DEAR DIARY,
These are things that happened to me, cross my heart and hope to die.
When I’m six, I bring home my report card from first grade. I’m smart, and I know it because me teacher tells me. At home, my parents don’t think I’m very smart because my sister tells them that I do stupid things. She’s making it up, but they don’t listen to me. “She knows what she’s talking about,” Mom says. “You shouldn’t question her, you’re too little. You should be happy you have a sister who pays so much attention to you.”
She pays attention, all right. That’s because she’s always watching for times she can do something to me, like smack me around. I don’t give her any reason to. I stay away as much as I can. I’d like to go to a friend’s house and spend some time with somebody who likes me. The problem is, nobody does. She tells them bad things about me, so I don’t have any friends. Sometimes Mom and Dad have parties for me so I can meet friends. My sister helps out at the parties, of course, and the guests go home crying. I think they’ve about given up on the party idea.
“Lazy bones, never does anything,” she says, and grabs my report card. It’s not like I was waving it in her face. I had it hidden in my book bag, but she got it anyway. Every time she gets my bag away from me, she tears it a little, so it will look like I don’t really care how I treat things that belong to me. I’ve gotten that lecture so many times I could mouth the words right along with Dad, but I don’t dare.
“Oh, look how careless she is,” she says, as she rips the carrying strap loose from my book bag. “Such a thoughtless child. Crazy bones, lazy bones,” she chants as she holds my report card up over my head so I can’t reach it. Then she steps on my toes, hard.
“Oops.”
She opens the report card and stares at it. I got high passes in everything, and an “exceptional” in reading.
“Give me back my report card!” I grab for it but she dances away.
“The teacher must have gotten you mixed up with someone else,” she says. “These can’t be your grades.”
“Oh, yes they are! Give me that!”
“I’ll just have to straighten things out. Where’s that eraser?”
“I’ll tell Mom.”
“You do and you’re dead meat, you little twerp.” She said it like each word was a deadly threat, which it was. I didn’t want to find out what it was like to be dead meat. I shut up about the report card but I made a face at her.
She found an eraser and undid all of Mrs. Sandauer’s nice cursive writing. Then she wrote in different grades, like “Math: Can’t count to three,” and “Art: Not talented.” In the comments at the bottom, she put “Very disruptive in class.” Those things were so wrong. I tried to grab the card from her. I was going to rip it up. Better to have Mom and Dad think I lost it than to have them see it like that.
She grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. I tried to hurt her by kicking backward with my feet. The heel of my tennis shoe connected with her shin.
“Ow, damn it. Cut that out.” She twisted my arm higher, so that I had tears on my face.
We heard Mom come into the kitchen and both of us froze. I didn’t want to get punished for saying bad things about my sister, and I guess she didn’t want to hurt me for real with Mom in the next room. She let go, and skipped away before I could get the card from her.
“Mom, look, a report card!” She dashed into the other room. I was right on her heels, but Mom already had the card in her hands. She was shaking her head.
“I’m so disappointed in you,” she said. “I would have thought you’d have more pride than to bring home a report card like this.”
I hung my head in shame. What else could I do? Then I got an inspiration.
“You could talk to Mrs. Sandauer, Mom.”
That got her angry. “There’s no point, is there?” she said. “She isn’t going to change her mind. Her signature’s right here.” She shook the card in my face.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll try harder.”
“Why can’t you be more like your sister?”