Prologue

Okay, here are the top ten reasons why I can’t stand my sister Lucy:

• 10. I get all her hand-me-downs, even her bras.
• 9. When I refuse to wear her hand-me-downs, especially her bras, I get the big lecture about waste and the environment. Look, I am way concerned about the environment. But that does not mean I want to wear my sister’s old bras. I told Mom I see no reason why I should even have to wear a bra, seeing as how it’s not like I’ve got a lot to put in one, causing Lucy to remark that if I don’t wear a bra now then if I ever do get anything up there, it will be all saggy like those tribal women we saw on the Discovery Channel.
• 8. This is another reason why I can’t stand Lucy. Because she is always making these kind of remarks. What we should really do, if you ask me, is send Lucy’s old bras to those tribal women.
• 7. Her conversations on the phone go like this: “No way…. So what did he say?…Then what did she say?…No way…. That is so totally untrue…. I do not. I so do not…. Who said that?…Well, it isn’t true…. No, I do not…. I do not like him…. Well, okay, maybe I do. Oh, gotta go, call-waiting.”
• 6. She is a cheerleader. All right? A cheerleader. Like it isn’t bad enough she spends all her time waving pom-poms at a bunch of Neanderthals as they thunder up and down a football field. No, she has to do it practically every night. And since Mom and Dad are fanatical about this mealtime-is-family-time thing, guess what we are usually doing at five thirty? And who is even hungry then?
• 5. All of my teachers go: “You know, Samantha, when I had your sister in this class two years ago, I never had to remind her to:
  • a) double space
  • b) carry the one
  • c) capitalize her nouns in Deutsch
  • d) remember her swimsuit
  • e) take off her headphones during morning announcements
  • f) stop drawing on her pants.”
• 4. She has a boyfriend. And not just any boyfriend, either, but a nonjock boyfriend, something totally unheard-of in the social hierarchy of our school: a cheerleader going with a nonjock boyfriend. And it isn’t even that he’s not a jock. Oh, no, Jack also happens to be an urban rebel like me, only he really goes all out, you know, in the black army surplus trench coat and the Doc Martens and the straight Ds and all. Plus he wears an earring that hangs.
  
  But even though he is not “book smart,” Jack is very talented and creative artistically. For instance, he is always getting his paintings of disenfranchised American youths hung up in the caf. And nobody even graffitis them, the way they would if they were mine. Jack’s paintings, I mean.
  
  As if that is not cool enough, Mom and Dad completely hate him because of his not working up to his potential and getting suspended for his antiauthoritarianism and calling them Carol and Richard to their faces instead of Mr. and Mrs. Madison.
  
  It is totally unfair that Lucy should not only have a cool boyfriend but a boyfriend our parents can’t stand, something I have been praying for my entire life, practically.
  Although actually at this point any kind of boyfriend would be acceptable.
• 3. In spite of the fact that she is dating an artistic rebel type instead of a jock, Lucy remains one of the most popular girls in school, routinely getting invited to parties and dances every weekend, so many that she could not possibly attend them all, and often says things like, “Hey, Sam, why don’t you and Catherine go as, like, my emissaries?” even though if Catherine and I ever stepped into a party like that we would be vilified as sophomore poseurs and thrown out onto the street.
• 2. She gets along with Mom and Dad—except for the whole Jack thing—and always has. She even gets along with our little sister, Rebecca, who goes to a special school for the intellectually gifted and is practically an idiot savant.

But the number-one reason I can’t stand my sister Lucy would have to be:

• 1. She told on me about the celebrity drawings.