Maneuvering Landmines (Converted Camren)

2/14

By the time Camila and Lauren went to middle school, they'd evolved from being called 'shrimp' and 'squirt' (respectively) to being addressed as 'Tweedle Dumb" and "Tweedle Dumber" (again, respectively) by Taylor Jauregui.

Taylor loved her kid sisters, she really did. She was eight years older than Lauren and nine years older than Camila and so it was difficult to justify not liking them. But sometimes they annoyed the shit out of her and she just really wanted to kick both of them. Lauren was always the ringleader, of course, but Camila always went along and sometimes it seemed like her two kid sisters were sharing a brain because good Lord, the way the two of them could annoy her without even trying. Taylor thought the two of them must have ESP with the way they could communicate non-verbally about annoying the shit out of her.

"Hey Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber," Taylor snapped at them at the dinner table as they giggled over some inside joke at Taylor's expense. "Give it a rest."

"Taylor, leave your sisters alone," Clara chided.

Taylor sighed and shook her head. She was still a week away from being able to go back to college. She was nineteen to Lauren's eleven and Camila's "almost eleven."

"You guys better be careful when you start middle school," Taylor said. "You guys will be sixth graders, and the sixth graders are called the scrubs. The eighth graders are going to put your heads in toilets and flush them," she teased. She bit back a laugh when she saw the way Camila and Lauren looked at one another uncertainly.

"Taylor! Don't tease your sisters!"

Taylor bit her lip and forced down a laugh. "I'm not teasing them, Mom," she said gravely. "I remember these two annoying sixth graders got flushed when I was in sixth grade. Come to think of it, those annoying girls really reminded me of Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, because one was brunette and had a smart mouth and the other one was a brunette who was little but talked a lot about nothing."

"Taylor," Mike Jauregui said in exasperation. "Stop it."

Taylor's grin faded and she ducked her head. "Sorry."

She didn't want to push him over the edge. It'd taken her nineteen years to really figure her father out and not provoke him into anger. He wasn't violent or anything, but he had a short fuse and he could say things that were emotionally decimating. He was a this-is-my-house-and-I'm-the-man-of it sort of father. They all loved him-- he was a good provider and not the kind of dad to smack anyone around, but they were all afraid of him nonetheless. It was sort of funny because she was nineteen and she was still learning how not to provoke him, Lauren was eleven and still did and her mother was married to him and could still incur his rages. The only person who seemed completely adept at tiptoeing around his anger was Camila and Camila was the newest one to their family. He seemed sort of indifferent to Camila in terms of parental affection, at least as far as Taylor could tell, but out of the three siblings he seemed to respect Camila the most. As the youngest and smallest, Camila was deemed "the little one," and their father often said "the little one is going to be the one who takes care of Clara and me in our old age" and "the little one is the one we can count on."

Even when Camila was little, she'd demonstrated an oddly slavish devotion to regimented scheduling-- she was never the child that slept-in during the weekends. She was up at dawn every morning. She was never the child who had to be reminded to do her chores and she was almost suspiciously well-behaved. There were times when Taylor got older when she almost resented Camila's presence because it was extremely difficult to be asked "why can't you be more disciplined like your sister?" when said sister was nine years younger and still had trouble tying her own shoes the grown-up way.

Taylor knew she shouldn't enjoy torturing her little sisters so much, especially Camil who was gullible and believed everything Taylor told her. But it was fun.