Page 5 of Every Step She Takes
“No!” The word escapes from the deepest part of my gut, the part that goes hollow at the thought of going on any more dates with any more menever again. I just don’t know how to explain this to my sister or my mom.
I feel like I need to have the right answer, the specific label… that I need to becertain. I feel like if I don’t have the perfect words to explain whatever this is to my family, they won’t listen.
And I needtimeto find those words.
So, I pivot. Hard. “No, don’t do that, Vi. I-I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself. With your toe, I mean.”Totally saved it.“What did the doctor say about the X-ray results?”
My little sister unleashes a dramatic sigh and welcomes the attention. “Eight weeks! He said I’m going to be in this boot for eight weeks!” She gestures to the foot she has propped up on one of my stools. They’re midcentury modern barstools that I tracked down at an estate sale in Ravenna, and I just finished sanding and restaining them, but none of that matters to Vi. “Can you believe that?Eight weeksover atoe? Who even breaks their big toe while parasailing?”
“I would guess a lot of people.”
My mom twists a cloth napkin in her hands. “I wish you wouldn’t do such dangerous things, especially in foreign countries,” she laments, because Molly Wells is a collection of anxiety disorders in the shape of a woman held together by Wellbutrin and romance novel audiobooks.
Vi brushes off her concern. “The extreme adventures company seemed legit.”
“The one that was operated out of a rusted bus in Venezuela?”
“Yes.” Vi is oblivious to my sarcasm. “The doctor said I shouldn’t travel fortwo months. What am I supposed to do with myself for two whole months? Work in the store with you?”
“Your disgust is noted.”
Vi has always jumped on any excuse to be away from the store and the family responsibilities that come with it. As a kid, that meant karate and Girl Scouts and an elite soccer team. In high school, she went on summer volunteer trips to the Dominican Republic and did a semester in Tokyo her junior year. The day she graduated, she got on a plane to backpack Europe for ten weeks and didn’t call home once. It’s been that way ever since. She boomerangs home sometimes to catch up on sleep and laundry and her regularly scheduled judgments of my life choices.
Victoria Wells never overthinks. She justacts. Which is probably why she was able to casually come out as bisexual at nineteen between bites of my homemade cottage pie. Without angst. Without questioning. Without having a fucking existential crisis about it.
And that’s the other thing. Vi is bi. If I were queer, wouldn’t she sense it somehow? Wouldn’t she have tried to set me up with a woman at some point?
Vi exhales in horror. “I can’t be stuck here like you. I was supposed to leave for Portugal and Spain in four days! I worked so hard to make this trek happen and I’ve been looking forward to it formonths, and nowthis!”
“You’re going to Portugal?” my mom asks nervously, as if Vi has announced a planned trip to an active war zone. “Why?”
“It’s the guided tour of the Camino de Santiago,” Vi snaps. “It’s been in the works for over a year now, and the tour company is paying megenerouslyto do the trip and post about it. I pitched the story on the Camino to theSeattle Times, and they’re considering running it next month.In print. Plus, I had a whole daily blog planned, with affiliate links and sponsors.” She melodramatically presses the back of her hand to her forehead in anguish. “So much planned social media content.Wasted.”
Vi often cries over sponsored content, but it’s clear this opportunity is important to her. Her Instagram might be 80 percentbikini shots in front of various waterfalls, but that’s because she knows how to game the algorithm. She’s always wanted to be a travel writer, and she’s smart enough to know that bikini selfies are how to get there.
Besides, she looks fantastic in a bikini—like Nicola Coughlan inBridgertonmeets everySports Illustratedcover model ever—and she never misses an opportunity to remind the world of this fact. It’s all part of being a travel influencer and midsize fashion icon.
“I can’t justbail. Writing for theTimeswould be a huge deal, and I don’t want to disappoint the tour company.” Vi wails like an injured otter before reaching for her can of legalized methamphetamine. Her long acrylic nails fumble with the tab for less than a second before she gives up and hands the can to me. I open it for her, and I’m immediately assaulted by the smell of blueberries and lighter fluid. The logo on the can saysBitch Fuel, with a slogan that unironically tells me to “fuel my inner boss bitch.”
But I don’t have an inner boss bitch. At best, I have an inner canary in a coal mine that I’ve been ignoring for far too long.
“I can’t believe I’m going to miss this trip!” Vi cries as I pass her the opened energy drink. “Can you imagine? All that sunshine and fresh air? Walking all day and drinking Portuguese wine every evening? Escaping it all for a while?”
And I can imagine it, actually.
“What if I do it for you?” I hear myself say.
Vi slurps her Bitch Fuel and belches subpar sushi. “Do what for me?”
“The trip. The Camino or whatever.” An idea is starting to take shape in my red-wine brain. “I could go and document everything for your Instagram and blog, and I’ll take notes so you can still write the article for theSeattle Times.”
My sister’s green eyes go wide. “You… you would do that for me?”
“I would do anything for you.”
My mom shakes her head. “No, no, you can’t do that, Sadie. You’ve never left the country before. You don’t even have a passport.”
“I do, actually.” Unused and buried at the bottom of my sock drawer.
