Yolk(29)

I scroll through my contacts. I’ve got my location activated with so many people. Girls from high school I don’t even talk to. Jesus. What have I been doing for the last ten years?

I wonder if telling Patrick that I did the brand identity for Jeremy’s literary magazine would make me pathetic or pathetic and delusional. Mostly I want to ask him what kind of ramen he eats. Whether he thinks Seinfeld’s racist. If he remembers what an asshole June was. I love that he’s a year older than her.

My pocket crinkles as I reach for paper towels.

I can’t believe he has his master’s degree. I wonder if there’s any way we would have started dating in high school. I’d have been a freshman and he’d have been a senior and…

I slide my hand all the way into my pocket. I find myself pinching the packet, tearing it open between my thumb and two fingers, hand cramping with effort. They slide out into my pocket but when I pop one into my mouth, I’m thrilled that it’s somehow even better than expected.

There’s no way one packet is enough. And if they sell out, I won’t be able to stop thinking about them. I head back to the fruit. This time, as if checking the nutritional information on the Tate’s cookies, I smoothly grab another packet with my other hand and slip it into my other coat pocket.

Just as I turn around, I startle at a woman in workout clothes and AirPods in the aisle. I smile, and she even takes an earbud out to smile back as if to tip her hat. My sight line rises to notice the enormous shield of mirror rigged to the ceiling.

I casually look behind the register. My palms dampen. Behind the salad bar I’d studied so intently there are four flat-screen TVs of the security cameras’ views. My heart races and my breathing along with it. June will murder me if I get caught. I watch my hand unsteadily place the rice on the shelf in front of me. The mango’s returned to the cooler. I force myself to ditch my groceries quickly and calmly. I leave with my head ducked. I’m convinced I’ll be found out. That it’s a matter of seconds before someone dashes out from the back to block me from leaving. I hurl the door open, rushing into the cold night, and hurriedly walk back to June’s, stuffing the stupid banana pieces into my mouth and tasting nothing.





chapter 17


The next day, June’s sprawled out on the couch eating Pringles when I get out of class. It’s Halloween, and Halloween at design school is its own exhausting spectacle.

“Hey,” she says, when I hang my coat up. Rory’s well into Yale on Gilmore Girls. No matter the season it always seems like Christmas in Stars Hollow.

“Hey.”

She studies me. “Where were you?”

I stop myself from rolling my eyes.

“Class.”

The kitchen counter’s a mess again even though I wiped everything up this morning. A half-dozen condiments left out. Loose sesame seeds. A Diet Coke that’s been there since yesterday. I open the fridge. A few days ago, I broke down and removed the shelves to air them out in sunlight. The bottoms of the produce drawers looked like the contents of a shark’s stomach during an autopsy. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find an old toilet seat cover in there.

I tip the soda into the sink.

“Don’t clean,” she says. “I’ll call someone to come.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, noisily crushing the bottle. I can’t believe that this time last year Ivy and I spent hours dressing up as prescription pill bottles with Euphoria makeup. We ate so much candy I googled whether you could give yourself diabetes. Sometimes my memories are so remote they may as well have happened to someone else.

I twist all the lids back onto the various seasonings and return them to their shelves.

The year before that, Megan and Hillary had a party at our house. It was nineties themed. They were actually kind of nice to me that day.

I sponge down June’s counters. I may as well. I looked up this building on StreetEasy and rent is, like, thirty-five hundred for a one-bedroom.

“Seriously,” she says, sitting up. “Don’t clean. It’s fucking annoying.”

I know this mood. June’s bored.

I check the time on the microwave. It’s 4:00 p.m. “Did you go outside today?” I already know she hasn’t. The air in the room is comprised of 100 percent mouth-breath.

She glares at me and bites into the stack of Pringles, which shatter across her sweatshirt. She brushes at them hard even though one of the crumbs is basically half an entire chip.

My sister is so jonesing for a fight.

“What?” she demands hotly. Every single baby hair on her head is sticking up in attack mode.

I can’t keep a straight face. A lactic-acid burn sears in my cheeks from keeping myself from smiling. I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say innocently. My chin wobbles.

I spray down the counters.

“I told you to fucking stop,” she says, doubling down. “So fucking stop.”

I can’t even look at her. She sits up. Covered in chips. Jutting her chin out.

I raise my hands and set down the Formula 409.

June and I have had fistfights and even drawn blood, but this isn’t that.

I’m trying to clear my throat. Reset. But chortles keep audibly escaping my nose. I bite my lips.

“What?” she counters again, but I hear her voice waver.