text: My sister, Savannah, and I were always opposites. My room was filled with *The Legend of Zelda* merch, and you could almost always hear *Skillet* emanating from my room. Various cables and cords snaked through the grass of my bedroom floor. I had one friend, and I always went over to his house after church on Sundays. My report card never saw below a B. I had a quick-witted tongue, and I used my natural talent far too often. Savannah’s AIM notifications mixed with a Jesse McCartney CD playing to create the symphony of a social butterfly in her room. Her low-waisted jeans and tube tops cluttered her bedroom floor. Her friends were always stampeding through the living room, causing an obnoxious ruckus on the weekends. She didn’t care about her grades. She faced all her problems with a fist first. Savannah decided I was one of those problems. She would do it anytime she felt I was deserving. A quick movement straight to my upper arm. Always the same spot. If I didn’t want to play the game she wanted to. A hit. If I forgot to unload the dishwasher. A hit. A hit. A hit. It wasn’t always not warranted. I was a little sister. Annoying, intrusive, arrogant. I called her dumb when she failed English. I snuck into her room to find love notes to taunt her with. I threw a snowball at her as she got out of the car. I kept spying on her and her friends as they played with my guitar hero. I messed with her Webkinz when she left the tab open. No matter what my offense was, she always responded the same: a hit. Our bickering may have taken different forms, but it was a classic sibling rivalry that always saw me getting in trouble. It was easier to hide the remnants of a punch than it was Savannah’s favorite Bratz doll now tattered in the playroom. I felt the hitting was unfair. I never hit her. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. We were four years apart and she stood towering over me. She knew she was the alpha dog. You could see it on her smug face anytime she settled upon punching me. So, the punches weren’t a punishment, they were a placement. They were warnings, reminding me that I was the little sister. Small, weak, indefensible. The incident happened on a day when I had already received three punches before lunch. It was a Saturday, the sun high in the sky peering over the tall pine trees that lined our backyard. A typical Saturday in which Savannah was home usually meant we were playing kickball. Just the two of us. We’d pick out various items to use as bases, usually a stray brick, a piece of wood, or a cluster of pinecones, and we’d have to search for our dusty red kickball. My team of ghost men and I always pitched first, because Savannah preferred kicking. I lined up the pitch, a roll directly down the middle. She wound her leg back and jetted it forward, and instantly made contact with the ball. It shot past all the bases and over our fence into the neighbor’s yard. I followed it with my eyes when it bounced past the trees and further into their yard. She told me it was my job to retrieve the ball, and she automatically gets a homerun. I couldn’t argue with that, it was a fantastic kick. When I got back to the mound, she was passing the home plate, and she proudly announced: “That’s 3-0.” “How is that 3-0? It was the first pitch of the game,” I questioned, already knowing she was bending the rules to ensure her victory (she did the same thing when we played Mario Party by giving herself nine stars before the start of the game). “I had two ghost men in front of me.” “No, you didn’t, you can only use ghost men after you’re on base,” I fired back. “I’m the one that even taught you about ghost men. I know how they work, and I had two in front of me.” She said this statement with a firm finality that meant no further argument would be had. Normally, I let her cheating slide. I never cared about winning, I just liked playing. Normally, I’d exhale all my frustrations and keep the game lighthearted. This was no normal day, however. The earlier punches mixed with my untamable frustration marked that. So, I kept pushing. “You’re just making up rules as you go so you can win. I’m not stupid,” “You are stupid, that’s how ghost men work!” Savannah began to raise her voice. I raised my voice to match hers, “You always cheat because you’re afraid I’m gonna beat you!” “I’m not afraid of you! You should be afraid of me!” She screamed. We were in each other’s faces. And then it came. The sting on my upper arm that still ached from earlier. The placement, the reminder. “See!? What are you gonna do? You’re the little sister!” She yelled. I felt my fists clench and unclench. My face was fixated in a scowl, and every muscle in my body was tensed up. I was a volcano begging to erupt. I was a bomb three seconds away from detonation. I was the little sister. Feeble. Puny. Powerless. No. It was that single word that shot into all the other adjectives floating about in my head. That one-syllable word rose above the others in this desperate moment, triumphing over the other words’ sharp teeth and claws. It duplicated itself over and over and over until it was the only word I knew. “No” was my savior. When the saliva shot out of my mouth and hit her directly in the nose, I hadn’t even realized what I had done. My sister stumbled back, stunned. Her blue eyes were wide as she tried to process what just happened. Then, it clicked. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face with a sob. Savannah bolted from where she stood in front of me to the backdoor. She yanked it open while crying and wiping the spit off her face. A few moments later, my mom and Savannah emerged. My mom looked mad. She asked me point-blank: did I spit on my sister? I nodded. I was scolded by my mom, saying I never, ever am to spit on anyone. I nodded again. My sister stood behind my mom with a tear-stained face and wore a mean look. I think she was more upset that I had stood up to her than anything else. She was dethroned as the alpha dog. Her reign of terror crashed down before her in an instant. I was the little sister. Defiant. Unafraid. Smart. We still bickered like normal siblings do. We fought over who was player 1 and who was player 2, we fought over who got to be Toadette, and we fought over who got to use the trampoline that sat in our backyard. Savannah and I were sure to get on each other’s nerves as the sun was sure to set, but, after that incident, everything changed. She never punched me again.