On Rotation(64)



*

And this is how I found myself sitting at a long table in a private study room at our local library with Ricky and my very unamused younger sister.

Clearly all my newly awakened emotions had muddled my judgment. Introduce Ricky to your sister, he’ll like that, a voice in my head had said, somehow forgetting that my sister was the kind of Grade-A Mean Girl who had once made her eighth-grade teacher cry in the middle of class. I sent her a warning text in advance—Be nice—but, in her typical, boorish Tabatha way, she’d elected to ignore my request. If looks could kill, Tabatha would have burned Ricky to a crisp on sight.

“Hi,” Ricky said when we walked in through the glass door of the study room. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Tabatha said icily. In my peripheral vision, I could see Ricky flinch. Then she turned to me. “Your presentation?”

I pulled out my laptop and plugged it into the projector. My presentation, jazzed up by my personal graphic designer, flashed onto the screen, and I walked up to it as Tabatha hummed approvingly.

“It looks nice,” she said. “Eye-catching, but not overdone, you know.”

“Ricky designed the theme,” I offered, just to see how she would react.

Tabatha didn’t disappoint.

“Though, on second thought, those lines over there are a bit distracting,” she said matter-of-factly. “But that’s not important right now. We can get you something that looks better later.”

Ricky shifted in his seat.

“I think it looks plenty good now,” I said, already regretting my decision to put Ricky directly in the line of fire. Though, I reasoned, Tabatha was small fry next to my mother; if Ricky wanted to be involved with me, he might do well to get used to sitting in the Appiah family hot seat.

“You wanted my opinion, didn’t you?” Tabs said.

Then she proceeded to give it at every possible opportunity. I stood in front of my presentation, holding back a wince when Ricky offered a critique of one of my sentences only for Tabatha to outright tell me to pay him no mind, shooting her a warning look when she followed up his praise with criticism. Still, in between her swipes, Tabatha doled out useful advice, and I stopped several times during my practice presentation to jot down notes. After the first run-through, she even allowed Ricky to participate, once going as far as agreeing with him on a point about one of my figures. I was proud of my little sister. No matter how often I poo-pooed her “B-School preschool” degree, I recognized her shrewd judgment and her eye for marketing. With my loans in the way, Tabatha would make buckets more than me and soon.

“Thanks, guys,” I said, closing out of the presentation. Dr. Reed would have to approve of the final edits, but I had a feeling he would agree with their input. “This was really useful.”

“’Course,” Ricky said. He pulled out his laptop, then reached into his pocket for his phone and set the timer automatically. I smirked; I forced him to study with me so often that it had become routine for him. I’ve never been more productive in my life, he’d joked. At first, I’d felt guilty that so much of his day had to be spent watching me click through question banks, but he waved me away.

“I like your company. I don’t really care what we do,” he’d said earnestly, successfully reducing me to a puddle.*

“What’s that for?” Tabatha asked, cocking her head at the countdown on his screen.

“Timer,” Ricky said. He explained our study game, then pointed at me with his pen. “Have to keep that one honest.”

Tabatha didn’t smile.

“What do you do during the thirty minutes?” she asked. “You’re not in school, right? So are you just on the internet? Watching sports or something?”

Bless Ricky and his patience. He gave Tabatha his most indulgent smile.

“No,” he said slowly. “I do a good amount of freelance illustration work.”

He turned his computer around to show off his current project—the album cover he’d started a few days back. I leaned across the table to take a good look. On his screen was a face, androgynous, composed of triangles of varying sizes with lines of varying thickness. The proportions were intentionally off—the nose too long, mouth too wide, heavy-lidded eyes too close together—and the head was tilted to one side and rested on a pair of folded hands. It was beautifully stylized and quite different from his usual work.

“It’s coming along really nicely,” I said encouragingly. Next to me, Tabatha sniffed. There was no way she wasn’t even a little impressed, but I knew that she’d rather eat her foot than admit it. I watched her beadily as she tossed her hair over one shoulder.

“How much does all of this make you?” she said. “Can’t be much.”

My jaw dropped with mortification.

“Ricky,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to answer that—”

Ricky’s expression shuttered entirely, his eyelids dropping to half-mast as he met Tabatha’s gaze.

“Enough,” he said simply. Then he snapped his headphones over his ears.

An hour of tense silence later, Ricky shut his laptop with a thud. I met his eyes from across the table, burning with embarrassment. I’d known Tabatha would likely be rude, but I didn’t think she would be “ask Ricky about his income with the undertone that it wasn’t sufficient” rude. That move had big Dorothy Appiah energy, and it put me off.

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