Page 17 of The Family Guest

My brother looked down. “What’s up, Pudge?”

Pudge was his nickname for me. It’s what he called me when he was a toddler and it had stuck. If anyone else called me that, I’d smack them. From Will, the nickname was endearing. I met his eyes. “Do you have some time?”

He snapped his laptop shut. “Yeah, sure.”

A few moments later, I was seated on his bed facing him. On the wall above us hung a Star Wars poster.

“What do you think of Tanya?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno. She’s okay, I guess.”

It was easier extracting a splinter out of a finger than extracting an opinion out of Will. Twelve-year-old boys were like that. The nerdier, the tougher. But I had to say that Will was adorable with his curly auburn hair, button nose, and sprinkle of freckles. We looked a lot alike and I was confident he was going to grow up and be as handsome as our father. A total babe magnet, though right now he had little interest in girls. Obviously.

“Doesn’t it irk you she hates Bear?”

“As long as he can hang out with me, I don’t care.”

“Don’t you think there’s something weird about her?”

“All girls are weird.”

“I’m not weird, am I?” I made a funny contorted face that made my usually serious brother laugh.

“You’re pretty cool for a girl.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a noogie. Will and I had always been close in our own coded way. And we’d grown closer after Anabel’s death. I’ll never forget holding his hand as we stoically watched my sister’s casket being lowered into the earth. Both of us clad in black, me in a hideous knee-length dress my mother had forced me to wear, and my ten-year-old brother in a black suit that was two sizes too big for him. While my mother had sobbed nonstop, neither of us had shed a tear. He’d never been close to Anabel, who, with her busy social life, had no interest in little-boy stuff. Legos, video games, and robotics had no place in her self-centered world. For her, Will had simply been a nuisance.

I, on the other hand, loved to help my brother build things with his Legos—from Lego dogs and Mindstorms robots to elaborate neighborhoods and space stations—maybe because it wasn’t that different from sculpting. Sculpture was my passion, and another reason I wanted to go to RISD is that they had one of the best fine arts programs in the country. Lucky for me, I had a studio set up in the backyard. My happy place. Thank every scrap of clay my mother hadn’t asked me to give it up to house our exchange student.

Knowing my time with my brother was limited, I asked him, “Does Tanya remind you of someone?”

“Yeah, a little bit of Anabel.”

“A big bit,” I corrected. You didn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out that my mother was seeking a replacement. And that Tanya had literally stepped into my sister’s shoes. “Didn’t you find it cringey that she wore Anabel’s clothes yesterday?”

“She did?”

Boys. I mentally rolled my eyes. It was time to cut to the chase.

“Willster, I’ve got a bad vibe about her.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure she is who she says she is.”

Will cocked his head. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, for starters, she told me her father is a British diplomat and I can’t find him anywhere on the Internet. The only dude I found that was close is dead.”

“That’s weird…”

“Totally weird. And up until today, she wasn’t on social media. I don’t know one high school girl, including myself, who isn’t on Instagram. Now all of a sudden, she has an IG account. I’ll show you.”

Slipping out my phone from a pocket, I quickly accessed Tanya’s new IG account and showed him the photos she’d posted. She now, amazingly, had over a thousand followers. One thousand and seventy-five to be exact.

Will’s eyes grew wide as I scrolled. “What’s a photo of Lance doing there?”

“Yeah, that really pissed me off. And she’s making it out like he’s her boyfriend.”