Page 12 of One True Loves

Chapter Four

“Mom said I have to act like a kid for an hour, so I need you to play this ridiculous board game with me.” Etta is standing at my door, holding Life with one outstretched hand like it’s going to bite her or something.

It’s the next afternoon and I should be packing for our trip since we’re leaving tomorrow. I should be reading the freshman guide that came in the mail from NYU a couple weeks ago and has been sitting under a pile of crap on my desk ever since. But instead I’m staring at the ceiling, half responding to Tessa’s sappythis is the beginning of the rest of our livestexts, and questioning every decision I’ve ever made. That still doesn’t mean I want to play Life with Etta, though.

“It’s a mutually beneficial situation, really, because it doesn’t appear as if you’re doing anything of importance,” she continues, and I turn my head to look at her. On the outside, she looks her age. A sweet yellow eyelet dress that Mom probablypicked out for her and her dark hair pulled into a tight puff. But her eyes give her away. They’re the eyes of someone closer to Grandma Lenore’s age, someone who’s been everywhere and seen everything and is waiting for you to catch up. That little old lady inside her is why Mom and Dad have to give her directives to “act like a kid.” If it was up to her, she’d spend all day researching the migration patterns of monarch butterflies or the reign of Mansa Musa or some shit. She’s not picky, as long as it doesn’t involve interactions with others—especially others her own age.

“Please, Lenore,” she whines, and I think I see a glimmer of the ten-year-old she is, begging her big sister to play with her. But then again, it’s probably just something she learned in the human psychology online class she’s taking through Long Beach City College.

“Fine,” I huff, rolling off my bed. “But only if you let me take your picture.”

She shrugs, settling herself down on my floor, and then sets her kid-sized Apple Watch knockoff for an hour.

I walk over to my desk to get the camera, sitting on top of the gift bag it came in. I’ve loaded in film, but I’ve been scared to use any of it yet. It feels like a precious resource because it’s so limited. But I guess I should figure out if it works or not now, before committing to lugging it around in my carry-on all around Europe.

“Okay, look here.” I hold it up, centering Etta in the viewfinder, and brace myself because there’s probably an 89percent chance that this thing will explode and take my eyebrows off in a blaze of glory. But it makes a click sound and then there’s arrrrrrr, like gears are turning, and a white-framed picture pushes out. I stare at it, waiting for the colors to slowly appear, and I realize, with a little embarrassment, that there’s a tight feeling in my chest—I’m holding my breath in anticipation. It’s silly, I know. This is just my camera from when I was a kid. Nothing like the nice models they checked out to students at Chrysalis.

But the picture delivers.

Etta’s eyes are wide, surprised by the flash, and it’s like the picture cut through all the layers to show her at her very core. The Etta who used to be my shadow and call me “Nor-Nor” and, like, eat her boogers and shit—before she started reading Ta-Nehisi Coates at six for fun. A moment memorized.

A smile takes over my face, so big my cheeks hurt. I’ve missed this.

Etta comes to my side now, to peer at the picture over my shoulder. “The composition is interesting, but the lighting is unfortunate. I don’t understand the purpose of using such outdated technology when you could take a far superior photograph with a DSLR.”

“Far superior photograph,” I imitate her in a nasally voice, pretending to hold up a pair of imaginary glasses that she doesn’t even wear with my pointer finger. It’s a stupid joke, and she looks me up and down, making it clear she won’t even dignify my childish behavior with a response.

I roll my eyes, and toss the picture and camera onto my bed. “Whatever. I like it.”

She nods slowly, humoring me, and then sits back on the floor. “Can we begin? We have”—she checks her watch—“fifty-six more minutes, and you know they’re going to check on me.”

“Yeah, that’s because last time you were supposed to ‘act like a kid,’ you ended up writing a ten-page paper on the villainization of Black girls in the Descendants movies.”

“It was a solid thesis,” she says as she begins to set up the board, taking out cards and cars and pegs.

“It was.”

I clown on her sometimes, just to keep her humble, but my little sister really is brilliant. Like scary brilliant. But the thing with my parents is that even though Etta has a brain that’s probably going to be stored in the Natural History Museum like some freaky artifact and sought out by the Nic Cage of the future—that’s still not enough. They’re permanently focused on her improvement, how she can be even better. Yes, she will probably hold a PhD by the time she’s nineteen, but can she talk about the latest Disney Channel Original Movies with her peers? Has she mastered the Hasbro canon? Can she adequately explain what “a TikTok” is? There will always be a next step, a pushed finish line.

And it’s like that for all of us. Wally and me can’t be caught slipping either. But I guess it’s fair because they hold themselves to those standards too. Dad has worked crazy hours all my life, and I don’t see him stopping anytime soon even though he’sreached partner at his law firm. And Mom started her own education nonprofit that was profiled in theLA Times. They’re crazy successful, and expect us to be, too.

“Okay,” Etta says, handing me a yellow car with a pink peg in the driver’s seat. “First you need to select a pet.”

“A pet? Since when does this game have pets?”

“I’m not familiar with the history of this particular board game, but feel free to research that independently after we’re done.” She arches an eyebrow way too skillfully for a ten-year-old. “Pick a pet.”

“But what if I don’t want one?” I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t even get the appeal of pets anyway. Like, who’s down with some creature creeping and pooping all around your house, and all...lickingyou or whatever. Why have we as a society accepted this as normal?”

“It’s in the rules,” she says, sticking a green puppy-shaped peg into my car. “Now are you taking the college path or the career path?” She motions to two separate starting points on the board.

“Oh, the career path for sure,” I say. “It’s shorter and you get your first paycheck sooner.”

“Hmm,” Etta says, sucking her teeth and shaking her head like the ninety-year-old granny inside her. She’s much more deserving of her old-lady name than me.

“What?”

“If you take that path, it’s highly likely that you’ll lose the game. When you take the college path, your probability ofwinning increases because you get a career with a higher salary, which in turn provides you with benefits that will impact the entire game.” Leave it to Etta to turn this ages-eight-and-up board game into a goddamn economics lesson.

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