I become “mom”- My sister was pregnant as I finished my junior year. I was being scouted by colleges to run and had goals of training to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps to make it into the Olympic trials. I was invited to go to presidential classroom in Washington D.C. and to attend an elite, invitation only cross-country camp in Utah. An honor reserved for the top 10% of high school runners in the country. I was running road races all summer and training hard to solidify a scholarship to escape this hell hole once and for all. As much as I hated to admit, my step father and mom were getting along really well.  He actually took treatment seriously this time and stayed sober.  He was going to meetings and doing the deal. He got back into the full swing of running his business and everyone was getting ready for me to go away to college.  For the first time ever, my parents acted like they were kind of proud of me. I was the only one not making their lives a living hell and that was actually recognized for once.  I was in line for a few scholarships for athletics, so they didn’t bother to look into financial aid for school.  They had enough saved up for whatever wasn’t covered by the scholarships too, so things were right on track.  My sister was actually not an asshole while she was pregnant. Her stoner friends ditched her because she no longer was able to provide the party for them. By this time my mom was trying to teach us about money management and got us each our own bank account with 500 of our dad’s death benefits in it each month. We were to use that money to pay for our lunches and any non-vital purchases for the month.  This was a practice she started for each of us when we had turned 16. It covered our car insurance and gas and for me, my races and anything I wanted to buy on my road trips. For my sister, it was weed, gas, and booze funds for her and her friends. When that party supplies train was out of services, her friends left the station. None of them so much as visited her for the next 6 months. She spent her time studying with a tutor at home and for a while, it seemed like she may get her shit together. She had my nephew the week of 4th of July. She almost went into labor watching my best friend and I trying to create the ultimate combination of fireworks. She laughed at us as we lined up smoke bombs and lightning flashes with spinners placed down the length of the drive way. She was pretty much back to being my sister before she became too cool for me. But then her party friends started coming around again. Now that she wasn’t pregnant, she could party again! Mom and dad were working as much as possible to help take care of the new baby, so they were rarely home. I would be getting ready to go hang out with my friends and would come out to find my nephew left alone in the house. This became a regular occurrence of me canceling my plans to watch my newborn nephew. Sometimes my friends would come over and babysit with me and we would play dress up with my costumes to entertain him. We taught him to dance and would sing to him. We watched movies with him, and he became our side kick. I was pissed that my social life was being sucked up by free babysitting but at least he had someone to take care of him. When he started to talk, he started calling me mom. I didn’t really correct him because it made sense to me. His mom was never around. The day she finally realized he could say mom and it wasn’t not directed at her…well, that did not go so great. She screamed at me and accused me of teaching him to call me that. She tried to hit me, and I called her a shitty mom and a worthless stoner whore. I called my mom at work and told her if she didn’t get her stupid daughter under control, I was moving to California to live with my grandparents. That was the end of our new-found sisterly bond that had formed during the last 6 months of her pregnancy. All bets were off and we were back to hating each other and being strangers again. 

Next Chapter: Entry Twenty