“Listen, young lady. This behavior is unacceptable. You’re out way past curfew and we need to talk. Come home immediately.”

“You do know I’m about to graduate, Mom. Your reign is over. Mary and I both will be gone.”

“Betsy!”

She’s hung up the phone. When I call back it goes to voice mail.

Mary would never have pulled something like this. She did have her secrets, true, but nothing like this. This could bring another embarrassment onto our entire family. Why can’t Betsy be the straight A, popular, normal kid? No, she has to be an artsy loser dating a person she shouldn’t.

Aren’t the adopted kids supposed to be the ones with problems? Yes, they are, and they are good for the waistline. Betsy was the opposite.

I discovered I was pregnant three months after Mary’s adoption. I’d made the mistake of removing my IUD and bam. My pants were tight, and soon my figure disappeared. I thought I’d dodged the pregnancy bullet and could only hope I didn’t have my mom’s penchant for thirty-pound weight gain with pregnancy.

But I did.

When Betsy was born, I wished for the best for both of us. Those wishes included, first, that I would lose the weight quickly and, second, that I’d be blessed with another little angel who I could mold into a successful, beautiful person who loved her mother. I dropped the weight quickly but lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, they say, although lightning does kill about forty people a year in the US, in case you wondered.

Carrying Betsy to term and delivering a healthy baby girl completed our family, I made sure of that with the doctor. Betsy was born with a smattering of my white blond hair, David’s bright blue eyes and extreme colic that didn’t resolve for months. She was sensitive to light, to sound, to touch. She was a fussy eater, a reluctant swimmer when the time came to learn and a clingy kindergartner when it was finally time for her to go to school. In short, she was a struggle.

Betsy was the opposite of vivacious, lovable, beautiful Mary. Mary was my golden child, I suppose, and Betsy had a hard act to follow. I guess you are born the way you are going to be. Life may make you into something worse, of course, especially if your older sister is almost perfect. Jealousy is a terrible emotion.