by Katie Henry
Mo smirks. “Okay, come on in, Land Shark.”
“Wait. Why would a shark have flowers?” I ask, knowing there must be a joke I’m missing here.
“Exactly,” she says as the door opens and Jonah steps through.
He and I stare at each other, then quickly look away. This couldn’t be more awkward if we tried. Maybe he is trying. Maybe this is his final revenge.
“I’m going to go ask for the set list,” Mo says. “Nobody kill each other. That rug looks bad enough already.”
Then she disappears through the doorway, leaving me and Jonah alone.
“I just wanted to say—” Jonah heaves a sigh. “I was really shitty to you. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
“I think I just felt like—”
“You don’t have to explain,” I say. “It’s fine, not a big deal.”
“Yeah, it is,” he says. “It is a big deal that Will and I don’t get asked for things like this. It’s a big deal that you had to get Mo in yourself. That is a big deal, Izzy.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s so unfair. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t realize that until Mo talked to me about it.”
“It’s also a big deal that I made you responsible for it,” Jonah says, dropping his eyes to the carpet. “And you’re not. All you did was say yes to something. We all would have. I was frustrated, and mad, and made it about you and it isn’t, and it’s even worse that I made it about you being a girl. That’s not the kind of person I am—want to be. Not to my friends.”
“We’re still friends,” I say. “Aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course.”
There’s a knock at the door, and Will pokes his head in the room.
“Izzy, there’s someone here asking for you.”
“The booker guy?” I ask.
“She didn’t tell me her name, but she’s tall and blond and terrifying.”
Ah. I stand up and gesture to the door. “Who wants to meet my sister?”
Chapter 15
CHARLOTTE IS POLITE enough as she meets everyone, though it’s clear she’s still wary of the whole situation, and not psyched about spending an hour in this bar before we start.
“You didn’t need to come to this early,” I tell her as we settle into one of two tables Will has saved.
She peels off her coat. “Would have been nice of you to mention that in your text.”
With all this time she’s going to be hanging out, I realize we have a more pressing problem. “Um. Charlotte.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something you should know.”
“What, do you have another secret hobby?” she asks. “Model airplanes? Necromancy?”
“Well—”
“Drinks first. Then dark secrets.” She swivels around, looking for a waiter.
“I want you to know now: people might say weird stuff,” I tell her, aware this is probably too cryptic and also that she’s definitely stopped listening, “Or things that don’t seem true. About me. But it’s complicated and I’ll explain everything after so just . . . be cool, okay? Just—”
“Izzy!” Mo snags my arm. “I want you to meet my girlfriend.”
She’s nearly as tall as Mo, but that’s about the end of the similarities. Her hair is long and wavy under her beanie, her winter coat puffy and practical in contrast to Mo’s flashy coat that can’t possibly be warm enough. She’s a little younger and much quieter than Mo and doesn’t fight for attention as Mo and the boys banter back and forth. She’s got a soft voice, so I don’t quite catch her name when she introduces herself. Something with an L. I’ll ask Mo later.
But the way they look at each other—that’s exactly the same. Total comfort. Real affection. I wonder what that would be like. Having someone you can relax into. Someone who balances you out.
“Are you drinking tonight?” Will asks me. “I’m heading to the bar.”
I shake my head. “My sister is, though. She has an ID,” I add, but don’t add that it’s fake. “I bribed her to come with the promise of a drink. Like a real drink.” I reach for my purse. “How much would it—”
Will stops me with a hand on my arm. “No worries, I got you.”
“You’re always buying.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“I know your parents are wealthy, but you shouldn’t feel like you have to cover us all the time.”
Will stops. He turns back to me, and I can almost see him debating inside his own head what to tell me. We stand there in silence, for a moment.
“My dad owns a vintage Shelby Mustang,” he says finally. And then pauses, like it means something.
“I don’t really know cars,” I say apologetically.
“Well, it’s beautiful. And very expensive. And he has never driven it off our property.”
“Because . . . he wants to keep it nice?”
“Because he’s worried if a cop sees him driving it, they’ll assume he stole it.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling horrible and stupid and out of better words to convey how horrible and stupid I feel.
“Yeah. My family’s got money,” Will concedes. “A whole ton of inherited wealth, if we’re being real here. But we’re also Black, and you can’t buy your way out of people’s racist assumptions.” He sighs. “That’s the default, you know? Suspicion. From everyone. But especially from wealthy white people, who don’t understand why someone who looks like you is in their space, because so few people who look like you are ever there.”
I want to say: it isn’t their space, of course it’s your space, too. But would that really make him feel better? Or would it just make me feel better?
“Jonah gives me a lot of shit about summering on Martha’s Vineyard, and I get how bougie it sounds, but . . . my family’s been going there, to Oak Bluffs, for nearly a hundred years because it’s a place without that kind of suspicion. They made this place where everyone understands where you’re coming from. It’s the same reason my mom signed me and my sister up for Jack and Jill, and my dad joined Sigma Pi Phi, and—” He pauses. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“No,” I say, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “Basically, Izzy, there’s a lot I feel like I can’t do with the money I have—that I’m very lucky to have—because of all that constant suspicion.” He looks back over to our table. “But I can cover most of Jonah’s rent so he doesn’t have to take out as much in loans. And I can get the next round at a bar, because it feels good to be able to do nice things for my friends.” He shrugs. “So I do. You know?”
I don’t know exactly. I don’t think I can ever really understand, being the person I am, and Will knows that, too. But I can listen.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I hear you.”
Will smiles, claps me on the shoulder, and heads to the bar.
Mo helps Will bring over the first round, then goes back for two glasses of Coke. One for me, and one for her girlfriend, which makes me feel better. It’s always a little weird to be the only one not drinking.
“Fancy,” Jonah says, nodding at Charlotte’s drink—clear and iced, with a sprig of something green as a garnish.
“Figured they couldn’t mess up a gin and tonic.” Charlotte takes a sip. “It’s like eggs.”
“High in cholesterol?” Jonah jokes.
Charlotte looks back at him coolly. “So easy a toddler could make it.”
“‘Gin’ is a funny word,” Mo’s girlfriend cuts in. “It doesn’t sound like it at all, but it’s Dutch. I mean, it’s English, but it comes from the Dutch word for juniper. Like, the berries, because they used the berries to flavor it, I guess? Maybe they don’t still.” She looks to Jonah. “Does it taste like juniper berries?”
“Ellis, how would I know that?” he asks.
“You were a Boy Scout,” Will points out.
“I got one merit badge in three years. And it was for traffic safety.”
; Mo’s girlfriend—Ellis, I guess, I knew there was an L somewhere—turns to me. “So, what’s your major?” she asks.
I cough into my hand to buy a second to think, but Charlotte gets there first. “Isabel? She doesn’t have one. She’s—”
“Undeclared,” I interrupt. Charlotte swivels her head to stare at me, but I don’t look over. “But I like Shakespeare. That’s my favorite class.”
“Oh, high five,” Ellis says, brightening. “I’m an English major.”
“And linguistics,” Mo adds. “Double major, which is hard at our school. Trust me.” Ellis blushes.
“And linguistics,” she says, nudging Mo. “Don’t brag for me.”
“It’s not bragging if it’s true.”
“I’m not sure you’re right.”
I can’t imagine Alex bragging about me like that. Being proud of the things I do, not just the way I look. Something warm but painful swells in my chest, and it takes me a moment to find the word for it. Not jealously, exactly but . . . longing.
“Where do you go to school?” Will asks Charlotte. “With Izzy?”
Oh, shit.
Charlotte frowns, then jabs her thumb in my direction. “With her? No, I’m in—”
“Junior year,” I interrupt again. “At Vassar.”
I can feel Charlotte death-staring at me. “Um. What?”
Oh my God, why did I say junior year? So she seemed legal to drink? She has a fake! I guess it’s because I’m pretending to be older, so she should be older, too.
“Wait, so you’re twins?” Jonah asks. “If you’re both in junior year.”
Give up, the reasonable part of my brain says. Keep digging that hole, the louder and much stupider part of my brain says.
“It’s funny you say that,” I tell him, though it isn’t funny at all. “So we’re really close in age. Right?”
“Right—” Charlotte confirms.
“So when Charlotte skipped second grade, we ended up in the same, you know, class.”
“Oh,” Mo’s girlfriend says politely. “Cool.”
“Extremely cool,” Charlotte agrees, between gritted teeth. “Isabel, can I can talk to you for a second?”
“Yes,” I say brightly. “You’re doing it right now.”
“Hysterical.” She grabs my elbow. “You’re a delight. Let’s go.”
“Who are you?” Charlotte demands once we’re standing by the bar, too far away for everyone left at the table to hear us.
“I don’t really know how to answer—”
“Not in a Descartes way,” Charlotte says. I have no idea what that means. She motions toward my friends. “Who do these people think you are?”
“Me,” I say. “Mostly.”
“Bullshit.”
“Minor details were changed.”
“They think you’re in college!”
I throw a look back to the table. “Charlotte, not so loud—”
“Where?” she asks. “Where do they think you go?”
“Roosevelt,” I admit.
“No one goes to Roosevelt.”
“That’s what made it a good choice.”
“Okay, so—” She counts off on her fingers. “They think you’re like twenty, a junior in college, and apparently, older than me!”
“I forgot what I told them before. I had to make up something—”
“You made me your little sister!”
“I had you skip a grade!” I say. “It makes you seem smarter!”
“I could kill you right now. Do you know that?”
“Charlotte—”
“A crime of passion. That’s not even premeditated. Mom could get me off.”
“Please don’t tell them,” I beg her. “Or Mom. Please let me keep this.”
“Ugh.” She takes a giant gulp of her drink. Then sighs. “Fine.”
“Thank you, thank you—”
“You owe me.”
“I know.”
“Like, monetarily. Whatever you’re making from this performance.”
“I’m not getting paid.”
She takes another gulp. “Jesus Christ.”
But when we sit back down with everyone else, Charlotte doesn’t say a word.
“Izzy’s really good,” Will tells her. “You’re going to love her set.”
“Oh, yes,” Charlotte replies with only the barest hint of exasperation in her voice. “I’ve always looked up to her.”
I squeeze her hand into the table. She kicks my ankle. I let go, but I can tell she’s trying not to smile, too.
As it gets closer to the show’s start time, I feel my nerves begin to bubble up. My chest is tight, my heart is beating faster, and my leg is jiggling so much Charlotte kicks me in the ankle again, to make me stop. I’ve got to focus on something, so I pull out my notebook from my bag and read my set, over and over, letting the noise of the others’ conversation wash over me like a wave. This is one of the nicer things about the weird way I hear—it’s easy to tune things out when I want to.
I wonder if there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing. Do Mo and I need to do a mic check, or clear our set with the booker, or anything? But when I look up from my notes to ask—Mo is nowhere to be found.
I lean across to table and get her girlfriend’s attention. “Hey, have you seen Mo?”
“She went to the bathroom.” But then she frowns. “Kind of a while ago.”
“Oh.” I swivel my head around, searching the room for where the bathroom might be.
“Is everything okay?” She starts to get up from her chair. “I can go look for—”
“No, no worries,” I tell her. But truth be told, I am a little worried. It’s weird for Mo to disappear like this, especially so close to start time. She’s always right in the middle of the group, pitching a last-minute new joke or getting our thoughts on a callback that didn’t land the last time. “I’ll get her.”
When I find her, she’s sitting against the wall by the sink in the women’s room, eyes closed. Breathing in sharply through her nose, then out through her mouth. Just liked she taught me to do. But I don’t think it’s working.
“Mo?” I ask, taking a cautious step forward. “It’s almost call time. What are you doing in here?”
She opens her eyes then, and the look she gives me is pure panic. “I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Perform.”
“Of course you can.”
This is kind of a strange reversal. Her having a crisis on a bathroom floor, me trying to pump her up. She’s better at comforting someone, and honestly, she’s better at having a crisis, too. I perch myself on the edge of the sink ledge. This bathroom’s cleaner than the one at the Forest by a long shot, but I’d still prefer to avoid touching the floor.
“I can’t.” Mo closes her eyes again. “Tell the booker that I have, I don’t know . . . homework.”
“Mo.”
“Surgery.”
“What?”
“Rabies.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You’ve gone up a million times before. What’s different?”
“This isn’t an open mic,” Mo says. “People paid to be here.”
“They paid to get in here. I don’t know if that’s—”
“This is the next step,” she continues. “Shows like these, this is where people figure out if they’re actually going to make it. If they’re good enough to go anywhere.”
“You are good. Everyone thinks so.”
“Good.”
“Yes.”
“But not great.”
“I don’t—”
“Good isn’t good enough,” she says. “Not if you really want to make it. You have to be great. You have to be something special, and I’m not.”
“Maybe not yet,” I say. “You’ve only been doing it, what, a year?”
“A little less.”
“No one’s great right away, are they? So what if it takes time?” I might not be great at stand-
up, or even good yet, but I’m a good gardener, and that took time. The first plant I ever had died. It was a succulent and it died. That’s barely even possible.
“I need something to show for it,” Mo says. “All the time I’ve spent—when I could have been studying, or doing an internship, or . . .” She shakes her head. “My mom thinks it’s a hobby. Like her book club, or something. And my dad’s always like, ‘Where exactly is this going, Mozhgan?’ They don’t see what it could be. How it could be my life, not just a . . . distraction.”
“Well, who cares what they think?” I shrug.
She blinks at me. “I do.”
“But you don’t care what anybody thinks.”
“They’re my parents, Izzy. Not anybody.” She sighs. “They sacrificed a lot for me to be where I am, my grandparents sacrificed absolutely everything for them, so it’s like, what am I doing with that sacrifice? How am I paying them back?”
“You don’t owe them that.”
“What?”
“Your . . . whole life.”
“That’s very American of you,” she says.
“Are you not American?”
“Yeah, I’m American. What’s more American than the pursuit of happiness? Your own happiness, at the expense of everything else. But I’m Persian, too, and I respect all the sacrifices my family made for me. I have to.”
Iran and Italy are far apart, but that tracks with my family, too. At least on my mom’s side. Her parents were first-generation Americans who worked minimum-wage jobs they never retired from, never got out of their little town, but pushed my mom to leave them behind the second she could. She pushed herself, too, through college and law school with full academic scholarships and sheer force of will. And what am I doing, with this easy life she built for me out of her own sweat and grit? Sneaking into bars and telling jokes for free.
“I know—” I start to say, but then stop. This is important. Mo needs to feel like I’m here, really here, the way she’s always been for me. I sit down on the floor next to her, close enough our knees are touching.
“I know you want to be great,” I say. “I know you need to be successful. But . . . even if you aren’t great—and I think you are. Even if you aren’t successful—and if there’s any justice in the world you will be . . . that doesn’t mean this is a mistake. Doing this has made me braver. And happier. And just way more . . . myself.” I shrug. “Maybe you were born this brave and happy and sure of what you want, I don’t know.”
