Page 79 of The Favorite Sister

We get stuck with a van again, Brett in the left middle two seats and me in the back row. The driver had waited after we’d gotten in, sure more of our friends were coming since we’d sat so far apart. “It’s just us,” Brett finally had to say. She doesn’t speak again until the cab has made a U-turn in the middle of Main and we have passed the old Presbyterian church on our right, and then she swivels in her seat to face me. She’s paled considerably in the last few minutes. “Everyone is probably too drunk to remember what you said anyway.”

Somebody isscared. I hold her eye, a half smile on my face, myhead grooving in gentle, unconcerned rhythm with the road. “I wrote it on the bathroom wall in permanent marker just in case,” I say. I didn’t, but I’m having too much fun, watching Brett quake in her sneaks.

Brett turns away from me. “I never should have agreed to this,” she mutters to herself. Then louder, for the people in the back, “I didn’tneedto agree to it. I’m not the one who’s past my prime.”

I stare at her Cousin Itt hair for a hot minute.

“Your sister is gorgeous,” I tell her, finally.

Brett snorts. “She’s single. Go for it.”

I find my lip gloss, dab some on. I must look afright. “But I never worried about Vince around her. Not for a second. You know why?”

Brett’s head bobs back and forth with the motion of the van. She doesn’t answer me. I grasp the back of her headrest with both hands and stick my chin over her shoulder. “Because she’s too smart for him. We all know Kelly’s the brains behind the operation. Vince likes his side pieces dumb. Dumb and not ugly, exactly—I mean, look at me—but, you know, like the castoffs. The lemons.”

Brett takes out her phone and at first I think this is some sort of sister strategy that I never learned, being an only child and all—ignore her and she will get bored and give up. But then I see she’s texting Jesse.Steph just got on stage at Talkhouse and told everyone that the show is fake and scripted. She’s badmouthing all of us and I just wanted you to know before we film at your place tomorr—

I rip Brett’s phone out of her hand, drop it on the floor, and smash the screen with a single stomp from my new wedges. This next part, thisdoeshappen so fast. Brett throws herself at me, all claws and wet lashings from her hair. She slashes my face, drawing three lines of blood along my jawline.

My fury is swift and deafening, makes outrageous demands: break her nose, blacken her eyes, bite off an ear. With a battle cry, I comply. The two of us are a twister of limbs and low base insults, rolling around on the floor between the two middle seats,scratching, biting, wailing at each other tostopeven while our fists blur in motion, because stopping feels about as impossible as sneezing with your eyes open. It is the most conventional catfight you’ve ever seen, and it feels like doing heroin for the first time. The pleasure center of my brain must look like a club in Ibiza during spring break. Lit. I cannot control much anymore, but I can control how hard I hit, how much I hurt this unrepentant impostor. The cabdriver swerves to the side of the road, shouting at us to stop or he’ll call the cops. We pull apart, gasping, exhilarated, and when I look down I realize I’m holding a hank of Brett’s hair in my hand. No, wait. Not Brett’s hair. Brett’sextensions. I actually bow down to her. At last, someone to whom I can cede the moral low ground.

“I should sell this on eBay,” I say, dangling the pelt in front of her face.

Brett wipes her lower lip and pulls her thumb away to check—yup, it’s blood. She stymies the cut with her tongue and says with hangsman good cheer, “Might help pay for your divorce. I hear they get expensive.”

That’sfunny. For a second, I actually think about sparing her.

Nah.