I can still see myself, five years old. Laying in my bed in my tiny bedroom. I could hear them shouting in the kitchen. I watched a small spider climb up the side of my wardrobe as my dad and my new stepmother fought about money, as they had since the moment she and her two children stepped foot into our house. Our house- my dad's, my brother's and mine. A month earlier I had suddenly acquired two new stepsiblings and a stepmother who saw me as nothing but a burden, like the mildew problem we'd always had in our bathroom that dad figured would go away if he just ignored it for long enough. This was the way I was looked at in her eyes. My room had been divided in two, dad had built a paper thin wall to seperate my new half-room from the half now occupied by the stepsister, eight years old at the time, despite the fact that I had this new life thrown at me and had given up so much for her, I liked her, she was quiet and she had these beautiful eyes, the type of eyes that hid terrible secrets behind them. Perhaps influenced by what I know now, I can remember thinking, even at such a young age that something was wrong with her. Muffled by the sounds of my father and stepmother's argument I could here the faint sobs of stepsister crying out into the night. I ran through the possible causes in my mind, for her distress. I concluded that she was sad about moving, which was perfectly understandable. I was sad that they were there as well. If it wasn't for the noises and conversations I heard through the tiny wall that seperated our beds I would have been left in the dark as to why stepsister chose to move in with her dad at the end of the year. It was apparent to nobody but me that stepbrother, fifteen at the time was doing bad things to stepsister in the night. At only five I was unsure what exactly it was that stepbrother was doing to her. I heard him tell her things like "you know you like this", "you deserve this" and the terrible things he would do to her and her mother if she told. I assumed these awful consequences applied to me as well, I kept stepsisters dark secret and attempted to comfort her as she cried on the other side of the tiny wall after stepbrother had gone. It was a dark secret that we shared between us for many years and I have come to know stepsister very well in last little while. She has helped me heal from my past better than any professional and I will always be grateful to her. Until tomorrow, Alice.