Innocence

Almost my whole life, I've lived in this house. Granted, my whole life hasn't been much. Twelve years of chores, school, and wandering around this big old mansion with my brother trying to find something to do. Crispen is a year older than I am, but he likes to pretend it’s five years, the way he bosses me around. He has a head of golden curls that all of the old people gush about, and the brightest blue eyes you have ever seen. Aunt Beth says when he grows up he’s gonna be a real “lady killer”. I’m not sure what that means, but by the way she says it, I can pretty much tell it’s supposed to be a compliment. I have chestnut brown hair cropped to my chin, freckles, hazel eyes, and am small for my age. No one has ever told me I’m going to be a “man killer”. They just pinch my cheeks and say “Oh, she’ll grow into that face.” They don’t know that I hear what they mutter afterwards:”With any luck”. So, for these past twelve years, my older brother has been my only competition.  I get by pretty well pretending like I have golden curls and bright blue eyes, but if it fails, I just imagine Crispen having brown hair and hazel eyes, like me. And a whole faceful of freckles on his perfectly white china complexion. It helps.

Despite the fact that he’s much less of an eyesore than I am, we are still best friends, Crispen and me. I mean, we’re all we got. Ever since our parents abaonded us on the doorstep of this huge house almost nine years ago, we’ve lived here. And come to think of it, we hardly ever leave. You see, my parents made Uncle Greg and and Aunt Ruth promise to take good care of us. No, better than just good. Amazing. And they said they’d be back, but no one knows when or where they went or how to contact them. They just...disappeared. Thankfully, our wealthy relatives had money to spare. They hired private tutors for us, because they wanted us to turn out “educated” and “Well-defined”. Unlike our parents. So we’ve been sheltered to the point of insanity inside this big house, having only each other as playmates. And Leove. If she can count as a playmate, which she can’t. She’s our cousin, she’s sixteen and a real brat. I almost never see her, this house is so big and she’s always somewhere else. But when I do happen to bump into her, my first instinct is to clear out immediately lest she grab me and bribe me into doing something for her or start teasing me about my hair. She’ll say: “Are you sure you and Crispen are related? He looks like an angel and you look like something the cat dragged in.” Then she’ll laughs it off, pat me on the back and say, “Oh, I’m just kidding, freckle face. You’re not THAT bad.”

I hate her. And I don’t care if that’s rude. When someone is that awful, you should be allowed to hate them. If it wasn’t for her, I might not look in the mirror every day to see if my hair is getting any blonder or my freckles fading. I’ve heard of blonde hair turning brown, so I’m hoping the converse is true as well. But so far, it’s just a hope. My hair is still just as dark as ever.

So today, it’s ranowing, a word Crispen and I made up to describe that kind of precipitation that is a mixture of rain and snow. The kind that usually comes in early spring. And I’m watching it from my bedroom window, pouting because just yesterday we were outside in light jackets, running through the fields with the sun in our faces. I thought winter was over at last. Apparently not. Crispen is lying on his bed, writing something. This house is big enough that we could both have our own separate bedrooms, we could both have 5 separate bedrooms. But we’ve been sharing a room ever since we moved in here nine years ago, and whenever Aunt Beth starts to suggest us getting our own room, I beg and beg Crispen that we can keep sharing.This way, we are together all the time. I can’t stand being apart from him. We’re best friends and have spent every moment of our lives together. It just wouldn’t be right to have separate rooms. It wouldn’t be worth it, either, because I would spend every spare moment in his room. So he’s a good brother, rolls his eyes and says: “Fine. One more year.” And that’s how it's been the past five years.