When they were little, Netty and G spent their prayers asking God why he made them cousins instead of sisters. Why had he made them suffer the cruelty of returning to their separate homes alone after weekend sleepovers instead of giving them a bunk bed forever? They passed notes in the hallway in elementary school, got in trouble for chatting if they were in the same class. But middle school created a wedge between them for many reasons: newfound friends, different levels of tolerance for the teachers’ disappointment, different ends of the fashion spectrum. By eighth grade, that wedge widened into a silence that carried through to high school. They small-talked at the kids’ table on Thanksgiving and nodded across the hallway when moving from class to class, but that was it. They graduated from high school with this distance. Netty went away to college in Albany, and G stayed back, picking up full-time hours at the ShopRite she’d worked at since junior year. Netty loved her freshman year intro classes; G loved the prospect of never taking another test.
Netty had a week back home for winter break and found the nerve to message G and see if she wanted to catch up. Netty’s roommate read her tarot cards, and the readings were full of swords and secrets; she needed to quit lying to herself, the cards said, and take some responsibility for this thing she could not name. On the walk back to the quad, she wept into the wrist of her sweater, and once in the dark dorm room, she rewatched The Fresh Prince and imagined that she and Ashley Banks were girlfriends. What a moron she was, how right it felt.
