says she likes that her hair is unique, but I think that she’s slightly crazy. Of course I never would tell her that, she is my best friend and all. And there are certain things that you just don’t say to your best friend, no matter how true they are.

“Hey,” I say, smiling a little as she takes my hand and starts to weave through the crowd again, this time dragging me along. We pass people and I recognize some faces, but some a blurry and unfamiliar, reminding me how small I really am in the world.

“Why didn’t you call me back?” Becky asks, sounding a little hurt. I know that she shouldn’t be, but I also know that Becky suffers from the worst case of self-consciousness that I know. It doesn’t help the fact that she’s painfully shy and a little socially awkward. But we never really talk about that, because I’m afraid she might get offended or shut down. We don’t talk about how I hate my sister, or how badly I want to be her. We don’t talk about Becky’s dead mom or her evil step-mom. Sometimes it seems like we don’t talk about anything.

“I was busy,” I say quickly, “Jessica was having a crisis,” I say, which is a half-lie. She really was having a crisis, but something on the phone with one of her perfect friends. Not anything she would ask me about. Instead I was on the other side of the wall and listening to the conversation from her end, pretending that it was me she was talking to. Like she actually cared about what I thought, or if she even knew that I was there to help her.

Becky nods and ducks around a couple making out by my locker, half of my cringes and half of me is jealous.

“So what did you have to tell me?” I ask as I spin my locker combination, feeling slightly guilty for blowing her off.

She turns crimson and looks down at her feet, “Nothing really, I just wanted someone to talk to.”

“Step-mom drama?” I ask, trying to sound compassionate instead of annoyed. Of course I’ve never had a step-mom so I don’t know how evil they are. But at the same time it seems like it’s all she ever talks about, or rather, complains about.

She nods again and looks down at her feet, looking like she’s biting back tears and suddenly I’m just praying she doesn’t start crying in the middle of the hallway. “It’s okay,” I say in a low, gentle voice and wrap and arm around her shoulder lightly.

She nods again, like it’s all she can do, and looks back up her eyes dark and sad. “She’s just awful.”

“I know,” I say carefully moving my arm off her shoulder so I can put my stuff away and we can take this emotional moment to somewhere more acceptable.

“I’m sorry June,” Becky says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and smearing a bit of her makeup, “You must think I’m such a crybaby.”

“Never!” I lie.

She looks up at me with a small smile, like somehow I’ve just made her life by saying that which makes me feel awful of course. But as she finally fixes her smeared makeup, I tell myself that I’ll feel bad about it later.

Just then I see Jessica finally walk in. I know she waits in her car to walk in just as the bell rings, like all the perfect girls do. When I see the way people are looking at her waterfall hair and the way she walks like she owns the school makes me feel bad all over again. But this is a different type of bad, the one that won’t go away even though you know that there’s nothing you can do to fix it.

It’s the kind of hurt that can really mess up a person.