by Alex Flinn
Lisette rang the doorbell. No one answered. She rang a few more times, then she sat down on the garbage bag and cried some more, great, racking sobs that shook her shoulders. We sat that way for a long time, me in the tree house, Lisette sobbing by the door.
It struck me for the first time that my father was a jerk. A real jerk who’d left his wife and daughter and had never seen her again, just like my own father had. Lisette and I were the same.
Finally, the air was quiet. This was my chance, my one chance. I had to sneak down when she wasn’t looking.
The tree house creaked as I made my way down the ladder. Instead of walking toward the porch, I went in the opposite direction, toward the street.
Just as I reached it, she looked up. She stared at me full in the face and smiled through her tears.
In that moment, I knew I hated her.
Lisette was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, more beautiful than Courtney or any of the popular girls at school, more beautiful than my dolls. She looked like a grown-up, like one of those people on Inside Edition. Her eyes were the same color as the sparkling, royal blue shawl, and her lips were large and a shade of red my mouth only got if I drank a red Slurpee. I knew the girls at school would soon make her their queen, and that made me hate her even more.
“Are you Emma?” she said, and I could only nod, frozen.
“Oh, God! I’m so glad!” She rose to walk closer to me. Her eyes fell on my book. I should have left it in the tree house.
But Lisette’s eyes grew even wider. “Wow, you’re reading that?” When I nodded again, she said, “You must be really smart.”
I went through a big-time internal debate about whether to nod again or deny it. Finally, I said my first words ever to my new stepsister.
“Well, I’m bad at math.”
“Really? Math’s my favorite. I’m bad at English. Maybe we can help each other out.” Then, she opened her arms and said, “Oh, Emma, I know we’re going to be just like real sisters.”
And, in that moment, I really wanted to believe her. A sister had to love you, right?
3
I brought Lisette up to my room. I debated doing this because, actually, it was two rooms, a suite with a bathroom between. At first, Daddy had suggested I give up one to Lisette, but Mother had vetoed that. “Bad enough she has to share her life with some stranger without having to share a bathroom.”
Finally, they decided that Lisette would take the spare bedroom, which was downstairs near the laundry room. Mother called it the guest room, even though we never had guests.
It had seemed like a good idea, but as I helped Lisette drag her garbage bag from the doorway, I thought it might have been fun to share with her. I remembered slumber parties I used to have with Courtney, when we’d put up tents and eaten Mike and Ikes. That was before she got cool in sixth grade and dumped me. I was almost about to offer to share my room with Lisette, ignoring the fact that Mother would completely freak if I did (though maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing) when we reached the door of Lisette’s room. She gasped.
“Is this … do we share this room?”
The room had one bed that took up half the space. I said, “No, this is your room.”
She dropped her suitcase and took first one, then a second step in. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never had a room of my own.”
“But you’re an only child.”
She nodded. “But Mom…” She stopped, eyes flitting to her feet, then back. “We had a one-bedroom, so we shared. Then, at the end, she was so sick I took the sofa bed in the living room. This is so pretty, though. You’re lucky to live here, Emma.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. I was lucky because my mother had stolen her father and all his money too. But, apparently, Lisette was too nice to notice. Now, she threw herself onto the bed, her face sinking into the pillows, which were old ones Mother had removed from other beds.
I waited a moment before saying, “Can I help you put your things away?”
It didn’t take long. Her clothes took up less than half the tiny closet plus a single drawer. She had no books, no dolls, certainly nothing expensive like a laptop, only a few stuffed animals, notebooks from school, and a framed photo of a fragile-looking blond woman, her mother. This, she put by the bed. There were no other photos of friends, no yearbooks either. I took more to sleepaway camp.
When we finished, I offered to show her around. At every door, her eyes widened. “Wow. My mother always said my father was rich, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Her words made me feel like I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a week. We weren’t rich. Our house was average for the neighborhood, and I went to public school. It wasn’t like we were the Kardashians. Still, I saw her taking in the flat screen TV, the pool, the Jacuzzi. I remembered her comment about sharing a room with her mom. Only poor people did that. Hadn’t my father paid child support?
When we reached my room, I didn’t want to go in. But Lisette said, “So this is yours?” and I had to admit it was. I saw the room the way it would look to Lisette, crowded with what now struck me as excess—expensive stuff, my own TV, which I barely even watched, American Girl dolls I’d outgrown, with houses of furniture, a rack for all my earrings. I’d even left the closet door open so she could see it was stuffed within an inch of its life with clothes.
She did notice. “Wow, it’s like a mall in there.”
“Yeah.” I tried to push the door closed, but it rebelled, swinging back. “I need to clean it out. There’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even fit.” I pushed again, then spied a pair of True Religion jeans Mother had brought home last month. Size: Tiny. Status: Never worn.
“Hey, you want these?” I pointed at them. “My mom got them too small. It was supposed to motivate me to lose weight, but…” I gestured at my size-seven hips. “Guess it didn’t work.”
Lisette looked at the jeans like they were booby-trapped. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. They’ll never fit.”
“Wow, thanks.” She took them from me. “But you don’t need to lose weight. You just have more of an athletic build.”
Except I tripped over my own feet, even when I was standing still.
She held up the jeans and examined the stitching. “You sure you don’t want to return these? Or sell them on eBay?”
“I have tons of stuff that doesn’t fit me, if you want it.” I held out a Hollister button-down that had been too tight in the bust last time I wore it. “Like this?”
She grinned. “Wow, thanks. I always hear about sisters sharing stuff.”
After that, I kept finding more clothes, clothes that were still new and things that had fit me before but wouldn’t now. I pushed back the envy I felt, knowing it would all look a thousand times better on my beautiful new sister than it ever had on me. Lisette had nothing. This was the least I could do. Besides, I wanted her to like me. It was obvious I’d misjudged her, based solely upon her looks. Didn’t I hate when people did that with me?
“Try this on.” I held out a Guess dress. “It’ll look so cute with your hair.”
But Lisette shook her head. “Later. I’ll put together an outfit for dinner. Does our father come home for dinner?”
Our father. “He should be here around six.”
“Cool. Hey, do you have any nail polish? We could do each other’s toes.”
This type of stuff was catnip to me. Actual girlfriend stuff, bonding over noxious chemicals. Before you could say “slumber party montage,” I had out my pedicure stuff my aunt had given me for Christmas. I spread out twelve bottles of polish on my Animal Planet Panda Exploration bedspread, hoping Lisette wouldn’t notice how babyish and lame it was. “Which one?”
She studied them, like an artist choosing a tone. “Oh, I don’t know. We should match, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely. I mean, sure.” I didn’t want to commit to a color. I’d let her pick.
“Come on.”
“Okay.�
�� I selected some bottles from the group. “I narrowed it down to three. You pick one. That’s what my friends and I do when we can’t agree.”
I left out the fact that I hadn’t been hanging out with those friends in middle school. Might as well let Lisette think I had real friends, not just people I sat with at lunch and never saw on weekends.
Lisette chose the royal blue polish and the one with silver sparkles. “Okay?”
“It’s like you read my mind.”
“I try.”
We sat with our feet dipped into the little blow-up footbath that came with the pedicure set. She said, “So, tell me about my father.”
I shrugged and curled my toes under. I felt like, maybe, he wasn’t who I’d thought he was, but I said, “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything. My mother totes wouldn’t tell me anything about him. I’ve never even seen a picture—she cut him out of all my baby pictures. In one, there was just a left hand. I used to look at that hand and wonder if I’d recognize it if I saw it again.”
As she spoke, my eyes fell on a photo, me and Dad at my fifth-grade graduation. Mom had taken the picture, and Dad’s hand was draped over my shoulder. I looked away before Lisette could follow my eyes.
“Well,” I said, “he’s really into gardening. We have a butterfly garden out back.” Did that sound lame? “Once, last year, we had twenty monarch cocoons, and they all hatched the same day.”
“Wow, wish I’d seen that.”
I hoped I hadn’t sounded like I was bragging. “Maybe it will happen again. The monarchs lay eggs on a plant called milkweed. Sometimes, we catch them and put them in a butterfly house so they build their cocoons there.”
Lisette wiggled her toes in the warm water. I tried to think of something else to tell her, something that didn’t sound like Daddy and I were attached at the hip.
“Oh, and he has a sailboat. I’m not that into sailing, though. I get seasick, and the sun’s bad for my pale skin. I hate my skin.”
“Your skin’s fine. You could squeeze those little blackheads, but other than that.”
“The magazines say not to squeeze them.”
“Well, yeah, but are you going to walk around with a hundred blackheads? You just have to get them the second you walk out of the shower.”
I nodded, amazed at how stupid I’d been. Lisette had perfect skin, so obviously, she knew. This is why people needed friends.
“Ready for polish!” Lisette tapped my foot. “Stop curling your toes.”
“My feet are so ugly.”
“They’re okay. Having a second toe longer than the first is supposed to be a sign of leadership.”
“Your feet are tiny.” I remembered this book I read about foot binding in China, where the girl with the tiniest foot got the richest husband. And then, there was Cinderella. In older versions, the stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try and trick the prince into marrying them. I looked at my big toes, and I knew which one of us would be the stepsister in the story.
“I hate my feet,” Lisette said. “I do ballet, and I couldn’t get pointe shoes until last year. My teacher said my foot was underdeveloped. Then, just when I finally got them, I had to quit.”
“Why did…?” My voice trailed off. Of course she’d had to quit because of her sick mother. “That’s so cool that you do ballet. Maybe you can do it here.”
She shrugged. “I guess. I miss my old studio, though. I miss…” She looked away. “I miss everything.”
She glanced at the photo of me and Dad, so I knew she’d seen it. After a minute, she picked up the clear nail polish. “Okay, then!”
An hour later, we had identical matching fingers and toes, and Lisette had finished grilling me about Dad. That’s when Mother came home. She walked in without knocking and took in the scene: me and Lisette as buddies. “Don’t you have homework?”
“I did it in class.”
She looked only at me, not acknowledging Lisette. “Wasn’t there a project in Ms. Dillon’s class?”
“Not until next Friday, and I’m half done.”
Why did she have to be so helicopter? I knew my mother had been a lawyer before she’d married Daddy. They’d met at work, actually. And sometimes, I felt like she really needed to get a job again, so she could stop obsessing about me all the time. I always did my homework with no nagging from her.
But Mother said, “I hate how you wait until the last minute. You might have other homework during the week. Do it now.”
“Can’t I even wait for my nails to dry?”
“Don’t talk back.”
“I wasn’t.”
She gave me that look, where it looks like her brain’s going to come shooting out her eyes, and I shut up. Only then did she finally look at Lisette. “Emma showed you your room?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then I suggest you go get unpacked. Dinner will be at six.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Mother stared at Lisette until she left, not taking any of the clothes with her. When she was gone, Mother went to the door, looked out, shut it, then sat on my bed.
“I’m warning you, Emma. Don’t get too chummy with that girl.”
“Chummy? We were just—”
“Talking? Painting each other’s toenails?”
“So?”
“I know her type, Emma. Did you hear her just now—‘yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am.’ What thirteen-year-old talks like that?”
“So you don’t like her because she’s polite?”
“She’s trying to get something.”
“Oh my God. That’s just crazy.”
“No it’s not. No it’s not. She wants information out of you, something she can use against you with your father, her father. Did you tell her anything, anything private?”
I remembered how I’d said I didn’t like sailing, but I said, “Of course not. This is deranged.”
“I assume you like living in this house, Emma? Having nice things?”
“Can I just do my homework now?”
“She’s his flesh and blood, Emma.”
“Daddy loves me.”
She sighed. “Just watch out, Emma.” She stood and walked toward the closet. “And change your outfit. That one looks all sweaty. And do your project.”
I did work on my project, at least until I heard the shower start up in her bedroom. Then, I gathered the pile of clothes and also some books I thought Lisette might like, not nerdy classics, but the kind even the popular girls read, books about faeries. Maybe Lisette would be like a faerie visitor who would change my life in mysterious ways.
Okay, that sounded dumb, even to me.
I snuck downstairs and knocked on Lisette’s door. “You forgot these,” I said when she answered the door, red-eyed.
She gestured that I should come in. “Your mom hates me.”
“She’s just…” Just what? Selfish? What could I say that wouldn’t make her sound awful? Nothing. “She doesn’t like change.”
“I was trying to be so perfect, but she didn’t even give me a chance.”
I remembered Mother’s comment about Lisette saying “ma’am.” Trying to be perfect would explain that.
“Maybe don’t try so hard. She’ll like you better once she gets to know the real you.” I knew she wouldn’t.
“I hope so.” Lisette’s eyes darted to the garbage bag still on the floor. “God, I miss my mom.”
I held out the armload of clothing and books. “I brought you some outfits. And some books too. I thought maybe if we read the same things, we could discuss them, and that would help you in English.”
“Cool!” She took them from me. “The books look awesome! You’re so generous.”
“No big deal. I already read them.”
“Still.” She threw her arms around me. “Oh, Emma, I’m so glad you’re here at least.”
I hugged her back, listening for the shower to go off upstairs. I could not believe this cool gi
rl was going to be my sister.
4
It was five-thirty when I heard the garage door open and, through the window, saw Daddy’s car pull in. I ran downstairs to greet him. I wanted to be there when he met Lisette.
But, when I got there, she was already wrapped in his arms.
“Oh, baby,” he said, “it’s been so long. Too long.”
Lisette was crying. Again. “I always wanted—”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it had to be like this, but at least we’re together now.”
I started to back away. It had been dumb of me, thinking I could horn in on their moment, their reunion. As I stepped back, I stumbled into the sunken living room and plunged headfirst into the sofa, my knee hitting the edge of the glass coffee table. I squeezed my teeth together to keep from shrieking. Lisette saw it all. She looked down.
Finally, my father let go of her. “Let me take a look at you. Man, you’ve grown.”
That was when I saw what she was wearing. My jeans, the ones I’d given her, and one of my shirts. The jeans fit all wrong, huge in the waist and hips but way too short, and the Hollister shirt had a big yellow stain on it. Now I remembered spilling Coke on it. The expensive clothes looked like they’d come from the Salvation Army.
“But we need to get you some new clothes,” Dad said.
“Oh.” Lisette gestured down at her outfit. “Emma gave me these. Wasn’t that sweet of her, to let me have her old clothes she doesn’t want anymore?” She whirled around, modeling the mess of an outfit. As she did, the pants dropped down, and she had to pull them up. She must have been a size zero. “They’re fine. I just need a belt, maybe. I have one though. You don’t have to buy me anything.”
