"You don't get to choose your family, but you do get to choose how they're allowed to treat you."

Morgan Ann Bennett

I was eight when it happened. I remember it like it was yesterday. In Arizona, where we were born and raised.

Callie was eighteen. It wasn't like anything to have my only sibling being a decade older because we're close. No, we couldn't do much together outside of home, but it was cool because she would drive me places.

My sister was always there for me. Always. Every missing tooth, every dance recital, every bruised knee, and nightmare.

If my parents gave a damn about either of us, I'd feel bad for saying Callie's more like a mother to me.

Like I said, I was eight. That's just a kid, but I knew it all.

Callie was always in and out of the house all hours of the night.

After graduation she was supposed to move out. She didn't. That made my parents angry. Apparently that was their agreement: either she go to college, move out and get a job, or join the army. She didn't do either.

If you asked her, she just didn't know what she wanted to do. However, she was in the nursing program at school. She even had pretty good grades when she applied herself.

Around fourteen Callie got boy crazy. My parents said she started acting out, getting detentions, failing classes, skipping school. They stressed, wondering what's wrong with her, blaming themselves for never paying attention to her.

Really, they didn't pay attention to either of us, but more so Callie.

My father, Owen, was a HVAC technician. Kelsey, my mother owned a hair and tanning salon. They did alright. We weren't rich, only comfortable. Us Bennett's didn't go on annual family vacations, but that's because they went terribly when we tried.

Because they went to college and were pretty well known in the city they never left since childhood, they swore they had some type of reputation to uphold. Callie, smoking and drinking at sixteen, didn't help that reputation.

They tried to get her in after school programs and summer and part-time jobs. If she didn't quit, she would get fired, or just never show up in the first place. It got to the point where my parents threatened her with boot camps and Catholic school.
Of course it never stuck, they were pretty soft, couldn't really discipline her.

One time she came to my dance recital high. At the time I didn't know, I could just see she was acting funny. She caused some commotion while I was performing and my parents started yelling at her. They said she was hallucinating and tried escorting her out immediately.
When the crowd started to murmur, my parents just let the cops take her away.

I ran backstage and started crying. I'll never forget it because after the number, one girl came to me and started laughing. She called me a "cry baby" and it ticked me off so I tackled her. We were just wrestling backstage in tutus, it was a mess. I won though. I hate that girl.

That wasn't the first time I defended Callie, or the last. Far from it.

She would often sleep in my bed and tell me the dumbest stories now that I think about it. They never made sense but she had the wildest imagination.

Sometimes my mom would come home late and my father would go get drunk with his work friends at the silos. So, if Callie wasn't out partying or locking herself in her bedroom, we would make the most outrageous meals, like something from a kids cartoon! I'm talking stacks of sixteen chocolate chip and M&M pancakes with ice cream on the side, gummy bears, cotton candy, fudge, caramel popcorn, Skittles, candied apples, and funnel cakes. And we'd make forts all throughout the living room and watch movies inside it all night or play with my Bratz dolls.

But Callie was a completely different person when she was in a relationship. Err, thought she was. Most of the guys never respected her but she saw it as love. She fell fast and hard, poor girl. It's like she didn't know any better, but she just didn't care.

She would stop talking to me, come home less and wear little to nothing. At eighteen, that's what you can do, though.

My mom had "grounded" her for two weeks after Callie ran away to a friend's college. Callie said she had the time of her life so it was worth it. I loved the pictures she shows me of the waterfall they went to.
My parents tried to say that since she didn't have a job, she couldn't go out and have any fun. They stopped giving her an allowance, but that didn't stop her.

Surprisingly though, Callie did stay inside for those two weeks. Well, only because she had mono. As soon as she recovered, she was back in the streets.

Anyway, Callie's new boy was Rayce Joseph. His father had been the history teacher at the local high school for a decade or so, he had the reputation as a hard ass. He also was the head football coach which was passed down from his father and so on. Everyone in this town stayed in the town. I say that to say, my father hated the Joseph's. So when Callie brought him over one day and they were caught dry-humping on the couch, you can imagine how any father would react, right? Now add to that years of prejudice towards anyone with his last name and you have a raging psychopath wielding a golf iron at the tattooed teenager.

I was upstairs coloring when I heard the commotion break out. Curious, like any kid, I ran downstairs to see what was going on. Callie was screaming, trying to stop our father from breaking Rayce's face. Meanwhile, my mother called 9-1-1 who came quick.

Once they arrived, my father made up this elaborate story that Rayce broke in and tried to take advantage of Callie. She wasted no time jumping to his defense. When the cop realized the two were "in love" he gave Rayce and my father a warning then escorted Rayce home.

Being timid like she is, my mother just wanted to sweep the situation under the rug like every other dramatic spell. This time, though, Callie told my father she hated him.
I guess that was his last straw because he had heard her say that before but this time he kicked her out.

He said she was ungrateful and "the worst thing about him." Callie didn't even shed a tear but I saw her lower lip quiver. I swear her green orbs turned black in that moment.

They said a lot of words I didn't quite catch or comprehend but I understood they were angry by their volume and the way everyone started slamming doors.

I followed Callie to her room while my mother calmed Dad down in the kitchen.

"I'm leaving, Squirt," Callie called me by my nickname as she packed her bags.

It was weird because when I walked into her bedroom that once looked like something out of a Y2K Teen Magazine, everything was packed and taken off of the walls.
The posters of male singers and pop bands were no more. Her pink fluffy pillows were now just white and stained. There were no shoes under her bed that I was tempted to try on.
She had already been planning to leave, I gathered.

I swallowed hard, walking up on her.

"Where are you going, sissy?" Yes, I still called her that.

She kept her back to me, frantically stuffing an Adidas duffel bag.

"Anywhere but here, Squirt." Callie sniffled.

I sat on the chest at the foot of her twin-sized bed.

"Without me?" I asked, wearing a pout. I didn't necessarily do it to manipulate her but I hoped it worked. Normally it would.

She huffed and paused for a moment to address me.

Kneeling before my body, she stared into my eyes.

"God, it's like looking at a little version of myself, I don't like it. I can't do this, Squirt. I have to leave, Dad doesn't want me here."

"Yes he does-"

"No! He doesn't. He hates me. And that's fine. That's why I'm gonna get the Hell out of here," she said, going back to her closet.

I just watched, not knowing what to do.

She finished and mumbled to herself that she'd be back for the rest while they were at work the next day or so.

At the door, Callie stopped and sighed.

Her neck turned and she glared at me over her shoulder.

"Come with me," she whispered, lunging back to me.

My eyes just went wide. What was she talking about, I couldn't go with her? Could I?

She squared my boney shoulders and started to get excited.

"Come with me," she repeated. I still looked at her like she was turning purple. "I'll take care of you, I promise."

I blinked my long eyelashes and carefully stepped outside the bedroom.

At the top of the stairs, I listened in on my parents saying how badly they wanted Callie gone.

I may have been eight but my heart broke. In my world did I want to live in where parents didn't want their own children, and she wasn't that bad.

Callie was everything to me. So I went with her.

She packed my bags while I helped, not knowing exactly what I was doing and how it would affect the rest of my life.

Callie was whispering to me the whole time, making our escape into another one of her crazy stories. I started to smile.

Once we had all that we could carry, Callie took my barely free hand and we opened my bedroom door.

Standing there was our father. He had heard everything, I'm assuming, and looked something like disappointed only not really.

He relaxed his posture and moved out of the way.

"Go," he said to the both of us. "and don't come back."