Page 4 of Riverside Reverie

Although she understood, Jasmine didn’t like how down the whole situation made me feel. She’d said I wasn’t acting like me, and I really wasn’t. I’d let Brinley smack me down, and I remained on the ground. I had allowed my sister to dull my shine, and if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I’d been letting her do it our entire lives.

“Remember when Brinley actually stood up for me that time with Brittany Carmichael?”

Jasmine pursed her lips, shaking her head. “You mean that time she out mean-girled the meanest girl in our grade? Yeah, I remember. But that was more like a territorial fight between two mean girls.”

I sighed again, knowing she was right. It had less to do with me and more to do with Brinley taking on the mean popular girls in my grade, even if she had said “nobody torments my sister but me,” before the ensuing catfight.

If Brinley wanted something, she’d stop at nothing until she got it, so I usually let her have whatever it was to spare an argument. Before dropping out to “pursue modelling”, Brinley had walked the halls of our high school like Regina George herself. Her beauty allotted her popularity, and most of her peers—Camellia included—were too intimidated to stand up to her.

She didn’t bother to hide her inner ugliness, but when it suited her Brinley knew how to schmooze and could put on a very convincing innocent act. A lot of the time, the adults were fooled by her; my parents, especially. Brinley really would make a great actress, as she could act out any emotion expected of her in any given situation.

But when she got angry, it was like a switch flipped. Brinley would fly off the handle, screaming and yelling, her eyes cold and raging. Her comments would slice through even the toughest of armour. Over the years, I’d learned to mask my hurt, because Brinley would only use it as a weapon to further antagonize.

I thought she’d grow out of her petty cruelties, and as adults we’d grow closer as sisters. But it seemed we only grew further apart, separated by Brinley’s anger and actions.

My high school graduation was the first indication I’d had that Brinley’s resentment for me had escalated from stealing my favourite clothes and purposely ruining them. She had scowled throughout graduation ceremony. In every picture our mom forced us to take together with me in my graduation cap and gown, Brinley was glaring. At the fancy restaurant my parents took us too for dinner, she had erupted into tears because everybody was making such a big deal of me graduating.

She’d next taken personal offence to my career choice, like it was somehow meant to be a slap in her face, like I was rubbing it in that I was “smarter” than her, when that wasn’t the case at all. I wanted to help people. My choices weren’t meant to slight my sister, and it’d never occurred to me that she’d react so combatively. I’d hoped that her pursuing her own dreams would bring her some form of happiness, and that we could bond over our differences while still supporting one another’s choices and dreams. Brinley’s recent cruel actions had me wondering if there was anything within in her that was salvageable. She showed no regret over how much she’d hurt me. It had put me in a dark place, wondering what I’d done to deserve such contempt from my baby sister.

I needed this trip; I needed to get away from her and regroup. I needed to figure out how I was supposed to move past the hurt she’d caused—or if I even could. I didn’t know how I could ever trust her again, and I considered myself a pretty forgiving person. To know that Brinley had intentionally sought to hurt me, and that she’d relished in succeeding…well, that changed things. It might be too much for even me to move past.

“You’re so loyal and helpful, and kind…a lot kinder than I am. You see the good in everybody, even if they don’t deserve it.” Jasmine remarked, keeping her focus on the road as some guy in a lifted Dodge sped past us, the engine roaring.

“Hardly,” I huffed. “I see the bad in people too, I just try not to condemn them for it, and I try not to let their past choices define their future. If Brinley got help for everything tomorrow, I wouldn’t hold a single thing against her.”

“I know, that’s the craziest part. I’d never talk to my sister again if she did half the stuff Brinley’s pulled on you.” Jasmine sounded impressed. “But…and I don’t mean to upset you by saying this…I think you’re holding your breath on something that isn’t going to happen. Brinley isn’t going to change, and definitely not overnight. For so long, you’ve held yourself responsible for her actions towards you, and you need to stop.”

I nodded, releasing a slow breath. She was right.

I was no martyr, and I knew consistently signing up to be my little sister’s punching bag wasn’t going to help her, and it certainly wasn’t helping me. But there was still a part of me that didn’t want to give up on her. I couldn’t turn off caring about my own sister, and I knew I could never truly escape the scope of Brinley’s problems or their trinkle-down effect on me because I cared. At the end of the day, we were sisters. It was just in my nature to worry about her.

It seemed like Brinley had been looking for something to drive the wedge permanently between us for years. Did I want this Scott thing to be what finally pushed us apart forever? I wasn’t so sure, but I did know that if she continued to show no remorse for her actions, I’d have no choice but to distance myself to protect my own heart.

I’d highly suspected my sister was mentally ill for years now—although my mother vehemently denied it whenever I voiced my concerns.

My parents were from the era of not talking about mental health, from burying it with a glass of rye or wine. They had a “stiff upper lip” approach to mental health. I don’t think they even knew what to do with the possibility of my sister’s mental illness, so they’d ended up minimizing it. Telling me it was just teenage angst, that Brinley had a flare for dramatics. My mother assured me Brinley would grow out of it, and to not take it so personally; all sisters fought.

Something in my gut told me otherwise, and things only got worse when she dropped out of school to be a social media influencer. The moment Brinley realized that people no longer needed an agent to be discovered, she’d invested all her time on social media cultivating a following.

Brinley had a knack for doing makeup and hair and making herself look flawless. She’d inherited the same gifts from our mother, who’d done some modelling work in her early teen years. The more followers Brinley got, the more her cruel nature reached new heights. I couldn’t help but worry that the pressure of maintaining that carefully cultivated image was worsening her mental health struggles. She’d sneer and scoff, tell me that her only problem was me, then she’d toss a couple of insults my way and storm off.

“I think she’s hurting, and instead of addressing why…she lashes out.” I shrugged, toying with my hair. That knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less, but it helped me understand her.

I’d read somewhere that people who feel disempowered lash out because they lack the skills that make them feel better when they feel bad, and it’s the only way they know how to get that boost. Brinley coped with her issues by being cruel and attacking, and this latest offence was just another example of her pattern, a pattern my parents had ignored and excused for our whole lives.

On the flip side, if they did finally acknowledge there could be a problem after all these years…what would change? Would they insist she finally see a therapist? Would it benefit Brinley in the long run to come forward about her discretions? Was my silence perpetuating harm?

“Brinley has made a lot of bad choices, but she’s my sister.” I pointed out, weakly trying to defend my…defensiveness of her, and Jasmine sent me a look over the top of her sunglasses briefly before her attention returned to the highway. “It feels wrong to just give up.”

Jasmine sighed. “You’re too close to the problem, here. She’ll never be able to see you as anything but the enemy, the competition. At least not until she learns how to deal with her issues herself. You’ve gotta let go of the idea of being the one to save her. Brinley needs to save herself.”

It was a hard truth to hear, but Jasmine wasn’t wrong.

“She’s family, and family is supposed to be there for each other, to help each other.” It was the internalized expectation I’d been brought up with, and no matter how mad I got at Brinley, that expectation was rooted in me.

“She slept with your boyfriend, Lux—and now she’s dating him. Worst of all? She doesn’t see a problem with it. How could you forgive something like that?”

I sent Jasmine a sad smile, appreciating her willingness to stand up for me. She was more like a sister to me than my own blood. “Well, yeah, it hurt. But Scott wasn’t my forever, I guess I knew that, but I was…”

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