I glared down at her. “Yes, you—” I stopped and sighed; she looked up at me, eyes wide, mouth chewing primly, looking likean innocent dairy cow. “Jesus Christ, Mom. Where are the twins, anyway?”
“I had your father take them shopping. I didn’t want them to hear this.”
“Why not? They’re implicated in this too.”
Mom waved an airy hand. “Hearing that they’re being accused of cheating on the SATs? It would hurt their confidence.”
“Hurt their—?!” I stared, disbelief clashing with fury inside me. Had my mother turned into a completely different person in the thirteen years between my birth and the twins’? The idea that she had ever worried aboutmyconfidence was laughable. Let’s see, there was the time when I was six and she had my hair cut like Brittany Murphy’s inClueless—adorable on Brittany; hideous on chubby six-year-old me. There was the year she took me to countless tween modeling auditions. (Surprise: no one wanted to sign a twelve-year-old with ginormous breasts and unmanageable hair.) And the summer when she insisted I try out for the role of Titania in the community theater’sA Midsummer Night’s Dream, and instead I got cast as Puck, spending the whole summer prancing around the stage as a horny clown.
“Rachel.” Mom brushed biscuit crumbs from her hands. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. If we’re going to be questioned by some… policeman, I don’t want you involved. You know nothing. The twins and your father know nothing. I know that I hired a tutor. That’s it.”
“But this is serious.”
“Yes, it appears so. Which is why this discussion is over.”
I deflated a little. She really wasn’t going to discuss this with me? I felt unexpectedly disappointed in her. My mother had never been a paragon of morality, but the idea that she would fake thetwins’ SAT scores… it was just wrong. We already had so much privilege as a family—did she not see that? The twins would be just fine, even with abysmal test scores.
She patted the couch cushion beside her. I sat down and she offered me a biscuit.
“Thanks.” I bit into it thoughtfully. “Mom, I don’t think you understand. It’s not right to—”
“Hush now.” She pushed my hair back from my face. “Why don’t you tell me about this so-called boyfriend of yours?”
I choked on a mouthful of dry cookie. With some deft maneuvering, I brought the conversation around to Jane’s upcoming bridal appointments. Her wedding was just over six months away now, but part of me wished we could stretch out the planning phase for several years. There’s nothing more effective in distracting Mom than wedding planning.
Mom promised to keep me updated about anything involving the investigation, and I, in turn, promised not to tell the twins about it.
“I suppose I can ask your father to get them an internship at his company.”
“Mother!” I cried, horrified at the thought of yet another company reporting the twins to law enforcement.
“Oh, yes, I’d better not.” After a moment of quiet contemplation she said, “Then I think I can get them an interview with the temple’s summer camp. No test scores needed to be a camp counselor.”
I held my tongue, deciding it was wise to pick my battles and trying not to imagine the consequences of leaving the twins in charge of small children.
My year had started off so promising. How had it all gone to shit six months in?
Now, on top of my ever-increasing loneliness, my mom was involved in some sort of criminal fraud conspiracy. And despite my geriatric age of nearly thirty, I had an alarming zit on my chin. How was that fair, I ask you? The combination of pubescent blemishes and elderly complaints, such as the lines forming around my mouth and the way my ankles cracked in the morning, was frankly depressing.
It was a Friday evening and I was alone in my apartment, examining my features in the mirror above the sofa. So far I’d counted thirteen gray hairs.Thirteen.Even worse: the lines around my mouth stayed put no matter how much I relaxed my face.
I flopped back onto the couch and called the girls. Surely they were all busy doing Friday-night things, but we had a sort of understanding about answering out-of-the-blue phone calls.
Eva answered first, and I could hear the low murmur of TV and Jasmine’s voice saying hi in the background. Sumira answered too, with no hint to her whereabouts. Amy declined.Odd.
With no preamble, I said, “I have finally seen the light regarding Botox. Of course it’s worth injecting neurotoxins into your body in exchange for smooth, elastic skin.”
“Don’t do Botox; that’s silly,” Eva said.
“Why not?” Sumira asked. “I’ve done it.”
“Sumira Khan, you’ve been holding out on us!” I perked up, wondering if this was exactly the sort of pampering treatment I needed.
“You never asked.”
“We divulge a lot of information that is not explicitly asked for,” I pointed out.
“Like the time you gave us the blow-by-blow of your gyno appointment?”
