Page 57 of The Favorite Sister

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 toeatat my engagement party. So no, I didn’t notice. And anyway, Kelly would never.”

Lauren slaps a hand over her mouth, capping agotcha!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.

“Iknow,” 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, makingdid 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 olivearch 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 new 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 courseshe 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 instructedto 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 anybodybeenin the picture for Kelly over the last—how old is Layla?”