I wobble backward when she lets go of me. Our West Village brownstone has always had sloping floors and an almost-obvious crookedness, and it’s all bigger and wonkier after all that wine.
“I don’t like the way you feel,” I say, the effort of words so exhausting I have to find my way to the couch. It’s something Janie bought years ago, which means it’s stiff and silky and ivory colored. “Fucking Janie,” I say, which I always say when I sit on things that Janie decorated our apartment with. The things Tess bought are comfier. The things Natasha bought are flashier. The things Mom bought look like home. Like an idea of home that I have in my head but doesn’t exist in real life. “Seriously, what happened to you? What’d they do to you up there?” She’s wearing khaki capris, which is lame, but something more substantial has changed. Something bigger than her clothing choices.
She smells a little like the plane, like those ham and cheese sandwiches that they serve in the middle of long flights. Her suitcase is by the front door, a reminder that she’s not actually living here this summer.
“Don’t freak out,” Arizona says. I squint harder at her. Shake my head to make things come into focus. Maybe I can shake off the drunkenness. Unblur the world.
It’s her boobs.
I realize it a single moment before she says it.
“I got my boobs done in April. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone because I thought it would sound like I got porn-star boobs or something, but I wanted you to see it’s like a teeny-tiny upgrade. I’m still smaller than, like, everyone else. I mean, aside from you. So it’s not a big deal. Don’t be a psycho about it.” She’s in too many layers for June in New York. A long tee hangs out of her oversize Colby sweatshirt. She wants me to know, but doesn’t want me to see them.
“I don’t understand,” I say. I grab my stomach, since all my feelings about it rush there, and I wish I were either more drunk or more sober. I am in the exact wrong state of mind to be hearing and seeing this.
“I feel more like me now,” Arizona says. “Like this is how I’m supposed to look. I never fit in my body.”
She’s right, her new boobs aren’t stripper big or anything, but they fill out the sweatshirt so that the letters of her college rise and fall in a new way. I hate that Tshirts and sundresses and fleece jackets will look different on us now. I won’t be able to look at her and see me.
“We don’t like boob jobs,” I say. My voice breaks; the pressure of a year of hearing about her new Montana-less life, a year of living alone with Dad and Tess and now Dad and his dreamy dating-someone-new look, is too much, and I need her to agree with me.
“I sort of like mine,” Arizona says. “But it doesn’t have some big, deep meaning, okay? And you look excellent the way you are. Okay?”
“Stop asking me if it’s okay,” I say. Late-night TV is droning in the background, and I wonder how this conversation would have gone if I hadn’t been out with Karissa all night. I wonder if we would have ended up eating prosciutto pizzas and looking at pictures of Europe and rating the Continent’s best kissers according to her very scientific data.
I wonder if I have missed something vital, a moment between us I’ll never get back.
I’m almost sad, but she turns slightly, enough so that I can see her in profile, and her new silhouette is all wrong and I’m filled with boozy rage again.
“We promised we wouldn’t do it,” I say. “We promised Mom we wouldn’t do it.” I hold on to her elbow like that will help steady us both, bring us back to shore together.
She looks like one of them. Like one of the stepmoms. Her clothes are airplane-messy, but her hair is smooth and blonder than I remember, and she has a headband with tiny pink rhinestones.
They glint.
“I don’t feel like we owe Mom anything. I’m not sure Mom is the role model of the year,” Arizona says.
“You promised me, too. That we wouldn’t get any kind of plastic surgery, no matter what Dad said. You don’t owe me anything either?”
She hugs me again and I hate it again. We’ve made a lot of promises over the years about staying away from the stepmoms and never forgiving Natasha and never getting plastic surgery and always being there for each other. These promises are the things that make us work—the levers and gears and mechanics that keep us ticking in sync with each other. They’re the things that make us sisters.
It turns out we aren’t good at keeping promises or maybe even at being sisters.
“We are going to have an awesome summer together,” Arizona says. She feels bad for me. She gets me water and rubs my back and I am a person to be pitied and cared for, but I’m not her best friend anymore. We aren’t going to explore Prague and Vienna and Croatia together, because she’s already done that with someone else.
“We’re not going to be together,” I say.