For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and for these two, their lives have been planned down to a science.
For Wylan Olson, being yourself can be very stressful. Since she was young, her emotions have always been backwards. The e...
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When I got home, I dropped my bags and ran upstairs changing into a t-shirt and some shorts. When I had a horrible day, I found solace in dancing to "Eye of the Tiger" without receiving judgment for playing air guitar and sliding across the hardwood flooring. That day was not like others. I had company right in the middle of a power chord.
Now, I was in Ty's room listening to Kwame read as my sister acted everything out. She knew the story by heart, so she corrected him when he was off pitch or didn't pronounce something correctly. I hadn't trusted him alone with my sister and she insisted that I accompanied my 'friend' to the reading of her favorite story.
Oh, how I loathed the day that my mother had bought Ty the book. The house had gotten dark and neither of my parents was home yet, so we pretty much relaxed with Kwame as a sidepiece to all the fun. My little sister had some kind of unspoken affinity for him, and he had no objections to playing around with Ty, but I did.
It came when she proposed that Kwame and I do a reenactment of fairy tales, and the very first story she wanted to reenact was Sleeping Beauty, which I quickly shot down. "Wyla, why not?" She batted her lashes and crawled into my lap as she tried to wrap her arms around me, which didn't work.
"Because I said no," I was avoiding any kind of awkward situations that Fate could launch my way, and one of the biggest unspoken taboos of the teenaged world was allowing your little sister to talk you into kissing a boy in front of her.
It made for the perfect mentioning at the dinner table that, "Wyla kissed a boy." Even worse, "He was in our house!"
Ty pouted and Kwame proposed that we just color princesses in her plethora of coloring books, which Ty didn't feel like doing so we ended up playing with her Barbie dream house. She had all black dolls and loved trying out different hairstyles on them. That was why some only had half their hair.
"Kwame can you hand me the bows?" I was working on a mannequin whose hair I had braided in the front and put in rollers. He nodded, handing me the hair bows and I looked at the doll he was working on.
I shook my head and he frowned, "What did I do now?"
"Well, you tried to do that," I observed and I clamped my hand over my mouth so I wouldn't giggle. He offered a look of mock hurt as he took the messy ponytails out. "Here you do the hair bows for this one and let me see what I can do." I offered, snatching the doll before he could protest.
Ty glared at me for grabbing her doll by the hair. She wasn't like most six-year-old girls who viewed their dolls as living things with feelings, but she still valued the sovereignty and right to respect that each one had. She was very gentle. At least she was with them.
Kwame begrudgingly took the hair bows and began inserting them in with precision. I began to braid the doll's hair and I asked Ty for the beads, so she stood up and sprinted out of the room. "Be right back!" she yelled and I laughed at the thought.
