JENNIE

My sister clutched my arm as I unlocked my apartment door. Our wet shoes squelched down the hall.

I was trying to be brave, but fear squeezed my chest, even with the lights on. It reminded me of when my utilities had been shut down — but worse. Like my home wasn't mine anymore, and I had no control over it.

In my room, I slid off my pink raincoat and dropped it on the chair. Everything was still a horrendous shambles, torn and violated. I wrapped my fingers around the key Kai gave me. At least I had that back.

"I'm calling the police now."

Jisoo blinked, pulling herself out of wherever she'd gone in her head. "Honey…I wouldn't call."

"Why? Because all this—" I waved wildly at the defaced mirror and the ripped nude sketch — "is too embarrassing?"

"They're going to ask questions, Jennie. They're going to ask how you got all that cash…which was how much?"

"Thirty-six hundred dollars," I muttered.

"And they're going to want to know why you were keeping it here. Even if you tell them you're cleaning floors or whatever, you were still getting paid under the table. And if they investigate…question people on campus…you said everyone knows about you and Lisa."

"Not everyone. It's a big school."

"But the people who know the two of you, know. What you did together — it's illegal."

I sank down on the bed. "Yeah, but it's not like I was…" I trailed off. "How illegal?"

"It's a misdemeanor. You'd get fined, you could even go to jail. So could Lisa. Not for very long, but still. Do you really want that on your record?"

"Thank you, Ms. Future Lawyer." I went to the window and closed it with a bang.

"Well, I don't know about that." She laughed a little. She looked thinner than the last time I'd seen her. My sweatshirt hung loosely on her frame, and her collarbones were sharper. "But if two years of law school are worth anything, I'm giving you some legal advice."

"What do you mean? Of course they're worth something. You're not going to be a lawyer now? You're quitting?"

"I just want to live one day where I don't have to be amazing. One day. That's all I want."

I went to her side and hugged her around the shoulders. "Wanna switch places?"

My sister's dark eyes flickered over me, then to the shameful chaos in my room, and her shoulders sagged. "I almost do."

My throat squeezed, but I forced some purpose into my voice. "What's going on? You have cold feet about the wedding?"

Impulsively, I squeezed her left hand between both of mine. Her skin was smooth and soft. She stared at my rug.

"'Cold feet.' You make it sound so normal," she said in a low voice.

"Of course it's normal! I mean, I've never been engaged, but it's got to be one hundred per cent normal."

"Haein's trying so hard." The words whispered from her lips. "I feel like we don't even know each other. I'm a fraud, Jennie."

"No." I shook my head. "You're not."

"I am."

I looked down at our twined hands, because something was missing. No gleam, no blinding flash.

"Jisoo? Where's your ring?"

She looked away.

"Was it too much of a workout to lift your hand?" I was trying for a laugh, or at least a smile, but she said nothing. "Does Haein know?"

She kept her eyes on the rug. "How much did Lisa pay you?"

"Jisoo…"

"I want to know."

Backing away, I knelt down, swept scattered gummy bears from the floor, and tossed them in the trash.

"Four hundred the first time. A hundred after that."

"Per hour?"

"Jesus, woman, for the night. I slept over."

"Jennie!" Jisoo dropped to her knees and clutched my arm. "So you stayed, what, ten hours each time? That's not even minimum wage!"

"There were perks. I got breakfast? She's a really good cook…"

"Are you serious? How could you be so careless? You practically gave yourself away. You should have charged much more."

"Lisa could barely afford what she did pay." I flattened the cocktail napkin that said little lies. It was crumpled but whole. When I pressed it to my cheek, my sister gave me a strange look. "And I wanted her, Jisoo. Not some rich boy with deep pockets."

Going to my dresser, she began folding my tumbled clothes and putting them away.

"I'm sure you had a very good reason for doing what you did," she said carefully.

I took a makeup wipe and swiped it across the WHORE scrawled on the mirror. The insult disappeared into a red smudge on the white cloth.

"I needed money," I murmured. "Let's leave it at that."

Jisoo straightened to her usual confident posture, though her hands shook as she folded my clothes.

"Why didn't you just ask me for help?"

I picked up one of my cheerleading uniforms from the foot of the closet, running my fingers over the embroidery.

"I didn't think you could ever understand fucking up like this. You're the perfect Jisoo."

"God." Her voice was hoarse. "I'm the furthest thing from that. I ran away to you! I understand."

"Yeah? Would any of these things ever happen to you?"

"Never." She smiled slightly. "But take that as a compliment. You're the interesting one."

"Uh-uh. I'm the runner-up. The screw-up. You're so brilliant and accomplished…"

I choked up. The next second we were hugging hard, half-laughing and half-crying, our cheeks pressed together, until we were interrupted by a sudden buzz.

"Your phone's ringing," Jisoo hiccuped.

I reached for my purse, but it hung silent on my desk chair.

"That's not mine."

The buzzing came from my bed. I dropped my uniform and groped the sheets until I found a silver phone.

Lisa's. It must have fallen out this afternoon when she stripped off her clothes. On the screen, over the same picture of the Coliseum that hung in her room, it said Nick.

I knew how it felt to have your privacy violated. But I was so sick of secrets.

I swiped the screen.

"Hello?"

The phone crackled, like there was a problem with the connection.

"Who's this? I need to talk to my sister."

His deep voice sounded enough like Lisa's to throw me off. But it was younger, faster, slurred. He'd been drinking.

"I'm Jennie. Lisa left her phone in my room. She'll be back, I don't know when."

"'She'll be back,'" he repeated, his tone laden with sarcasm. "I've heard that before. Oh, wait, I haven't. But she keeps showing up."

I didn't know what to say, but I wanted to keep Nick on the phone. "I've seen your picture."

"Oh?"

"You were a cute kid."

"She showed you a picture of me?" Suddenly, he sounded hopeful. As young as the boy in the photo, and trying not to care.

"No. I…snooped in her closet."

Jisoo, hanging up my cheerleading uniforms, raised her eyebrows at me.

"Awright!" His voice warmed. Lisa's little brother was obviously the school troublemaker. "What else did you find? Come on, talk."

I prickled, suddenly uncomfortable. Jisoo folded a shirt into a neat roll. Holding the phone away from my face, I touched her arm.

"You don't have to clean up," I whispered.

She let out a sniffling, coughing laugh and wiped her nose. "Girl, I want to. It's therapeutic."

"So she didn't tell you anything about us," said Lisa's younger brother in my ear.

"I mean, I know your names. You're Nick, and your younger brother is Eddie. That's all."

"Typical. So fucking typical. Doesn't even drop a few crumbs for her girlfriend."

I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and straightened my sheets with a snap. "I'm not her girlfriend."

"Then what are you?" he demanded. "I think I've seen your picture too."

"What do you mean?"

"Or maybe a whole pad full of pictures of you."

"She showed you?" I gripped the phone. "Please, no."

There was a silence. "Nope. 'Course not. Not my sister the gentleman. But I'm no gentleman." He coughed. "Apologies."

Smoothing out my comforter savagely, I stared at the ripped nude portrait over my desk. Jisoo, shuffling around my room, was avoiding it.

"Hey," Nick exclaimed, full of false bravado, "if it makes you feel better, she was pissed. Anyway! That's not the point. Point is, she needs to stop ignoring my fucking phone calls. She needs to decide if we're gonna see our mom. Just because she hasn't gotten over finding her doesn't mean she can take it out on all of us."

"Finding her?" I swallowed. "What happened with your mom?"

"You don't know?"

"No."

"She hasn't said anything to you at all?"

That did it. All the strain of the past week crashed over me in a tidal wave.

"I know jackshit!" I bawled at this utter stranger. Maybe it was because he sounded like Lisa. "And I'm sick of it! My secrets are exploding all over the place, but Lisa won't tell me a damn thing!"

"Our mom left four years ago." Nick said abruptly. "Lisa blames herself, and you know what? She's right."

The picture I'd found flashed in front of my eyes: her mom, standing with the family. Absent-minded, faraway. Elsewhere. I felt Lisa's ring pressing into my skin, tracing my breasts, rubbing against my folds, and heard the chill in her voice when she said it had been her dad's.

She'd given away the watch, but she'd kept the ring.

"Why would she blame herself?" I was walking into a minefield, and I couldn't stop.

"Well, a good brother would keep his mouth shut, but I'm no good brother, so…" There was drunken satisfaction in Nick's voice. "She was running around on our dad. Lisa came home early one day and walked in on them. That would mess most guys up, knowing their mom was — you know. But she freaked the fuck out and told us. All of us. At dinner. She kept saying the truth needed to come out. Mom was begging, begging her to stop. Eddie, our kid brother — he was eleven, for Christ's sake!"

"God," I whispered. Jisoo shot me a worried look. "I'm sorry."

"Lisa likes to act so protective of Eddie. Swooping into our house to fix everything and pay for all our problems like she's some fucking saint or martyr. But she sure as hell wasn't then. She ruined our family." He let out a breath. "I wish she'd stayed. Even if she kept cheating on my dad, she wouldn't be worse off than she is now. And my brother — what a hypocrite. Lisa deserted us, same as her! Ran off to college, ran off to Italy. Like, the more distance, the better. You know what happened there?"

I tried to swallow, but there was a lump in my throat. "No."

"No one does," he scoffed. "She calls out our mom for having one secret, when she's got a whole closet of them! I went through her stuff, you know, just like you. I found some notes she wrote in Italian, all about some chick named Yoona. Turns out she was like some older sugar mama to her and she was fuckin' obsessed with her. I translated them online, and—" He whistled. "There's some crazy shit in there. Are you ready for this?"

"Don't tell me."

"Don't you want to know?"

"No." I went to stand by the closed window and wondered where my screen was now. The thief probably tossed it in a dumpster. "If Lisa wanted either of us to know, she'd tell us. It's her history. Her privacy."

"Fuck privacy. Fuck secrets. I'm done with 'em and you should be too!"

I locked eyes with Jisoo. She hesitated by the desk, then began stacking papers, slowly.

Nick exhaled. "Listen, whoever you are. My sister made a mess of our family. Then she went off to college and pretended nothing happened. Once she was out of the country, it was like we didn't exist. Now she's back. She hangs around on the weekends and tells us what to do. She shows off her nice clothes and throws money around — she uses that shit to control us, you know. Buys groceries. Clothes for Eddie. Pay my fines? Sure thing. But buy plane tickets to visit our mom? No one can do it but her. 'Don't accept money from Dad, don't accept money from Mom.' Now she refuses to decide if we're even going."

I sat down hard on the bed. This was why Lisa was out of money. This was why she hadn't called me. I need more time.

Quietly, Jisoo slid the drawers back in my desk. She picked up the little lies cocktail napkin and dropped it in the trash.

"No," I gasped, dashing to the trash can.

"What?" Nick asked.

"Nothing." I snatched the napkin from the trash and held it tight. I didn't care what my sister thought.

"My sister hides, Jennie." There was a slurping noise, like Nick was drinking from a bottle. "She pretends. She lies and fakes it. She's a coward. You need to know that about her."

I stared at the inhumanly neat handwriting on the napkin. "You and Eddie can't go see your mom yourselves? You…can't afford the flight? Your mom can't either?"

His voice broke. "I'm not going without her."

His breathing turned ragged. Heaving. He was crying.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm so sorry. I could try to talk to her…"

"Just tell her I'm done waiting, and I'm not going to let this go."

He hung up.

I turned Lisa's phone over in my hand. It was warm. Guilt crept through me.

"What a mess," I muttered.

Jisoo sat down next to me on the bed, bumping my hip with hers. "At least your place is clean now."

My room was as neat as a hotel bedroom. You'd never know it had been wrecked and ravaged. Jisoo had even fluffed up my pillows. The only reminder was the torn nude sketch over my desk.

"This is the best it's ever looked." I hugged her, trying to cheer us both up. "You're the best."

"Ha! If I never hear that again, it'll be too soon."

"Baby…" I rubbed her back through my sweatshirt.

She sighed. "Your shirt's so comfy."

"Keep it."

"I'm not going to take the shirt off your back."

It looks better on you than me, I was going to say, but I held my tongue. "Do you think — maybe — you should talk to Haein? Like, soon? I told you he called tonight. He sounded like he was about to have his own breakdown."

"I don't want to hurt him."

"So you avoid him?"

She bit her lip. A tear caught on her lashes, glistening like a diamond.

"Jisoo, I'm not trying to be mean. I promise I'm not." I handed her the box of tissues, and she mumbled something about using up all my Kleenex. "But you can't go on like this. I tried to protect Kai's feelings, and look how well that turned out. He cheated on me with Rosé because he felt like I was always holding back from him."

My sister's eyes widened. "He did what?"

I sighed. "Yeah, that happened. I haven't talked to Rosé since last weekend. She might not even know that I know, but…"

"How did you try to protect his feelings?" she asked curiously.

My cheeks went hot. "I, uh, I kind of faked it in bed. Among other things."

"How?"

"Jisoo!"

"I want to know! It's not like I've ever been with someone."

"Okay, well, I pretended to get off. You know…making noise, moving around…"

She nodded, unconvinced.

"I never pretended with Lisa." I cleared my throat. "Sometimes I begged. Other times, she gave me as much as I could handle. One time, I crawled to her."

Jisoo's dark eyes were round. My face was flaming.

"Anyway," I finished, "you get the idea."

She opened her mouth, then shut it. "Um, no. I have no idea what that feels like."

I sat beside her on the bed and twined my arm through hers. She picked up a strand of her dark hair, air-dried from the rain, and let it fall.

"I really do care about Haein," she said. "I just — I'm so exhausted. It all feels like too much right now. I need more time."

"So tell him."

"That's scary." Unexpectedly, she giggled. "You think if I crawled to him, he'd take the news better?"

"Do you want to?"

"Mmm…no."

"Jisoo, baby, you do you. I'll do me."

Down the hall, a light knock came on the front door. Jisoo started, grabbing my arm.

"Don't worry," I soothed, trying to be strong for her sake. "It's probably Lisa."

I padded down the hall in my socks.

"Who's there?" I called.

Lisa's deep voice came through the door. "It's us."