I hope that reading my writing makes you feel like I've just given you a hug. If it doesn't, e-mail me, and I'll have to give you one in person.

My sister and I have always been opposites, but whether or not we are opposites in spite or because of each other is something I’ve never been able to figure out. I sometimes worry that the person I grew into took up so much room in our quiet life that my sister was forced to grow into the places I left empty. From a scruffy sapling I shot into the sky year by year, unfurling wildly, branches chaotic and menacing. Smaller, subtler, ever more empathetic, I worry that my sister felt she had no choice but to simply stretch out where I left room for her. It’s that way with sisters, or at least it always has been with us: we intertwine and grow apart and collide. We fight and  leave angry, half-moon shaped nail marks on the back of each other’s arms–but then we find a reason to make fun of the way our Mom laughs (I want to invent an adjective form of ‘hyena’ just to describe it) and get back to watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

My sister was captain of the field hockey team, and I was layout editor of the yearbook the year everyone proclaimed it “too artsy.” I was Alice in the 8th grade production of “Alice in Wonderland,” and she was…Ali Roy–no need for acting, her own name, its three-syllable rhythm cascading with verbal ease, carried enough cache on its own. I got grounded time and time again for exposing my PG-13 exploits on various blogging outlets (Xanga, Deadjournal and Livejournal), and she got grounded for attending the popular kids’ parties. Everyone knew we were siblings, but we looked and acted so differently everyone also probably thought one of us was adopted. She inherited my mom’s tan Portuguese glow; I am pale, freckly, embarrassingly Northern European.

My sister left for college yesterday. Senior year amplified her self-doubt, so I’ve been the recipient of many teary late night phone calls punctuated by wails about how much she loves and looks up to me. I try my best to respond with sisterly things like, “You are going to do amazingly at college,” and, “It’s going to be scary, but you’re awesome and you’re going to love it.” She’s always appreciative, but with the knowledge that we’re both aware that she is far more emotionally intelligent than I could ever hope to be.

Sometimes late at night I regret moving to California, if only because I made a decision that resulted in being so far away from her. When our parents got divorced, I was 14 and she was 10. They broke the news to us in the living room, which is how we knew they were going to do it in the first place–there were only two things that happened in the living room: opening Christmas presents, and breaking bad family news. My reaction to their announcement was to run back to my computer and pound out an angry blog entry about the ordeal. My sister’s was to scream and cry and bang her fists. “But what will my friends think?” she wanted to know. I thought that was brave of her, to be so blatantly selfish. It was such a “fuck you” to our parents–who cares if you two don’t love each other anymore, what will my friends think when they come over for dinner? She has always cared so much about what other people think. I used to hate that about her–it struck me as vaguely Stepfordian–but now I see it’s because she’s hypersensitive to the way other people feel. As a writer–as a person–I wish I had her intuition, her innate ability to read the emotions of others just by looking at them.

When I was in elementary school, I preferred sleeping on a mattress on her bedroom floor instead of in my own bed. It was a scratchy, lumpy mess of a mattress, but I didn’t mind, because sleeping on it meant that I got to be near to her. I slept there for two years straight.

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