Page 78 of The Favorite Sister

“Aren’t you married?” he asks, the noble question a gurgle from deep within his throat.

“We can stop if you’re uncomfortable,” I offer sweetly, releasing the buckle of the needlepoint belt his mom bought for him. Tim groans. It’s not ano.

We reenter amid protests from the peons who have been waiting in line for the last forty minutes. At the outdoor bar, we find Brett stuffing a lime down the neck of a Corona.

“I have been looking for you everywhere!” she cries. She jumps up and gets behind us, herding us like a flock, ordering, “Inside, inside. I have a surprise for you.”

We get stuck in a jam at the door, and Brett takes the opportunity to dust the wet leaves and grass and crud off our new friend’s back in a dramatic, sweeping motion. “Steph,” she chides, slyly, “way to not be a dead fish, girlfriend.” I’m both incensed by the implication that I don’t have interesting enough sex with my husband to keep him faithful and pleased that Brett has noticed that I amdesirable enough to have pulled a guy like... shit. I’ve forgotten his name.

“If only Arch could be as lucky.” I tousle her hair, the way I’ve seen Kelly do to annoy her. Brett slaps my hand away, hard enough to be heard over the music.

The three of us—the world’s most beat ménage à trois—push our way inside. At the bar, what’s his face runs into his friends again.Tim!they cry, and I silently thank them. Tim waves at me to go on with Brett, who continues to drag me onto the dance floor, holding one of my hands in both of hers for extra leverage. I glance back at him before the crowd swallows me whole—two newborns with tits have joined their group, are squealing,Oh my God, Tim!and reaching up to hug him because they are justsolittle andsopretty and so very, very young. It’s like the weight of the universe has suddenly settled on my eyelids. I could fall asleep standing up in this drunken, dancing crowd.

Brett has forged a path to the stage, and she’s waving her arm at the lead singer, who points right back at her, as though she knows her. “So,” the singer says into the microphone in her loud, clear veejay voice, “you know I don’t usually take requests.” The crowd hollers, incoherently. “But there are special circumstances tonight, because we have twoGoal Diggersin thehouseeee!” This announcement is greeted with cheers that could be cheers for anything, and booing that is very specifically for us. Brett jams both middle fingers into the air.

“And one of these bitches,” the singer continues, “has been screaming atthisbitch to play ‘Bitch’ for the last hour. So what do you say we three bitches sing a song about bitches together?”

More vague cheering. More intentional booing.

A stagehand ambles toward us, sticking his hand into the crowd and hoisting the two of us over the large speakers. The stage lights are bright lie detectors, and I realize with a start that despite her twee pigtails, the lead singer might actually be older than me.

She cups her hand over the mic and speaks to us. “Please tell me you know the fucking words.”

“I dominated this song at middle school dances,” Brett says. “Steph, what was that? College for you?”

The lead singer gives me a look—oh no she didn’t—and makes a grand gesture out of pressing the mic into my hands. “She can sing backup,” she tells me with a wink. The act of camaraderie frames the moment as two old broads taking back the night from the young buck. I am struck brutally and repeatedly with a blunt-forced thought:I never should have come here.

The song starts, that bouncy pop beat laced with a few warning strokes of the guitar, gearing up for the title profanity that Brett screams into the mic with adolescent glee. Brett wasn’t in middle school when this song came out. I was. I remember my mother hanging up the phone with shaking hands, turning to me and asking if I had used street language at Ashley’s beach house after they were kind enough to host me for an entire week. That was the word ginger, golf-shoe-wearing Mrs. Lutkin had used.Street. I had washed the dishes after dinner and hung the towels to dry on the outdoor line and made the bed every morning, but what Mrs. Lutkin remembered most of my stay was the night she came home early from dinner and found Ashley and me in our pajamas, dancing around the family room tostreetmusic.

Brett is having a hell of a time, whipping her long, wet hair in circles and hogging the mic only to screw up the order of the lyrics.I’m a bitch, I’m a mother, I’m a child, I’m a lover. By the second verse, Brett decides to personalize the song and shout,I’m NOT a mother, which no one thinks is funny but doesn’t seem to embarrass her.

We’re at the part in the music video that involved a heavy lift from central casting. Black women, wacky women, butch women, old women, pretty women, all dancing together in the same room, proving that the bonds of sisterhood are stronger than cultural and generational walls, than the beauty standards that try to tier us.Whoo-oh-ohhh whoo-oh-ohhh. Brett turns to me, and in a momentof passion, reaches behind my neck and slips her hand under my ponytail. I think she might kiss me—put on a display of faux lesbianism to ruin the very last of our feministic cred—until I realize she’s sliding off my hair tie. Before I can stop her, she tosses it into the crowd with a mirthful laugh. “Let your hair down for once in your life!” she screams at me, forgetting—or not forgetting—that there is a microphone in her hand.

It’s as though she pantsed me. I scan the crowd for Tim, hoping he isn’t watching this. I hope for something different when I locate him, surrounded by his friends, laughing and shaking his head. Why is he shaking his head? Is hedenyingthat he hooked up with me? He says something in a defensive posture to a member of his group. Whatever it is only incites more teasing. He is. He’s denying it.

The band plays the main chord, again and again, softer and softer, until we can hear the crowd cheering again. Brett passes the mic to me to take a deep bow, which is just another opportunity to flip her hair over her back like Ariel the Fucking Mermaid.

“How about a round of applause for these two?” the lead singer says into the backup singer’s mic. “That was terrible,” she says over the jeers and cheers. “Terrible! Stick to spinning and making up stories, you two.”

A lowohhhhtravels the crowd and the lead singer brings her hand to her mouth, mortified. I don’t believe she was being malicious, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s how it was interpreted, and I have to say something. I have todefendmyself. One of the bouncers is helping Brett scale the speakers, but I still have the mic in my hand when her feet touch the ground.

“I am good at making up stories,” I say into the microphone, before I can think about it too hard. “But this one”—I point to Brett—“she’s the master at it.”

Brett looks up at me from the crowd, laughing a little, because I’ve kowtowed to her all evening and she has no reason to believe I’m about to turn on her. “You heard we had a falling-out, right?”

Brett’s mouth drops open a little.

I continue with a rictus grin. “You’ll see it all play out on TV. But when you do, you should know it’s fake. The whole thing was fake. We made it up for the ratings.”

“Get off the stage!” somebody yells.

Brett is now trying to scramble back over the speakers like an obese mountain goat.

“Oh, and no little girls are raped in the mountains of Morocco. Brett lied about that too. Andoh yeah, they’re going to try to make it look like Vince fucks Brett’s sister this season. But that’s not who he—”

Brett tackles me before I can finish. It is a real, honest-to-God football player tackle, a hug around my ankles that cripples me at the knees. I fall back on one hand, raise one filthy heel into the air for balance. It could be a dance move: Do the cover-up, and kick it like this.

“Girl fight!” the singer cackles into the mic, like the fucking traitors we all turn out to be as soon as the opportunity presents itself. I hurry to my feet, furiously embarrassed, clenching my fists at my sides to keep from whaling Brett across the face, which is what I’m dying to do, though not here, not yet. I trundle over the speakers, refusing anyone’s help on the way down. It’s farther than I expected and I feel my shins in my pelvis when I hit the floor, stumble ungracefully, and stride out, as dignified as too many vodka shots will allow.