Abbey Hayden

RUNNER UP

My Little Sister

I hate my little sister. Lying on the lower level of the bunk bed, I stare up at the underside of the mattress in scowling resentment after my sibling, two years my junior, claimed the coveted top tier. I am seven years old, and burning with righteous indignation at this Machiavellian usurpation of my birthright - for who, if not the first born, had natural claim to the top bunk? This, I decide, is the cherry atop the tyrannical cake my sister had cooked up that evening. Not two hours prior, she had sat at dinner proudly refusing to eat her vegetables, condemning the rest of the household to an hour’s imprisonment at the table until her plate was empty. Desperate for escape, and to play with the new Barbies we had received for Christmas, I begged her to finish her last, now cold, piece of broccoli, so that we might not all suffer under her vegetable-driven despotism. With the same crazed grin that had yanked off the leg of poor Flight Attendant Barbie, she flicked the final floret across the table and fled upstairs giggling.

This routine endured for most of our childhood, each evening a torturous battle between my little sister and her dinner. She would hide beneath the staircase at mealtimes, turning on me furiously if I dared reveal her whereabouts. We would whirl through the house, tugging at each other’s hair and shrieking while our parents looked on despairingly. Only when we collapsed with exhaustion into bed did her breathing soften, the rise and fall of her chest grow quiet, and a small hand extend down from the top bunk with its pinky outstretched. Interlocking our fingers, each evening ended in the promise of a silent forgiveness, that the hatred born of dinnertime deadlocks and conquered top bunks would not survive the night. We would fall asleep that way, arms outstretched, and I would wake up in the morning to see her arm still dangling over the bed.

As the years drew on, our beds drew apart amidst our parents moving, upsizing, divorcing, downsizing, our youthful squabbles outperformed by a far uglier war that stilled my little sister. She grew reticent, sullen, the effervescent tornado that once tore through our home eclipsed by the adults who tore it apart. The arm that once reached for my hand retreated into its separate room, and I now stared at the black flecks on the ceiling rather than a sister-shaped print in the mattress above my head. Our imprisonment at the dinner table persisted into teenagehood; I found myself once again enduring unending evenings of stalemate, silently begging that my parents might end their now cold marriage so that we might not all suffer under its tyranny. But with the dining room so loud with the cracking of the foundations, who would hear a fork scraping food across the plate, never once lifted to the lips?

My little sister grew littler. Her arms dangled, now by her sides, long and thin as her cheeks sallowed. Vegetables are all she will eat. Dinner is still a battle. My parents still despair. I find her, more than once, hidden during mealtimes, glowering at me darkly from beneath a desk as she waits to see if I snitch to Mum. I am seventeen years old, and I am frightened of my little sister. I am frightened of her waning silhouette, of her chest that rises and falls after being stood up for too long, of her heart that is heavier than the rest of her and failing under the pressure. I am frightened in the car when driving to doctors’ appointments, when I sit with her in the waiting room, when my parents stop picking up the phone. I am seventeen years old, and I receive slips in the post from the council because I am a ‘Young Carer’ for my sister. I tell them that I have ‘A Levels’ and that this ‘isn’t a great time, actually’, but there’s no good time to have Anorexia.

My little sister goes to the hospital, and when she comes home, I come home from school. Two days out of five, I complete my lessons online while my sister completes her clinician’s meal plan; we sit on the sofa with our pinky fingers interlocked, typing and chewing and praying the other makes it out. Sometimes she flicks her dinner at me, and we both grin. She is fifteen now, and she wants to be a singer. Raising my eyebrows at her plate, I remind her she needs to eat if she wants to go on stage. She smirks, telling me I need to go back to school if I want to be a journalist. The evenings draw on; mealtimes become softer, harder, yet one day we’re no longer in stalemate.

I am twenty years old. The August sun is hammering down and I am serving pints to inebriated students to put myself through university - grimacing as one boy is sick in the corner. Checking my phone to see how long until I can go home, the screen lights up with a text from my little sister. She got into music school. 

I am twenty-one. Laden with library books, my scream is louder than the cathedral’s toll and my hands quiver as I call her. “A week… with The Times Magazine… December…” and she breaks into peals of laughter. 

That weekend, I went to London to stay with her. Smiling again, she led me through the school that was teaching her to produce music, and I told her about the essay that I hoped my professor would like. She made fun of my posh accent, I made fun of her bohemian clothes, and we linked arms on the Tube to the restaurant. It felt like a long way to go, but she reminded me of how far we had come already. It had taken twenty-one years, but finally I loved eating dinner with my not-so-little sister.