Piper
I sleep in the next day. It’s a blessed Saturday, and I don’t have to work. When I stumble into the kitchen late morning, I’m surprised to find Tati in silky floral pajamas, humming as she sips coffee and pages through a magazine. Sunlight streams in through the windows.
“What are you doing?”
She glances up. “Reading.”
Most mornings, even weekends, she goes down to the gym, where she spends forty-five minutes on the stair climber, listening to a self-help book or a metaphor-laced opus or, sometimes, a romance.
“What’s on your agenda today?” she asks when I sit down with a glass of orange juice.
You tell me, I want to say. Saturdays and Sundays are for chores and errands and personal improvement. Tati makes lists of tasks for herself and for me, and we don’t quit until it’s all knocked out.
And she wonders why I sneak out to tie one on.
Though not this summer. These days, escape looks different.
“I don’t know,” I say experimentally.
She nods, as if a free Saturday is and always has been acceptable.
“What’s on your agenda?”
“I was thinking about going for a manicure.”
I nearly choke on my juice. After rent, car insurance, investments, and groceries, there’s not a lot of extra money left for fun things.
I know because Tati tells me all the time, like when I ask for jeans from Abercrombie or suggest that it might be time I had a car of my own.
Plus, my sister doesn’t like professional manicures.
She’s never found a nail tech capable of doing the job as well as she does it herself.
She actually says stuff like that out loud.
She has bestowed upon me her best mani tips and tricks, though, so I can’t shame her too harshly.
“That sounds nice,” I tell her.
She smiles. “Do you want to come? My treat.”
I inspect my nails. The teal polish I used the night I fell into the pool is long gone, and my cuticles could use some love. But do I want to spend upward of an hour with my sister in a nail salon?
“Okay,” I say, because if she’s trying, I should too. “Thanks.”
She closes the magazine. “So, tell me about last night.”
Never—not once since my first movie with Daniel Chen in eighth grade—has Tati inquired about one of my dates.
Before Mom and Dad passed, she’d dish juicy tidbits about her nights on the town and ask me about the boys I crushed on at school, but since she morphed from sister to guardian, she hasn’t asked about anything but my grades and my bank account and whatever irresponsible thing I’ve done most recently.
“It was just dinner,” I say with a shrug.
“Henry seems like a responsible kid.”
“I mean, yeah.”
“He’s not your usual type.”
I fold my arms over my chest, defensive, though I’ve had the same thought. “You think he’s too good for me?”
She blinks. “That’s not what I said. It’s just that with the exception of Gabi”—she pauses pointedly, apparently still salty about our friendship breakup—“he’s not the sort of person you usually surround yourself with.”
As if she even knows what sort of people I surround myself with.
Other than Gabi, I don’t invite people over.
I’ve been friends with Hudson and Jayden and, tangentially, Anna and Michaela, since middle school, yet Tati’s only met them briefly.
I sure as shit haven’t brought any of the vacationers I’ve casually connected with over to hang with my sister, especially not after one of those boys was the catalyst for the missed-recital fight Gabi and I had over spring break.
Tati assumes I spend time with riffraff because of a few tiny mishaps.
Like, okay, January of junior year, Gabi and I helped Hudson, Jayden, and Damon nick our rival high school’s district wrestling championship cup—a harmless prank.
It was as simple as the five of us ditching third period and driving to Sun Crest High School during their widely publicized pep rally.
Gabi and I crept into the lobby, which was empty but echoing with chants coming from the gym.
I picked the trophy case lock with a bent bobby pin, and Gabi grabbed the cup.
Too easy. We raced back to the getaway car, where the boys were waiting, whooping about our triumph.
Our celebration was short-lived. An attendance clerk in the front office had spotted Gabi and me in the foyer, looked out at the bus lane, and jotted down Jayden’s license plate number.
Turns out it’s not cool to trespass on the property of a school you don’t attend.
Not cool to swipe that school’s stuff, either.
By the time I got home that afternoon, high on the all-in-good-fun theft, Tati had been notified by my school’s furious administration.
I received a two-day suspension and a somberly delivered If you ever participate in anything like this again threat.
My sister was enraged.
“I surround myself with decent people,” I say now, sounding petulant even to myself.
Tati tucks a blond wisp of hair into her ponytail. “I’m not trying to pick a fight, Piper. I’m trying to tell you that I think Henry’s good for you. I approve.”
I don’t need your approval! begs to be said.
It’s true—I don’t. But that’s not what’s bugging me.
It’s Henry. Rather, the points Tati just made about Henry.
He is different from other boys I’ve spent time with.
Hudson and Jayden are tons of fun, and they’ve got big hearts, but they’re troublemakers, and they’re not exactly scholars.
Henry, on the other hand, is going to graduate high school, rock higher education, and then serve our country.
He has no tattoos, piercings, or scars earned by way of stupid stunts.
He doesn’t have a rap sheet of misdemeanors like vandalism or possession.
And while that means he’s a fantastic influence, blah, blah, blah, I’m worried about how being with me will impact him.
College is hopefully in my future, and I’ve managed to dodge actual arrest, but I’ve made mistakes. Tati and Gabi will attest to that.
Am I going to mess up Henry’s plans? Corrupt him? Turn him feral?
No. Not today. Today I’m going to do better. I’m going to be considerate. Peaceful. Kind. Today I’m going to be the sister Tati wishes for.
“Well,” I say, keeping my tone pleasant, “thank you for your approval.”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
“Piper.”
“Tati,” I return, dragging out the syllables.
She sighs. “I really don’t want to argue.”
“I don’t either.”
She looks skeptical, but she doesn’t hassle me. “Go shower. We’ll have a good time at the salon. No more talk about boys.”
I do as she asks.
The whole point of setting up her and Davis was to help chill her out. Help her cheer up. Help us reclaim some semblance of a sister relationship rather than the custodian-captive dynamic we’ve been operating under for so many years.
It’s working.
Who am I to scoff at success?