Strange Encounters

Before I knew it, I was in 4th grade, with a quickly developing brain, and a bright future. I loved school, and to be honest I was great at almost all subjects, I guess it just came naturally to me. I had grown a lot in the last couple of years, and my mother had started a height chart right on the door frame of the bathroom in between me and my sister's rooms. This week I reached 51 inches, a whole inch taller than last week. Every time my mother would measure, she always would have a prideful look. She was always so busy with Sara that the few minutes she took out of her week to measure me always meant a lot to me.

Speaking of Sara... she had grown a lot too... almost... scarily fast. At the young age of two, she was walking on two legs and making vaguely coherent sentences. Now, at 6 years old, she was already playing sports very well, easily speaking in full, coherent sentences, and without the stutter that I so desperately wanted to get rid of. Her face had gone from "adorable" to "breathtaking" very quickly. Her soft, rosy cheeks and her cute little button nose were the perfect compliments to her utterly gorgeous, electric blue eyes. To be honest, it made me jealous... I never understood why everything was so easy to her. It wasn't easy for her, it was just easy. While I was struggling to catch and throw a baseball, she was already doing summersaults in our backyard.

The way my mother would look at her... it was infuriating... it felt so unachievable. There was no way in hell I could ever make her smile like my sister did. When my sister would ask for extra food, my mother would always oblige, even when she couldn't quite afford it, she always tried. And my sister asked for a lot of extra food. At least thirds, every single meal, and she would never waste a crumb. I didn't know where it was going, or why my mom thought that the proportions she was giving Sara were healthy for a girl her age, but even in my confusion I still felt a very clear envy brewing inside of me.

As my mother continued to update the height marker on our door, she would always make remarks that I felt like were deliberate in attempt to tease me. When Sara had already reached 45 inches in height, my mother was quick to say, "Oooh, Chris you better watch our, Sara might catch up to you..."

The worst part is that I knew it wasn't a might, it was a will disguised as a might. It wasn't just the whole, "Oh it's OK sweetie, girls just mature faster than guys" thing; she was developing crazy fast, much to fast for me to hold the lead with. She was also weirdly strong for a girl, being able to easily move her body weight around like it was nothing, and often break 'fragile' things by accident quite often with nothing but her grip strength. I had seen her accidently break a glass cup simply by laughing with it in her hand and accidently squeeze it into pieces, but more disturbingly, there were very clear indents in the stainless steel cups that my mother and sister liked to use to put ice cold water in. I had tried many times to squeeze the cups to get a similar kind of reaction, but I never even came close.

She had even hurt me and one of my friends one time when we were all playing tag on the street. For me, I was attempting to run from her as she tried to tag me, but she grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me back, to which I flew nearly 10 feet behind her. For my friend, Jonas, she catch with him and he had asked her to throw it harder. She chucked it straight at his face and gave him a very bad black eye for nearly a month. After hurting both of us, she said the same thing, "How are you hurt, I didn't even try that hard..."

One school morning, we were in our mother's bathroom brushing our teeth since our bathroom had a busted faucet at the time, and my sister decided to check her weight on the scale. I was curious so I took a gander at the weight while she wasn't looking and nearly gasped at the number I saw. She was nearly 200 lbs... which obviously made zero sense. Afterwards I checked my weight on the scale to see if it was broken, and alas, there it read with an accurate reading of about 60 lbs.. My little 6 year old sister was more than 100 lbs. heavier than me, and already better than me at... well... just about anything.

Another thing that confused me was... well... you can call me a creep or whatever, but... the way my mom sounded when she was using the bathroom was a lot different than how my sister sounded. My mom always had a steady, rather dainty sounding tinkle noise, and my sister had a very deep, and very powerful stream that stopped and started at the end, sort of like me, but a lot heavier. It wasn't something that I actively listened for, but something I would hear walking down the hall or something, and it quickly started to bother me. Sara also never wore tight shorts or pants, always wearing a skirt or baggy pants. It was like my both my mother and sister were in cahoots on something, and believed that not telling was for my own good.

Even through my struggles through jealousy, and confusion as I grew up with my anomaly of a sister, my friends were always there to support me and lift me up. Adam, Jonas, Serena, and especially Rachel, stayed loyal to me and by my side even after meeting my sister, although the two boys were often flustered when speaking directly to her, because, as previously mentioned, my sister was no dime a dozen, she was remarkably pretty and effortlessly confident in the little bit of conversation that she took part in. Rachel though, Rachel was always so nice to me, often seemingly entranced by whatever I was doing, and quick to compliment me after to doing something cool or impressive. She would bring me flowers, cool looking rocks, or whatever little trinkets she could get her hands on that she thought I would appreciate. She was just... amazing. Even around my sister, she always had something nice to say to me. It felt good to be liked by someone out of admiration, rather than through what I assumed was pity.