One of a Kind
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A short story about a girl who loses her sister.
Kasey would always brush her curly fro back and slick it down. Her puff was so full and thick and larger than her own small noggin. I had the same noggin, a small head, with coarse, porous black hair. I usually wore two puffs, so that others could tell us apart.
Our eyes were the same shape and color, an oak brown. We spent countless hours pointing out the tiny differences that existed between us. Our skin was usually the same tone, a walnut brown, the only true differences would come when one of us spent too much time under the sun. Our nose was short and had a slight bend at the tip. Kasey had brown freckles on her cheek that were light and unnoticeable to others, as they mostly blended into her skin, but I noticed them as a distinct marker that set us apart. For all our similarities, there stood this small difference.
I brushed my hair back into a puff and slicked it down with gel. I carefully laid my edges down before getting dressed. I was dreading going to school, I didn’t want to feel their eyes on me, not knowing what to say or do around me.
“Olivia, we don’t have all day,” my mother yelled from downstairs.
I threw on a t-shirt and a pair of distressed, ripped up jeans I know my mom would detest. “Coming,” I yelled back. I left my room and paused. I returned to my room, my once shared room, and made and then unmade my sister’s bed. I noticed that I had put the brush away, but that wasn’t right, Kasey would always leave her brush out and a few strands of hair. I put the brush on the vanity at a slight angle. I pulled a few hairs from it and scattered them around the brush.
“Sorry mom,” I said, scrambling to get my shoes on. I guess I could have breakfast at school. She looked at me and shook her head, it was as if she had seen a ghost.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why, what?” I asked. My mother looked like she wanted to throttle me. She let out a groan, an enraged groan and grabbed her keys aggressively off the table. It spooked me to say the least. I stood, feeling empty as my mother left our townhouse in Germantown, Maryland. I heard her start her gray Toyota Highlander and saw the flash of the headlights through our light gray curtains. I had lost my ride to school, I had…
