She slept until noon most days. I’d leave for work in the morning and she’d be in bed. I’d come home and she’d be in the same place on the sofa, hair in a messy bun now, wearing my robe like it belonged to her. She would watch TV, scroll her phone, laugh into it, text friends.
Sometimes she went out at night, dressed like she had somewhere important to be, leaving behind the heat cranked up and the lights blazing.
When I asked about job applications, she waved me off with vague language.
“I’m exploring my options,” she said, like she was a consultant deciding between offers, not an unemployed person who’d been evicted.
Meanwhile, my routines eroded. My office was no longer mine, so I tried to squeeze work into my bedroom. I balanced my laptop on my knees, took calls with my back against the headboard, hoping my voice sounded professional while my sister’s laughter floated through the walls. I tried working at the kitchen table, but the kitchen was often dirty, cluttered, loud.
What made it worse was how casually she took from me.
I came home one afternoon and found her wearing my favorite sweater, the soft gray one I’d bought after a promotion, a small reward I’d justified to myself because I never bought myself anything. She wore it like it was hers.
“That’s my sweater,” I said, and my voice shook with a kind of shock that surprised even me.
She looked down at it, then back up at me. “Oh. I just grabbed it. It was in the closet.”
“It’s in my closet.”
“We’re sisters,” she said, shrugging. “I thought sharing was normal.”
It wasn’t just clothes. It was my skincare, the expensive face cream I used sparingly because it cost too much. I’d find the jar open, fingerprints in it. It was my meal-prepped lunches, carefully portioned containers I’d stacked in the fridge. I’d open the fridge in the morning and see one missing.
“Did you eat my lunch?” I asked once, incredulous.
Vanessa smiled, chewing. “I was hungry.”
I tried to set rules. It felt absurd to have to do it, but I did it anyway. I sat her down at the dining table.
“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to speak calmly. “We need ground rules if you’re staying here. Clean up after yourself. Ask before you borrow things. Help with groceries. No loud noise during work hours. No friends over late on weeknights.”
Vanessa nodded, eyes wide, like she was listening. “Sure. Totally.”
And then she ignored every single one.
The worst nights were the parties.
At first, she invited friends over “just for a bit.” It always turned into hours. Voices rose, laughter spilled into the hallway. Music started low and then crept higher. Glasses clinked. Someone would shout over the music, and then someone else would shout back.
I would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to their joy vibrate through the walls. My alarm would ring at 6:30, and I’d still be awake.
The first time I came out to ask them to keep it down, I tried to be polite. I tried to be the reasonable one, because that was the role I’d been trained to play.
“Hey,” I said, standing in the doorway in my pajamas. “I have work in the morning. Can you guys keep it down?”
Vanessa’s friends looked at me like I was a landlord. Vanessa smiled at them, a little smirk, and then turned to me.
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