by Katie Henry
Charlotte has said things that were dismissive, or flippant, or even mean, but she’s never once said anything stupid. “What?”
“I feel like the only way people pay any attention to me at all,” she says, “is if I make them.”
Even though I don’t want to admit I understand, I do. Deep down in my bones, I do. Charlotte doesn’t just want to be seen. She’s fighting to be heard, too. Just like I am.
“You always got attention because you were so cute, you know?” she says. “From birth, which is weird, because most babies look like angry aliens. And then when we got older, all anyone at parties, at school ever said to me was ‘Your little sister’s so adorable.’” She shrugs. “And what was I going to say? You were.”
“But who cares, Charlotte?” I roll my eyes. She was editor in chief of the paper, senior-class vice president, the goddamn salutatorian—next to that, who cares if I was a cute kid?
“I cared,” she says. “How could I not? I was always standing next to you. I was always being judged against you, and I was never, ever going to measure up.”
“What do you think it was like for me?” I ask her. “Being two years behind you, having every teacher already know you? ‘Oh, you’re Charlotte’s sister.’ So excited. So hoping for another Charlotte.”
“Peter’s older than you, too,” she points out.
“Yeah,” I say. “They were not hoping for another Peter.”
We both laugh. And then I keep going.
“But then I wasn’t you. I wasn’t as smart, and didn’t work as hard, and needed extra help all the time and—” I swallow. “I was never going to measure up to you, either.”
We were judged against each other from the time we were kids. Both of us, not just me. And we both feel so shitty because of that judgment, not just me. Charlotte never felt pretty enough, just like I never felt smart or charming or approachable enough, and it wasn’t because of anything we did to each other. We didn’t do anything except exist.
“It’s weird, going to college,” Charlotte says abruptly. “You’ll see when you go.”
I already feel like I’m there, half the time. High school feels like a doctor’s waiting room, beige and boring. Or maybe it feels like purgatory. A vast nothingness, with only the promise of something beautiful ahead. The more hours I spend with Mo and Will and Jonah, the more I forget I’m sixteen. The more I lie to them—to myself—the less it seems like a lie at all.
“Don’t you like Vassar?” I ask Charlotte, not sure where she’s going with this. “It seemed like you did.”
“No, it’s great,” she says. “But it’s weird. Because you spend eighteen years being part of a family. You go to school, yeah, but you come back to the same place every night, and . . .” She trails off, searching. “Even if it’s not perfect, it’s simple. It’s—”
“Familiar,” I say. It’s like I finally realize what that word is supposed to mean.
“Right.” She turns and stares out the window. “But when you go to college, you’re totally disconnected from that. You’re not part of a family, not like you were, anyway. You move around this totally new world as one person, this . . . singular unit.”
“Yourself,” I say softly.
She looks back to me. “And that’s the weird part. When you’re all on your own, you suddenly have to figure out what it even means. To be yourself. Not somebody’s daughter or sister or some part of a family but you. Just . . .” She shakes her head. “. . . you.”
I hesitate for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?”
She puts her hands up in mock surrender. “Jeez, sorry I—”
“I don’t mind,” I interrupt her. And I can admit—it feels good. Getting control of the conversation. Making sure I get to finish my thought, instead of waiting for someone to give me permission. “But you don’t do something without a reason. You’re . . . intentional like that.”
“You know me so well.”
She’s being sarcastic, but I’m not. “You’re my sister,” I say. “Of course I do.”
Charlotte chews on the inside of her mouth for a moment before she speaks again.
“Another thing that’s weird about college,” she says. “It makes you want things. New things.”
“Like a fake ID?”
Charlotte blinks in surprise at the second joke she’s ever heard me tell but recovers fast. “Yes, but I took care of that during orientation.”
She’s pretty quick. She’d probably be good at improv.
“So, then—” I prompt her.
“You get a new perspective is what I’m saying.” She looks down at my bedspread. “You watch your weird roommate with her weird sisters, and even though they’re all so annoying you could kill them . . .” She looks back at me. “You sort of wish you had that, too.”
I’ve spent my whole life thinking Charlotte despised me. Or, at the very least, resented me. But it was more complicated than that, and neither of us knew how to talk about it. So we just never talked at all.
“Maybe we could,” I offer. “Maybe it could—”
“I don’t mean right away or anything,” she jumps in, and instead of seeing her wresting away the conversation, all I hear is the nervousness in her voice. “I’m not expecting, like, miracles—”
“Will you come to a bar with me tonight?” I blurt out.
“Uh,” she says. “What?”
“Like not just any bar, a specific bar. It’s on Wells Street.”
“Did you hit your head and forget you’re sixteen?”
“It’s an eighteen-and-over event.”
“Yeah, again, you’re sixteen.”
“They’re not going to card me.”
“Why?”
“I was sort of . . . invited.”
“Invited?” She pauses. “What is this?”
“It’s not bad. It’s—”
“Because if some guy told you he’s a model scout, that’s a scam.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not a—”
“And if he told you he needs you to help him with a wire transfer, that’s a scam—”
“Duh, Charlotte.”
“And if he told you he knows this great little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that doesn’t show up on Google—”
“Let me guess, it’s a scam?”
“No. You’re going to wake up in a bathtub in Englewood minus a kidney.”
“It’s a comedy show,” I tell her. “Stand-up. No model scouts or missing kidneys, just jokes. And probably a gross bathroom. But mostly jokes.”
She makes an impatient sound and starts to rise. “It’s nice of you to invite me, but I’m not really into stand-up.”
I close my eyes, swallow my doubt, and tell her the truth. “Not even if I’m the one . . . standing up?”
It’s a miracle. After all these years, I’ve finally found a way to make my sister quiet. The secret ingredient is . . . sheer shock.
“No,” she says finally. “No way.”
“Yes.”
“But—you’re not even funny!”
“You’d make a great heckler, Charlotte.”
She’s silent again. For a long time. A couple more seconds and I might have to call 911.
“Do Mom and Dad know?” she asks.
It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that even if Izzy doesn’t actually have parents, Isabel does. And if they found out what I’ve been doing since January, my very real parents would flip their very real shit.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I think my mousy little sister was replaced by a lizard person.”
“Pod person.”
“What?”
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” I say, thinking back to the rainy day I watched the movie with Alex. “That’s what you’re thinking of, but it’s pod people, not lizard—” I shake my head. “Please come. I really need you to come.”
“You want me to come watch you?”
“I have to bring people, or they won’
t let me go up.”
“Oh,” she says, and it’s curt. Almost disappointed. Almost like Charlotte wants to be there. Or maybe it’s more than that. She wants me to want her there.
“Why are you asking me, anyway?” she continues. “Why not one of your friends? Your boyfriend?”
“You’re my sister.”
“Thank you, I’m aware.”
“You’re my family,” I say. “I can’t tell Mom or Dad, but . . . I can tell you.”
Another long silence. I’m going to have to remember this trick.
“Okay.”
Now it’s my turn to be shocked. “What—okay, what does ‘okay’ mean—”
“It means text me the address.”
“So you’ll come?”
“No, I just want the address for when I have to report you missing—yes, obviously, I’m coming.”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” I say, flinging my arms around her and ignoring her attempts to shove me off. “You are the greatest sister in the entire world. The known universe. I’m sorry for every bad thought I’ve ever had about you.”
She peels herself out of the hug. “Oh my God.”
“And that time I peed on your teddy bear when I was three.”
“I’m leaving now.”
The problem with being a chronically late person is everyone assumes it’s your fault, even if you got on the exact right bus at the exact right time, and then that bus ran into the exact wrong traffic.
“Ridiculous,” the lady in the seat next to me mumbles.
Everyone on the bus looks like they’re about ten seconds from a French Revolution–style riot. Minus the beheading.
“Damn, man, what’s going on?” a young guy at the back yells up to the driver. “Jesus, let’s move.”
Maybe I spoke too soon.
I check my phone for the third time in two minutes, watching the seconds tick down. If I got off right here and ran, I could still make it mostly on time. I get up from my seat and walk to the front.
“Hi,” I say. The driver ignores me. “Um—”
“Traffic,” he says curtly. “I’ve got no more information than you do.”
I scan the long line of unmoved cars in front of us. “Can I get off here?”
“This isn’t a stop.”
Well, we haven’t moved in forever, I want to say. So this isn’t a bus; it’s a prison on wheels.
“I know, but can I please just get off?” I beg.
“Can we all get off?” a man in one of the front seats agrees.
“This isn’t a stop!” the driver repeats.
“We’ve been stopped for ten minutes,” another woman yells. “It’s a stop now.”
The driver swears under his breath and opens the back doors. “Get off if you want to get off, goddamn.”
“Thank you,” I whisper to him.
If you get hit by a car, I’m telling my supervisors you incited a riot, his eyes seem to say.
I jump off the bus almost giddy it worked, and I’m not stuck, and I might actually make it on time. I take exactly one step before I realize I’m going in the wrong direction, spin around to correct myself—and crash right into a light pole.
“Ow,” I yell, clutching at my cheekbone. “Fucking shit.”
An old woman walking past me glares. “You don’t have to swear.”
“Yeah, well—you don’t have to talk!” I shout after her.
I gingerly pull my hand away. No blood. And no broken bones, I don’t think. But the whole left side of my face is throbbing, and when I check myself out in my phone camera, it’s bright red, too. If I know my own body after sixteen years, there’s going to be a giant bruise in about two hours.
And I’m totally out of time to fix it.
This place looks like a TV show set. Or more accurately, it looks like every comedy club I’ve ever seen in a movie. A real stage, smooth floorboards with nails that aren’t trying to escape this mortal coil. Tables on multiple levels, and judging by the girl by the bar tying on her half apron, waitress service. An honest-to-God redbrick wall, in a building that isn’t otherwise made of red brick.
“Oh, damn,” Mo says when I walk in the door, ten minutes later than we planned to meet here. “Who did you fight?”
“A light pole.”
“I think it won.”
“Is it really bad?”
“No,” she lies. “It’s fine.”
“Oh my God,” I say, digging around in my bag for a mirror. “Oh my God.”
“You can joke about it,” she suggests. “Maybe you could open with that.”
“That’s not my opener!”
“I’m suggesting you improvise.”
“You said everyone hates improv!”
“I said everyone hates improv shows.” She sighs and grabs my hand. “Come on. I’ll fix it.”
Mo drags me backstage and into a little alcove with a single chair, a streaky mirror, and a vanity table covered in drug store makeup of every kind and every color, most of them half-used and a bit dusty-looking.
“We don’t know where any of that’s been,” I protest. “I’ll get scabies.”
“Look, you can go out as you are, or you can risk scabies.”
I sigh and plop down in the chair. “Scabies.”
Mo snorts and selects a foundation.
“Kind of fucked up,” she muses as she pats it on my face with surprising gentleness and ease. “Actively choosing skin disease. I’ve seen guys go on looking like absolute shit. Way worse than this.”
“I don’t want people judging me.”
She stops. “For what?”
“I don’t know.” I bite my lip. “Maybe I just don’t want them noticing me.”
“Izzy. You’re onstage. That’s the point.”
“Noticing me for the wrong things.”
“There are worse things than being seen,” Mo says. “Even if it’s scary.”
She steps away from me and surveys my face.
“How is it?” I ask.
“Not as bad.” She grabs a different bottle from the table and leans in again. “But I think this one might work better.”
It’s cool on my skin, whatever it is. Scabies or not. This feels almost like when I was younger, and my mom helped me put on her borrowed makeup, before something special.
“How do you know how to do this?” I ask Mo.
“Do what?”
“Makeup.”
“So just because I own a bow tie means I can’t do makeup?”
“A bow tie? You own like twenty bow ties—”
“My consumerism aside,” she says with an eye roll.
“You don’t wear any, do you?”
“Nothing but sunscreen and ChapStick.”
“Then why’d you learn how—”
“My mom.” She snaps the foundation shut. “I did it for my mom.”
“You wore it for her?”
“No. I did it for her.” Mo leans against the table. “When I was in my senior year of high school, she got diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”
Oh. Oh, no.
“Mo,” I breathe out. “Oh my God.”
“You’re not supposed to get it that young, but she did.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
“Basically what happens is all the cells making dopamine—the stuff that makes you happy, you know?—they die,” Mo continues, as if she hasn’t heard me at all. “And when that happens, it damages your nervous system, which messes with the way you walk and talk and think. And it’s degenerative, so—” Mo swallows. “You stop being able to do the things you used to. Slowly, not all at once. She had trouble walking, she had trouble swallowing, and eventually she had trouble putting on her makeup. Her hands spasmed too much. And that made her feel so awful, she never wanted to leave the house. And at first I was like, that’s so messed up. That she feels like she’s not worth anything if she’s not pretty. She’s sick! Who cares about mascara?
“But then I realized
I was being unfair. Who cares? She cares. However I might feel about it, putting on lipstick and having her eyeliner on point makes her feel good. It makes her normal. So . . . I learned how to do it. Her entire ten-step morning routine, I learned how and did it for her every morning before school. And she fell a lot, so I learned how to cover up bruises, too.” She tilts her head and scans my face. “I did get pretty good at it, I’ve got to say.”
“Who does it now that you’re gone?”
“My dad. He’s not as good. She says so all the time, on the phone. Though the phone is getting harder.”
“You must miss them.”
“Yeah, I do. Way more than I thought I would. I mean, I always wanted to go away for school. When I was like eight, I asked if I could go to boarding school.”
“Wow. You wanted out.”
“No,” she laughs. “I was just always independent like that. Ready for life to start. I figured, why wait? Anyway, they didn’t even let me go to sleepovers. I don’t know why I tried.” She sighs. “I never thought I’d be homesick. I wasn’t at all, my first year. I’d wake up in the morning, in my dorm, and I’d be so happy I was there. And then I’d feel so guilty, for feeling happy.”
“Why?”
“Because I abandoned her. And my dad.”
“You went to college.”
“I could have gone closer. I didn’t.”
“But it’s not like you wanted to leave her.”
“What if I did?” she asks. Then pauses. “I mean, I’m not saying that’s why I chose Chicago. I chose it because it was the best school I got into. But what if a part of me was . . . relieved? To know I’d be so far, I wouldn’t have to think about it every second of every day. I’d be almost normal again. Do you think—would that make me a horrible person?”
“No,” I tell her, because I don’t. Even if I don’t understand what that feels like, I know she could never be a horrible person. “I don’t think so.”
“Well.” She rubs at her nose. “Sometimes I do.”
Just then, there’s a knock on the door. Mo clears her throat.
“Who is it?” she calls out.
There’s a pause. “Candygram.”
“What?” I say, turning to Mo. She only laughs.
Another pause. “Flower delivery.”