Walk a Mile

Riley's POV

You know the expression, "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you judge them"?

Yeah, that expression completely changed my life. My thoughts flipped, flopped, were roasted and eaten. Everything changed when I decided to actually do that. Then again, most people don't take that expression as literally as I did.

My twin sister, Brooklyn, and I were absolutely inseparable for the first thirteen years of our lives. Anything one did, the other did. We would play, sleep, even talk together. My mother would say we had some sort of superpower where we could read each other's mind.

We might as well of had that power. Every movement one made, the other understood. I could tell what Brooklyn was thinking just by looking at her. She could read me like an open book.

When we were little and my mother made cookies, Brooklyn would distract her by faking some injury or crying over a lost toy she knew exactly where it was at. While my mother was occupied, I would grab a few cookies, not enough to her to tell they were missing. As often as we did it, we never got caught. We would hide up in our room, snacking on the chocolate chip goodness.

By the time Brooklyn and I should have started school, my mother and father were already fighting. My mother didn't want school to separate our closeness, much to my father's dismay. He thought it was unnatural to grow up always relying on someone. My mother won out the argument, just like she usually did back then.

Every weekday after that, we would sit down at the kitchen table at exactly eight A.M. My mother had every home-schooling book possible, not that I minded. Reading was my passion, and I spent hours reading while Brooklyn struggled to do her work that I had long ago finished.

When we were eight, we grew even closer from hours of hiding in our room together. When our parents fought, even more often then they used to, we played board games, and I gave her the answers to our homework even though I wasn't supposed to. After the screaming stopped, Brooklyn would go downstairs and I upstairs to search for supplies, mostly cookies before the next round of yelling began.

No matter what though, the next morning at exactly eight o'clock, my mother would be waiting at the kitchen table. I would read, Brooklyn would struggle, my parents would fight, and we would hide. That's the way it was, and since we didn't go to school, that's the way I thought it was supposed to be.

The summer we turned twelve, my mother had a smile for the first time in months. "Good news," she chirped. "Grandma wants you girls to stay with her for the summer. Isn't that exciting?"

Of course it wasn't exciting. Grandma Jacobs didn't make cookies or tell funny stories or even say more than ten words a day. We shared a cramp room half the size of the one at home in her tiny apartment while she sat, dusting and petting her cat Oakly. Grandma loved that cat more than us, feeding it treats and fish while we had expired TV dinners for every meal. It was unfair and smelt really bad, but at least there was no fighting.

Quiet was nice for once, and no schooling meant we could sleep around the clock. The entire summer we slept through the day expect for eating, then would wait for Grandma Jacobs to go to bed to invade the kitchen. One of us would stand watch while the other took a handful of change from the jar she constantly added to. We would buy old candy and cookies from the gas station across the street, but it was better than moldy chicken and rock hard peas.

It was the worst and best summer of our lives, but it didn't last. Two months later, we packed our bags and kissed Grandma good-bye. Our mother drove us off from our safe haven in her silver minivan. I hadn't hated that idiotic car as much as I did that one moment. It was back to the yelling and screaming and vase breaking. It was the last summer anything would be the same.