Other Half

Green

I'm laying in the soft green grass on my back garden,on my belly, stroking the blades between my fingers as I examine them closely. The grass is not perfect, from a distance it looks like it is. It looks evenly cut and perfectly coloured. However looking right at it, inspecting each blade, I notice that one is lighter than the rest, and a few are slightly longer or shorter. Each grass soldier is beautiful, uniq, one of a kind. The gardener comes once a month to cut the grass and treat it so it stays green. A nice man who smiles as he works and spends a long time tending to the lawn. I guess that's what happens though. They start off the same. They are treated the same. They grown in the same place the same home. But some times they just don't grow the same.

"I'm nearly fifteen years old goddamn it if I want to have my room in a mess I bloody well will" I speak to my sister, still with my head in my book, I know it's rude but I don't care. She needs to leave me the hell alone with my stuff. Elena has been trying to work on her science assignment for over on hour, but every time I look at her she is eyeing up my part of the room with distaste. To be fair on me its not that bad. My books are wonky, some of my pencils have rolled across my half of the desk and my school uniform and bag have been throw buy the side of my bed, which has not been made. However, compared to her well made bed and pristine uniform hung up next to her ridiculously tidy side of the desk desk, it's a mess.
" it's not YOUR room Ines it's OUR room, your so damn selfish it's unreal,. U KNOW I CANT WORK IN A MESSY ROOM".
"Stop looking at the mess then" I say under my breath trying to ignore the fact that she had raised her voice. It's clear that she heard my low mumble when her eyes narrowed and her hands rose to her hips as she stood up and faced me fully.
" your not even LISTENING to me Ines, it not fair on me to always be picking up YOUR STUFF and making YOUR BED". She points at each part of my "Messy" room with attitude as if to provide evidence to her argument.
I looked her straight into her angry brown eyes "don't then, leave my stuff be, and I'll tidy it when I'm ready too" Elena is pushing red hot steam out of her ears by now " but you never DO TIDY IT. ITS MY ROOM TOO INES AND I HATE MESS".
I throw my book at the wall, and it falls with a thud onto the floor by the door. I'm furious. I stand, and eyes trained only on my sisters " yes your right Elena this is OUR room that means that I have JUST AS MUCH SAY AS YOU". I shouted the last part with so much malice that I saw Elena flinch.
Elena is getting redder and redder and silence is held for a painful amount of time as me and my sister stare at the other.
"You know what Ines?" She says this in such a quite and formidable voice that I look at her in shock and, in honestly, alarm. " your right we are nearly fifteen, maybe its time for me to move into one of the spare rooms" she turns and walks out of the door. She does this so softly and closes the door so soundlessly that it it stuns me, stabs me and leaves me standing there mouth open staring at the door.

My heart is racing as if I have run up a thousand stairs. My legs are like jelly, kind of like after iv finished a basketball practice conditioning. My head is pounding similar to ,what I image as, a hangover. It hurts. It hurts me more than storming and banging the door ever could. She leaves me heartbroken.
We have always shared a room, and we have always fought over her compulsive need to have everything in order and my need for chaos. We have had little banter and little fights and sometimes big fights some louder than this. But me nor Elena had ever walked out on each other. Never. The fact that she had walked out on me was a level of hurt I had never yet felt.
more than when I broke my leg climbing out of our window, more than my moms face when I only got a C in my English test.
Over the last year or so me and Elena have started getting further and further apart different friends, different hobbies. I even quite playing the flute in the orchestra so I could spend more time playing basketball, Elena was upset about it but she supported it.
Elena s side of the room is buy the window because she clams to love the morning sun, it's Mostly pink, matching nicely with our clean white walls, her chose of paint.
The desk that is in the middle of our room is large and can sit two, plain white wood again Elena s choosing. Our twin beds, our bed covers, our twin wardrobes all Elena, I swear she has OCD she can't cope when things aren't a set, don't match if anything is unclean or out of place.
As I look round our room I notice more and more that it's not OUR room it's HER room.
She planned everything down to the matching white rugs by each of our beds. It makes me angry. I grab the two pretty pink handles and fling open my white dainty wooden wardrobe doors, almost breaking the flimsy things, grab a handful of my clothes. My hurt is forgotten for the moment, and I make my way toward the biggest spare room. This room is lime green and light oak wood, large double bed ready made , for the guests we never have, with lime green and white throws. The room is much more me than the room I just left. I place my clothes into the empty oak wardrobe and returned to the other room continue collecting my belongings.
I collapse onto my new bed and look around my new room. My clothes away and my school things on my desk. I get up and mess up the desk, tipping pens and what-not over the empty space and turning my books to make a messy tower.
I sigh, I feel like I can breath in here, that this is mine, that I can have it a mess and it's fine, that I can put pictures up onto the wall the way I want. There is still something missing though. Elena . And all the hurt of the past two hours comes crashing back down to me.
My eyes are stinging as I will my self not to cry. I succeed but it's not easy.

I look over at the clock. Seven o'clock. I haven't spoken, or even seen Elena since before lunch. I had eaten in my new room, determined to stay away from her. Giving her the cold shoulder wasn't easy but I'm stubborn, so stubborn that Iv never caved in NEVER. It still hurts that she walked out on me, but what hurts more now is that she looked serious when she said she wanted to move out. That my own twin didn't want to live with me anymore. The one person who I should be able to love unconditionally and have them love me back the same way didn't want to share a room anymore. Sure I had snapped and moved to the green room, but she was the one who wanted her own room not me. I'd never wanted to move out, never even thought of having my own room. We have three spare rooms in this house and not once has it entered my mind that I could have my own room. Yet it had obviously entered hers.

Eight o'clock. She must know buy now that Iv moved out of my room. Mom must have told her surely.

Nine o'clock. She knows but doesn't care. Maybe to her it's no big deal. My eyes are sore from holding back the tears. My head hurts from the headache I feel throbbing as if it's alive heart beating painfully against my brain.

Ten o'clock. It's dark but I can't be bothered to drag myself up to turn on the light. Why would I need a light anyway it's not like I was doing anything just sulking in my room.

Eleven o'clock. Maybe if I had just picked up my clothes. All of this over a little bit of mess.
It's all seeming really silly to me now, still painful, but the reason silly.

Half past one. My light is turned on. My eyes adjust to the light and see a red blotchy face at my door. As I focus further I notice my sister, tears dried on her face, which was a mess, and it's painful to see her like this. My arms find themselves opening and Elena is in them sobbing and mumbling things that I could hope to understand between her hiccups. I guess she did care.

Half past two. The grass is slightly wet beneath me. But I don't care. Me and Elena have been sitting here now for about half an hour, she has said sorry so many times and I have forgiven her just as many times. A pot of peanut butter and a packet of Oreos are sat between us and I take a cookie apart and dip one side in the delicious creamy heaven that is in the glass jar. It's a comfortable silence. The cloudy night has no stars and it's freezing cold, the wet grass is making my legs and bottom feel numb. I feel great that the fight is behind us.
It won't ever be like it was before today though. I'm not moving back into my sisters room. We both know this, I haven't said but I don't need to, the sad look on Elena s face says that she realises this too.
Elena looks up from the ground though wet eyelashes " I guess the grass will always grow inconsistently".

I was right that night when I said things would not go back to normal. I stayed in the green room and my sister stayed in the White, redecorated it for one and painted it pink.And it hurt like hell for a while but It was better for us, I think it gave us space. Space to let us grow the way we wanted to together but separately. In the same garden but with our own soil. Like the green grass in our back yard.

And I'm lying here now in on the grass in our back yard, alone. Thinking about the times we wasted fighting, the time I wasted being stubborn. Wondering if things would be different if we had stayed close. All those precious days, afternoons , even hours and minutes. I'd give anything to have that time back. Have that time to pick up my clothes, give in and say I was sorry before it got out of hand, do my homework first time around so she didn't have to nag at me. I'd do anything to go back and be there for her.