As the Wind Changes (Camren)

Prologue

She first realized it when she was 5. It was mother's day and they had decided that they wanted to surprise their mother with some handmade gifts. The thing is, her sister had never been one to conform. Her sister's version of 'handmade' gift had turned out to be a gift of song, something that all of her family members ended up enjoying for the rest of day. She did too and she couldn't find it in her heart to mind that her gift was forgotten as soon as she had presented it to her mother.

After all, her sister had a voice of an angel and she had always been inclined to just listen and stay silent. She was content with the fact that her drawing had graced the surface of the refrigerator door, something that her mom could stare at every day if she wished to and later on she would find her parents dedicate a whole wall in the kitchen space for all of her creative arts. So really, why would she mind that all they could seem to talk about was her sister?

On that day she learned that her sister would always have the attention for how loud she was and she would only be seen as the quiet, artistic one. Quiet people don't always get noticed, do they? But she didn't understand it then. She also didn't understand what living in someone else's shadow mean, but boy she surely knew how it feel without even understanding it. So she just kept listening and smiling.

Her sister was a star and she couldn't help but just gaze at her with so much pride and love. After all, one could only acknowledge light when they know of the dark. She just didn't know that she would end up being the dark that most people forget about once the light is there.

----

When they were 9, starting fourth grade, everyone had already learned how to differentiate the two even though their mother still had a knack to dress them with the same clothes. She was known as the frowning girl and her sister was more like the ray of sunshine people would bask in for hours. The kids in the playground surely had no problem whatsoever showing whose side they were on. She couldn't blame them. Most people, just like flowers, tend to gravitate towards the sun, but not her.

She had started to realize then that she was her own person. She was tired of being compared to her sister all the time. She was tired of being known as the other Jauregui girl. Why couldn't people just say her name? It's Lauren. It wasn't that hard. It's not like she had some exotic name that was hard to pronounce. If anything, her sister had the harder name. Mikaela. There's like so many potential there to get it wrong.

But just like how it had been all this time, she let it go.

"She's pretty."

She flipped her head, finding a strange girl she had never seen before sitting on the swing beside her.

"Yeah..." She nodded carelessly, getting her attention back to her sketch book.

"So that means you're pretty too..." The girl continued, looking rather persistent.

"I guess." She shrugged, paying the girl the least of her attention.

"You know the point of being identical twins is that you actually share the same physical appearance."

She could only scoff, averting her gaze back to the girl. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Well, I am..." The girl persisted.

Lauren arched her eyebrows in confusion, silently asking the girl to elaborate more.

The girl cast her gaze across the yard to where Mikaela was, surrounded by her rather big group of friends. "It just seems like you don't know that you're just as special as she is..."

Lauren blinked once, twice, trying to decipher what the girl was really trying to say and decided that she didn't really understand the girl (but later on in life she realized that that was some deep shit the girl was telling her). "You're weird."