The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  “Are you going to have guy or girl strippers?” Layla asks, already red-faced, mouth covered, waiting for Kelly to scold her.

  “No strippers.” Kelly wraps her arm around Layla’s shoulder and kisses her forehead while Layla squirms. Kelly says something quietly into Layla’s ear that stills her.

  We pick at the food and make safe observations about the weather and the people and the time change, and I go over the plan for tomorrow. The vans are leaving at 7:00 A.M.—one for us and the crew, one for the bikes. The village of Aguergour is only twenty-one miles away, but as the last ten miles are a dirt track on the edge of a treacherous mountain range, it will take over an hour to get there.

  The waiters come to clear the platters and bring out coffee and tea. Layla stops them from taking her plate. It’s full of bread and dips and meat that she hasn’t touched. “I put it together for Lauren and Stephanie,” she says, and Jen’s aw maybe would have duped me had I not seen how she looked at my sister earlier.

  I tried to get Kelly alone before dinner, to share with her my suspicions that Jen is not her friend, that she has only glommed on to her to push a narrative that Kelly has slept with Vince. I was also hoping to finally get a definitive response from her regarding whether or not she actually slept with Vince—because on that, I am still not clear—but Kelly hasn’t left Jen’s side since we arrived this afternoon, and I’m too smart to put this into a text message.

  “Here we are!” Lauren peals.

  When I look up, it appears to be only Lauren in the doorway, holding that same glass of heavily limed water. But then Stephanie steps out from behind her, her wet hair in a bun at the nape of her neck and a shocking amount of makeup on her face, even for her.

  “Sorry,” Steph says, unapologetically.

  I make room for her on my pillow. “It’s fine. It’s all very casual. Layla saved you a plate.”

  “You are such a sweetheart!” Lauren cries.

  Stephanie mumbles something that I can’t quite make out, ignoring the spot I’ve opened for her and sitting next to Kelly, on the other side of the table across from Layla and me.

  Kelly turns to her, which is a lot more confrontational when you are shoulder to shoulder with someone, sharing a bright pink pillow. “What was that?”

  Stephanie reaches for an olive. At a slow, thunderous volume, she repeats herself, “I said, she’s been raised so well.”

  Kelly purses her lips, disbelievingly. I’m pretty sure Steph said trained—not raised—too.

  “What are you drinking?” Steph helps herself to a sip of my wine. “Mmm.” She rubs her lips together. She points at it and barks at the waiter stationed in the corner, “Get me a glass of that.”

  Stephanie reaches for a piece of naan. Instead of tearing off a bite-sized piece, she folds it and shoves the whole thing into her mouth like a taco. “Mmm,” she says. “Thank you for not eating carbs, Laur. This is heavenly.” She reaches for another piece of naan, though her jaw is still working like a baseball player’s on chewing tobacco.

  “I eat carbs,” Lauren protests with a laugh.

  Stephanie spells out, “L. O. L.” I can see all the food in her mouth when she pronounces the “O.” She glances around the table, her eyes wide and unfocused, herbs tacked to the thick coat of gloss on her lips. “How was everybody’s day?”

  The question is mockingly curious, clearly not meant to be answered, and we fall silent, unsure of how to handle this Joan Crawford–shellacked Stephanie before us.

  I clear my throat and take a stab. “Well. Lauren and I rode the new bikes down to the Jewish—”

  Stephanie interrupts me. “Lauren partook in physical activity that was not—?” She glances at Layla, clasps her lower lip in her teeth and performs a slow, sexy body roll, crooning, throatily, “Bow-chick-a-wow-wow.”

  I open my mouth to object. Stephanie shoots me a look that makes me close it.

  “Subtle,” Kelly snaps.

  “This is an adult trip,” Stephanie says, matter-of-factly. “If you didn’t want your daughter exposed to adult language, you shouldn’t have brought her.”

  Layla looks fairly heartbroken. I reach for her hand on the floor.

  “I’m glad you’re here, little mama.” Lauren winks at Layla. Lauren may be a drunk pitbull but at least she’s kind to kids. Turning to Stephanie, she responds, “And for your information, I don’t mind partaking in physical activity when the piece of equipment is, like, the Hermés bag of the fitness world.”

  “What a ringing endorsement!” Stephanie cries, her tone swinging from nasty to bubbly faster than I can think, how many milligrams is she on? The waiter returns with her wine. “Sir,” she addresses him formally as he sets the glass in front of her, “could you go into the basement or storage unit or mummy tomb or whatever and look for our bikes? You’ll know they’re our bikes because they’re SPOKE bikes. They are the most beautiful bikes in the whole wide world. They came in first place at the Omaha county bike beauty pageant in ’09. They beat out Christy Nicklebocker and she motorboated all of the judges, including the three-hundred-and-seven-pound church lady who is related to her through marriage.”

  The waiter turns to me, dumbstruck. “Madam?” he asks.

  Everyone is looking at me, waiting for me to do something, to say something. “Just a joke.” I laugh haltingly to the waiter, offering him the plate of food Layla put together for Stephanie and Lauren, so that he has an excuse to take it and leave the table. I have to keep nodding at him as he backs away, you can go, it’s okay.

  “I’ll make sure you’re the first to ride one tomorrow,” I say to Stephanie, desperate to placate her. Just hold out on going completely crazy until the trip is over. “When we get to Aguergour.”

  “When we get to A-grrr-gorrrr,” Stephanie repeats with ridiculing concentration. “A-grrr-gorrrr.”

  “Yeah,” I say, pretending like she isn’t making fun of me. “It’ll be better anyway. We’ll have more room to see what the bikes can really do in the country.”

  Layla sighs longingly, turning to my sister with big, pleading eyes. “If I promise to stay under a certain speed limit, can I try them?”

  “Layla,” Kelly says in her scary mom voice, “what did I say?”

  Stephanie works a back molar with her tongue, dislodging a lump of wet food, her eyes darting from Layla to Kelly, Layla to Kelly. “My mother never let me do anything either,” she says, her gaze settling on Layla.

  “Excuse me,” Kelly laughs, testily, “but she is in Morocco.”

  Stephanie rises to all fours, trying to untangle her legs from her caftan to get into a more comfortable position, but for a moment, I think she might spring across the table and attack Layla. “I hid everything from her,” Stephanie continues, leering at Layla like a lecherous old man. “You’ll learn how to do it too. You’ll have to because your mother will never truly understand what life is like for you. You’ll become little negro Nancy Drew.” She giggles, queerly. “I should do a children’s series. Negro Nancy Drew.”

  “Hey!” I say, more startled than angry. I have never heard that kind of language from Stephanie before.

  “Don’t use that word about my daughter,” Kelly says, voice quivering with indignation.

  Layla grumbles, looking absolutely humiliated. “Mom.”

  Stephanie only laughs. “You don’t get to tell me anything about that word, Miss Teen Mom.”

  I gesture desperately at the riad’s butler, who has been waiting on the sidelines for a moment to intervene. Now is the time, the wave of my hand says. Now. Now. Now.

  “Ladies,” he says, his hands clasped in prayer, “dessert is served on the Atlas rooftop, along with a special treat.” He holds out an arm, leading the way. “If you will.”

  The Atlas rooftop is so named for its unobstructed views of the High Atlas mountain range, its djebels brown and snowcapped in the winter, but only brown now. I stay close to Layla as the rest of the Diggers fan out on the quiet, twinkle-lit roof
top. I can tell she’s reeling after what happened downstairs.

  “That’s where we’re going tomorrow,” I tell her, pointing at the mountain range. Tucked into the crests and valleys are mud-thatched Berber villages where the women sing as they weave pom-pom rugs and knead dough for bread, celebrating their emancipation from the walk to get water, their freedom to work.

  Layla aims her phone at the view width-wise, snapping a picture for an Instagram story. She attempts a few different captions before giving up with a dispirited sigh.

  “You okay?” I ask her.

  “Why doesn’t Stephanie like me?” Her mouth tightens and twists to the left, a sign she’s about to cry. Kelly and I used to take videos when she was a baby, her mouth a little raisin on the side of her face, the veins in her temples straining against her skin. You can hear us giggling in the background, Oh, oh, there she blowwwwws.

  I lean against the clay ledge of the rooftop, so that I’m facing her. Under the fat Christmas tree lights, Layla’s face is arresting save for a humdinger of a pimple in the corner of her chin. Marc electric-slides around us, capturing us in a profile shot. “It hurts when it feels like someone doesn’t like you, especially someone you might admire.” I rove my head around, until I find an angle where I catch her eye. “Right? You admire Steph?”

  “I do admire her, but I thought . . .” She exhales with enough force to blow out the candles on a birthday cake, as if frustrated she can’t find the words to explain.

  “What?” I ask gently, reaching out to smooth her hair.

  Layla ducks out from under my hand. “You wouldn’t get it.” There is something on that word—you—that I have never heard before, at least not directed at me.

  I blink, stung. Kelly is the one who loves Layla but doesn’t get her. That’s my job. That’s what I do—I get people. I try to make her see that I understand. “I admired Stephanie too, and it was important to me that she liked me,” I say. “But something I realized, Layls, is that—”

  Layla doesn’t let me finish. “Stop telling me you understand because you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like not knowing anyone who looks like you.”

  The statement feels like a concrete barrier erected on a previously open border. I’m shook to my core realizing that Layla feels like this and didn’t tell me. Of course I have worried about her, being one of a handful of black students at her school, but Layla is so far from an outlier. She’s one of the most popular girls in her class. Everyone who meets her falls in love with her. I guess I assumed that being liked was the same thing as belonging. I never stopped to think how meaningful it would be for Layla to meet someone like Stephanie, someone who would understand what life was like for her better than anyone, but who instead has taken a visceral dislike to her. “I feel really stupid for not realizing you might feel like that,” I tell her apologetically. “And for assuming you would just volunteer those feelings if you did. I’m the adult. I’m the one who should be asking if you’re doing okay.”

  Layla gives me a half-hearted shrug. “It’s fine. Mom is always asking me anyway. It gets annoying.” But she doesn’t sound annoyed at all.

  On the other side of the rooftop, where white benches pen in a short table set with a platter of sour fruit tarts and a mosaic-styled ice bucket, Lauren cries, “A fortune-teller? Maybe she can tell me which one of you hussies planted the Post story.”

  “Shut the fuck up about the Post story,” Steph roars. “Everyone is so fucking bored of the fucking Post story.”

  I can practically hear the air being let out of Lauren’s sails from across the rooftop, but I ignore the heated exchange for Layla’s sake. I will do anything to cheer her up. I pop my eyes at her as if to say, A fortune-teller? Fun!

  “Come on,” I say, leading her over to the sitting area, where the evening’s special treat has turned out to be a plump, fifty-something woman with a sheer yellow scarf draped loosely around her head, shuffling a deck of tarot cards.

  As we approach, I hear the butler explaining, “Jamilla only speaks Arabic and French, but I’m told we have a translator for the group.”

  Hmm, I wonder who told him that? I study Lisa, my enthusiasm for this special treat waning. There are very few people I trust on this rooftop right now.

  Lauren thrusts her hand into the air, thrilled to provide such a critical service for everyone here. She introduces herself to Jamilla and listens intently to the woman’s response.

  “She says that the person she is reading should sit next to her,” Lauren says.

  Kelly addresses Layla with a buoyant smile. “Want to go first, Layls?”

  I know Kelly is just trying to make up for what happened downstairs, but I don’t want Layla anywhere near this crystal gazer. Even if she isn’t a producer plant, I don’t trust Lauren to translate truthfully.

  Layla sidesteps the bench, taking a seat to Jamilla’s left. Jamilla pats the pouf of Layla’s hair, exclaiming delightedly, and poses a question to Lauren, who claps her hands together, hooting at whatever it was Jamilla said to her.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “No. Elle est sa fille.” She points to Kelly, saying to Stephanie, “She thought Layla was yours!”

  “Why is that funny?” Stephanie wants to know.

  “Jesus, you are in a mood tonight.” Lauren reaches for a sour fruit tart, checking to make sure the cameras are watching. I eat carbs.

  “Let’s let Jen go first,” I intervene. “This is more her beat anyway.”

  Jen purses her lips in what could be considered a smile. “I believe that wellness of mind and body is the best predictor of the future, but sure,” she shrugs, “okay.”

  Jamilla shuffles the deck, fanning it out for Jen and motioning for her to pick one. She pats her chest, instructing Jen to press the card to her heart.

  “Fermer les yeux et penser à ce que vous derange.”

  Jen turns to Lauren.

  “Close your eyes and think about what troubles you,” Lauren translates for her. Jen complies with a gamely sigh through her nose, clamping both hands over the card as though trying to smother it.

  “Ouvre tes yeux.”

  Jen arches one eyebrow, eyes still shut.

  “Open your eyes,” Lauren says.

  Jen flutters her eyes open. Jamilla motions for her to reveal the card on the table: The Lovers. Jen runs a hand through her longer hair with a laugh. “Okay,” she says. She’s nervous, I realize.

  Jamilla begins the reading.

  “The Lovers do not always symbolize love,” Lauren says, when Jamilla pauses to take a breath. “Especially when somebody places the card upside down like this.”

  The group leans forward, elbows on thighs, to get a better look.

  Jamilla rattles off a long spiel that Lauren seems to have trouble with.

  Seems to.

  Seems to.

  “Can you say that again?” Lauren asks.

  Jamilla repeats herself, and Lauren nods along, brow cinched, in a commendable effort of trying to understand. “She says that a reversed Lovers card can indicate that you are at war with yourself, and that you are struggling to balance your own internal forces.”

  Jen produces a polite hmm! As though Jamilla’s reading is interesting, but doesn’t resonate.

  “That’s all?” I say. “It sounded like she spoke for a lot longer than that.”

  “That was the essence of it,” Lauren says with a celestial smile.

  “Toi,” Jamilla says, suddenly, beckoning Stephanie. “Je veux te parler.”

  “She wants to talk to you,” Lauren says.

  Jen gets up—almost eagerly, I note—but Stephanie makes no move to trade positions. “Why?” she asks in a surly way.

  “Get over there and find out!” Lauren places a hand between Steph’s shoulder blades and shoves. The plane of Stephanie’s back hardens in response.

  Jamilla says something else that sounds urgent.

  “She says it’s important!” Lauren exclaims.

/>   Stephanie sighs irritably. We all watch, collectively holding our breath, as she decides to finally get up and move into Jen’s spot. She plunks down next to Jamilla with category-five attitude and, without awaiting instruction, pulls a card, holds it to her chest, and shuts her eyes. She’ll do this on her own terms.

  She opens her eyes and places her card on the table at Jamilla’s untranslated behest: The Hanged Man, upright. Jamilla says something short and unemotional.

  “So,” Lauren says. “The Hanged Man is a willing victim. He makes personal, financial, and professional sacrifices in order to accomplish a higher goal. You are the ultimate martyr.”

  “No shit,” Stephanie says, and, just like the pink chipped polish on her toes, this response is pronounced and out of character. We have a funny contest at the end of the season—which Digger required the most bleep censors in the editing room. It’s usually a toss-up between Lauren and me, but Stephanie, the group’s wordsmith who prides herself on more thoughtful articulation, has always come in last place.

  Jamilla is speaking again. When she finishes, Lauren takes a moment before translating. “You are giving too much of yourself to someone. Someone who doesn’t give enough of himself or herself back to you. You let him or her hurt you time and time again.”

  Steph leans back, getting comfortable, a dangerous smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. “Is that so?” she asks, nodding, thinking it over. She strokes the underside of her chin, ruefully. “Ask her to narrow it down for me, Laur. Is it a him?” She looks directly at me. “Or is it a her? Because really,” her laugh tinkles, “I could go either way.”

  My hands and feet go numb. It is chilly up here, so close to a woman I thought I knew so well. Because the Steph I knew cared deeply about the dog and pony show. She was hell-bent on protecting her pride. If I wanted, I could turn to the cameras and say you can’t use this or fuckshitfuckshitfuckshitfuckshit, which we do sometimes to blemish the shot if it isn’t to our liking. But doing so would only draw more attention to Stephanie’s oh-so-unsubtle insinuation that we had a thing. It won’t make Lisa let go of that theory, it will only make her latch on harder.