Mean girls

Mean Girls Ninety-five percent of the fights my sister has been involved in have not been her own fights. Ninety percent of the fights she has been involved in have probably been because of me.

Tiffany and I are quite different as far as sisters go, even though there is only an 18 month age difference between us. Growing up, we looked alike, we were dressed alike and strangers confused us. Our own little brother had trouble telling us apart, so he just referred to both of us as "girl" until he was old enough to realize our personalities were nothing alike. I was prissier, more upbeat, and usually had my nose stuck in a book. My sister was a tomboy, never allowing a minute of play outside to go to waste. She liked to let me take center stage, but she was a good sidekick, usually providing the best laughs to the adults we tried to impress. I hung up posters of Kirk Cameron and Jonathan Brandis. She wanted to date Freddy Kruger.

The first time my sister got into a fight over me happened in junior high. Tiffany and I were the new girls at school, and I immediately gained an unexpected popularity with the boys with my winning personality and freshly grown C cups. The first week, I dated PJ, even though I was warned by a redhead named Sherry to stay away from him because he was "her property." The next week, it was Steven. After Steven, Keven and I spent a few afternoons holding hands. Then, I met Scott. Scott wasn't in my class, but I certainly knew about him because he was the cutest guy at school and he was on the football team. I came back from lunch one day to find a note addressed to me left behind in my desk - it was from Scott, asking to be my boyfriend. A month later, I was dating the most popular guy at school, and I became the school's Valentine queen.

Needless to say, the girls hated me. I had only been going to their school for a few months and had taken what most of them had been wanting since they had started school there years before me. I couldn't walk down the hallway without being called a slut or a whore, and I never took up for myself. I felt the girls had already labeled me, and there was no changing their minds. On the other hand, it infuriated my sister. Any girl that had something to say to me, she had insults to sling back at them. There wasn't a girl she was scared to talk shit to, and it eventually earned her a nice fat lip.

"Who did this?" I asked her. She had just got home from basketball practice, lip swollen and a bloody t-shirt.

"Oh just Susie."

It was no secret to anyone how much Susie liked Scott. Susie was also the biggest and tallest girl at school, and bullying those smaller than her was a favorite pastime. Tiffany and Susie were on the basketball team together and got along fairly well, so I couldn't see why Susie would bust her face up.

"It was no big deal. I got my ass kicked. So what?" She shrugged it off.

"But why?"

"She was saying mean things about you. She said you let all the guys feel up your boobs. You probably do, I don't know. But I'm not going to let her say bad things about you."

She washed the blood off of her lips as she told me the details of the fight. "It's not so bad though," she said, pointing to her fat lip. "I look like Julia Roberts".

When I was a senior in high school, I made an enemy out of a girl known by the nickname "Sugie". Looking back on things now, I really can't think of a reason why I disliked her, other than the same reasons I was disliked by the girls I went to junior high with. I was jealous of her. She was a cute girl - a dead ringer for Christina Aguilera - and the guys loved her. Sugie is responsible for one of the best, all time, inside joke/quotes my friends and I still say for laughs. A girl in my class, Heather, also had a severe hatred towards Sugie and it took it out on her right as Sugie passed her on the stairs during a class switch. Hannah shoved Sugie as hard as she could and we watched as Sugie's small, blonde frame came tumbling down the stairs. She stood up, smoothed down her skirt and in her most Kristen Cavalieri-esque voice, screamed, "YOU SCRATCHED MY PINK SHOES! YOU BITCH."

Sugie approached me two days before my prom party, and said she had a deal to make with me.

"Look, I know you don't like me," she said, "but the truth is, everyone will be at your party, and I don't wanna miss out. I know you aren't going to invite me, and if I crash it, I'm sure Hannah will have my ass. Why don't you let me pay you?"

"You want to pay me to invite you to my party?" I asked, stunned.

"How's 100 bucks?" she asked, and just like that, she was invited to my party.

Her biggest mistake was made when she showed up at the party after I had already drank my fill. As soon as I saw her walking across my yard, I elbowed the other girls around me. "Look, there's Sugie," I sneered and in my best valley girl impression I took a cheering stance. "LIKE OMG," I screamed. "ITTTTTT'S SUGIE."

Laughter erupted.

"GIMME AN S, U, G, I, E. What's that spell? SUGIE! What's that mean? Who the fuck knows? It's a dumb fucking nickname! YOU SCRATCHED MY PINK SHOES, YOU BITCH!"

Sugie came charging at me, ready to deck me. In all fairness, I deserved it. She paid to be at my party fair and square, and she was still getting harassed, but before she could reach me, my sister had her in a headlock wrestling her to the ground. I watched as Sugie struggled to grab handfuls of Tiffany's hair, but it didn't even phase Tiff. She sent Sugie away from the party black and blue and probably wishing she had just spent her money on a new pair of shoes.

A few weeks ago, my sister and I spent several exhausting days playing childish mind games with my parents' 21 year old renter, and personal friend of Tiff's. A couple of those days, despite the renter telling us he was "like, totally wanting to hang out with us, man" and making several appearances at Heather's when the three of us were there, we were blown off when another girl came into the picture. I sucked it up. "So what?" I told myself. He's just nice to look at. Conversation is okay with him, but not mind blowing. Yeah yeah, there's that fantastic mass of body hair he has, but other guys have that too, right? He really isn't that fun to hang out with anyway. He just kind of sits around, looking pretty - a typical Mimbo. No need to get vaginal insecurities because he preferred the company of a girl named Sunshine to us. I could let it go.

My sister, however, couldn't. Any chance she had to blast The Renter for hanging out with Sunshine, she took it. After spotting us riding around one evening, he flagged us down. He sauntered over to the car, peered inside and said something flirtatious. My sister rolled her eyes.

"Hot day, huh?" She lit up a smoke and exhaled, interrupting his game to switch over to small talk.

"Yeah," he said, looking towards the sky, "It's not too bad. It's kind of cloudy."

Tiffany turned and stared at him. "But I bet it sure was nice waking up to Sunshine this morning."

The Renter laughed, picking up on Tiffany's sarcasm. "Hater," he replied.

Tiffany ashed her black and mild, turned to The Renter with her finger already pointing and her head nodding along with it. In typical Tiffany fashion, she screamed, "I'm not hating! I'm TELLIN YA BOUT YO DAMN SELF."

That's all it took for Tiffany to decide she doesn't like The Renter anymore and she sure doesn't like Sunshine. Sunshine stepped on our toes, she says. If I thought a girl was overstepping her boundaries, wouldn't I do something about it? she'd ask me. And no, I wouldn't. I don't like drama. Guys aren't worth fighting over. Especially when they were never exclusively ours to begin with.

"Well, you may not care," she said to me one morning, "but I'll have that girl's ass".

When the visit with my parents came to an end, Tiffany and I made two stops on the way back to my apartment. The first? The home of Sunshine's boyfriend's mom, where she proceeded to tell the woman about how this girl had been sleeping over The Renter's for the past two nights while her boyfriend was out of town. "I thought you might wanna know what kind of girl your son is dating," she said in her most diplomatic voice.

The second stop? To get some smokes, because she had a long phone conversation with Sunshine's boyfriend prepared for the road. How my sister finds this stuff out, I'll never know. She doesn't care about stepping on toes. She doesn't care about pissing people off. She hates minding her own business.

"She's probably gonna try to kick your ass," I said to Tiffany, after she hung up the phone.

"I know," she laughed. "I can't wait."

I never want to be on my sister's bad side.

Tashina Savage puts her sister in the Top Five List of People She Admires Most. You can share your list with her at sundaysgirl@gmail.com