October 8th 1996, 3:55pm.

I'm sitting at the dining table with Michael. He made a little rainbow cake earlier and lit thirteen candles on it, celebrating my birthday today for yesterday that I missed out on.

He finishes singing the song in his beautiful voice and says, "Make a wish Carmella."

"But I already have everything I want," I say honestly then blow the candles out.

Michael smiles and pulls out a knife, allowing me to cut pieces of it, and then we begin eating.

Lola isn't here. She left an hour ago saying she wanted to go out for a little while, not even bothering to acknowledge or apologize that she forgot my birthday yesterday. I can't help but feel guilty for calling her what I did, but I feel she deserved it.

Once Michael and I finished eating, he says, "I'll clean everything up. Wait in your room and I'll be there in a second." I wait patiently for Michael to come back, and within a few minutes, he walks in holding a fancy black glasses case with a red ribbon around it.

"Happy birthday, Carmella." He hands it to me. I take the ribbon off and open the case, and there sit the most beautiful pair of ray bands I've ever seen in my life, they're bigger and the frames are black.

"Wow, thank you Michael."

"You're welcome, I'm sorry about what happened to your glasses yesterday, so I bought you new ones."

"How did you know which frames to get?"

"Gut feeling." He smiles. "Here, try them on." He takes off my old ones and carefully places the new ones on my face, and they feel brand new, and so much clearer.

"These feel amazing, I love them."

"I'm glad."

I then jump at the sudden door slamming of the hotel room and wonder who's here. Michael furrows his eyebrows and gets up to go see.

"Lola, you're back," he says as she comes walking in.

"Yeah, I am..." she looks at me then at Michael. "Can I please talk to my sister, in private?"

"Sure." Michael smiles at me then makes his way out of the room.

"Carmella, I didn't know that you saw Michael and I...doing that. I just lost control of myself and I realize that I was being a hypocrite and I had no idea you had a crush on Michael."

"Lola, I don't care about that anymore. I just hope that this stays as an experience, not a sex-perience."

She frowns, "Well, what's wrong with that? I mean, I understand what I did was a little shallow, but I don't see what's wrong in having a little fun."

"It's not about that, I wasn't angry about what it was that you did – exactly. I was angrier about what you told me about influencing the past and yet you continued to do it."

"Well it's not like I could've hurt anyone..."

"Yeah, you did. You hurt me."

"Carmella, I'm sorry." Her voice is beginning to crack and I know she's starting to cry.

I sigh. "Please, stop," I say, not sure what to do. I never saw my sister cry before. She always put on this I'm-so-great attitude, I never considered her feelings before.

"I'm sorry." She wipes her tears away. "Can we forget about this?"

"I can't hate you forever, Lola. So, yeah."

She smiles. This is the first time I ever fought with my sister and made up after it without it lasting for days. I always fantasized what that would be like, now I know. I guess that's another thing that I learned how to do here.