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My Stepsister’s Birthday Party
Do you ever know how these things will go?
Ilana was older than me by three days, four hours, and six minutes.
It was something she found funny to tell at the parental units’ parties as she pretended she was drinking apple juice that was really watered-down scotch from the liquor cabinet. She’d always rope me into the games — as she called them — because her father was a high-brow professor while my mom was the artist he’d fallen in love with: needless to say, the circles they frequented were eclectic to put it kindly.
It was also pretty much a guarantee that my stepsister thought she could run my life because she was three days older too.
“Jacob, you need to get your head out of your ass,” Ilana told me the day before the party my mom was throwing her at the Five Degree Gallery she ran downtown. She sat in front of her vanity to paint her lips red and smoke up her eyes with dusky eyeshadow. “The sooner you man up, the sooner Mom and Dad will let you go to school abroad.”
I leaned against the doorjamb, scuffing my shoe against the floorboards. “What? You think I’m just going to magically get their blessing? I flunked out my first semester, if you remember.”
“You don’t gain anything if you don’t try, little brother,” Ilana said.
