We all bolt up the stairs like Satan himself is coming our way.
The effort doesn’t do me any good. I barely have time to drop off my first round of boxes onto my bedroom floor when my stepmom’s voice calls out from the foyer.
Derek had been the only one in my family to see my makeover beforehand, but based on the tone barking up at me, I seriously doubt things will go over as well as they had with him…
Not until I went away to school (and was no longer under Blythe’s watchful eye) did I make the changes I wanted to. When I arrived in the dorms nine months ago at the start of Freshman Year, I didn’t own a stitch of makeup, never dressed in anything that wasn’t at least three sizes too big on my already-skinny body, and wore my long black hair over my face like a curtain. I essentially looked like Cousin It with glasses. Living in my house, in this town, I was better off being as inconspicuous and harmless as humanly possible.
And that’s why I couldn’t have been happier to have a roommate who just so happens to be a fashion major. Maggie lives to be people’s fairy godmother, and makeovers are pretty much her favorite pastime. After three weeks of living together, she finally convinced me to ditch my natural locks in favor of a black cherry hue and then buy the clothes I actually liked rather than what I could use to drown my body in. The latter was a harder pill to swallow, given my weight insecurities, but as I rediscovered a healthy relationship with food throughout the year and put on some much-needed pounds, it got a lot easier. Add in contact lenses and some makeup, even I have to admit, I don’t look half bad.
Standing in my house, however, may as well be the stroke of midnight for this Cinderella, because my stepmother will likely tear me a new one the moment she sees me.
Because I’ll never be my sister.
If this were a movie, I’d walk down the stairs in slow motion as some generic pop song plays in the background and a phantom breeze gracefully blows the hair away from my face. Everyone would “ooh” and “aah” and tell me how pretty I look.
Instead, my legs shake so badly that I’m just happy they don’t give out and send me tumbling down to the ground floor. Can you blame me? I find my sister glaring up the stairs like I just climbed out of a dumpster. I may as well have, becauseI’m wearing jeans with rips in the knees, a plain white tank top, and a pair of three-dollar flip-flops. Compared to the polo shirts, skirts, and pearl necklaces adorning my sister and stepmom, I’m pretty much the equivalent of a hobo.
Thankfully, my stepmom is too busy pacing the foyer, barking into her cell about something to do with flower arrangements, to notice my arrival.
“Well, don’t you look…different.” My sister’s words are harmless enough, but Vanessa’s tone is about as welcoming as the barrel of a shotgun jammed in my face.
“Hey, sis,” I mutter, attempting to plaster on something resembling a smile.
“Where on earth is your sister?” our stepmother finally asks, pulling the phone away from her ear. She side-eyes Maggie before literally looking past me and up the stairs, as if waiting for someone else.
And it hits me after the most awkward moment of my life that she doesn’t even recognize me.
“Hi, Blythe,” I enunciate a little louder.
The Stepmonster slowly pulls the reading glasses off her face, studying me with an expression that, funny enough, is a carbon copy of my sister’s not a minute ago. “Ali?”
“This is Maggie, my roommate,” I add dumbly after the world’s longest, most awkward silence.
My stepmother doesn’t even spare Maggie a glance, her eyes still fixed on me. “Honey, what on earth have you done to yourself?”
I’m beginning to think Blythe and Vanessa can’t operate independently from one another, because, yet again, they both look over my hair, face, and clothes as if everything’s been doused with anthrax.
I know the whole “Evil Stepmother” trope is clichéd as hell, and I wouldn’t go as far as to label Blythe that, but she certainly isn’t “friendly” either.
My mom was killed by a drunk driver when I was six, and Dad hadn’t shown any interest in dating for the next four years…until Vanessa begged him to take her to a ballet. Vanessa got to seeDon Quixote, and Dad apparently got a new (and much younger) girlfriend when he met a particular dancer backstage. As expected, with their shared love of ballet, Blythe and my sister immediately hit it off. Blythe andme? Not so much.
My stepmom told me I had an ideal body for a ballerina and even enrolled me in classes…until she witnessed me dancing. Apparently, the production ofSwan Lakewasn’t looking for “an uncoordinated antelope.” Her words, not mine. Sure, she always made these kinds of remarks with a laugh, as if that helped soften the blow to a child’s ego, but Dad and Vanessa never seemed to notice the slights.
And it seems Blythe had crafted Vanessa into the perfect Mini-Me, because with every passing year, they became increasingly similar. More often than not,they’remistaken for sisters.
“Ali looks like a stripper,” Vanessa mutters not-so-subtly under her breath just before Derek meets us at the bottom of the stairs.
As always, she’s made sure he couldn’t hear the remark, and I’m not dumb enough to pick a fight with her. That doesn’t improve Maggie’s mood because, hot damn, she looks ready to spit nails.
It wasn’t always like this.
Vanessa and I had always been close growing up, even after Mom died. Sure, adolescence, extracurriculars, and friends caused us to drift apart throughout the years, but Vanessa hadnever been hostile—not until she returned home from college last summer, that is.
You know that whole “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” sentiment? Yeah, well, let’s just say no love was lost from her end. Perhaps Blythe was serving heaping amounts of her famous “We hate Ali” Kool-Aid while Vanessa was at school, because it was the only thing I could think of to account for my sister’s sudden hatred.
I didn’t see her the first few days after she returned home, but from the very second I did, everything I did suddenly offended her.
And it seems nothing has changed this year, either.
