“Are you okay?” I ask as soon as she walks through the door. I look her up and down. She looks normal. Her hair is cut in a short buzz cut. Her nails are painted black. She’s dressed in tight jeans and a pair of Doc Marten boots. She has about five piercings in each ear, going all the way to the top of her earlobes, and a big forearm tattoo which I can only make out a little bit as it peeks out from under her shirt.

“Can I crash here for a bit?” Brie asks. “Mom and Dad are driving me nuts.”

I inhale deeply. Well, that’s a surprise, I think sarcastically.

“Sure, of course,” I say quickly. “You’re my sister.”

Brie drags her large duffle bag into my living room and plops it down on my couch. She then heads to the refrigerator and opens it. I follow close behind her and quickly move her duffle bag to the floor - God only knows where this thing has been.

“Fuck, this thing is like a desert. How are you surviving?”

I shrug. “I haven’t shopped for a while.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

She looks into my freezer and helps herself to a pint of ice cream. Without bothering to get a plate, she just grabs a spoon and digs in.

If I weren’t so used to this, I’d be offended. But this is just Brie Willoughby being Brie Willoughby. And no matter how different we are and how I’d never admit it out loud, or much less, to her directly, I’ve missed her.

Brie is my stepfather’s daughter. My parents got divorced when I was eight and my mom started tutoring kids to make extra income. The pay was the best in Greenwich, Connecticut, where a lot of hedge fund managers and other finance people lived, and that’s where she met Mitch. Mitch paid her $200 per hour to tutor Brie, who was five years old at the time. It’s not that Brie was really behind on anything. It’s just that everyone else’s kids got tutored so it was expected by her school, to keep her from falling behind. Mom also said that Mitch wanted a warm female presence around his daughter after her mom died suddenly from cancer. Apparently, the slew of nannies that took care of her around the clock didn’t exactly cut it. Mitch worked long hours and Brie was pretty much left alone except for the household help. Well, Mom started out as his household help but that didn’t last long. They fell in love and, six months later, he asked her to marry him. They got married in Nantucket when I was eleven and Brie was nine.

“Mom and Dad are pretty awful sometimes, aren’t they?” Brie asks, opening a box of cereal and shoving a big handful of it into her mouth.

“Do you want a bowl? Or milk?” I ask sarcastically.

“You don’t have any milk.”

“I have a bowl.”

“No thanks.”

I smile. Brie isn’t the type to take people seriously who aren’t being direct. And if you obfuscate your true intentions or passive aggressiveness, she will just go ahead and ignore that on purpose. I find it mildly annoying when she does it to me, but I find it hilarious when she does it to my mom who has her share of passive aggressive tendencies.

“So what are they doing this time?” I ask.

“Mom isn’t happy about my new buzz cut, as you can imagine, but she won’t come out and say it. Instead, she sent me pictures of a wig that I might like. A wig!”

I laugh. “Seriously?”

“It’s like she thinks that I didn’t get this hair cut because I wanted it. Like it’s something that happened to be me.”

“Well, you know Mom. Looking attractive is quite important to her,” I say. Brie glares at me. “Not that I think you look unattractive. What I mean is that she is pretty conservative about what women should look like.”

Wow, I really put my foot in my mouth with that one. But Brie just lets the whole thing run off her shoulders as if it’s nothing. One of the reasons why she buzzed her hair is to not look like a regular girl. We both know that.

“So, what do you think about it?” she asks.

I look at her hair, or lack thereof. She’s not completely bald, but it’s definitely a close shave. I can see every nook and cranny in her skull.

“I like it.”

“You liar.”

“No, I like it because you like it. It’s like you aren’t wearing any armor. You don’t have anything to hide behind. I’ve been noticing that you haven’t been wearing much makeup recently either. Is it for the same reason?”

“Noticing? When? You haven’t seen me in —“

“Months, I think,” I say. “But I do follow you on Instagram and Snap.”

“Oh, right.” She shrugs.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t really given it much thought. But I guess there might be something to that. I’ve always felt like makeup created this barrier between you and the world. And it was always odd that only girls wore it. Like, why do we have to insulate ourselves against the world? When guys don’t have to.”

“Um…because we’re women. And men are still in charge. Not as much as they once were, but for the most part,” I say.

“Well, fuck that,” Brie says.

“I agree.”

“Hey, you know what Mom would say now?” Brie asks. I shake my head. “That men might be in charge, but it wouldn’t hurt anything for me to go out there into the world looking attractive.”

I laugh. “Yep, that’s pretty much true.”

“Of course, she never once stops to think about what attractive means. And how different cultures have different definitions of female beauty and beauty in general than we do.”

I know exactly what she means. “Mom is pretty set in her ways,” I say. “So, what did Mitch say about this?”

Brie has called my mom Mom ever since she married Mitch, her dad. But because I still see my biological Dad and I still call him Dad, I never felt comfortable calling Mitch Dad, since he’s not really.

Brie shrugs. “Nothing really. Dad couldn’t care less.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. And you know, he just said he had to go to work. As always.”

Mitch works a lot and not because we need the money. It’s his way of surviving in the world. It’s his way of checking out of difficult situations. Some people have drinking or drugs, others have yelling…Mitch has his work. He’s a workaholic who probably needs to get treatment, but because it’s so socially acceptable in this country to be addicted to working, no one thinks it’s a big deal.

“I’m not sure Mom is just upset about my hair, though,” Brie says after a moment, closing the box of Cheerios.

“What do you mean?”

“Eh, she wasn’t exactly thrilled when I told her about the other thing I was thinking about.”

“What?” I ask. She hesitates. “What? Tell me.”

“You’ll just get upset.”

“No, I won’t. I promise.”

“You know how much I hate empty promises like that. I mean, you can’t really promise not to get upset because you have no idea what I’m about to say.”

I laugh. “You’ve been in college way too long,” I say after a moment.

“Well, it’s funny that you should bring that up. I’m actually thinking of taking a break.”

“What?”

“Just for a semester. I want to go traveling. Central America, I think.”

I shake my head. “But what about Swarthmore?”

She shrugs. “It’ll still be there when I get back.”

“But what about your friends? They’ll all graduate before you."

“Well, many of them won’t. People are already starting to take gap years just like they do in Europe. I think it’s a really good idea. I mean, how the hell do we graduate and go out in the world without actually seeing any of it? How real people live.”

I shrug. “You know me, I think travel is really important. I love to travel. But what about your education? Your degree?”

“My degree in anthropology will just have to wait,” Brie says. “It’s not exactly the most useful thing in the world.”

I shake my head. “You know how much I hate statements like that. I mean, a university degree isn’t just about its usability. What you learn in those classes defines you as a person, more than you’ll ever know. I had no idea how much my contemporary literature class would influence my writing. Even though I just write romance.”

“Oh, yeah!” Brie’s eyes light up. “By the way, Mom told me about that. Holy fuck, Ellie! I got your books and…well, you’ve got quite an imagination.”

I blush. I didn’t exactly want to get into all that. No yet anyway.