“Oh, now you want to talk about fair?” Sulli’s humourless laugh cut through the air as her eyes narrowed into slits. She couldn’t believe that after all of this, Frankie was now taking issue with the way Sulli had chosen to paint her betrayal. No, it wasn’t fair. Nothing about where they were now was fair. But at least Frankie still had Wally. Who did Sulli have?
Her sister's rant was delivered like a slap across the face to her, much like every revelation being pushed her way tonight. The old Sulli, pre-Beth’s passing, never backed down from an argument, even when she knew that her limited vocabulary, in complete contrast to Frankie’s own, would always leave her starting off with a handicap. The Sulli of right now, heartbroken and grieving and so lonely she thought she might die from the emptiness of it all, didn’t want to fight back.
Instead, she stood there as all her old childhood gripes were levied against her, the words of a heartbroken sister being spat back at her to try and bring them back to even footing. Like for like, hate for hate, hurt for hurt. Perhaps it would make Frankie feel better if she could somehow form all of Sulli’s old discrepancies into the same shape of what she’d done.
“I was little!” Sulli shouted back, tears burning hotly against the backs of her eyes. “I wanted my sister to spend time with me and she never did. She hated that I wasn’t her. She hated that I wasn’t Gigi or Beth. She hated that I liked Wally too. She hated me.”
The tears spilled down her cheeks now and she didn’t bother wiping them away. Who cared if Frankie saw them now when her big sister had already won? She’d won Wally back from Sulli, and she had left the blonde feeling small enough to be swept away by a slight breeze. There was no leg left for Sulli to stand on because she had done all of those things and not a single one of them had ever meant anything to Frankie, not really.
“It was the only way you’d ever even look at me,” she admitted, her voice small.
Her whole childhood had been filled with bright spots of burning crimson, the colour that Sulli painted Frankie’s anger in her mind’s eye. When she looked back on her youth, there was so much red, because Sulli had done whatever she could to take Frankie’s indifference and turn it into something else. Her sister’s anger had always been more favourable than her disinterest. At least when Frankie was yelling at her, it meant that Sulli still existed. She’d grown up knowing how to get a person’s attention, because she’d had to learn how to do it the hard way.
Now, she had Frankie’s, but it didn’t fill her with the same smug satisfaction as it used to. And Wally? Well, she’d lost Wally’s interest entirely. Once again, Sulli was alone. She didn’t even have Beth.
Growing up, Frankie h-ad never felt welcome. Beth was kind to everyone, so it wasn’t as though she’d ever done anything to undermine Frankie. She was the sort of person that had a degree of patience that Frankie was still yet to experience in anybody else, and when you were as pessimistic and full of doubt as Frankie May was, it was hard not to assume that there was a limit to that kindness. She loved Beth so incredibly fiercely, but there was always a nagging voice in the back of her mind telling her that her younger sister pitied her, that she was only nice to her because nobody else could tolerate her.
Gigi was always so content with her frilly dresses and her makeup, always running off to some local dance or to bat her lashes at whoever she and her friends deemed the most eligible bachelor. She’d never understood why Frankie didn’t get it, and it wasn’t hard to see that she judged her for it. Frankie didn’t wear pretty dresses, and she didn’t care for boys. She wore ripped jeans and mucky sneakers, always either dragging mud into their ma’s pristine kitchen, or hidden away in her bedroom with her nose stuck in a book. Sulli was more to Gigi’s speed, and Frank had always envied it. She’d been so jealous of the way they seemed to match each other’s pace, borrowing each other’s clothes once Sullivan was big enough to fit into Georgiana’s dresses; Gigi was always far more content with telling their younger sibling all about the boys in her class, the two whispering under their breath about fashion and art as they braided each other’s hair. Wally had seemed like the only saving grace throughout Frankie’s childhood. He was the only one that she thought might understand her, who’d seen her heart reflected in the books that she read, her anguish in the words that she wrote.
“I didn’t hate you,” Frankie snapped, infuriated. “I was just as lonely as you were, but none of you ever cared enough to notice!”
It was just like Sulli to always play the victim. Frankie wasn’t proud of herself or what she’d done. She wasn’t happy with how she’d dictated the way that Wally should treat her sister, and she was ashamed at having made Sulli feel so small. But Sullivan always claimed to be the outlier, always insisted that nobody listened to her, yet long before Beth had died when Frankie was spiralling into a pit of despair, depression swallowing her whole as she’d lost any and all passion for writing and books and music and art, who did she have? Who had been there for her? Certainly not Wally, with his false love and unwanted proposals. Not Sulli, who’d been so eager to flee to Paris, away from them all. Gigi had been so wrapped up in her love for Griffin, and then the fallout of his failed proposal, that she never had the time to see Frankie for who she was. And then there was Beth, who had stayed brave and optimistic even in the face of her illness. How could Frankie have ever burdened her with her problems? She couldn’t, and so she’d remained silent.
Frankie stared at Sulli, the silence so palpable that it threatened to swallow the bedroom whole. How could Sulli ever believe that Frankie hadn’t wanted her, that she hadn’t been silently hoping that one day she’d be enough for her beautiful sisters? She’d always known she was different, in her boyish clothes with her scruffy, tangled hair and ragged, half-bitten nails. It was no secret to her that she wasn’t pretty or talented, that she wasn’t the type of girl that could ever make something of herself. It was why she’d left, after all. With Sulli gone, Frankie had fooled herself into believing that she could find herself too. Instead, she’d returned home with two fresh wounds, her heart aching from the loss of both Evan and Beth, and with nobody to confide in.
“I always wanted you to be my friend. I never once thought I was somebody worthy of your respect, or Gigi’s, or even Ma’s,” Frankie admitted, feebly. All of her fight had left her, and she knew it wasn’t nearly enough to earn Sulli’s forgiveness, but it was all she had.
