Chapter 2
THREE WEEKS LATER
When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being an artist.
Forget Picasso and Michaelangelo—I was going to be the greatest painter who ever lived.
While my sister, Jules, would become a dolphin trainer, I would spend my life with a dozen rescue dogs and an easel by the sea.
Ask any little girl what she wants to be when she grows up and I promise you, she won’t think twice.
President, actress, marine biologist— by the time she can read, the dream is woven in so deeply it dances with her DNA.
Often, it becomes hard to separate her identity from her ambition: the thing that she knows, deep in her heart, is meant for her.
From that day on, art became my addiction.
For some, art is a hobby, but for me, it was a portal to another world.
Somewhere an awkward, pathologically responsible girl could be completely herself: fully engaged with the magic of being alive.
I sketched the way most girls keep a diary; immortalizing every beautiful scene I witnessed in the pebbled pages of my sketchbooks.
I gave myself sharpie tattoos and covered every inch of my homework in wild orchids and ink-scaled dragons.
And when I was ready to move on to bigger projects, Dad even let me paint the outside of our van: this time, for real.
It was my dad who made me believe that art was magic. So when he got sick my senior year of high school, I filled his hospital room with seascapes and wildflowers and sunlight on the North Cascades. Like if somehow I could bring the world to him, he might have the strength to return to it.
It didn’t work, though. In the end, I think all it did was remind him he wasn’t coming out.
There is a moment in every kid’s life when reality comes knocking.
When the fairytale crumbles and the castle grounds are revealed to be astroturf.
Inevitably, she discovers that marine biology is two thirds lab work and zero thirds talking to dolphins.
That Prince Charming is clearly face-blind and obsessed with feet.
She learns, perhaps most importantly, that girls with financial aid and a teenage sister to care for don’t always have the luxury of becoming professional artists.
Because no matter how much we want it, the dream of the fairy tale can’t last forever. At some point, we all have to grow up and choose the next best thing.
But what the hell are we supposed to do when it doesn’t choose us back?
I wake to the sound of a lock being twisted and roll over into a pile of pillows. I must have fallen asleep on the couch again. I hear the deadbolt unlatch first. Is someone breaking into my apartment?
In my confusion, I grab the object closest to me without disturbing the pile of blankets I’m buried under.
Unfortunately, it’s less of a weapon and more of a stale hunk of bread.
I can already see the headline: jobless, painfully single Chicago woman fends off would-be attacker with four-day old baguette.
The latch clicks and my door swings open.
“Good morning, sunshine!” the burglar/murderer trills in the most cheerful octave known to man. Marianne. It’s not her usual M.O. to drop in unannounced, but then again, I haven’t seen my phone in hours.
“Oh my god,” I hear her exclaim in horror as she steps inside. Something soft and crinkly drops to the floor. “Stella? Stella!”
“Present,” I call listlessly, lifting my left hand from the rubble of blankets. A few seconds later, my head also emerges.
“Thank God,” Marianne says, surveying my biohazard of an apartment. I like to consider myself a minimalist, but in the few weeks since I basically ruined my life, I haven’t had the energy to do anything beyond the confines of my sofa.
“I thought you’d been robbed!”
I rub my eyes to see that Marianne has come armed with coffee and pastries from Toto’s, my favorite coffee shop.
But not even the promise of a fresh croissant can rouse me from my pit of despair.
She’s dressed like she’s just been to a workout, but the vaguely sunny haze coming through my window tells me we’re still in work hours. Is it the weekend already?
“Oo la la, Stella,” Marianne teases as she holds up the marinara-splashed bra that’s hanging over my dining chair. “Did you have a party without me?”
“Give me that,” I lean over the back of the couch and snatch it from her, tucking it under the layers of blanket I’m snuggled in. The one perk of having an apartment the size of a shoe box? Everything’s within reach.
“If you want your paws on my undergarments,” I tell her, “you’ll have to bid for them on the dark web like everyone else.”
“Glad to see your sense of humor is still intact,” she says, holding out the dark roast to me like a peace offering. “You look like you could use this.”
“Thanks.”
Marianne lowers herself carefully onto the couch, shoving my headphones and over-filled journal to the side.
I don’t even want to know what I look like right now—my unruly brown hair is probably so matted I’ll have to shave it off.
Maybe the nuns will take it as a sign of my devotion when I plead with them to join their convent.
“Seriously, Stell,” Marianne lowers herself carefully onto the couch, shoving my headphones and over-filled journal to the side. When she sits down, I can almost see the outline of her baby belly starting to show.
“I know you’re depressed, but it’s been three weeks. I think you’ve overextended the traditional shitty job mourning period.”
“It wasn’t a shitty job,” I wave her off. “And I don’t need a lecture. I know I’m a pig, and I’ve accepted it.”
Marianne gasps.
“How dare you degrade my favorite animal! This is beyond barn-dweller status. You’re one step away from ending up on an episode of Hoarders: Chicago.”
“Do you think that pays?”
Marianne smacks me with the paper-bagged croissant she’s holding, and I snatch it from her.
“Let me paint you a picture here, my sweet, naive friend,” I start as I take a massive, buttery bite. “Do you know how many job opportunities are out there for art history majors?”
“Stella—“
“Last week, the Museum of Contemporary Art turned me down for a volunteer docent position because they were looking for someone with ‘more experience.’ I have a masters degree and I’m not even qualified to work for free!”
The last words come out as half choke, half cry as I stuff half of the croissant into my mouth at once. Marianne grabs the bag back from me as the flakes rain over my Tom Petty t-shirt.
“Ok, you need to chill,” she says firmly. “It’s the new year! You should be celebrating, not doom scrolling job boards and drowning in unwashed laundry.”
Just then, my phone dings from some unknown location across the room—probably tucked under a sweatshirt or in the back of my refrigerator.
“You gonna get that?” Marianne asks.
“It’s just Jules,” I tell her. “Again. She won’t leave me alone. She’s trying to get me to come on some crazy vacation with her new in-laws.”
I feel a coil of guilt pulsing in my stomach.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to my sister—more than anything, I want to spill everything that happened last month and hear her tell me she’s on her way from California with brownies and a homemade voodoo doll.
The problem is, she’ll actually do it. And right now, she doesn’t have time to play clean-up crew.
Besides running the hair salon she opened last year after years of saving, my baby sister Jules is bra deep in planning the wedding of the literal century.
But even if Jules and I did keep secrets from each other, which we definitely don’t, I’m notoriously the worst liar of all time.
If I answer the phone, I’ll have no choice but to dump my sob story all over her pre-nuptial bliss.
“Her obscenely rich in-laws? Let me guess,” Marianne says, “They’re trying to kidnap you to the Maldives? Sentence you to ten days hard labor at a Swiss ski chalet?”
I contemplate bopping her with my baguette.
When Jules first told me she was dating Harry Warren, the heir apparent to the Warren Entertainment empire, I was more than skeptical.
Their rom-com worthy story of a haircut turned seven-hour dream date seemed a few cliches north of believable, especially when a quick google search revealed his net worth to be on par with George Clooney’s.
If there’s anything I learned from the handful of trust-funders I had the displeasure of going to college with, it’s that privilege can make monsters out of otherwise normal kids.
So when Jules first brought her new man out to visit last fall, I was honestly expecting an entitled jerk.
But despite my best efforts to hate him, Harry won me over in a matter of hours.
Not only is he a genuinely nice guy, but he treats my sister like a literal queen, recognizing her for all the amazing qualities men are usually too blinded by her general gorgeousness to see.
He even shares her bizarre obsession with Swedish Europop.
Still, his flagrant generosity and ungodly expensive watch told me everything I needed to know about the kind of life Jules is signing up for. One that’s very much out of my league.
“Very funny,” I snap back, but I don’t correct her.
If Marianne knew where my sister and the Warrens were actually headed, she’d try and convince me to go.
And I’ve already made up my mind—there is no way in hell I’m spending two weeks with Harry’s blue-blood family, no matter how nice a guy he seems to be.
I have enough reasons to feel like a trainwreck: I don’t need her shiny, perfect family to rub it in.
“Why don’t you go?” Marianne asks anyway. “Sounds like a good excuse to get out of dodge and clear your head for a few days.”
“It’s next week,” I tell her. “Too late.”