Adios Faith I was excited but a little nervous for Faith to leave and start the next chapter of her life in Boston. I could not wait to be an only child for once in my life and finally have some peace and quiet. However at the same time I never had to be alone, faith was always there for me when I needed her the most or when I just did not want to be alone. Before faith left I never spent much time alone, she would take me to school and back, help me with homework, cook when my mom wasn’t feeling well, and pretty much anything else my mother or I needed as she was working her way through a nasty divorce with my father. Faith, a five foot two, fair-faced young woman with dark brown hair, that curled like the current during a high tide, was my rock. I still remember the day that I brought her suitcases down the stairs and loaded them in my baby, a 2014 jet-black Toyota Tacoma sitting on 27 inch wheels with some pine straw and yard clippings leftover from work in the bed. I do not cry often but I had to bite my lip to keep the tears back as my mother and I watched my father and my sister drive away. My mother on the other hand looked like she had just been through the rapids at WhiteWater the way she was crying, I had to promise her I would make cookies and watch movies with her just to make her stop. That night we got a call from my sister, clearly exhausted and stressed out of her mind but I could tell she was excited about the beginning of her freshman year at Northeastern University. The move in had gone well although some of the things she ordered for her room had not arrived. She told us that the next day she would be meeting her roommate and going to target to fill the rest of her tiny dorm room. When faith and I were young children we did not like each other, she would bully me by calling me names, taking my things, or changing the channel while I was peacefully watching something on tv. We constantly fought and put our parents through hell with our arguments. As we both grew older and more mature we started to become closer, especially when I graduated from my old school High Meadows and moved to The Galloway School. The more time we spent together and the more maturing we both did, the closer we got as friends. Our bond has always been based on the fact that we are kin and have to spend time with each other, in other words if we were not related and met each other we would probably not get along well. Her interests include theater, debate, science, art, she acted in most of the theater productions at Galloway and she even created her own independent study course about genetics or maybe genetic counseling, whatever it was I did not understand it. I could not be more different, I like sports, spending time with my friends, and the great outdoors. However we still spent lots of time together, because she is 3 years my senior she got her driver’s licence long before me so she acted as my personal chauffeur for several years. This also made our bond stronger because we used to go out and get ice cream, go out and mess around in target or simply just go for a drive. I remember one time particular that we crept out of the house late at night, hoping that our dad would not wake up and try to come with us and we drove off to pick up our friend Venture and grab some ice cream. The garage door was our only obstacle, our alarm system wasn’t on but the door made the sound of a plane taking off. We quickly jumped in the car taking our usual positions; faith driving and I rode shotgun, even though I knew I would have to get in the back once we got Venture. With no calls or texts from my dad we rolled the windows down and sped out of our neighborhood blasting our favorite music: old Childish Gambino and Kanye West. I remember these memories with my sister so clearly because I enjoyed our time together so much, we always got along during these after-hours excursions. But at the end of the day she had a 4.0+ GPA as an honor student and I’ve met with the principal more than once. However nothing brought us closer than our parents divorce, our bond was starting to form when they shocked our world. One quiet night at our old house in Roswell, our childhood home where I spent countless hours playing basketball, baseball and lacrosse as well as roaming the acre of thick woods with my English labrador named Teddy. After my sister and I had overheard our parents fighting for weeks and discovered that my father had leased a townhouse they told us that they had to split up. Everyone was broken to pieces and for the next 2 years Faith and I only had each other. Our once whole and happy family was now like the pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle. Dealing with my parents divorce would have been much harder without my sister; without her help packing my things when we had to move 3 times in 18 months or driving me 40 minutes one way to the other parent’s house because I forgot my baseball cleats, I would have been lost. Fast forward several years and faith is studying abroad in Greece and working in a professional lab. College and living on her own in the incredibly large city of Boston has brought out a great level of maturity and I can see how she has developed from someone I used to call “my second mother” (which my real mother hated) into a fine adult and productive member of society. I know that when she left for school she was worried about me being alone and not having anyone but I have surrounded myself with great friends and my parents have cooled off some. I hope that Faith understands the impact of her actions and how important she was and still is to me.