Have you ever caught someone you trusted planning something unforgivable?

The Making of Competition

My sister ruined my reputation by sending explicit messages to my teachers from my email. So, I got her lies on video and kicked her out of my life. Now, our parents are forcing us to act like besties, and nothing ever happened. My parents never let me and my older sister do any homework.

My older sister, Leah, was only 8 months older than me. She was charismatic, the type of girl to effortlessly make an entire group of people laugh, the one almost every boy instantly fell in love with. Meanwhile, I was a little more of a tomboy. I always took an interest in cars and loved being able to do things by myself.

But, when we were starting to hit puberty, it was like a flip had switched. In their eyes, getting married and having children was a woman’s only purpose on this earth. So, anything outside of that was disgusting and extremely immoral. It’s not even like they were religious or anything, just straight up batchet crazy.

At first, it seemed like the rules only applied to me. Whenever I tried to do my usual hobbies, like soccer or playing with my trucks, my parents would whail on me because I wasn’t acting like a woman. Leah would always comfort me and tell me she loved me for who I was no matter what.

But then the rules started hitting her, too. Because as well as being charismatic, she was also a huge nerd. Leah loved reading. She spent her free time getting days ahead on homework.

She was in the kitchen doing math one day when my parents completely lost it.

“Your only job is to clean up and be pretty”.

They then proceeded to confiscate her calculator. She ran up to our room crying. Before this, we were free to eat whatever we wanted. Sometimes I’d eat until my stomach was so full I felt like vomiting.

But the next day for breakfast, we got a quarter of the portion as usual. And it was a bar designed for weight loss. I swear I thought they were pranking us.

But that’s when my dad said, “You’re becoming a woman now, so you have to act like it”.

Over the next few days, Mom was gifting us with expensive YSL perfume and other name brand makeup products. She’d spend hours every day showing us how to get the perfect wing and blend foundation properly. She even told us that if we didn’t look like we were at least 16 by the time we were done getting ready for school, then we weren’t allowed to go.

To most kids, not going to school would probably sound like a dream. But to us, school was our only escape.

“Mom, why are we doing this?” Leah asked, voice shaking.

“Honey, in just a few years, all the good men will be gone. and if you don’t get one soon, you will die alone. You don’t want that, now do you?”.

She answered Leah’s question, but I knew it was a threat to us both. So, from there, me and Leah focused all our energy into looking older. We didn’t even have time to do our homework or study because of how much time maintenance took.

By the time we had both turned 13, we could have passed for 17. Every boy in our grade either wanted me or Leah, and we were getting dozens of Snapchat ads a day. We knew it was kind of weird, but we didn’t care.

When we updated our mom on all this, they’d treat us 100 times better. No yelling, no pain, just a happy family going on trips to Disneyland or beautiful beaches. I think eventually we just convinced ourselves that we had super cool parents who were helping us be the most popular girls in school and let us skip homework and didn’t care if our grades were bad.