Page 2 of Feel It All

“Soon,” Wyla adds.

“I will, but let’s move on to better things. Wav, tell us about the school where you start this fall.” Waverley shares our mom’s passion of teaching and just got her degree in Middle School Education. She starts teaching sixth grade this August at Aster Creek Middle School. Wyla is still indecisive on what she wants to do officially but is getting her basic credits right now at Aster Community College.

Waverley starts beaming at the now topic of conversation, “I am so excited—I will actually get to teach kids. Years of school later and I will finally be doing what I have been dreaming of since we were kids. Plus, I get to decorate a room however I please, which is really one of the best parts. You two obviously will be helping me put it together.”

“Oh joy,” I mutter.

“I will gladly help you,” Wyla says honestly. Wyla is the sweetest of the Bennett sisters, never snarky like Waverley and I are.

“Thank you, Wyla. Winry, you’re helping whether you like it or not.”

“I am just so jealous! You guys are both doing things you love, and I still have no idea what I am going to do. I finish my core requirements this fall—what am I going to do then? I’ll be living with Mom and Dad forever,” Wyla says looking like a lost puppy.

“You’ll figure it out, Wyla, you still have time. You’ve been volunteering a lot; have you found anything you enjoy there?”

“I enjoy volunteering; it feels good to help people at the soup kitchen and I love the animal shelter, but I want to take every little helpless creature home. I brought home Poppy already and Mom nearly had a stroke.” Poppy is Wyla’s German shepherd mix she brought home a few months ago. She was a tiny little abandoned puppy, and I had to stay the night when she brought her home to help bottle feed her because Wyla had to study for an early test and couldn’t be up all night before.

“Hey, why don’t we have a Bennett sister sleepover tonight at Mom and Dad’s? I could use some sister time, and it will help me avoid meeting my new neighbors,” I suggest, hoping to lift Wyla’s spirits. I hate when my sisters aren’t feeling their amazing selves.

“I’m in,” Waverly agrees.

After breakfast, I head straight over to our parents’ house. With last night’s incident and the new neighbor today, I’m feeling off my game. If I met them today, I would most likely say something awkward and stupid. I tend to say whatever comes to my mind at times. I would like to push off the new neighbor for as long as possible. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but I suppose it is just change in general. The new neighbors force me to get used to a new normal, and I have had so much on my plate between managing Crossroads and my daily routine that it just feels heavy at times. Don’t get me wrong, Crossroads is doing well, but this is our first year, and I want it to be amazing. So I have been putting my heart and soul into it.

I walk into the house where I grew up, and it instantly brings me peace. I love this place. My whole childhood is packed in this house, so much so that it is practically bursting at the seams. With only 1,500 square feet and three bedrooms, we had to be a close family. There was literally no hiding from it.

For a while, just Waverley and I shared a room, but when Wyla got old enough, we decided to cram all three of our beds into one room and made the other room our walk-in closet. Mom always made us share everything anyway, so there was no point in trying to separate it out. “Hello,” I holler as I walk in the door, “your favorite daughter is here.”

“Wyla?” I hear my mom mock.

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

“I couldn’t pick a favorite of my girls, even if you forced me,” my dad says while bringing me in for a suffocating hug. Dad’s hugs are like that. They encase you and somehow bring you this comfort that you didn’t even know you needed.

“That I believe. Me on the other hand, it changes daily.” Mom confesses as she walks up to greet me. “Hi, Honey, what brings you over?”

“We decided to have a girls’ sleepover tonight. Wyla ran to get the essentials, and Waverly is meeting us here around dinner. I didn’t feel like going home, so I thought I would see my favorite people. Well, second favorite people, sisters first.”

“That’s exactly right,” Mom agreed. She never had siblings, so that’s why I always felt like she forced us to be close. And yes, “forced” is the right word, but it worked out. If one of us went somewhere, the others had to follow; there was no doing anything without each other. And there was no not sharing clothes either. They honestly never bought us clothes individually; it was always understood that anything Mom or Dad bought was ours to share.

“I’m glad you’re here, moon baby,” Dad says dearly. He has called me “moon baby” for forever. I was born on a full moon, and I have just always loved the nighttime. Even to this day, I don’t sleep great; something about night just feels good to me.

“I am too,” Mom butts in, “and it is a perfect night for a sister sleepover. Looks like a storm is rolling in, so y’all can do your usual sleep pile in the living room.”

“Your favorite daughter is home!” we hear Wyla holler. We really are sisters. As soon as Poppy hears Wyla, she takes off to greet her. She lay in her dog bed when I got here, didn’t even flinch. Little brat.

“Hi, Pops. Win, why don’t you help me with this stuff?” Wyla has her hands full of bags full of absolute junk. “I bought stuff for you to make your homemade cookie dough, and the best part—look at what movie I found…Aquamarine!”

“Ah, no way. It’s shaping up to be a perfect sleepover. Mom said we can destroy her living room and make our signature sister pile.” I take some of the bags from her and take them to the kitchen. I dig around in the kitchen until I find everything I need to make the cookie dough.

Over the next few hours, I make the cookie dough and put it in fridge to set, then I help mom with dinner. Ivy may technically be Crossroads’s signature baker, but I’m not too shabby in the kitchen if do I say so myself. Waverley shows up just as we plate the spaghetti for dinner.

“Let’s get this party started,” Waverley says while carrying in each of our favorite bottles of wine. I am a Riesling girl, Wyla is a Moscato, and Waverly is a Zinfandel. “Oh, yes, Mom’s spaghetti. She really does love us.”

“I know what my girls like.”

“Winry, I got you two bottles of Riesling. It seemed like you needed it after, you know,” Waverley adds, wiggling her eyebrows and smirking.

“What, why? Winry, what’s wrong?” Mom barely takes a breath in between questions. She always worries about us, but especially me. She knows I got her anxiety and then some. I stare at Waverley, mentally stabbing her for even insinuating about my night last night in front of Mom and Dad. “It’s nothing, Mom, Waverley just knows I have had my plate full at Crossroads.”

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