Sincerely, The Stranger You Call Sister

Childhood Arc: Summer Activities

"Hello" -Normal speech.

"Hello" -Parseltongue.

'Hello' -Thoughts/Telepathic twin-speech.

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Dear Little Brother,

I can remember how nervous my little sister Nora was when she first started grade three.

I never could understand it before. I mean, sure, we just moved to a new place and none of us knew anyone there, and yes we were transferring three months already in the school year, but is it such a big deal?

True, it fucking sucked to leave all of our friends behind. But there's thing called FaceTime, and we'll be making new friends so I couldn't understand why Nora started crying.

Even as a toddler Nora didn't take well to strangers, hiding behind either mine or our parents legs when meeting someone new. She wouldn't meet their eyes if they were a teenager or older, and mumbled unintelligible if forced to speak in their presence.

She was a very lively and cheerful person when you got to know her, often chatting your ear off nonstop, but terribly shy before then. She got a bit better as she got older, but being in a room full of strangers still made her uncomfortable and she would never volunteer to do a public speech.

Anyways, I can still see little Nora the morning of our first day. She kept playing with her honey blonde hair, a nervous habit of hers, and for a time I thought she would actually chew through her bottom lip. Great reluctance came off her while made our way to the bus station, and I had to grab her arm to haul her arse myself because she dragged her feet so much. The prat even tried to 'accidentally' miss her stop at the elementary school, but because the bus dropped high scholars off last I was able 'remind' her.

Jacob, who is two years older than Nora, was sick that morning and so he stayed home, which just made Nora bitter towards our live-in nanny, Grace. Nora tried to convince Grace that she was sick too, describing how her stomach flip-flopped and how positively nauseous she felt. Except she made the mistake of admitting that she had butterflies at the thought of being the "new girl," and so without an evident fever, clogged nose, nor the fact unlike Jacob she hadn't puked so far, Grace refused to call Nora in sick.

Grace told Nora that even if she misses school today, tomorrow she'd still be the new student. That she should get it over and done with now, and not later.

Personally, as Olivia, I never once experienced "butterflies" because I was new. Oh, sure, I've had my nervous and nail-biting moments, like trying to make a good impression for interviews and being the new employee during my first (and only) official job (because babysitting and walking dogs doesn't count), or the one time that I entered in a debate competition with other schools. But for being the "new girl" at school, or just entering a new school and meeting new people in general? No.

I guess I was simply blessed as an overall confident kid, often finding myself the leader in most friend groups. I noticed early on that I made new friends fairly easily (I loved to socialize with others back then, a complete extrovert -and a stark difference compared to how I am now) and more often than not, my friends would ask me for my opinion on something or let me decide what we were going to do.

Or maybe I just surrounded myself with less decisive people than me, and so they were all happy to let me take the reins. It's probably both, because simple confidence can carry you far, even if you don't have much to back it up. (Looking at you, Rebecca fucking Cornwall. Bitch almost got me arrested when we were thirteen -but that's a story for another time.)