Page 3 of The Favorite Sister

“Because I don’t want anything that makes us look inexperienced in the press,” she said, flicking open a yoga mat. “I’m worried how it looks to our investors, like we’re little girls playing with Monopoly money.”

Well, I thought but didn’t have the energy to say,they aren’t our investors. They’re my investors. So don’t lose any sleep over it.But I let it slide. I have enough headaches in my life right now. No need to get hung up on the delusional statements of a stay-at-home mom who still hasn’t accepted the fact that her tubby little sister is the overachiever now.

And overachiever I am. Since filming wrapped last season, I’ve raised $23.4 million to expand the location of my spin studio, WeSPOKE. Coming fall 2017, SPOKE will open on the Upper West Side and Soho, and, if this yoga thing does well for us, we have our eye on a space just down the block from our original SPOKE location in the Flatiron, the premier zip code for boutique studio fitness in Manhattan. Not bad for a twenty-seven-year-old community-college dropout who, up until three years ago, was living in her sister’s basement in New Jersey.

I should be proud, and I am, but... I don’t know. I can’t help butfeel conflicted about the expansion. I loved our scrappy little studio when it was a self-governing affair: There was no board to answer to, no human resources department, no numbingly dull talk ofthe market. Our seed capital came from an entrepreneurial contest I won when I was twenty-three. I never needed angel investors or bootstrappers, I never had to answer to anyone but myself. The grant money gave me the freedom to focus on the mission of SPOKE, which is and always will be to protect and educate the female Imazighen population of Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains.

Imazighen women and girls—some as young as eight—walk, on average, four miles a day under a gruesome 14 UV Index sun just to bring home a single jerrican of water. It’s a woman’s duty to provide clean water for her family, and the task often prevents them from attending school and entering the workforce later in life. Then there is the issue of their safety. One in five Imazighen women have been sexually assaulted on their way to the well, sometimes by groups of men who hide in the bushes and wait for the youngest walkers. When I heard this, I had to act, and I knew other women would be compelled to as well if I made it easy for them. For every fifth ride at SPOKE, we provide a bike to an Imazighen family in need. The bikes reduce the time of the water-gathering task (from hours to minutes) so that young girls are home in time for school and their moms can go to work. The bikes mobilize girls who haven’t even gotten their periods yet to outpace a gang of rapists.

That was my pitch, and not a single investor bought it. They were all men, and they all thought New York City women were too self-absorbed to care. But these days, it’s cool to care. It’s mandatory to support the sisterhood. Women are spokes in the same wheel, trying their best to move each other forward. That’s SPOKE’s mission statement. Kelly came up with it. Beautiful, huh? Myself, I preferredGet off your privileged ass and think of someone else for a change, but Kelly made the point that we’d probably catch more flies with honey.

Of course, when we didn’t, Kelly lost interest. She laughed at me when I showed her the article I’d clipped from theOutmagazineI found in the doctor’s waiting room, detailing the entrepreneurial contest for budding LGBTQ business owners.That’s a long shot, she said, but I’ve always had a strong arm.

I’d peeled apart a folding chair and said, “The Hamptons are absolutely lovely and they should stay that way, but they won’t, not with pop-up yoga studios opening where the hardware store is supposed to be.”

Kelly had sighed. “There’s a client base out here, though.”

I’d set the box of Grindstone doughnuts on the seat of the chair. I’d already eaten two—classic Boston crème and blueberry basil with lemon ricotta frosting. The sugar remained a burning ring in my throat, demanding more.Better than an orgasm, people say about good food, but that isn’t quite right. Food is what happens before the orgasm, the building of something great, the wonderfully excruciating plea tokeep going, keep going. Too many women deny themselves this pleasure, and I decided long ago I would not be one of them. Almost one third of young women would trade a year of their lives to have the perfect body. This is not because women are shallow, or because they have their priorities out of whack. It is because society makes life miserable for women who are not thin. I am part of a small but growing minority determined to change that. SPOKE is the first exercise studio that mentions nothing about transforming your body, because study after study proves that your physical body has so little to do with health. Healthy people are people who feel connected to their communities, who are loved and supported by those around them, and who have a sense of purpose in their lives. Healthy women do not waste their precious energy separating egg whites from egg yolks.

“How about this,” I said to Kelly. “I won’t mention anything about this being your first time in Montauk if you consider the free memberships for the locals.”

“No, Brett,” Kelly said, her favorite refrain. “Someone in this family needs to graduate from college.”

“Half a degree from Dartmouth is like a full degree from CUNY,” I pointed out.

“I’ll get a scholarship,” Layla had said, dutifully. Little perfect angel that she is, she had found a broom and was sweeping the area around the yoga mat, because it was dirty and the instructors were going to be auditioning barefooted. When Layla was born, the doctor told me she had 25 percent of my genes, but I think those cells have copied and split a few times since then. It was Layla’s idea to curate an Instagram account and online shop that hawks the wares of Imazighen women. The feed is filled with gorgeous rag rugs, pottery, and cold-pressed olive oil, and 100 percent of the proceeds go back to the women of the High Atlas Mountains. Just like her auntie, Layla thinks with her heart, not her wallet. We have Kelly for that.

“It’s not that easy to get a scholarship, Layla,” Kelly said. “Especially to a top school.”

“Uhhhhh,” I said, making prolonged eye contact with Layla, whose smile was a dare:Say it. “I think she’ll be fine.”

“Don’t do that, Brett,” Kelly muttered, plopping into a chair while her daughter continued to sweep the floors.

I walked over to her and rested my hands on the back of her chair, bringing my face close enough for her to smell the lavender rose poppy seedwe could have just gone to Dunkin’doughnut on my breath. “Pretending to be colorblind is just as offensive as the n-word, you know.”

Kelly covered my whole face with her palm and shoved me away. “Stop.” It came out an exhausted plea. Kelly is a mother, and heretofore exhausted in a way that I as a child-free individual running a multimillion-dollar corporation cannot begin to even contemplate.

Kelly had Layla when she was nineteen years old, in a confounding act of defiance against our recently deceased mother. Growing up, my mother’s shadow darted after Kelly as she moved between AP classes, piano lessons, Habitat for Humanity, SAT tutors, college essay editors, college interview coaches, Dartmouth, premed summer sessions, and finally, a fellowship with the International School of Global Health in North Africa that Kelly returned from motherless, pregnant, and more chill than I’d ever seen her. Our mom was far from the traditional definition of a tiger mom. Her fixed statewas mopey, immobilized, one stain on her blouse away from crying. Kelly was the court jester, but instead of juggling and telling jokes, she got straight As and played Bach with soft fingers. When our mother died (tookthreestrokes), Kelly was released from duty. Why she decided to celebrate her freedom by holding out her wrists for another set of handcuffs still escapes me, but then we wouldn’t have Layla, who, listen, I know on a subliminal level has to love my sister more than she loves me. But it doesn’t feel that way. Not to me and not to Kelly either. And it’s a reversal of fortunes for both of us.

Because when I was in high school, I was the least loved. I was smoking pot when I should have been in Spanish class, piercing my nose instead of my ear cartilage, eating white cheddar Cheez-Its for breakfast, and looking more and more like my mother every day, anegregiouscrime, in her eyes. I never understood it. Kelly may have gotten the thin genes but my mother and I gotface. A boy in high school once said that if you put my head on Kelly’s body we could be a supermodel. And this is the problem with the way girls are raised, because both of us were flattered. One of us even gave him a blow job.

Erin returns from the bathroom, shaking her wet hands. “No paper towels in there,” she says. I stick my hands in my sweatshirt and reach out to dry hers. For a moment, our fingers intertwine through the terry cloth material, and we feel that our hands are the same size. I love introducing other women to the eroticism of equality.

“Thanks.” Erin isflushed. She takes a seat next to me, pressing play on her recorder with a cutely scolding glance in my direction. I lift a hand with a shrug—No idea how that happened—and a prism of light distracts her.

“Ah,” she says. “There’s the famous ring.”

I hold out my hand so we can both admire the gold signet I wear on my pinkie. “It’s a little cocktail-hour-at-the-club for me,” I say, “but I got absolutely no say in the design.”

When the show was renewed for the third season, Jen, Steph, andI realized we were the only original cast members still standing, and Steph proposed having rings made to commemorate this momentous achievement. She sent me a link to the website of a designer Gwyneth Paltrow featured onGoop, $108 for an inch of plated gold, plus the cost to have them engravedSS, for Standing Sisters. This was before the $23.4 million, the book deal, and the speaking fees that still haven’t made me rich, because it is very hard to be rich in New York City.Does Claire’s still exist?I texted back.On me, was Steph’s response. A lot of things wereon Steph, and despite what she tells you, she likes it that way. Sometimes, I catch Kelly staring at the ring. She’ll look away when she realizes she’s been seen, sheepish, like a guy busted staring at your tits when you bend over to pick up something that’s fallen on the ground.

Erin’s attention travels up my bare arm. “Is that new?”

I flex my bicep for her. I am not the type of woman who gets a tattoo on the nape of her neck or the underside of her wrist. “A woman needs a man—”

“Like a fish needs a bicycle,” Erin finishes.Another Straight Girl Flirts with Me (And I Love It)should be the name of my fucking memoir.

“That’s so clever,” Erin gushes. “Especially with the reference to the bicycle.”