Deal With It ✓

Twenty-Three: A Nightmare

Song: Feeling Good // Michael Bublé

To oreocrazed for all her lovely comments!

You're in for a good one, lads.

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Amber and I were never the type of siblings to voluntarily spend time with each other.

We were like two magnets with the same charge; we repelled each other, always trying to find a reason to not spend time together. If I'm being honest, there wasn't a reason we tried to escape each other, it was just in our nature to. Dad hated it. He'd always go on about how we're family and that we have to stick together, but the fact of the matter is that we had nothing in common.

Or maybe that's what I convinced myself.

Sometimes, as I stared up at my painted ceiling while lying in bed, I'd think back to Amber's early childhood and how we treated each other. I remember how much I hated her cries when we stayed at our grandparent's house, how she demanded dad's attention every other second, how she threw tantrum after tantrum when I refused to take her with me whenever I went out to meet my friends.

The truth was she was a child with one parent who tried to give her the world and a brother who couldn't care less about her existence.

Despite the fact that I made it crystal clear that I wanted nothing to do with her, she'd always try and worm into my plans, and dad would get really fucking mad at me whenever I dismissed her. It wasn't until recently that I realized that she was trying to spend time with me. Sure, dad tried to give her more attention than any child required, but he also had a company to look after. That meant that he couldn't always spend time with her.

I was her brother, her family, and she noticed how I treated her like a stranger. Maybe she wanted to change that; she wanted to feel like she didn't only have one person.

"Babies and toddlers are really perceptive," Dad would tell me. "She just wants to spend time avec son frère, Dyl."

I never listened to him though, which would piss him off to no end. The first time I ever spent time with Amber, without the presence of my dad, was when he forced me to do it. He said that he had a very important meeting that he had to attend, which would extend into dinner, and he didn't want to call the babysitter.

"You're going to have to be alone with her at some point, donc pourquoi pas maintenant?"

I was seventeen, I didn't know how to take care of a five-year-old, I wanted to protest, but the tone of his voice left no room for argument. He picked up his jacket, and before he left for the meeting, he told me to play a game with her in our backyard or teach her how to ride a bike.

I didn't want to be left alone with her, and I sure as hell didn't want to play a game. I had a violin recital in two weeks and I had to practice. But I didn't like it when dad got pissed at me, and I knew for a fact that he'd get really mad if he found out I didn't spend time with my sister, so I relented.

When I walked into her room, I wasn't surprised to see how much of a pink mess it was. Dad had asked the interior designer to decorate the room so that it looked like a kingdom because she was 'sa princesse'. Her Barbie Dreamhouse was set up in the middle of her room, with doll's clothes scattered around the floor. She sat in front of the plastic house, gently shaking a doll in front of a kitchen set to make it seem as if she's doing something. Her hair was tied up into two pigtails, and blue clips adorned the top of her head.