Chapter Sixteen

WhenI go to text Isaiah that night, I struggle to find his name in my contacts. I try Isaiah and Ortiz first, but nothing comes up, despite the fact that I watched him enter his name into my phone. Remembering our earlier conversation, I try one last thing: Zay.

And there it is.

I spend no less than twenty minutes composing my text to him, reading, rereading, and then deleting the whole thing and starting again. Everything I type out seems robotic and unnatural, and I’m on edge even more than normal because of how thoughtlessly I hurt his feelings earlier.

I’m also maybe a little confused by how quickly he’s gone from the bane of my existence to someone whose opinion I care about.

Eventually, I end up with this.

Me: Hey! It’s Whit. You mentioned earlier that tomorrow might work to meet up? I’m around, so let me know!

Casual-ish, peppered with my usual smattering of exclamation points. Short. Simple.

After I send it, I hide my phone under my pillow and go to find Lily. She’s lying on the carpet in her room, playing her Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, without a doubt.

Lily has played this game obsessively since its release, meticulously making and remaking her island, crafting custom items, and trading with players on Discord. I got into it with her for a bit, but every time I played my character, she complained I was messing up her island by letting too many weeds grow because I insisted they were pretty (true) and giving too many “ugly” clothes to Clay, an adorable hamster who loves being lazy and eating. She eventually deleted my character. Honestly, I get it.

“Ooh, are you talking to my boyfriend, Clay?” I tease from the doorway.

She doesn’t even bother looking up, but I catch the gigantic eye roll she gives me. “I kicked him off the island.”

“You what?!”

Lily shrugs. “I have a new theme and he didn’t go with it!”

“What’s the theme?” I ask.

“I’m turning the entire island into a giant karaoke bar.” She tilts the screen toward me and I get down on the floor next to her to take a closer look. In the game, she’s built a massive dance area with microphones, vertical speakers, colored lights, and twinkling palm trees. It looks pretty amazing.

“Um, this is incredible,” I say, snatching the Switch to get a closer look.

“Hey!”

“I’ll give it back.” I move her character (who is wearing a headset microphone, cute) around the island so I can look around.

But when I accidentally trample through some of her flowers, she yanks the console back. “You’re done. You’re done.”

I pout and cross my arms. “Fine.”

Lily shakes her head and turns completely around so I can’t see her game, and I flop on the carpet dramatically, staring up at her ceiling, where she’s stuck glow-in-the - dark music notes. Then I flop onto my side and start to poke her with my toe. “Is this distracting?” Poke. “How about this?”

“I’m ignoring you,” Lily says.

From this angle on her floor, I can see everything that’s under her bed, including some ancient board games we haven’t played in forever, forgotten Hatchimals, and a few scattered Lego pieces. I can’t imagine not being obsessive enough that you’d just have random Lego pieces outside of their original box, but whatever, that’s why this is her room and not mine. I reach for the Hatchimal, an interactive stuffed toy that you teach to do things as if it’s a baby. It comes to life and giggles.

“God, I forgot how creepy these things are,” I say, tossing it back under Lily’s bed. When that doesn’t get her attention, I sigh loudly. “You’re being boring.”

“And you’re being annoying.”

“I’m your older sister. I’m supposed to be annoying.”

Lily finally turns to me. “I think you have that backward.”

“I think you have that backward,” I repeat in a hig h-pitched voice.

She lets out a frustrated groan and turns her console off. “Fine. I’m done. Are you happy now?”

“Delighted,” I say with a grin. “Can I do your makeup?”

“Really?” she asks, eyeing me skeptically.

“Really!”

“With your good makeup?”

“With my good makeup,” I promise. Lily claps her hands together and nods a few times. “Yay! Let me go grab my stuff.”

I’m back in a hurry with a Caboodle filled with different types of makeup, including the drugstore stuff I usually use for Lily’s makeovers (oops) as well as the good stuff I hoard for myself (What?! It’s expensive!). A promise is a promise, though, so I skip right to the items I’ve picked up from Ulta and hold out two different color palettes from which Lily can choose.

She opts for the Sugar Rush Tarte palette, a mix of bright colors

I rarely use, and I’m thrilled to have a chance to experiment with them on her. The colors will look great with her brown complexion.

“Can we skip the contouring?” Lily asks, wrinkling her nose when I reach for my foundation. “It makes my face itch.”

“Ugh, but you won’t get the full effect!” I whine.

“Don’t care. Eyes only, please.” She smiles smugly, knowing I’ll give in.

With a long, dramatic sigh, I agree, and pat some primer on each eyelid.

“I feel like we haven’t really seen much of each other lately. How’s everything been going? You getting to and from your classes okay?” I ask.

Even though her eyes are closed, she opens them just to roll them. “It’s going fine.”

“Oh, okay. Good,” I say, disappointed she doesn’t want to share more. “Anything else?”

“School’s okay. Kind of boring sometimes. One of my teacher’s aides is super nice.”

“Is that Ms. Kaminski?” I start to layer on the yellow at the inner corner of her eye.

“Yeah. We just call her Ms. K. She sometimes lets me listen to music.”

“In class?” I ask.

Lily shrugs. “Sometimes.”

Why is she letting Lily goof off and listen to music when she should be helping her focus on her studies? Though Lily struggles to read and write at her grade level, she’s super smart, and I hate when authority figures can’t see that.

“Is she supposed to be doing that?”

“It’s only when we’re between activities or a few minutes before the bell,” Lily explains.

“Hmm” is all I say as I switch to the next color in the palette, a neon green, which I’ll blend into the yellow on one side and eventually into the turquoise on the outer edge of her eye.

“Ruby thinks Ms. K is awesome, too,” Lily adds.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. The other day, Ms. K let Ruby bring in her Switch and show me her entire island. It’s not as good as mine, but it’s way better than the ideas you had.”

“Hey! Watch what you say about the girl doing your makeup,” I warn.

She opens the eye I’m not working on and laughs. “Sorry.”

“What’s so great about her island?”

“It’s just really cool. She figured out how to make all these different levels and the houses line up kind of like a neighborhood. It’s hard to explain, but I really like it,” Lily says. “She’s so good.”

I blend the shadows out on her left eye, satisfied when they meld together. “Sounds like it. Other eye now.”

“Abuela bought me the paid version of Animal Crossing so I can have Ruby to my island whenever I want.”

“You can do that?”

I add the colors to Lily’s right eyelid as I listen to her talk. “Yeah. Ruby showed me how. So now if she’s on and I’m on at the same time, she can just come over to my island or I can go to hers. You can only do that if you list someone as your best friend, though.”

“I see. And Ruby is your best friend?”

Lily laughs again. “Well, in the game, yeah. She has to be, otherwise it’s harder to visit each other.”

“Oh, right, right.” I’m nodding despite her eyes being shut.

“But . . . yeah, probably in real life, too. That’s why when she asked me if she could borrow my copy of the Intonation vinyl, I said it was okay.”

This makes my hand pause midair. “The lim ited- edition one?”

“Yeah.”

“But Lily, that’s super valuable!” I protest.

Okay, so, in fairness, I don’t actually know if it’s that valuable. I haven’t looked it up on eBay or whatever, but it was lim ited- edition. Seven years or so ago, the group partnered with a store to produce an extremely limited number of vinyl records featuring an exclusive remix of one of their singles. You could only get it by waiting in line at a physical retailer (as if it were the 1990s or something), and once the vinyls were gone, that was it! The remix isn’t even on Spotify now. So why would Lily think it was a good idea to loan it to someone who’s practically a stranger?

Her eyelids fly open and she scowls at me. “So what? Ruby wanted to borrow it so I let her. It’s mine!”

“It’s ours,” I correct her.

“No, it’s not. You don’t even like Intonation anymore! You barely even listen to their songs. It’s always your sad, sappy Maggie Rogers playlists.”

“Um, I listen to Beyoncé, too!”

“Whatever!” Lily argues. “It’s mine and I can do whatever I want with it.”

“But Lily! How do you know Ruby’s not just using you to get that vinyl?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s a terrible thing to say, especially about Lily’s new friend.

“Why would you even say that?” Lily’s arms are crossed now. “God, you’re so annoying. Just leave me alone and get out of my room.”

“I didn’t even get to finish your makeup,” I protest.

“I said, leave me alone!”

Sheepishly, I grab my makeup kit and slink down the hall to my room, feeling her eyes watching me as I go.

For a minute, Marisol’s words from earlier ring in my ea rs— Just let her live a lit tle but whatever. Am I such a bad person because I don’t want Lily to be taken advantage of ? She has this habit of giving in to whatever people want, always letting them borrow her belongings even if the person is a near stranger. Sometimes she gets the items back, but sometimes they come back broken or, even worse, are never seen again. I don’t want this to happen to the Intonation album— not when it holds so much sentimental value.

Lily may be mad now, but she’ll thank me for this later.