A/N: More true fiction.

At home, everything had gone to shit. Worse than shit. Worse than scum. I don’t know a fitting adjective.

My home wasn’t an easy place to live to begin with. All stubborn, suffocating pride and stale air. It hurt to breathe.

My stepfather and I are much alike. Ironically, this is why we never get along well. I would like to say I am nicer than he is, kinder. But the oppression and frustration he strangles me with put thoughts in my head that lead me to believe otherwise. I am just as miserable and angry as he is. He is just luckier to have someone lesser to take it out on, who will rarely speak back, or even if she does, who will never have the last word, will never hold the winning hand.

(Hint: That’s me.)

And unfortunately, since I am the youngest, since I am the dependent one, and since shit rolls downhill, I have no one upon whom I am permitted to take out my frustrations. Instead I follow in the footsteps of my sad stepfather and take my anger out on myself.

My stepfather’s name is Dick. I find this both humorous and suitable. My mother’s name is Molly; suitable, too, because no other name could fit the way hers does. My sister’s name is Mellany. My nephew’s name is Ryan. My name is Megan. Not necessarily suitable—those are just the facts.

Mellany has always been popular, accepted. Especially by men. She has always been good-looking—not “stunning” or “gorgeous,” but definitely handsome. She has never had to try to fit in with crowds or acquaintances. She just does. She melts into social situations like ice cubes in a glass of water.

Mel and I are driving one day, to her dad’s house, in her still somewhat newish silver Mitsubishi. Ryan, who is eight, is seated in the back, playing his Gameboy, oblivious to the world around him. Or so it seems.

Mel drives kind of like I do, her attention on seemingly everything except for the fact that she is driving. She speeds and chats to me as we cut close corners. I know I should be nervous, but Mellany’s bad driving actually calms me. I am used to this.

Mel is currently chattering on and on about Aaron, the latest man in her life. I am only half listening. I can practically predict every word before she speaks it. Everything about Mel from her lips sounds the same: perfect, enviable, just right. It could be anything—a job, a boyfriend, an outfit, a car—if it’s Mellany’s, it’s better than whatever the hell you’ve got. That is, until she’s done with it. Then it’s worth shit, regardless of whatever she said before.

While I carefully and quietly note this, I still cannot deny that I am drawn to my sister, the same as everyone else, enticed by that fluid nature of hers, both admirable and unobtainable.

“He’s so gorgeous, Sis,” she tells me, and a part of me brightens, a light switched on in a once dark room. I love it when she calls me “Sis.”

“And his accent…” She sighs and dramatically fans her face, cutting it kind of close as she swerves out of the lane of an oncoming car. I laugh in an understanding way, fulfilling my role as interested younger sister.

She busies her hands with what seems like anything but driving the car. She lights a cigarette, takes a drag. She changes the track on the CD incessantly, never letting a song play longer than a minute, no matter how much either one of us loves it. She flips through one of five cases of CDs, slipping discs into the stereo, playing one song, and then taking them out.

“He keeps telling me he’s going to come see me for a week,” she continues, still rambling on about Aaron. “You have to meet him, Meg. He’s gorgeous.”

I nod and take her in.

She let her hair down that day, always a good choice. Mellany has long, lustrous tendrils of dark black-brown that ripple and wave halfway down her back, thick, strong curls.

My hair is short and difficult, hanging in stringy, mouse brown tangles.

Mellany has wide, bright features, dark brows, generous lips, and a broad, bright smile. She has round brown eyes. Our mother used to sing to her when she was little. “Brown-eyed girl.”

My eyes are green.

We look barely alike.

This is because Mellany and I are half-sisters. We have the same mom and different dads. (Though my dad claims to have raised her when she was a child, before I was born. He doesn’t mention the way he used to treat my mother, right in front of Mellany.)

I watch her and I listen, about Aaron, about all her friends in Kentucky, how she misses them so much, how they helped her out so much more than Mom.

Ryan is quiet in the back, buckled in and listening. He hears it too, I know. Or rather, he doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear Mellany what he needs her to say. She doesn’t say, “I’ve missed Ryan. I've missed my son.”

Ryan lives with us, with Dick, Molly and I. He sometimes feels more like a little brother than a nephew. I don’t mind. In many ways I felt like an only child growing up because Mellany is so much older than me. She didn’t live with us. She was never around. In a way I feel Ryan is reliving that part of my childhood. But Mel isn’t Ryan’s big sister: she is his mother.

Ryan is living with us because Mel doesn’t have her shit together. There is no better way to phrase it. She may brag about Aaron and her friends down in Kentucky, but what she will rarely say is that she is broke and had nowhere else to go but home. And while it is her own doing, I feel bad for her, because I know how much she wants to be home—and that isn’t much at all.

I know because I don’t want to be there either.

“I fucking hate it here in Michigan,” she tells me, swearing right in front of Ryan. He is used to it, immune. “Kentucky is so much better. There are jobs, Megan. There are apartments there, nice ones, with rent only half the price of the shitty ones up here.”

She takes a drag on her cigarette, a Marlboro 100. I liked it better when she smoked Camel Lights. The box was much more feminine, more fitting.

She continued on about Kentucky, how great it is, how much better than Michigan. She tells me this as if I have a say in where I get to live.

Of course Kentucky’s better, Mel. It’s where you want to be.