The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  I turn to Kelly, my expectation that she will want to stick by me apparent. Instead she says, “I’ll go with Jen. So she’s not alone.”

  “Kel,” I say, annoyed, “don’t you think we should make sure the bikes are working properly?”

  “I don’t think it takes both of us to do that.” She leans around me and taps Layla’s knee. “And Layls, I’d prefer it if you came with me too.”

  Layla whines, “Why?”

  “Because it’s different riding the bikes here than it was in the warehouse. There’s traffic and people walking and I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt.”

  “I thought nine-year-olds could ride them.”

  Kelly glances at me, but I refuse to meet her eye. I don’t want Layla riding the bike on a busy city street either, but that’s Kelly’s fault—for begging to take on the responsibility of the manufacturing process, for being the cheapskate who said no to thumb grips. The next shipment of bikes will arrive in the fall with a safer design feature, but in the meantime, we’re here with the prototypes. It’s not the end of the world, necessarily. Plenty of early model electronic bikes were designed without thumb grips and plenty of people have ridden them without incident. We just have to impress upon the villagers how easy it is to unwittingly accelerate with a twist grip, that you can kill a person going only forty miles an hour.

  Kelly says to Layla, “Well, when you have to walk ten miles to collect water for your family I’ll let you ride it again, okay?”

  Layla appeals to me with her eyes stuck in the back of her head.

  “Sorry, Charlie,” I tell her, pursing my lower lip to assure her that her pain is my pain. “But I’m with your mom on this one.” I glance over Layla’s shoulder. “Steph? You coming with?”

  Steph speaks to the window with glazed eyes, lulled by the rolling portrait of brown earth and blue sky. “I have some calls to make when we get to the hotel.”

  “You sure?” I ask her. “This is the only full day we have in Marrakesh. Don’t you want to see the city?”

  Stephanie shuts her eyes again. “It’s beautiful.”

  When we arrive at the hotel, the hits keep coming. Lisa informs all of us, in her creepy little-girl voice, that there has been a change to the rooming assignments. I am no longer staying in the suite with Kelly and Layla. Jen will be taking my place, and I am to room with Stephanie.

  “I’m happy with that.” Jen bumps Kelly’s shoulder with her own, and I try not to gag.

  “And I’m happy to be on my own.” Lauren beams. I eye the luggage that hasn’t left her side. I’ll bet she is.

  I’m also betting that this is a setup, so that Lisa can see if her theory has legs, and that there is a very real possibility she may bug my room. I am alone in that concern, it seems, as Stephanie appears indifferent to the fact that we have been stuck together, and that there is only a single, king-sized bed for the two of us to share—not a coincidence. When we get to the room, she drops her things, kicks her nice shoes across the room, and heads for the privacy of the bathroom.

  “Steph, wait,” I say to her before she can shut the door.

  She pauses without turning to face me. I put my phone in front of her face so that she can read the unsent text message to her: Marc told me Lisa thinks we SLEPT TOGETHER! That’s why she wants us in the same room. She might have bugged it so we have to be careful what we say.

  Stephanie reads and rereads the message, her face eerily blank. She takes my phone and composes a response, handing it back to me and shutting the bathroom door without waiting for me to read it. I look at my screen to find that she didn’t write me back in words. Instead, she selected three emojis, the ones with the screaming faces and hands clasped to the jaw.

  “She’s definitely not coming?” Lauren asks when I meet her by the elevators.

  I shake my head. “I think she’s pretty tired. She’s probably jet-lagged from being in L.A. right before this.”

  The elevator doors open and Lauren and I wait patiently while Marc backs in with the camera first.

  “Is she tired?” Lauren asks when the elevator doors have trapped us inside. “Or is she upset?”

  The hair on my arms prickles. “Why would she be upset?”

  “I don’t think it’s escaped her that Vince has a little crush,” Lauren teases, and I instantly regret giving Lauren this opening on camera. “Did you not notice at your engagement party?” she continues, to my complete horror. “He followed her everywhere.”

  I steady myself against the gold ballet bar lining the inside of the elevator. “I didn’t even get a chance to eat at my engagement party. So no, I didn’t notice. And anyway, Kelly would never.”

  Lauren slaps a hand over her mouth, capping a gotcha! laugh. She is wearing the most impractical biking outfit I’ve ever seen. To not exercise Lauren wears head-to-toe Nike and to exercise she wears a gown rimmed with rainbow-colored tassels that the wheels of the bike are going to gobble alive.

  I glare at her. “What?”

  Lauren drops her chin to her chest with an infuriating giggle. “I didn’t mention Kelly by name.”

  A cold sweat surfaces on the back of my neck. “No,” I insist. “You did.”

  “Nope.” Lauren says the word with a pop of her lips: no-pope! She grins, adjusting the gold beaded tikka splitting the part of her baby blond hair.

  “That’s Indian, you know,” I tell her.

  “I know,” Lauren huffs in a way that makes it clear she didn’t. She lifts her chin as the elevator door opens on the ground level. “Africa is trying to improve relations.” I follow our self-appointed U.N. representative into the lobby, making did she really just say that? eyes at the camera.

  “And by the way,” Lauren says to me over her shoulder. “I would never either. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried. This slut has standards.”

  I accidentally land on the heel of Lauren’s sandal, and she snaps backward. “Fuck!” she cries, and when I look down, I realize I’ve torn her ankle strap.

  “Oh my God, Laur. I’m so sorry.”

  “I just got these,” she moans, crouching down to examine the damage.

  “You’re supposed to bike in closed-toed shoes anyway.”

  Lauren scowls up at me from the brightly tiled floor of the riad and I laugh. “I’ll buy you new ones at the Tanneries, okay?”

  “Américain maladroit,” Lauren mutters, standing.

  “I’ll wait for you down here,” I tell her, as she hobbles back toward the elevator. Marc stays with me.

  I plop onto a sand-colored linen couch in the lobby, scrolling through my phone and rereading reminder texts from Lisa. REMINDER: talk to Lauren about how you feel about Jen and Kelly pairing up today. I know you and Jen have made peace, but she has talked so much shit about you over the years. Kelly is your SISTER. How does this not bother you??

  I drop my phone into my lap, running my hands over my face and sighing. Of course it bothers me that Kelly is under the spell of a holistic hack, but I have bigger things on my mind. Like the fact that Lauren has noticed Vince’s fixation on Kelly, and that Stephanie seems very much on the verge of defecting.

  On the other side of the lobby, there is a bit of commotion that catches my attention. Kelly, Jen, and Layla appear beneath an olive arch with a second camera crew in tow. Kelly and Jen are both wearing flesh-colored pillowcases that Jen probably had commissioned from her own exfoliated skin cells. I start to lift a hand to get Layla’s attention, but I’m stopped cold by what I witness next. Kelly, noticing that the tag on Jen’s dress is sticking out, reaches out and tucks it in, her fingers grazing the back of Jen’s neck. Jen, walking a few steps ahead of my sister, is clearly startled by my sister’s touch. Startled and something else that changes her face in a single, sneering flash: repulsed. She wrangles her reaction not even a second later with a grateful smile.

  The axis of my world shifts, just enough for me to review everything I know about Jen and Kelly’s infuriating friendship in a ne
w light. I’m happy with that. Jen had said to Kelly when she found out they were rooming together. Why, then, did my sister’s touch just cause her to recoil in disgust? It makes no sense, unless it is not that Jen is happy to spend more time with her new friend—but that she’s been coached to spend more time with her.

  And who would coach Jen to spend more time with my sister? I wake my phone and reread my reminder texts. Lisa. Lisa must have shared her suspicions about Vince and Kelly with Jen. Of course she did. Lauren knows, and if Lauren knows, her overlord does too. I watch Jen wind the diameter of the lobby’s central fountain, wondering what her reminder texts from Lisa say. Ask Kelly how she’s getting along with the other women. How are things going with Steph? It doesn’t seem like Steph has taken to her—any thoughts as to why? My best friend’s husband and my booby sister—it would make for a luscious storyline.

  Marc says, “Check out the Bobbsey Twins.” He zooms in on Kelly and Jen, who are now swishing out of the lobby in their long, shapeless dresses. Kelly doesn’t look like the new girl anymore. She looks like an original. Like she could be wearing my ring.

  I didn’t know it could be possible, but I feel worse after Lauren and I get back to the hotel. Based on our conversation as we roamed the market with our guide, it’s clear that she has been instructed to ask me questions to help shape Kelly’s impending storyline as a husband-stealing harlot.

  “So, what’s the deal with Layla’s father?” Lauren had asked as we perused the stands of leather slippers and Moroccan saffron and tin lanterns.

  “He’s not in the picture,” I’d replied with a friendly note of finality in my voice.

  “So, like, has anybody been in the picture for Kelly over the last—how old is Layla?”

  I took my time examining a SPOKE-red beaded gandoura. I asked how much in my spotty French. The merchant rattled a response too quickly for me to understand.

  “He said four hundred and forty dirham for one, eight hundred dirham if your sister wants one too,” Lauren translated for me. Lauren speaks French like a rich college girl dripping in Patagonia and Van Cleef, which is who she was once. Even I can hear that her accent is a travesty.

  “Rude,” I joked, hoping for a pardon.

  “Right?” Lauren agreed, playing along. “Like we could be sisters.”

  “Mother, daughter, maybe,” I said, grinning, and Lauren gasped, truly stricken I would say such a thing on camera.

  We continued on our way after bargaining down to seven hundred and sixty dirham for two caftans, red for me and virgin white for Lauren.

  “So how old again?” Lauren asked.

  I stopped to admire a pair of sandals. “How old again what?”

  Lauren smiled at me, patiently, while the camera looked on. “Layla.”

  “Twelve.” I held up the sandals. “What do you think of these?”

  “Cute,” Lauren said without looking at them. “And so, has Kelly been with anyone in all that time?”

  I bartered with the vendor before answering her. “I really don’t like to think about my sister being with anyone, Laur.” I shuddered as if to say, Kelly? Naked? Ick.

  “She must be pretty lonely then.”

  I shrugged, counting out thirty dirham.

  “She must be pretty pent up. I can’t even imagine going that long without the D.”

  I handed the money to the vendor without answering, trying not to think about what happened the last time Kelly felt pent up, right here in Marrakesh.

  When I open the door to my hotel room, the lights are off, an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on but muted. It’s an old one; Khloe still has her original face.

  Stephanie is asleep on top of a creamy, sequined Moroccan wedding quilt, barefoot but dressed in the same clothes she’s worn from L.A. to New York to London to here. The pink polish on her toenails is chipped, which brings me to a full stop. I’ve only ever seen Stephanie with a perfect pedicure. She wraps her toes in plastic before going to the beach in the Hamptons, to keep the sand from dulling the topcoat. It used to drive Lisa crazy. Cut the princess off at the feet, she’d tell Marc, at a pitch dogs could hear.

  Steph’s phone is charging on the floor next to the bed. I check my battery—16 percent—and drop to my heels. When I unplug her phone, the screen lights up long enough for me to read a text message from Vince. If anyone asks me about it, I’m telling the truth. I’m done lying for you, Steph.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands to attention, as though summoned. I look up. Stephanie is in the exact same position she was in when I entered the room, only her eyes are wide open, watching me.

  “Steph!” I fall back with a startled gasp. “Sorry. Can I . . . ? Do you mind?” I hold up the cord of her charger because the way she is looking at me has rendered me incapable of speaking in complete sentences.

  Stephanie reaches for her phone. She skims the message from Vince, then regards me, coldly. “Help yourself.”

  “I was going to shower,” I tell her, standing unsteadily. All the blood rushes to my head, blinding me for a moment. I put my hand on the cool lime wall until my vision clears. “Unless you want to first?”

  Stephanie closes her eyes. “You go.” She slips her phone under her pillow, like you would a gun.

  The women are sitting cross-legged on a smattering of quatrefoil-printed pillows, facing the cameras with their backs to the fire. When I came to Morocco for the first time at fifteen—twelve years ago now!—I was surprised to find that a fire would be necessary at night. When I pictured Morocco, I pictured rolling orange dunes, wavy in the heat, men in turbans hallucinating pools of fresh water. Basically, a dumb American’s caricature of a country that I found later to be as diverse in geography and climate as my own. In June, in Marrakesh, the weather is what my mother would call pleasant. A far cry from New York, right now a festering septic tank of loogies and dog piss and two million colony-forming units of bacteria per square inch. Bless its yucky heart, I miss it.

  The clover-shaped windows are open, calling the flames west. Maybe north. I’m such a girl when it comes to directions, though I know better than to say so out loud and perpetuate such a stereotype. Lisa holds up a hand in question, wanting to know where Stephanie is. I mime applying mascara while one of the sound guys mics me up.

  Lisa rolls her eyes. “So another two hours then?”

  I spread my palms—what do you want me to do?—and enter the shot. “Salut, les filles,” I say, tugging on Layla’s pony and wedging myself between her and Jen, who, I shit you not, is wearing a red fez like she’s motherfucking Aladdin. “How was today?”

  “Oh my God. We walked, like, ten miles,” Layla says, leaning forward to dunk a cracker into a bowl of hummus. The fire sets off a sterling flash at her neck.

  “This is new,” I tell her, pinching the charm between my thumb and index finger.

  “Oh, yeah.” Layla tucks her chin. “What’s it called again?”

  “Hand of Fatima,” Jen answers, and I realize she’s wearing one too. I don’t need to look at my sister’s neck to know they got a three-for-two deal at the souk today.

  “It’s supposed to keep anything bad from happening to you,” Layla tells me.

  I reach for something that looks like lamb. “Is there enough food here for you?” I ask Jen, at the same time deliberately scraping the meat off the bone with my teeth like the top of the food chain savage I am. “I told them we have a vegan in the house.” I stick a greasy finger in my mouth and suck off the juices. Definitely lamb. Lamb has such a distinct taste—pure animal.

  Jen buries her face in a mug of tea, her words parting the steam. “It’s plenty.”

  “Are you sure?” I say, scooching closer to the table to examine the spread. “What can you even eat here?”

  Jen indicates her paltry options because I did not, in fact, call ahead and warn the hotel we had a vegan guest in our party, because we do not have a vegan guest in our party. “Olives, carrots, naan, hummus.”


  “There’s egg in the naan and feta in the hummus,” I tell her.

  “You’re so thoughtful to worry so much about me.” Jen means to smile but only shows her teeth. “I ordered some veggie kabobs to the room earlier so I’m not very hungry.” She sets her tea on the low table, linking her hands around her knees, her beady eyes alighting. “Is Steph coming or did you two have another fight?”

  “We had so much to catch up on we lost track of time,” I return, easily. “But, I’m sure any minute now.”

  I watch Lauren make eye contact with Lisa over my shoulder. “Maybe I should go check on her,” she says. She climbs to her feet, holding tight to her water glass. A lot of lime in that water.

  I do not want the second camera crew following Lauren upstairs so she can grill Stephanie—Have you heard the one about your husband and Brett’s sister? I stand and offer to go with her.

  “Brett,” Kelly says, tugging on the hem of my dress, “we actually want to talk to you about something.” I stare down Lauren a moment, but what can I really do? I can’t be everywhere at once. Reluctantly, I return to my seat on the floor, watching Lauren sashay out of the room, her caftan grazing the black-and-white medina floor, the assistant cameraman weaving the same unsteady path behind her.

  “We were talking,” Kelly continues, tucking her hair behind her ear and glancing at Jen to make it clear who she was talking to, “and we thought that maybe when we get back we can throw you a bachelorette party at Jen’s Hamptons house.”

  I point a lamb rib at my chest, looking both ways over my shoulders, as though she couldn’t possibly be talking to me.

  Kelly har-hars at my put-on bewilderment. “Yes, you. Jen was saying she’d like one last summer weekend in the house before it sells.”

  “And I think it’s important to continue to feed this good energy between us,” Jen says. “Celebrating joy builds walls that keep animosity out.”

  Jesus, hold my earrings. We both know this is a production-driven move—there is always “one last hurrah” before the end of every season, an event that brings the women together to kiss and make up before we tear each other to shreds at the reunion. I had been the one to suggest a bachelorette party to Lisa, I just didn’t think Jen would be the one hosting it.