I was the oldest child in our happy little family.
Happy for them I suppose.
As long as they forgot I was there.
Alice was my sister. How I hated her. She was small and sleek and blonde. Everything mommy and daddy could want. I was Small and thick and had pitch black hair, but not the kind that shimmered, no but it would seem to glow in the moonlight. Not that they knew that. No, they were to busy cueing over Pretty little Alice. She didn’t have to do a thing and they would praise her. Now I would say I faded to the back as soon as Alice was born, but that’s not right. I was never in the spot light. Never had the affection she received. Because I was the not so Pretty daughter. So it hurt more knowing that it wasn’t that they just didn’t like there children, it was they didn’t like me. To fill the void mommy and daddy could- no would not, I learned to read. And Read I did. We had a vast library, thousands of books. I read every last one. Before I was six. There was one story I loved more than all the rest, and hated at the same time. Alice in Wonderland. It was a story of a magical world where everything was what it wasn’t and wasn’t what it was. A world of strange creatures that would lovingly hold you one minute and then force scalding liquid down your throat the next. It had many pictures of dark landscape and horrifying characters. My favorite was the Mad Hatter. No- The dormouse, but the Hatter was a easy second. I would imagine having tea with them and the March hare. Sometimes I would steal the very old tea set of my mothers and go out into the woods and wait, because maybe just maybe they would come and join me. But only if I waited for them. But I hated the story just as much as I loved it. Because the girl who did get to travel to Wonderland, like I so dreamed, was ALICE. Now I could have overlooked the name if it wasn’t for the fact that that Alice, looked exactly like my Alice. From the sickening blonde hair to the ugly blue dress, to the uncomfortable black buckle shoes. It was as if even in my fantasy world she would always be better than me. More loved.