PROLOGUE

Carol stood in front of the mirror in the room that she and her sister shared, preening and admiring herself. She turned this way and then that way, craning her head as far as it would go to see if her butt looked as big as she hoped. Her sister was sitting on their queen size mattress and looking at her with what looked like disdain. She shook her head, sighed, and got up to come and stand beside Carol, fluffing her hair and pouting in the mirror while using her considerably bigger body to push Carol to the side.

“Hey! Why’d you do that?” Carol bristled, quickly grabbing and holding on to the edge of the dresser to steady herself.

“I did that because I was saving you from wasting your time. What on earth are you checking out? You look like a fly.” Victoria replied, dragging her hands down her body to show her sister that she was really sexy.

Carol shook her head and went to sit on the bed, thinking to herself how horrible her sister was, although in a way she guessed she couldn’t really blame her. When you were as sexy as Victoria was and had all the boys flocking around you, it was bound to get into your head. She stole a glance at her sister where she was still standing in front of the mirror and admiring herself. They were the most unalike sisters that Carol had ever seen. They were both curvy, but there the similarities ended. While Carol was of average height, chubby, and a brunette, her sister was tall and blonde without being big-boned. Carol’s chubby frame made kids at school tease her and her freckled and pimpled face did not help one single bit. On the contrary, her sister’s cheerleader looks made many girls want to be her friend and made most of the boys at school drool over her.

“Oh, shoot! I almost forgot. There’s going to be a party…” Victoria said, drawing out the last word and waiting for her sister’s reaction. Carol, who was painfully shy and did not care in the least for such gatherings stared evenly at her sister without interest until Victoria sighed dramatically and hopped on the bed in true teenage fashion.

“There’s going to be a party this weekend at Liam’s.” She said, looking in her sister’s face, knowing fully well that she was going to get a reaction. 

Carol’s face went beet red and she averted her gaze from her sister’s own, her mind beating fast.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Victoria demanded.

“What on earth do you want me to say?”

“Oh, common. You know you’re dying to ask for details. You know it.”

“Were you invited?” Carol asked her sister, knowing fully well what the answer will be.

“You bet I was. I’m the most popular girl in school. It would be weird if I wasn’t invited to these sorts of parties.” Victoria replied in a tone that said that Carol was really dumb for even asking such a question.

“Are you going?” Carol asked almost fearfully, pain gnawing at her young sixteen-year-old heart as she waited for the answer.

“You already know I am. I’m not bringing you along, though. Like I told you before, you have to get in shape before I will be able to bring you along with me to these parties. It’s bad enough that you’re not even tall.”

Carol swallowed the lump in her throat and replied. “I’m very much in shape. I’m just chubby.”

“Yeah, right. So now, for the icing on the cake, guess what?!”

“I don’t really wanna know. Look, I have to go do my assignment.” Carol said, preparing to get u and escape from her mean sister. Victoria did not give her a chance to do that but immediately blurted out in a triumphant voice.

“I’m going as Liam’s date. He asked me.” 

Carol ignored her sister, pretending that she did not hear what she had said, and proceeded to pick up her books from the table in the corner of the room.

“I mean, you should have seen how all over me he was.” Victoria goaded her sister, coming over to stand beside her so that she could be noticed.

Carol had a hopeless crush on Liam, and her sister knew this very well, but that did not stop her from going after him and flaunting herself shamelessly in front of him in a bid to annoy Carol. Even now that she had succeeded in getting the guy’s attention, she was not still satisfied but wanted to taunt her sister. It had been that way since forever.

“Congratulations on that. Now move so that I can go and do my assignments in peace.” Carol said, trying desperately to control her temper and not deliver a resounding slap to Victoria's face.

“Well, you can’t blame him for choosing me over you. I’m prettier, after all.”

“That’s nice to know,” Carol replied, making to move past her sister as tears gathered in her eyes. Sometimes, she hated her sister as she could be so mean, and for no reason at all.

However, Victoria was spoiling for a fight and refused to let her past. Carol, who was already very mad, in spite of her usually calm demeanor, shoved her way past her sister whereupon Victoria grabbed her hand and got in her face.

“Don’t walk away from me, you ugly little duckling. I told you that you’re going to pay for telling on me when I had an abortion.”

“That was two years ago, Victoria. Besides, you had no business having sex at fourteen, not that it is any of my business, anyway…”

“You’re damn right, it wasn’t, miss goody two shoes.” Victoria cut in through gritted teeth.

“You also seem to have forgotten that you were bleeding to death and I might just have saved your miserable life,” Carol yelled at her sister in anger.

At this, Victoria let go of her sister’s arm and gave her a resounding slap that made her head reel backward with the force of it. 

“You bitch!” Carol yelled in anger, as their parents came into the room at that exact moment.

“What on earth is going on here?” Their mother, Belinda asked, looking between her two daughters and going straight to console Victoria who burst into loud and phony tears that anyone could clearly see through as soon as their parents entered the room. 

“Mom, she always keeps bringing back the incident and shaming me about it. I know I’ve made mistakes, but I was a kid then.” Victoria cried, as though she was now an adult.

Before Carol could even defend herself, her mother began to scold her.

“You really should be ashamed of yourself, Carol. You’re the older one, but you keep acting like a child. I already warned you that if this happened again, you’ll be grounded. So you’re grounded.”

“But mom, she started it. She brought it up herself.” Carol tried to defend herself, but it all fell on deaf ears as their mother continued to berate her while their father just stood there saying nothing. They always took Victoria’s side no matter what she did and made everything she did, including the abortion Carol’s fault. It had always been that way and she guessed that that was how it would remain. She had no idea how right she was.