(5) Un Unexpected Friend

It's just another lazy Summer afternoon, and the bright sunlight streams through my bedroom window as I lie on my bed, flipping through Seventeen magazine with MTV's TRL blaring in the background. I peer closely at Christina Aguilera pictures, and her strange taste in fashion. The phone rings. Turning over onto my side I grab it, and immediately hear Britney's voice on the receiver. Then I quickly run across the room to my small TV on the table, shut it off, and bounce back onto my bed.

"Hey Brit!" I laugh.

"Oh my gosh! I feel terrible for you. I can't imagine what must' be going on at your house right now!" Britney says excitedly.

I lie down on my back and ease my bare feet against the wall next to me, feeling completely lost, as usual.

"Ummm...I’m not sure what you’re...

"How is she taking it?"

"Who?"

"OLIVIA, of course! I can't believe he did it right before she's leaving!"

"Did what?"

"Come on, don't tell me you don't know, you're her own SISTER! Jake dumped Olivia last night when they went out to dinner!”
I can't believe it. Typical of me to the last one to hear the breaking news everyone in Darien must have be talking about, especially when it's about my own sister.

"I gotta go. I have a whole list of people to call about this! Call me later to tell me how she's handling it," Britney says eagerly.
With that she clicks off, and I am left to lie there staring blankly up at the ceiling with the receiver still tucked next to my ear. I throw it back on the cradle and then stretch out, completely lost in thought as I trace the outlines of the puffy clouds on my bedspread.

Olivia has always been Miss Perfect. With her long legs, sun bleached hair, and perfect smile, I had always envied her. She had
been on the Varsity lacrosse team since she was a freshmen, was a soccer state champion, and every guy's dream.
She had gone through boyfriends like a freshman goes through laundry until she went out with a certain sophomore named Jake. He, like Olivia, was also perfect and loved by everyone. As a varsity football player, member of the homecoming court two years in a row, and voted in his middle school as "most likely to become an Abercrombie and Fitch model, he was just the right boyfriend for my sister. He took her to his junior prom, his summer house in Nantucket, and every single happening party that was planned. Jake and Olivia were inseparable. No one in the entire high school could know one of them without the other one and everyone assumed they would go out until he went away to college, and even then they probably would find a way to still be together. All of sudden Olivia has been abandoned. It is like when Angel left Buffy. I love it!

I had found out by phoning my mom that Olivia had been at her friend's house since the previous night. 1 waited hours and hours for that moment when my sister would walk through the front door, heartbroken and fully vulnerable. Olivia and I hardly ever talked. She was constantly gone or in her room on the phone so I hardly knew her now, though before high school we had been like best friends. I knew one thing though, there was no telling what Olivia would do in times like these. She is an extremely sensitive person and is known to take things like this very hard.

At about 6: 15 she walks in. There are dark circles under her eyes indicating that she hasn't slept, her blonde hair is matted, and smudges of mascara stand out on her cheeks like war paint. Not surprisingly, besides all this, she still looks perfect.
I watch her carefully. She seems to be rather calm. As she walks slowly upstairs, I follow her, which she doesn't even seem to notice. In her room, she sits silently on her bed and gazes weakly over to the pictures of her and Jake on the bedside table. I fully expect her to grab it and smash it, but she doesn't. Everything Jake ever gave her remains where it is, from the jewelry to the stuffed animals he won for her at carnivals to the Nantucket postcards.

"Olivia?"

She looks at me wearily.

"Do you want to maybe go for a drive or something?" I wait for her to scream at me and push me out of her room, but she just smiles. It's scary for me to see her smile like that.

She picks up her keys, the silver key chain with the heart from Tiffanv's that has Jake's and her name engraved on it, and off we go for a drive to the beach. It's dark outside as she veers to the left towards a parking spot right in front of the water. We sit on top of the car roof together, just like when we used to in middle school.

The waves crash against the sand and there is faint laughter from some party down the beach, where everyone is probably drunk.

I gaze up at the sky, where the stars are studded across the black with the small sliver of a moon glowing in the middle of it. Olivia puts her arm around me and we watch the water, quiet for a few minutes. Then she begins to cry as she looks down at the silver ring on her finger that Jake had given to her for her birthday. It is a special moment. We talk about life and each other's problems and of course, Jake. I suddenly feel this long lost love for my older sister, a feeling I hadn't felt for two whole years. I wish with all my heart that Jake and Olivia could have been still together, but perhaps then we couldn't have shared this night together.

We stay there, the car's bright lights underneath us, the water lapping in front of us, the sounds of laughter behind us, and God watching over us. It is a moment for sisters.

For an hour and a half, a bond between us is sealed, and we both realize there are times only for sisters.