by Nick Osaada

Created on: November 02, 2008

It wasn't as though it really made a difference, mused Caroline. After all, hadn't Greta always been the most difficult, arrogant, vain woman on the face of the earth?

She was washing the breakfast dishes as she thought about this, looking out toward the opposite window where Greta's face should've been.

It was like clockwork, every morning. Caroline would be washing the dishes, and there would be Greta, at the adjacent window, doing something glamorous. Usually applying makeup liberally, or modeling the newest addition to her wardrobe with enough flamboyance to put an eye out; yet always with this oh-I-had-no-idea-you-were-watching expression of pure innocence.

But no matter. It was all over now. Greta had moved away, taking her trophy hubby and two-point-five blonde kids with her. All in all, it was like someone had rolled a giant boulder out of Caroline's way.

Except that, where that boulder used to be, there was now rushing, howling air.

She sponged little Kerry's cereal bowl with unnecessary force. It had begun as far back as elementary school.

Greta, with her exotic name and graceful good looks, was immediately crowned unchallenged queen of the classroom. In Fairberg Elementary, a Shirley Temple look-alike who spoke German to boot was straight away endowed with the ability to issue commands and reprimands as her whim dictated. After all, pointed out most of the first grade class, Greta could speak another language, and remembered going to parties in another country.

Caroline, by contrast, had some Native American blood in her and looked anything but Hollywood-worthy with her dark hair, somber black-button eyes and wide, upward-curved lips. She could remember going to ceremonies with her grandfather; ceremonies in which elaborate costumes were worn and even more elaborate stories were related around a firebut no-one in school cared about that.

The worst thing was, never in their thirty-year history together had Greta ever actually out and said that she considered herself Caroline's superior. No, she would always dazzle Caroline with the sweetest of smilesusually after she had just shown her up in some waythat were somehow far worse than open mockery might've been.

But then, hadn't she gone and followed Caroline to high school, just when she thought she had graduated her way out of the Greta Show forever? If that wasn't openly malicious, what was? Plus, guess who ruined Caroline's chances of making the volleyball team? Oh, she had practiced, but Greta was just

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