For Real(6)

He hopped in the sack



With that ho Janine Black,



And I hope someone poisons his beer.”



I smile. “Nice. Excellent poetic use of ‘ho.’ ”

Miranda’s quiet for a minute, and then she says, “Hey, thanks for coming with me tonight.”

“Of course,” I say. “I’m always here if you need me. But I know you’re going to be fine. You’re so strong, you’ll be back on your feet in no time.”

“I hope you’re right,” she says.

“I am. Trust me. You always bounce back so fast. Plus, the worst part’s over. Things are going to start getting better now. All we need is the right revenge.”

I mean it as a jokey, offhand comment; I’m just trying to get Miranda to smile again. But as the oncoming headlights sweep over my sister’s face, I see the spark in her eyes reignite.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” she asks.





We brainstorm revenge ideas the rest of the way home. Should we put raw seafood under the hood of Samir’s car? Photoshop pictures of him in women’s underwear and send them to all the major casting agencies? Hire someone with an STD to seduce him? But none of those ideas seems quite right, and we still haven’t come up with a winning plan by the time we pull into our driveway at four o’clock.

I get into bed with complicated, heist-style scenarios swirling through my head, and I vow to stay awake until I come up with a dazzling plan to surprise Miranda with in the morning. But tonight has worn me out, and against my will, I fall asleep almost immediately.

The chime of a new text wakes me from a dream about rappelling through the skylight of the Louvre and stealing an Impressionist painting of Samir’s face. It doesn’t seem like it could possibly be morning already, but sunlight is streaming through my curtains. I grope around for my glasses so I can read the message.

NATALIE: Everything ok? Why are you back early?

ME: Long story. Miranda’s here too.

NATALIE: ?!?!? Must hear everything! Coming over.

ME: If you expect coherent sentences, bring coffee and muffins.

All my other friends have already left town for their jobs at camps and theater festivals—our town’s so tiny that there’s nothing to do here over the summer. It’s going to be deadly boring next week when Natalie starts her internship at Paparazzi Press, a small publishing house in New York City. She and I had originally planned to spend the summer in the city together, and I’d applied for production assistant positions at pretty much every major TV network. But it turned out that even the fetch-and-carry jobs were supercompetitive, and everyone turned me down. So instead of delivering coffee to famous directors and producers, I’ll be spending the summer behind the counter at Jojo’s Joe, serving the extremely nonfamous population of Braeburn.

Natalie arrives fifteen minutes later with three takeout cups and a paper bag full of muffins. This morning she has on shiny, bubble-gum-pink combat boots, tights printed with skulls, and a black tulle skirt that was probably born to be a petticoat. Her glossy black hair is up in a ponytail, revealing long earrings made of pink feathers. Nat has lived in Braeburn all her life, but her fashion sense belongs to a much larger city. Her parents, who both grew up in conservative Vietnamese families, are completely mystified by the way she dresses.

“Double cappuccino, banana nut,” she says by way of a greeting, shoving a cup and the bag into my hands. “I got cranberry pecan for Miranda.”

“Perfect, thanks. That’s her favorite.”

Natalie flops down on the green leather couch in my living room, and a small cloud of cat hair poofs up from the cushions and settles back down on her tights. She grabs the remote and deftly flips through channels as only an expert television watcher can until she finds a marathon of Speed Breed. Like me, she thinks better with some ambient noise.

“Ooh, is this the episode where Amber seduces the tattooed plumber?” I ask.

Natalie considers the TV carefully. “It could be the one where Jakarta does twelve pregnancy tests in a row—”

“—and then smashes the mirror on the medicine cabinet when they all come back negative!”

“Yesss! I love this one.” She takes a long sip of her coffee, then grabs the soft yellow pillow my grandma crocheted and nestles into it. Since Nat and I met three years ago, she’s spent so many hours snuggling with that pillow that I think of it as hers. When she’s settled, she says, “So what happened? Tell me everything.”

I repeat the story of Samir, and Natalie reacts with appropriate gasps and exclamations. “What a douche,” she says when I’m finished. “But I guess it’s good she found out before they were living together, right? Is she moving home?”

“For a little while, I guess, until she figures things out. She didn’t want to talk about it last night.”

“God. What are we going to do about Samir?”

This is one of my favorite things about Natalie. It’s never “What are you going to do about your problem?” It’s “What are we going to do?” “We came up with some revenge ideas last night,” I say. “But it was really late, and I think they were pretty stupid. Just pranks, mostly.”

“No, it can’t be a prank. Miranda lost someone she loved, so we have to find something Samir loves and take it away. What does he care about?”