Love You Like a Sister

by Robin Palmer

  “Lexi,” I hissed. “Stop!” I wasn’t big on people knowing my business. I was the only one of my friends who didn’t have a Twitter account. And the only pictures I posted on Instagram were of my jewelry or of Tabitha, my cat.

  “That’s cool,” Chantal said. “Hope you find something,” she added as she turned to walk away.

  “He’s getting married,” Lexi went on, lowering her voice to a whisper when it came to “married,” as if it was a bad word. “And she’s going to have three stepsisters.”

  So much for my business staying my business, I thought as I felt my stomach tighten. While it had been semi-easy to convince myself since getting my dad’s e-mail that all of this wasn’t that big of a deal (People get married all the time! I know tons of people with stepbrothers and stepsisters! I had been saying to myself every night before I went to sleep), hearing it said out loud by another person was a whole other thing. It made it so . . . real.

  Chantal’s left eyebrow went up. “Wow. That’s a lot to deal with.”

  The tightening moved into a full-blown clenching.

  “Not really,” I said nervously as I shoved the five-dollar bill my mom had given me across the counter. “I mean, it could be a lot worse. He could be marrying someone with, like, ten kids. Like on those reality shows.”

  “But they’re girls,” Lexi replied before I could even open my mouth. “All girls.”

  Chantal’s other eyebrow went up. “True. Good luck with that.”

  “Why do I need luck?” I asked, my mouth all dry.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that, you know, girls are tough,” she replied. “I had four sisters. My dad said that the sound track of our entire adolescence was slamming doors and crying.”

  “Oh, they’re not like that,” I said quickly.

  Lexi looked at me. “How do you know? You haven’t even met them yet. And you weren’t even able to Instastalk them, because their accounts are private.”

  I didn’t really know how they were going to be, of course. It was just wishful thinking. “Because if they are like that, this is going to be a mess,” I said glumly.

  Chantal reached across the counter and patted me on the hand. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She went into the bakery case and pulled out a raspberry hamantasch cookie and handed it to me. “Here—have this. I find that baked goods always help me in a crisis.”

  At least I had my subject for my “How I Spent My Summer” essay when school started back up: “How I Made It Through a Crisis,” by Avery Johnson.

  * * *

  “How many evil stepsisters were there in Cinderella again?” Lexi asked later at Painting Pals as she picked out colors for our rhinear, while I sketched his horn. Because our dorse had gone over so well, we decided to do another animal combination. We thought about going with a pox (a pig/fox combination) or a cheetaroo (cheetah meets kangaroo) but settled on the rhinear, which was a combination of a bear and a rhinoceros.

  “Two,” I replied as I erased what I had just done. One look at my bedroom would make a person think that I wasn’t much for order and organization (and they’d be right), but when it came to drawing, I would start over as many times as I needed to until I got it right. Mom said she wished I was more like that when it came to math. “Why?” I asked Lexi.

  “Oh, good,” Lexi said, relieved. “Maybe that means you won’t have the same kind of experience she did, then.”

  I stopped erasing and looked at her. “Can we please stop talking about this whole thing with my dad?”

  “Okay, okay. Sorry,” she said, jumping around on one foot. If Lexi wasn’t my best friend, she’d be really tiring to be friends with. She was always in motion. “We’ll talk about something else.”

  “Great,” I said as I picked up my pencil and started sketching again. After a moment I started to relax. Two One Two—the name of the gallery—had this way of doing that to me. I think it was because other than the art on the walls, the place was just . . . blank. Concrete floors, white walls, big metal benches. Mom said it was an “industrial” look. I thought maybe it was because Pixie, the owner, didn’t have a lot of money to decorate. The art was what people called “modern,” which meant sometimes you wouldn’t know it was art unless it was hanging on the wall and had a sign next to it with a title. Like, say, the black Hefty garbage bag with teeth marks that the artist had titled O’Neill Decides to Snack. (According to Pixie, O’Neill was the artist’s cat.)

  Pixie walked over to look at our progress. “Great work, guys,” she said with a thumbs-up as she kept moving. Pixie was always moving. Mom said that was because she had lived in Manhattan for too long and it had screwed up her nervous system. She had moved to town from there a year earlier and decided to start Painting Pals so that kids would have an opportunity to be around art while they worked on their own. Unfortunately, it hadn’t really caught on. Lexi and I were the only people there that day. Usually there were at least six of us.

  Lexi and I were quiet for a bit. The kind of quiet you could only be with your best friend, where it didn’t feel awkward and you weren’t racking your brain for something to talk about just to fill the silence. “So what are you going to wear on Sunday when you see him?” she finally asked.

  I put down my pencil and stared at her. The kind of stare you could only get away with giving your best friend. One that said, If you open your mouth one more time, I’m going to kill you.

  * * *

  “Honey, it’s just brunch,” my mom yelled up to me on Sunday morning as I tried on yet another outfit. “Not your prom.”

  “I’m almost done,” I yelled back. I searched through my closet for my yellow cotton cardigan to throw over the lilac striped dress I was wearing. We did a lot of yelling in our house. Not the angry kind—the kind that two people who were too lazy to walk up and down stairs did.

  I couldn’t find that cardigan, but I did find a peach one. Except when I put it on, not only did I not like the combination, but I no longer liked the dress, which meant it quickly joined the five other dresses that were lying in a heap on the foot of my bed.

  When I heard Mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs, I knew I was pushing it. I could tell from the way she was jogging up them that she had already had both of her morning coffees plus an espresso shot, and that her hyperness would result in more annoyance than usual, so I quickly grabbed the first dress I had tried on—a blue-and-white seersucker sheath that I had found at a garage sale last year—and put it back on.

  “Okay, okay, I’m ready,” I said as she stood in my doorway. “I just need to find a necklace.” I walked over to my jewelry box. It was actually a tackle box, for fishing. It wasn’t cute or anything, but as my grandfather had said when he gave it to me two birthdays before, “You won’t find a more functional place to keep your jewels this side of Texas,” whatever that meant.

  I grabbed the first thing my hand landed on: a red carnelian flower on a black velvet choker. It didn’t really go with the dress, but that was kind of my style: putting together things that didn’t go together. Sometimes there were epic fails, but for the most part it worked. If only that people remembered me as the girl who had a very unique style.

  “Okay. Now I’m really ready,” I said after I fastened the choker on my neck. I turned to Mom. “Do I look okay?”

  She smiled so wide that I could see her dimples. “You look beautiful.”

  “Really?” I asked anxiously.

  “Really,” she replied as she pushed me toward the door so I wouldn’t have a chance to change my mind (and my outfit) again. “I know you’re nervous, but there’s no reason to be.”

  “I’m not nervous,” I lied.

  She gave me the Look. The one that said, Don’t even think about lying to me because I’m your mother and I have you all figured out and always will.

  “Fine. Maybe I’m a little bit nervous,” I admitted.

  She pushed my too-long bangs out of my face. “There’s no reason to be. I kn
ow in the past you and your dad haven’t spent that much time together, but things will be different now.”

  Of course they would. My life was about to become Cinderella’s times a third stepsister.

  “From my conversation with him, it sounds like he’s really changed.”

  I sure hoped so. Otherwise this was going to be Awkward with a capital A.

  * * *

  Brunch wasn’t Awkward with a capital A.

  Not one bit.

  It was AWKWARD WITH ALL CAPS.

  For once, not only were we not late getting somewhere—we were early. Ten minutes early, in fact.

  In an e-mail he sent me on Thursday, Dad had told me to pick a place for brunch that I liked. I chose La Maison des Crêpes, which was French for House of Crepes (it said so right on the menu), but they had a lot of things other than crepes. Like regular pancakes, and omelets, and the best hot chocolate on the planet.

  As usual, the parking lot was packed, but just as we were pulling in, someone was pulling out right near the entrance. Unlike Lexi, I’m not one of those people who look at everything as a sign, but in this case I took the empty space as one that brunch wouldn’t be horrible. Or at least that there’d be only, like, two minutes of awkward silence as opposed to ten.

  “You ready?” Mom asked as she swiped some lipstick across her mouth.

  “What are you doing?”

  She turned to me. “What do you mean?” she asked, and mashed her lips together.

  “You never wear lipstick.” She barely wore makeup, period. She looked at it like I did about the whole pajamas issue, but opposite: Why put it on when you were only going to take it off later?

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well, I just felt like it today. End of story.”

  “End of story” was code for We’re not going to talk about this anymore, Avery, and if you push me on it, I’m going to get really annoyed.

  I knew there was no way my parents were ever going to get back together (I had given up on that idea when I was five), but maybe she just wanted to look extra good to impress my dad. Like I did. That wasn’t such a bad thing.

  “He’s probably not even here yet,” I said as we got out of the car and walked toward the entrance. “He’s usually on the late side. You know, like you. I wonder how I got to be on the early side when you’re both like that,” I babbled. I also wondered how I’d gotten to be such a babbler. Neither of them had that problem.

  “Well, even if he’s not here, we can give your name to the hostess so you won’t have to wait as long for a table,” she replied as we went inside.

  I scanned the room. I was right—he wasn’t here yet. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right here,” Mom said.

  When I got to the ladies’ room, two blond girls—one who looked to be my age; the other, a little older—were in front of the mirror over the sinks, fixing their hair. From their similar cornflower-blue eyes I assumed they were sisters. I waited for the older-looking one to slide over a bit so I could have some room, but she didn’t budge, so I was forced to stand at the very corner of the vanity, which meant it poked me in the stomach if I tried to lean over and look in the mirror.

  “Did you look at the menu for this place?” she asked the other one as she painted her lips with thick pink gloss. “There’s not one healthy thing on the whole menu. It’s all carbs.”

  The younger one finished braiding a small section of her hair and fastened it with a ponytail holder, before using a bobby pin to pin it back. “Ew,” she said. “Gross.”

  “Actually, they have an egg white omelet,” I chimed in as I opened my purse to take out my strawberry ChapStick. “My mom gets it when she’s dieting. She says it’s really good.”

  They looked at me, confused, like I had just said something in Russian. “Um, okay,” said the older one. “Thanks.”

  I felt my face turn red. That wasn’t a “Thanks” thanks. It was more of a “Why is this strange person talking to me?” thanks. “You’re welcome,” I mumbled as I uncapped my ChapStick. So much for trying to be friendly.

  “And did you see how everyone is dressed around here?” she went on to her sister. “Can you say ‘clearance rack 2012’?”

  I glanced down at my dress. I wondered what she would think if I told her I had gotten it at a yard sale. I was tempted to, just to see the look on her face.

  A toilet flushed and out of one of the stalls came another blond girl. She looked to be about eight or so, but unlike her sisters, who had obviously taken time with their outfits and accessories, she was wearing a pair of jeans and a plain pink T-shirt with what looked like chocolate smudges near the shoulder. “What’s a clearance rack?” she asked.

  The two older ones rolled their eyes at each other. “Where you get your clothes,” the middle one replied.

  Obviously used to being treated like this, the younger one just shrugged as she began to wash her hands.

  The older one glanced over at me. “Is that a ChapStick?”

  I stopped midswipe and nodded.

  “I didn’t know they even made those anymore.”

  My eyes narrowed. I knew an insult even if it wasn’t a straight-ahead one. In fact, the ones that weren’t straight ahead were even worse. “Yeah, well, I happen to like old school,” I said. “Like my dress. It’s vintage.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I hope you washed it first.”

  “I like your dress,” said the youngest one as she scrubbed some soap on her chocolate stain, making it even worse.

  I smiled at her gratefully. “Thanks.”

  The older one gave her already-perfect hair one last smoothing out and sighed. “I guess we should go back out there and get this over with.”

  “Yeah,” agreed the middle one, smoothing her own hair, but messing it up a bit in the process.

  I swear as they walked out, it looked like their noses were literally stuck up. Well, the older two. The younger one had her head down because she was still scrubbing at her stain and therefore bumped into the door.

  After the door had closed behind them, I let out my breath. I dug my phone out of my bag.

  just had a run-in with a gaggle of BBs, I texted Lexi.

  OMGOMGOMG!! BLOND OR BRUNETTE???? AND WHERE????? she texted back immediately.

  blond. in the bathroom here at the restaurant. “BBs” was short for either “Blond Barbies” or “Brunette Barbies,” and was a term we used for various mean girls we came across. I guess if we had ever seen any redheaded ones, then they’d have been RBs, but we never had. Maybe redheads were nicer overall.

  UGH!!! I HOPE THAT’S NOT A SIGN THAT THE REST OF THE DAY IS GOING TO BE BAD.

  I hadn’t even thought of that. Okay, texting with Lexi was not helping.

  gotta go. more later, I wrote, before giving myself one more once-over, picking up my bag, and going back out. When I returned to the dining room, the BBs had joined their mother at a table and looked just as bored as they had sounded in the bathroom. I hoped we wouldn’t have to sit near them, because having to look at them would ruin my meal.

  “Some table looks like they woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Mom said as we watched the oldest girl roll her eyes at her mother, who was also blond, and also pretty. The girl was a good eye roller. The kind who could roll them really slow, making you feel even dumber. Mom turned to me. “I’m so glad you’re not an eye roller.”

  I tried to do it, just to show her it was possible. “Ouch,” I said about a quarter of a roll in. “I think they’re stuck.”

  Mom laughed.

  Just then I saw my dad walk out of the restroom. As he started coming toward me, a big smile came over his face. Wow. Mom was right—he had changed. Usually when he saw me, his smile was more like a flash of lightning, gone as quickly as it appeared. I didn’t realize until that moment, as I smiled back, how much I had missed him. Most of the time I tried to pretend it wasn’t a big deal that he lived three thousand miles away and we
rarely saw each other, but it was a big deal. And I was really glad that was about to change.

  “Hi, Dad!” I cried as I started to make my way over to him.

  His smile remained, but in that moment, as he kept walking, I realized that it wasn’t meant for me.

  It was for the table of BBs.

  Aka my soon-to-be stepsisters.

  Three

  “Avery! Hi,” my dad said as he jumped up from the table and gave me a hug, after I had gotten my legs to work and made my way over to the table. He gave me a big smile, but it still looked fake. “I can’t believe how grown up you look!”

  Was he completely clueless about the fact that he had forgotten to mention that brunch was going to be a party?

  He turned to Mom. “What happened?”

  As I blushed, Mom laughed. “Apparently, they grow up.”

  He gave her a hug too. “You look terrific, Monica.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. So do you.”

  By this time the blond woman had gotten up and was now hovering behind my dad, looking a little nervous. Now that she was closer, I could see that while she was pretty, she wasn’t, like, model pretty. And she had a pimple to the left of her chin. Something about that made me feel better.

  My dad took the woman’s hand and pulled her forward. “Avery, Monica—this is Lana. My fiancée.”

  “Hi,” Lana said nervously, putting out her hand for me to shake. She had pretty hands. And her nail polish was this neat blue/purple color. It was very unstepmotherish, which I liked. “It’s so great to meet you, Avery. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  I shook her hand, which was damp. She might have been more nervous than I was. “It’s great to meet you, too,” I replied as I glanced at her daughters out of the corner of my eye. The youngest one was staring straight at me, not even trying to hide her interest. The other two were on their phones.

  Lana let go of my hand and turned to Mom. “Hi. Matt speaks so highly of you.”