Eadey the Pest

      Ayva had good reason to hate Eadey; the little yellow Xweetok was that most cardinal of sins: annoying. Eadey was loud, and excitable, and gullible, and incendiary, and very, very stupid.

      Their mother never called her stupid of course, it was always “unique” or “special” or “learns differently”, but as far as Ayva was concerned, those were all just nice ways of saying her sister was as dumb as a bag of rocks.

      Indeed, at this moment, while Ayva stood in the bathroom with her forepaws on the countertop to see herself in the mirror, she could hear Eadey screaming the house down in her room.

      “No no no no no no! I won’t go I won’t! You can’t make me! I’m not going! No!”

      Ayva sighed as she combed out her silky green fur collar. It was like this every morning. Trying to get Eadey ready for school was like pulling teeth without Novocaine; a long, painful process in which someone usually wound up getting bitten, most frequently their long-suffering mother.

      “Eadey honey, please, you have to go, you have that test today,” Wren pleaded over the shrieking. This only caused the howls to get louder.

      As she exited the bathroom and passed her sister’s bedroom, Ayva saw Eadey clinging to the far edge of her mattress while the human woman attempted to drag her off it by her back legs. The sight would have been comical if it weren’t so ear-splitting.

      Sniffing with self-importance, Ayva looked away from the scene and returned to her own room to pack her backpack. She would never degrade herself by making such a fuss about something as simple as school, it wasn’t her fault her sister was ineducable.

      Eadey was, as the school counsellor put it, “globally academically delayed”. That was fancy professional language for dyslexic, terrible at math, had illegible handwriting, and couldn’t tell Terror Mountain from the Lost Desert on a map. Essentially, if it had to do with school, Eadey couldn’t do it.

      As her sister continued screaming, Ayva rolled her eyes. Eadey was in a special class with a decelerated learning pace and a personal aide to help her learn, and she still acted like she was dying every weekday morning. She had it so easy, and still had the nerve to complain.

      About halfway through breakfast, Ayva heard the screaming stop. Some ten minutes later, Wren appeared, looking frazzled. She was followed by a downtrodden Eady, whose face was streaked with tears, her fur matted and sticking up at odd angles.

      “What did you bribe her with this time?” Ayva asked snidely as she shovelled cereal into her mouth.

      “Ayva don’t start,” Wren said, pulling a bowl from the cabinet and putting it in front of Eadey.

      “Mommy said she’d buy me ice cream if I took that test today,” Eadey sniffled.

      Ayva grit her teeth, it wasn’t fair. She actually had to get good grades on her tests to be rewarded, but all Eadey had to do was take them. She’d seen what qualified as a test in Eadey’s class too. It was all tracing letters and simple addition and subtraction, the sort of thing kids half her age could do.

      “What kind of cereal do you want honey?” Wren asked from across the kitchen.

      “The one in the yellow box please,” Eadey said.

      Ayva smirked. “The one in the yellow box? What’s it called?”

      Eadey scowled, “You know I can’t pron… prue… say the word good,” she said hotly.

      “The word you’re looking for is “pronounce”, and it’s not “good”, it’s “well”, honestly, don’t they teach you anything in that slow class of yours?” Ayva asked.

      Eadey snatched up her glass of orange juice and tossed it in Ayva’s face before jumping down from the table and running from the room.

      “Mom she just threw juice all over me!” Ayva shrieked, wiping the stinging liquid from her eyes.

      “I’d have thrown juice at you too if you picked on me like that,” Wren said, tossing a dish towel at Ayva. “Clean that up, I have to go and coax your sister downstairs… again.”

      Angrily Ayva mopped up the spilt juice as hastily as she could before going back upstairs to wash the sticky liquid from her fur. It was already starting to dry and get spiky.

      On her way to the bathroom, Ayva paused outside Eadey’s closed bedroom door. She could hear her sister crying on the other side.

      “She’s horrible!” Eadey wailed, “why is she so mean all the time? Why did I have to be born this way? Why can’t I be smart like Ayva?”

      Ayva smirked to herself, but froze when she heard her mother’s reply.

      “Oh Eades, I know it’s hard, but you’re very smart in your own way, you’re so good at drawing and sculpting, and nobody has a better sense of direction that you. There are plenty of things you can do that Ayva can’t, you don’t have to be smart in the same ways.”

      Ayva snorted. Her sister? Smart? Please. Drawing and sculpting weren’t real skills, and nobody ever got a job because they had a good sense of direction. Wren was just trying to make Eadey feel better about her abominable lack of talent. Ayva had heard enough; she finished making her way to the bathroom, smug in the knowledge that she would never have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find things she could claim to be good at.

      Ayva turned on the shower and tested the temperature before stepping under the spray. The warm droplets soaked her fur and weighed down her thick fluffy tail.

      She didn’t have long to enjoy herself though, for five minutes later there was a pounding on the door. “Ayva hurry up, you’re going to be late!” Wren called.

      Ayva grit her teeth with annoyance. If obnoxious Eadey hadn’t thrown juice at her in the first place, she wouldn’t have had to shower for the second time that morning. This was all Eadey’s fault.

      Shivering, Ayva turned off the water and shook out her fur. She squeezed the water from her tail and wrapped herself in a towel. She was still drying off when there came another bang on the door.

      “Ayva you’d better finish up, we’re leaving!” Wren said.

      Ayva sighed and hung up her towel. She was still damp, and the walk to school was going to be unpleasant. She stepped out of the bathroom and found Eadey headed for the stairs, wearing her backpack.

      Eadey glanced at her briefly, then looked pointedly away, ignoring her. If that was how she wanted it, two could play at that game.

      Ayva pushed past her on the stair, deliberately knocking her into the bannister. “Watch where you’re going ignoramus,” she snapped. Eadey said nothing.

      The walk to school was made in stony silence, and when they arrived at the school gates, Ayva ran off before her mother had a chance to say goodbye. She always tried to do her best to avoid being seen associating with Eadey, or “the weirdo in the slow class” as she was known. Most of her classmates didn’t even know they were sisters, and Ayva tried to keep it that way.

      Risking a glance back, Ayva saw a tall red Zafara crossing the lawn towards Eadey and Wren. Mr. Jacobs, Eadey’s classroom aide, always came out every morning to walk Eadey back to class.

      Ayva was glad she had more freedom than that. She’d be so humiliated to be seen being escorted to her classroom by a teacher, like a baby who couldn’t be trusted to walk by herself.

      Suddenly a voice behind her made Ayva jump. “Hey Ayva, what’cha lookin’ at?”

      Ayva turned around and saw Donny the blue Shoyru approaching her. “Oh, hey Donny,” she said, “I was just thinking I’m glad I’m not like that Eadey weirdo, imagine having to be walked to class by your teacher every morning, talk about embarrassing.”

      Donny followed her gaze across the lawn to where Eadey and Mr. Jacobs were standing with Wren. “Yeah, that would stink,” he agreed, “c’mon, we don’t wanna be late.” He turned and walked up the steps into the building, leaving Ayva outside, wondering what her mother and sister were talking about with Mr. Jacobs.

     ….

      The day passed quickly, and soon enough Ayva found herself outside by the front gates again, weighed down by her backpack full of textbooks, each required for a different homework assignment she’d been given.

      It wasn’t long before Ayva spotted Eadey and Mr. Jacobs making their way back across the grass towards her. She glanced around uneasily, hoping no one else was watching and that their mother would show up soon. She also noted with no small amount of jealousy how light and empty Eadey’s backpack looked. Eadey very rarely got homework, and when she did, it was all baby stuff that took ten minutes, or at least it should, if Eadey would just sit down and do it. This rarely happened though, and homework time frequently ended up being just as long and drawn-out a battle as the mornings were.

      Wren arrived very shortly after, and Mr. Jacobs smiled at her. “Eadey had a good day today,” he said, and Eadey smiled proudly. “She did a great job following directions, and we took our letters test today. We’re still working on a few of them, but Eadey tried very hard and stuck with it, I’m very proud of her. She has a little bit of homework tonight,” Mr. Jacobs continued, and Eadey’s face fell. “We’re working on M sounds right now, and she has a paragraph to read, and I’d like her to go through and circle all the words that have the M sound in them.”

      “It’s too hard!” Eadey whined as tears filled her eyes. Ayva wanted to punch her.

      “It’s okay Eadey,” Mr. Jacobs said, “it’s the same thing we worked on in class today, and you did a really good job, remember? And if it really is too much, you can leave it for tonight and we can look at it together tomorrow.”

      Eadey looked down and her ears drooped. Ayva was livid. Her teacher never let her get away with not doing her homework, Mrs. Richards would never dream of letting her finish it in class the next day. It wasn’t fair.

      “Okay kiddos, let’s head home, thanks for the update Mr. Jacobs, we’ll do our best on the homework, won’t we Eadey?” she said encouragingly.

      “I took my test, you said I could have ice cream,” Eadey said stubbornly, still not looking up.

      “You’re right, I did. I’m very proud of how hard you worked today, good job,” Wren said, stroking Eadey’s fuzzy head.

      “What about me?” Ayva demanded, “I worked hard too! And I have way more homework than circling words in one stupid paragraph!”

      “Yes Ayva, you can have ice cream too,” Wren said, “we’ll stop at the general store on the way home.”

      As they walked down Neopia Central’s crowded cobblestone streets, Wren asked, “So what did you girls do at school today?”

      Ayva sighed, “I had a spelling test, and we started our history unit on ancient Qasala.”

      “We played Cheat to work on our number skills,” Eadey said, “I beat my group twice in a row!”

      “Great job Eadey, I’m proud of you!” Wren said. “Ayva, how did your spelling test go?”

      Ayva scowled, jealousy burning within her once more. She never got to play card games in class. “Fine,” she snapped, picking up her pace. Playing games, getting ice cream just for taking tests, easy baby homework, Eadey had no idea how lucky she was.

      They arrived at the general store, and Eadey bounded in excitedly, peering at the tubs of ice cream behind the glass counter. “Do they have mint chocolate chip?” she asked.

      Ayva rolled her eyes, “It’s right there dummy, the very first one on the left, there’s a big sign right in front of it.”

      Eadey’s ears drooped and her lower lip wobbled. “You don’t have to be so mean,” she whimpered quietly.

      Wren glared at Ayva, “Ayva stop picking on your sister right now or I’ll change my mind about that ice cream, understand?” she said coldly.

      Ayva looked away angrily, but nodded once. “Sorry,” she muttered.

      They left the shop with their cones and made their way the rest of the way home in relative quiet.

      As soon as they entered the house, Wren said, “Okay Eadey, go ahead and finish your ice cream, then I’ll help you with your homework, all right? Let’s see how fast we can get it done tonight.”

      “But I’m tired!” Eadey whined, “I’ve been at school all day and my brain hurts! Can’t I just do it in class with Mr. Jacobs tomorrow?”

      “Quit whining you baby!” Ayva snapped, “I’ve got way more stuff to do than you and you don’t see me complaining!”

      “All right that’s enough!” Wren said angrily, “Ayva, go upstairs and do your homework and let me deal with this.”

      “But I – ”

      “Now!” Wren shouted. Ayva scurried upstairs with her backpack without another word, seething the whole way.

      She shut herself in her bedroom, but could still hear Eadey crying downstairs. Her sister made her so angry sometimes! Ayva huffed in annoyance as she pulled her heavy math textbook from her backpack and dropped it onto her desk. She flipped it open to the right chapter and found where she’d left off that afternoon.

      Half an hour later, Ayva had finished her math and was getting ready to start her history. She had just started skimming over her notes from that morning when she heard a knock on her door, and her mother came in, holding a large pile of textbooks in her arms.

      “Did Eadey finish her homework?” Ayva asked flatly, not looking up.

      “Yes she did,” Wren said. “Ayva, I want to show you something.”

      “I have to finish this,” Ayva replied, flipping a page in her notebook.

      “It’ll only take a minute,” Wren said, placing one of the textbooks on the desk, blocking Ayva’s work.

      “What’s this?” Ayva asked, looking at the book. It was a college calculus textbook, covered with strange symbols Ayva didn’t understand.

      “It’s the textbook I used when I went to university,” Wren said, opening it to the first chapter. “Here, I want you to do these problems,” she pointed to several equations on the page.

      Ayva couldn’t understand any of it. “I can’t do that, it’s way too hard,” she said.

      Wren waited for Ayva to realize what she’d said, and when she got no response, she replied, “That’s exactly what Eadey says whenever she’s faced with math problems, and you always tell her how stupid she is because of it.”

      Ayva swallowed, “But that’s different, she can’t do stuff that’s supposed to be easy for a kid her age, I’m only ten, I’m not supposed to know how to do calculus yet.”

      Wren sighed, “Eadey’s brain works differently than yours. Just because she’s at an age where she should be able to do the things you can do, doesn’t mean her brain is able to keep up. She’s smart in other ways, she’s amazing at everything involving pictures, shapes, patterns, things like that. It’s why she can draw and sculpt way better than you or I, it’s what her brain was designed to do. Here, try to read this,” Wren handed Ayva another textbook, this one on art.

      Ayva flipped it open to the first page and skimmed it. A lot of the words were too big for her to understand, or even guess at pronouncing, and all the pictures were captioned with expressions she didn’t know the meaning of. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

      “Eadey understood it,” Wren said simply.

      Ayva stared at her mother. “She did not!” she snapped, “there’s no way Eadey read this and understood what it was talking about!”

      “I read it to her, and she understood exactly what it was talking about. She’s in her room making a copy of that sculpture right now,” Wren pointed to the strange, abstract twisting lump of clay pictured on the page.

      “So what? It’s just a weird statue, it doesn’t even look like anything, anyone could make that,” Ayva said hotly.

      “It’s a famous piece by a very well-known and wealthy artist in Altador,” Wren said, “some of his work has been commissioned by the king himself.”

      Ayva paused and considered this. “Really?” she asked quietly, in spite of herself.

      Wren nodded. “Let’s go and see how your sister is doing,” she said, holding out a hand to Ayva.

      Ayva took it and rose from her chair, her curiosity piqued. Could her useless sister really be as good an artist as this famous person who made art for a king? She shook her head and smirked to herself, of course not, the idea was absurd.

      Wren knocked on Eadey’s bedroom door and pushed it open. “Is it okay if I show Ayva what you’re working on?” she asked.

      Eadey looked up from her desk and scowled, covering her work with her paws. “She’ll just laugh at me,” she said.

      “No I won’t,” Ayva blurted. Eadey looked surprised, but eventually lowered her hands. Ayva got closer and swallowed a gasp. The lump of clay had twisted and arced under her sister’s patient plying, and was now a perfect replica of the picture in the book. “Did… did you really make that?” Ayva asked quietly.

      Eadey nodded. “Mommy said I’d be good at it,” she said, then nervously she added, “do you like it?”

      Ayva paused, then nodded. She had never had cause to praise anything her sister had done up until now, but even she could not deny that what she was seeing was impressive. “Yeah… I do,” she said.

      Eadey smiled broadly, “Really?” she asked, “you do?”

      Ayva nodded again, then thought back to that impossible calculus textbook and all those strange meaningless symbols. She thought for the first time about how frustrating it must be to have a brain like Eadey’s, to want so much to understand the work but to not be able to. “I… I’m sorry I made fun of you Eadey,” Ayva said at last, “Mom showed me some stuff and I, I guess I know now that you’re not stupid, you just… don’t learn stuff the same way I do. I’ll try to be nicer from now on, okay?”

      For a moment it looked like Eadey might cry, then she threw her muddy paws over her sister’s shoulders and hugged her tightly.

      “Okay okay that’s enough,” Ayva said quickly, pushing her away, “one step at a time.”

      …..

      The next morning, Ayva awoke to the usual screams of torture denoting that her sister was not about to go quietly to school again, and felt an instinctive pang of annoyance. As it flashed through her though, she paused and thought about the previous night. She rolled over and glanced at the calculus textbook that still sat on her desk. Ayva had to admit that she wouldn’t want to go to school if everything was going to be that hard either. She got up and headed for the bathroom, for once deciding not to say anything to Eadey about how difficult she was being.

      At breakfast, Ayva said nothing to her sister when Eadey asked for “the purple jam” to go on her toast, and wondered what it must be like not to be able to read such simple things as labels. She remembered the words in the art textbook, how so many of them just looked like long jumbled strings of letters with no meaning. It had been immensely frustrating trying to figure out what they said.

      As they arrived at school that morning, Ayva ran off to her class before Mr. Jacobs arrived as usual, but couldn’t help but cast a glance back at Eadey, wondering for the first time what her day was going to be like.

      That afternoon at recess, Ayva was playing kickball with some of her classmates, when suddenly she heard jeering not far away.

      “what’s’a matter little freak? Can’t read it?” a voice demanded. Ayva looked around and spotted a green Lupe shoving a textbook in Eadey’s face. Eadey looked close to tears.

      “L-leave me alone!” the little Xweetok spat, backing away.

      “Aw is the baby gonna cry?” the Lupe demanded, cackling.

      Ayva bit her lip uncertainly. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t want anyone to associate her with her sister in any way, but Eadey needed help. Sighing, she left her place in line behind her teammates and marched up to the Lupe. “You leave my sister alone!” she shouted.

      The Lupe turned and smirked at her with surprise. “This little weirdo is your sister? Does that mean you’re in the stupid class too?”

      “No I’m not, but Eadey isn’t stupid, she’s way smarter than you!” Ayva said hotly, inserting herself between her sister and the bully.

      Suddenly one of the teachers on recess duty came walking up. “Is everything okay over here kids?” the red Pteri asked.

      “This jerk was picking on my sister!” Ayva said angrily, “he called her stupid!”

      “Well she is!” the Lupe blurted, “she can’t even read!”

      “Well we’ll just see what the principal has to say about this,” the teacher said coolly, “come with me please.” Without giving the Lupe time to protest, she escorted him away.

      Eadey looked uncertainly at Ayva. “Thanks for helping me,” she murmured awkwardly.

      “No problem,” Ayva said.

      “So… does this mean, we’re… like… friends now?” Eadey asked.

      Ayva found herself smiling. “We’re more than that,” she said, “we’re sisters.”

     The End.