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 ^{(it's beta!)}

There are three women living in my house. My mother, myself, and my younger sister, who has not been quite right since The Accident, a few years ago.

"You be nice to her," says my mother when I say the things I used to, "you be nice to her, she's changed on the inside."

But she is wrong. The inside is exactly where my sister has not changed. Her new body is the difference, and my mother has a new mask to match it. A new, cold persona that she adopted after that first day at the hospital.

I don't pretend that my sister is completely ok, and I certainly don't pretend that I am always nice, or understanding. Still sometimes, there are moments where, despite her "wrongness", she says the most beautiful, true things. And it is even more heartbreaking to see my mother miss this.

At the end of summer, we are outside, collecting seeds off the once majestic sunflowers. My sister calls them sun seeds, she is determined to plant them all later, and watch the skies clear.

The next day however, it is raining. My mother storms about the house, muttering angrily about wet laundry and how busy her life is and how I don't help her and how selfish I could be. So selfish! My sister looks up from the cards she is playing with.

And says very, very seriously "I think sometimes, the sun forgets to grow."

She was always clever, but now she is the smartest person I know. She can tell you about maths and science and anything academic. She can tell you about films and music and anything cultural. But she can also tell you about the sound a head makes when it hits the concrete after a long fall. She can tell you about the tissue stretching operations to hide the scars. She can tell you about the other children who laugh at her and tease her. She can tell you about never saying a word back. She can tell you about life at its lowest. And then smile and tell you why the bad things don't matter.

Then there are the days where I can't bear the change. I can't bear what is happening. I shriek, I scream, I would do more.

"Go back to who you were! You've changed so much and I can't stand it. Stop letting this control your life. Move on. Get on. It's not going to get better! Just live for god's sake!" I shout at my mother.

And she looks at me like I am the worst thing in the world. And she says

"You were meant to be with her."

First was unsatisfying, but I ended where it ended.

Here is the accident it was based around. I have changed it a little.

We were on holiday with some friends, and my mother wanted to go and play tennis.

She tells me to watch my sister.

But I was in one of those dark moods people sometimes get, and I had no desire to get out of it. I know that looking back, it would not have been unreasonable to just do it, but at the time it seemed like such an unreasonable request.

So I was angry. I glared at my sister. This was her fault, if she wasn't so.. So what? Young? Annoying? So herself?

She looks at me and knows I don't want her there. "I'll go catch up to Mum.." she says.

"Whatever." I shoot at her.

And then she is gone.

And then she is back. My mother, running into the house, reaching for the phone. "Your sister has had a little accident," She says.

I ignore her, nonplussed, until I realise she is calling an ambulance.

"Shit. Shit!"

I realise how undignified it is for me to be swearing at this point, maybe a numb, guilty silence would have been more appropriate. But I remember every step of the short journey from myself to my sister. It was a hot day, and I am running down the road, tar sticking at my feet. Then through the small break of trees, the pine needles contrasting the harsh gravel. Then I am at the tennis court, the same tennis court where I played only yesterday. Where my mother played only today. Where my sister is lying on the ground. The fence she climbed towering over us.

There are people there of course. With their sickening conversation.

"Did you see it?"

"See it? I HEARD it!"

"..Like smashing a pumpkin."

I throw up.

Sirens announce the ambulance arrival. Volunteers get out. They check my sister, then lift her onto a stretcher. Or what is there of my sister, because she looks smaller now, and broken. My mother gets in after her, and my father follows behind in the car. I watch them drive away. At the end of the road they stop. But not for me. Later my father tells me he thought it was because my sister died, but really, she had regained consciousness and started vomiting.

I was never told what really happened at the hospital, I know they took some tests, I know the doctors told my mother she would be alright.

And she was, mostly. But people always change when things like this happen.

My mother is different, more fierce and sharp, but still loving.

I am different, quiet and less edgy, but still smiling.

My sister is different, gentler and slower, but still herself.

There are three women in my house. And my sister is the First.

When you are young, you just assume similarity. I had a best friend, and we though we were almost sisters. We had everything (that mattered) in common.

Until one day - She disappeared off the face of the earth, and it woke me up.

I had never understood, or taken into account, why so many people lived in her big yellow house. Or why her mother, wearing oceans, only smiled and clasped her hands. Why her family never accepted our invitations. Why her father studied medicine by day - and drove a taxi through the night.

I hardly knew my best friend, and now she was gone.

It would be a lie for me to say I never heard from her again though. For a start, there were the phone calls.

In the first one - "I'm fine! I'm in Auckland!" before the line went blank. No one spoke in the others, but each time the phantom rang, I knew it was her.

I started seeing her in the street. Each dark ponytail was hers, until the owner turned around. Each high pitched ring of laughter was her trying to find me. For four years, I was haunted by the ghost of a girl who wasn't dead, only far away.

Still, gradually her brief appearances became less frequent. My mother called this "accepting", but really, I think I was just forgetting her.

Then one day - earlier this year, I heard the laughter again, and looked up into the almost-lost smile of the girl who had once known everything.

Our reunion was not tearful or joyous, but shy. We were strangers, with only nostalgia linking us together. We were so different, then and now. Only this time, the Second time, we knew it.

It's amazing to realize you can be exactly who you want.

Something has changed, for the better, I mean.

I don't really know why. I just woke up this morning, and things were, are, inexplicably good.

The curtains are open, no longer keeping me in the dark and hiding me from strangers eyes, but framing brightness. the sun is out, defying winter by evaporating puddles and drying clothes.

There's not only bright, there's colour too. Green, blue, yellow, red. Grey is gone. Grey is out of sight. No, dammit, I'm doing this all wrong, this isn't what I'm trying to say. I don't know how to describe happy anymore. I don't even know if it can actually be done. We normally write about sad moments that affect us so emotionally we just have to put little pieces of them into words

so that someone else can take them away. Stories about accidents and lost friends and lonely girls and death.

But I'm sitting at my window and each time I glance out, I can't suppress the smiles that push unfamiliarly across my face. I feel simultaneously light and heavy. Like I would float away, but someone knows that would be dangerous - they're holding my hand. They don't have a name or a face, I'm speaking figuratively. Still, the result is I'm just drifting off the ground, only slightly. But it's enough to save me from stubbed toes, and cigarette butts, and gum on the pavement.

This time last year, I was reaching the end of a bad relationship. I knew what was coming, and I shouldn't have been surprised. Teenage drama always ends predictably. And by god, I definitely played my set role as the clingy, desperate, twittering female. Still, I was. Surprised. I never liked to be ordinary, and breaking up was such a common thing to do. Supposed heartbreak, crying, regret. Nothing special, nothing desirable. I could have written about this in a different way, forcing sympathy, but it's stopped mattering now. No, it's stopped stopped mattering. It matters for different reasons.

It matters because it happened, and maybe it has affected the way I am today. I see this as a good thing, because right now, in this moment (which is more important that moments passed, or moments to come), I like that way. I am who I want to be. Which is bigger than what everyone else wants.

I think that some people believe that big things have to happen for you to be proud of yourself. Winning a competition, writing a book, getting married (or getting divorced), but right now I'm walking around my house in my underwear, ready to have the best day of my life. Small works too. Like sleeping through to 10:35 for the first time in... God, I don't even know. It feels so strange. But for the first... second... Third time in my life, I think I'm all of me again.