I worked tirelessly every single night to maintain a perfect grade point average while joining every academic club and debate competition available to me. My flawless report cards were usually met with nothing more than a cursory nod and a cold comment about how that was exactly what they expected from a girl with my resources.
Meanwhile, Kaylee would often bring home mediocre grades and receive effusive praise for simply trying her best or showing a minor bit of improvement in her social studies class. By the time I entered high school, I had fully internalized the belief that I needed to work twice as hard just to receive half of the recognition my sister got for doing nothing.
I joined the competitive debate team and eventually became the editor of the school magazine while taking every single advanced placement course that the curriculum offered. I often studied until well past midnight, fueled by a desperate and lingering hope that my parents would eventually look at me with the same pride they showed Kaylee when she landed a minor role in a local play.
My sister and I maintained a very complicated relationship throughout our youth. I never truly blamed her directly for the way our parents treated us because she was just as much a product of their strange parenting as I was.
However, there was an undeniable and growing distance between us as we aged into our teens. Kaylee grew incredibly accustomed to receiving whatever her heart desired without ever having to lift a finger or face the consequences of her mistakes.
When she accidentally crashed her first vehicle at sixteen, which was a brand new luxury sedan, my father simply replaced it with an even better model the very next afternoon. When I had previously asked for a small loan to help purchase a reliable used car for my commute to my part time job, he told me that I needed to learn the value of a dollar and save up myself.
The most agonizing memory of my entire childhood occurred during my senior year of high school. I had been named the valedictorian of my class, which was an achievement that represented four years of relentless labor and personal sacrifice.
The ceremony was scheduled for a Tuesday evening in late May, and I felt a surge of excitement as I prepared to deliver my speech to the entire school. When I reminded my parents about the date over dinner, my mother winced and looked down at her calendar with a sigh.
