Christopher Butkus 7:11 PM:
Any special occasion? Another glamorous party or night out on the town?
I loved that this was his impression of me. Someone whose calendar was chock full of glam.
Rachel Weiss 7:12 PM:
Going away for the weekend.
I may or may not have left out the part about it being with my family—you know, to add to my mystique. He typed for a moment, then stopped. I felt a strange pang, and then an even stranger swoop in my stomach when he started typing again.
Christopher Butkus 7:15 PM:
Good for you! I’m getting out of town for the weekend too. Enjoy it!
I resisted the urge to ask where he was going and who he was going with—honestly, it was none of my business. I gave his message a thumbs-up and put my phone back in my bag, determined to enjoy the summer-evening air on my skin.
CHAPTER 14
I WOKE AT THEbutt crack of dawn to await the family chariot. Dad had wanted to leave at four a.m., but we’d shouted him down. I swear that man is obsessed with traffic patterns. I sent a quick goodbye to the group chat.
Rachel Weiss 7:03 AM:
Good morning, friends. If you don’t hear from me within three days, please send a search and rescue team to the town of Leavenworth and tell them I may have been clobbered to death by my mother’s overwhelmingly misguided love.
Twenty minutes later, my parents were already yelling at me. Something about how it always takes me half an hour to leave my apartment, even when they’ve given me twenty-four hours’heads-up. I could barely hear them over the sound of the twins sobbing next to me in the back seat because Dad refused to stop for Starbucks until we’d driven at least fifty miles.
It was so unfair that Jane and Owen got to drive themselves. Just because they were engaged. And because they had a car and I didn’t. And because Dad’s Subaru only fit five people. It was so inconvenient that Mom and Dad decided to have twins after me. As if I were not the perfect reproductive swan song.
We arrived in Leavenworth just after noon, about two hours later than Google Maps had predicted. It was the bane of my dad’s existence that the women in his family insisted on stopping at least five times on every road trip: to pee, to buy coffee, to go shopping at every outlet mall we passed, to buy more coffee—you get the idea.
We were staying at the same vacation cabin we’d stayed at nearly every year of my life. It was in a little clustered community of other cabins and had a wraparound porch with a firepit, a grill, and a hot tub. Truth be told, it was quite nice, which was surprising given that Mom and Dad were the ones who had chosen it. Normally they couldn’t be trusted to choose toilet paper.
Anyway, we arrived and stumbled out of the Subaru, all of us choking and gasping for air. (The twins had purchased bagfuls of body spray and air fresheners from the Bath & Body Works at the outlet mall and proceeded to test them all at once.) I should clarify: Dad and I were choking and gasping, and Mom was going, “Ooh, nature doesn’t smell nearly as nice as the car—girls, spray some of that cotton candy one over here.” The twins pranced into the house behind Mom, spraying the air around her like her personal scent fairies as Dad and I schlepped the luggage inside. The twins immediately ran through the upstairs bedrooms screaming, “I get this one! No, this one!”
I ignored them, helping Dad stock the fridge and cabinets with the food we’d brought for the week—enough to feed a frat house for three months. I’d assumed—innocently believing there was still some good in the world—that I would get my usual room, one of the three with a queen bed. When I’d finished in the kitchen and lugged my suitcase up the stairs, however, I found that the twins had each claimed one of the grown-up rooms, leaving only the loft with four twin beds that they usually shared.
“Very funny, you two,” I called, pulling one of their bags off my usual queen bed. “Hilarious joke.”
I had backed halfway out of the bedroom, dragging Abby’s duffel along the wood floor, when I stopped, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling with a sudden presence. Too late I realized that there was one twin on either side of me, each with a finger poised menacingly on the pump of a spray bottle.
And that was how I ended up sitting on a child’s bed in the loft, coughing up lungfuls of mingled cotton candy and mango sorbet vapors. Mom joined me briefly to explain that she thought it best to let the twins have the queen beds.
“They’re having a difficult summer,” she said. “It’s hard, working a full-time job.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” I coughed.
“They’re working harder at summer camp than they’ve ever had to work before.”
I doubted this very much. From everything I’d heard from the twins—and seen on their social media stories—their job consisted of sunbathing in hammocks and forcing children to row them around in canoes.
When Jane and Owen arrived, they deposited their things on two of the other twin beds without argument. No doubt the scent of my brutal attack still lingered on the air.
The unpleasantness was all but forgotten as the day wore on. We went into town and availed ourselves of everything the Bavarian tourist trap had to offer: sausages and beer for lunch, chocolate and wine tastings, and endless souvenir shops. Mom came away with one bag stuffed with decorative magnets and another of bespoke soaps in festive shapes. For dinner Dad grilled enough burgers for everyone to have six. It’s as though once he gets a grill spatula in hand, he can’t stop himself. We ate on the porch, gathered around the firepit, as the setting sun washed the whole scene in rosy light. I was reminded that sometimes, my family could be quite fun.
And then Jane and Owen excused themselves, saying they were too stuffed for dessert and were calling it a night.
“Oh, Jane,” Mom called after her. “Take your usual room. You two should have a queen bed. And privacy.”
